escape velocity

How advanced is the ‘West’ be compared to the ‘East’! Half a century maybe. Going by the fact that way back in 1965, the Gemini 4 mission enabled United States conduct it’s first ever spacewalk! And, only 43 years later did the Chinese manage to send their men to space! Now this is not history or ground breaking. It’s just ‘me too’,  ‘good job guys’, ‘Oh, better late than never, welcome to the club boys!’.

Space exploration is a ‘country versus country’ thing.  It’s a showcase of a country’s growing technological prowess. It’s not a ‘yay! we build rockets too’ thing, it’s a finally, ‘we too’ build rockets thing… But what happens when a private company gets in to this space.  That’s exactly what happened when Space X an American company, showcased it’s capabilities in an area that’s traditionally the domain of a few privileged countries.  I just saw a video that shows them successfully launching Falcon 1, a space vehicle.  Now, ‘this’ is history, as it is the first ever privately developed rocket that has made it into space. Notwithstanding the fact that this was their fourth attempt.

I wonder how long it would be before a private company in the ‘East’ takes up a space mission.  Technically, it isn’t possible in China, unless they usher in democratic reforms and privatisation :). Then again, who knows what’s going to happen in the next 50 years in Asia! That leaves India! Well, we are yet to put our first man out there! It’s still a long way to go.

Just read reports that India’s Reliance Entertainment has pumped in $500 million in equity towards a 1.3 Billion investment that would help Hollywood’s Dreamworks establish itself as an independent studio!

According to Reuters the deal with Reliance allows the studio co-founded by director Steven Spielberg to leave Paramount Pictures. Apparently Spielberg has not been having a good time at Paramount where he often clashed with it’s studio chief.

I guess this is a win-win for both parties. Spielberg gets to go ahead with a new company, and Reliance Entertainment gets to build their brand further.

The LA Times says that this occasion might be a reason for Hollywood to celebrate. “With so many companies foundering, in a desperate search for funding or totally out of business, seeing DreamWorks back up and running with a nice chunk of cash in the bank is probably music to the ears of agents, producers and screenwriters everywhere.”

This isn’t the first time that Hollywood’s seeing Asian participation in it’s business. The last I remember was Sony’s purchase of Columbia Pictures back in 1989! Not sure there were many Asian entrants since.

Well, am quite glad to see more and more Indian companies going global

“I am essentially racing for free. No salary. No bonus. Nothing on the line.… This one’s on the house. And you know what? At the end of the day, I don’t need money.… Not only will I be fine, my kids will be fine, my grandkids will be fine.�

Now, that was Lance Amstrong, saying what he seems to believe in!

Inspired by Olympic triumphs of older athletes (the 41-year-old swimmer Dara Torres and the 38-year-old marathoner Constantina Tomescu-Dita for example) Lance seems to believe that he can return to racing and weave his magic! And, having come second in a recent 100-mile mountain bike race, he might as well have a reason to do so.

A lot of people say that it’s best to get out when you are at the top. At 37, almost three years after having retired, I guess it’s either a lot of courage and conviction or just vanity and megalomania!

Whatever be the case, I am happy to note that Lance Amstrong is not (yet) history. It doesn’t matter whether he wins or not! He proved that one can kickass after having fought and survived cancer, and now he is bent upon proving that a sporting life doesn’t end by one’s late 20s / early 30s. So…way to go ‘Mellow Johnny’.

Browser wars have never been so dramatic in a long time. Every big player seems to have an ace up it’s sleeve, and nothing’s surprising anymore.

Four years back, the media was talking about ‘a new browser from the makers of Mozilla, called Firefox’. Back then, the Mozilla Foundation funded by Time Warner, IBM and Sun Microsystems launched Firefox version 0.9 on June 15, 2004. And, Firefox 1.0 was out by early November the same year. By 2006, Google had become the largest revenue source for folks at Mozilla with their paid referral agreement.

And, all that Microsoft could pull of in these years was Internet Explorer 7, which had a few features such as a Google-circumventing search bar, and a tool that auto-linked addresses to Microsoft’s Live Maps. This cut no ice for the folks at Redmond. It was soon touted to be one of the worst browsers with poor standards compliance, and a serious memory hog.

By, 2008, Mozilla managed to take up close to 19% of the market share. In it’s fourth year, the company set a record with Firefox 3.0 being downloaded 8 million times since it’s release in June the same year. To top it all, by August, Mozilla announced the renewal of their contract with Google till 2011, ensuring revenue streams for quite some time to come. This was all that we got to hear about Google’s Browser strategy. Back Mozilla!

Redmond rolled out Internet Explorer 8. Soon enough, experts pronounced that IE8 had a long way to go if it was to catch up with Firefox 3.0 in terms of JavaScript performance and web standard compliance.

By now, Apple was pushing Safari, Mozilla was pushing Firefox, Microsoft was pushing IE8, and there was Opera lagging behind with it’s slice of the pie. And, this was all that people were talking about. Microsoft seemed worried about Mozilla! And, everyone seemed to be betting on it to take on Microsoft.

And, all of a sudden, on a sunny September morning, we all wake up to see that folks at Googleplex had a plan! Chrome! Overnight, we have a new wild-card entrant. A Google browser which integrates it’s search engine into a browser like never before! And, the initial responses are amazing.

Chrome in brief:

• a. Is quick to launch
• b. has an intuitive User Experience (tabs are above the address bar)
• c. Integrates ‘’search” and ”address bar” allowing one to type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages.
• d. Is going to be open source, would include a new JavaScript virtual machine, and Google Gears add-on by default

Well, they’ve packed quite a punch for a start. Wonder which way the browser wars would go now? Is Google planning on dislodging Firefox with Chrome, or is it looking to take on Microsoft? Is Google’s relationship with Firefox a purely commercial one or a strategic alliance? Was it’s support to Firefox a Red Herring all this while, as Google prepared to enter the space with it’s new weapon! Or will Chrome and Firefox complement each other, co-exist and together take on Microsoft’s IE? Well, we’ll see! One thing’s for sure, all this competition can only do good for the end-user, and that’s what matters