For starters, the health ministry’s vision is to provide 50 essential generic medicines, free of cost, from “birth to death” to all Indians across the nation.

Could be the start of something other countries might be able to follow.

50 essential meds to be given free?

StyleDiary founder Patricia Handschiegel:

A friend and I were discussing this not long ago, about business conferences and seminars. I don’t usually go to conferences or seminars about business.

The reason is, as an entrepreneur I like to do my own thing. I go by and rely on this. I don’t like to have a lot of outside influence or…

Nicely put. I find myself doing this a lot more recently.

Air India’s top officials, according to sources, met OnAir, to discuss the options of installing on board Wifi base stations on international flights.

What is hopefully Step 1 in making Air India an airline of choice again.

Air India in talks with OnAir to have Wifi on board

During the keynote last week, John Siracusa referenced The Godfather, quipping:

Today Tim settles all family business.

I’d say it’s more that Cook settled the family business back in October 2012. Last week’s keynote was when we, on the outside, finally saw the results. Apple today is firing on all cylinders. That’s a cliché but an apt one. Cook saw untapped potential in a company hampered by silos.

Great analysis.

John Oliver’s hilarious coverage of Indian Elections (and its media)

The reporting on Election 2014 is going from bad to worse.

Before you get into a bunch, I do understand the The Newsroom is an idealistic show, meant for TV. Even Aaron Sorkin, the show’s creator, admits the show was not written to show journalists how to cover the news. But it doesn’t mean there aren’t a few cues to be taken. I’ve spent some time in collegiate journalism — that’s not to say it was lesser than regular journalism, we were bound by the same ethics codes dictated by the Associated Press. I still use ‘em’ vs ‘en’ dashes rather than just hyphens as you will find in this blog. We were also guideline’d when it came to facts, reporting about ourselves, and authenticity of sources. And I think here the Indian media has a lot to learn.

Election season is afoot in the world’s largest democracy, and in my attempt to track it as well as understand it, I rely on the media. Off late though, I find that I spend more time reading and looking at source interviews rather watch TV or rely on a lot of media, because I find the focus is TRP rather than fact or focus, points I raise in more detail below.

Aside from the show, idealism and fanfare, for me the key to The Newsroom lies in this key phrase: ‘..nothing is more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate’.

Where are the facts?

Spend 20 minutes on any TV channel and all you will hear is ‘Rahul Gandhi said this today’ and ‘Narendra Modi said that’. Shouldn’t there be some responsibility towards actually representing the facts? Correcting them if they are wrong?

As an example, when Rahul Gandhi says tons of land was given away at ridiculous (he actually says INR1 per sq. m) to the Adani Group by the Government of Gujarat. Narendra Modi claims in return that there is no wrong doing and the Supreme Court validated their land deals. Instead of the headline ‘Gandhi family makes its strongest attack on Modi’ and ‘Modi sharpens attack on the Gandhis’, shouldn’t you perhaps spend some time to review the Supreme Court verdict that says the model by which the Govt. of Gujarat allocated this land should be replicated by other states?

Conversely, when people like Uma Bharti allege that Robert Vadra would go to prison over misdealing in land ownership, the Congress comes out to defend him. Great, but shouldn’t you rake up evidence of no-wrongdoing, or bring up public records of the Government land deals that are a matter of public record, or at least should be?

Instead the media spend time running from one party to another asking for a comment rather than doing any work.

One more example just to drive home the point. In Rahul Gandhi’s constituency of Amethi (he’s the incumbent MP), Priyanka Vadra (his sister who is campaigning for him there) and Smriti Irani (running for the same seat) are fighting that the other never visits the constituency. So get on it, visits and interviews are public record. Prove either one of them wrong!

What is equally bad are the translations and misrepresentations. I can’t even get into the examples here but I urge the media to translate and quote correctly. Enough headlining.

Where is the focus?

Sit through an evening debate and the only thing the anchors and channels want to talk about is how bad was one person’s statement over another. There’s never a discussion of facts — often, it’s a direct misquote — but moreover, there doesn’t seem to be any focus either.

Take the example of Mumbai which went to vote last week. Initial estimates say anywhere between 3 and 6 lac names were unavailable, Was there a debate (not talking just a quick newsbite) on the item? Nope. Did anything raise a fuss over the action taken by the Election Commission (they apologized and said they would fix it before the next election for the State Elections in two years)? Nope.

