I've been drooling over pictures of Zune for the last week now. I know that lots of people make fun of Microsoft for our packaging and branding () and with Zune and the XBox 360, things are really different.

No more 'Personal Music Player 2006 Professional Edition Sp1 Feature Pack Community Technology Preview'. Yay!

On a tangential note, I was watching an internal demo of Zune's song sharing features and I instinctively described it to someone as 'he Zuned him the songs'. Just as Google trys to stop being a verb, you might see a whole new verb from Microsoft :-)

On an even more tangential note, why does the brown Zune polarise people so much? I hate it but I know people who absolutely love it. Weird.

"Normal ATMs require atleast 10 lakhs rupees (around $20,000 ). If we were to convince banks to install one in each of the 650,000 villages in India, this was too expensive. So we went and created one that was just Rs.50,000 (around $1000 USD)" 

This was just one of the several amazing things I heard yesterday from Dr.Ashok Jhunjhunwala. He was doing a talk at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad and since Microsoft is literally next door, he dropped by and did a talk here as well.You can see him deliver a similar here on Google Video.

I've never been a big believer in technology changing the quality of life in rural India. Until yesterday. I (and the rest of the audience) was completely floored as Dr.Jhunjhunwala related story after story of how he and his gang of IIT professors have used startups and technology to change the quality of life in India. Be it getting 100 million phones in India or be it doubling the rural GDP, they have some incredible targets.

When looking at the screenshots of some of the products they had created, I was slightly ashamed of myself and the work I do. Day in and day out, I think about products like Windows Live, the iPod and Zune, the XBox and so on. I think of these as 'products that matter'. But here was this IIT professor showing off a really ugly-looking Windows application that allowed doctors to remotely diagnose patients through video conferencing all at a very cheap rate. These applications change lives. Not an iPod or a XBox 360.

None of the technology was rocket science. Just good ol' fashioned ingenuity and perseverance. Truly amazing.

Forget the politicians and the corruption. This guy gives me hope for the entire country.

People talk of how movies like 'Rang De Basanti' make the feel patriotic. For me, listening to Dr.Jhunjhunwala made me feel patriotic.

I wish the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation or Google.org would throw a few billions atim and ask him to change the country. I'm sure he will.

Heck! He already has.

is probably this.

Shift-right click away!

I tried my hand at liveblogging Sunil's talk at Blogcamp.in. Here's my attempt at transcribing his talk. I was too tired to get the question and answer session. Disclaimer - I've missed out on a lot of stuff. Also, since I'm posting this while Sunil is still speaking during the Q&A, so excuse the bad punctuation and formatting and grammar

I belong to the transistor generation.We had just one newspaper in the house.You had to wake up early enough.And ask my father to pass the sports page. Transistor radiors meant you had to be still for if you moved, you could lose the signal

Today, everyone here has a laptop. You could do anything you want. You could get news from the US, from New Zealand, wherver. It is mind boggling

A few years ago, I figured that I couldnt write long hand anymore.My columns are still in long hand - my secretary types it out. But when I'm overseas, I have no choice but to get online.
Yes, you could fax it..but it was never great.I still dont know how to use the keyboard
I'm a 2 finger typist. I envy the guys in the pressbox who dont have to look at the keyboard
The journos long ago banged away on typewriter keyboard. Now, all of you (bloggers) are typing away..and I cant hear a thing. Its an art and a skill..and I appreciate that

I would punch out a fantastic column..and then look up at the screen and learn that nothing has come on the screen. For I had done something wrong

But I'm still learning

[I didn't catch the name]Someone came up to me and appreciated my computer stuff - for people my age give up quickly. Newspapers lead to television lead to the Internet

When India was in the WIndies and I was in the US, I watched a match streamed live on the TV
I also cheated a bit by submitting a report from the US saying I had attended the match in the Windies
Before podcasting, I did a lot of television commentary.In commentary, you feed off your fellow commentator. You have a producer sitting with you. You have a omnivan running all the 25 or so cameras.
You have a director figures out which feed to put on the TV from the 25 feeds. Quite a process
But there, you are at the mercy of the director or the producer
The director would tell you "We're going to show you this - say Tendulkar's grip" and prepares you
So you get time to prepare yourself to speak about it
We used to have hand held mikes instead of lapel mikes. Why? There's a ball by ball commetator and there's a color commentator
the ball by ball commentator tells on what happens every ball. The color commentator adds 'color' to the picture on the monitor. Something that isnt obvious from the picture. Sometimes we dont do it well and say something that is obvious..we say "The ball went to the boundary". Duh!

But in podcasting, things are different. I dont have anyone or any events to feed off
In a podcast, I have time to prepare. I have to speak on what has happened on a 6 hour game
In 5-6 minutes, I need to speak and summarize what happened in a 6 hour day
The disadvantage is - in summarizing, I might miss out the cameos. I'll list the double hundreds..but I'll miss the bowler taking one crucial wicket
In podcasting, it might be a great idea to have someone who can come back to me and ask me "Sunil - what do you think of that?"

With technology, I'm sure its just a matter of time before this happens
In podcasting, the easiest thing is to finish it off without worrying about the consequences
In television, you have to worry about users coming back to you
I'm not a blogger. I've been sitting and listening to you discussing. Its been fantastic
I'm thinking of starting a cricket blog..with help from my friends here

Ladies and Gentleman..thank you!

The rumours are true! I'm going to be participating (and most probably speaking) in BlogCamp. My only problem is that I have no clue what I'm going to be speaking on yet. I've been furiously trying to brainstorm topics but to no avail. If any of you have suggestions, please send them my way.

In other bad news, my laptop's motherboard is going through an agonizing death. There is a very high probability that I'll be computer-less when I land in Chennai tommorow. Which is going to be a royal pain in all the wrong places.