digital thoughts

The first time ever, an Indian company landed in the list of most innovative companies compiled by Business Week magazine. Tata Group landed in 6th place in the “25 most innovative companies” list. Apple, Google, Toyota, GE and Microsoft snatched the first 5 places. Tata Group is ahead of Sony, Nokia, Wal-Mart and even Nintendo! Business Week is impressed with Tata’s new $2500 car and its distribution model. Way to go Tata!

We can’t depend on oil for our power needs. It’s not only reliable, it’s also dangerous. So, the government takes initiatives to tackle the power challenge.

“Government” in this case is not Indian government. It’s the local government in San Francisco, USA. San Francisco City officials proposed a program that offers companies and residents government-funded loans and rebates to offset the costs of installing solar panels.

This program basically cuts the cost of solar panel installation by more than 50%. Programs like this will encourage more people to use natural power rather than living at the mercy of OPEC.

Power shortage in India is much worser than many other countries. Indian government should promote programs like this. Unfortunately, our politicians are more interested in their own power struggle; they just don’t have time to think about Solar power.

Related Link: San Francisco Airs Solar Incentive Plan

Most of us dream about reaching corner office. Shai Agassi reached it at the young age. He was only 33 when he joined SAP when it bought his company TopTier Software Inc.

Shai Agassi was seen by others in his industry as the future of software giant SAP, where he was next in line to become chief executive.

Still, that was not enough for Shai. He quit the job in March. Everyone was speculating what he was going to do next.

Shai Agassi has raised a hefty $200 million in initial funding to tackle a challenging issue: how to make electric cars a viable alternative to ones powered by internal-combustion engines.

He pulled in lot of investors and some country presidents to help him with his adventure. He is a great sales man. If he can really pull this off, that is great news not only for him, but for the entire world. Electric cars will save this environment from all the pollution we see every day.

Side note: I personally think that we should ban all the auto rickshaws in the country, until they convert the engines to either gas driven or electric.

Electric cars have two big limitations: They are costly and need frequent recharges. Shai Agassi is thinking about cheaper and more powerful batteries that will solve the worries about the cost.

Shai Agassi is from Israel. He is naturally thinking about reducing the dependence on oil. It’s not only political. It’s also a right thing to do.

Related Link: Shai Agassi’s Blog

Scientists have for the first time found uranium in “exceptionally high concentration” in Ladakh, the icy Himalayan region in Jammu and Kashmir that has strategic significance for India.

Samples of rocks analysed in a German laboratory have revealed uranium content to be as high as 5.36 per cent compared to around 0.1 per cent or less in ores present elsewhere in the country.

If this new discovery is viable, there is not much need for importing uranium. The proposed India-US nuclear deal is all about importing it. However, don’t have high hopes, because it would take years before we could finally extract the uranium from these rocks.

“Geochemical analysis of the separated zircon grains showed exceptionally high concentration of both uranium (0.31 – 5.36 per cent) and thorium (0.76 – 1.43 per cent),” said Upadhyay, a geologist at Kumaon University in Nainital. He added that the study is preliminary and “detailed work is in progress”. According to Upadhyay, uranium-bearing magmatic rocks are located all along Kohistan, Ladakh and southern Tibet (from east to west). “However, contents of uranium may differ from place to place,” he said.

The low uranium content in ores, however, makes mined uranium in India expensive compared to that in Australia whose ores contain as much as 15 per cent uranium.

Related Link: Do we need nuclear power?

A woman was killed yesterday night in an accident involving the Mind Scrambler ride at Playland Amusement Park in Rye, N.Y., just north of New York City.

Emergency workers responded quickly, “but there wasn’t very much anybody could do for her,” Police Chief O’Leary said. The woman, who was in her 20s, was pronounced dead at the scene around 9:30 p.m., he said.

The indoor attraction spins riders around in a darkened tent with flashing lights. It was the scene of another deadly accident on May 22, 2004. Stephanie Dieudonne, 7, wriggled free of the restraining bar on one of the cars, knelt on the seat and fell soon after the ride started, according to investigators.

Friday’s accident marked the fourth fatality within as many years at the Playland.

When I read this news, I can’t stop thinking about what kind of safety arrangements we have in Indian theme parks.

American theme parks generally follow safety procedures. Workers in those parks are well paid, they provide good customer service. Most of them do care for the guests of the park.

In India, the situation is very different. I visited many theme parks in the past four years. Most of these parks’ staff doesn’t care about the guests, that is an under statement.

Take VGP Golden beach, Chennai for example. You need to pay Rs. 125 to get in. There is almost nothing inside except few rides for toddlers. Rest rooms are complete junk and of course there is no water. Wherever you see they have “VGP” signs. But customer service is none. I guess they use this park to promote their shops.

