omshom

2006-08-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

Prop 87 and Vinod Khosla

by Robert Rapier

More links by Robert Rapier:
Vinod Khosla Debunked

Video: Vinod talks Ethanol

2006-07-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

Startup and VCs

Some things I was reading last year when we were close doing a startup

Term Sheets

Paul Graham on Startups

Hackers and Painters

2006-07-18T11:36:00.000-07:00

Kitchen Remodel (contd.)

3) Range Hoods

Since our cooking range is going to be on the island, we had the option of downdraft system or Island/Peninsula hood/chimney. With the amount and style of cooking we do, the downdraft system would not have been so effective so we went with Island Chimney which will had a great look as well to the room. Island Chimney's are far more expensive that their regular (wall) counterparts.

During the research, we also found out that the chimneys which have glass in them, may look cool but over the years (2-3 yrs), the glass will absorb the grease and the edges will start to look a little dirty and dark/blackish. So, we went with a all stainless hood. There are still some choices, but not a whole lot for mounting on the island. Also, you need a chimney which is slightly wider than the gas stove since its an island.

A 36 inch wide chimney would work fine with 30 inch stove.

All the models below are:

- Stainless
- Atleast 36inch wide

2006-07-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

Kitchen Remodel (contd.)

2) Cooking Range

This was slightly simpler than refrigerators since there are not so many options available. The common factors among the compared ranges are:

- Slide In model
- Dual Fuel
- 30 inches width
- Stainless Finish
- Energy Star

GE has only one model which fits the bill while Frigidaire has three different models to choose from.

Frigidaire FCS366E C is the very basic model with Black steel door handles. The second model FCS36E C has mathinc color Steel handles but they don't look as sleek. Both these models have some kind of 'SpeekBake' Convection system which give ok performance. The third, professional, model is PLCS389E C which has much sturdier and professional looking grates with better Pro Matter finish. This has a different Convection, 'Even Cook' which adds another coil around the fan which eliminates temperature fluctuations and provides even cooking. This also has a Star-K Sabbath mode Kosher cooking. This also has a Warm and server drawer which is not available in first two models.

KitchenAid and Jenn Air are also ver professional looking serious type ranges, but slight expensive as compared to GE and definitely Frigidaire.

2006-07-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

a little off-track (Kitchen Remodel)

I've taken some time off from work and we are going thru the process of total kitchen remodel. This gave me a chance to see what appliances are out there so we can decide on what fits our style and budget.

The style decisions were based on contemporary, stainless looks with performance. There are awful lot of major appliances out there and with a limited set of manufactures making them under different brands, it could get confusing very fast. Like Amana, earlier, was the only manufacturer making bottom freezer refrigerators, but now its bought by Maytag which is bought by GE?... So some Maytags are now Amana. And, LG makes for other folks as well, like for Kenmore.

Anyways, we mainly researched in the stores for available models, checked manufacturer's websites, read consumer reviews and magazines.

1) Refrigerator

There are so many styles available, so we wanted to narrow down to smaller subset before doing a comprehensive research. All the models in the matrix below share the following characteristics:

- Bottom Freezer
- Stainless
- NOT Counter depth
- Energy Star

Summary: LG combines good set of features and looks and a decent price.

LG is fairly new in US market but has been aroudn for decades in other countries and is a very reliable brand. In LG terminology,
- 'FC' in the model name along with '7x0' as in the model (LFC25760 or LRFD22750) means that the model doesnot has any water or ice dispenser on the door
- 'FD' and '8x0' in the model number (LFD25860 or LRFD22850) means that it has door water dispenser but no ice on the door.
- FX' and '9x0' in the model number (LFX25960) means that it has door water and ice dispenser. Note that having ice on the door will take up nearly the whole door shelf space.

GE has alot of models, but none are in the full size. Their models are all 22.2 cu.ft. In few of their models like PFS22SBSSS and PFS22SBSRSS/PFS22SBSLSS, they have ice maker as optional since they don't have internal water dispenser. What "the people who drink water from the fridge dispenser don't use the ice either." ? This is stupid. Plus, having the water dispenser inside the fridge where you have to keep the door open isn't that convenient and kinda defeats the purpose.

Amana is good, but their high end model is around $2650 MSRP and none of the other models have french doors.

