Nagarjun Palavalli

Self-taught programmer, designer, entrepreneur and aviation enthusiast. I'm currently the CEO at TripCloud - an integrated travel and expense management solution for companies.

[nagarjunp]

How much does Apply pay to ship an iPhone from their factory in China to San Francisco?

Answer: less than $1 or about 0.008% of the total cost of an iPhone 6! Learning about the global shipping / logistics industry excites me. The sheer volume of goods shipped every year, all the infrastructure needed to process these goods and its impact on the global economy is mind-boggling.

The introduction of the standard shipping container some 5 decades ago resulted in significant improvements in shipping. It also led to the creation of much larger ships. Some, capable of carrying over 18,000 40-foot containers. I'll let you grasp the scale of that for a minute.

Ever wondered how Indian mangoes get to New Jersey or how a pair of Levis jeans got to Ghana? How about that Ikea furniture in your bedroom? They are all dependent on the ships and cargo planes that get them to their various destinations.

Here are some interestig facts that I uncovered today:

It costs roughly $2.50 / kg to ship an item by air from China to San Francisco

A new iPhone 6 in its box weighs some 385 grams so it costs Apple less than $1 to ship it from its factory in China to San Francisco

Apple ships about 100,000 / plane and requires 124 flights to ship 30 million iPhones (the amount of iPhones sold in the US last quarter) to the US

It represents 2% of the total air freight volume between China and the US and causes the price of air freight to increase 2-5x during the months of October and November when new models are launched

It only costs $300 to move a 40-foot container from Rotterdam to Shanghai

The Port of Rotterdam is the world's most advanced and automated port. It cost some $535 million to build and handles 445 million tons of cargo each year.

Sound interesting? Here are some links from where I pulled these facts (interesting reads):

Why are ocean freight rates so low?

The iPhone's Impact on Air Freight Prices

Why is the port of Rotterdam more automated than the port of Oakland?

[nagarjunp]

Boxed Water is Better

A company in Michigan is taking on the $144 billion global market for bottled water with a novel idea - sell water in a carton rather than in a plastic bottle. This, seemingly simple change has a dramatic impact on the water industry and on the environment.

Aside from the fact that paper cartons are far more recyclable, they can also be packed more tightly than plastic bottles. How much more? For every truck of plastic bottles, the company can ship 26 trucks of boxed water making transportation substantially more efficient.

Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the most revolutionary. Read the whole story here: http://bit.ly/1MvczsI.

[nagarjunp]

Wunderlist Review

Most people who know me would agree that I’m obsessively organized and productive. Being organized helps me stay on top of things so I never miss important files, events or information. I rely on a number of tools to keep things in check:

Evernote is where I dump random thoughts, ideas, meeting notes etc.

My Outlook.com email has several rules to automatically triage my email

Contacts are synced via Google

All my files are organized and backed-up on OneDrive

I go to great lengths to maintain this ecosystem of apps and services. I’ve always felt that the missing piece of the puzzle was a task management app. I’ve dabbled with Asana and Trello in the workplace and they’ve worked great but they never seemed to translate well into my personal life. A number of iOS apps looked great but didn’t really solve the purpose well. They either had too few features or too many animations. Most apps didn’t work on other platforms and didn’t even backup / sync my tasks.

I’m an Evernote fan so when Evernote introduced tasks, I gave it a shot. I even hacked it to mimic David Allen’s GTD system (I’ve since stopped following this system, feels overloaded) but somehow, it never felt easy. Evernote is a solid notes app but when it came to tasks, it felt bloated. For a brief while, I even tried Things. It was better than most other apps but felt slow, clunky and most importantly, it was unnecessarily expensive.

Enter Wunderlist! Wunderlist is almost perfect. Almost, because I expect more from it. It’s a little like Apple. Apple creates some of the world’s most beautiful and functional products. Yet, people crave more from them because they can rely on Apple to deliver. I expect the same from the makers of Wunderlist. Within the first few minutes of using Wunderlist, it became clear to me that its makers built it with a whole lot of love. It felt like they thought it through.

