August Rush

So far, the month of August by all means was the most volatile month of this year. In order to publish my yearly event log I am compiling the list of all the important events that took place in a month. I know we still have almost 4 months left in this year but here I am presenting you with the events that took place in the month of August. Thanks to globalization, I am sure we all get impacted by these events in some way or the other.

Here goes the list.

Aug 4th – Dow loses 512.76 point (4.31% down), NASDAQ loses 136.68 points (5.08% down), S&P500 loses 60.27 points (4.78% down) – Worst day for the market since Dec 2008

Aug 5th – S&P downgraded the US debt rating to AA+ from AAA

Aug 8th – S&P downgraded the debt rating for mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to AA+

Aug 8th - Dow loses 634.76 point (5.55% down), NASDAQ loses 174.72 points (6.09% down), S&P500 loses 79.92 points (6.66% down) – Another very bad day for the market since Dec 2008

Aug 9th – Apple overtakes Exxon Mobil for the first time to become the most valuable public company (in any field of business).

Aug 10th – And another bad day for the market. DOW sheds 519.83 point, NASDAQ loses 101.47 point and S&P loses 51.77 point.

Aug 10th – At the close of the market, Apple ahead of Exxon Mobil for the first time ever and became the most valuable company in the world.

Aug 15th - Google decided to acquire Motorola Mobility for $40.00 per share in cash, or a total of about $12.5 billion.

Aug 18th – HP decided to abandon Touchpad & WebOS, and confirm its plan to spin off PC business.

Aug 24th – Steve Jobs stepped down as Apple’s CEO. Tim Cook became new Apple CEO

Aug 25th – Linux OS turned 20

Though, I might have missed tons of other things that have happened during the month of August, but the events mentioned above were significant enough to get hold of my attention and hence they turned out to be the part of my yearly event log and on this blog.

Why you must watch "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"

I decided to watch “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” the moment I came to know that Weta Digital will be associated with this movie. My decision was not wrong and I am glad that I stick to it. We will come back to Weta in a moment but first let me tell you that “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is not the movie to be missed. It is an excellent film with an eye opening message. This movie is not about some crazy bunch of Apes trying to bring chaos and destruction to the city of San Francisco, but this movie is about crazy human beings who can go to any extent to prove what they are doing is correct and whatever harsh decisions they are taking will proliferate man kind and eradicate some of the most dangerous and incurable diseases from the face of our planet. Well this issue is debatable and I am sure there will be no end to it.

Watch “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” for its excellent direction, heart touching story and superb performaces by all the actors, specially Andy Serkis. Now if any of you don’t know who Andy Serkis is then it is completely fine. Andy Serkis is the man who hides his face behind the CGI and has played some of the very unforgettable characters. Andy was the one who played Gollum in “Lord of the Rings”, he also played the role of the mighty “King Kong” (Peter Jackson’s version) and in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” he played the role of Caesar. I guess both Weta Digital and Andy did an outstanding job by creating Caesar. You won’t be able to make out that Caesar is the creation of the magical motion captured CGI. The CGI effects are simply flawless and very neatly done. The expressions given by Andy Serkis were superb and heart touching. I am wondering if Academy will consider Andy’s role (as Caesar) and will nominate him in any of the best actors category. Hope after watching that you will feel the same.

Watch out this behind the scenes video to see how Weta and Andy created Caesar.



Now coming back to Weta Digital, it is one of the best CGI makers in the business of film making. Peter Jackson founded the company way back in 1999 and I recommed checking the wiki page to get more details on that. Based in Wellington (New Zealand), Weta brings in world renowned talent in the art of CGI and related effects under one roof. The team at Weta was responsible for creating some awe-inspiring CGI and bringing in some historical achievements in this elite field of film making. Lord of the Rings, Avatar, District 9 and King Kong were among the very best of Weta’s projects. For more movie projects of Weta, visit this link.

Go watch “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and I am pretty sure you’ll like it. The movie does question your inner conscious about animal cruelty by repeatedly asking you these questions – are we doing justice to these innocent creatures, for the sake of experimentation are we using them as petri dish, will there be any alternative solution to test new drugs? Well as I have mentioned all these questions are debatable.

To me “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” was the best summer film for this year. Though it got released 4 weeks back, it continued to be among the top 5 grossers in the US. Go watch this movie and see how "Evolution becomes Revolution" (which is also the tagline of this movie).

Steve Jobs's 313 patents

There is this excellent resource (courtesy NYT) that published the list of 313 patents where the name of Steve Jobs is mentioned along with the other inventors. Patents related to and ranging from computers to ipods to iOS devices to packaging to power adapters to designing the glass staircase (which we see in the Apple store) shows Steve’s impeccable record and demonstrates his genius. Go to this link and explore. Click on each and every picture in the link to get more details on the patent.

The information presented is unbelievable and truly amazing. Hope NYT keeps this page alive for ever. Good stuff, indeed.

Book review: The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr

Last night I finished reading “The Big Switch – Rewiring the World from Edison to Google” by Nicholas Carr. This book is a pretty good primer for anyone who would like to learn about the basics of cloud computing or SaaS or Software as a Service. In addition to the simple writing style Nic Carr also educates the reader on how the world and our society got changed with the invention of electricity and how the computers and the internet are once again revolutionizing the world. I feel somehow the author is smitten by the technological developments at Google and I have no complaints with that. Time and again he refers back to what Google is doing and why Google is a leader in the field of cloud computing. I guess apart from Google there are pretty good players out there which deserves their names to be mentioned when discussing about the cloud but again Nic did an excellent job and covers all the major points related to the cloud in this book so no complaints.

