Dolphin(s) Tale - Four of seven beautiful #Dolphins that swim by my home at least twice a day. A few times they have splashed me with water as they chased their prey under my dock on #Tampa Bay in #Florida! What gorgeous creatures they are. I remember growing up in #Pakistan and watching a TV show about a Dolphin called #Flipper. Do you remember the show? That show was based on an earlier movie which came out soon after I was born. The title of this video plays on a more recent movie called Dolphin Tale.
Posted by Imran Anwar on Friday, April 24, 2015
Apollo Beach Summer Sunset Tampa Bay Florida - IMRAN™
An early summer sunset on Tampa Bay at Apollo Beach, captured with a good old iPad 3 at my Florida home. Timelapse music video shows a stunning sunset followed by dramatic storm.
© 2014-2018 IMRAN™
Cold - Spring - Harbor ! -- Stunning but frigid day despite spring at my blessed Long Island home marina made me think of the name of a different place.. Cold Spring Harbor. :-)
Sweeping Views Of Fabulous Gotham Hall, Times Square, New York City During A Masquerade Party. An old bank building it is an exciting (though quite loud) venue for corporate parties and events.
Stunning Sunset Apollo Beach #Florida in 12 seconds timelapse #video
http://youtu.be/-WYWw7KhDdw made with my Windows Phone #Lumia1020.
The article (Tech In Pakistan 2014) in the reputable Pakistan newspaper, Dawn, makes good points lamenting the mind numbingly stupid, and self-destructive, policies and factors that make for such “tepid performance” in Pakistan. The author, Y. Brohi, points out how one does not need an army of people to launch a startup. My personal experience proved that, indeed, even one person can start a revolution or entire industries for others to build on.
At the end of the eighties and in the early 1990s, I was fortunate and blessed to pioneer and launch Internet email service in Pakistan right from my home in Gulberg-III, Lahore, while I was studying for my MBA at Columbia University Graduate School of Business in New York City. Together we, my then partner & neighbor Ashar Nisar and I, were able to launch the .PK ccTLD, literally putting Pakistan on the brave new digital world’s map.
I later also had the opportunity to make another, less known but also important, humble contribution to Pakistan’s economic progress, by bringing and launching global credit cards in Pakistan, starting with issuing the first MasterCard license to a Pakistani bank in the early 90s. The availability of credit to the middle class can be a major driver to drive economic activity and the creation of products, services and related jobs.
Both of those industries were launched with no government funding (actually, we succeeded despite resistance and other tactics of the authorities of that time that I will not mention), and without venture capital, which at that time was near impossible to get in Pakistan.
My reason for writing this is not to boast on past achievements but to exhort the dynamic and industrious Pakistani entrepreneurs to learn from what the article says and what my experience shows.
You, one person, can start anything you want. There is nothing stopping the next secure identity and privacy solution to be created in Pakistan. There is no reason that Pakistanis cannot pioneer artificial intelligence or secure cloud computing methods.
If there is one thing that I have been frustrated by, and feel is a core reason for Pakistanis not creating world changing new things, is the disregard for intellectual property rights and concepts. From people ripping DVD movies to kids ripping games without payment, to the shameless way so-called respectable newspapers (excluding Dawn) steal and reprint others’ creative output, theft of intellectual property is commonplace, and something people almost boast about.
How then can people think in terms of creating intellectual property if they are themselves busy stealing someone else's? That attitude is embedded in our culture and needs to be addressed. Without that, all the creative capabilities of Pakistanis will continue to be wasted on copying or reverse engineering others’ work, not creating brave new IP to change the world.
I would love to see that topic get discussed at a national level. There are few nations that have so much creative entrepreneurial talent than Pakistan, as I have seen in my ~30 years of traveling the world.
Let us find ways to stimulate that and channel that and guide that for the greater good of the creators and the nation. That is why, in speaking to groups of Pakistani entrepreneurs and technology professionals, I say, “To Achieve Greatness In A Digital World, Respect Intellectual Property And Innovate With Your Own, Or Be Irrelevant!”
IMRAN™
http://imran.pk
I have been an Apple user for 30+ years, and a Mac bigot since 1984. Even though my day job is at Microsoft and I use Windows laptops, Surface, Windows Phone Lumia, my personal life's work is invested (and sort of locked) in the Apple ecosystem.
Even my MS colleagues know, I would often be the only guy at an airport with a PowerBook laptop in a sea of Windows machines, which I was no fan of. But the decline in innovation and quality at Apple has been shocking. I’ve had MacBook laptops that had manufacturing defects that Apple hid and then stopped patching after warranty. I had to replace my iPhone 4S (a great device) three times because of static noise issues.