As someone who spends most of my time in front of a laptop, a good desktop experience is more important to me than mobile in most cases. Wunderlist’s Mac app is a delight. It’s quick to load, quick to move around, looks stunning and most importantly, syncs instantly across all my devices. It does all this without compromising features. It’s easy to organize tasks into lists and lists into folders. You can even share a list with friends, family or co-workers. You can assign tasks, set due dates and reminders and even make notes. Interestingly, you can even have tasks repeat in set intervals. I’ve found this to be useful. This is just half the story. You can also comment on tasks that you’ve shared with others and more.

Wunderlist does all this without feeling heavy and clunky. There’s a sort of natural simplicity to how it works. Most successful apps gain traction because their users get habituated to using them. These apps are a natural extension to how people work. Wunderlist seems to get this right. For me, it was three things:

Pressing Ctrl + Shift + W opens a Quick Add window globally on your computer. This makes it easy for me to add a task the second I think of it. It’s very natural. No need to open the complete app or fiddle on my phone. It’s very much like firing up Spotlight on your Mac. Natural.

Desktop notifications are great because I spend most of my time in front of my laptop. Wunderlist uses native Mac notifications that I never miss.

Sync, sync, sync. It’s flawless.

I’m starting to get very used to Wunderlist. Few apps have this effect on me. Sketch is another app that had this effect on me. 

I love most things about Wunderlist and I’m going to continue using it. As a power user of most apps, I have a few feature-requests that would make it stick even more. If you’re one of the creators of Wunderlist, please make notes.

Keyboard Shortcuts

There are a limited number of keyboard shortcuts within the app. I like to use the mouse as little as possible. It makes navigation much quicker. I almost never use my mouse when navigating Gmail, Outlook, Feedly, Twitter or a number of other apps. Why does Wunderlist have so few keyboard shortcuts? It wouldn’t hurt to cover every feature within the app. Here are a few features that aren’t covered by keyboard shortcuts yet:

Switch lists

Mark a task as complete

Add due dates and reminders

Reorder tasks

Jumping to sub-tasks, notes and comments

Viewing available keyboard shortcuts (most apps use the Cmd + ? shortcut to show you a list of all shortcuts)

Share lists

Advanced Notes

Notes are a missed opportunity in Wunderlist. Clearly, its makers think its an important feature. Otherwise, they wouldn’t let you open a note in full-screen mode. If notes are important enough to be opened that way, why limit it to plain text? I find myself taking notes from calls and meetings. Wouldn’t it be great to add a rich-text editor or Markdown support? It would be even better if, with one click, I can sync / copy the note to Evernote.

Minor Bugs

I like to sort my tasks by Due Date. Immediately due on the top, rest below. Yet somehow, new tasks simply sit on the top even if they are due later. I have to manually apply the sort again. It’s irritating. It shouldn’t be difficult to permanently set the sort order of a list and have it override the app’s global “add new tasks to the top of the list” setting.

I wish the makers of Wunderlist include these features into the next versions of the app. I have very few complaints though. Wunderlist is stunning and I’m going to continue using it.

[nagarjunp]

Great time to be a Motion Graphics artist. Tempted to learn some myself. Found this amazing YouTube playlist loaded with AfterEffects Motion Graphics tutorials - Mt. Mograph.

Graphic by: Jakub Antalík

[nagarjunp]

Moving to Sketch

I use a number of tools throughout my design process. Typically, I start by logging my research into Evernote and compile my thoughts there. Once I do that, I try to draw a really rough wireframe using a pen and paper. If I'm happy with the general layout on paper, I'll transfer that wireframe to a tool like Balsamiq if I'm working on a web app or I'll create a pixel-perfect mockup using Adobe Photoshop if I'm designing a mobile app. In some cases, I'll even use Adobe AfterEffects to animate the UI so developers can recreate the concept pixel-to-pixel.

I've used most of these tools for years. Balsamiq is fairly simple to learn but very basic. It took me  2 years to get sufficiently comfortable with Photoshop. Photoshop wasn't specifically designed to mockup UIs. People just soft of work their way around it. I'm not usually comfortable trading tools that I've grown accustomed to over the years but, I decided to give Sketch a fair try this week after hearing so much about it. I know I'm late to the party but boy am I glad to finally make it.