2006-07-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

MeCommerce

Yet Another contextual advertising network. This just launched from GoodStrom.Com (Capatalism Done Right) which combines Amazon Affiliates and Google AdSense.
Although, Amazon is testing its own advertising network to be combined with its Affiliates program.

http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06070505.htm?source=eptyholnk303100&logvisit=y&npu=y

2006-05-18T11:32:00.000-07:00

Historic crash for Indian Stock Market

2006-04-28T10:07:00.000-07:00

"Every breath You Take" by Friday Follies

Just saw the complete video on CNBC. Apparently it's Glenn Hubbard's response to Ben Bernanke being the Chairman of Fed. Glenn is now the Dean of Columbia Biz School.

Very funny and hilarious video

http://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/everybreath/

2006-04-01T10:39:00.000-08:00

Romancing with Google.

Google is beta testing their Romance product. Another online dating site with emphasis on Contextual Dating, putting the technology in use for soul searching.

How do they plan to make money? Contextual ads online and over the phone. Premium call rates for dating advisors... now I need to take advice from those geeky folks.

What's next, 1 900 Google for Love ??

Ha Ha Ha !! good try.

2006-03-24T17:54:00.000-08:00

Google Base in Real Estate search results.

I just spotted Google Base search refinements in few of the searches related to real estate. If you look for "home for sale" or "for rent homes" etc, you'll get that refinement page.

Searching for similar experience I found this blog from SearchEngineJournal.

2006-03-24T17:30:00.000-08:00

Google MBD?

There's a whole lot of commotion about this new addition to Google's robots.txt file.
Everyone is making their guess about what it could be.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/index.php?p=137

I wonder what it is...

2006-03-20T18:20:00.000-08:00

Why is Zillow skewed?

Since my last post, Zillow has improved a bit in terms of showing the near ok valuation for some properties, but for others, it's way off.

Here's why? It seems like it relies a lot on the last sale of the property instead of anything else. If a propertay hasn't been sold in last 2-4 years, its value is going to be very low in Zillow, while if you compare a similar property which has sold recently, Zillow's estimate will come out to be slightly more than the sale value taking in the account that real estates would generally go up....

Lot of people are now starting to rely on this information, but they don't quite understand that zillow's estimates could be way off.

A recent example is Belltown, Seattle. I'm trying to sell my condo which I've had for 2.5 years. Zillow shows a value of this place to be $488k. While other properties which were sold in last 6 months, zillow's estimate is higher than the sale price.

Now consider the units which are on NWMLS for sale, and aren't sold yet. One unit is listed at $550k while it's zillow valuation is $429k. The other one is listed for $760k and it's Z-value is $641k. Considering that most of the units are sold within 97%-100% of their sale price, this is totally wrong.

2006-03-10T11:05:00.000-08:00

Preview Local Live

This is even better. You could either pick a car or just walk on a street and you'll see the real world as a driver or a person taking a stroll.

2006-03-09T16:46:00.000-08:00

Windows Live Local

seems like a good combination of google local, a9 maps and Blockview. And, the BirdsEye view is phenomenal. Although, its available only for major cities, but others are coming soon.

http://local.live.com/

2006-03-02T07:54:00.000-08:00

Origami Project

I wonder if Microsoft's Origami has anything to do with mobile or some kind of a personal electronic device.

2006-02-08T21:53:00.000-08:00

Finally, Zillow launches.

Zillow is doing what Redfin did, but at a larger scale, more IP (Zillow's algorithms) and a lot more features. That makes the site not only more confusing, but unproven algorithms seem to have huge margin of errors. For example, couple of house valuations show that the properties are priced much lower as supposed to the sale prices in the recent history. And, of if you try to update the assessment, it goes way beyond the actual sale price. That's due to variety of reasons including incorrect assessment of the property at the county office to lower taxes, or un-reported upgrades and remodels to the county, or a recent high price sale by a builder in the neighborhood etc.

I've been studying this market for more than couple of years now (see my earlier posts How's internet changing real estate and Real estate traditional scenario). And, Zillow provides a mix of products/features to the consumers. I've also compared buyers and sellers journey in the past and what kind of features would help them. The raw data is already there, though not expeosed well, and sites like Microsoft's houseandhome.com also provides neighborhood info, but consumer need more derived assessments. Although having the ability to slice and dice data in different ways is definitely great, I, as a consumer, need some stencil metrics and standard derived ways to look at the information which make more sense to me as a buyer or a seller or just investor.

If there were some metrics like Zestimate which could tell me how well an area appriases over time and how's the housing ownership and housing age changing with time, that'd help me more than comparing my house value to city, county, state, national average.

