Freeconomics

Welcome to freeconomics

Never in history has so much innovation been offered to so many for so little. The world’s most exciting businesses – technology, transport, media, medicine and finance – are increasingly defined by the word “free”. Whereas WalMart, the world’s largest retailer, promises “everyday low prices”, entrepreneurs and ultra-competitive incumbents develop business models predicated on providing more for free. It is a difficult proposition to beat.

Bootstrapper's Bible - Seth Godin

Seth Godin's Bootstrapper's bible is available at change this. Download this timeless masterpiece

Technorati Tags: sethgodin, bootstrap, startup, entrepreneur, ebook, technology, web2.0

30 IT Trends for 2007

CIO Insight has given a laundry list about trends for 2007. Full article here

Strategy
1. Process improvement will be job No. 1
2. IT works on closing the sale
3. Companies make their Web sites more engaging
4. Customer service gets a tune-up
5. Companies put their mounds of data to work
6. Information governance gains momentum
7. CIOs strive to be strategic

Management
8. The division between IT and business will diminish
9. CIO compensation keeps climbing
10. IT organizations will keep growing
11. CIOs struggle to find business-savvy technologists
12. Outsourcing changes IT management
13. Outsourcing growth slows
14. Offshoring shifts from India
15. Companies invest in IT leadership
16. Demonstrating ROI will remain a struggle

Security and Risk
17. No abatement of IT security threats
18. Security concerns turn users away from Windows
19. Security morphs into risk management
20. Compliance achieves what government intended
21. Compliance spurs financial process improvement

Technology
22. The move to a new architecture marches on
23. Enterprise applications start losing their luster
24. Data quality demands attention
25. IT reluctantly embraces Web 2.0
26. IT innovation loses traction
27. Business process management services and software will frustrate users
28. For business intelligence, the best is yet to come
29. IT organizations start going green
30. Dissatisfaction with vendors is on the rise

Technorati Tags: technology, trends, security, IT, enterprisesystems, web2.0, CIO

Search Advertising Fact Pack

Advertising Age has released Search Advertising Fact Pack 2006 Highlights

• Forrester indicates $7 Billion business this year
• Search Engines share - Google (44.1%), Yahoo Sites (28.7%), MSN-Microsoft sites (12.5%), Time Warner (5.6%), Ask network (5.5%), All other (3.6%)
• Under Business Information, Yahoo Finance (32.6%) is way above from their next competitor MSN Money (12.5%)
• The average Pay-per-click costs around $3.92 in the third quarter and $4.75 in the first quarter

Web site optimization strategies for 2007

• mRSS - media RSS, the syndication vehicle for video
• Microcontent
• Blog PR
• Social media optimization
• Taggging
• Google Co-op
• Wikis
• Longtail optimization

Technorati Tags: searchadvertising, technology, interactive advertising, google, yahoo, msn, adwords, adsense

Studying the Web

Excerpts from the interview of Tim Berners Lee on Studying the Web:

"'The whole idea of the original Web was social, but what we have created is a microscopic infrastructure where the little things themselves are not quite sufficient in understanding the big things,' Berners-Lee said yesterday at a press conference announcing the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), a new project that will produce the tools for better understanding the Web and garner insight from the results. 'We have a duty to understand all the beautiful, wonderful things we are producing and make them better,' said Berners-Lee who also is director of the World Wide Web Consortium, researcher at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and a professor at the University of Southampton. This collaborative research project will create a new Web-science curriculum at the University of Southampton and at MIT."

Webscience, Technology Review, Web

What makes Sillicon Valley special?

via O'Reilly rader, about how Prof. Bill Miller dissects the DNA of Sillicon Valley

1. Universities and research institutes which interact with industry

A key point from Miller's perspective is that having great universities around isn't enough, they need to be a functioning part of the community. Clearly this means having alumni who go out to form companies, but it needs to also include a way for the university insiders to participate in innovation. Taking the case of Stanford, Miller points out that there are revenue sharing incentives in place which encourage schools and departments to allow their professors to take part in professional activities.

2. Meritocratic and risk-taking culture

Miller points out that as compared to much of the world, Silicon Valley relatively devoid of old boys clubs which act as gatekeepers. If your idea is good enough, you can generally get financing, deals, employees, etc., here. Additionally, Silicon Valley is relatively tolerant of failure, with some entrepreneurs succeeding only after many failed attempts. This is something that is in stark contrast with much of the world.

