Ajai Karthikeyan's Invictus

Today (or more like yesterday) was a great day in the history of computing. The iPad has finally been announced to the public. Having watched the keynote as well as having a lot of expectations for this product, here is what I feel about it.

1. It looks gorgeous. The Unibody is amazing. I love it on my macbook. I’m going to love it on the iPad (I seriously did prefer iSlate personally.)
2. People are going to buy it. Apple is going to sell the iPad because it is cheap! And because they have and awesome PR department. Its functionality might not be that great (for those who wanted a Mac OS on it) but it does what it needs to do.
3. I saw Steve type on it with 2 hands. Not something I have seen before and not something I will believe until I check it out for myself.
4. The apps on the iPad are great. I look down at my dock right now and see the apps I use the most often. MailPlane for email (I can haz an app for that pretty please). The rest is the iWork suite, Pandora, Meebo running on Fluid and my alarm clock. All of which can easily be ported onto the iPad or have already been in certain cases.
5. Did you see iWork on the iPad? It looks gorgeous. I almost cried in joy when I saw iCal.
6. Will the iPad kill the Kindle? Hell No. The iPad and the Kindle are not the same. I own a kindle and I like it cause I can read on it for about a week between recharges. It also is less of a strain on the eyes too. The iPad is not the Kindle!
7. 10 hour battery life. Great Job apple. Anyone who knows me well will know that my biggest frustration is more battery like on all products. When I read the TechCrunch prank article which said ARC Reactor (design: Tony Stark) I was salivating though I knew it was not going to be true. Next one, I was 24 hours
8. I am not happy by the fact that there are ZERO USB ports on this device. If for nothing else but to plug in a flash drive to copy files quickly.
9. I find the lack of flash support to be disgraceful.

So, there is my report on the iPad. Am I a Fan Boy? No! Do I want an iPad? Yes! Will I get an iPad? No! Why? I can’t afford one right now and I would rather wait for the iPad Version 2 which has improved on this wonderful product (and hopefully I have on interned for a couple months and made some money by then to buy myself an early birthday gift.)

One of the problems I have with the Computer Science program at Georgia Tech is the fact that there are very few opportunities for students to learn the hot languages in the classroom. Many students learn languages such as Rails or PHP in their free time hacking code together on their own but most do not do so and lack the motivation or ability to learn by themselves. I am embarking on the quest to solve this problem and the result is what I call Coders Anonymous: The Programmer’s Support Group.

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One of the most interesting responses we had at the Young Entrepreneurs Society Panel last Tuesday was to the question “What does a startup CEO actually do?”

While, Sanjay Parekh replied “Everything“, Merrick Furst countered with “Nothing“.

The explanation is simple. The CEO is responsible for doing everything and must be willing to do it all (this includes taking out the trash). In reality, a CEO does not have the time to do anything at all. A CEO’s job is to hire people to do different tasks, tell them what to do and make sure they get it done. Once that is done, the CEO has run out of hours in the day.

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I was just reading Seth Gordin’s post on If Craigslist cost $1 and instant writers block cure . This got me thinking of the freemium model. I have heard both Chris Klaus and Jimmy Wales talk about this in the last year and use many tools that follow this model of revenue generation.

For those wonder what freemium is, it is a business model that works by offering basic services for free, while charging a premium for advanced or special features. Common examples of businesses that use the freemium model include wikipedia/wikia and Pandora.

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There has been a lot of talk in the Atlanta community about co-working spaces and this has had me thinking of my ideal work space. I have had conversations with a bunch of people and everyone has shared their own opinions. Using these and my own experiences to get work/studying done while in college, I have designed this, the ideal co-working spot concept (for me).

Please do take this with a grain of salt and do contribute your thoughts on this. If you like the idea and want to turn it into reality, do come talk to me and I’ll help anyway I can. It is after all 1% idea 99% execution.

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