I have often observed that Indian movies have a habit of skipping over various aspects of a character’s development in a rush to tell the entire story in the allotted time. Story telling is a noble pursuit, in that the audience is nowadays impatient and quick to judge. It takes a lot of combined work by everyone involved, from the script writer to the editor, to release a product that is worthy of people’s time and money. Consequently, if the end product is a confused, winding tale, it is a failure of every single person involved in the storytelling process. Continue reading
November 2013
Smartwatch. Meh.
Samsung is talking about 800,000 shipped Smartwatch units. Yeah, whatever. No one’s buying them, no one’s talking about them. At least not in my part of the Internet. Here’s the thing. People call Samsung an Apple competitor. Really? Android fans jump to the HTC One now. The Fitbit Force looks more like a smartwatch than the Samsung Smartgear.
I saw “The Italian Job” yesterday. Samsung is the Steve to Apple’s Charlie in the movie. Samsung barely has enough imagination to last it a few years before stealing someone else’s idea.
When you’re trying to break into a new market, an important part of that process is innovation. The ‘thing’ Samsung is dangling in front of us looks like something Casio put out in the 90s. When Tesla came out with an electric car (which is essentially what it is), did they say, let’s make another boring iteration of an electric car that drones like a bee and doesn’t go over 60 mph? No. When Nest made a thermostat, did they make it look like every other thermostat in the market. Not at all.
Why does it seem so hard to innovate? Why does it seem like Samsung cannot look at a device and dream up something different? Maybe because Corporations don’t dream.
Death
Death,
come to me slowly
and stand besides me
like a friend
for I will have lived fully
by the time you come.
Or,
stand in attention
like an enemy
and let us fight
till the end of eternity
before you take my soul.
But,
do not creep up suddenly
and take me with
a treacherous knife in my back
like a wretched, unwary man.
Death,
fight me like an enemy
or greet me as a friend
but be not a stranger
when you take me in the end.