I cannot even buy an external fingerprint reader for Mac OS that would work while I have it built in my PC laptops. I have no touch on the latest Apple MacOS devices. The gorgeous near perfect keyboards of previous MacBook Pros now have been replaced by plastic types that even PC users match or exceed.
iOS and its boring icons are still brain dead and have not evolved since iPhone started. I barely have to life my WindowsPhone screen and still can see who emailed me, what the weather changed to, what the latest news are, what someone said on FaceBook, see my photos rotate, ALL on the home screen without touching the phone. Yes, the Apple ecosystem still has a million more apps but after my initial craze which led me to have 1100+ apps on iOS, I have been aggressively deleting apps since only a handful are actually used. Of those about 80% are available to me on WindowsPhone too.
My latest iPhone 6 Plus has a lousy 8MP camera while my year+ old Windows Phone Lumia 1020 has 43MP that runs rings around it. But worse of all is the sheer number of painful experiences I have had and seen people report on Apple's own boards is mind boggling.
I used to complain about Windows control-alt-delete but with Windows 8 and now Windows 10 coming plus Windows Phone and super cool Live Tiles the user experience is far more innovative than Apple’s. Samsung users tell me even on hardware that company is beating Apple in new features. But the latest shocking defect in Apple hit me today.
You know how Bluetooth connects different vendors products for 15 years but can you believe Apple's latest MacBook Pro & iPhone 6+ fail to connect to each other even with latest Yosemite and iOS 8.1.1 !
In the old days all media did was predict Apple's death and I would argue against it. Now I see Apple non-stop defect laden launches but hardly any media express outrage or show coverage over it. I am not hating on Apple because someone at MS wants me to. After all, as I said, I have been invested in the Apple ecosystem and even my most used Mac apps are from Microsoft, including Outlook, Office/Word/PowerPoint/Excel and especially OneNote.
It is a pretty incredible switch of roles that I did not have any mail loss, data loss, issues moving from Windows 7 to Windows 8 and even Windows 10 Preview but I lost days of effort to resolving about a dozen separate known bugs and defects in upgrading the MacBook Pro to Yosemite and the iOS devices to iOS 8. That is definitely not how the yesterday’s gold standard of user experience and quality, Apple, worked. Is anyone a clear winner in that user experience war. Not right away. But at least today Apple’s clear lead in that area is gone.
That is why the next personal devices I am lusting for are not Apple gadgets but the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, an Xbox One and a Microsoft Band. Hint, hint, if you really love me, and of course you do :-) , Christmas is around the corner. Just kidding!
What do you think?
Berliner Dom DOMinating Berlin Sky - IMRAN™ on Flickr.
I love Berlin, Germany, and every time I am in Berlin since my first visit 27 years ago, I always enjoy visiting the Lustgarten area and seeing this imposing structure of the Berliner Dom.
I was able to take this awesome composite photo by combining a few photos taken with my Windows Phone Lumia 1020 and photmerging them in Photoshop. It is amazing how much detail can be see if you view the 55 MB 11000x7800 pixel image on a giant screen.
© 2014 IMRAN
The Islamic call to prayer, Azaan, recorded during my Umrah during Hajj season, on Friday (Juma) at night prayer (Isha) time. I was able to say all 5 prayers in Mecca on this Friday. A blessed experience that remains with me for a lifetime.
It boggles my mind how a once proud and capable country like Pakistan has worked extra hard to become a nation of self-loathing, miracle-waiting, pedagogue-worshipping, people who refuse to take responsibility for their actions, expect Allah to step in with a magical leader to fix the problems the people themselves cause and accept, while blaming everyone on the planet for the issues.
A majority of my fellow Pakistanis, including supposedly educated ones, are the only people who can detect things that even scanning electron microscopes or the Hubble Telescope cannot see. They see conspiracies everywhere. If there was a Nobel Prize for conspiracy theories, Pakistan would have dozens of recipients of the award.
Sadly, Pakistan is the only country I know of that goes out of its way to malign the only two Pakistanis to win Nobel Prizes. They spit on Dr. Abdus Salam (Physics, contributing to understanding of the forces that make the universe work) because he is from a non-Muslim sect. They despise Malala because obviously she must have won the Nobel Prize (that she deserved to win solo last year even more than shared with someone this year) as a tool of the anti-Islam West and Zionist forces.