Here’s another. On the same day, half of Bollywood decided to honor their yearly commitments to IIFA and attend the IIFA Awards in Florida rather than vote. Except a passing mention on the channels, who chose instead to highlight and interrupt coverage with ‘Breaking News’ when they spotted a new celebrity coming to vote, there was not a single debate. I only found IndiaTV take the coverage a little further, and spend time asking actors at IIFA in the US about the fact that they did not vote. Most of the response revolved around contractual obligations. Anupam Kher even went so far as to say, and I quote, ‘for me India is first’, but we have contractual obligations. Let’s not forget here that there was a large and vocal outreach on voting made by Bollywood to vote for a secular government.

Where is the bias?

In the early episodes of The Newsroom, the editorial team insist anchor Will McAvoy make clear he is a Republican, something he has shied away from declaring prior to the start of the show’s timeline. This was interesting. The journalism I’m attuned to needs to be as neutral as possible, but I understand in this day and age, and in political discourse, it is a different story.

Let’s be clear that there is nothing wrong with having one. Journalists are voters too, and have every right to view their choice. But declaring this choice helps unskew their reporting. Knowing McAvoy is a republican makes it that much more credible when he then takes on a Republican candidate on fact. Simultaneously, he can no longer just hardline at the Democrats because his bias would make his interviews less credible. His responsibility increases as a result to stay closer to, and argue on facts, since anything else would make him less relevant.

The same must apply to the Indian media. I’m not saying everyone needs to come out and say whom they are voting for, just that it needs to be less biased and more factual. When you are held so closely to your bias, you automatically need to stay on facts to be relevant.

Make of this what you will. Recently, in an interview by ABPNews, an interviewer asked PM candidate Narendra Modi if the media should fear him if he comes to power. Barring the sadness of this thought process, the answer is impressive indeed. Slightly paraphrased, Modi said ‘If you’re scared of a political leader, you shouldn’t be in the media. For a democracy to function, the media needs to be strong.’ The interview is here for verification.

Criticism by the media, holding our public figures accountable is paramount. It’s not about being scared of a political party or a leader; but it’s also not about sensationalism. Everything is not breaking news. You have a responsibility to present the factual truth, and in this regard and my opinion, you’re failing miserably.

Video: Seth Meyer rips the White House, Congress and Trump.

The 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner:

“I’ve never said this to anyone before but maybe you should start smoking again.”

© QTAB.com. Full technical specs are here.

Souq.com launched their QTAB tablet last year. Shaped much like the iPad mini — so much so that a couple of people mistook it for one while it sat on my desk — the QTAB is a barebones Android device that arrives with a couple of hardware quirks.

A closer look of the device and the differences from the standard comparison devices are apparent. For starters, the QTAB has both its hardware buttons at the top — power on the top left, home on the top right. While change is sometimes good, I can’t say this was an easy transition. I often found myself hitting the home button to sleep/wake the device. Similarly the volume buttons are soft touch at the bottom of the screen — something easily forgotten when you want to quickly turn up and down the volume.

Experienced tablet users would be easily annoyed by these changes; however, first time users — and I believe this is where the QTAB is looking to target the market — should just use this as a baseline instead without too much fuss.

The other area where I believe the QTAB has some work to do is boot up. Restarting the device takes some time (and I found myself restarting it fairly often to clear out the wifi connection, for example) — I timed it at 41s during one restart. This is particularly interesting since there didn’t seem to be any bloatware installed on the device. Normally this wouldn’t be a bother; but when the device stayed idle for a few hours, it would refuse to connect to the wifi unless rebooted.

So let’s talk about the market. The official statement is that the QTAB is targeted for the Arab region, and particularly for education. I’m not sure what is special about the QTAB for the market (other than price, but they’re not the only one playing in that range), but I can see the value for education. Souq.com’s backing would mean institutions would be able to setup good warranties compared to some of the other players. The QTAB serves as a basic device that would meet the needs of browsing and reading. There is also a large market in this region for first time, basic tablet users who want to be able to read email, view Facebook and maybe make a Skype call or two — and give them away as gifts to others and kids. From what I’ve seen in that space, if they put the right resources behind it and iron out the quirks, the QTAB should do just fine.

When robbing a bank, remember:

• Don’t drop the cash
• Check your tyres
• Wear slip-proof shoes

Clumsy bank thief’s bad day gets worse

Lots of entrepreneurs struggle with pricing. How much to charge? It’s clear that the right price can make all the difference — too low and you miss out on profit; too high and you miss out on sales. Don’t ask, can’t tell Asking people what they’d pay f…

Good read (with sub-reads linking to studies & experiments) on pricing and how it works on the mind.

Pricing Experiments You Might Not Know, But Can Learn From

Video: What conf calls would be like in real life

Hilarious video.