Adobe’s Change to the Computing Landscape

The cloud computing model is central to building web software. But there needs to be a balance between local client computing and cloud computing. The best applications will have an architecture that leverages both -- they're not totally in the cloud and not totally on the client.

Adobe’s AIR, in particular, is designed for that hybrid model. You can take advantage of the local computing environment in a way that is functional across different Operating Systems. You can do local processing, even when you are offline. But you can also take advantage of services in the cloud and even integrate the best data from multiple sources across the cloud into one application. The blended model of cloud and client is one that takes the best advantage of the computing landscape.

One could say, "Hey, it's all going to be cloud computing," but that is ignoring all the processing power that we have in front of us on our computers, or, you can say, "Hey, it's really still about the desktop," but that's ignoring the revolution of the Internet and all of the services available in the cloud.

You want a solution that helps you balance across both. That's hopefully the architecture the world is building.

The Success Story of China

China’s growth rate has been superb. Its success story can be summarized as:

1) Its export of electronic goods stands at USD 180 billion a year.

2) One-third of all the shoes exported to the world are made in China.

3) It makes 75 percent of the world’s toys.

4) Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is at USD 70 billion a year.

5) Shanghai alone has nearly 4000 skyscrapers (just for comparison, more than all of India’s, and more than those of Los Angeles and Chicago combined).

6) It has built around 60000 kilometers of expressways and will soon outstrip the total length of the US highway network.

7) Per Capita Income has risen to over USD 6000, although not very high a figure, but ten-times of what it was in 1978.

8) The number of its people living in absolute poverty has dropped from 425 million, two decades ago, to 26 million, as of today.

9) Its population is almost totally literate.

10) The life expectancy of its people is reaching the level of that of developed countries.

11) This year, it is expected to overtake Germany to become the world’s third largest economy, leaving it behind the US and Japan only.

Overall, China is on the go. But, just to caution you for not over inferring the figures, ‘Made in China’ means ‘Made by America or Europe in China.’ A very high share of the benefits goes abroad, to the foreign companies that have set up factories in China.

Cost Saving Trends of and for Airlines

High fuel prices are causing heartburn in aviation circles. Therefore, here are some of the ways airlines are and can employ to tame high fuel costs:

1) Fly higher, you burn less fuel. Particularly, at congested airports, avoid holding at lower altitudes. That is also the reason why planes have winglets on them. Winglets reduce drag and help the plane climb up, saving fuel up to 3 percent to 4 percent per flight.

2) Avoid level flying with gear down and full flaps. Doing so could actually reduce fuel consumption by 300 Kg per engine. Not doing so increases the charge, using up more fuel.

3) Cruise while descending.

4) Use light leather for seats instead of heavy cloth.

5) Switch off the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) – which is used for the lights and the AC - when on the ground and use the Ground Power Unit (GPU). An APU consumes 200 liters of fuel an hour. Whereas, a GPU, as it runs on diesel, saves money.

6) Reduce magazines and newspapers, flush lavatories during delays, change cutlery to plastic.Start APU just before engine shutdown.

7) Wash the plane more often; dust and moisture slow it down.

8) Stop taking excess fuel unless required. Modern jets burn 3 percent to 4 percent of the weight of additional fuel carried per hour of flight.

9) Decrease loading of water on the plane.

10) Encourage single-engine taxi after landing.

11) Use proprietary flight planning software that suggests the flight path, so that the plane can be aligned with the wind, thereby reducing friction.

12) Go in for more fuel-efficient planes that are aerodynamically well designed, like the A-380 and the Dreamliner.

13) Hedge in fuel. For example, Southwest Airlines has stolen a march over its competitors by hedging fuel till 2012 at USD 51 a barrel. According to the International Herald Tribune, “The hedges have helped Southwest Airlines profitable, producing gains of $455 million in 2004, $892 million in 2005, $675 million in 2006 and $439 million for the first nine months of 2007, as oil prices nearly doubled.”

Mark Twain On India

Here are some excerpts from Mark Twain’s travelogue, Following the Equator:

"This is indeed India; the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence… The country of a thousand nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods. It is the cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition… The one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, for wise and fool, for rich and poor, for bond and free. The one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined… Its marvels are its own; the patents cannot be infringed; imitations are not possible."

