Tracking Flu Online

A fascinating look at how scientists are currently using social media and online data to track the flu trends. And it all goes back to 2008, when Google launched, well Flu Trends. Read on Nature.  | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Files, R.I.P.

Computer files are going extinct. It is about time. And here is why. | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Global Map of the Internet

Global Map of the Internet — no, literally. I used to feature this on my old blog all the time. It is good to see friends at Telegeography still continuing the tradition. Check it out. | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Oh Annie

Google held its fall product launch event in New York. There were some good bits, some great bits, and there was a bit that was a head-scratcher. It involved famous photographer Annie Leibovitz, wh… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Google’s new smart home strategy, explained

“It’s also locking down a new model for the smart home that will rely on Google as an essential gatekeeper for Nest devices. This will keep Google in the game as it negotiates with other devi… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

(MacOS) Catalina Crisis

Michael Tsai has collected reactions of various Mac people (for lack of a better word), and pretty much everyone he has listed is urging caution when it comes to upgrading to the newest m… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Marc Benioff on Why We Need New Capitalism

In an opinion piece for The New York Times, Salesforce co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff argues: It’s time for a new capitalism — a more fair, equal and sustainable capitalism that actually works for… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Big Tech & people: a complicated relationship of convenience

After some quick and intense travels, it is nice to be back in my apartment, where the noise levels are minimal, the bandwidth is blazing fast, and I have time and space to organize my thoughts. Fo… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

What to read this weekend

“Five Dimes.” A great whodunit. Just go read this right now. “As Sea Levels Rise, So Do Ghost Forests.” A sobering investigation into how seawater is killing trees and forests on America’s eastern … | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Lighthouses

Made with Leica SL and Leica SL Vario 24-90 lens. When I think about what is that one project I could dedicate myself to, that will combine my passion for seascapes, emptiness, and; it probably wou… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

20 years of SAJA

Today is the 20th anniversary of South Asian Journalist Association — a group that was co-founded by Dilip Massand, MK Srinivasan, Sree Sreenivasan and me in New York. When we started the gro… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Bags on the Internet

I have learnt the hard way that bags look much better on the Internet, and most people who write about bags are just trying to score a free one. In short, always buy a bag after seeing it in real l… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Our Collective Chinese Conundrum​

Photo by Joseph Chan on Unsplash A single tweet from a Houston Rockets official has set off a firestorm and a wide-ranging debate about how China is trying to impose its policies on the rest of the… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Scientists behind Lithium-ion​ battery tech get a Nobel price​

As a Chemistry major, I tend to keep half an eye on what’s happening in that world and why I am pretty keen on material science and battery technologies. I was very pleasantly surprised to re… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

California’s Power Outages Explained

It is darkly comical that only the other day I was talking about the power outages of my childhood being a thing of the past in Delhi and here I am reading about a planned outage in my home state o… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Social Media, Propaganda and War

“What Libyan propagandists and their backers have shown is the speed through which new narratives and disinformation can be spread, how social media can be used for this, and how easily foreign act… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Pedaling back

It is a timeless trend — new opportunity is met with excessive investment, which leads to an eventual bubble and then a collapse. And then an opportunity for a deep pocketed bargain hunters to prof… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

In India, no Onion left behind

In order to avoid political drama, India has banned all onion exports. No, this is not an Onion headline. Take a look. | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Delhipolis

Ice carving in 90F heat, that’s Delhi. I visit my parents every year, and every year Delhi seems a bit bigger, a bit more chaotic, a bit more crowded. There is hardly any room to walk. The ur… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

The Why of (my) Photography

Every so often, someone asks me why I go to such lengths to make photographs. Why disrupt my routine and fly thousands of miles away to remote, and sometimes harsh and uninviting, places just to sp… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

The Why of (my) Photography

Every so often, someone asks me why I go to such lengths to make photographs. Why disrupt my routine and fly thousands of miles away to remote, and sometimes harsh and uninviting, places just to sp… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

How to lengthen your phone’s battery life

Best way to charge and ensure your battery life is not compromised is to simply charge using the cable, not matter how nice and convenient it is to charge wirelessly. University of Warwick, UK | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

When Doves Smile

Rebecca Lily, who has helped me with my photo coloring grading in the past with custom presets, has now released a new set of presets (Pro Set VI) for Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw. These are a fa… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

When Doves Smile

Rebecca Lily, who has helped me with my photo coloring grading in the past with custom presets, has now released a new set of presets (Pro Set VI) for Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw. These are a fa… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Letting Go of Expectations

Expecting something from other people often leads to a sense of disappointment and disillusionment, which ultimately eats into one’s sense of happiness and joy. You give others power over your emot… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Patience & photography

Northern California. Made with Leica SL and Leica SL Summicron f2/50mm Photography is an act of supreme patience — a great landscape image is nothing more than mother nature’s desire to oblig… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Hipstamatic Returns. Why you should try it?