I may have not appreciated Sketch as much if I hadn't used Photoshop for so long. In the 2 days that I've used Sketch, I'm about 90% convinced that I'm never going to use Photoshop again for designing interfaces. Sketch feels like it was purpose-built for designing UIs. It combines the simplicity of Balsamiq with the power of Photoshop. It took me just a few hours to get comfortable with its features and I even recreated a layout that I had previously wireframed using Balsamiq and built using front-end technologies. The whole process just felt natural.

Here's what I love about Sketch:

Simplicity

Somehow, you instantly feel comfortable when you use Sketch. I found myself navigating around the UI very easily. I even picked up all the keyboard shortcuts in just a few hours. If you've used Photoshop before, you'll like how Sketch organizes layers. As a Mac user, the Inspector also feels very natural.

Artboards in Sketch are like canvases in Photoshop except, you can have more than one in the window. Sketch even comes with pre-defined templates to design responsive-web apps, iOS apps, Android apps (Material design) and icons.

Speed

The Sketch interface is extremely well laid-out. Photoshop can't afford to do this because it's used for a whole bunch of other reasons. You'll find yourself ignoring half the menu items in Photoshop when designing UIs because they just don't apply to the UI design process.

Sketch is not like that. It's purpose-built. You'll use just about every feature it has to offer. Not because it's there but because it's exactly what you need. This means that you'll get from idea to UI about 3x faster (at least from my behavior).

Sketch also has a host of handy 3rd-party plugins that will make it even quicker to design UIs. Here's a plugin that I especially liked: Content Generator. It's already saved me hours of work. You can download hundreds of plugins and configure Sketch just the way you like it.

Community

It feels like Sketch is the only app that can give Photoshop a run for its money in terms of community support. There are hundreds of plugins & freebies created by the thousands of Sketch users. There are also 3rd-party tools like Framer that directly import Sketch files. I'm sure that I don't have to ever use Adobe AfterEffects once I've mastered Framer.

Purpose-built Features

I can't count the number of times I've copied a Photoshop layer style and applied it to other parts of the layout just to keep my UI consistent. I also didn't bother with custom-swatches because they're so time consuming to create and maintain. I would just copy colors, styles and whole layers. Not anymore with Sketch.

In Sketch, you can simply define a component of your UI as a "Symbol" to be reused. You can even define custom text styles that you can use across your UI. When you modify the style of one text field, all other text fields that use the same style inherit the changes. Magic!

Among other things, you can even copy the generated CSS styles for any element within the Sketch file and easily export images to be used in web, iOS and Android apps.

Conclusion

I'm convinced that Sketch is the right tool for UI design. It's simple and yet, powerful. Why pay $700+ for Photoshop when you can get everything you want in just the right package for under $100? I haven't even scratched the surface of Sketch. I'll report back when I have used it some more.

UPDATE (12/20/2014)

Chinese Translation Available: This blog post was generously translated to Chinese by Laba Zhou - http://www.labazhou.net/2014/12/moving-to-sketch/.

[nagarjunp]

Firefox is 10 years old!

Today, Mozilla Firefox turns 10 years old! I still clearly remember the day Firefox was announced. Around 2004 - early 2005, I was in front of a Windows 98 PC at a cyber cafe in Bangalore (I still didn't own a PC myself) and read the news on a bulky CRT monitor.

It was around that time that I'd started to learn how to build websites. I remember downloading countless free HTML templates and tearing down the source code to understand how it all worked. My typical workflow went like this:

Download free HTML template

Load up the source file on Notepad (clearly, Sublime Text didn't exist back then)

Make modifications

Open the file in Internet Explorer and see what broke

Often, I'd edit multiple pages at the same time and open each page in a new IE window. Before I knew it, I had 15 IE windows open. It was a mess.