Energy Security

Coal is easily the cheapest option for energy. However, coal-based power produces massive greenhouse gases, and for this reason it may not be a good option in future decades. Moreover, coal is going to be exhausted, eventually.

Alternatively, it is possible that breakthroughs in solar technologies could make energy-generation cheaper and economically more viable. Solar energy is also available everywhere and is renewable. Moreover, it has none of the toxic. Recent advances in solar thermal technology show a lot of promise. Yet, nobody knows whether the technology is scalable, can work in cloudy countries, or can overcome maintenance issues.

As it seems, the most promising alternative source of energy is nuclear power, although nobody knows for sure, since the future is full of uncertainties.

Opponents of nuclear power for energy say that nuclear power will never account for more than a fraction of power needs, and will be the most expensive form of power.

The economic viability of nuclear power is far from proven. A detailed MIT analysis in 2003 suggested that nuclear power was distinctly more expensive than power based on coal or natural gases.

Since then, the prices of fossil fuels have sharply increased. And, meanwhile, the nuclear power industry argues that economies of scale can substantially reduce the cost of nuclear power. Nuclear power plants have high upfront costs, but have low running costs. If they are built without cost or time overruns, nuclear power could be competitive with natural gases even at today’s prices.

For example, France, which gets three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear power, has shown that once production is standardized and plants are built on time, nuclear power is competitive.

Fourth generation nuclear power plants are now on the drawing board, and could further improve the economics of nuclear power.

We need to keep all the options open, aim for a mix of energy sources, and try to be at the leading edge of all technologies, so as to hedge the future.

Economics of the Rupee

If exports go up, or foreign investors bring in foreign currencies into the country to invest in the stock exchange, the demand for the rupee goes up, and the external value of the rupee appreciates. Conversely, if the trade balance deteriorates, our demand for foreign exchange goes up, and the rupee depreciates.

At times, the government – precisely, the Reserve Bank of India - also influences the value of the rupee by buying or selling foreign exchange to affect the demand for the rupee. For example, the sale of foreign exchange by the RBI will result in a fall in the supply of the rupee.

When Foreign Institutional Investors pour money into the economy, a huge inflow of foreign money increases the demand for the rupee, causing the rupee to appreciate. However, this phenomenon might hurt Indian Exporters, because their products become more expensive on foreign markets.

But, when the situation is exactly the opposite, say, when the Indian-share market is bearish, Foreign Institutional Investors pull out of the Indian-share market, reversing the inflow of foreign exchange.

Most of the times, adverse trade balance, along with the outflow of foreign exchange due to the actions of the Foreign Institutional Investors, increases supply of the rupee on the foreign exchange market, resulting a fall in the external value of the rupee.

Like all other prices, the exchange rate too plays an important role in correcting demand or supply imbalances. For example, the lower the value of the rupee, the easier it is for Indian exporters to sell their goods abroad. Moreover, the higher volume of exports will help restrict the fall in the value of the rupee.

As our import bill is not very large as a proportion of GDP, so the rupee when appreciates does not help much in countering the inflation. Thus, a fall in the rupee value of our basket of imported goods can only have a small impact on the rate of inflation in the near future.

How Can You Smoke More?

Smoking is undoubtedly extremely injurious to health – it’s the main cause for lung cancer, lung diseases, and heart and arteries diseases. So, if you love your longevity, you should quit right now.

On the contrary, Mark Twain, a great philosopher, said, “It is easy to quit smoking. I have done it hundreds of times.”

If you are one of his “disciples,” you should continue reading this blog, otherwise go and do something more fruitful.

So, how can you keep smoking and still love your longevity? Well, it depends on what you smoke! There are plethoras of brands on the market. And, you should opt for the least damaging one.

The primary factors you should keep account for in your “slim lady” are: Amount of Tar, Amount of Nicotine, and Amount of Carbon Monoxide – the less these are, the better it is for you.