Hipstamatic is back. Hipstamatic X is a new and improved version of the old classic. Think of the same old Bill Murray but this time in a Comme de Garcons outfit. (By the way we were talking about … | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

53

Sometimes, you need to spend a day being reminded you of what you have, instead of focusing on what you don’t. Every year, on my birthday (which happens to be today), I am reminded that I have the … | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Gladwell’s catchphrase factory has shut down

In his new book, “Talking to Strangers,” Malcolm Gladwell writes that poets have “far and away the highest suicide rates,” as much as five times the rate for the general population. The statistic s… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Planet vs Nations

“Watching this roll across the timezones like a wave of defiance is making me feel like I live on a planet, rather than a fragmented jigsaw of angry nationalisms,” tweets Scott Ludlam, … | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Words without impact are just noise

Countless books, think pieces, Twitter threads, comedy shows, and podcasts have scrutinized the diseased body politic down to its smallest, rottenest internal part. The insight industry is booming.… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Headline hyperbole & article without info

It has become pretty obvious that many in technology media are practicing outrage journalism and are doing so without really making smart, data-backed arguments. I came across two such examples in … | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Talking to my iPhone 11 Pro

When I spoke to Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President, earlier this month about the new A13 Bionic chip, we focused on how the A13 will help enhance the performance of the phone and ma… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

WeWork drama, Streaming wars, & What (else) to read

Photo by Eloise Ambursley on Unsplash It has been so long since I wrote a formal piece for a magazine, that I forgot how much energy it takes to bounce back from such an effort. I am usually good f… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Really long running TV series are a dying breed

”Now that syndication is no longer the cash cow it used to be, that goal is no longer as important — and the value of shows going on for years and years has thus plummeted in the eyes of the networ… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

No not Santa Monica

For someone who prefers the focal length of around 50mm, the new iPhone 11 Pro’s ultra wide lens is a bit unsettling. And yet it is something special, as you can see in these two photos. Edited wit… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Psst… wanna buy an igloo hotel?

For about $300,000 you can buy an abandoned Igloo Hotel in Alaska. Add another couple of million and you can have electricity. And then let the influencers roll into this curiosity which was made i… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

My piece in Wired about A13 Bionic

I wrote an in-depth piece on Apple’s A13 Bionic chip, and how it stacks up against the silicon from its rivals, Samsung, Huawei, and Qualcomm. I have always loved writing about pure technolog… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Salesforce invests in Automattic

Salesforce Ventures has invested $300 million in Automattic, a company that was started by Matt Mullenweg, a close friend. Our firm, True Ventures, is the earliest backer of Automattic. I am deligh… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Moats & Competiton

“One of the strategic tasks of an innovator is to deter imitation for as long as possible. This applies not just to companies in established markets, but to startups that are creating new mar… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Hodinkee on Apple Watch 5

Watch-focused publication Hodinkee has a lot to say about the new Apple Watch Series 5. “One side effect of the always-on display is that I’m using simpler watch faces,” they writ… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

The Consumerism Curse

Among the hardest things I have done in my life is to quit smoking. It has been over a decade since I last touched a cigarette, but I live with the effects of a 25-year habit, dealing with illnesse… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Can we please stop the unicornonsense?

Twelve startups have either IPO’d or been acquired after being valued at $10 billion or more by venture capitalists. Eight of them are valued higher than their last known private market valua… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Charlie Warzel of NY Times vs John Gruber

A few days back, The New York Times writer Charlie Warzel wrote a piece criticizing the whole notion of the Apple Event(s) as something whose time has come and gone. He wants Apple to shut it down.… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Why do we photograph?

“Cameras are mere tools. Film is a mere medium. Digital data is a mere medium…they do not define why we do it! I recommend you ask yourself the same: ‘why do I photograph?’ The physical… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

Taxing Personal Data

What about a tax on the sale of personal information, including the use of personal information for ad placement? To be clear, I’m not talking about a tax on collecting information or on&… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

The Consumerism Curse

Among the hardest things I have done in my life is to quit smoking. It has been over a decade since I last touched a cigarette, but I live with the effects of a 25-year habit, dealing with illnesse… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago

This is why we love sports

Sports media is often about big stars, big tournaments, and big moments. And the big media often ignores those who toil in anonymity. And perhaps that is why I get great joy in seeing someone who p… | Continue reading


@om.co | 5 years ago