So between Continental and Emirates, I had to pick an airline.

Now, Emirates has an exceptional cabin crew who seem to come from all parts of the world and seem very nice. Their on-demand in-flight entertainment system is second to none.

Their aircraft look new. Upgrading to business class is easy if you have the points. Unlike other airlines who make a stop at some outdated airport, Dubai International is among the top airports with everything from free WiFi to great coffee conveniently located all over the airport. No wonder I flew with Emirates, and will continue to consider them where possible.

At Dubai, I was able to send a proposal out to a client from the airport while enjoying a Costa coffee (Everything from Starbucks to Panera is also available at the airport). After speaking to a few people on their way to South Africa for the Soccer World Cup, I realized that many people did not fly British Airways due to strike concerns and picked Emirates due to their reputation for punctuality.

I hope that for their own good, airlines crews around the world should realize that operators like Emirates will eat their lunch and dinner in a few years (right now it may just be lunch). But all striking unions seem to do is encourage the demise of organizations who already are unable to globally compete.

In situations where a company has to compete globally, unions have no place and serve no purpose because costs and in turn remuneration will be driven by market forces and not collective negotiation.

Emirates uses a global pool of people for its cabin crew and pilots. Its airport is maintained by Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Filipino labor (cheaper I assume). I doubt strikes are much of an issue for them.

Some more food for thought:
$1 US = $3.67 UAE Dirhams
$1 US at JFK International Airport will NOT get you a bottle of water ($1 will not get you a bottle of water outside the airport easily either, unless you find a vending machine).
At Dubai International Airport, you can get 3 bottles of water and .67 Dirhams in change is yours to keep.

Dubai is in a desert?

While anger towards BP is a localized and short term emotion and likely to dissipate in a few years just like anger towards Exxon, America should be angry at the government who collectively has done very little towards really creating a blueprint for the future of energy and transportation. Americans should also blame themselves as most people seem to think that everyone is entitled to cheap gas. With cheap gas comes a huge demand for it and along with that comes powerful lobbies who make sure that restrictions on oil companies are as weak as they can possibly get.

The latest Time magazine says, that Dick Cheney was responsible for diluting some regulations against the oil industry. With Dick’s record I tend to believe this statement. But let me not pick on Dick, if ultra stringent regulations on the oil industry are not in place today, then the entire political system is to blame. A few months ago President Obama did approve offshore drilling (this decision may already have been reversed). It’s kind of sad to see that politicians really do not have a track record of looking after people that inspires confidence in democracy.

It’s ridiculous to see the number of people who get onto US highways each day. It’s inefficient, costly, environmentally unfriendly and just plain stupid to not have a good nationwide mass travel system in place. How about getting the best of intercity travel technology from Europe or Japan into the US? I would love to see two or three competitors to Amtrak in the country with TGV or Shinkansen type high speed trains.

I once used the TGV from Paris to Brussels and the trip was superb. I got some reading done and I doubt I could have made the trip faster if I drove all the way. The price obviously can’t be beat. But I realize that moving away from highways that now feed a whole industry of automobiles, fast food, gas, toll collectors etc. is not going to happen in one decade or maybe even two. But it needs to start now. So slowly, people can get off the road and into nice clean trains whenever possible.

So let us take this disaster to think about:

• Whether we really need to put the environment or cheap gas ahead in our list of priorities.
• Whether offshore drilling is a bad idea overall
• Whether god intended for oil to remain where he/she put it (i.e. underground)
• Whether all offshore drilling facilities should be scrapped overall
• Can I be happy driving a 4 cylinder automobile instead of a 6 cylinder automobile? Do I need an automobile at all?

What happens is that if you make a one-time donation to a non-profit, a sizable percentage of your donation will be spent on sending you postal mail. And you will be doing more harm than good if that donation is a one-time small donation. The affiliate postal mails that will also be sent to you will pretty much negate that donation you made, in the wasted printing and mailing costs.

