Pratibha Patil — Questionable candidate

 

Just because you are a Gandhi Family Sycophant does not make you nominated for ceremonial post. Alas, what more can you expect from UPA government run by none other but Sonia Gandhi who has nominated Pratibha Patil as the President of India.

There are charges of Bank Scam, Sugar Scam and murder cover up on the college queen. Mud-slinging or not, the citizens of India need answers first. Who knows how many skeletons are rattling around in her cupboard. One expect the First Citizen of India to have clean slate.

I protest this nomination on my blog. How can we replace a respectable man like Abdul Kalam with this lady.

Who makes the iPod – True Globalisation

If you want to study the Globalization effect of iPod, NYT has a very interesting article.

Who makes the Apple iPod? Here’s a hint: It is not Apple. The company outsources the entire manufacture of the device to a number of Asian enterprises, among them Asustek, Inventec Appliances and Foxconn.

But this list of companies isn’t a satisfactory answer either: They only do final assembly. What about the 451 parts that go into the iPod? Where are they made and by whom?

Three researchers at the University of California, Irvine — Greg Linden, Kenneth L. Kraemer and Jason Dedrick — applied some investigative cost accounting to this question, using a report from Portelligent Inc. that examined all the parts that went into the iPod.

Their study, sponsored by the Sloan Foundation, offers a fascinating illustration of the complexity of the global economy, and how difficult it is to understand that complexity by using only conventional trade statistics.

The retail value of the 30-gigabyte video iPod that the authors examined was $299. The most expensive component in it was the hard drive, which was manufactured by Toshiba and costs about $73. The next most costly components were the display module (about $20), the video/multimedia processor chip ($8) and the controller chip ($5). They estimated that the final assembly, done in China, cost only about $4 a unit.

But this method hides some of the most important details. Toshiba may be a Japanese company, but it makes most of its hard drives in the Philippines and China. So perhaps we should also allocate part of the cost of that hard drive to one of those countries. The same problem arises regarding the Broadcom chips, with most of them manufactured in Taiwan. So how can one distribute the costs of the iPod components across the countries where they are manufactured in a meaningful way?

Those clever folks at Apple figured out how to combine 451 mostly generic parts into a valuable product. They may not make the iPod, but they created it. In the end, that’s what really matters.

Google never stops

The guys in Googleplex never stops inventing. Latest from them is the new Graphical Interface for Google News. This has an animated interface so you can browse news by images. If an image interests you, just hover your mouse on it and the related news will be highlighted. Go Google.

Coming this Friday

Unless you are living in a cave, I am sure you have heard about Jesus Phone, otherwise known as iPhone. As millions of other people, I have been following smallest scraps of information pertaining to the Phone of Phones. After lot of speculation about the launch of iPhone (June 11th? June 20th? June 35th?), it is confirmed now that it’s launching on June 29th i.e. coming Friday.

As I know about gizmos, I know that there will be an initial hype about iPhone and there will be long queue outside Apple stores on Friday. I just want to feel this gizmo in hand and wait for some time when the bugs will be fixed, better model will be made and price will drop (4GB model = $499, 8GB model = $599). If you are interested in roadmap of iPhone, go here. But nonetheless, let’s see this new baby this weekend. Eh!

Some good reviews of iPhone are available at following locations:-

Wall Street Journal

New York Times

USA Today

NewsWeek

Walt Mossberg’s Video Review

New York Times Video Review

USA Today’s Video Review

How to type on iPhone? Video tutorial by Apple (Quicktime required)

To get list of what iPhone doesn’t have, look  here.

And if you want to know the features iPhone has, look here.

Pogue’s Tour of the iPhone [NYT]

Often-Asked iPhone Questions [NYT]