The curse of the trophy startup

no man’s land

noun

The general version

an indeterminate or undefined place or state.

The military version

disputed ground between the front lines or trenches of two opposing armies.

The ENTREPRENEUR version

the place in space/time where an entrepreneur is stuck (quite unproductively) in search for the elusive trophy startup to found.

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What I learned when I lived without mobile data for 2 months

I was living without mobile internet for the past 2 months. Somehow Airtel had bonked my data plan, and they couldn’t set it right the first time I got on support. I figured something must be wrong with my hardware and was too lazy to follow up again. The only internet I had was wifi, when I was indoors.

And hey! I know what you just did. Don’t make that face and shrug away my first world problems. I think I deserve some credit for getting by. Do you think there’s wifi everywhere? In trains, on streets, in restaurants? Do you? Let me show you some proof of how hard life is for those who are unfortunate Continue reading What I learned when I lived without mobile data for 2 months

Request for app: Arnab Goswami debate talk time distribution tracker

I bumped across The Newshour on Times Now today after a really long time. It is still _really_ hard to watch. Amazed at the longevity of this format (I presume it is doing very well)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you have probably heard of Arnab Goswami and his antics. Basically if you like to watch people shouting at each other, and see one self-aggrandising man trying to pass himself off as a force for righteousness, then this is the show you need to watch. Arnab Goswami has spawned many memes, and he is famously known as the man who knows what India wants to know.

Anyway, a brilliant app idea struck me while watching. Would be really glad if someone builds it. I think it might be pretty useful <I’m being serious>. So here goes..

What if you could get real time metrics on a debate. Suppose you are watching the newshour, and you could pull out your phone, launch the app and see something like this –

debate time tracker v1

Or maybe even this –

debate time tracker v2

The red indicates time spent shouting or multiple people talking in illegible debate etc. We could also measure decibel levels. I’ve noticed how they keep controlling the volume on the newshour depending on whose voice they want the loudest.

Of course this could be done for other news programs as well. But since the idea came from watching newshour, I want to call it the Arnab Goswami debate talk time distribution tracker. If Arnab funds it, hell I’ll build it myself.

What do you think? Does India want to know debate metrics? What are the other metrics we could track, apart from talk time?