All in all, with so much money spent, so many smart poeple at work and after such a long time, I was expecting more.

2005-10-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment Show roundup (Sept 2005)

Very interesting summary by Chetan Sharma .

2005-09-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

Are open source integration solutions mature?

I've also been looking at various open source integration solutions lately. Though, there are a lot of projects but they provide only a link in the whole chain. For example there are projects focusing only on transformations, adaptors, work flow etc. And if some are going beyond these, they are for pure webservices. What if I want to integrate my SAP environment?

This article provides a good executive summary.

2005-09-30T11:55:00.000-07:00

Real Estate is quite hot these days and people are trying to maximize the returns by using technology. Here's another company which is going local and providing property searches.

http://www.trulia.com/

They are only in few cities and uses google maps. After the debut of www.housingmaps.com I wondered when are the going to combine real-estate (MLS) with google maps, kind of similar to redfin but on a global scale and better/faster presentation.

2005-09-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

John L Scott introduced interactive map search for MLS listing

http://www.johnlscott.com/SearchAdvanced.aspx?Type=38&ShowDemo=true

2005-09-02T16:03:00.000-07:00

Another company to use technology to make buying/selling real estate easier and more efficient.

This new company in New York is thinking of building a system like eBay ranking and ratings and they plan to apply this to agents. If I was selling a condo in Belltown/Downtown Seattle, I would want my agent to have experience in such sales and local presence. Why should I trust an agent from Issaquah who has no past history in dealing with downtown condos.

2005-09-01T13:52:00.000-07:00

How's Internet changing the Real Estate transactions

Last week I wrote about Real Estate and how traditionally residential transactions have happened. I also promised that I'll write about what else is happening to this market and how the system is bringing discounts for end consumers.

In the previous post, we looked at why traditional 6% model doesn't work and consumers need more visibility
into where there 6% is going.

First of all, there are websites who are similar to traditional lead generation model and all they do is to trick and convince buyers/sellers to give their contact information. It could be for "find out the value of your house" or "view homes for sale" etc. Once they know a consumer is interested in any of the activity, they sell the information either to external agents or share is with their own agents. One company recently went public just by selling this information for big money.

Once the agents qualify the leads, they follow up like a traditional agent.

Buyer Focused: One of the great example for this is ZipRealty. If you buy thru them, they'll give you back 20% of the commission, as they advertise on their website, which they get from the seller. That means, if a seller gives 3% of the sale to buyer's agent (ZipRealty in this case), you'll get 20% of that 3%, which is 0.6% of the sale price. Once you register they randomly assign and agent to you who keeps sending you spam and pestering you to respond. Anyways, they can return the savings back to the buyer by streamlining the processes and making "agents" more salaried that total commission.

Similarly on the seller's side also, an east cost company provides full-service to sellers but the agents are their employees and they have organized their services in more vertical fashion. For example, they have teams of people doing only qualification of leads, legal work, staging etc.

All the above models are pretty much Self Service, but they provide better service and savings since they can make better use of the processes, information and technology.

Other extreme is FSBO, For Sale By Owner, which is starting to gain momentum but there's no governing body like MLS so it's all scattered over different websites and channels (print, online, audio, video). In addition to this, since fsbo is even less than 15% of the total listing, buyers don't go to those sites and Buyer's agents do not have any incentive to go there since FSBO doesn't want to pay any (or much) commission.

Then there are sites like MSN HouseAndHome which just give you information about a neighborhood and help a buyer decide on one. They ultimately link to some other listing site and this could not be a complete model in itself. Although, if you have enough research and derived results and IP, you could provide this as a service.

Redfin is another example which is adding value to buying process by providing a geographical search. And, with the introduction of Google Map APIs it'll be much easier integrate MLS data to it. People have already launched craigslist + google maps and what not. A better experience would be to combine informational data + google maps + mls listings + neighborhood bars and pubs + grocery stores + whatever else you can think of.

Coming back to full service and fsbo, what if there was a service which lets me do what I want (as a seller or buyer) and let me hire professionals to do the rest? The ideal scenario would be to itemize all the steps in the roadmap for buying/selling and present it as a menu to the consumer. Just like when I file my taxes with H&R Block, they itemize their fee and give a complete breakdown.

More on this later, or you could ping me at hisacs@gmail.com if you are interested.