Queensland is another waste. You need to pay Rs .300+ to get in. If you go there on weekdays, many rides are not working. Some rides are open only after 1:30pm. If you ask questions about this, you get a smirk from the staff.

Why I am writing about customer service when I want to discuss about safety. My point is that when the parks’ staff is not worrying about basic customer service, how do you expect these guys to care about maintenance of the park? If a guest don’t wear a seatbelt properly or if a restraining bar is loose, will the park guys really take care of it? I doubt it.

You can’t expect children to sit tight in a ride. Children are children. They will try to get away from the seat if they are panicked. If the restraining bar is loose as in the case of  Stephanie Dieudonne, the accident can be fatal. Theme park management and park equipment manufactures should have common sense before they come up with the ride ideas.

So far, we haven’t had any major accidents in Indian theme parks. Theme park industry is quite new in India. The government should put some strict regulations to make sure each theme park has sufficient number of attendants for each ride and all the rides are properly maintained. I don’t think any parent would expect their child to meet an accident in a theme park. They trust that theme park management maintains the park properly.

Indian theme park owners should respect that trust and maintain the parks with proper care. I remember the school fire tragedy in Kumbakonam, TN, few years ago. No parent would have suspected that school correspondent was a greedy moron. Nobody would have even imagined that such an incident could take place. Only after that fire tragedy, TN government woke up and put strict regulations for all the schools.

It’s better to be proactive and put strict regulations for our theme parks also. There is no point in punishing the culprits after the loss of innocent children. A wise government will act before any tragedy happens.

You might have seen all kinds of buildings. Have you ever seen a building where the floors would rotate 360 degrees?!

David Fisher, an Italian-Israeli architect, has dreamed up a 68-story combination hotel, apartment and office tower where the floors would rotate 360 degrees. Each floor would rotate independently, creating a constantly changing architectural form.

Each story of the tower would be shaped like a doughnut and be attached to a center core housing elevators, emergency stairs and other utilities. Wind turbines placed in gaps between the doughnuts would generate electricity.

The doughnuts won’t rotate fast enough to scare the residents. A single rotation would take around 90 minutes. “It’s quite slow,” says Mr. Fisher.

Mr. Fisher, 58 years old, was born in Tel Aviv. His claim to fame is the development of the “Leonardo da Vinci Smart Bathrooms,” a prefabricated bathroom system that hotels and resorts use to quickly build new facilities.

Mr. Fisher says he got the tower idea while looking at condominiums for sale in Miami several years ago. He noticed the much lower price tags for units without water views. He thought “why not give all units a chance of having water view at least few times a week?”

He designed the building that gives rotation to each floor, so each unit will have different view every day!

Well… how do you supply electricity, water to the floors that keep on moving? What about plumbing? Don’t the water pipes crack when the floor moves?

Fisher says supplying electricity to the floors will be similar to how a moving train captures power by staying in constant contact with a power source — in the case of a train, an overhead wire or third rail. He also says that plumbing is taken care of too although he can’t disclose the details.

This rotating skyscraper will be built in Dubai.

There is couple of weird accidents recently. Hyundai vehicles were used in all of those incidents.

Few months ago, five software engineers got trapped in Hyundai Santro in one of the busiest roads in Chennai. They were waiting for the rain to stop, but all of them died because of carbon monoxide poisoning. Car exhaust didn’t find a way out due to surrounding water, so the gas went back to the car and killed the passengers silently.

Few weeks ago, Hyundai Accent was involved in another cruel accident. Five people traveled in Accent from Trichy to Chennai. One stupid lorry driver tried to cut in front of them to take a coffee break. Accent’s driver tried to stop his vehicle from colliding with the lorry. But, his car’s front got locked with the lorry. Then came the weirdest part, fire got triggered in the car’s engine.

Passengers in Accent tried to escape from the car. But, all doors are locked, they couldn’t open the doors. There is some serious problem with the design of Hyundai cars. The hydraulic locks got jammed for some reason.

Car started burning; passengers couldn’t get out of the car. They were helpless. They were burnt alive. So sad”¦

I don’t want India to become a lawsuit country like U.S. But, unless there are proper legal remedies for these victims, all car manufactures in India will be careless. It’s not only car manufactures, any business for that matter. All these business guys know that they can easily get away in the current legal structure. If the same thing happened in U.S., Hyundai might have faced huge drop in sales and many lawsuits. Firestone is the best example in the same scenario.

In India, there is no value for human life. So, these accidents will get added to some statistics and everyone including Hyundai will forget this.