Code/Decode

Edgeeconomy by Umair Haque

2008-02-16T12:00:00.001+05:30

tag: bubblegeneration, socialmedia, technology, future, media, branding, advertising, attentioneconomy, edgeeconomy, harvard

Secret History of Sillicon Valley

2008-01-22T13:57:00.000+05:30

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

tag: technology. google, silliconvalley, ecosystem, internet, web2.0, mobile, history, steveblank

Data Portablity

2008-01-21T16:50:00.000+05:30

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

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

Back from a year's hiatus

2008-01-17T14:34:00.000+05:30

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.

| View | Upload your own

tag: technology, freaknomics, piracy, world, economics, capitalism, youth-culture, india

Emarketer's predictions for 2007

2007-01-02T21:32:00.000+05:30

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

Technorati Tags: onlineadvertising, socialmedia, webtv, gamin, mobiletv, predictions2007

Wikiasari mania roundup

2006-12-26T09:58:00.000+05:30

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.

Technorati Tags: wikipedia, wikiasari, google, jimmywales, crowdsourcing

Claim your OpenID

2006-12-24T15:58:00.000+05:30

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.

Technorati Tags: openid, webstandards, semanticweb, web2.0, FOAF, distributed computing

Economy of abudance & distributed product//service architecture

2006-12-05T09:38:00.000+05:30

Om Malik points out to an excellent article written by Kevin Maney for USA Today. Kevin argues about a new world order, taking Amazon's web services (AWS) as an example. Although to me, i am unsure, whether the other companies listed there will take up this suggestion and execute things like in "Web services", it makes a good reading & a pointer to a "Longtail" world, neatly summarized by Chris Anderson.

It makes a lot more sense today, since with a 6 Billion population, and an average of about 0.01% of people sharing a particular interest, than we have a user base of around 6 million people for that product or service. Distributed products/services, based out of existing infrastructure is a new way of looking at creating 'market niches' for a generation, which is born with mobile, web and sensors around. Creating 'platforms' as against stand alone products are going to be the rage for the next generation of mankind. Web creates the headway first, than probably will be followed by other industries in the due course. Sharing ATMs in India, can be talked upon as a tiny step taken by non-web industries to "create, share & use" philosophy. If Amazon web services (AWS) created the "virtual startup, virtual entreprenurship" era, YouTube created the "distribute anywhere, everywhere media, Gmail created "no inbox full ever, creeping storage data", as Chris Andresson, clearly puts we are entering an "Economy of abundance".

Kevin for his part, neatly summarized some of the ideas, which is worth looking at in a way AWS does for the web.

if executives at Hormel Foods thought about their business the way Bezos thinks about Amazon, Hormel could create a meat platform. If I have a great idea for a new kind of sausage, I could use Hormel to make it, store it and ship it, while I sold it from a website. I could create a sausage company and never step foot in a rendering plant.
Maybe this trend would not be such bad news for GM. It has excess capacity and nearly 100 years of manufacturing expertise. If it created a car making platform, GM could enable the creation of dozens of new niche-market car companies, all using GM to make and distribute their designs.

I'm not saying the Hormel or GM examples are likely to happen, but some company will do something along those lines. It's not that far afield from today's contract manufacturers in Asia, which make batches of cellphones or toys or shoes on demand. Except Amazon's concept suggests a new level of sophistication and ease-of-use. Point, click and make a product to sell to the world.

Technorati Tags: aws, amazon, longtail, web, mobile, chisanderson, usatoday, ommalik, gm, google, philosophy, businessdirection

Google's 5 products

2006-12-05T08:42:00.000+05:30

Nick Carr has beautifully summarized the "art of simplicity" from Google.

Google Search ("Google" goes back to meaning just search: for all information types, on all devices, personalized)
AdMarket (a unified market place for buyers and sellers, spanning web text, web video, web banners, print, radio, TV)
YouTube (YouTube expands from video to become the common interface for all media sharing)
YouTools (what Apps for Your Domain morphs into, with different tool sets for businesses, families, universities, and hospitals)
YouFile (a personal information management service, covering health data, finances, etc.)