2005-08-25T19:42:00.000-07:00

Real Estate traditional scenario

Recently, I've been reading and discussing a lot about real estate and how different players in the market [especially US] are trying to use Internet as a medium to attract more and more business.
Traditionally, this is space is driven by agents and agents only. Brokers have facilitated growth of these agents and have made it easier to for anyone to become an agent. Over the last 10 years, the number of agents has doubled while the prices of the properties has gone up many folds.

How do agents work?

Today, agents hold the key (literally) to the properties and the transaction. Although, people are starting to use FSBO (for sale by owner), but still it's not even 15% of the properties sold thru agents. Since it's such a big transaction, sometime the biggest in life, people are not scared but hesitant to do it by themselves. Although, I've seen the agents are no better except that they have been doing it for so long and they know the process. This reluctance resulted in always using an agent whether you are buying or selling.
Typically, seller pays 6% of the cost of their house when they are selling it. This 6% is in addition to the cost they might pay for closing and other fees. 3% of this goes to seller's agent and 3% goes to the buyer's agent. You could say that a buying a house is free since a buyer never has to pay anything.

Buyer's Side

Since a buyer doesn't pay anything to his/her broker, they don't really care about the commission their agent is getting. Although, one could question what work is actually done by the agent.

Let's look at the journey of a buyer.
- select an agent
- select a neighborhood (factors like near work, school district, pubs and restaurants, transportation etc)
- city, suburb, lifestyle
- age, type of house
- rooms, floors, yards
- luxury (waterfront, community, acreage, community)
- market research (cost of living, crime)
- channels for research (papers, magazines, hours history, price trends, online, agent)
-- SELECT A HOUSE
- research
- price
- loan
- offer/counter offer
- contingencies
- inspection, title, appraisal
- SIGNING

In this whole list, most of the work is done by the buyer or needs buyer's feedback or decisions from buyer. Once the house is selected, it's more of a formality other than 'offer' stage. Another important aspect is selecting the Agent.

I would argue that when most of the work is done by the buyer, why is their broker getting paid 3%. Same question is asked by lot of other people and there are business models which exploit this inefficiency (more on this in the part 2 of this blog).

Seller's side

Seller and their broker has a lot more work on the other side. That's generally true because things should be easier for someone who's spending the money and slightly competitive for those who are getting that moolah.

A seller needs to do a lot more stuff upfront even before their house is ready to be in the market. Staging/Imaging and just trying to make you house pretty so that it'll attract buyers. Not a lot of agent pay huge attention to this and it impacts the seller in their cost of the house. People generally look for these simple fixer uppers and make a huge premium on it. If you look at "Designed to Sell" on HGTV, you'll see how a $50 paint job with $0 clutter removal makes a huge difference in selling a property.

Once your house is all ready to go, the agent needs to work over-time in marketing and putting the house up on MLS and other channels to market it. Today, it's very difficult to find a good selling agent since there's not much visibility into agents transactions and there's no ranking.

What's coming in the next blog?
- finding good agents
- quantifying agent's work
- exploiting market inefficiencies
- FSBO and Full Service: what's in between?
- new business models which are out there

2005-08-25T18:57:00.000-07:00

How I decided to buy another iRiver iFP 799T 1GB Player

After having bought iAudio U2 1GB flash player, and having done extensive research on Flash based player, this is now the best player in my list. You can also refer to iRiver 1GB players review which I wrote with all the analysis.

In Summary, of all the flash players, 1GB is the max which is available other than iAudio 2GB model which has some problems in efficiently utilizing the space.

The only drawback to this player was that it couldn't function as USB storage device and support for OGG format was not available, but with the newer firmware these problems are solved. This is why I purchsed this unit instead of iAudio. Also, iAudio seemed to have limited availability and support.

Size: Max available using Flash technology (which means no moving parts like Hard Disk based) in the market with best utilization. iAudio 2GB has limitation in the number of files you can store as well as it cannot use all the 2GB space.

Formats: supports the newer OGG, WMA and variable MP3 formats also with the latest firmware which is available on the iRiver site (only if your player is not shipped with the latest one and has v1.21).

Sound Quality: The earbuds which come in the package are as good as any other portable player earbuds. Although, I get slightly better quality with Sony EX 71. The sound quality, when connected to the amplifier at home, is also very rich if you have good quality files on the player. Ofcourse, ultimately it depends on the file quality/size.

External: Silver and Black, could have been available in more color combinations. But, the different colors are for different capacity size players.