So its important to only donate to a few non-profits whom you plan on giving to on a long term basis and to also request the non-profits to whom you are donating to, to not share your information with affiliates of any sort.

Airports in general are boring places and getting a service such as WiFi without the need to supply a credit card is a welcome relief to anyone who distrusts using credit cards for temporary public services.  I would also like to add that that unlike other airports such as the Dubai International airport, WiFi here was actually fast and usable and good enough for any kind of internet telephony.

New Delhi Domestic Flights Terminal

So far, there has been little difference. JPMorgan Chase does have a very nice online control panel that lets you look at all your credit cards and banking accounts in one view, however there was little difference in terms of features that affect your way of life.

That is, till last week when I dropped into a JPMorgan Chase ATM to deposit a handwritten check. I was first struck by the absence of deposit slips and envelopes which in the past have been ‘out of stock’ at some locations and either you had to come back another day or drive to another location to make a deposit.

But then I noticed that the ATM machine had this new neon green slot that said “insert check”. Intrigued, I logged in, inserted the handwritten check, indicated my preference for a receipt and confirmed the amount of my deposit which was miraculously displayed on the screen.

Essentially the process of depositing checks that previously took about 4-5 minutes and licking an envelope, now takes less than 45 seconds and no paper is involved. This is an example of a perfect implementation of a paperless system, handwriting recognition and where technology really makes a difference to the customer. Wait, the environment now benefits too.

Enter Bing. I decided to try Bing for atleast a day and see what the search engine could do.With about 20 searches, my initial reaction is that, the search engine is actually quite effective.

It produces decent results and also classifies information in ways that Google does not yet do.

For example all searches produce an additional reference link. A search for “Antique Cars” brings up results and on the left side a navigation bar with links to Manufacturers, Values, Trading, Parts, Reviews. The old Live.com feature of Cashback is still there with Bing.com. Eligible purchases get you money back.

A cool feature within Bing is the neverending image view function. Searching for images is continuous and you can keep scrolling till there are no more images to display. Images can be sorted by size and various other presentation options.

Now, what’s impressive about searching for images with people in them is that Bing can filter photos with “just faces”, “head and shoulders” and “other”. And this function works quite well.

Another cool feature is the webpage content preview function. A mouse over any of the search results gives you a filtered and condensed view of what the page contains without actually visit the page. This is helpful if you’re into research and need to find documents to read.

From a webmaster point of view, a website I submitted to Bing got indexed in less than 24 hours.

Searches are fast! Search results are clean. Cached version of pages are available. And search key term suggestions works nicely.

From the looks of it – Microsoft’s got a great product with a decent name – finally.

The challenge for Microsoft is to break into people’s Google habit. I am going to try both Google and Bing interchangeably over the next month and get into the habit of trying either engine randomly. Who knows, maybe using two search engines instead of one may actually make my life more interesting.

Now, you may not actually require these credit cards but they do serve a useful purpose and that’s got to do with your FICO credit score. About 30% of your FICO score depends on the amount of credit you use relative to the amount of total credit you have.

So its important to ensure that  your credit card accounts are not closed by the issuers for inactivity. Due to the economic downturn, there has been a recent trend by credit card companies to close inactive accounts.

Here’s where domain names come in. If you are in the internet business, you probably own about 2 dozen domain names or maybe more.

I charge the domain name renewal fees to a different credit card each time a renewal comes up. This ensures that my credit cards get a minimal balance once or twice a year. So far, none of my credit cards have been canceled for a lack of activity.

Note: FICO scores are only useful if you need credit. If you really don’t care about or need credit, then disregard this post.

I think all those ‘de-listed’ Chrysler dealers would do well to apply to become Alfa Romeo/Fiat dealers if they get the opportunity from whichever company ties up with Fiat.

There is truth in what he said. We all use Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail for email. We’re mostly all used to working in a cloud. So what exactly is new with cloud computing?

