Technology: To Ends, or To Means?

Posted on November 29, 2011 by AR Rafiq

All to often policy makers, bureaucrats, and technologist make the mistake of  perceiving technology as the solution to all vices, not realizing that technology alone will not help in their quest to achieving nirvana.

It’s understandable when technologists from the High-Tech capital, Silicon Valley look upon technology as the one stop solution to all of humanities problems, after all Silicon Valley techies live, breath, eat, and drink technology day-in and day-out. However, it’s  quite shocking when policy makers, government officials, Ivy League MBA graduates and many a times entrepreneurs are found evangelizing technology solutions as the ultimate solution to everything, and forget the human aspect of the problem they are attempting to solve.

I admit,  early in my career, as a Silicon Valley Technologists I to would look upon technology as a one stop shop — an Ends to a Means. However, I realized, or rather was made to realize early that just because it exists, it doesn’t mean it’s got to be used. Technology, as I have come to learn  and accept, is nothing but a means to an end.

Technology solutions are mere tools that enables drivers — policy makers, business professionals, Entrepreneurs, and bureaucrats to be drivers, and find solutions to issues faced at their organization or country.

Technologists, whether at fortune 500 corporations, or fledgling startups in some remote corner of the globe know only one thing, and that is how to create kick-ass products, it’s up to the world  (the client) to find a use for it — though nothing  stopping the technologists from suggesting use case scenarios as guide posts.

Just because a technology solution exists, it does not mean it should or can be used. Users of technology need to be mindful of the problem their solving, identify the requirements and then go and look for, or if needed develop the specific technology application.

 

Posted in Technology | Leave a comment

Entrepreneurship: Path to Political & Social Reform

Posted on August 17, 2011 by AR Rafiq

Entrepreneurship is the solution to achieving sustainable grassroots political and economic empowerment for marginalized peoples of the world.

Some say the bang rests in providing basic education. And rightfully education is a top priority, however empowerment through entrepreneurship kills two birds with one stone — i.e. Education and Economics.

In a nation like Pakistan it is imperitive for the nations economic health to equip the common man with the tools that will enable him/her to break free from the shackles of poverty and the dominant feudal systems. Only then can s/he be truly free to enjoy the fruits of living in a democratic society.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Posted in Entrepreneurship | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

It’s not always milk and honey

Posted on August 6, 2011 by AR Rafiq

Do not start a company just becuase it seems like the “cool” thing to do or becuase you want to make shit loads of mulla. Do it only if you are passionate​ about creating something ground breaking. Do it if you don’t mind sacrificin​g “personal”​ life, living on the edge, stretching​ your “personal”​ finances, living out of suitecases​ and living frugally. Life of a startup entreprene​ur is very similar to life of a third year graduate student.

Starting a business does not mean overnight riches. In fact don’t expect to hit the jack pot. If you do well and good. You will however end up making a decent living doing what you love doing, though not a gaurantee.

Starting a business will surely impinge upon your “personal” life. Your business is your life. If you are married, make sure you get the buy in from your spouse. Your kids must be made to accept that Mommy or Daddy may not have free time on the weekends like other Mommy’s and Daddy’s who work at 9 – 5 jobs.

Be prepared for sleepless nights worrying how you’ll pay next months mortgage or rent.

If you’re single, then be prepared to downgrade your life. Move out of that expensive apartment, find a like minded friend or other bootstrapping entrepreneurs and find a way to share a home.

More over be prepared to adapt to change. Be prepared to modify your business model, or perhaps even change the scope of the business. Your final product or service may not end up with what you started out to build. Above all: Remember to enjoy every moment of your entrepreneurial journey. Try and keep a positive attitude.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Posted in Entrepreneurship | Leave a comment

A New Vision – EDA 360

Posted on May 14, 2011 by AR Rafiq

To date the Electronic Design Automation (or EDA) industry has only served the needs of the creator, and completly ignored the integrator.

The integrator needs a different set of tools and functionalities. According to John Bruggerman there has been a profound shift in consumer buying habbits that have changed the industry as we know it.

John Buggerman claims shift has been underway for several years but has recently accelerated due to the introduction of consumer devices like the iPhone. .

Today the game is all about Applications (or Apps). If you can create an App Community, you can sustain differentiated products.

To support such a paradigm shift manufacturing has got to shift from being solution providers to application enablers.

System companies are asking Semiconductor companies to provide application ready platforms, that not only include the hardware but also the software. This is proving challenging for semiconductor companies. In turn they are asking the EDA industry to offer an expanded set of features and tools.

