Eideard

Ravindra Misal

I came to Umred to write about a riot. A few months earlier, power blackouts that rural Indians always suffered silently triggered a violent reaction. Why? Umred was just another small town in the middle of nowhere, dusty and underwhelming. But Umred had begun to dream, townspeople told me, because of television, because of cousins with tales of call-center jobs and freedom in the city. Once Umred contracted ambition, blackouts became intolerable. A psychological revolution, a revolution in expectations, had taken place.

“Electricity is essential to ambition,” an energetic young man named Ravindra Misal explained to me, “because I need it to do my homework, I need it to listen to music if I am a dancer, I need it to listen to tapes of great speakers, I need it to surf the Internet. But I cannot, so people get angry.” Over plates of mutton and chicken, Misal and his friend Abhay offered examples of the little things that were changing in Umred: young men hunting online for wives, farmers’ sons deserting the farms to work at a bank in a nearby town, a deluge of students signing up for English classes. And beauty pageants. “I see Fashion TV on television, Miss India contests in the big cities,” Misal said. “So I thought, Why can’t we have that also?” And so he organized the first Mr. and Miss Umred Personality Contest, which seemed to be half about physical appearance and half about the communication skills that are all the rage in small-town India.

Misal embodies the type of person who will truly transform India: not an engineer or a financier, but an average person who refuses to be satisfied with the status he was born to. Umred rioted because its people had somehow acquired the courage of their own dissatisfaction. But what kind of India will they build?

And that’s what the several pages of this article examine.

An interesting read. Questions that had better be answered equitably and quickly if India is to realize the potential the moneyboys think is there.

Why is this man smiling?

Amazon.com on Saturday released its annual post-Christmas statement on holiday sales and made one thing clear: the Kindle was king…

“We are grateful to our customers for making Kindle the most gifted item ever in our history,” said Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

In another milestone for the e-reader, the company noted that on Christmas Day, for the first time ever, Amazon customers bought more Kindle books than physical books. The company didn’t offer specific numbers for either category.

The peak shopping day for the online retailer was December 14, when customers ordered more than 9.5 million items worldwide, “a record-breaking 110 items per second.”

Among those items bought between November 15 and December 19, the top electronics, following the Kindle, were Apple’s iPod Touch 8GB and the Garmin Nuvi 260W GPS.

In the video game category, top sellers were the Wii Fit Plus with Balance Board; New Super Mario Bros., and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

RTFA for lots of detail – including some too boring to ever need mention. My favorite?

The last Local Express Delivery order that was delivered in time for Christmas, was placed by a Prime member and went to Seattle. It was a Kindle that was ordered at 1:43 p.m. on Christmas Eve and delivered at 4:57 p.m. that evening.

Outstanding. Having spent a number of boring years in traffic management, I’m astounded at what contemporary commerce can offer.

Catch me if you can!

Authorities in California said they arrested a UPS employee accused of stealing $40,000 worth of packages from a distribution center.

Fairfield Police Department Major Crimes Unit detectives said Ronald Lozano, 38, who has worked for UPS for 16 years, had been taking packages including computers, cellphones, iPods and video game systems from the Fairfield distribution center where he was stationed since April, KVOR-TV, Sacramento, reported Friday.

Police said they found $8,000 worth of stolen items from the packages in the suspect’s home.

Lozano, who was placed on leave pending termination after his Wednesday arrest, was charged with embezzlement, possession of stolen property, and grand theft. He was released from the Solano County Jail on $10,000 bail.

People don’t often dramatically change their behavior – absent heavy duty forces. Has this guy been stealing for 16 years and was never caught because only now has he landed in a facility with better security? Or did he just decide to take up theft – after his transfer?

BTW – what’s missing from my neck of the prairie this holiday season is the usual shark or two who follows UPS trucks around while they deliver – stealing parcels left when no one was home to receive them.

Despite the stagnation of book, music and DVD sales, Amazon.com is gaining momentum as a retailer of almost every other kind of product.

Like many general retailers, Amazon seeks to forge direct ties with manufacturers wherever it can so that it can keep a larger percentage of the profits. Just as shoppers might find Safeway cereal, RadioShack batteries and Wal-Mart diapers, Amazon has sold such “private label” items since 2004, including Pinzon bath towels and sheets, Strathwood patio furniture, and Denali power tools.

Now, Amazon is expanding its private-label line with AmazonBasics, a new collection of consumer electronics items.

The items are not all that exciting, at least for now. They include HDMI cables, Ethernet cords, and blank CDs and DVDs.

All will be shipped in Amazon’s recycled cardboard frustration-free packaging, which gives people another opportunity to avoid those hermetically sealed plastic clamshell containers from other vendors.

Just being able to open the fracking package makes a difference for me. Hopefully, I will no longer need the old pair of kitchen shears I keep in the study.

Daylife/AP Photo by Jae C. Hong

Even amid the flash and sizzle of the world’s premier showcase for consumer electronics, the reality of the economic recession will be hard to ignore.

With shoppers in a funk and companies scaling back, the annual Consumer Electronics Show extravaganza in Las Vegas this week is likely to be subdued, with fewer manufacturers, retailers and people expected in attendance.

The focus is likely to be on smaller, more connected and greener devices that can help consumers save on bills. That is a change from years past, when companies trafficked in excess, offering items such as massive 150-inch TVs that were beyond the financial reach of most consumers.

“In tough times, the emphasis maybe shifts from cool and neat to how do you make things work better,” said NPD analyst Stephen Baker.

The Consumer Electronics Association, which hosts CES, estimates that 130,000 people will attend, down from 141,00 last year. Hotel rooms in Las Vegas, usually scarce at this time of the year, can still be found.

One of the Las Vegas Shows I’ve never attended. Probably never will.

The only tech I’m waiting for will be an all-HD line-up from DirecTV. That’s mostly a function of candyass broadcasters sitting on their wallets during the recession. And a wee bit more in price cuts for photo-voltaic panels. Then, I plan to move 1st to grid-tie and, then, off the grid entirely as battery efficiency/price gets sorted closer to an old geek’s budget.

Yes, there’s still a power cord somewhere

Sony, Samsung and other consumer-electronics heavyweights are uniting to support a technology that could send high-definition video signals wirelessly from a single set-top box to screens around the home.

What the consortium announced is an important development in the race to create a definitive way to replace tangles of video cables, but doesn’t end it — both Sony and Samsung also are supporting a competing technology.

Of course. The article gives you details on the competing technologies to reflect upon if you think this is something that floats your boat.

As a long-time home entertainment geek, I see nothing of value here except the possibility of replacing one cable. Whoop-de-doo!