The Branded and Gilded Life

How much is a petabyte? More than you can read or see in a whole lifetime. Since 1996, the Internet Archive has put together the combined output of humanity in knowledge, thought and action. 75 years of pulp fiction are part of the collections. Just in case anyone thinks that all it has are classics of literature only a few people read. We have this image of a library in our head. A quiet place fi...

There's no guarantee a college graduate is going to get a job. However, the  cost of education continues to rise every year. The Bloom Institute of Technology is going in the opposite direction. Tuitions can be paid from income earned after graduation. Or upfront. The institute teaches courses in data sciences and full stack web. And instead of interviews, companies can try out students for a mont...

The extreme opposite of Amazon Only one title is on sale in this bookstore at a time. Where else but Japan? In Ginza, in a single room,  Morioka Shoten, transforms book retailing to high art. The clientele is invited to interact with authors and absorb the creative atmosphere around the title. Book readings and interactions with the author are all part of the package. The books are changed only on...

If you chew on your nails, don't bother reading this. A nail cutter is the last thing you need because your teeth do the job just as effectively. The humble nail cutter is standard in households. Stainless steel with concave clipper blades and a functional design. It's a lot like the office clip. The look hasn't been updated in decades. The slightly rough pattern on the back to smooth out the snip...

What if you could change the patterns on the clothes you are wearing? Simply by tapping a few places. This was demonstrated at the CES booth in 2015 A model wore 'clothes' that changed right in front of the bystanders. It was more like she was wearing strips of panels and not cloth. The clothes were under this and they didn't change colour. The idea was to demonstrate that it was possible to get d...

It's the single biggest mistake made by a bank. Citibank transferred $500 million instead of $ 5 million, acting as an agent for Revlon. It was part of an ongoing repayment plan. It was like any other transaction - except that the term used in the form was misunderstood The error was detected a day later - by then, it was too late A tale of bad UI. High value transactions like these pass through t...

They couldn't be more different An onion and a potato. But a restaurant in the US has managed to fry onions in a way that makes it irresistible. It's not the familiar onion rings. Dipped into batter and then deep fried. There is no batter here. It looks like a sunflower you can eat with the right dip. There are several origin stories. But it begins with an onion sliced deep in several directions b...

The pandemic threw movie theaters into steep decline. Through lockdowns and social distancing norms, it looked as if theaters would have a hard time springing back. But they have an asset no home theater can replicate A 650 ft screen. The older games would not have stood up to this level of magnification. But the new generation has amazing graphics that are rarely exploited to their full potential...

Skyscrapers that stick out like needles on the New York skyline. The haunt of the well-heeled crowd. Looking for the perfect address in the middle of the swankiest neighborhoods. But large vacant spaces were hard to come by. And so, architects designed dazzling needles going as high as 1400 feet into the air. Promoted as marvels of design and engineering. The needles would tower over the older rem...

Does your mobile phone wake you up with the tune of your choice? And do you press 'snooze' several times before you finally get out of bed? A look at how people used to wake up before alarm clocks were invented reveals some far-fetched solutions . A lit candle, placed in a metallic plate, had nails pierced into it at regular intervals. When it melted to reach the nail, it would clatter down, wakin...

You get off the train and walk up and down the platform. It's built at a scenic spot where a river bends and charts a course through the mountains. The strange thing about the station is that the platform has no entrances or exits It's simply a long viewing gallery along the railway line. Breathe the clear air and enjoy the view. Then wait for the next train to arrive, get back on and proceed to y...

Real life throws up more twists and turns than the movies. Picture this. A young lady dressed in proper aerobic gear in the outdoors is going through her daily routine. Yellow top with black leggings and a mask, in accordance with the pandemic rules The words are unfamiliar - but the tinny track and beats are perfectly in accordance with a class anywhere in the world. Now, the backdrop. A wide mul...

At home. At work. At school. In restaurants. No wonder chairs are an essential test of a creative designer's portfolio. They literally come in all shapes, sizes and materials. Flashy or functional. When a ruler sits on it, it's a regal throne. Commoners can dream of recliners, high-backed, low backed and futons. Office chairs are different from the garden variety They can be stacked, folded and as...

