From Istanbul To Sand Hill Road

The Wii Fit...end of Yoga, Pilates

At the Game Developer's Conference 2008, by far the most inspiring product I saw was the Wii Fit; both the software and the fantastic sensory hardware that comes with it.

It's a pad with a bunch of weight and possibly motion sensors that can pinpoint where and how you stand.  It is accompanied by 40 games that are aimed to make you exercise your core body.  There is a unique game for almost every muscle group, and it even makes you do the yoga moves and figures out how accurately you do it based on what it senses on the pad.  It's nothing short of brilliant.

Games get harder as you go.  The pad also measures your progress, your weight and how well you've trained your core.  There is a skiing game that makes you move your knees left and right, there is a balance game that exercises your glutes, a ski jumping game that makes you do squats and it even makes you do pushups.  This may be the solution to the obesity problem in the US.

The game went out on sale in Japan in December 2007 and since it has sold 1.1 million copies in Japan.  It hits the US stores May 19th.  It is an absolute must have.

When good hardware is combined with good software something great happens.  Both the Wii and the iPhone are the two best examples of it.  They remind me of the following Alan Kay quote:

"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware."

P.S. Google gets this quote too by the way...their data centers are their hardware, and it's a lot more impressive than both the Wii and the iPhone.

Locke, Hume and Berkeley at The Game Developer's Conference

I walked the exhibit floor at the GDC looking for the answer to one question and one question only; "Is there a user interface better than that of the Wii?"  I was looking for new kinds of sensors, new kinds of sensory input devices that can enable gameplay never imagined before.  I was the colonial empiricist at the exhibit floor looking to understand the world through the senses.  I saw a bunch of disappointments, but one spectacular and inspiring innovation.

The Playstation 3 booth was not the place to see that innovation, though the booth itself was hard not to see. I asked somebody from Sony whether they were coming out with a Wii like controller and nobody knew of any such effort.  That was disappointing, but maybe it is an admission of defeat for them if they do.  Then I saw a young guy demonstrating a game on the playstation.  I approached and asked him without looking at his badge: "Do  you know if Sony is going to come up with a Wii-like controller?"  The answer I got was decisive: "I have no fu..ing clue, but if they did it would be awesome duuude!"  Then when I asked him if he knew anybody who knew the answer he said "I have no idea dude, I am just here to demo this game."  Maybe Sony should listen to its developers, but I left that booth with no luck.

Then I ran into a booth that was selling the Novint Falcon (shown here).It's supposed to be a new kind of joystick with force feedback that is supposed to make your gameplay a better experience.  I tried it and the impact is marginal.  It's also a big device and where will you really fit it.  Also, you have to hold a tiny little ball (in front of the much bigger machine in the picture) to move your character and fire your gun.  It's a tiny little ball because if it was bigger, it would be harder to give it the force feedback.  Smart thinking?  Not!  When you play a first person shoot-em-up you want to feel you are carrying a big friggin gun, not a wimpy little ball in your hand. It was a niche product at best, and not what I was looking for.

Then I visited Neurosky's booth.  They make a headgear that analyzes your brain waves to turn it into sensory input to a game (see below).  The headset is below.  I knew of their competitor Emotiv, which has a different device.  It was surprising enough to see that not only had somebody come up with a "thought controlled joystick" but there were actually two companies doing it.  You got to love innovation.

There was something really cool about their demo.  You put on the headgear walk around in a virtual world and if you focus and concentrate long enough you can move objects. Much like using The Force.  Very cleverly, they put an X-Wing fighter in the water that is very heavy and you really need to focus to move the X-Wing out of the swamp.  I said: "That's pretty cool, I'll give it a shot and try."  Then suddenly the lady with the headset looked at me with her eyes opening wider and slowly said: "Try not.  Do or do not.  There is no try." 

Jokes aside, it will be a long, long time before these devices replace joysticks.  Can new games be developed for it?  Possibly, but that value proposition won't come clear unless the makes of the devices write a few decent games.  Still not the innovation I was looking for.

Then there was Zcam, whose tagline is "You are the Interface".  They use a 3D camera that captures not only the colors but depth (it sends out a signal and measures how fast it comes back).  So it can detect your head, fingers, arms, but more importantly whether it is moving towards the screen and back.  Therefore you can just use your hand and body motions as an input, no need to hold any device.  I can see that working well in many cases, but is it such a bad problem to hold something. Don't I want to hold something like a racket when I play tennis?  Must I use my hand?  Holding something is easy, pressing buttons is harder, and what about that case when you really want to press a button.  That's a pretty simple thing we can assume that people know how to do, again that's not a problem worth eliminating.  While the technology was impressive this device also didn't do it for me.