Other Features: FM radio -- excellent reception and quality, mike/radio/line-in recording -- good, customer equalizer - good feature, Voice recording - works pretty good and I'm thinking of taking this to closed concerts, other modes and visualizations.

Battery: 1AA cell which with good for up to 35 hrs (not quite 40hrs as advertised). I think it also leaks battery if you don't it for few weeks. But, I also have a practise of removing batteries from electronic equipment if I'm not using them. Of course, not for torch. AA works out more effective and cheaper as compared to AAA batteries (shorter life) and built-in Li/xxx battery (limited life, have to always carry a charger). 'AA' battery was an important decision in buying this player since they can be bought anywhere in the world.

Display: ok screen, atleast it has one, not like iPOD Shuffle. Backlight is great, but consumes a lot of battery.

Pretty intuitive interface with the joystick and other buttons.

All in all, its a great player, good features and they listen to their customers also as they have added support for OGG files and usage as a USB disk.

-- feedback after couple of weeks usage --

* WMA files ripped from Windows Media Player in VBR (Variable bit rate) don't play on the device. I had to convert those to MP3

* Once you install the latest firmware v1.28 to enable this to be recognized by Windows Explorer, Real Player, and Windows Media player; the player will no longer be recognized by the iRiver Music Manager. This is not a problem for me since I generally use Windows Explorer only. But, if you are tied to Music Manager software from iRiver, you might not want to update the firmware, which will restrict your device to be used as a flash hard disk.

I'm also worried since the device cannot be recognized by the Music Manager, how will I update the firmware to a more newer version which might come later. Hopefully, iRiver will update the Music Manager to recognize it, or come up with another way to update the firmware.

Other than these two factor, I'm totally satisfied with the player and the quality.

2005-08-25T18:55:00.000-07:00

Cannot decide between Flash and HDD based MP3 player

This review describes the complete thought/research cycle for deciding a digital player. It includes hdd based, flash based, different flash based capacities, features, battery life etc. The features etc for any player are already available on the detail pages and else where so I'm not including those, instead doing the comparison exercise. I've also written this review for other flash players which I considered in the comparison.

I've been using iRiver SlimX iMP-CD350 CD/MP3 player for quite a while now and decided that its time to move to a smaller player which is more versatile and portable. I'm just not a CD person, and as soon as I buy a CD, I rip it and get the files all over my computers/laptops.

There are lot of smaller digital music players available in the market. My first decision point was to decide between HDD (hard disk drive) or Flash memory based players. HDD based are available from 4GB to 60 GB and since it has a mechanical drive, it's not suited well for my activities (gym/running etc). While flash based don't suffer with this draw back, they come only in 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB and 2GB. I wasn't buying a player to make it a permanent repository of all my music and having up to 1GB of music (16 hours of CD quality, 32+ hours otherwise) was good enough for me. For this reason, I decided to go with Flash based player. Plus, most flash based players have direct USB connectivity and some of those can also be used as a regular flash disk for document transfer and storage.

Next step was to decide the capacity. I was inclined for a 2GB player since it'll store even more songs, but found some warning in iAudio (Jet Audio) site where a 2gb version can store only up to 450 (files + folders) and the player cannot address the last 260MB memory of the player. I had also used a flash based 2gb usb storage device which had similar storage problems. So, I went with 1GB version and decided to give more time for 2GB+ technology.

Next was feature sets and brands. I had following things in mind in terms of features: formats capable, battery life, firmware upgradability, and FM player. I considered Creative (MuVO Micro N200), iRiver (iFP 799), Apple (iShuffle 1GB), and JetAudio (iAudio 5, G3, U2).

iRiver had drawbacks were not being able to work as USB storage device, limitation on Ogg audio and MP3 VBR files. Apple was not just my thing since it lacked a display, FM tuner etc and accessories like FM player are added cost/size/weight too. Creative was also limited only on WMA amd MP3. It seemed like most of the players but iAudio/Jet Audio have format limitations.
Jet Audio (iAudio) had most of the formats available (MP3, WMA, WAV, Ogg Vorbis, ASF etc), firware upgradable, trendy size, good reviews, USB storage device and good choices. And, I was totally bought on iAudio.