According to EDA, there are three steps needed to create this new environment:

  1. Create: Wheneever or whomever hardeware or software. In other words it must be a solution that can integrate with easy into any system. It must come with the right documentation, and be fully verified and configurable to the end application.
  2. Integrate: Design teams must be able to integrate IP into platforms, then verify complete SoC (System-on-Chip) or platform interchangeability – including interface between Analog/Digital blocks, and hardware/software.
  3. Optimize: Design teams must be able to reduce die package costs while ensuring quality, and lowering device power consumption and trimming testing costs through automation.
  4. Collaborative Ecosystems: It is crucial that a a collaborative ecosystem to ensure the industry does not collapse intro a handful of vertically integrated companies.

Concerns: 

Creators are most concerned with delivering the best performing, lowest power consumption, and smallest die size semiconductor devices.

Integrators are looking for hardware solutions that is good enough and serves their application needs. They are most concerned with: Quality, Costs, and Time-To-Market.

Posted in Technology | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

5 Steps to Productizing your Services

Posted on May 10, 2011 by AR Rafiq

1. Look at your past 18 months of client activity to see trends in project scope.

2. Break these up into 3-5 service levels by deliverables.

3. Develop brief case studies and the sale tools you need for business development (including naming/branding the service levels).

4. Get feedback from current clients on your new service packages.

5. Take new productized service offerings to market, track responses and adjust as needed.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Posted in Entrepreneurship | Leave a comment

Bin Laden: End Of An Era

Posted on May 3, 2011 by AR Rafiq

Osama Bin Laden is finally dead and buried. Aside from the manner in which he was taken out, it’s imperative that we move on to more pressing issue. In American the Clear and Present Challenge is putting millions of American’s back to work.

The Obama Administration has got to realign it’s priorities:  Moving away from expensive wars to proactive promotion of mass job creation programs across all sectors of the Economy, supporting Entrepreneurs both at home and abroad with incentives to innovate and forge Global partnerships.

America was built upon a dream, a dream that all men are created equal under God, and are indivisible, with equity and justice for all. That dream now is looking more and more like a dimming beacon in the distant horizon. Ordinary Americans are bogged down with the rising cost of living. Across the country small and medium businesses are suffering, despite popular Washington lore, small town American has not weathered well through the current recession.

What America needs is to renew former Great Depression Government Programs that employed thousands of ordinary people and simultaneously contributed to the National Knowledge Reserve, and development of the National Infrastructure.

For example during the Great Depression unemployed Mathematicians and Physicists were put to work to solve fundamental theoretical problems. As a result today we have valuable resources such as: The CRC Handbook for Scientists and Engineers, and an update to the extensive Table of Integrals that are used by millions of Engineers and Scientists around the world. Not forgetting the construction of the Inter-State highway system, Golden Gate and Bay Bridges in San Francisco which had an significant impact for years to come.

In Pakistan, we need to move on, set aside our differences, take lesson from past mistakes and proactively work towards alleviating the common man’s burden.

The common man in Pakistan has similar concerns as Americans, though at an even more basic level – i.e. survival and providing ROTI( food), KAPRA (clothing), MAKKAN (housing), and TALEEM (Education) to his or her family, in a safe and secure environment.

Pakistanis are a highly innovative and Entrepreneurial people. Given the right breaks and appropriate partnerships Pakistanis can prove to be a valuable Global Asset Class.

Bin Laden is dead, lets now kill the poisonous ideology he and several other groups have been promoting within Pakistan and around the world, not with the Gun but with the Pen and intellect.

Osama Bin Laden’s death is a turning point in the world, bringing an end to an era that began circa 1977 with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Posted in Meanderings | Tagged | Leave a comment

Rise Of The Tablet PC

Posted on April 22, 2011 by AR Rafiq

It was not too long ago when we would watch Geordi La’ Forge in the popular Star Trek Next Generation television series whip out his PADD, or Personal Access Display Device, and punch out some theory or the other about ships performance or their mission.

On a Star Fleet vessel the PADD has been used for functions ranging from performing complex engineering computations to reading Shakespere as Captain Picard would be seen doing.

In recent years science fiction and art has paved the way for technological advancement. From the personal computer to mobile phone, all these devices first made their debute in science fiction novels followed by Hollywood films.

The tablet computer is no different. Though they have been in the marketplace for years,  the Kindle, the iPad and similar devices have made tablets mainstream and hold out the promise of a new age of entertainment and personal computing.
 
The evolution of the tablet PC is similar to that of the laptop computer, the netbook, and the smartphone: Companies aren’t so much selling us a better computer as they are selling us new ways to use computers.

The compact form factor of tablets, together with wireless connectivity and location-based functionality all combine to create a whole new set of opportunities and challenges for entrepreneurs and industry incumbents alike.