So, which is, perhaps, the best option on the market? So far, the best I have figured out is Dunhill – that comes in a white pack with 1 mg written right on the front face. A White Dunhill pack contains 1 mg of Tar, 0.1 mg of Nicotine, and 1 mg of Carbon Monoxide. Whereas, Marlboro Lights, which is arguably the world’s most popular slow-killer brand, contains 6 mg of Tar, 0.5 mg of Nicotine, and 7 mg of Carbon Monoxide.

Now, you know what to do! And, by the way, if you get to know something still better, do let me know too!! :-)

How Does Adobe Make Money?

Adobe gives away its innovative technologies, such as, PDF Reader, Flash Player, the Flex development framework, and now AIR, for free. So, how does Adobe make money? For Adobe, the revenue comes from several sources.

One of the revenue sources is from tooling – Adobe builds some of the best tools in the world. The more people build widgets that work on Adobe’s free technologies, the more interest Adobe hopes to drive to its tools: Photoshop, Creative Suite, Dreamweaver, and new tools, such as, Flex Builder.

The second source of revenue is from its server technologies. Adobe makes servers, like LiveCycle, which manages business process workflow, documents production, and reliably shares documents, Flash Media Server, which does streaming of video, and ColdFusion, which is a rapid application development framework.

The third source of revenue is from hosted “freemium services”, which means the services are free to some extent and then you need to pay some premium for using those services thereafter.

The fourth source of future revenue is going to be from its own standalone media player. The media player is also going to be free to end users. The way this generates revenue is: You can either watch free video streams or, if the content providers want to monetize their content, they can associate advertising with Adobe’s media player, and then Adobe shares in the advertising revenue.

Strategically, Adobe feels like the more it can help innovate and move the expressiveness of the Web forward, the better off Adobe is in terms of enabling people to produce that expressive content with its tools and servers.

Energy-frugal Japan

According to The New York Times, Japan is a role model of modern energy efficiency, harnessing its waste heat and gases - that had previously been released into the air or had burned off as waste - to generate much of its own electricity to power generators.

Superior technology and a national spirit of avoiding waste give Japan the world’s most energy-efficient structure. Japan even urged the leaders of the G8 nations to adopt numerical targets as they discuss new ways to curb carbon dioxide emissions. The existing pacts, the original climate treaty from 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, have been called failures by energy and climate experts.

Japan is by many measures the world’s most energy-frugal developed nation. After the energy crises of the 1970s, the country forced itself to conserve with government-mandated energy-efficiency targets and steep taxes on petroleum. Energy experts also credit a national consensus on the need to consume less.

According to the International Energy Agency, based in Paris, Japan consumed half as much energy per dollar worth of economic activity as the European Union did, or as the United States did, and one-eighth as much as China and India did in 2005. While the country is known for green products, like hybrid cars, most of its efficiency gains have been in less eye-catching areas, for example, in manufacturing.

Corporate Japan has managed to keep its overall annual energy consumption unchanged even as the economy doubled in size during the country’s boom years of the 1970s and ’80s.

Japan looks certain to fare better than other countries in the new era of high energy costs.

Trade-offs For Doing Business in the UAE

Undoubtedly, the UAE is a very fast emerging market for businesses. The opportunities for a very high growth are paramount. However, the UAE economy shows some weaknesses, too. Its business freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, and property rights are low, due to certain local government's regulations and policies.

According to the Index of Economic Freedom (IEF) report, which covers 162 countries, the UAE's regulatory environment doesn't seem to be very appealing to people who intend to start, operate, and close a company in the UAE.

Starting a business, in the UAE, takes on average of 62 days, compared to the world's average of 43 days. The minimum capital requirement to launch a business is high. Although, obtaining a business license takes less time than the world's average of 234 days. But, bankruptcy proceedings are lengthy and cumbersome.

The IEF report says foreign investors do not receive the same national treatment that the local investors receive, except for those who set up offices in the free zones. The UAE requires that at least 51 percent of a business must be owned by a UAE national.

In the UAE, goods have to be distributed through an Emirati partner, although "liberalized" items may be brought in without an agent's approval.

While the UAE's two stock markets are open to foreign investments, foreign ownership of listed firms is limited to only 49 percent, while some companies shun foreign ownership.

The government owns all the land in Abu Dhabi. And, Mortgages have been introduced for select Dubai-based, five-star property developments, and are otherwise generally unavailable.