Technorati Tags: google, technology, businessmodel, direction, nickcarr, article

In praise of the third place

2006-12-04T08:58:00.000+05:30

James Surowiecki's great piece of wisdom about what is important - No.1 player in the domain and hurting your profitability or No.3 player yet make decent enough profits. James incidentally is the author of "The Wisdom of Crowds". Link via Bokardo

A recent survey of the evidence on market share by J. Scott Armstrong and Kesten C. Green found that companies that adopt what they call “competitor-oriented objectives” actually end up hurting their own profitability. In other words, the more a company focusses on beating its competitors, rather than on the bottom line, the worse it is likely to do. And a study of the performance of twenty major American companies over four decades found that the ones putting more emphasis on market share than on profit ended up with lower returns on investment; of the six companies that defined their goal exclusively as market share, four eventually went out of business.
The point is that business is not a sporting event. Victory for one company doesn’t mean defeat for everyone else. Markets today are so big—the global video-game market is now close to thirty billion dollars—that companies can profit even when they’re not on top, as long as they aren’t desperately trying to get there. The key is to play to your strengths while recognizing your limitations. Nintendo knew that it could not compete with Microsoft and Sony in the quest to build the ultimate home-entertainment device. So it decided, with the Wii, to play a different game entirely. Some pundits are now speculating,ironically, that the simplicity of the Wii may make it a huge hit.Nintendo wouldn’t complain if that happened. But, in the meantime,third prize is looking a lot better than steak knives.

Technorati Tags: wisdomofcrowds, newyorker, profitablity, businessmodels, simplicity, bokardo, valuation

FOAF: Step in Semantic Web

2006-12-02T08:17:00.000+05:30

As a Web 2.0 junkie, there are many things we can speak about loud. There buries the truth of "realistic web" but verbal skyscrapers of what's possible with Web 2.0, and how Web 2.0 will change the world. Today's web is a massive network of disgruntled pieces of information. We have just started to assemble the vast information and data in varied structures like XML,RDF, Wikis and more. Semantic Web is the realistic, true genuine answer to the growth and potential to web. Semantic Web as a concept which is detailed in this TR Article, goes beyond traditional way of connecting networks to machines, but moves beyond to make some "real smart meaning" out of the network. MIT is working on this interesting concept of 'Piggy Bank'.

While reading this article [What comes after Web 2.0 - Technology Review] , i bounced upon FOAF, and really is impressed with the direction it takes towards 'Semantic Web'.

FOAF (Friend of a Friend) is a project for machine-readable modelling of homepage-like profiles and social networks. At the heart is a schema for defining relationships between people, and various attributes such as name, gender and interests. To enable linking, each record includes unique identifiers for each friend.

Instead of breaking your head on the markup, schema part of it, there are already neat FOAF-a-matic auto generators available to create to publish FOAF profiles in your blog. This to me looks like what XFN, which was taken seriously couple of years before by Jeffery Zeldman and other designers, whom i know. Closely coming to the same is Microformats hcard.

FOAF, XFN, hCard among other things are needed to create a larger, dataset of information portability on the web. There will definitely be issues like privacy protection. To be fair and honest, the moment you install, Google Desktop, your privacy is already been sold to Google :) What is needed is a structured, disciplined way of sharing information across multiple systems and mediums. Semantic web should be taken as a concept, not just pertaining to the "browser-centric" version of the web, rather it's a larger-than-pc-enabled web to a more detailed distributed databank. There will always be debates, arguments for and against for everything of this sort. But what is more important is that there can be a universal identifier for information, enabling true, real semantic web, where the web will be smart enough to understand about "Me" and deliver relevant results to my contacts. It also needed to be considered seriously to make Web 2.0 applications, more 'web native' and deliver better communication, than merely an Ajaxified user interaction.

Technorati Tags: semantic web, FOAF, microformats, Web2.0, XFN, technology, futureweb

Heads will be raising!

2006-12-01T17:57:00.000+05:30

These heads are our rebranded logo for TracBac. TracBac is a web-based visual collaboration application which allows visual designers, creative professionals to collaborate with their clients visually. Having been in development for months, we are unveiling it slowly with an invite-only signups with selected designers. So, if you are a designer, working for an advertising agency, creative professional, UI designer, web designer and whatever you do with Photoshop, Illustrator, Paintshop Pro, Coral Draw, GIMP and so on, sign up for an invite.

I promise, you won't regret for giving away your email ID :)

Freeconomics

2006-11-27T18:20:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-25T18:19:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-23T22:40:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-16T09:15:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-13T19:38:00.000+05:30

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?

2006-11-13T18:27:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-13T09:16:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-10T16:50:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-06T15:55:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-04T10:07:00.000+05:30

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

2006-11-02T10:29:00.000+05:30

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."

