Notion Ink in CES 2012 Las Vegas

I just provided a nice heading with no information, because I don't have any. So far it's been all quiet on the western front as far as Notion Ink's announcements in CES 2012 goes. Someone should drop into Hilton Suites Booth 28-102 and check them out.

As I mentioned in my previous post Notion Ink has entered Adam and Eve (when they say Adam I assume Adam 2) into CES showcase. However, we've heard of Eve only in passing references in the past in the the forums and little directly from Notion Ink.

As far as I can tell, there's no coverage of NI in CES - I haven't seen (as of this writing, or perhaps I missed it somewhere) anything about NI in Engadget (oh look, Transformer has Ice Cream Sandwich ICS), CNET, Gizmodo, techcrunch. Of course, today is day-0 so it's possible NI will come out with guns blazing in the next 2 days, amazing everyone with Adam 2 and Eve.

There is also no mention of CES in Notion Ink's blog, am not railing on it - just sayin'. Perhaps this time they prefer to be quiet about it than make a big noise, and that's fine by me. Better do than talk.

My guess? Perhaps an updated spec of Adam, and I doubt Eve. If there's an Eve maybe it's a OEM phone running some stock software, but maybe they'll prove me wrong ;)

Lot of effort into something you don't believe in...

From the TR interview "Msg2me - How does your company attract talent?
RS: Serendipity actually. I have never believed in interviewing people and then hiring them. Interviews are useless, you just can't learn about anyone in an interview. Generally we'd like to talk to their friends, facebook profile, their past work and most importantly talk to their partners who were engaged with them in a project"

Fine. I don't quite agree with that approach but to each his own. But... he said he "has never believed" which seems to indicate that this belief was held forever, not changed recently.

and yet just a few months ago...

"Had some 100+ interviews in last 2 weeks..." July 26th 2011.

"Design, UI and animation team has also been expanded. (In fact in last 3 weeks, we have had around 80+ interview (I attend all))" March 3, 2011

(so just from the 2 above sentences I gather there were > 180 interviews...)

Err... why attend so many interviews if... you know... never believed in...? Or perhaps it's necessary to attend 180 interviews to, you know, confirm that they're useless...?

Boo!

So much for my resolution, but I'm open to come back and say I killed myself prematurely. Or rather, my announcement of my death was premature.



I just can't resist...

So. I'm back.



BTW here's an interesting link about fusion garage, which at one point seemed promising.

And I'm giddy with glee on some of Notion Ink Responses to questions posed on the TR CES 2012 thread



animated cat images - source

I just realized...

[edited/removed. Blah blah blah something about me moving on, good bye and other tear dropping sentimental stuff, loud crying and so on. turns out I ain't goin' nowhere]

CES 2012 is around the corner (Jan 10 - 13)

CES 2012 is here and here's Notion Ink's entry

Interesting - they've mentioned 2 brands, Adam and Eve.

Pleasant surprises?

Good bye to TabletRoms (TR)

I was a participant on TabletRoms (TR) for a while - even before it became TR. And all throughout, I've admired how this community grew, and how its developers have helped the Notion Ink Adam owners (and increasingly others too) and have, more than once, praised them on this blog and on their forums.

However, I recently decided to logoff for one final time when a post became personal, and it  was made more than clear that I wasn't wanted. It wasn't that opinions challenging a NI favoured view were countered, argued or debated - it's just that they could not be said at all.  Such posts were viewed as "negative" / "not constructive." - more like "don't say it because we don't like to hear it"

To me, asking questions, keeping a company to its word, checking if they're following up on what they say, repeating when necessary, they're all constructive actions. You can see that I link NI's words from their own blog and interviews as evidence. But it seems all we can do is praise, provide technical solutions, or be able to code like gods which unfortunately I cannot. The way I see it, it would have been right to tell me I'm wrong, correct me, point me to the right facts, ignore me, debate with me, find faults in my arguments -- but the path taken was essentially to silence the voice because it doesn't sing the same tune.

As much as I continue to admire their work, this is a gentle caution. Non-tolerance to contrary views (when not abusive / personal) and remarks is a slippery slope. If you  cannot criticize the company, cannot criticize the product, cannot criticize the admins, cannot criticize developers, cannot even ask probing questions without being told to shut up, it will slowly choke discussion and debate. Recently I've seen more than one example (not involving me) where even innocent, gentle questions were attacked.

I see the quandary some of the TR folks find themselves in - it's their forum they built, a lot of hard work went into it, and now NI is paying some "bounty" (reward money I guess) for some work, some of the TR devs are benefiting for contributions from NI. This creates a conflict of interest - and reduces the ability to step back and not step-in unless comments are abusive or personal (which in most cases were not).