The reason I remember the launch of Firefox so clearly is because of one very specific Firefox feature - tabbed browsing. This may sound trivial today but, back in the day I remember being very excited about it. It instantly solved my web development workflow and kept things organized. I'm sure there were several other under-the-hood improvements compared to IE but I didn't know enough to get excited about those back then. Mine was a UX issue and Firefox nailed it. It helped me learn quicker and that's all I wanted.

While I'm no longer an active Firefox user (I use Chrome), that doesn't mean I think less of it in any way. Ten years later, Firefox is still an integral part of my development process. I test and debug my code on it. I'm sure my early learnings would have been very different without Firefox and don't know what I would have done without it back in the day.

[nagarjunp]

The Salesforce $1 Million Hackathon Experience

A little over a week ago, @jishangiras and I won 3rd place* at Salesforce's mega $1 Million hackathon. The 2 day event held in San Francisco was nothing short of phenomenal and unlike any I've attended before. My friend and I won $35,000 for our app - ReachOut (may no longer be functional). Here are my thoughts and a few points on how we did it:

The Experience

I've attended a few hackathons in the past but none compare to this one. Salesforce does a great job of not making the hackathon easy for you. To begin with, you're competing against ~1,000 talented programmers from across the world who've made their way to San Francisco for Dreamforce (Salesforce's annual company event). If that isn't intimidating enough, there's a strict 48 hour-ish timeline to conceptualize and build an app from scratch.

Most people spend the entire weekend at the venue. We (my friend and I) slept on bean bags under our tables for grand total of 6 hours that weekend.

Up until the hackathon & Dreamforce, I'd never known much about Salesforce beyond an average understanding of their products. It's hard to truly understand the scale at which they operate unless you've been to your first Dreamforce. Salesforce doesn't cheap out on anything - the venue, the perks, the speakers or the swag. The event on the whole is a big deal for the company and it clearly shows. Organization & hospitality were top notch.

Other than a minor glitch during registration, the hackathon was smooth. WiFi was great, food was decent (I wish there was more vegetarian) and hackers had clear guidance throughout the event.

Here's how we managed to win 3rd place. Hopefully, these tips will help you win your next hackathon.

1. Prepare in Advance

You usually have very little time to code at a hackathon and you don't want to waste your time planning your app or setting up your dev environments when you get there.

You want to do as much research and read the hackathon guidelines at least a week in advance. Try to understand what kind of apps they're looking for. For instance, one of the goals at the Salesforce hackathon was to highlight the use of the Salesforce 1 Platform. I didn't know much about it and didn't want to spend my time learning during the hackathon. My friend and I got together a week in advance and built a dummy app to familiarize ourselves with the APIs. This gave us a huge speed boost compared to the other teams.

While building the dummy app, I had trouble setting up the Heroku Toolbelt on my laptop and it resulted in a 3 hour battle with SSH keys. Imagine if I had to waste 3 hours during the hackathon? Since I'd fixed the issue in advance, I simply setup a new Heroku project and got started.

2. Understand the Hackathon Guidelines

Organizers will usually publish a document on the kind of apps that they'd like to see you build. They'll also tell you the judging criteria and how many points are awarded toward each. For example, you could have something like this:

25% for innovation

25% for design

25% for business potential (can this "hack" turn into a real company?)

25% for use of [company] APIs (Salesforce in our case)

Think about different ways that you can score high for each criteria. If you think you'll fall short on one, learn how you can improve your chances or partner up with a teammate who can fill in those gaps.

Come up with general ideas on what you could potentially build. If the hackathon was held previously, try to lookup the winners to understand what kind of apps the judges look for. This will also help you avoid building apps that overlap with previous years' winners.

3. Team Up

If you have friends who code, ask them if they'd like to join you. A lot of people waste hours during the hackathon to form teams. Now, there's pros and cons to this. The cons are clear - you waste time and you don't know if the other person can deliver. The pros - you make new friends. It's really your decision.

Personally, I don't like wasting my time. There's going to be plenty of opportunities to network during breaks and lunches. Plus, since my friend and I knew each other's skills, we were able easily delegate and deliver a usable app.

