The beginning

It all started with the Xperia X1, released in Feb 2008 that caught the attention of everyone. With a functional touchscreen+QWERTY keypad, a different approach to the UI(panels), an unmatched display, a reasonably fast processor+RAM running WinMo 6.1 to boot, it seemed that SE had managed to pack everything sweet into a comfortable form factor. With expectations running sky high, SE did finally manage to deliver something that no one had done then, albeit at a high price.

Meanwhile, 2008 turned out to a year SE would love to forget, keeping in trend with the economic slowdown.

Sony Ericsson are reporting that for Q4 of 2008 sales were down a mighty 23% on last year, that  margins are down 15% on last year and they have stated that they had a net loss for the period of €187 million.(Detailed report here )

Yet, the Xperia X1 managed to do better than most of its siblings. Expectations were running high on the successor to X1, with news that SE had joined the Open Handset Alliance adding fuel to the speculations that they were going the Andriod way. With a regular product lineup that only offered incremental features, SE had to take a significant hit on its sales numbers and profit margins for 2008 .

2008-2009

From Q2 2008 to Q3 2009, SE managed to release updated phones in the walkman, cybershot lineup. Phones such as the G900, W705, C902 kept the competition alive in the mid-end segment. Although their numbers aren't known, one can take a wild guess that they would've done pretty well considering SE manages to sell mid range products in good numbers.

With no other high end phone released (other than the X1), the W995 managed to have its fair share of glory. With a 8.1 MP camera and the walkman tag, it managed to combine the best of the 'C' and 'W' series. The phone did reasonably well from June 2009 till the next wave of SE products were released in October. Incidentally, this also marked the end of the 'C' and 'W' lineups as SE switched to a different branding strategy.

New Wave

After Xperia X1 sold in decent numbers, and the smartphone market growing strongly with the availability of newer platforms and devices,  it was inevitable for SE to adopted a new strategy. Not only did it need a new flagship product, but also a diverse enough product range that would do good in all segments.

Around May 2009, rumors began to spread that they were working on something big - a successor to the X1 running Andriod. What was called as Rachael, and then X3, was finally christened "Xperia X10" when it was officially announced in November 2009. It would not be appropriate to call it X1's successor in the strict sense because it isn't a QWERTY phone (that title will probably goto the Xperia X2). The X10 has a list of firsts for SE - the first with a Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon 1 GHz processor, and the first phone on Andriod. It was directly pitted against the likes of iPhone 3GS, the Palm Pre, and the N97. While the ommission of Andriod 2.0(donut) will definitely be a big let down, the probable reason for it would be that they are having trouble porting their custom UI for donut and would rather focus on shipping the X10 on time.

Meanwhile, the 'C' and 'W' series made way for a new strategy where SE tried putting the best of both worlds into a single product. The clear distinction beween the two series is now gone as both the Satio and Aino have high end cameras, and media capabilities (in addition to the smartphone capabilities of the Satio). Also, the true successor to the X1 came in form of the Xperia X2, which offered incremental upgrades and WinMo 6.5 to keep the fanboys happy.

Of particular interest is the Satio. It is the second 12mp mobile on the market, losing out only to the Samsung Pixon. Leaving that aside, it has almost the same hardware specs as the iPhone 3GS and runs the tried and tested Symbian S60 5th edition. Although S60.5 isn't the best in terms of touch optimization and response, the fact that Symbian is the most popular smartphone OS with thousands of applications readily available will play to its advantage. Putting a high end camera and media capabilities into a smartphone is a gamble - it may be a smart move if they manage to do both well. Unfortunately the homebrew UI isn't tried and tested, and the fact that it runs on S60.5 which isn't particularly smooth itself, might just put off prospective buyers. With that said, its about time SE had a bit of luck, and the Satio seems like it deserves every bit of it.

Final Words

The announcement of 4 top end products targeted equally at the trigger happy, music junkies, enthusiasts and business executives, SE has tried to get its wheels moving. With varied platforms like WinMo, Andriod and Symbian, and high end hardware specs, it has forced mobile buyers to take a good hard look. No more losing out on prospective customers because they don't like the mobile platform - there is now something for everyone. With the Satio and Aino already out on the market, the X10 and X2 are expected to be released in early Jan 2010. This does mean than they will lose out on the high spending Christmas and New Year weeks, but its always better to release a polished product than repent later.

SE does have something to worry about. All these products are top of the line and there is nothing new for the lower and mid segments. Was this a conscious decision or were they too busy focusing only on their high end lineup is a question that will have to be answered. If they can put out patches and bug fixes for the next 6 months and keep customers happy, 2010 may just turn out to be a good year for the failing giant. Will it take them back to the glory years of the K750i? Only time will tell.

It all started when Simon King, an English graduate working at an American University was fed up with not knowing how his team was doing. What began as a network of fans over Chat instantaneously grew about to become the world’s largest cricket website.