There were  3 roads they could take, given their unique position and influence with Notion Ink.

a) Active role  - often reaching into NI and getting them to answer difficult questions & owning up to responsibilities while supporting them and their community, even if benefiting from NI for certain aspects. Play a strong mutual give-and-take role.

b) Be an independent / hands-off party - take no sides, and take no benefit from the company so as to maintain a neutral stance

c) Benefit from NI / stand behind them - maintain a positive spin for the company and its product even in the forums and keep contrary opinions limited / discouraged

I'm sad that they chose (c). With their influence, having NI's ear, they could have played an interesting role in bringing an incompetent company to a higher level. But by tolerating such poor performance they've only reinforced what NI has always been able to get away with - sloppy performance, vague answers, all the while benefiting from the good work of the developers on a community forum.

There is also another way, which is, instead of lip service to posting freedom, simply make it very clear that members must (a) contribute via code, beta testing etc. or (b) post something nice. Nothing else is permitted - that way it can be a close knit community of all like minded people.

Unlike NI, I have no doubts that TR will continue to grow and serve its community well. Just that I'm not the right type of member.

Come along for the ride, once again - Kivy and Notion Ink

I have much to write, from NI's "compensation" to its TR ICS developers to my sad "divorce" from TR, but first let's turn our attention to Notion Ink's latest blockbuster post.

This is what I inferred from the posts, and you can comment on the merits of these statements. The text in "italics" is the original text from the blog post

1. "Notion Ink is an active contributor for this project" All I could gather from the reading & looking at Kivy's own site, is that Notion Ink is giving an year-old ADAM as the 1st prize in the contest (sorry, winners). I also checked the Kivy github AUTHORS file and it's not clear to me what NI is contributing to code or design. From Kivy's own blog, all they say is "The contest is sponsored by NotionInk, an indian company that designs tablets PCs" - which would be an odd way to phrase it if Notion Ink was actively contributing to the project. Are they giving development money? Code? Design inputs? I think I'll ask Kivy.

2. What does this have to do with Adam development? I mean I can get onto github or sourceforge and find tons of interesting projects. What does this directly have to do with Adam or its future? He says mentions Eden/Genesis again, but we've heard about that several times in the past.  So, once again, mumbo-jumbo nonsense of some other interesting project with no clue on what this means to Adam - considering that they can't seem to even build their own IC. And let me bring your attention to the fact that in the past he's talked about BLISS, YAGO, Genesis etc. none which have gotten anywhere. Here is a past para from the April 16 2011 post "We’re be working on the fascinating fields of the natural language processing, relationship extractions, algorithms like YAGO and snow-ball, and the dream behind all our efforts, the BLISS system."  What happened to all that? Who cares. Kivy is the latest. Fans too timid to ask.

3. "This is going to be a very impressive year, specially because it will let me explain what are we doing, finally!" - so for the last 3 years...?!

4. "We have been rather quiet on what’s happening at our end on future products and developments, but today I want to share a rather unique project called Kivy" - I still don't understand what this post has to do with future products or developments. The sentence seems to infer that somehow Kivy was linked to Notion Ink but it absolutely does not seem so. It's a "flash like" equivalent UI framework for multi-touch devices. Perhaps NI wants to use it in the mythical Genesis but nothing in the post has anything to do, as far as I can see, with Notion Ink. Happy to be corrected.

5. "Remember the earlier reference to Python?" Actually I do. Here's what he said (Sep 17 2011) - "For reasons which will soon be obvious, our love for a parsentongue, python has grown exponentially" OK first of all that sentence makes little sense - it's not parsentoungue, it's actually parseltongue and I can see no connection between parseltongue and kivy. So no, reasons weren't obvious at all. Maybe he meant love for python has grown.

Finally, I could not but resist this. Read the 2 sponsor blurbs from the Kivy site:

Notion Ink is the rebellion in you! It's your firm doing what you wanted to do. It is dissolving the emptiness which otherwise fills up our lives. It is the guilt in you which says, let's realize our dreams. Technically an upcoming OEM, but philosophically, we are designers who hack engineering, just like you!

Github is a web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system. Github offers both commercial plans and free accounts for open source projects.

See the difference? I spoke of this once before back in May! When you read github's blurb - simple, easy to understand, you know what they do. Read Notion Ink's - it's utter bombastic nonsense.  Dissolving emptiness in our lives? I can tell you what - they're doing that mightily well with their customers who are spending good portions of their lives ROMing, flashing, formatting and what not to get their device to work. Hehe.

Notion Ink Adam makes it to Engadget's list

Well, go ahead and buy one. At least you can be thrilled about owning one of the biggest misfires of 2011

Will 2012 be any better? Have they learned? We'll see.

