Photo Courtesy of Karnataka

Entrepreneur N.R. Narayana Murthy will be the Claremont McKenna College 2012 Graduation Speaker. Mr. Murthy will receive an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws at the ceremony.

Murthy is most well-known as founder and former CEO of Infosys, an information technology business and consulting company based in India.  The company, founded in 1981, today claims revenues of $6.825 billion.  Under Murthy’s leadership, Infosys became the first Indian IT company to be listed on NASDAQ. Murthy introduced the Global Delivery Model, which is largely credited for the success of outsourcing IT services to India.

Over the years, Murthy has received countless honors and awards for his work.  According to his biography on the Infosys website, he was named one of The Economist‘s ten most-admired business leaders in 2005 and topped the Economic Times‘s list of the most powerful CEO’s in India three years in a row.  In 2005, he co-chaired the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos along with six other business leaders, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Murthy advocates for “compassionate capitalism” in his home country of India.  In 2004 interview with BBC, he said, ”We believe that if India has to solve its problem of poverty, we have to embrace capitalism, ensure that jobs are created, and make sure that market-driven policies are accepted.” Today, he sits on boards for the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the United Nations Foundation, and the Ford Foundation.  He also serves as a Trustee for the Rhodes Trust, home of the Rhodes Scholarship program.

Murthy’s daughter, Akshata N. Murty, graduated from CMC in 2002.  She currently serves on Claremont McKenna’s Board of Trustees.

For more information on the 2012 Commencement, please visit the CMC Commencement Page here.

This article was updated at 3:15pm on February 23rd to include information regarding the honorary degree.

Professors, other adults, and your parents probably think that you are really good at using a computer. Based on my none-too-empirical observations of most Claremont McKenna College students, unless you’re an Resident Technology Assistant or Lab Technology Assistant, you probably suck at using a computer. Test number one: Are you reading this article on Internet Explorer? If yes, stop reading this article and download literally any other browser. All of the other options are faster, better designed, have more features, and are more secure. Subtest A: Do you know how to download another browser? If no, I’m not sure I can help you. Ok, now read on.

Should every CMC student be able to configure a VPN or access their computer’s root directory? No. Nobody wants to put the RTAs out of a job. There are, however, a lot of simple things you can do in order to make the time you spend on your computer more efficient, leaving more time for Reddit, or The Vampire Diaries, or, you know, being outside.

This isn’t a Steve Jobs tribute column. There are thousands of good ones. I’m far from the best writer for the Job (pun intended) and far from the most knowledgeable person about his life or Apple’s future. Instead, I’m trying to find a lesson in his life for all of us at Claremont McKenna College. There’s an irony in the fact that this lower middle class, adopted kid who dropped out of Reed, a college that is arguably the antithesis of CMC, managed to build the most valuable company on the world. Jobs was a Buddhist, yet many people credit his personal aggression for enabling him to become the greatest CEO of all time. He never got an MBA and he never worked a day for someone else in his adult life. He never won a Kravis Prize for Entrepreneurship, yet his personal wealth is many, many billions of dollars.

As we feverishly beat down the path towards “success” in whatever our chosen field might be, Steve Jobs is looking down from above, probably wondering what gives us the impression that the path we are taking will lead us there. Here’s the dilemma: would a Stanford MBA be nice to have? Sure, but Steve Jobs proved that you don’t need one to make it in business. Obviously, none of us are Steve Jobs, so we might need that Stanford MBA or law degree or Fulbright or even that awesome summer internship. But at the same time, Jobs’s legacy leaves you wondering, “Do I really need it?” and “Is it really worth it?”

But that’s what Steve Jobs always did. He made us rethink and reevaluate our sense of what is normal. He made us question why we worried about buying a Discman and collecting CDs when we could store thousands of songs on an iPod. He made us consider aesthetics when buying a computer. He asked, “Why shouldn’t a device we use every day be beautiful?” Even if you’re a PC user and you think that that’s overly romantic, you still have to make the argument that you bought a PC instead of a Mac because it offered the same power for less money– because Steve Jobs realized that people would pay more for a computer that looked better. He didn’t invent the cell phone, but he made us realize it’s full potential. Right now I’m writing this column on an iPad, a device which, all other things equal, is really, truly a joy to use.