4. Build

Once you've settled on an idea - build! It takes a lot of effort to build something presentable and usable within such a short timeframe. You'll need to rough it out. Hackathons can be very demanding and you need a lot of energy. Prepare yourself for it. Sleep well on the day before the hackathon.

Our team set hourly goals and reported to each other with updates. If we were stuck on something, we'd try to help each other so we don't waste time.

5. Present

Depending on the hackathon, you'll need to tailor your presentation. You could have built something great but if you don't present it well, you'll end up losing points.

We gave ourselves 3 hours to create a compelling presentation. That meant that we had to complete the app at least 3 hours before the timeline. Our first round of judging was high-school science fair-style. We knew we had 2 minutes to present and 1 minute for Q&A as judges walked by our tables. We wanted to make an impact so, we built a homepage and set up 3 computers and our app to create a display that the judges wouldn't forget. Here's what it looked like:

We also scripted our pitch. We wanted to make sure we highlighted every feature and we made sure the app worked.

That's it!

That's really about it. Do your best, be honest and then wait for the results. Good luck for your next hackathon.

*Heroku Category

[nagarjunp]

Mobile Is Eating the World

A16Z's @BenedictEvans makes it clear - mobile is growing faster than the PC ever did and it's unstoppable.

[nagarjunp]

Peer to Peer

Can a completely distributed grid of small generators trade power with each other, using a decentralized and trustless cryptocurrency? Can a traffic jam of self-driving cars clear itself as the computerized vehicles bid for right of way?

- Naval Ravikant in The Fifth Protocol

The disruptive force of P2P is understated. Every 5 years or so for the past 2 decades, we've seen P2P technologies disrupt major industries - Napster (1999) disrupted the entertainment industry, Skype (2003) disrupted the telecommunications industry and Bitcoin (2009) is encouraging heated debates about the future of banking and commerce.

Running any public infrastructure at scale requires automation and large amounts of computing resources. Up until the last decade, computing power was so expensive that only large corporations and governments could afford it. This heavy buy-in meant that most public services were controlled by a central entity. You paid a pre-defined $x for 1 KwH of electricity to power your home, $y / minute to make a phone call & $z / gallon of gas.

As the cost of computing plummets & as P2P technology becomes more pervasive, are we heading towards a future where we cut the middleman? A future where people-control-people and everything is democratic? It's a fascinating thought that could result in the disruption of major public services by letting anyone participate in and profit from a global economy.

@palavalli

Image Credit: http://www.freeenterprise.com/

[nagarjunp]

Why I'm Not Buying A Smartwatch Just Yet

Wearables are more than just a fashion. For as long as humans have made electronic gadgets, we've dreamt about helpful devices that we can wear - glasses, watches, electronic clothes (they are real) and more. What makes now a great time for wearables is our access to powerful and miniaturized hardware. Everything from processors to gyros, accelerometers and storage have become so small that they can fit on your fingertip.

Wearables augment human interactions in the most natural way making computing almost invisible and yet, infinitely powerful. By putting aside large hardware and big screens with windows, wearables can help accomplish a person's daily activities without getting in the way. With applications ranging from healthcare (the most obvious one) to productivity and even military, the possibilities for wearable computing are endless.

This brings me to smatwatches. I've had somewhat of a love-hate sentiment towards smartwatches and this is unfortunate since I think they make for the most ideal wearable computer.

The Love

I've been wearing a Jawbone Up for about 10 months and I remember thinking - "I wish these features were on my watch" as soon as I strapped it on for the first time. Having to wear two devices on both hands somewhat reminded me of the days when people carried PDAs and early mobile phones. The two are individually useful but when combined, make for an immensely powerful and indispensable tool. Need proof? Try living without your smartphone for a day.

Smartwatches are similar. Unlike smartglasses (Google Glass), a watch is non-intrusive, comfortable and won't make you look like a dork. It's also much easier to interact with considering that you can simply lift your wrist and use your fingers to tap a screen instead of having to navigate touchpads or use voice commands.

The physical limitations of a wearable also mean that they cannot have large screens, making them an impossible replacement to your phone or laptop. They serve as in-betweens, collecting and bringing you tiny snippets of information (notifications, reminders and a little bit of entertainment) at the right time.