3. Global linkages

For any number of reasons, be it world-class universities or the high quality of life, people from all over the world move to Silicon Valley. This creates a flux of people with a variety knowledge bases and personal connections. Miller claims that it is in this mixing of knowledge that new ideas are formed and that in the unique network of relationships that they are able to be realized.

Asia's Mobile mashups

Asia's mobile mashup in Businessweek article

..the combination of disparate features into one device isn't just a top-down phenomenon pushed by carriers and manufacturers. Consumers often take the lead, playing with user-generated content in myriad ways. They can seamlessly "mash up" or combine, say, music or video from various sources and integrate applications from their personal computers and printers with their handsets.

The feature-power of mobile phones and the creative melding of content and software applications are bound to increase as 3G mobile handsets and ever-speedier wireless networks continue to be rolled out across the region. Roh Jun Seok, a researcher at state-funded Korea Culture Content Agency in Seoul, notes that plenty of consumers are already using their handsets to shoot digital photos and video clips and then transferring them to PC-generated home pages and blogs.

Mobile, Mashup, Technology, Businessweek, Asia

Google - the OS for Advertising

Om Malik argues about Google's frenzy expansion for advertising

Just like Microsoft’s Windows (or any other OS) manages all the hardware and software resources of a computer, Google’s Ad/OS will similarly manage all the critical components of an ad campaign, regardless of media type. But instead of controlling and allocating memory, Google’s Ad/OS will allocate ad budgets… instead of prioritizing system requests, controlling input & output devices, Google’s Ad/OS will enable ad inventory buying & placement… instead of facilitating networks and managing files, Google’s Ad/OS will optimize media buying across the spectrum & manage creative placement.

Google’s Ad/OS will be used to manage and buy ads at many of the top new media publishers like MySpace, YouTube, AOL, Ask, and Google itself, of course, along with hundreds of thousands of blogs. It will also be used to buy ads in the NY Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and all sorts of local papers owned by Tribune, Gannett and McClatchy… not to mention radio stations all over the country that are owned by Clear Channel and other radio conglomerates. And if Google executes on its plan, soon all the major broadcast TV and cable networks will join in to make their ad inventory available via Google’s Ad/OS.

Google, Advertising, Om malik, Online advertising, Online media

Zamzar - Free online file conversion

via TechCrunch. If you say the one thing i wanted all these days from my browser, it is this. I was always longing for a service like Zamzar -
to do file conversions of all types. The list is seriously exhaustive and worth considering for your day-to-day operations. I The operation is too simple. Step 1.Upload your file Step 2. Select the file format in which you need to convert the file. Give your email ID and that's it. The download link comes to your email and it works perfectly without a glitch. You can't loose track anywhere. Simple,effective and powerful service to use with. Kudos to the team which is created.

Technology, Zamzar, fileconversion Web 2.0

Moral Minds - An Evolutionary Theory of Right and Wrong - New York Times

Religion & Teachers are only catalysts, yet every human being comes with his own set of moral grammar embedded in. A fascinating research by Dr. Hauser on the book 'Moral Minds'. Excerpts from the NYTimes article - An Evolutionary Theory of Right and Wrong - New York Times

The proposal, if true, would have far-reaching consequences. It implies that parents and teachers are not teaching children the rules of correct behavior from scratch but are, at best, giving shape to an innate behavior. And it suggests that religions are not the source of moral codes but, rather, social enforcers of instinctive moral behavior.

Both atheists and people belonging to a wide range of faiths make the same moral judgments, Dr. Hauser writes, implying “that the system that unconsciously generates moral judgments is immune to religious doctrine.”

Science religion humanbehavior nytimes primatology hauser moralminds

Elephants and Evolution

Excerpts from Elephants and Evolution - How the Landscape is Changing for Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Adobe:

"The days of purely desktop-based applications are clearly numbered, but so are the days of exclusively web-based apps. Both Microsoft and Google are racing toward a happy medium. However, they aren't the only players in town, not by a long shot. Both Mozilla and Adobe are well positioned to take advantage of desktop and web convergence. Companies offering solutions that connect desktop and web apps together will get their chance too. Calendaring and project management are two obvious choices, but every productivity app deserves to be re-examined."