The idea of leasing processing and storage space online with a company such as Amazon (Amazon’s Elastic Computer Cloud) looks like the leased main-frame concept of the 80’s. Except now, the services are internet based and we have a diverse collection of applications and operating systems. Add virtualization to the mix and essentially cloud computing is a new term for an improved version of a concept that’s been around for a long time -  commoditizing computing resources.

Oracle customers for example, especially smaller ones, could benefit substantially from the cloud computing concept where they can be freed from the intricacies of maintaining both software and hardware. But  then, as a customer you lose control. If Oracle makes all their applications software available online using a SaaS model, it could very well attract new customers who are willing to sacrifice control for convenience.

Instances where one is not likely to buy into cloud computing:
Location of Critical Applications
Larger customers may not buy into the concept. Think about this, how much are you willing to trust an outside company to manage your critical applications? Say like AIG or Lehman Brothers a cloud computing
service provider goes belly up rather fast for whatever reason? What exactly are you going to do?

How Many Platforms?
What happens if your company used multiple application platforms and one cloud computing service provider cannot support all platforms? Are you going to use multiple clouds?

VMware has a solution for this and their virtualization technology may very well make then an acquisition candidate (Without virtualization cloud computing is really not possible).

Cost vs. Convenience
Your applications still sit on a server somewhere. If at some point your application usage requirements are such that you really need dedicated ownership of a server’s resources, would you really save money utilizing a cloud computing environment? Would not using a managed server be a better option?

The Internet is not 100% Reliable
How many companies are going to feel comfortable about depending upon their ISP to reach their critical applications/data?

Privact and Legal Requirements
I would assume that most cloud computing data centers are based in the USA. Just yesterday, there was news of UBS handing over confidential tax records to the US tax authorities (not a bad thing in my opinion).

How data contained within cloud computing data centers are governed and made available to government authorities will be of considerable concern to companies that are not American. This is still a legal gray area.

Liability
Does anyone read the fine print about liability? Zoho, GoogleDocs do not guarantee that your data is 100% safe. They are certainly reliable but that’s not the same as a 100% data security guarantee. What happens if a company loses their sales leads to a competitor who hacked into one of their sales accounts available online?

Instances where one is likely to buy into cloud computing:
Small Companies and Start-ups on a Budget
Smaller companies who wish to provide a world class experience to their application users but with a limited budget, would find cloud computing to be a welcome alternative to huge upfront costs. The idea here would be to start making money first before investing into dedicated hardware and infrastructure.

Scalability
Say you a have a new online service that may become the next big thing overnight. A cloud computing environment can give you the additional computing power seamlessly if you have a surge of new users/customers.

Mobile Applications
If your workforce is geographically dispersed, chances are that your workers are accessing reporting, applications remotely. In such scenarios it may make more sense from an availability point of view to use a cloud computing environment to serve applications.

Lower Cost Hardware
Your workers will have the added advantage of using the new range of sub $300 Netbooks from Acer/Asus/Dell since they will not need substantial localized computing power.

Online office suites like Zoho and GoogleDocs are good examples of online applications that are widely used.

Unlimited Storage Capacity
This is one of those features that can be called a plus but really is not, since most computers today come with atleast a 150GB hard drive. So unless you’re collecting movies or something of that nature, this is not really a huge plus for end-users. From an enterprise point of view, storage only gets cheaper with time.

Native Group Collaboration
If 10 people need to look and comment on a document, it becomes easy to do so with a cloud based application.

In conclusion, I think cloud computing will become an accepted means of delivering software as a service (SaaS). Cloud computing will initially be adopted more by those companies that are starting up and who are keen on saving on tech infrastructure costs and by smaller companies who cannot afford to maintain a dedicated infrastructure to deliver online services. But it will take a certain amount of time for the model to mature to a point where security, reliability and legal issues have been worked out for large corporations to become comfortable.

VMware Cloud Demo Video here (really good intro)
http://download3.vmware.com/vcloud/demos/cloud_demov2.html

Some references:
UBS to ID clients accused of tax evasion
http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/18/news/companies/UBS.reut/index.htm

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