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Wow…is all I have to say after getting a chance to use Cisco’s video conferencing solution called TelePresence, it’s the way video conferencing should be. Over the years I’ve used video conferencing products from Cisco, Polycom and Tandberg to name a few and they were all kludgy and just never really worked. Granted, you can never replicate an in person meeting but TelePresence gets pretty close. I was in Bombay and initiated a call with several people in Irvine, California and you felt as if everyone was in the same room.

The Cisco team built TelePresence from the ground up and went as far as designing the room, chairs and table that need to be used. The unit I was using cost around USD 300k per side and had three 65″ LCD’s running full 1080p…yes 1920 x 1080. That means several gig’s of data was compressed to under 15Mbps which is still a lot of bandwidth but it is so worth it. Below are some pictures but they really don’t do justice, first 5 pics are from Bombay and the last 2 are from Irvine. I really should have taken a video!

More info on TelePresence from the Cisco website.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been debating whether to upload my personal data contained in my address book and calender to the Googleplex. I figured Google is already a massive part of my life with search and Gmail do I really want to hand over more of my life to Google? I have no doubt Google will not profile my data or pilfer it, but in this current environment of anything is possible (countries going bankrupt, USD 50 billion ponzi schemes, Starbucks closing stores etc…) you never know.

For me, it comes down to hardware independence.  I would love to buy a cheap USD 100 phone when I travel and not have to tinker with all the settings. Currently, I use a MacBook Pro (MBP) and iPhone combo to organize and manage my life, the two make sweet music like Hall and Oates.  My iPhone data is backed up to my MBP and my MBP is backed up to an external 250GB Toshiba drive.  My dilemma is I’m locked into an iPhone only solution at the moment and living in India means if something happens to my iPhone I have to shell out USD 640 for a new iPhone…that is a HUGH deal breaker for me.

There are two solutions to this:

1. Apple expands it’s iSync software to natively work with many of the new phones from BlackBerry, Nokia and Google’s Android platform. Most likely won’t happen as Apple historically is a closed platform. I’m a hugh iPhone fan, but the power of open source technology is no match for a closed architecture platform.

2. Move my data to Google which would be my central data repository.  Then using the various Google tools such as Google Sync I could download my data to a new phone and sync on the fly. And as more companies offer Android based phones I would have a much larger selection of phones to choose from. For example, Motorola just scraped their own phone OS and decided to exclusively use the Android platform.

I hope the competition between Apple’s iSync and Google’s Sync make both products better in the near future. Ideally, I’d like to stick with Apple’s iSync and not have my address book and calendar reside in the cloud but I’m guessing it’s just a matter of time.

Every year for the past several years I would make a New Years resolution to get organized, then I would download a bunch of Mac applications and get frustrated with them.  During the last half of December 2008, I decided to try 3 programs: OmniFocus, The Hit List and Things.  All 3 applications allow you to use the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology from David Allen. I like to call it “Getting Shi!@# Done.”

OmniFocus (OF) from The Omni Group.  I’ve tried this program several times and loved that it was really just a blank sheet and you could customize it. OF has both a desktop and iPhone version that sync up. But for some reason I just couldn’t fit it into my daily work flow. Otherwise it’s a great program from a very talented company.

The Hit List (THL) from The Potion Factory. THL is in beta and has a great interface.  THL fit in with how I work, but it’s iPhone app has not been released yet and that was part of my criteria for picking an application.  The iPhone app is in the works but I really wanted something on day one – Jan 1, 2009.

This finally bring me to Things from Cultured Code. I have been a part of their beta program and have tried using Things several times over the past year.  As their official launch at Macworld 2009 neared, their code base got better and was very rock solid. I again started to use Things and was impressed how much better the application was when I first started using it. The Things interface is so simple you can start entering data right away without reading a “how to” guide. The interface was a natural fit for how I work and took me no time to get organized. The iPhone version synced via WiFi without any issues to my desktop.  The iPhone version has a couple features missing but the team at Cultured Code are making sure those get implemented ASAP.

Overall, I would highly recommend Things if you are looking to get organized.  Things desktop is USD 50 and Things iPhone/touch is USD 10.

Update: Watch the Things screencast I created

Cook as in cooking the books. Satyam is the 4 largest IT major in India and was started by Rama Raju. Today he dropped a massive bombshell that involved an accounting scandal which sent the stock tanking 77%, it closed at Rs 40.25 a share (the 52 week high was Rs. 542). Rama faxed a letter to SEBI Wednesday morning where he outlined the level of fraud and why he did what he did. The letter tries to show him as the knight in shining armor trying to rescue the company…what a crock of sh!@#. According to the letter he is solely responsible and nobody knew anything but him, even though Satyam has over 53,000 employees, had 9 directors on the board and PwC as the auditor.

The meaning of Satyam in sanskit is truth, which brings me to this point about trust. Who can you trust? The founders of the company? The board of directors? The auditors? The analysts? The regulators? The ratings agencies?

To quote a line from my spiritual advisor – LA rapper 2Pac Shakur:

Before I go to sleep
Tell me, who do you believe in?
Who do you believe in?

So why did he do it? The usual culprit is pump up the numbers to drive the stock price up (aka pump and dump). Based on my extensive research (using google and talking to one person) I have two theories:

1. The numbers for the past several years were pumped up by using the cash on the balance sheet to play in the equity markets. When the markets fell last year, that cash disappeared. Is this likely, maybe. When I came to India a couple years ago, I met with a pharma company that had Rs 50 CR on the books and wanted to invest in the equity markets. They said “why invest in our business when we can make 30-40% in the markets.”

2. Government payoff (read bribe). IT companies in India are usually free of corruption but infrastructure and real estate companies are the exact opposite. Rama has two sons – Teja (runs Maytas Infra) and Rama Jr. (runs Maytas Real Estate). Where did Maytas Infra get the money to “win” the contract for the Hyderabad Metro project?

I would highly recommend reading the letter he faxed to SEBI, below is the best line from the letter:

It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten

Update:
The lead partner from PwC who handles Satyam is Srinivas Talluri, you can email him at srinivas.talluri@in.pwc.com to get all your questions answered.