Today’s tablet PC though no where as powerful as the Star Trek PADD, it is poised as a clear and present distructive technology in the personal computing space.

More and more people are begining to use tablet PC’s in their daily lives. As it stands today you can conduct most computing tasks on a tablet.

Though tablet PC’s have been around for quite a while, it’s debute in the marketplace has been directly impacted by the cloud computing revolution. Where local install of software applications has been replaced by cloud (or web) based services such as Google Documents or Microsofts Office 365. Users need not concern themselves with technicalities of installing software, partitioning hard disk to maximize storage. All that has now moved to the cloud.

Granted there are computing tasks that continue to require local installs on desktop PC’s. Such as in the world of Electronic Design, engineers remain dependent on expensive software installs, multi-gigabytes of storage and bandwidth for R&D tasks. Howeever, that will come to pass.

The future of computing rests with with tablet devices acting as semi-dumb terminals to access cloud based resources.

Posted in Technology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Foodies Go Mobile

Posted on April 22, 2011 by AR Rafiq

The world of mobile is fast becoming a norm. You have mobile applications for almost every facet of life. From calculating currency exchange rates to ordering a meal on the go. The mobile device has become an essential ingredient to life.

There are those that would argue that increased accessibility and mobility is destroying the quality of life as we know it. But then their were similar arguments from critics at the advent of Radio and Television. That said my intent of this post isn’t to argue the pros and cons of technology.

Here I present and discuss a few up and coming mobile applications and services that are poised to having a disruptive impact on how society approach Take-Out.  Until very recently I was offering my  consulting services to a stealth startup in the Mobile Ordering and Payment space, called Mx for the purposes of this blog post. Mx was initially beta tested at the Los Angeles Colosseum in 2007. It presented a compelling business model that enabled a full ordering and payment mechanism, with a full user to vendor talk back feature.

The applications I am going to discuss today, aren’t no where near what Mx was offering, however a hybrid of features from each of the following startups would most definitely come out as a killer App in the Take-Out space.

Order Mapper (www.ordermapper.com): has created a sophisticated ordering platform capable of processing orders from any internet-connected device, delivering them via phone, fax, e-mail or direct to a POS, and updating the ordering device in real-time. Here are just some of the technologies which make this possible. Order Mapper is a funded by Twillio Micro Fund! A Dave McClure early stage angel investment firm.

Naan Map (www.naanmap.com): Is a niche market restaurant finder that was established in 2005. The application is heading up for tough competition with Zabihah (www.zabihah.com) that has been operating in similar niche markets for well over a decade.

Food2go (www.kubeone.com): Proposes a “hassle free” ordering mechanism. It is a one way ordering mechanism. Unlike Order Mapper, Food2Go does not provide online payment features.

 

Zabihah (www.m.zabihah.com): As I mentioned above, Zabihah has been around for well over a decade catering to a niche market. Zabihah offers a vast database of ethnic eateries in the U.S. and Europe. Most recently they launched their mobile service that has enabled users to easily search for restaurants while on the go.

 

 

Order Topia (www.ordertopia.com): is the tip of the iceberg. Order Topia boosts a compelling mobile application. Order Topia offers the full gambit of features from searching for a restaurant, browsing a menu. submitting, and finally paying for an order. In essence the mobile device is converted to an ordering and payment terminal. Watch a video demo here.

iConcessionStand (www.iconcessionstand.com): is introducing a new way to shop and pay for products on mobile devices at live events such as ball games.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Posted in Appilications, Technology | Tagged | Leave a comment

Technology Imperfections: Mobile Boarding Pass

Posted on April 8, 2011 by AR Rafiq

I just checked-in using United Airlines Mobile Boarding Pass. It took 10 min’s for the TSA officer’s scanner to read the barcode.

Note to Self: Never leave home without a paper copy of the boarding pass. Contrary to Silicon Valley lore, technology ain’t perfect.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Posted in Meanderings | Leave a comment

Hello, World!

Posted on April 8, 2011 by AR Rafiq

My dear Friends, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to my new home.

Some of you may already know me, but for those of you who are new to My World, I’m passionate about finding creative ways to use technology for the betterment of society. okay your probably thinking that is so cliche’ish! Well you’re probably right.

By way of background my blogging career began at http://Siliconstani.blogspot.com and http://wadibuzz.blogspot.com. From there I moved to WadiWalllah.com a community blog dedicated to the denizens of Silicon Valley.

With the advent of the micro-blogging tool Twitter I, Like many others got pulled into the 140 Character World. My tweets are available at http://twitter.com/arrafiq.

I look forward to interacting with you here as I role out my next several posts from my world.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Meanderings, Social Activism, Technology | Tagged | Leave a comment