Details to be updated
Viral Loop
Just finished the book viral loop by Adam Penenberg. It was a good read and gave a good insight into how most of the companies based on viral growth have succeeded along with details of companies that failed to grow virally. This concept of viral growth and viral factor in a business was something new to me. Though I knew about almost all of the companies (and ofcourse their core business) that the author mentions about, this book gives a new perspective of looking at them. Starting from the days of Tupperware to Facebook, each chapter discusses about the different viral growth companies that came up and how they succeeded or failed. Along with viral factor in a business, the author also talks about how scalability becomes an issue in such businesses and how few of the companies could not survive as they could not handle the scalability issues. Also in a chapter or two, he discusses about the trade-off between the high viral factor and scalable architecture of the business.
On the whole, this is a good read for anyone who would like to know about how all the online businesses and social networks we have now started and are surviving. As a person with keen interest in reading about companies, mergers & acquisitions, start-ups, etc., its a real good addition to my library.
Now slowly I am moving towards slightly different set of books and to begin with, just started reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Came across this book after reading a post by gibberer š and then also there was a mention about this book in viral loop. I now have a long list of books to read of which some are related to history as well.
Digressing from the topic, I had my first bad experience with macbook pro yesterday š . I had to do a hard shutdown after it stopped responding š . Never expected that I would get to see this on my mac so soon……was just watching a movie in vlc and nothing else was running but somehow it decided to freeze. Actually whenever IĀ run vlc, I see some issue with the video being not clear sometimes or getting stuck for few seconds. Will observe it for few more days and see what could be going wrong…could be an issue with the vlc player for mac as well and not an actual issue with mac itself š …..yes I do love apple products š .
Battery life of my macbook pro
Less than a week into getting my new mac, I am almost done now setting it up for my work. One thing I noticed is that I was getting just around 4-5 hrs of battery life whereas its supposed to be around 8-9 hours for the 15″ macbook pro. And this was without using any audio/video. This was kind of letting me down as one of the key points I was interested is the battery life.
When I checked my graphics card settings, it was set to automatic graphics switching. So, ideally it should be using the intel graphics processor and not the nvidia graphics card as I was not running any graphics intensive applications. Could not figure out the reason and sent a mail to our cisco mac users. Got a suggestion from one of them to use this gfxCardStatus app to check which graphics card is being used and to force it to use one of them. Was surprised to see that it was always using the nvidia one which explains the low battery life. Then checked the dependencies that this app lists showing which one is the culprit and it turns out to be google talk plugin šÆ . Never expected that to make use of the nvidia card. Anyways now I have forced it to use only Intel one and I am getting 6+ hours (almost 7) of battery life š . I am going to keep an eye on the battery life to see if its going to be consistent.
And all this is with wireless always on, bluetooth off and keyboard & screen luminosity set to around 50%.
Finally the macbook pro is here
At last, after a long wait, I got my new macbook pro delivered to me. I have only one word to say……awesome!!!!……from the packaging to the actual 
hardware, eveything is so perfect…..I think I won’t look back at any other laptops now after using macbook…..hats off to Steve Jobs. The moment I saw the mail to pick-up my mac, I was jumping with joy š . I took some pics starting from unpacking the box to powering it on for the first time….my friend even shot a video of it š . I was really mesmerized at how sleek the device was…..with the perfect all aluminium finish, it’s definitely the device to own. It isn’t that hard to move to a mac from pc…..though there are quite a few differences when coming to keyboard shortcuts, etc that we are used to on pc, I think its just matter of few days. On the whole, I am very happy with it and will keep posting updates about my mac here.
Initial few hiccups were related to page-up key, page-down key, home, end, forward delete, etc but google is always there to help š .
I now think, adding a time capsule to my existing set of gadgets would be really good but its not that cheap here in india š . Nevertheless, once I am done with exploring it completely, I will think of any new additions.
Only sad thing that flashes in my mind is the news about foxconn suicides…..how can people be treated so badly at a place where such amazing devices are manufactured.
Getting a MacBook Pro
At last I am getting it….I am getting a MacBook at work š … its going to be the newly released MacBook Pro….the 15″ one. But the only problem is the procurement is a long process and I will be able to play with it only after 2 months from now š ….but its definitely worth the wait šĀ and I am really excited to get my hands on the new macbook. Will update it here once I get it shipped.
Update May 20th 2010:
Fortunately/unfortunately apple released the new macbook pro hardware at the same time as I was raising a request for mac. So, after a long wait for a month, finally cisco has evaluated the new macbook pro hardware and gave a green signal to ship new macbooks. So, today finally the purchase order has been placed and my new mac book pro will soon be shipped from singapore. Can’t wait to lay my hands on it š .