"TechPoint" - The techie edge

Microsoft's been working hard on a project called Milan. In short, it is a multi touch sensitive computer. The possibilities are nerve wrecking. Expected to cost anywhere from $5,000 and $10,000. Microsoft plans to sell these units to Corporate customers towards the end of 2007. This is some of the things that Bill gates talks about in his books "The Road Ahead" and "Business at the speed of thought" where he predicts the future where we'll use digital news papers and that sort. He also mentioned about future of advertising, he wasn't talking about google adsense, but paradigm shifts. The ability to point something on the screen while watching a movie and finding more about it like the brand of the shoe or clothing, etc. Its already possible to find out about the location where a movie was shot etc in HD-DVDs.



And here's a Microsoft Surface teaser video.



Check the possibilities at http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Gizmodo has more details here.

Microsoft Surface on Wikipedia.

Most of these are possibilities and may take a few years to develop depending on consumer feedback.

I came across so many of these DVD rental vending machines many times in grocery stores in the last few months.

Last night, I thought I'll just give it a try. I went up to a Walgreens redbox DVD rental vending machine(redbox). It gave me about about 80 or something titles to pick from. Most, if not all were fairly new releases.

I picked a title, swiped my credit for just $1. In about 8 secs, the machine spits out the DVD. It also offered me an option to get the receipt by email, as opposed just printing(very good, no waste of paper). And the email promptly arrived with the $1 charge.

Although they advertise as $1 + tax, the tax amount was zero on my receipt. No complaints :-)

Redbox advertises, as no late fee, the catch here is every day you keep the DVD after the first day of rental will be at $1/day extra until you reach the cost of the DVD.

However, this will not totally take over blockbuster(BBI) store rentals or netflix (NFLX) online rentals right away. But once it creates more awareness among customers and more titles start appearing, this little DVD rental machine can definitely be a big threat to them. The $1 thing will definitely get most people.

I've spotted these DVD rental boxes in Chicago at Jewel, Dominick's, Walgreens, McDonald's, etc. In New Jersey, it's available at Stop & Shop. It is not available in Michigan yet.

If you'd like to try it free for one day, just put in your email here and you'll get an email like this.

Welcome to the unpredictable, wild and mildly remunerative world of redbox email. You'll now be receiving regular to semi-regular emails from redbox. Perhaps even a random delivery or two to keep you on your toes. Redbox will be sending these emails to you at: myemail@myemail.com. You might want to alert your spam nanny so that valuable codes for free rentals and critical new release information are not unduly delayed.

Now to the good stuff. To redeem your one night's free rental, please enter the following promo code at any redbox.

SOMECODE

Enjoy!

Redbox thanks you for your participation.

For the past couple months I had been reading, reading and reading. Hey! its been ages since I finished a book, so...I'll excuse myself for doing something stupid like this :-)
Here is the list of books in the order in which I read them.

The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman

- Talks about globalization in 21st century and lists 10 flatteners that make the world flat. Primarily focus is on IT and India. He also then talks about the unflat world. This is quite a read, it talks a lot about history and some interesting facts like UPS employees repairing Toshiba computers on behalf of Toshiba to expedite service. Pretty Interesting!

The 360-Degree Leader by John C. Maxwell

- Liked it. Shows how to emerge as a leader no matter where you are in an organization. Proves titles have no value in leadership. I recommend this to all of you. However, if you read this you must also read the next book The Dilbert Principle so you get the best of both worlds.

The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams

- While John C. Maxwell in The 360-Degree Leader conveys selfless dedication and talent will ultimately be rewarded, Scott Adams says No. Explains "The unskilled get promoted because higher they climb the lesser the risk of causing any problem". Scott Adams talks about his work days and a hypothetical company called OA5 (out at 5) where all employees must leave work at 5 to explain happy employees are more productive. Although written in the dotcom bubble era with unreasonable generalization, it still is interesting and humorous to read.

The Joy of Work by Scott Adams

- This is the book I read last, but probably the least I remember about. Scott Adams talks about boss managing strategies, getting your co-workers to do your work and a few other things so you can live a selfish and happy life. Read this for the humor but don't follow it religiously! Scott warns about it too!

Being a voracious traveler, I had been using online mapping services like mapquest and google maps for a very long time. Even though I am not very bad with my directional sense, I've been lost terribly a few times with the printed maps. Carrying an atlas hasn't helped much either.

I recently bought a Garmin Street Pilot c330

This GPS unit is:
- portable (mountable on dash)
- preloaded with detailed maps
- touch screen display
- voice guidance
- vivid light sensitive graphics display

It's such a time saver. I just hop in to the car, punch in the address and the GPS tells me where to go turn-by-turn. I've been happy in terms of directions from Garmin as it sources from Navteq.
I am not sure where Magellan, Cobra and TomTom source from? I am very happy with Garmin and would like to hear about experiences from others.

I had been wanting to buy a GPS unit for a very long time, but kept procrastinating it for whatever reason. May be for the bells and whistles I wanted, the price was much higher. For me, the must features were, portability, touch screen, voice guidance, preloaded maps. Since I've gotten the unit, I feel stupid for not buying it early.

Anyway, the Garmin Street Pilot c330 has a retail tag close to $1000, but sells in amazon.com for just $299 with free-shipping and no sales taxes (Same thing sells in Best buy for $399 + sales taxes)

With the recent sales tax law, if a company has a physical location in a state it must charge sales tax on online sales as well. Amazon, however, does not have physical stores and so is not obligated to charge you sales tax :-)

If you are in the market for a GPS, I'd strongly recommend the Garmin Street Pilot c330 from amazon.