All of these are ephemeral, meaning that they last for a very short period. Why bother wearing smartglasses all the time just to interact with information a few times every day? A smartwatch is the perfect device for such interactions.

Here are some apps that would go great with a smartwatch:

A notification to your next meeting (time-based information - great for a watch)

A fitness app that counts down remaining reps in a workout while calculating heart rate and calorie burn

A navigation app that shows you tiny arrows to indicate walking directions

A grocery list while you're walking the isles so you can use your hands to pick up items instead of fidgeting with your phone

Subtle alerts to calls while you're in a meeting

A Siri-like voice-assistant

Sure, your smartphone can accomplish a lot of these but I for one have been in many situations where my hands have been busy and yet, I wanted access to information. Imagine if your watch recognized your travel and showed you your boarding time, gate, arrival time and destination weather all while you're busy pushing luggage carts.

The Hate

Choice: No matter how hard you look, there's about 3 real contenders for smartwatches today. Pebble (the most promising), Samsung Gear and the Sony Smartwatch. The Pebble has a fantastic ecosystem of apps through their app store but looks like a toy (the Pebble Steel is a minor improvement) and an E-Paper display is simply limiting. Samsung's Gear range looks fantastic and even has a great Operating System but, its connectivity is limited to Samsung smartphones (which I obviously don't own). Sony lacks a serious ecosystem.

Design: Argue all you want but, put your average smartwatch against a single-purpose TAG and you'll see what I'm talking about. Watches are more than simple time-telling devices. They're an accessory and need to be designed with great detail. With that in mind, it's worth noting that Samsung's Gear range is probably the only real contender. They're beautifully designed and the newer models even allow you to swap out the band. The addition of a circular display would instantly win me over.

Ecosystem: We need an open smartwatch operating system. One that any manufacturer can customize and install - similar to what Android did to the smartphone ecosystem. The lack of a unified platform makes sharing data between watches close to impossible. Try liberating your fitness data from a Jawbone Up and moving it to your new Samsung Gear or the other way around. Try connecting your Samsung Gear to an iPhone. You simply can't do it. An open smartwatch operating system would greatly unify this ecosystem. Time for an Open Smartwatch Alliance? Smartwatch makers need to look beyond short-term gains and come together to build an ecosystem.

Note

An immediate solution would be to blend Pebble's great ecosystem of apps and open-nature with Samsung's design chrops, which would essentially fix 90% of all smartwatch annoyances. The remaining 10% can be sorted by building an open platform for OEMs. Consumers would have greater choice, which would result in lower prices, increased purchases and as a result, greater developer interest.

We're at the infancy of this ecosystem but, it already looks promising. I can't wait to buy myself a smartwatch but until these quirks are resolved, I'm going to remain on the lookout.

@palavalli

[nagarjunp]

3D Printing Can Turn India into a Hardware Innovation Hub

Every country, to remain economically strong, must make physical products if it doesn’t want to become a nation of burger flippers and checkout clerks.

- Chris Anderson, Author of Makers

"Why hasn't India produced an Apple or Sony yet?" - An eternal question that I've heard many many times over the years. Narayana Murthy, Nilekani, Premji and others have led India to software dominance over the past few decades.

Yet, in this nation of over a billion people, commercial hardware innovation is almost absent. Can 3D printing help produce the next Narayana Murthy, Nilekani or Premji only, in the hardware space? It absolutely can. India's maker-revolution is about to unfold.

A Nation of Makers

When I was young(er), I'd make monthly visits to SP Road, a street lined up with wholesale electronics suppliers in Bangalore. They sell just about everything there, LEDs, motors, capacitors, batteries, micro-controllers - you name it. I'd look through countless 'DIY Electronics' books, pick a project, set out to buy parts, rush back home and build it over the weekend.

I was still 12 years old but, had amassed enough knowledge to build a working model hovercraft, an IR door sensor, a projector and a bunch of other cool toys. It was an exciting time. I also had a small group of friends (the nerds) in school that shared schematics for electronics and built projects. This was before the world of web development (which I still absolutely love) got me hooked.