Founded in 1993, the technology then was quite basic. It had one person recording the score and the other generating a flat file. With more demand from the ardent, 21st Century fans regarding the statistical analysis and more new rules introduced from the International Cricket Council, the then Cricinfo went topsy-turvy and didn’t have any other choice rather than scaling itself up. Although it doesn't seem like it, scoring cricket is fantastically sophisticated since there are an extraordinary number of things which can happen, such as a super sub or ball hitting the helmet kept behind the keeper and so on.

Zach Hitchcock, ex-employer New Zealand cricket team developed a Video Analysis software and started out his own venture with the help of Chris Cairns, New Zealand all-rounder, which latter became ‘Feedback Sports Ltd’. Based on his experience in the cricketing analysis, he was referred to Cricinfo. With Zach and Lupo Data Concepts, a BESPOKE application was developed that feeds real-time scoring information into the website.

Here is how it works. An operator sets up a match in the software by accessing the relevant match information in the database. The scorer sits in front of a television and uses a ‘point and click’ interface to describe the action as it happens. The software has an interface to score each ball of the cricket match live, in real-time. The scorer has the option to automatically generate real language descriptions of the game, which can be over-written should anything unexpected happen like super sub, etc. Once the information for a ball has been entered, the scorer sends the same and the software packages it up and in turn sends it to their Linux-based server which displays the data on the website.

Matt Pickering, Business Development Manager for Lupo Data Concepts, says

The technology choice for the project was crucial. Before we even began we could see a number of challenges we would need to address. Cricinfo has scorers in India, South Africa and England which meant we needed to deploy the software to all of those locations

Deploying real-time software simultaneously in multiple locations is not as easy as what you think. The whole application was developed in .NET Framework 2.0. The team chose to introduce Microsoft technology into a Linux environment. Cricinfo now has a Windows Server 2003 running in its data centre. This, combined with SQL Server 2000, provides the communications centre for the system. The scoring software itself employs Smart Client technology, built with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

Tom Gleeson, one of the owners of Cricinfo, says

We now have an option that allows users to query particular wickets or what type of balls Shane Warne bowled when Flintoff hit a four. You can really drill down and analyse the data. It’s relatively simple in terms of what the site is capable of but from a user point of view it adds a great deal of value to the site

Cricinfo now has a database that stores information about each and every match that is being played, such as who, where they’re playing, as well as historical data on every international game that has been played since 1970. Gone are days when web used to be mere pages. It’s all about streams, syndication, real-time entities, and some finest RSS technologies now.

Also, PHP's lack of support for threaded programming is another major let down. While this is a genuine issue, rewriting the entire PHP core and the parser to support threads is not worth the effort. But I genuinely haven't felt the need for multi-threading in PHP till date. While threading is a must for system programming, the need for it in a web environment is not entirely clear. Also, the major strength of PHP - its simplicity will be compromised if threading is to be introduced.

Another genuine concern is the confusion caused by settings such as "register_globals" , "magic_quotes", "safe_mode" . These three variables have had a major impact on the deployment of PHP scripts. Web hosts allow ways to tweak these settings, but for the layman who just wants to get a blog up and running, its a bit of a hassle. Also its an issue that needs to be addressed by web developers who want maximum compatibility for their applications. The next major release PHP 6.0 aims to completely do away with this settings for good, and that will indeed clear up a lot of mess.

Most of these issues boil down to one thing - the lack of a an official formal specification. Although the PHP Group oversees the continued development, it is still a community effort, and as such requires stringent software engineering and management. Since the original PHP parser was completely rewritten for version 3 and above, there have only been attempts to patch up vulnerabilities, and add new features like Object Oriented Programming, namespace support among others. PHP 6 is touted to be THE release, which will address most of the major concerns.

For all its shortcomings, its still THE easiest server side scripting language to work with. The C/C++ syntax, seamless integration with MYSQL, support by almost all web hosting providers still make it THE web language IMHO. The LAMP stack is undoubtedly the king of the web, and will continue to be so, owing to the simplicity and widespread community support offered by all its components. And not to forget, its completely free.

Yahoo bought the company near the peak of the dotcom bubble for more than $3 billion, which, along with the rise of alternative services, quickly spelled the end of GeoCities’ prominence. Today, it appears that the end of GeoCities is being made official, as Yahoo has closed the service to new accounts and posted an FAQ with some details as to how the shutdown will go.

Wikipedia page here

Adios.

The question is - how true is the cost projection? I'm a big fan of such initiatives, but common sense prevails and its pretty damn clear that this is unrealistic. MIT's OLPC was projected at about $100, but finally ended up being priced upto $190. In short, I believe the Indian government is trying to pull off another cheap publicity stunt. Unless the exchange rate of the US Dollar goes upto Rs.1ooo, I don't see this happening.

But then again, the initiative will be heavily subsidised by the government to make it as cheap as possible. But will they take upto 90% of the price remains to be seen. I'm sure in the current financial position, they simply cannot and will not do so.

Until further details - this simply isn't going to happen.

UPDATE: Yea, its a total flop show. The device is actually some sort of external storage, not a laptop. More here