You don’t have to bow down at the idol of Steve Jobs to recognize what a tremendous talent the world has lost. But as we try to convert our CMC educations into lives of leadership in commerce and government, it is worth reflecting on the qualities that made him the leader he was. Steve Jobs was ruthlessly creative, brilliantly simple, and deceivingly smart. He didn’t follow anyone else’s path to success for a day in his life. Rather, he forged an entirely new path and brought many millions of people along for the ride. It’s my sincere hope that the class of 2012 and the other 850 students I’m privileged to share my last year at CMC with do the same. CMC is an atypical liberal arts college and that’s why we came here. So be an atypical graduate. Be a true leader. You probably won’t be Steve Jobs, but don’t let that stop you from trying.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs

For this column, I originally set out to write a post about apps. Example: “3 Apps for Every Stag” or “5 Apps to Get Me Through Thesis” or “What’s on John Faranda’s iPhone?” Turns out, a lot of people have covered this. My Google search of “top 5 apps” yielded 1.3 billion results. Moreover, I guarantee that any random selection of apps that I picked will be different than anyone else might pick. Even worse, I might miss some fantastic iPhone-only app because I have an Android phone (gasp). Such is the challenge in a world with hundreds of thousands of apps–there are almost literally too many to choose from. So rather than provoking a debate from which I might never recover, I’d like to redirect your attention to one of the truly revolutionary outcomes of the app-ified world: the Mac App Store.

It’s been around since January 2011, but was implemented so subtly that a lot of people–including many CMCers I’ve met–haven’t even heard about it. Simply put, the Mac App Store marks a turning point in how we use software for three reasons: it makes everything “an app”, it’s dead simple, and it sets a precedent. Windows users, bear with me, a similar “Windows Marketplace” is coming as part of Windows 8, so the ideas apply on both sides of the OS canyon.

The original iPhone, you might remember, didn’t have apps. In fact, the first non-Apple developers weren’t able to create apps for the phone until more than a year after the iPhone was first announced. There was no “App Store” to speak of. People still thought of software as “programs”–you bought your program, like Microsoft Office or TurboTax, on a CD, stuck it in the drive, and installed it. You could download it from the internet as well, but most of the “big things” were still coming on CDs. Moreover, most software programs were big lumbering beasts that needed a CD in order to function. The idea of a lightweight piece of technology that did one thing simply and well didn’t exist yet. You bought Counter-Strike and it dominated your computer while you were using it. The iPhone changed everything by demonstrating that it was feasible to make these simple pieces of technology, distribute them for (almost) free over Apple’s platform, charge a buck per download, and still make a significant amount of money.

What was the model that Apple used when building the App Store? The iTunes Music Store. Why? Because it worked really well. Apple had shown that people would pay for music online if the experience was really good and the music was high quality. There’s a premium to be had for not having to worry about BitTorrent or P2P and all the hassle that go along with obtaining music illegally, and Apple captured it. The iPhone App Store, and now the Mac App Store, are further extensions of the same idea. With the creation of the Mac App Store, Apple wants every single piece of software that runs on Apple computers to become an “app”. And in Apple’s dreamworld, the apps are curated so only the ones that don’t have viruses, don’t violate Apple’s terms of services, and don’t copy Apple’s own software get through. With the Mac App Store, everything’s an app, as long as it passes Apple’s gauntlet.

So what do users receive in return for allowing Apple stricter control over what goes on their computers? A better experience and better prices. The app store experience for your desktop programs. Log in with your Apple ID, click the price button to buy, and then click again to install. Everything is automatic after that, and every time you open the app store, all the available updates can be installed in just one click. It’s an exact recreation of the iPhone experience. Apple is operating under the belief that users will pay a premium price for an Apple computer becuase it offers this simplicity and elegance. You don’t have to go through the Windows install pain of downloading the install file, opening it, running “InstallShield Wizard”

EW!

and clicking “next” ten times before you can run your program, you click “install” once and watch as the program hops into your dock and a small red bar above the icon shows you the installation progress.

