Can Google Maps help me change lanes?

Every day when i drive down i-95 south to get to work more often than not, i find myself stuck in the slowest moving lane. I have tried using Google Maps and Waze intermittently to find a faster way.. By now you know at least 2 things

1. I do change lanes a lot while driving in my quest to get ahead

2. I see the glass half full and keep using maps on my daily route with a hope that i will reach my destination within shortest time possible..

Google maps keeps surprising me with new features ever so often. Most recently, it lets me pick the time of travel and gives an idea of the duration of the travel based on this input..thats a lot of data gathering and processing…. taking this even further, i was wondering if google can tell which lane i should be in to move faster?

To provide this level of detail, the real time data processing logic needs to evolve significantly. We all know that that left most lane is the supposed to be the place for every one moving faster than others.. but very often we have these moral police who are the slowest of the lot and love driving in the leftmost lane… more power to them.. but why should i suffer and how can i circumvent the situation .. and the lane changing logic may be the answer..

Again, this is a very raw thought and i am sure there are other considerations needed.. for example, if an app were to tell me to change lanes, everyone using the app with a desire to go faster will change lanes within a 1-2 minute window.. that will just end up making the fast lane slow.. and the app will now suggest that change the lanes back to where you started… so worst case scenario would be everyone just changing lanes.. and creating some sort of sine way along the road..

Another consideration is to create user segments based on the intent, not everyone would want to go fast, some of us do want to drive more cautiously than others and for this segment safety would be top priority, so based on such intent you could pick a setting in the app such as “time no bar” and “shortest time” pretty similar to the settings you have when you select your route.

I am sure i have missed some key considerations, but the questions is can this be done?

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Do (we) Indians tip well?

Tipping is an integral part of the American service sector , no one knows why or how this came into existing but given the number of single hardworking mothers earning their living working as waitresses there is no doubt that one should tip a minimum of 15% to 20%. I have been raised in Mumbai under fairly middle class surroundings and I understand the value each dollar adds. I have been in the US for some time now and love eating out and I am a generous tipper, my wife always tells me that i overtip out of guilt that most of my countrymen don’t tip enough, if at all. I wanted to take an objective look at both sides of the coin and get to the bottom of this perception.

During my MBA in Philadelphia, i met Stacy who waited tables part time to cover some expenses and Zac who use to be a cab driver and had made his way to the B school. During one of our social interactions, i heard both these friends talk about Indians being sloppy tippers, irrespective of their economic stature and the quality of service being offered. As an Indian, i was embarrassed about the judgement being passed on the 1.2 billion of us, based on a few hundreds that have obviously done a poor job representing India abroad.

I was curios of various aspects of this particular conversation and some questions popped up in my head right away, the first being, how the hell did these guys know if their customers were Indians. One look around the bar and I kind of answered myself as i scanned the room i could pick out Indians or at least thats what i would like to think they were given our enthusiasm and four dimensional nods.

Stacy explained further that she had very limited hours per shift and she had to make sure that her tips generate enough return on investment. I have tried to brake down the problem based on cursory data i got from her then.

She worked 12 or so hours a week at a hip restaurant near the university campus, that means 3 shifts a week for 4 hours. Assuming that she had 5 tables per shift and each table is occupied by the same people for 45 minutes, she could be serving 25 tables in one shift. I have taken 15 minutes to compensate for no shows, or non peak times, cleaning time etc.

servingtables

So based on her experience and a little bit of stereotyping, every time an Indian occupied here table, she assumed the worst and instead of taking a chance and giving that table the level of engagement that she would otherwise give other tables. She decided to spend the least effort on that particular table and use the same time for other tables to ensure prompt tips from them thus compensating for the perceived poor tip. Fair enough, I am sure she reached this conclusion based on her experience and thought that she was better off not expecting any good tips from tables occupied by South East asian (read Indians) and spending her time and energy on other tables. So if i plot a bell curve, my countrymen would be perceived to be in the areas to the left of the mean in the 2-2.5 times standard deviation!

Theoretically, what happens if all tables are occupied by Indians? I should ask her that, I am sure it would be her professional nightmare.

Now let me come to the other side of this argument, why can’t most of my countrymen tip?

Imagine growing up in a country with 1.2 billion people belonging to differing dialects, religions, values, beliefs and ethnicity. A country where the strength and the weakness is “diversity”.  Furthermorel if you are living in Mumbai, as i did, most of your day is spent in traveling to and fro, mingling between various stations, buses, autorickhaws and taxis. You often come across women bargaining with the street vendors negotiating the price of a pound of veggies etc. Culturally, negotiations is part of being Indian and one of the oldest and surest way for finding the best deal on the products. You learn to negotiate growing up, may it be the traffic cop trying to fine you for not carrying the relevant documents or the taxi driver you has rounded the fair to the nearest higher multiple of 10, negotiations is survival.

With this cultural exposure when one comes to the US it may take a while to get adjusted to the options, lifestyle the exchange rate. Today, 1 USD is ~63 Indian rupees, that means when I step into a 7-11 to buy bread i am spending at least 3 $ = 189 rupees for a bread that i would get for 20-30 rupees all this happening while you still have student loan at the back of your mind (the interest rates for the loan typically taken from an Indian bank, is around 12-13%). Amidst this chaotic when you go to a restaurant, the tip is a nail in the coffin. So that does to some extent explain the Bell curve behavior.