That wasn't a typo. But it was calculated to stop you in your tracks. Music, that is. There's some serious saxophone underlining the Hindi melodies of the 60s and 70s. Interludes to transport you straight back in time to the haunting tunes that never fade. How did an instrument invented by a Belgian music maker in 1840 drill deep into the Indian psyche? And his name was Sax. Adolphe Sax. Wasn't pu...

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash You don't. Not unless you try anyway. The first thing you'll feel is emptiness. Much like switching on a recorder and trying to find the words to say. Or the moment people freeze when they are told the camera is rolling. Begin by writing all the jumbled thoughts and expressions that spring to mind. Expect a mess. Forget about it for a few hours. Come back later a...

.A couple of years is a long time Many would be quite happy to change every six months There's a breathless quality to it - if you need to charge more than once a day, if the display or the icons don't have the same fluidity... It's easy to be dissatisfied. And advertising plays a starring role in it for sure. Making comparisons is now completely acceptable. In this game, no one wins. Whether it's...

How can you make a regular football better? Well, it gets kicked around a lot. On rough grounds, it's likely to get scruffy quite easily as well. But one of the biggest problems with footballs is that they deflate often. The local bicycle shop is usually the place to breathe life back into it and get it bouncing again. The other problem is the rubber bladder. Once punctured, end of game. Nendo has...

It wasn't invented yet. CRM. Neither was Nike. The company was called Blue Ribbon and Phil Knight's first hire was a guy called Johnson. He sold Tigers, the company's imports from Japan with the tenaciousness of a terrier. And faithfully reported every move back to Knight. He wrote every day detailing what he had done - the phone calls, customer responses, updates on sales calls, everything. He se...

We've grown used to slipping emojis into our messages. What looked like a simple set of smiley, frowny, teary, impatient, laughing or exasperated expressions have become part of everyday messaging. That statistics are off the chart There are over a 100 trillion messages sent online every year across all messaging environments. On Google there are over 1.8 trillion searches a year. So the messaging...

There are millions of cogs in the Indian economy's wheels. They grind ever so slowly, sickly, barely making it from one month to the next. Getting them into the digital age is like forcing them to time travel. But Udaan believed it was possible. The founders had helped to build India's first ecommerce company, Flipkart. And they knew that there was gold beneath all the heat and grime of India's sm...

Data is oil, right? But do we have the vehicles to drive it? Numbers are the foundation but we've not made it much easier to understand. We represent them through pie charts, bar graphs and spatial dispersion. In advanced cases we are able to create interactive points to get a better picture. Even then, we're on the outside looking in through screens. So, how can we enter the data landscape like w...

The art market is worth over $60 billion . 90% of it comes from paintings that cost over $10 million each. Where can you park money after buying a few dozen mansions, cars and practically every article manufactured in the world? There was a great summing up in a book called Maverick by Ricardo Semmler. He said that everything you can put a price on in the world can be bought for $12 million. That'...

The first remote controls were wired. And called 'Lazy Bones'. And they gave birth to the couch potatoes of today. They were originally invented to mute the volume when the ads came on. And the early designs were like guns you pointed and shot at TV screens. Basic functions were to change channels or move volumes up and down - and there were just four buttons to begin with. The number of buttons e...

It started out as a convenience. An added layer of security - the inclusion of a One Time Password (OTP) to process transactions online. Then it became a source of stress. Some smartphones could help you copy a number and paste it to let a transaction go through Or apps which automatically entered the OTP. But that was confusing to some people as well. There was no standard procedure to deal with...

Car drivers have been protected from crashes for a few decades now. It's standard equipment even on entry level models. Do two wheeler riders have an option? Especially when on-vehicle deployment is dangerous? A French company has come up with an ingenious solution. An air bag built into the rider's vest It works for motorcycle riders, horse riders and skiers And it is now mandated equipment on th...