It wasn't the Playstation 3 (not the Xbox either by the way), it wasn't the force feedback device, it wasn't the thought controlling headset, and it wasn't the Zcam.  So what was it?  What was this remarkable new user interface that stole the show?  You have to read the next post to find out.

Subprime Mess for Dummies

A must read powerpoint that sums up what's going on with the subprime mortgage loans.

Download sub_pime_presentation1.ppt

Enjoy!

A Evening with Muhammad Yunus

Last month, I was at a Silicon Valley Bank sponsored event where we got to listen to Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus speak.  As most of you know he is the visionary behind microlending.  I had heard and read a lot about him before I met him, so the question I had in mind was, "Can microlending work in America?"  And I did get a good answer for that, and that's what this post is about but before we go there, let me talk very briefly about what he did in Bangladesh and why it worked. This is the very short version.

Muhammad Yunus started microlending in 1976 after seeing 42 people being hassled by loan sharks.  They were suffering, and according to Yunus, they were almost being tortured.  The total amount owed by these 42 people were $27 (that's twenty seven dollars).  He became the guaranteur of this amount.  Starting there, he created a bank, lent money to men and women, found out that money lent to men didn't come back, money lent to women was paid back.  So he started to lend to women.  He now has 7.5M borrowers, 96% are women.  99% percent of his loans are repayed.  They've even started lending to beggars.  You read it right, people begging for money in streets.  He gave loans to 100,000 beggars and 10% have stopped begging and have a business.  The remaining 90,000 are "part time beggars" they also used the money to become door to door salesmen.  Now that his bank has grown, it gives university scholarships, trains doctors, offers health insurance to the poor.  He trained doctors, but there weren't enough of them so the bank funded a medical school.  All this was done by lending money to the poor and sticking to his mantra which has been : "Poverty is not in the person, but in the sytems that created them."  In my personal opinion he's done more for his country than most presidents I've seen.

Now let's come to the situation we have here in the US.  47M people don't have health insurance, and there are probably another 47M who think they have health insurance, but find out they really don't when they need it (watch Sicko if you don't believe me).  The situation is worse with check cashing and payday loans.  According to Business Week the payday loans business is booming here as well, I quote:

"Plenty are profiting from the financial wreckage. Banks are increasingly pushing secured credit cards, which require borrowers to put down a deposit and charge stiff 19%-plus rates. CompuCredit, which specializes in cards for consumers with poor credit, added 500,000 accounts in the third quarter. Collection agencies, too, have moved into the credit-card game: PRM Financial Services offers debtors a card at a fixed rate of 18.9%. "We're talking to doctors, attorneys, and businesspeople," says Carol Freeland, a partner at PRM Financial. "Just because you make a lot of money doesn't mean you don't end up in trouble."

That may be why payday lenders, which advance customers money on their paychecks at rates of up to 500%, are migrating to more affluent neighborhoods. According to a recent Brookings Institution study, there were only a few hundred payday lenders in the U.S. in the 1990s; now there are more than 23,000, with 37% located in Zip Codes where the median income is at least $48,000. "People who never dreamed they'd go to a payday lender are going," says Gail Cunningham of the nonprofit National Foundation for Credit Counseling. " Business Week Feb 07 issue

I asked Muhammed Yunus personally after his talk; "What's the problem in America?" And his answer was very plain and clear. "The problem is the banking system.  It does not help the poor.  A lot of people can't open bank account, and if they do they pay heavy service fees".  He is right.  The banking systems wants to have nothing to do with the poor.  So the poor go to payday loan shops or check cashing outfits described above.  Muhammed Yunus also said something very saddening.  He apparently told this to a Congressman, and what he heard from the Congressman was that payday loans, and check cashing businesses were flourishing most in locations nearby military bases.  This normally would be hard to believe but coming from a Congressman, it's sad to hear that those who defend the country and risk the most are shunned by the banking system.  Now that should make us all think.

Superbowl Breaks Viewing Records...

Superbowl XLII was one hell of a good game.  I had a great time watching the whole thing.  Here is what I read about it recently on a blog

"SUPER BOWL XLII was the most-watched sporting event on record and the second most-watched TV program in history. Nielsen says an average of 97.5 million viewers watched the Giants-Pats contest. The most-watched program is still the M*A*S*H finale, which drew 106 million viewers in 1983."

97.5 million viewers ain't bad.  But it sure feels like a niche event, compared to the FIFA Wold Cup final which is watched by 2 billion people.

Why The British Health Care System is Better

I've been sick for the last two days and had to work from home.

I wonder if I had called 911, would I have gotten the same good treatment the British give their men who get sick?

See the proof for yourself.