Hey look, a new Rohan Clone* on the blog!

So, perhaps stung by all the criticism, or whatever else (trying to drum up investment from tomato farmers?), Notion Ink put up a new blog post. Would be nice if someone proof-read it, but I guess Rohan did and it shows.

Fine. For a refreshing change, it's from "V" -- I guess it is "Vikram Dutt" if it's his real name (that's what it says in the post title bar), and I personally don't care. On the first read, it sounded OK. But then I read it again. And again. Because what I was asking myself is "what new information did I learn?"

That's when it became clear - this isn't an original post. It seems to have gone through the "Rohan reality distortion field*" which usually manifests itself as many paragraphs with useless information. 

Let's go back to the post. 

1. We learn again that Camera is WIP. Well, it's been WIP for over 6 months now. Everyone knows why it's in WIP. And the action to resolution -- well "you guys help us", uh oh - that's what TR has been doing. The post he links to a developer asking Nvidia is from Dec 2011. What is it now? April 1st week 2012. So given most devs are slowly walking away, does this implicitly mean it's never going to happen?

2. Then he goes into RenderScript. Wait what? Er... Renderscript and SVG will be in focus... um, so? Just like how "infographics' were going to be a "long fun project" in NI, remember? Now we're onto RenderScript (Rohan Shravan mentioned RenderScript in February 2011, go look it up) 

3. Sharing anything on next version of Eden doesn't make sense if Camera isn't resolved? So if Camera is the critical bottleneck then why would you spend a lot of time on Eden, which from your own admission doesn't sound useful without a camera. The two topics are unrelated. The reason you can't share much on Eden 2 is because you don't have much to share. And if Camera does not get resolved, does it mean there will be no Eden 2?

4. Blah blah micro-apps. This one has CEO touch all over it, "refer" a value in one cell of a sheet to another - indeed. 

5. Some more weasel words - "great products need stronger fundamentals", er could you share what those "fundamentals" are? Your employer's first product was awful so it'd be great to know "fundamentals" you plan to adopt.

6. "There is truck load of information yet to come" - like how your CEO wanted the readers to keep their notebooks open for design details? They're still waiting. When will this truck load of information come.

"First things first", like what? What specifically is your next step? What exactly are you out to do now?  What is the "first thing" and what should your users / prospects expect?

How about sharing something concrete instead of vague details and promises?

There's one concrete commitment in this post - " Unlike Adam 1, there will be no short-cuts for 2. If something not working, it won’t go out". Well, at least there's an admission that there were short-cuts in Adam 1. I have absolutely no faith that they will follow-up on this philosophy, but it's something I can point to later.

I'm really disappointed at the lack of "you are a visionary" posts from his long time fans, please, entertain us. Where's the chroot guy when his idol wants him ;)

* and ** -  I had a much ruder title, but then I realized that "V" is an employee doing his manager's bidding. The language/content has all hallmarks of Rohan in it, so it isn't fair to blame V I guess.