The Notion Ink Sale - should you buy or not buy the Adam?

http://conclave.notionink.com/showthread.php?1171-ICS-Holiday-Sale-and-more!&p=7123#post7123

Apparently they're selling the same Adam (nearly a year old by now), and the prices aren't much different.

Should you buy it? My recommendation are pretty much the same as in this thread from May 2011

If you have spare change to throw away, want to learn a lot about ROMming and RAMming etc. and have all the time to do that, sure.

Everyone else, don't.

Besides, for the similar price, you could get old much better functioning tablet alternatives on eBay, so it makes no sense to buy this tablet unless you're some fan / techie with time to spare.

Yes, yes

Notion Ink CEO  - Rohan Shravan - comment on Dec 24 2012

"Having said that, TR team is going to play far major role we are seeing here. I want to take the whole group past just making ROMs, and change the way tablet works."



oh, such magnanimity. TR should be lucky they're being given a chance to develop the ROMs/ICS for NI.

Let's see how this pans out, in about 6 months.

so much for the highly researched customer service portal...

http://conclave.notionink.com/showthread.php?1168-Poor-Customer-service

What's the point if you don't even respond to the queries.

----------------------------------

Update: Dec 13th. Barely a day after the post above, either the user removed it (hmm.. unlikely) or Notion Ink quietly removed the post. I've seen this happen before - so here's the text of the post as-is

"sent ur customer service manager Ragu email back in first wk of November with videos of my problem no reply. then got email that my Request number 16707 is changed to 1038 as u guys have moved to new support system. sent an email on 14 Nov stating that i havent receivd any reply from Ragu. still no reply. then again i sent an email on 29th Nov again didnt get any reply. On 1st Dec sent an email with photographs atttached comparing adam with ipad still havent got any reply. then sent email on 10th dec still waiting for ur reply.

please dont make me come to your office n shout at you guys. any ways i do write for a local paper and all of this thing is going in our next tech edition. lets see then u reply"

Do what's right, Notion Ink. If it was the user that removed the post, then tell me so and I will mention it.

Why I think NI in its current form will wither away and die

In my last post, a commentator asked if I would speculate on NI's future. And here is what I think... and why.

Notion Ink, in it's current form, will wither away, with a whimper, and Adam will die. There, I said it. There is no future for Notion Ink or Adam the Tablet. Now let's go deeper.

I said "in it's current form" because companies, no matter how badly failing, don't necessary "die." You could still have a 1 man company, someone else could buy it for the name and so on. But in it's current form, as a company that makes Adam and Eve and whatever else, it will wither away.

Let's go back to the fundamental premise I talked of before - a company can exist in a commercially viable form when

a) It is a profitable enterprise

OR

b) It is a fast growing enterprise to which there will be capital infusion because there is promise of a significant future reward for today's risk

Of course, badly run companies can also be purchased for certain IP and then most of it killed away, but let's keep that out for the moment.

A company that makes no profit, no promise of significant future revenue or profits - will die. That's simply the economic reality of it.

Let us for a moment forget about Notion Ink's dysfunctional management and incompetent developers and apply (a) or (b)

1. Profitability - a consumer electronics company that makes tablets and sells only a couple of thousand with potentially 0 margin (or -ve, as it only started) is definitely losing money and not making it. Also consider they've been at it since 2009.

2. Growth - None. In fact, I still contend that the second release of order did much worse than the first. After utterly failing the first release, alienating its loyal customers, angering its reviewers and essentially falling back on an external hobby community to support its software development plans, there is no chance that they will magically sell millions. Maybe a few hundred gullible buyers and a few of the "die-hards" who still hopefully linger around. This isn't enough to keep it afloat. They don't have a clue on who their target market should be and they've certainly targeted the wrong market. The techie/hacker market is too small for them to sustain on.

You can look at a few important dimensions for growth and test if they're true. For a start-up company to grow really fast, one or more of these should be true

External factors (market, competition...)

1. A differentiation or business model that has a significant advantage & attraction in the market (for e.g. Square)


2. Weak or slow moving competitors


3. Govt. incentives, push, mass purchase, regulatory advantages

Internal factors

1. Significant  investment in marketing & sales, infrastructure to keep pace with growth


2. Ability to hire, retain, develop top talent


3. Strong distribution & sales channels and wide product availability

Now let's go back and test these against Notion Ink.

External factors (market, competition...)

1. A differentiation or business model that has a significant advantage & attraction in the market - Except PixelQi - nothing. The market for people willing to suffer the ADAM experience just so they can read in bright light is too, too small to factor growth. USB ports, HDMI are all good for a few techies, most don't care about features but about experiences.