Some of the popular mapping websites are Mapquest, Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Mappoint, Ask, etc. While most of them source from Navteq or TeleAtlas; the way they are presented makes a huge difference in the user experience. Companies try to stay ahead of competition by doing something different. One common thing is to provide a feature that competitor’s don’t offer. But sometimes it leads to some interesting features such as ask.com’s map providing an option for walking directions.

For walking in downtown New York or Chicago or similar big cities this feature would be very useful and Ask.com is the only service that provides it.

An interesting direction would be 223 E Monroe St, Chicago, IL 60603 to 339 W Monroe St, Chicago, IL 60606. Compare between Driving directions and walking directions. Due to one way routes, driving directions are not the best to take if you plan on walking. Great!

I searched Ask’s map direction from Chicago, IL to Detroit, MI and just for the heck of it I clicked on walking directions and I found the time estimate as 125 hr. 20 min.

Now I would be curious to know who would walk so many hours?

The reason for my curiosity is Ask.com probably is optimizing routes for driving and walking, because the Chicago – Detroit driving directions shows a shorter route while walking directions shows a longer route may be due to the fact that you cannot walk on all the routes that you can drive.

Pretty much walking directions is the only feature that would attract you to Ask.com’s mapping site. There are no other standard features such as reverse directions which is a commonly used feature and available in other mapping sites.

Mapquest still stands as my top pick. Mapquest’s sole business is maps and they do a good job at that. Mapquest is the only service that allows you to perform advanced options such as Shortest Time, Shortest Distance, Avoid Highways , Avoid Tolls and Avoid Seasonally-Closed Roads. Mapquest may not be up to mark with the top notch technology such as ajax or flex, but they sure do provide good and accurate directions with some really good advanced options.

Related posts:
Yahoo maps beta released - feature rich
Google Maps Vs Mapquest - what’s your pick?

Google maps and mapquest, now seems all old school after the release of yahoo maps beta. Yahoo has come up with some really nice features. Competition has now become more stiff between rival companies. Here's a short comparision list.

A guy called Paul has come with a Craigslist-GoogleMaps combo site housingmaps.com.
The site provides the Google maps view of all the listings at Craigslist for the specific city you select.
At this time the website provides the following search filtering:
1. for rent, for sale, rooms or sublets
2. City: Has over 35 US cities and includes Toronto.
3. Price Range: You cannot specify a price range, but you can pick from the pre-defined list of price ranges.

I was a Mapquest user for a long time. Right after the release of Google maps, I jumped in to using Google maps, because it gave more visual directions.

Then, I noticed that Google Maps was not very impressive after all.

For the last one year, I had been traveling a lot and for every trip, I made sure to compare the directions of Google maps and mapquest. More than 95% of the time, I ended up choosing mapquest because it not only gave me the shortest route but also gave me the fastest route besides giving me good time estimates. There had been very few instances where I picked Google maps.

Just as an exercise, try to find the direction from Detroit, MI to Chicago, IL. Pull up the directions on Google maps and Mapquest. Here are the differences:

Now, compare the two maps and you will see that the two directions are entirely different. Mapquest takes you from Michigan to Indiana and then Illinois. Note that Michigan and Illinois have highway speed limits 70mph. Google maps will take you from Michigan through OH and then Indiana and then finally to Illinois. Note that Ohio and Indiana have lower speed limits 60mph/65mph and thus takes more time.

Another example, is Detroit, MI to Tallahassee, FL

Notice that in the above example both of them give about the same miles, however Mapquest estimates the total time to be 15 hours 53 minutes and Google maps estimates it to be 21 hour 13 minutes. Both of them pretty much give the same route. I found myself reaching my destination in about 15 hours and 30 minutes, close to Mapquest’s estimate and about 6 hours earlier than Google’s estimate. Now, that makes a big difference in my travel itinerary.

These examples are in favor of Mapquest. I did not find a strong example favoring Google maps. If you know of some favoring Google maps please comment to this post and I will rewrite this post with your comparison.

The new BMW coupe is to be released this September. The 2007 BMW 3 series coupe will be the first BMW coupe to be released based on the design of 2006 3 series. The coupe will have 300 horsepower and 300 foot-pounds of torque. The combination of turbocharging and direct injection develops power and performance more quickly than a turbocharged engine of conventional design. This is the best Bimmer money can buy that is close to an M3 in terms of performance.

Zero to 60 in just 6.2 seconds. You may be interested in the 2006 BMW 325i - quick TOUR video which is similar to the new 2007 3 series coupe in design.

Lease or buy, september is the expected release of yet another ultimate dirving machine.

Its all about the survival and emotions of an american family when a giant disaster strikes the earth. It's not terrorism or an attack from other humans. Its an attack that comes out of no where; may be aliens, but the word alien is not used in the movie. It ends with many humans killed and nothing happening to any of the members of the super hero family. They survive everything and meet at the end with all the emotion.
I love the movie for the action, graphics and all the sci-fi features. The killing of humans through the lightning like rays is just something to awe. The family emotions and the ending of the story are the ones that make you come out of the theater with disappointment pondering if speilberg is trying to tell the world something.
The movie has its own genre, thinking of how the movie was shot is just mind blowing!
Tom cruise has done his part well, even though I don't think this movie will add any extra credit to his acting.
Of the speilberg movies I'd give this one a C+ overall!

Go to http://maps.google.com and see for yourself.
Are you tired of mapquest and yahoo maps, getting all text directions,
turn left, right and not able to figure out where you are going?
Confused? Yeah, google is the solution. Google map gives you picture
perspective. You can look at maps and graphically interpret. It is
hard to explain all the features unless you explore it on your own.
But sure can tell you, you will know where you are going for sure!
Google maps is in beta. Can't wait for the final release!
Way to go google! You guys rock!