Unrelenting tyranny of reality TV

I can still remember it clear as day. It was almost eight years ago, over coffee with photographer Trey Ratcliff (a pioneer of HDR photography) where I theorized about hyper-personalization and how… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

The bigger story behind big valuations

The New York Times notes that big-money rounds are becoming all too routine in Techlandia, which has led some to wonder: what is the cause of this seemingly irrational exuberance? Valuation, in the… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Serendipity & Summer Doldrums

Did you notice that I had gone missing for a few days? Exactly 10 days to be specific! In case you were wondering, I decided to take some downtime to work on a specific problem — a continuous… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Elad Gil on startup advice & his book, High Growth Handbook

About ten days ago I caught up with Elad Gil, a Silicon Valley veteran who has written a new book, High Growth Handbook. Even halfway through the book, and I can already tell this is a book that is… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Time is on Apple’s side

Since the ancient Egyptians and their sundials, we humans have been fascinated with the idea of measuring “time”. And our reasons for measuring time often inform the design of tools we use to track… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Why we need sleep + 4 good reads

Do you remember what happened at the start of this week? Me neither! The news is flowing so fast these days, that you can’t really figure out what’s really happening. And that is why misinformation… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Juul & its House of Smoke & Horrors

Back in the day, when Silicon Valley was about silicon and technology, our industry elders used to wisely caution that Silicon Valley doesn’t invest in tobacco, alcohol, porn, and guns. Not anymore… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Companies, like people, don’t change

Not a month goes by when we hear about another snafu or scandal about Facebook and Uber. And each time I wonder if they will change. It seems both these companies are genetically pre-programmed to … | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

“Fake Followers” are “Social Spam”

Just about 12 years ago, at a costume party hosted by Ruby Red Labs in the SOMA district of San Francisco, I got a chance to talk to one of the now-forgotten founders of Twitter, Noah Glass. He sho… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Facebook & Its Lies: Facial Recognition Edition

As you know, there is no love lost between Facebook and me over its constant abuse of our privacy. You also know, how I feel about the disingenuous nature of its comments and policies. So perhaps i… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

BitCoin & Energy Usage

…the current global power consumption for the servers that run bitcoin’s software is a minimum of 2.55 gigawatts (GW), which amounts to energy consumption of 22 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year—… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Federer goes to Uniqlo

When it comes to men’s tennis, there is no one better, cooler and nicer than Roger Federer. A man of an insatiable appetite for winning (with a smile) and lover of beautiful watches, hit a fierce b… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

App Store At 10

Apple’s App Store turned 10. If you remember Walter Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs, then you would remember Steve wasn’t a fan of the idea of an app store. An enthusiast community … | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Guest Posts Gone Wild

Buzzfeed is reporting that one single contributor who wrote 700 articles for Forbes and 300 for Entrepreneur magazine, has been charging brands to mention their names in his articles. It is yet ano… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

I don’t want my Financial TV

Fox Business News is beating the crap out of CNBC. In 2Q 2018, Bartiromo’s Mornings led Squawk Box among total viewers, 109,000 to 104,000 FBN grew … beating CNBC by 23% (203,000 total … | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Guest Posts Gone Wild

Buzzfeed is reporting that one single contributor who wrote 700 articles for Forbes and 300 for Entrepreneur magazine, has been charging brands to mention their names in his articles. It is yet ano… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Does Silicon Valley have a conscience?

Silicon Valley’s recruiting pitch has long been: Work with us to change the world. Employees are encouraged to make their work life synonymous with their social identity, and many internalize those… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Journalism Problem #1

Jill Abramson, former editor of The New York Times: “From four years of teaching at Harvard, so many of my students are interested in journalism, but they mostly want to write first-person, highly … | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Past & Future

Politics, business, technology, innovation… past always tries to hold down the future. Every time I read an article about Brexit, dismissal of Tesla, or new ideas, it all boils down to our do… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

IGTV or QVC 2.0: Either way keep an eye on it!

I have always been fascinated by QVC and Home Shopping Network (HSN), and how effective they are in moving product and reshaping inventory. It is no surprise that those two are central to one of my… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

What do YouTube, Instagram & GitHub have in common?

I have had a few days to think about Microsoft’s decision to buy GitHub for $7.5 billion and I am increasingly convinced that this is a good deal for Microsoft, as long as they don’t pull the same … | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

You know that thing called blogging

It has been almost ten days since I have been able to read properly. The bug I picked on my recent travels along with severe conjunctivitis turned out to be a forced vacation from screens. I am woe… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Coming Home

“I usually don’t plan ahead for my work, what interests me most about taking pictures is responding to the world around me.” Johnny Patience, friend, and a fellow photographer, writes a… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Junk

Our homes are filled with essentials (aka things we can’t live without), non-essentials (aka things that add comfort and enhance our daily life) and junk. In fact, most of our life is full of junk.… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Goodbye Anthony Bourdain

It has been six days since I got back from Iceland. And every single day has been spent in bed – dealing with conjunctivitis, cold, cough and fever. Despite all precautions, all sort of vitam… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

What is Age really?