The last step was to decide on the model. I considered iAudio 5, G3, and U2 version. The main differences are 5 is based on 'AAA' batter and lasts only 15-20 hours, G3 is slightly wider but less longer model with 'AA' battery and supports up to 45-50 hours on one cell, and U2 was similar to '5' but had internal Lithium Polymer battery and the same 15-20 hours playback time. U2 model also lacked Ogg Vorbis format capability.
If I was travelling long distance and not able to charge LiPolymer battery, it's a waste. And, 15-20 hours just doesn't turn not ecnomical with 'AAA' battery, so I ended up with iAudio G3 1GB player and I'm very satisfied with the player itself.

Everything about G3 player is great but it has a slightly longer start-up time. It has great radio reception, great sound quality, small enough size, USB sturage device, ok microphone, ok recording.

All in all, a great player.

2005-08-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

Choosing Mobile Data Plan in US (part 2 of 2)

After getting the BlackBerry, I've been surfing both WAP and regular HTML sites on it. HTML is definitely a bad experience partly due to form factor with header/footer displays and mainly because of slow connection speed.

So, I decided to checkout EDGE on Cingular which is supposed to be much faster than GPRS, as well as UMTS or Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (Cingular) which is launched in 6 cities in US.First of all, one store in downtown Seattle did not have live phones and they weren't aware of UMTS also. The couple of guys store in Pacific Place store seemed more knowledgeable but they could get me a phone with EDGE and HTML capable browser. There were couple of phones from Sony Ericsson and Motorola Razor which had EDGE Class 10 (240 Kbps download and 120 Kbps upload). I didn't see much difference while browsing WAP sites on EDGE vs. GPRS, but there were no media sites to which I could compare.

I then asked about UMTS network which is available in Dallas, Detroit, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle. UMTS (also known as WideCDMA or WCDMA) is an entirely new setup based on CDMA while EDGE was just a software upgrade to GSM network. Whereas GSM networks segregate calls into exclusive time slots, CDMA networks mix a bunch of calls together into a single channel, with each call encoded with a special key. (Think of it as a group of people in a room, each speaking loudly in a different language. Only the decoder with the right key—the one that speaks the right language—can understand each call.)This has a maximum theoretical speed of 384Kbps but while talking to few people, they could only get 299Kbps in Dallas only. While the upload speed stayed at 54 Kbps, similar to that of EDGE. Cingular is also working on a software upgrade to UMTS which will be HSDPA and get average speeds up to 700 Kbps, but this will happen in 2006.Cingular stores only had Merlin U520 PC card on UMTS and couldn't get any phones, while AT&T (now cingular) had a Motorola A845 and another Nokia 6230 phone. I couldn't get my hands on them.

UMTS in Europe uses both the frequency bands 1900 Mhz and 2100 Mhz. 1900 Mhz is sued for outbound transmission while 2100 Mhz is used for all inbound. The problem with UMTS in US is that 2100 Mhz band is not available since its used for US military for satellite communications. Although FCC has agreed to free it up, there's no timeline.This kind of prohibits the usage of non-US UMTS phones in US and UMTS isn't 'U' anymore.

For this reason, Motorola has released a US version of its true UMTS phone 'A835' as 'A845' in US only, which will also operate in 850/1800/1900 frequencies.

I also looked at Verizon's Wireless EV-DO network which was much promising as compared to speeds and availability. This has been released in 32 US metro areas and gives an average speed of 300-500 Kpbs with peaks up to 1.1 Mbps. CDMA 1xRTT EV-DO is a wide channel on existing CDMA network only on data. It's generally offered only on PC card, but there's an Audiovox XV6600 PDA phone which supports pda or laptop browsing. The catch being that the phone can only talk to laptop using bluetooth thus limiting the max speed to 400 Kbps, although there are some trial versions of USB communication also which is not 'supported' at this time.

All in alll the state of affairs in US for mobile data plans is really sad and not a whole lot of options. Everyone has GPRS, EDGE is not a considerable improvement and with limited choices as well as new technology around the corner, it doesn't make much sense to spend on it. UMTS is limited, while EV-DO seems to be the best option. My only problem with Verizon is that they do not use SIM cards, while I love to store everything on SIM and change phones every now and them.

2005-08-25T12:24:00.001-07:00

This is part 1 of 2 posts in "Choosing a Mobile Data Plan in US"

Service Provider

I've been thinking of getting a data plan for a cell phone which I could use for surfing, trying out new apps, voice calls as well as the new developments in 3G space. I asked a few people and did a lot of research to finally have things clear in my mind with respect to offerings, products, technology, geography etc. The different technologies available are 2G (GSM), 2.5G (GPRS), 2.75G (EDGE) and 3G (WCDMA). Their data rates are typically 9.6 kbps, 20-40 kbps, 144 kbps, and 144 kbps respectively. In terms of service providers, T-Mobile in US supports only GPRS while Cingular/AT&T has EDGE available.I considered Verizon and Sprint also but both of them are cdma and I was looking for GSM based which uses a SIM card and the phone can be used anywhere.