2. Weak or slow moving competitors  - It's the other way around. With Apple, now Amazon and then the Transformer and Galaxy - it is a very hard market place that has wounded even the big and strong. The competitors are iterating rapidly and Adam, which once looked good on paper, is now history


3. Govt. incentives, push, mass purchase, regulatory advantages - Nope. None that I know of. The Indian govt. may have been a savior but they're off trying to build their 30,50,100$ tablets. Then there's many others coming up in the domestic market place too - have you read about Eva? (which I predict will vanish soon anyway)

Internal factors

1. Significant  investment in marketing & sales, infrastructure to keep pace with growth - Nope. For a company that takes months to even have a ticket system, botched service centers, no marketing medium except a strange blog - there sure isn't much happening here. The only exception to this is if there's a hidden investor who is pouring large sums for a flashy entrance post Adam 2. I would call that investor "stupid", they'd be better off buying the design and building a company that works rather than do it via NI. Getting a Tablet reference design isn't rocket science anymore. Read about Eva again, or the $99 chinese tablet.


2. Ability to hire, retain, develop top talent - Nope. If you're keeping a watch, the supposed "100 member" team of NI is sitting idle for months or are utterly incompetent because it's now beginning to look like NI is contracting developers from the TabletRoms community to help get ICS in place.


3. Strong distribution & sales channels and wide product availability - Not available anywhere. When the next product releases, if ever, I suspect it will be in few places. 

So, what am I missing? I don't know. No matter how I look at it, this is a lost cause. Sure Adam 2 might come, and the faithful will crow that it will change the world. But for something that built to a crescendo, this will be a slow slide to death.

You can also read a fine post by freedune with a different perspective but essentially coming to the same conclusion.

In the next post I'll mull about the ramifications of what I believe the relation is between NI and the development folks at TR.

It's fascinating when I look back

There's a lot I've vented on NI in the past months, starting with my first post, whose message still holds as true today as it was in April. It's fascinating how little this company learnt in the period.

The one that you might want to look at it is one I wrote asking 'What do you stand for, Notion Ink' - and in it you'll see a great paragraph from the CEO of Notion Ink, Rohan Shravan, explicitly stating that they're about to unveil a big effort in Bangalore - here's what it is

This summer Notion Ink is starting a unique (but mostly concealed, though we will open it for a small number of people in different domains who match the criterion set forth by the team) project which will run in-n-around Bangalore area for next 5-6 months. We’re hiring a very large number of contributors from colleges, clubs, various groups and, from diverse fields. The aim of this project is to create a mature “front and back end” system before we open it for the world. Design and develop a scalable model which is optimized for the goal and comprehensive enough to cover a majority of creative domains. We’re be working on the fascinating fields of the natural language processing, relationship extractions, algorithms like YAGO and snow-ball, and the dream behind all our efforts, the BLISS system.

This was back in May. I mean, you and I know nothing ever came of it. What happened to this "unique" project? Guess it was a bunch of mumbo-jumbo like everything else, DIY system, BLISS, Genesis, you name it.

Their website hasn't changed, we still haven't the faintest idea what it is really that they want to accomplish (if anything at all), and at the end of the post I said something to the tune of "you may be young and super bright..." and on that account I was really wrong. Only the "Young" part is true.

4 months... 30 minutes... all the same ;)

Found some new amusement for myself in this thread

Customer asks "hey can you do X" on Aug 6th

It took 24 days for someone to answer it, and "Chief" says

"Working on it" (mind you, this was Aug 30th)

Now, to me, when someone says "working on it" it means "working on it" - and considering that the request was fairly trivial (someone on the same thread says it takes 30 minutes) one would think that given Notion Ink's competent 100 member team this would take maybe 3 days :P

But nope - it's been 4 months and "working on it..." has remained that way. Just another of those things I guess where "working on it" / "coming soon" mean absolutely nothing.

PS - the request may have been trivial - if it can't be done for whatever reason why not just come out and say it? Why mislead and then not follow-up?

Lowest standards of any fan base...

I'm convinced that the remaining NI fanboys belong to that group of people that have really low standards and impossibly low expectations.

It's such a fine group to sell to! Sell crap, they'll buy it and the best thing is they'll sing your praise for it and find reasons why the crap is gold. How cool is that.

Time for me to market them a few things I need to get rid of.

Hmm...so... has the "whole community" built ICS yet? because there's no ETA from NI. Of course they're waiting for the "community" to do their work for them so they can give them a "bounty" (here boy, candy for you) and perhaps use that as their own ROM (remember Honeycomb? After blogging and misleading people that they were doing their own release for months, they just took Tabletroms!) .  Why invest in resources and develop when you have people doing it for you for a low price. How sweet.

Hurry up "community", NI doesn't have all month long for you to finish it!