It is very early on Saturday morning, and basically, I couldn’t sleep last night. I am excited to leave town for a few days to get away from it all. To be honest, this is not about technology… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

We are all trapped in the “Feed”

Every afternoon, during lunch, I open up YouTube, and I find myself marveling at the sheer dumbness of its recommendations. Despite having all this viewing data of mine, world’s second most popular… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

May 25: Worth Reading

Remember GoTV? Or the Verizon’s much talked about the acquisition of once-very-hot Vessel? And all those press releases from Verizon where it talked up its dreams of being an OTT video giant. All t… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

What really is longevity?

For some odd reason, I have been thinking about, mortality and frailty of life. Some of it is with the passing of icons of my youth — Prince and Tom Wolfe, for example. The other is just because I … | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Blockchain Phones? Really!

It seems a whole new slew of phones that are optimized for blockchain applications are currently under development.   Sirin Labs is going to debut its Finney phone in October 2018 which runs a cust… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

5 stories worth reading

Facebook’s full of fake accounts. And despite it saying it stopped nearly 538 million so far this year, there are almost 80 million fake accounts on the service. And they are for sale, Charlie Warz… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

My only camera rig

I love between analog and digital worlds. My 12.9 inch iPad Pro and Logitech K811 keyboard are my preferred computer combination. For a timepiece, nothing like the artful work from masters at Grand… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

538 Million: Why did Facebook’s Fake Account Problem Got So Big?

Something about Facebook’s transparency report doesn’t add up to the numbers it has previously filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As part of its new transparency report, Facebook to… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Passion, Optimism and Techno-Utopianism

MIT Media Lab chief Joi Ito has been receiving criticism for promoting techno-utopianism in a 60 Minutes segment about technology and the impact of technologies developed in the media lab on modern… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

AI Needs Power: lots of it

I was reading a blog post, and this tiny bit stood out: Kaushik Roy of Purdue University compared the power consumption of Deep Blue for chess (15kW), Watson for Jeopardy (200kW), and AlphaGo for G… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Skype, Interrupted

Skype, was once a beloved product, one that I loved using every day. It was a product I wrote about long before it was trendy. I sent the team feedback. Like all tiny apps that are good at what the… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Some Thoughts on Google Photos vs Apple Photos

Google I/O is as good as any time to take stock of the disparate and polar opposite ideologies of Google and Apple when it comes to machine learning and privacy. And nowhere it is more evident than… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Jony Ive talks about the Apple Watch, finally

Ben Clymer is Anna Wintour of the Watch World, an editor of immaculate taste and deep understanding of the watches and their relationship with culture. He is also the founder of Hodinkee (a True Ve… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Facebook, Social Media & the Social Contract

Last Monday, I attended the Milken Global Conference and participated in a panel on “Social Media and the Social Contract.” The panel was moderated by Willow Bay, dean of the University of So… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Startups, Ideas and Timing

“The two worst things to be as a startup is too early or too late. Too late you can’t recover from, but you can survive too early if you have a great CEO and loyal investors.” Thi… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Yesterday’s Terabyte + What to Read This Weekend

Less than a fortnight ago, the proverbial airwaves and media web were falling all over themselves, chastising Facebook and its data addiction, which allowed the company to amass data on over two bi… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

The Paywall Quandary: How many subscriptions does one really need?

Bloomberg is the latest to go behind the paywall. And it is going to annually cost about $420. Felix Salmon (over on Slate) argues that Bloomberg is going behind a paywall because it can as this is… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

The Paywall Quandary: How many subscriptions does one really need?

Bloomberg is the latest to go behind the paywall. And it is going to annually cost about $420. Felix Salmon (over on Slate) argues that Bloomberg is going behind a paywall because it can as this is… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Dating with Facebook: What’s love got to do with it?

In Hindi, there is a saying that no matter what you do, you can’t unbend a dog’s tail. I was reminded of that saying when I read the news that Facebook was launching a dating app, to make a love co… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

The Past vs. The Future

Holding on the past is a convenient way to avoid science, technology, and the reality of the world. Future needs reinvention and rethinking. Industrial era dogmas are now in direct conflict with th… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

[Review] Shinola Canfield Headphones

If you are looking for a pair of headphones, I have a surprising recommendation that manages to marry form, function, and fashion in a package that is appealing to both genders! | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

It is time to ask Twitter the same privacy questions

Media rightfully has been focused on Facebook and its outsized role in what are calling the surveillance economy. But focusing just on Facebook is a mistake, for data accumulation and its subsequen… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago

Why we need for technically literate legislators

The Spectator: It’s no longer good enough for our elected representatives to feign technical illiteracy, throw up their arms in defeat, and ask the office twenty-something to fix it….a special case… | Continue reading


@om.co | 6 years ago