SP Road

Even to this day, a single visit to SP Road will convince you that there are enough hardware-geeks in India. Thousands of people, all making their way through this crooked little street to stock up on electronics parts for their projects. It's akin to Tokyo's famous Akihabara district (only much smaller).

A little Googling led me to Angad Daryani, a 15 year old maker from Mumbai. In many ways, his story reminded me of my teenage maker-days. Angad built his own RepRap 3D printer and is now learning to program his electronics. He's also deeply interested in robotics. These are just two stories. Imagine what the rest of the nation is up to.

Engineering is hardwired into India's society and education system. We need to do a better job at bringing interested makers in the country together. This can be done in one of several ways - Makerspaces, conferences, meetups etc. It will encourage people to exchange ideas and build things.

An Open Mind

I've also seen growing interest in courses like Industrial Design in the country. There are at least a dozen schools that offer Industrial Design courses in India and I expect this trend to grow

My sister, who is an architecture student also sees the benefits of 3D printing for rapid prototyping. She spends hours cutting paper to build models that are looked at for no more than 15 minutes. With 3D printing, she could convert her CAD models into tangible objects much sooner and perhaps go through 3 design iterations in a day instead of one.

India's universities have well equipped computer labs and Internet connectivity. With 3D printers starting at just $2,000, most engineering / design colleges can afford to install one on-campus. Students could be allowed time slots to print their models. Colleges can even add an optional 3D Printing course to their syllabus. It will empower students to rapidly iterate on their ideas and produce better results.

Implementing such programs will pay off in the next half decade. Combine India's large engineering talent with creative hardware designers and you've got a winning combination. Not only will it create great new companies, it will also provide a new generation of students with more job opportunities. Students who opt for courses like Industrial Design will stand out in the job market that is littered with thousands of Computer Science graduates.

No Excuses

I've seen India's Internet / mobile startup revolution first-hand. Today, the ecosystem (engineers, investors, customers, PR) exists for anyone who wants to build a company in those categories.

We've also seen some successful hardware companies emerge in the last few years. Micromax is one example. Sure, they don't have a truly global footprint but, they've almost entirely displaced Nokia in India. They have successfully tapped into a 1 billion large marketplace and continue to grow. Customer confidence in these companies also seem to be improving. Similarly in China, Xiaomi has been eating up the Chinese smartphone marketshare.

These companies understand their buyers very well. They have used their 'local knowledge' to obliterate large multi-national companies. With so many problems (infrastructure, healthcare, transportation) that still remain unresolved in India, there is tremendous opportunity to build innovative products.

For those of you who want to start a hardware company, we can spend hours arguing that Indian investors don't like hardware startups or we can go another way - crowd funding.

For the first time, we can completely circumvent the investor and go straight to our customers. Dream up a great product, build prototypes with your 3D printer, shoot a quick video and share it with the world on Kickstarter. Interested customers will fund your idea. Nothing beats customer money. There's really no excuse anymore. Want to start a hardware company? Then, start a hardware company!

Remarks

I have great confidence in the future of the Indian hardware ecosystem. A combination of new education programs, a supporting community (maker groups, meetups) and a global marketplace will make it easier for innovative people to build the next Apple or Sony.

@palavalli

[nagarjunp]

Bitcoin Needs an Image Makeover

Behind all the media attention and technical wizardry, Bitcoin has a fundamental problem: it's too complex to explain to your friends. At first glance, this may not sound like a huge problem but, bear with me.

I've been actively following the rise of Bitcoin & cryptocurrencies. Every time I learn more about it, I get all worked up about the promise it holds:

Completely decentralized, nobody has major control

Works anonymously so you don't have to worry about security

It's inflation-proof

It's so cheap to move around that it's almost unbelievable

Marc Andreessen did a great job at explaining the disruptive qualities of Bitcoin which you can read on his blog. This brings me to my problem with Bitcoin: its brand.

