Contrasting Amazon and Barnes & Noble's eReader and Market Cap

I've been looking to buy an eBook reader for a while, been pushing the decision till iPad's announcement. I am usually not the very first adopters of technology, although trail closely behind. I happened to buy one of the HP iPAQ way back in 2003 or so for over $650; still waiting for it to die, currently works as a mp3 player for the home theater. Anyways, like many, I am disappointed with iPad, primarily due to lack of e-Ink screen and poor battery life.

I started exploring other eReaders in the market, such as, Kindle, Sony's Digital Reader, and Barnes & Nobel's Nook. They all have their pluses and minuses, but they are much better for reading compared to laptop, desktop, netbook, iTouch, iPhone or even iPad.

The above is not what I wanted to write in this blog. As you can guess from my previous blogs, besides technology, I have a keen interest in the financial markets. I've been noticing that since iPad announcement, Apple's stock has had a hair-cut for about 10%, from around $210 to $190; however, at the same time, Amazon's stock went up about the same percentage, $120 to $130. This morning, I wanted to see how's Amazon doing; it was actually down about 10 bucks. But's that's not what I wanted to write, keep reading.

I was shocked to see the market cap of Barnes & Noble as compared with Amazon, the ratio is 1 to 50, B&N being $1B, and Amazon at $50B. That's an astounding number, given how people are comparing their products on the same level (Kindle and Nook); essentially, Amazon can have Barnes & Noble for breakfast...just kidding :)

See the screen shot from Google Finance:

Chrome OS - Is Google Shooting Itself in The Foot?

Google announced today that Chrome OS is now open source. I had heard little about Chrome OS prior to this announcement. Out of curiosity, went ahead to check it out.

I was surprised to find it had no ability to store or access data locally. It's meant for the cloud, meaning this is simply a fast booting machine with a browser built-in. All your data is on the cloud.

Wait a second....Does that mean I can't hookup my iPod or USB device to play media? I can't even run BitTorrent to download anything from web. What is it then, sounds to be worse than a real browser? Also, you need special hardware to run it. What's the point of this. Hmmm..what happens with no internet connection?

So many questions...will have to wait and watch when this becomes available in late 2010. I have a feeling this may not be successful.

Jumpbox - Open Source In A File

Recently, I was trying to experiment with some of the open source solutions such as Drupal, Joomla and Sugar CRM. They are all pretty popular in their own space; although I must say they can be extremely painful to install and configure, especially for someone coming from Microsoft world. You could be pulling out hair for a long time. Do I need Windows or Linux as OS? What about a database? Perl or Python? I don't want to answer any of those questions.

Gone are those days, where you are struggling with myriad of Linux distributions and packages to try an open source product. Here comes Jumpbox, an all-in-a-box solution in a virtual disk. All you need is free VMWare and a copy of the VM image from Jumpbox. The image file is usually not that large. So far, I've got Joomla and Drupla installed and running in minutes. Installation is a breeze, and most of them require simply 256 MB of RAM to run.

Needless to say, I am still struggling with the further configuration of these products, which is another story; at least I am one step ahead in the game, thanks to Jumpbox.

Andy Jordan's Tech Diary: Online Hookups Get Geo-Aware. - WSJ.com

Andy Jordan's Tech Diary: Online Hookups Get Geo-Aware. - WSJ.com







Saw this video about the power of "location based services" LBS on WSJ. I have a feeling LBS will sooner or later be the next sensation in the social networking space. As true with most of the computer technologies, they usually start with retail consumers, and then find its way into the corporate world. From just being a service to hookup like minded people in the near vicinity, it is very likely that LBS may become the next thing to perform trade in the neighborhood.



Listen up quietly: I am giving out a business idea. What if I there is an online LBS service that can list the handyman in the neighborhood. Suppose I am in need of a plumber to fix my kitchen sink, all I need to do is check on my mobile phone for a plumber near me. I will post the job, and hopefully get couple of bids in few minutes. Based on previous ratings, I will pick the best person to get the job done in the best price I want. The guy will come and get the job done. More than likely, I will pay through the online system, and give a rating. Craigslist is so passe.



Anyone willing to monetize this idea of Craigslist 2.0?

Ding-dong, DRM Is Dead — But Here Comes Variable Pricing - Giga OM

Ding-dong, DRM Is Dead — But Here Comes Variable Pricing - By Giga OM:


Here is my take on the subject:

"Variable pricing is not uncommon in entertainment (or for that matter, in any industry). Retailers like Wal-Mart and the likes always sell DVDs with different pricing. On the extreme end, the eBay model is all about variable pricing…it’s actually auction. I hope we don’t see mp3s being auctioned on iTunes, although that’s a selling model too, where buyer bids and pays what he/she likes."

Embedded vs. In-Memory vs. Server Databases

Software developers often interact with server oriented databases. However, there are at least two other types of databases, embedded and in-memory, which are less known to the software developer community. Here are the three types I would like to broadly classify the databases into:

a) Server Centric: They usually require a separate installation of the database server component. These are the most common types of databases, for example, SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Postgres, DB2, and so on. The database engine of these databases are hosted in a separate process. The applications trying to access data in these databases need to first connect using a database connectivity technology such as ODBC, OLE DB, ADO.Net, etc., and then execute SQL commands. The actual execution of the SQL queries are performed by the database engine.

b) Embedded: These databases do not require installation of any database components; often they are called as server-less or embedded databases. Some examples are SQLite, Firebird, MS Access, Derby, etc. The applications making use of these databases can create and manipulate databases from within their application itself, without requiring any additional software to be installed. These databases support SQL types command. There advantage is that they are easy to setup and require very little maintenance.

c) In-memory: These are the fastest of the breed. The database engine becomes part of the application accessing the database. Few common in-memory databases are Berkley DB, Microsoft's ESENT, Perst, etc. In order to make the data access faster, these databases do not provide support for SQL type command. In any other database type, the support of SQL forces additional layer of parsing to perform data access, and hence make them slower as compared with in-memory datavase. In fact, applications are required to use special APIs to access and manipulate data.

The in-memory databases are hardest to implement, although they have the best performance. However, there are wrappers available to ease out the development process, but still they do require additional work on the developer's end.

Delicious vs. Blogger

I am an avid Delicious user. I bookmark a lot of content on Delicious. Half of my content are technical stuff (software, technology, etc.), and the other half are business news (trends, strategy, analysis, etc.). The business bookmarks are primarily from WSJ.

The other day, as usual I was half way through an article on WSJ; and was getting ready to bookmark that on Delicious. My wife popped up from behind and asked if I ever read the articles bookmarked on Delicious. That made me ponder, I hate to say, as usual she was right this time as well. I hardly go back and read them, although I do refer to technical articles from time to time, but not on the business ones.

From now on, I am planning to add the business articles in my blog as opposed to just stuffing them on delicious. While delicious is painless to use, blog requires some effort to come up with the right choice of words. Will see how it goes.