Art of bullshiting

2006-10-26T09:52:00.000+05:30

There is a huge voice out there about a company which is opening a office in Second Life called crayon, located at a virtual location called crayonville. One of the founders have a blog post and described what their business & business model is;

We’re not an agency nor a consulting practice as is traditionally defined. What we are is whatever you want or need us to be.

I like to think of us as a true mash-up that combines the best in traditional and new thinking about marketing, advertising and PR.

We’re a solution provider. We’re an extension of your team. Consider us a new breed of partner – one that keeps everyone honest and on the right path. Our client is not the consumer: our client is the truth.

Need an example for marketing craptalk or art of bullshit, this is one. With its lengthier blog post, Neil hasn't even figured out what exactly they are. Nick Carr was spot on in this.

What is more important is not opening an office in a virtual place, that can definitely be a marketing hype to bring in some initial hits into your website, but a solid fundamental and problem solving capabilities put across your organisation. Nick is right in his post, that will the truth pays the invoices. Its not even about the invoices, but more about the financial business model itself. What to my mind comes is, crayon seems to do all sorts of things for all sorts of requirement for all sorts of people. I am unsure whether bullfighter can trash these sentences as jargonish dump, since it uses simple english words, yet so confusing & so vast. They are to me, doing a chinese math, than an actual business model. Remember great companies are built by doing a focussed act and not doing chinese math.

secondlife crayon Technology Advertising PR Marketing

Microfinance & helping poorest citizens

2006-10-19T10:31:00.000+05:30

Microfinance's future in Knowledge @ wharton - Excerpts

There is evidence at all levels that microfinance is growing dramatically. As of the end of 2004, according to the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report, more than 3,000 microcredit institutions reported reaching over 92 million clients, two thirds of whom "were among the poorest when they received their first loan." (Microfinance includes microcredit as well as other related services such as insurance and savings accounts.) In addition, there has been a sharp increase in institutions -- such as New York-based WWB -- that advise microfinance agencies. CitiBank is partnering with WWB to train microfinance institution managers.

microfinance society world Technology

Is AWS is a game changer?

2006-10-02T17:01:00.000+05:30

Sadagopan asks a question about Amazon's Web Services are Game changers? I am unsure about saying this as Game Changer per se. But again, Amazon is the smartest company presently cashing on the Web 2.o frency. Unlike your post, i dont think, Enterprises are not going to shy away completely from the offersing of Amazon. More and More enterprises [Amazon S3 even lists Microsoft in a case study]are now under tremendous pressure to deliver value. Managing huge infrastructure itself is a big job by itself. If a vendor like Amazon manages things for them, i think, they can outsource large volumes of data to Amazon. I strongly foresee, Amazon comes with an enterprise offering sometime later. The other company which can utilise the same is Google.

With Google Mini, they are already providing "box-packed" products to enterprises. I wont be surprised, if Google comes with their own way of utilising their data centers & infrastructure somewhere connected along with their lines of activities. Think about this, Google now gives you email, rss feeds,storage [the rumoured GDrive], payment facilities, [Google Checkout], writely, spreadsheets and lots n lots of SDKs for developers and end customers. How long will that take Google to customise a solution similar to EC2 or S3 which will be tightly integrated with their offerings. The best part then will be Google has to release low cost computing which will be seamlessly be integrated with their wi-fi plans for selected regions.

What is more important here is that with S3 & EC2 things are going to be lot more liberated from vendors. We can certainly look forward of things like Coghead , Ning or Sampa which will completely alter the development landscape if done well, where these services will certainly play a major role in their offing. For example, i am no longer using Thunderbird and i have switched over to Google Hosted Email service. This allows my office to completely work anywhere, without the issues of restricting our emails in a single machine. Every email service provider gives a web based access, the case in point is, Google's infrastructure and its distributed computing architecture, which makes it unique and worth to be in.

The future of computing is not definitely going to be on PCs, so the data delivery & recoverability needs to be centered around somewhere in the servers. This one single factor, will be the key pusher for these webservices or infrastructure based technologies.

