Republic of China Consulate Experience

My wife and I will be headed to Beijing and Shanghai in September this year as part of an international trip with the Wharton School of Business.

So we had to get visas. This was my first time getting a visa for China, and as any well travelled Indian knows, we have stood in many lines and filled in multiple forms in triplicate to get that elusive visa.

I arrived at the front door of the China consulate where I was asked to take a #. My # was A130. There were about 40 people in the room. So I thought, hmm might take a while. Within 30sec my # was called and I was asked to come to counter 9. There the lady took just 3 things, my application form, 1 photo and passport. Thats it. She then handed me a receipt and said "pick up on Monday, OK?".

I was out of there in under 5 mins.

I'm quite amazed at their efficiency... looking forward to the rest of China!

best,

Vinay

iPhone 4G antenna issue - analysis by AnandTech

Having been at the center of the Apple Adobe fight in the press and blogosphere, I've seen Adobe be the victim of undue and biased criticism - for example I believe it was Steve Jobs at Apple that suggested that Flash on a phone would reduce battery life to about 30mins. Well we proved that it wasn't the case and ensured that an external party like Frost & Sullivan would vouch for the same. Flash can run on the Nexus One, under normal conditions for about 3+ hours when watching good quality video.

Well what goes around, comes around, I guess. That said, without taking sides on the antenna issue, I do want to highlight this analysis by AnandTech, which does a great job of breaking down the issue.

A fresh start

I started this blog to offer my perspective on happenings on the mobile world. I have been fortunate to work in the mobile industry for the past 10+ years and in this while mobile phones and the software and applications they run have come a very long way. My first mobile related job was as a product manager for the mobile browser (WAP)... back in 2000, when phone.com was a .com darling of wall-street. No, I didn't make gobs of money :-).

For the past 4 years I've been a Group Product Manager at Adobe Systems, helping bring Flash Lite and Flash Player to mobile devices. We just launched Flash Player 10 on Android, and it is currently the among the top free apps on the Google Market. My experience at Adobe was terrific and I will miss the gang there, as I move on to my latest endeavor.

I will be joining Ecrio Inc. (their website isn't great - yet!) next Monday, August 2nd 2010, in the role of Sr. Director, Product Management, to lead their product efforts. I am very excited about the potential of rich communication services and the coming of 4G and LTE networks that will unleash this potential. I am very fortunate to be working on the bleeding edge of new technology and in my interactions with very smart people in the wireless world I grow and learn everyday. With this vantage point in the industry comes an ability (I hope) to offer perspective... this is what this blog is about.

Outside of work, I spend my time with my wife Ashwini, daughter Malaika and as much golf as I can manage.

thank you for reading and best of luck.

-Vinay