I get asked by a lot of friends (many non-technical) about Bitcoin. I start off by explaining the above four points to them and then explain how they matter. Most friends nod in acceptance at these straightforward advantages but, the complexity kicks in when they ask me to get into the details of its inner-workings. Now, I'm no cryptocurrency expert but, as someone with an above-average knowledge about technology (I'm a web developer), I understand Bitcoin fairly well. Here are some questions I find extremely hard to answer.

Why can't I just use normal money?

YOU CAN! My friends often read articles on how Bitcoin could & may replace traditional money. When you look at Bitcoin's value-propositions, there just isn't enough reason to convince your friends (or yourself for that matter) that Bitcoin makes more sense than traditional money. Let's look at two of the above points: anonymity and zero-fee transactions.

While there's a few places where you might want to transact without revealing your identity, most daily activities don't demand such high-levels of protection. I'm not afraid of swiping my debit card (which has my name on it) at restaurants, ATMs or even online. I take measures to safeguard my card details digitally (using Dashlane) and none of my friends have ever reported troubling activities with their accounts. Traditional money: 1, Bitcoin: 0.

Transaction fees are another problem. Unless you're the kind of person who's sending money to relatives far away or a business moving money to other countries on a daily basis, you don't encounter large transaction fees at all. Sure, the merchant (restaurant, gas station etc.) may end-up paying a 2% fee per swipe but how does that affect you? It doesn't. Traditional money: 2, Bitcoin: 0.

How do I use Bitcoin?

You get online, create a 'Wallet', generate a Base62 address, convert some of your existing Dollars into Bitcoin and THEN scan a QR Code to send someone Bitcoins. All that to avoid a puny 2% fee that you don't pay? Na-a!

Create a 'Wallet' online? Hashed address? Blockchain? QR Code? What the heck? My friends are already lost.

Traditional banking has a heavy human-touch which makes people comfortable with it. You visit a bank and meet with a person to open an account. Easy. You fund your account with money that your employer pays you with a check (printed). Easy. You visit a restaurant and swipe a debit card associated with that bank account. Easy. No funny-looking hashes, QR Codes to scan or 'Wallets' to create. Traditional money: 3, Bitcoin: 0.

That sounds too complex. Why the heck are people still worked-up about it?

Good question. Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies are great for specific needs. At the moment, it's biggest advantage is probably in helping you move money across the world with nearly zero-fees. It can also be immensely powerful for online shopping. Your computer is probably the least secure point-of-contact when it comes to traditional banking. All a hacker needs is an un-patched computer to install a key-logger and run away with your personal information.

Bitcoin's architecture can almost completely eliminate that. You generate an Address for every transaction so even if a single Address is compromised, you're not worried about your entire account. 

What about the recent Target breach you ask? It'a a good counter-point but, consider the global volume of transactions and the Target breach in itself isn't enough to disrupt banking.

Bitcoin isn't Going Away

If anything, Bitcoin is probably a template for what the future of money will look like. It has immense potential but, not before its issues are sorted out.

For any cryptocurrency to gain mass acceptance, it needs to be simpler to understand and must draw parallels to traditional banking. What do I mean by that? People understand 'Checking Account', 'Debit Card', 'Credit Card' and 'ATM'. The cryptocurrency of the future should find a way to hide those complex hashed address and yet be as secure. It needs to be easier to 'open an account and fund it' AND it needs to get rid of the QR Code for primary interaction. NFC could be a great alternative.

How soon before we visit a physical bank that stores cryptocurrencies and hands out NFC cards instead of magnetic-cards? I don't know but, it sure would help with the masses. 

By now you're categorizing me as anti-digital. Far from true. I read the daily news on Feedly instead of a news paper, I have a Kindle, I have QR Codes on my business cards, all my passwords are encrypted and I use online banking. You get the idea.

Here's what I want from the cryptocurrency community:

That the media does a better job at explaining the real uses of Bitcoin in daily life

Future Satoshi Nakamotos create cryptocurrencies that are easier to use than traditional banking

Entrepreneurs building services on top of cryptocurrencies make it MUCH more friendly to use and draw parallels to traditional banking

It's the only way that cryptocurrencies can gain acceptance beyond geeks and nerds.

@palavalli