Google Amazon S3 Technology Webservices Ning Coghead Sampa Distributed Services

Chinese Math

2006-10-01T19:39:00.000+05:30

Self Reminder: Dont' ever get into this Chinese Math trap :)

Technology Review Innovator 2006

2006-09-30T23:00:00.000+05:30

Technology Review (TR35) 2006 Innovator's nominees are inspiring, reviting, exciting & all the more important contribution to humanity. The people listed are not looking at things from the traditional perspective, and bring in fresh insights into age old problems & in some cases like Utkan Demirci, completely revolutionise the thinking process. I think, the bios of the under 35 innovators are really inspiring. Known names to me like Joshua Schachter [del.icio.us], Jason Fried [37Signals],Micheal Raab [Agrivida] among an array of interesting, exciting people. Worth a read.

innovation Technology Technology Review innovators

Hiatus

2006-09-01T12:42:00.000+05:30

I am taking a hiatus for official reasons for next 45 Days. So dont expect things happening over here. Come back by Oct. 15th expect some really big announcements.

Six Webs

2006-07-23T10:46:00.000+05:30

Bill Joy, the inventor of Berkeley Unix, the founder of Sun Microsystems, and now a partner at Kleiner Perkins talks about 'Six Webs'. Excerpts from the Technology Review blog:

Bill Joy's six Webs are:
1. The Near Web: This is the Internet that you see when you lean over a screen - like a laptop.
2. The Here Web. This is the Internet that is always with you because you accesses it through a device you always carry - like a cell phone.
3. The Far Web. This is the Internet you see when you sit back from a big screen - like a television or a kiosk.
4. The Weird Web. This is the Internet you access through your voice and which you listen to - say when you are in your car, or when you talk to an intelligent system on your phone, or when you ask your camera a question. Joy concedes that this Web does not yet fully exist.
5. B2B. This is an Internet which does not possess a consumer interface, where business machines talk to other business machines. It is chatter of corporations amongst themselves when they do not care about their human drones.
6. D2D. This is the Internet of sensors deployed in meshes networks, adjusting urban systems for maximum efficiency. This Web also does not yet exist. Joy says that it will embed machine intelligence in ordinary, daily life

Technology Web Billjoy

Coming end of Enterprise software shakeup

2006-07-02T10:13:00.000+05:30

Strategy + Business has a nice article on how Enterprise software is heading for a shakeup [Reg. required]

Five years ago, 11 companies controlled 90 percent of the databasemarket; now only six do. In business applications, the trend is evenmore pronounced: Seventy percent of the market is now controlled byjust 35 companies, compared with more than 120 companies in 2000. Suchhigh-profile deals as Oracle’s recent acquisitions of Siebel andPeopleSoft have left only two vendors to choose from, Oracle and SAP,for top-tier integrated suites.

Technology Web2.0 Business Enterprise Systems Collaboration

We the people!

2006-06-23T08:52:00.000+05:30

Back from a month's hiatus. Was running and life spent on Airports and lounges and business meetings. From the rain dipping Bangalore to "jaane tho" Mumbai to "aasaal-lam-alaikum" Dubai, Sharjah to mountainous Muscat to "thalai vazhai elai sappdu podu" Mayavaram, life just runs on every possible transportation except ships.

Business 2.0 lists worlds' top 50 People who matter. You can find the all time favourite names to new geeks in the list. What surprised & excited me is the No. 7 - The Emerging Global Middle Class.

From the excerpt:
The Emerging Global Middle Class
China, India, Russia, Brazil, and elsewhere

Why They Matter: According to Goldman Sachs, in the next decade, more than 800 million people in China, India, Russia, and Brazil will qualify as middle class -- meaning they will earn more than $3,000 per year. To put the figure in context, that's more than the combined population of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. These ambitious, well-educated workers represent both a threat and an opportunity for corporate America. On the one hand, thanks to global competition, they're bringing brutal cost pressure to bear on U.S. products. Yet at the same time, these newly affluent consumers have money to spend -- more than $1 trillion a year, according to most estimates -- and they generally aspire to own American brands and other high-quality imports. They're looking forward to enjoying a more comfortable way of life, and huge opportunities await the global firms that figure out how to deliver that at a price these workers can afford.

Certainly People rocks! Most important factor is finally Corporate America and the developed nations accept in public the raising middle class and got to accept the "rule of the land" in these diversed geographies. Good to the see the BRIC report finally comes in effect.

When MS will learn?

2006-05-19T18:35:00.000+05:30

The reason, although i have differences of opinion with Apple on so many things, the one thing stood out for Apple, is their care for customers. The usability & GUI design is what makes Apple raises above the rest. My hotmail account now is Windows Live Mail. I really dont know which genius has designed the user interface for Win. Live mail. The hover on the link gives a white background and the text is on white. Even the guy who starts learning Web design tomorrow knows about the usefulness of contrast & colors. For Microsoft, i believe, they will spend some million dollars in this user interface testing and finally lands up on this. Thumbs down MS.