I am trying to get back on my reading habit and will try to reduce my reading backlog. Though I having a tight schedule, but the good news is that I have completed this book in a short time. Next on my table and on my reading list are 2 very interesting books – “Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin Mitnick” and “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis”. In the past in my blog “Hackerville” I have wrote about Kevin Mitnick and what he is capable of, go check it out. Michael Lewis is another amazing writer, and now I am confused which one to read.

I will probably go for the autobiography of Kevin Mitnick (Ghost in the Wires) first and after that will take on Michael Lewis. Reading is fun and I will make sure it will stay that way for me forever.

Steve Jobs steps down (resigns as CEO of Apple)

Tim Cook is the new Apple CEO, effective immediately. It is a sad news indeed. I have no words to describe what impact this will make on the loyal Apple community and its users, but one thing is for sure that this will not stop Apple's success as a company.

Here is what Steve Jobs said in his resignation letter:

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

Good Luck Steve. You are my Hero.

Must Watch - Portal: No Escape

I am a very big fan of the Portal game and I knew this would happen some day. Well friends there is this short film on youtube which is selling like hot cakes and it has around 500,000 views in just 2 days. The movie took 1.5 years in the making and it got created by Dan Trachtenberg. Even if you don't know about this game I am sure you will like this short film. I wish that someday this will be made into the full length movie. Enjoy the video below (in full screen and HD) and experience the crazy world of Portal.

Apple App store is down

[Update@12:25 pm CST] - The App store is up now. Not sure what was the reason for this outage.

This morning at around 9:00 am CST when I tried to access the online Apple store the page was not able to load. At first I thought it was just me but soon after that I came to know that the Apple store is down. Usually when this happens Apple will put some kind of notification about the maintenance they are performing. Somehow I am not having a good feeling about it and I might be wrong. Currently it is around 12:00 pm CST and the site seems to be down, still. It seems to be a pretty big down time for the Apple store and I guess nobody has anticipated that.

Are they launching any new product or are they being hacked or is it some unusual unsuspected server crash? Well we need to wait and check out what exactly happened. Hope Apple will release the reasons for this downtime. Will keep you updated as soon as I am able to access the Apple store.

Google strikes back: Plan to acquire Motorola Mobility

Google decided to acquire Motorola Mobility for $40.00 per share in cash, or a total of about $12.5 billion. Now as we all know by now that this is a huge news. This will make the smart phone competition more interesting and challenging. This is the clear indication that now Google is making itself more stronger and this deal will bring Google in direct competition with Apple. So far Apple is the only company that makes both the mobile software and the hardware, and now Google will do the same once this deal will be done sometime by the end of this year or the beginning of next year.

In the war of the patents Google has been a loser and this seems to be the revenge of Larry Page. Google did not did well and was not able to capture what it was looking for during the Nortel patent saga. With this deal Google got 17,000 Motorola patents plus 7000 Motorola patents which are in the pipeline, making it a total of around 24,000 patents. I believe Google is smart enough to spend it cash wisely and to me they are not after the patents, may be they are, but to me it is more of a strategic deal. I am not an expert here but to me 24,000 patents for $12.5 billion is a not such a good deal. What worries me as of now is that with this deal Google got an additional of 19,000 Motorola employees and their current strenght is 29,000 which is like 60% increase in the workforce of Google. I am sure Larry have had that in mind before he proceed to make this deal. There are some serious questions for the leadership and mangement teams at Google on how they plan to manage such a massive work force? Google has been a software company for all these years and now with this deal it is entering the hardware market which could become another challenging job for the search giant. Out an out this has been an intresting move by Google and will surely proliferate the unstoppable Android and its followers and we see get a huge spike in the mobile operating system. To get more details on this deal read Larry’s blog here.

Not sure what will be Apple’s reaction on this one, but I guess it will not do much about it. Time for Microsoft to make a move and buy Nokia. I was pretty sure that Microsoft will buy Nokia sometime this year but I have never imagined that Google will make a first move. Anyway I guess it is never too late for Microsoft to add the dying Nokia into its family.

With this deal the smart phone war has become pretty sweet and of course fun to watch. I know I said that before and I guess I will keep saying that as there is still lot more to come.

Apple beats Exxon Mobil and becomes most valuable company

Market lose is Apple’s gain and today for the first time ever Apple is ahead of Exxon Mobil in the total market valuation and thus now Apple becomes the most valuable company in the World. Yesteday for the first time Apple took the lead and was ahead of Exxon Mobil, but Exxon recovered at the close of the market and got ahead of Apple. Today there was no stopping for the tech giant (thanks to the massive market crash) and now Apple is ahead of Exxon Mobil in market capitalization by a total of $6.4 billion.


It is extremely remarkable for Apple because last year it overtook Microsoft to become the most valued tech company and today it overtook Exxon to become the most valued company in any field of business. At the start of this year Apple was $75 billion behind Exxon and as of today Apple is ahead of Exxon by $6.4 billion.

Great Job Steve or Steve Job(s) great.