October 23, 2010 by apurvadesai
One of my first attempts at writing was a post titled the Power of the Head Wiggle after I returned from a trip to India in early 2009. I first posted it as a note on Facebook and received favorable feedback from my friends and contacts. After I started my blog, I soon re-posted the write-up on this blog. It has by far been the most popular post I’ve made. Most noticeably, it had been cited as a reference on Wikipedia under the term Head Bobble. It has also been cited in other people’s blog post such as Mind Your Decisions.
This week, I shared my story of the Indian Head Wiggle on the Canadian Broadcast Center (the Canadian equivalent of NPR) program Definitely not the Opera (a program like NPR’s program This American Life). Continue Reading »
Posted in India, Lifestyle, Travel | Tagged CBC, Defnitely not the Opera, Power of the Indian Head Wiggle, Why do Small Gestures send Big Messages | 6 Comments »
October 23, 2010 by apurvadesai
Last week, I attended the Virtual Goods Summit 2010 in San Francisco. One of the presentations I listened to from Flurry Analytics presented estimates of revenue per visitor (or user) for different sites or platforms. See below.
Continue Reading »
Posted in Internet, Social Media | Tagged Flurry Analytics, iphone revenue, Revenue per platform, Twitter revenue | Leave a Comment »
October 10, 2010 by apurvadesai
Recently, I attended a World Affairs Council event in San Francisco titled Is Africa the Next China?. James Manyika, Director of McKinsey & Company and also Director, McKinsey Global Institute, McKinsey’s economic research arm presented the findings of their study on recent economic trends of the continent of Africa. McKinsey released the report titled Lions on the move: The progress and potential of African economies in June 2010. (pdf documents of the entire report and executive summary can be downloaded here). Continue Reading »
Posted in China, Economics, Globalization | Tagged Africa economic indicators, Africa's potential, Is Africa the Next China, Lions on the Move: The progress and potential of African Economies, McKinsey Global Institute | 2 Comments »
October 3, 2010 by apurvadesai
Earlier, I wrote about my experiences using public transportation from the Peninsula to downtown San Francisco, including my Caltrain ride each morning. My Caltrain ride is usually on an express train line, which has 3-4 stops before reaching the city in about 30 minutes, or occasionally, a later, all stops line that takes 45 minutes.
Now, among all of the 10 stops between, Hillsdale and the end of the line in San Francisco, there is only 1 stop (South San Francisco) where passengers upon departing the train, will have to cross the tracks to reach the platform.
From where I’m sitting on the train at that stop, I’ve noticed that there are some differences in how various people approach those tracks:
- Some people will step on the tracks to propel themselves to the platform.
- Others will step over the tracks and then step on to the platform. Continue Reading »
Posted in Commuting, Silicon Valley | Tagged Commuting, Difference between Men and Women, Men and Women differences from a commute perspective, Step on or over Railroad Tracks | 2 Comments »
September 21, 2010 by apurvadesai
In Sugata Mitra’s recent TED talk at TED Global 2010, he stated this unfortunate reality about education:
“There are places on Earth, in every country, where, for various reasons, good schools cannot be built and good teachers cannot or do not want to go…”
In my earlier post titled, Is this the Future of Learning in Large Urban Slums, I wrote about Mitra’s research and fascinating conclusions around how children, when exposed to computers without adult guidance, learned on their own. Very important results, because as Mitra states in the quote above, all around the world there are places where children don’t have access to schools and teachers. In this video below, Mitra delves more into his research around the world ranging from India to Italy—dramatic cases of children demonstrating quantifiable learning and improvement by simply having access to a computer. Take a look at the 20 minute video. Continue Reading »
Posted in Education, India, Technology | Tagged Children Learning, Jewel of India, Self learning, Sugata Mitra, TED Global 2010 | Leave a Comment »
September 11, 2010 by apurvadesai
This week the World Economic Forum, an independent, not-for-profit international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Per their website, the Technology Pioneers programme is the World Economic Forum’s way of identifying and integrating those companies – normally in a start-up phase or in their first rounds of financing – from around the world that are involved in the design and development of new technologies. The innovations of these companies reflect society’s attempts to harness, adapt and use technology to change and improve the way business and society operate.
Each year, approximately 30 are recognized as Technology Pioneers in three categories: Continue Reading »
Posted in Internet, Silicon Valley, Startups, Technology | Tagged Aster Data, Davos, Foursquare, Medicine in Need, Opower, Spotify, Technology Pioneer Programme, World Economic Forum | 1 Comment »
September 4, 2010 by apurvadesai
In Superfreakonomics, their follow-up to the hit book Freakonomics, authors Stephen Dubner and Steve Levitt describe an interesting study by Keith Chen, Associate Professor of Economics at Yale University. As I wrote about in my review of Superfreakonomics, Chen’s research describes studies where monkeys are taught how to use money. The monkey’s quickly learned to use money, understood money had value and modified their behavior based on the money’s value.
Chen’s Yale research colleague, Associate Professor of Psychology, Laurie Santos, recently gave a TED talk delving deeper into their economic and psychological study with capuchin monkeys. The interesting 20 minute lecture by Santos is shown below, followed by my thoughts on the overall lecture. Continue Reading »
Posted in Economics, Education | Tagged Irrational Human Behavior, Keith Chen, Laurie Santos, Loss Aversion, Monkey Economy as Irrational as Humans, Monkeys learning how to use money, Superfreakonomics, TED talk by Laurie Santos | Leave a Comment »
August 21, 2010 by apurvadesai
As I’ve written in this blog a few times, like many, I’ve become an addicted smart phone user. In this post, I laid out my iPhone App storage usage patterns vs the average usage patterns, and raised some questions about the future growth and characteristics of users of these platforms.
Now, I’ve come across some even more robust external data from the site Mobile Entertainment (ME) sets analyzing App usage of different smartphones which provide some further insight into the questions I raised in that previous post. Embedded below is a presentation with 157 Mobile App stats that ME has released and says we should all know about. Some fascinating data here. Continue Reading »
Posted in Internet, Silicon Valley, Technology | Tagged 157 Mobile Application stats, Android App Store, Data about App Stores, Iphone App Store Data, Mobile Applications, Mobile Entertainment | Leave a Comment »
August 8, 2010 by apurvadesai
Two recent and unrelated phenomenon are Foursquare and Vuvuzelas. Foursquare is the preeminent geo-location service, (competing sites include Gowalla, Loopt, and Yelp) where users check in to locations such as restaurants, bars, parks or almost any type of establishment, in essence announcing to their friends on social network and media sites like Facebook and Twitter where they are at the moment. Continue Reading »
Posted in Internet, Social Media, Sports | Tagged Foursquare, Foursquare and Vuvuzelas, Online vs Offline Personas, Vuvuzela | 8 Comments »
July 25, 2010 by apurvadesai
In the past two weeks, I came across two exciting and interesting news headlines, both dealing with technology and research developments in India. The two headlines:
- Using Computers to teach Children with No Teachers
- India develops world’s cheapest “Laptop” at $35
Now, the real excitement is how fast these two developments can be combined! Let me explain.
Using Computers to teach Children with No Teachers
This article discusses 10 years of research performed by Professor Sugata Mitra. Mitra first introduced children in a Delhi slum to computers in 1999 by embedding a computer in a wall facing the slum. Continue Reading »
Posted in Education, India, Technology | Tagged Future of Learning in Urban Slums, India $35 Laptop, Kapil Sabil, Learning from Computers without Teachers, Learning in Cambodia, Learning in Developing Countries, Professor Sugata Mitra | 1 Comment »
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