These Pakistanis come across sounding like Taliban apologists. The irony is that the first word that was spoken in The Message of God to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was “Iqra” — READ. How tragic that evil Taliban and their Al-Qaeda cohorts malign true Islam by shooting education seeking teenager girls in the head and blowing up children and schools in Pakistan.
Even more hilarious than the funniest monologue by late Robin Williams or any standup comic in the world are the faux-rational questions people ask, or reasons they give, for why Malala won the Nobel Prize. They see a massive global conspiracy of everyone on the planet in what happened. For them, here is the absolute truth which I am certain will make perfect sense to them.
One evening Malala and her family were sitting at dinner and said, how can we get rich and famous.
The father said, hey, why don't we arrange to have you shot in the head and it will all work out great. She said, Awesome!
They flew to Switzerland and had a meeting with the Rothschild family, which obviously leads the group of Jews that run the new world order. They got into a conference call with Benjamin Netanyahu (sadly a real life war criminal) and President Obama, who agreed to fund the project to insult Pakistan.
Then they invited every member of the Nobel Prize committee from Sweden to Switzerland for high tea, to get agreement they would give her the prize as an insult to all Muslims.
A Jewish doctor came and examined Malala’s head and pointed to the exact spot she should be shot with a gun.
She was so happy… knowing she would soon be able to make speeches, after a little bit of a headache of course!
The family then took a briefcase of Dollars from Obama (who happens to have had a Muslim father) and a gun from India’s Modi (sadly, a murderous politician in real life, responsible for a massacre of Muslims in India).
They took out a help wanted ad in Taliban Daily Noose. They picked the applicant to shoot Malala in the head.
The rest, as they say, is (a) history (lesson).
I repeat what I have said many times before. “A nation that does not recognize its own problems, that does not take control of its own destiny, where every single individual knows, believes, and acts to do what he or she can to change and improve their part of society and their nation, is bound to continue into a death spiral. Where stood what was once a great nation all that would remain is a pile of waste, destruction, chaos and blame.”
Until Pakistanis wake up and smell the reality, it starts with the man in the mirror, Pakistan will continue to be populated by people whose entire energy and creativity is spent on coming up with conspiracy theories that are funnier than George W. Bush’s idiotic utterances, or Joe Biden’s retarded faux pas; that are more complex than the inside of Optimus Prime in Transformers; and more creative than the “Final Unifying Theory Of The Universe."
If these people actually believe in all their conspiracy theories, I am told there is more funding available so they can volunteer to have their teenage daughters shot in the head to become famous and rich.
My fellow Pakistanis, please stop being a head case. Stop maligning people that bring far more honor to our country and religion than the Taliban whose actions you seem to justify or the pseudo-religious and populist people you are following as leaders. Stop those who seek to destroy what opportunities we have to become the honest, responsible, educated, hard working, God-fearing but tolerant people our Prophet would smile on, and make Pakistan a country Quaide Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah would be proud of having founded.
What are YOU going to do starting today, to be a better person, and to make your part of Pakistan a better place?
A golden moment in time I captured during my recent visit to London, England, after 22 years.
As the hands of time complete their turns on the Big Ben’s clock face, the face of London continues to evolve.
The changes were so marked in the 22 years between my 2 visits, I can only wonder what someone from an older more gilded age would think, if we could turn back time, or cause a bend in the space and time continuum.
Definitely something to keep a(n) (London) Eye on!
© 2014 IMRAN
When I finally made it back to London after 22 years, I was almost going to miss getting on the London Eye because of a hectic meetings schedule. But at the end of the day of ICANN meetings towards the end of my extremely short stay, I headed to the landmark.
Of course, right after I paid for it is when the otherwise great London weather I was enjoying turned to rain. But, despite that I was able to enjoy new views and viewpoints of London that I had not seen before, including this unique shot showing a big bending stairway, seemingly to heaven, against the majestic backdrop of Big Ben and the magnificent Parliament building.
This is a one-third crop of a WindowsPhone Lumia 1020 photo straightened and enhanced in Photoshop.
© 2014 IMRAN
0-200 mph 30 Seconds, Boeing 777 London Lahore TakeOff - IMRAN™
0-200 mph 30 Seconds, #Boeing 777 #London TakeOff
I captured the takeoff as the PIA Boeing 777 took off on a beautiful English summer day from London Heathrow headed to Lahore, Pakistan.
http://youtu.be/lvvMirdU8zM
© 2014 IMRAN™
#flying #travel #Pakistan #PIA