It’s readily apparent that Apple sees the Mac App Store as its ideal distribution platform for everything installed on your Mac. Apple’s two major software suites, iLife (iMovie, Garage Band, and iPhoto) and iWork (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) are both no longer available in Apple retail stores. They’re up on the Mac App Store as à la carte downloads: $15 for the iLife apps and $20 for the iWork apps. This means that instead of dropping $120 on Microsoft Office, you can pick up Apple’s Word, Excel, and PowerPoint equivalents for half the price. Other flagship Apple software products, like Aperture for advanced photo editing and Final Cut Pro for professional video editing, are also available from the Mac App Store.

Perhaps the sharpest evidence of Apple’s committment to the Mac App Store platform is its chosen method of distribution for Mac OS X Lion, the newest version of its operating system. When Lion was released in July, the sole way to get the update was to install it from the Mac App Store. This meant a tradeoff–users had much less control over how the update went about, and had no hard disk backup of the OS in case something went wrong. In return, most users received the easiest OS upgrade in the history of personal computers. To make the upgrade experience even more enticing, Apple offered Lion for just $30–far cheaper than past Mac upgrades or comparable Windows upgrades. OS X Lion remains the best selling and top grossing “app” on the Mac App Store. Several weeks later, Apple released OS X Lion on a thumb drive in stores and online for $70. Nonetheless, it’s easy to conclude from the pricing and timing of Lion that the Mac App Store is Apple’s preferred method of distribution. The writing on the wall is clear: settle for Apple’s curation and limitations, and in return you’ll receive higher quality apps and a cleaner, more enjoyable purchasing experience. It’s a model that Apple used successfully used for both music and iPhone/iPad apps, and now they’re ready to make it universal.

So where does this leave Windows users? Windows, like Apple, is looking to make the next version of Windows more closely resemble the mobile phone experience its worked so hard to perfect on the Windows Phone. The Windows Marketplace for Mobile is the Windows phone equivalent to the iPhone App Store, and the early previews of Windows 8 draw heavily from the Windows Phone experience. There’s even stronger evidence though: screenshots of Windows 8 show a big icon for a “store” (right). Assuming that Apple demonstrates the viability of the Mac App Store, expect Microsoft to follow suit and try to provide a comparable experience for PC users. In neither case will these platforms replace a large swath of applications that people download from the internet, but they will capture a large much of the revenue in the desktop app market.

One final note: with these platforms, it’s clear that Apple and Microsoft both believe that there is a future for desktop applications. This differs fundamentally from Google’s philosophy that in the future, everything can and will be done on the web. I didn’t include the Google Chrome Web Store in my discussion because it presents a completely different vision–where users run all their applications inside the web browser and the desktop is just a portal to get on the internet (or is eliminated entirely).

Want to read more from Dave Meyer’s #CMC Tech Blog? Check out his technology saavy by reading Castles & Moats in the Tech Business, let him explain Twitter to you and help ease the stress of school with 3 Tech Tools to Simplify College Life.

Life at Claremont McKenna College is simple. We don’t have to worry about cold weather, crowded lecture halls, or sharing our sports teams with Pitzer. Getting work done shouldn’t be complicated either: grab your notes, seclude yourself in a corner in Poppa, and bang your head against the computer until an essay appears. Unfortunately it’s rarely that simple. Sports, extracurriculars, TNC, classes, and beautiful Claremont afternoons tend to get in the way of uninterrupted studying. Matters only get worse if you’re working on a group project.

What’s a Stag to do? Grab a beer and call a Mudder? Maybe. But that’s not the kind of attitude that’s going to get you to that glorious Monday of thesis-completing, Andre-drinking, and fountain-splashing euphoria that every CMCer dreams about. Instead, make your laptop and campus-wide Wi-Fi work for you and use these technology tools to simplify your college life.

First, a disclaimer: I prize true usefulness above all else. Moreover, an application has to be fast, reliable, accessible, and so easy your grandmother could figure it out. I won’t adopt something until I’m certain that it’s an improvement from the way I did it before. Here are three truly useful tools that will make your college life a tad easier:

1. Google Docs

Let’s be honest. Can Google Docs do everything that Microsoft Word can do? No. Can it do almost everything? Yes. For free. Try to convince yourself you’ve used more than eight of the dozens of fonts in Word, a view besides “Print View,” or figured out what “styles” are. You can’t? Exactly. Plus, is looking at this screen for 20 seconds before you can start typing really the best use of your time?

