Code/Decode

Narain is the founder & CEO for 360 Degree Interactive, a web services firm based in Chennai, India. This blog is about his personal views on Web 2.0, RoR, Social networking,Digital media, interactive advertising, SaaS, Service Oriented Architecture, India Inc, rural education, Web standards, mobile 2.0 and more.

Saturday, February 16

Edgeeconomy by Umair Haque



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Tuesday, January 22

Secret History of Sillicon Valley

There is an interesting talk by Steve Blank in Google Tech talks



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Monday, January 21

Data Portablity

Come across this neat video showing the importance of data portability. Check this out.


DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.

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Thursday, January 17

Back from a year's hiatus

Its' exactly been a year i have taken a hiatus from blogging in English. While, my tamil blogging was also took a beating, i was writing over on that blog. Over a period of one year, i have learn a lot things, interacted with people, worked on multiple assignments and so on. Lets start this years' first post with a bang.

In the last year, i was keenly interested in the economics part of the world. Been reading things like Freaknomics, Undercover Economist and tracking a lot of economics blogs to understand the changing nature of culture, capitalism, markets and people. From Freaknomics, i am writing actually a series of articles over there in my tamil blog.

The book got my attention this time while surfing Landmark is this book. The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism

See their presentation of their theory & real world scenarios.



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Tuesday, January 2

Emarketer's predictions for 2007

In a series of various predications happening in various domains, i would like to point on the directions on the online media & advertising scene, compiled by Emarketer
* Online Ad Spending Will Hit $20 Billion
* Some Money and Lots of Hype for Online Video Advertising
* Social Networks Are Set for a $1 Billion Windfall
* Downloadable Games Will Get Hotter
* Thirty-Seven Million Strong: A 'Minority' Bigger than Canada
* Mobile TV Arrives
* US B2C E-Commerce Will Cruise Past $200 Billion
* The Retail Power of Word-of-Mouth
* Broadband Services Will Matter as Much as Speed
* DVRs Pump Up TV Viewing
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Tuesday, December 26

Wikiasari mania roundup

Jimmy Wales, the founder of wikipedia is launching a search engine powered by people. The new wikia search engine project is named 'Wikiasari' and will apply 'crowd sourcing' features to search engine results, letting individual users rank sources of informatin and their relevancy to a particular query. Dave Winer has some good logic in his post congratulating Jimmy. O'Reilly talks about this as artificial artificial intelligence. To me it makes sense, but again, the marketability needed to be tested. Wikipedia in years have gone from nothing to something to reckon with. Every possible search for a query, wikipedia entry comes in the first page of search result, showing the enormous potential and content rich information it provides. SearchMarketingGurus has slammed this as a wikisari mania. Niall Kennedy has the most sensible article in this mania rush.





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Sunday, December 24

Claim your OpenID



Get your OpenID first. Then go about read this post. OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity. Someday back, when i was researching on the Technorati & other things for work, i stumbled across OpenID, and din't take much time for me to claim my identity in a minute. This was one of the few things the real "web 2.0" should provide, along the lines of Semantic Web. Off late, i am a firm believer that if not 2007, the near future is going to be of more semantics in the web and the way we interact with the web.

The option of OpenID also introduces a lot of web-native things for us. First and foremost, you don't have to remember all the user names & passwords which we encounter with plethora of websites / applications we are working with. Sorta single sign-in like Microsoft Live ID or Google Account ID to sign respective services. What is a distinguishing feature with OpenID is that, it is application neutral and YOU OWN YOUR IDENTITY, not Google, not Microsoft and not some Web 2.0 sites out there to catch your attention.

There are already many sites start supporting OpenID login including Technorati and Wikipedia. Learn more about OpenID here. With OpenID, there are lot of things opening up for us in our digital identity. I have written about FOAF, and OpenID is a logical, if not the bigger step in the right direction of semantic web. What i am looking at now is if Visa or Mastercard or any other neutral organisation can create a Open account number, something similar to Paypal account, then it would be a bigger logical step. The account number can be integrated with my OpenID and anyone with an OpenSearch API, should be able to add meta data on top of it. With this, the problem of working with multiple bank accounts is solved.

With this integration, it is easier for us to map the credit worthiness of the digital identity, and the payment gateway integration should be much easier and need not be as complicated as it look today. This also provides, like in the physical world, people will pay more attention to their digital identity. I think, with semantic web around the corner and multiple data delivery options like RSS are going to mainstream, its time to think afresh about the way we interact in our daily digital life. Things aside, I urge open standards to be put across the web for people to take the best advantage in terms of distribution of information, content and commerce.


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