After deciding on GSM, choices were T-Mobile and Cingular only. I didn't get any first hand feedback from people and most of the references were from the presentations of other people. Cingular seemed slightly better from T-Mobile from the plans as well as from my experience also. I tried same phone on these different technologies (GPRS from T-Mobile and EDGE from Cingular) and found slightly better performance from EDGE while browsing my.yahoo.com pages. I compared only the HTML pages thru HTML enabled browser and didn't try WML. The biggest problem while surfing is that HTML pages are not designed for phone screen and there are 10s of screens of HTML display only for header and footer and you have to scroll really down before reaching the real content. Given the above experience and other advancements and features in Europe/Asia over EDGE technology, I was tempted to settle with Cingular.

Cingular has a two year contract while T-Mobile has one year, and Cingular also sometime gives troubles while unlocking a tri/quad band phone after few months. Plus, I had heard some bad CS experiences with Cingular also. T-Mobile on the other hand always unlocks the new phone after 3 months of usage, plus I've been a T-Mobile customer for last 3 years or so. So, I signed a T-Mobile unlimited data plan.

If you plan to browse, write applications, download stuff etc, make sure that you have unlimited data plan. And, if you choose Blackberry integration, it takes another $10 per month with the plan.

Selecting a Phone

Motorola Razor is a cool phone and I was quite tempted, but I wanted to get something which would let me download and keep data from the internet, as well have an HTML browser since not all sites are yet in WML. These requirements pretty much eliminate all the phone except for PDA phones and Blackberry phones.

I considered BlackBerry SureType keyboard with two characters on one key, BlackBerry fulll keyboard, HP iPAQ, PalmOne. Basically, PalmOS, WindowsMobile and Blackberry OS. iPAQ was too expensive although had camera/flash with it. Palm was ok and nothing outstanding. Blackberry was cheaper and only acceptable solution with corporate integration also.

So, I opted for that and also downloaded BB's development environment to write the applications.

2005-08-25T12:24:00.000-07:00

thinking of buying/selling a house

Choosing residential real state

Why do we rely so much on Real State agents (RSAs for now) for everything related to buying or selling a house? OK, some people are trying "For Sale by owner only", but how much does it help? You still need agents to complete the paperwork, cross your T's and dot your I's. Wouldn't it be nice if you knew exactly what your agents are doing and you pay accordingly, just like when you go to H&R Block to file your taxes and they show each and every line they bill you for. Maybe you wouldn't need them for most of the work and cut their share from traditional 3 percent of the sale to 2 percent or less.When I bought my condo for the first time, I did most of the research about the places, neighborhoods, and to find just the right house. Before selecting the house all I got from the RSA was automated search results from his company and his KEY to open the lock so I could see the place from inside. I agree that he did answer most of questions and did help in offer/counter offer process. But this is something which could be put out there on the internet so people can refer to it and build a knowledge base.

Another aspect of buying a house is price comparison for neighborhoods, previous sales, appreciation for areas etc. This is something which is available with the agent, but its only when you ask for it. If you don’t know what other property sales to compare your house to, you don't know what to ask. So, you don’t get the right answer. Most of this information is already available from the county's assessors department, but it's not their interest to make it known to everyone. What if someone worked on exposing this data from the county office to general public or make it a service which any other application developers can use. That would be interesting and I bet different statistics and usage of such data will come up, just like Google maps.

One such attempt is made by a Seattle company Redfin.Com. Although, they ultimately link you back to a broker and claim that it does save on RSA's commission.

Zillow.Com is another such company with good experienced management and a great team. They haven't yet exposed what they plan to do, but claiming something big. Bigger than NWMLS. Bigger than MLS. Making it a phenomenon to change they way real state transactions happen. Since it includes management of Expedia.Com, they plan to change the housing industry just like they changed the Airline Ticketing. But think about it, how many plane tickets you buy in your life time and how many houses do you buy?

This is just my observation in last few years and I think its going to be real big.

Contact me at hisacs@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.

2005-08-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

Some products which I own and recommend.