How is Google Docs better? First, you can access it right from your email. Or the Google homepage. Or just about anything else on the internet that Google touches. No need to worry about saving things in “.doc” versus “.docx” or hoping that everything will display the same way whether you’re on your laptop or at Ryal.

Ever had Word crash after you’ve diligently typed out several pages of A-quality work? Or thought you saved only to discover that your file was “corrupted”? Not so with Google Docs. It basically saves any time you pick your hands up from the keyboard. Working on a group project? Why bother saving a Word document, firing up your email, attaching the document, and emailing all your group members? In Google Docs, just click share, type in your group members’ names, and the exact same document is in their inbox in seconds.

Sometime soon, incoming freshmen are going to realize that they can get along just fine witout investing $80 in the Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). That’ll be a scary day for Microsoft, and it’s not so far away. In the meantime, if you have something that absolutely has to be done in Word, just go to File>Download As>Word in your Google Doc, and a Word document version of your Google Doc will download in seconds.

2. Dropbox

Sure, it’s easy to have your group collaborate on a Google Doc instead of passing a Word file around via email. It’s slightly more complicated to share the other material–PDFs, spreadsheets, pictures, and especially videos. CMC has very generous attachment size limits, but try to send more than one hi-res picture or *gasp* a video and your attachment fails. But before you pull out trusty old flash drive, check out Dropbox.

Once you create your Dropbox account, you can download the Dropbox application for your Mac or PC. It places a folder on your computer, right next to “Documents” for Mac users and “My Documents” for Windows, called “Dropbox.” Anything in this folder syncs to the web instantly. Even better, you can do this with much larger files, like video files that you could never email. There are no upload limits for the desktop app. Worried that Mike Malsed won’t let you download Dropbox on his precious Poppa computers? No problem. Everything is available on Dropbox.com and your iPhone/Android.

Best of all, you can create “shared” Dropbox folders between multiple people. It’s a great way to have one simple gathering place for the assorted documents, data, and materials that accumulate when working on a group project.

3. Prezi

There are few things more excruciating in college than sitting through in-class presentations. Not only are most people bad presenters (that’s another article), but they make bad presentations in PowerPoint. After spending five minutes plugging their flash drive in and waiting for their PowerPoint to open, you sit there while they read off their slides.

Prezi changes everything. Prezi is an online presentation maker that allows you to create sliding, zooming, panning, rotating, dynamic presentations that will keep your classmates engaged and amazed. (If they haven’t seen Prezi before, you’ll probably get a few “Whoaaaa, how did you do that??”s too.) Prezi is one of those things that’s easier to show than describe, so check out the embedded Prezi below:

Look complicated? It’s not. After you create your first Prezi, you’ll find yourself wondering why Microsoft had to go and make PowerPoint so complicated. Plus, it saves automatically and is accessible anywhere that has an internet connection, just like Google Docs. If you don’t owe it to yourself to try it out, at least you owe it to your classmates not to create another abysmally boring slideshow.

People come up with new ideas and new technologies to make our work more efficient, effective, and effortless. Not all new technology does this, but these three applications do. Plus, they’re all free.

Every year since 2005, a group of about a dozen Claremont McKenna students spend a week in San Jose where they have the opportunity to visit and network with various Silicon Valley executives at leading companies in the area. This year, students brushed shoulders with CEOs, partners, and other top management at nine companies in the Silicon Valley area. The trip, which costs ITAB over $1,800 per student, is provided free to participants.

ITAB, the Information Technology Advisory Board, is an organization of CMC-affiliated executives in the technology industry working to advance the role of technology at CMC. Since 2005, the organization has sponsored a week-long trip to Silicon Valley. The trip was started in 2005 by ITAB Chair Bart Evans ‘70.

Mr. Evans started the ITAB trip to help establish Silicon Valley as one of CMC’s “centers of gravity.” “The current centers of gravity for CMC alumni are LA, New York, DC, San Francisco,” Mr. Evans explained to the group of 15 students who attended this year’s trip. That is, CMC alumni are concentrated in a few industries and geographic areas. “The world is getting smaller—much of our country’s business is being exported, but Silicon Valley is one of the few places [in the US] where people are still creating and innovating.” Mr. Evans wants to add the technology industry, specifically Silicon Valley, to CMC’s radar.