All this is true, so far as you are a student who is struggling with student loans and living expenses and securing a job with a company ready to sponsor your visa. However, once you start earning, generous tipping should be practiced. The shift from the earlier mindset to a post job mindset takes a while too and for some this mental transition doesn’t happen at all and hence the “minimal tipping” syndrome.

Alternatively, the human behavior aspect on could be fueling the self fulfilling prophecy that Indians don’t tip, as even if someone wants to tip the lack of service might rub him the wrong way and he may not tip at all .

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Can 7.99$ per month find me a soulmate?

Saturday night at the bar while waiting for the bartender to take my order and secretly wishing i were a pretty chic for him to notice and give me my drinks, I unintentionally eavesdropped on a conversation between, what i believe were 2 boy-nerds making a transition to man-nerds.
The gist of the conversation was about the probability of the woman of their dreams being in this particular Boston bar.

This thought spawned a thread of some creative thoughts in the upper right corner of my head. My soulmate, i thought is sitting at home right now and watching Netflix and there may be a 1% chance that i meet her here.

A 30 year old with 50-60 hour work weeks, i spend an enormous amount of time on Netflix and i started to wonder, if Netflix can help with finding my soulmate. Consequently, I started drifting on a Netflix product improvisation journey and here are some of the features that I believe Netflix can potentially monetize while increasing the value of the $7.99 monthly fee.

Outside of your Facebook friends, create an experience for its subscribers to talk to to each other through forums. This can be based on the weighted score drawn from the common genres, actors, nationality etc.

  • For example, if i am in Chicago and have watched TV shows A, B & C within 7 days and am looking for some company to watch TV shows X & Y, can i create a forum which can act as a platform for me to interact with like minded people around the area also interested in watching Shows X & Y?
  • Can i invite them over for a watching party? Assuming the US population at 320 Million, and taking into account 36 M Netflix subscribers (see chart below), so 1 in every 8.8 persons is a netflix subscriber.
    • The chances of the viewing party being attended by friends of the host’s who are not subscribers is 80%, which is very high. Hence, this also boosts the market cap.

      Netflix US Subsription

      Netflix US Subsription

  • Can Netflix organize the watching party for an extra fee? This could be a crowdsourced activity, where the Netflix can assign ranks of a leader to a person who is willing to host the party, is certified by Netflix based on some criteria and in return he can get Free access for X months.
  • Is there a potential for me to find my life partner through these interactions?

At a time, when 36 million americans are spending a chunk of their time on Netflix, it is definitely worth a shot to facilitate the union of like minded subscribers, where i can be the bartender and attend to every need of my soulmate!

Product Design – Can Paris Hilton be Hillary Clinton?

I think something changed this summer, something so innate that I wonder how i didn’t think of mentioning this before. I realized that I have always been into questioning, criticizing and looking at everything differently, but until some time back I used to think that something is seriously wrong with me at a personal level and I am a devil critic, but now i can see where that comes from.. it just comes from an urge to make complex things simple, while keeping it aesthetically beautiful.

The myth has been broken by the mobile application world.. that a tool that is beautiful can be of high utility value. In other words, Paris Hilton can now have the IQ of Hillary Clinton! Thats what any mobile application is capable of. Using basic usability concepts and latest innovative tools for development, a simple app can be attractive! Take a look at the application made by Recce for New York City.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/recce-new-york/id568090462?mt=8

Let me know your thoughts!

About Me

A simple soul, talent in search of opportunity and confident of creating that opportunity if it doesn’t exist !

The following figure shows a combination of aspects needed to make it big in life.

Currently, with the right mix of Talent, and never ending determination i am very close to point A and thus making it big is unavoidable.

Talent meets opportunity
About Ameya Thorat

India in America!!

The currency note of my country has 16 languages. The people speak an additional 125 dialects. Four of the world’s religions were born here. Eight more have amalgamated into our culture. We have dozens of festivals and a hundred ways of celebrating each one.  Our 28 states and their peoples have their own distinct characteristics and swear by them. To add to the diversity, we have a range of skin tones, ancestry, history, castes, communities and beliefs.  And any one of these permutations and combinations can be my neighbor, friend, boss, parent or client. As an Indian, I don’t really have time to analyze the complex dynamics of interpersonal relationships in my world. I just live it.  I am, like the people around me, happy to swim in the diversity that unites Indians.

Through childhood, college and work, the diversity that you come across in India empowers you to accept differences and to work and learn from them. Bias is not absent. But bias, more often than not, is based on personal experiences, good and bad, rather than on genetics or geography. So with this set of values and perceptions I started my journey towards earning an MBA in the United States. The first step was marked by breaking away from my comfort zone and moving away from my people, my family and my friends.

It has been 8 months since I stepped on this soil, and from the moment I arrived at JFK airport until the time I walked into class, I have felt a sense of discovery, a strange feeling of walking into something new each time. There are so many facets in this country that are unique and intriguing. The subtle signs that each place and each landmark conveys has left a mark in my memory. For instance, on my drive from New York City to Drexel University, I was scared and anxious about staying at a new place, meeting people from different nationalities and working with them. The same thoughts that excited me at the Indian airport were now transitioning into anxiety, and amidst the cyclone of thoughts, I looked out of the car window and my eyes fixated on a “LOVE” sign in a park. This sign settled the mental cyclone and managed to get a smile. Something led me to believe that I was heading in the right direction and had nothing to fear.  I will never forget that moment and the comforting feeling it gave me. With so many varieties in nearly everything from climates to foods, from cultures to cars, from museums to pubs, I am living in an extension of my culture in a way that resonates with the thought that defines India –  “Unity in Diversity.”