During the trip, ITAB pays for all student expenses—a week-long stay at the Fairmont Hotel San Jose, transportation, food, and miscellaneous costs. ITAB also provides each student with calling cards (business cards), a leather-bound portfolio, and tote bags to carry the “shwag” we pick up throughout the week—an “I’m Feeling Lucky” t-shirt from Google, a chunk of Silicon rock from Applied Materials, a bottle-opener that plays the “Yahoo!” jingle, etc.

Throughout the week, students are shuttled to various companies in Silicon Valley from Apple Headquarters in Cupertino to Google Headquarters in Mountain View (plug for Google: free Naked Juices and food everywhere!). CMC Chief Technology Officer, Professor Cynthia Humes accompanies the students on the trip, as her office is responsible for planning the trip.

“It’s a lot of work to plan the trip, but we get better at it each year the program is in operation,” said Dr. Humes. “For example, we hope to visit a gaming company like Electronic Arts next year in addition to this year’s lineup of companies.”

ITAB is also actively recruiting new members to help defray the costs of the trip. “The current cost is about $1,800-$2,000 per student, with students paying for their own transportation to San Jose. We want to expand our resources to be able to pay for each student’s transportation as well,” said Humes.

The ITAB trip (and the similar Financial Economics Institute-sponsored Networking Trip) is an underutilized gem at CMC. Within days after the trip was over, students had landed interviews and even jobs at the companies visited. What one learns in an economics or computer science class makes for useful technical skills, but only opportunities like these prepare students for the real world.

My highlights from the 2008 ITAB trip:

-Presentation by Scott Mauvais ’90 at Microsoft. Mr. Mauvais gave us the down low on why Microsoft isn’t threatened by Apple and a few other “do not repeat this outside of this room” remarks. I will not repeat them. We also got to raid the company store.

-Julie Cox ’07 gave an informative presentation about what consultants, especially IT consultants, do on a day to day basis.

-Listening to John Volk ’70, Partner in the Venture Capital Group at PricewaterhouseCoopers recount his decision to go to law school (“This was nearly 40 years ago… we didn’t know what was what… Duke was the best [law school] I got into, so I jumped in a car and drove across the country.”)

-Ashwin Navin ’99, President and Co-Founder of BitTorrent delivering the keynote address at the Alumni Association-hosted ITAB Reception at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. In a chat with students after his speech, Ashwin recalled how cool he felt living in Auen Hall when it was the only dorm with high speed internet hookups in every room.

-Weston Presidio, a venture capital firm located on a pier in San Francisco. Jim McElwee ’74, a partner at Weston Presidio, talked about the hardships and benefits of venture capital firms.

-Todd Teresi ’94, Senior VP at Yahoo!, brought in legal and marketing experts from the company to talk to us about censorship in China, redefining Yahoo!’s brand, and other topics. I was pretty unconvinced that Yahoo! would grow or survive much longer after our visit until recently.

-Discussion with Bill MacGowan ’79, Executive Vice President, and Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystem. Mr. Schwartz is a legend in Silicon Valley and his blog is one of the most widely read in the industry.

-Apple presentation by Scott Gilfoil, head of campus recruiting. Mr. Gilfoil gave us an entertaining pitch to work for Apple (and buy Apple products).

-Joe Pon ’89 and George Davis ’80 at Applied Materials. Joe Pon gave us a tour of Applied’s labs, including chip manufacturing and research clean rooms where we had to take off our shoes and wear booties. Mr. Pon also discussed our country’s energy crisis and gave me a clearer view of solar panel technology and alternative energy sources.

-A visit to Infosys in Fremont, CA convinced me to apply for an internship in Bangalore, India this summer. I guess I’ll see how that one turns out…

-Jonathan Rosenberg ’83, Senior Vice President at Google, first fanned out 15 business cards, smiled, and said “E-mail me. I WILL help you.” Mr. Rosenberg also recounted some of his favorite CMC stories and advice for success in business.