Shantanu Oak - FOSS / SMS application

2006-05-13T10:40:00.000+05:30

Shantanu Oak has in detail explained about using yubsub to create SMS applications compare to traditional costly SMS applications with 4 digit shortcodes and other information. It's an interesting experiment to work with and being in the FOSS model, i believe this has some serious implications on traditional pricy applications. Seems interesting and great! but again, with all the free software application, this also has a some serious implications in terms of trustability.

Barcamp Mumbai - First preview

2006-05-13T10:00:00.000+05:30

Landed in the IIT Powai the place which hosts barcampmumbai. The place is seriously cool and works perfect for such a conference, so relentlessly. My presentation is kept at around 12.00 AM, let's see it was supposed to start at 9.00 with the welcome address and i can only see a handful of people over here and the wi-fi is not configuring yet. What's fun without all these glitches in running a barcamp

People are laughing and i think i am heading for some beautiful presentation. It's 10 AM now and we are still figuring out the way things are in terms of Wi-fi. It's good to see some young faces & people speak out Web 1.0 & pulling the legs of the the sponsors, good finally we landed to the Web 2.0 regime inside with a cut chai :)

Good to see there are more woman participants in mumbai. I have seen one hand full of participants in chennai & i am unsure about what happened in bangalore & hydrabad. I hope this will be one more rockin geekdom.

Future of Internet

2006-05-05T23:29:00.000+05:30

While Om Malik, screams about saving internet, the internet pioneers are talking about the future of the internet. Web pioneer Vint Cerf and tech pundit Esther Dyson to discuss what they expect in the next 10 years. Mr. Cerf envisions an interplanetary network, while Ms. Dyson ponders a loss of privacy and an information glut. From WSJ article excerpts

By the end of the decade, we will have a two planet Internet in operation as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is prepared to serve as a store-and-forward relay to ground-based rovers, a mobile science laboratory and other future missions to Mars. The Interplanetary Internet, serving robotic and manned missions, will grow from this simple configuration to a more complex backbone of interplanetary links as each new mission is launched to the planets and satellites of our solar system. Virtual visits to our near-space neighborhood will be as common as a trip to the local supermarket as we amass enormous amounts of information about the region of space in which we live. Kids will have virtual field trips to visit the Spirit and Opportunity sites on Mars and other places from which we have gathered so much information already and will gather in the next decade.

Technology Innovation Internet

Firefox ahoy!

2006-04-20T22:30:00.000+05:30

And that's called f**king up IE :)

Innovator's world - Apple, Google all the way

2006-04-16T11:58:00.000+05:30

Businessweek's cover story talks about 100 most innovative companies in the world. It is no surprise to me, that their survey in 3 continents [Asia, Europe, North America ] puts Apple in the first place and Google in the second place. They have done an extensive survey in 3 continents and a slide show detailing the order.

Innovation is in heart of Apple from late 90's as Steve Jobs has taken the top chair in its garage company. Going by different reads about Steve Jobs on books, news article he is a compulsive manic in perfection & industrial design for his products. On the other hand, Google, surprisingly lead by two "geeks" has brought in tremendous changes in the way people search, communicate and work in recent years. The heart of innovation of Google lies in its simple presentation of complex algorithms & search results to a laymen. Innovation need not be creating a new line of activity or product but packaging an ever useful thing the way people like it. The iPod & Gmail are classic example of how a 'commodity product' can be made into a cult product. The other surprise in the list is that the Asian and Europeans think, Microsoft is an innnovative company and providing the 4th rank [Incidently, the Europeans prefer their finnish major Nokia in third place, and Asians put 3M in third place] whereas the Americans put Microsoft into a distant 9th position for their ranking. The only Indian company toping the list is Infosys by Asian listing. My list probably goes like this going thru the survey:

Apple
Google
Nokia
Toyata
Intel
Southwest Airlines
IBM
Sony [Surprising North America dont even list Sony]
Technorati [Although this is not a traditional company, these guys will revolutinise the way online works in coming years]
IDEA

Apple Microsoft Innovation Google Businessweek Technology

Patents Vs. Products

2006-04-13T13:24:00.000+05:30

Patents are to me, the life blood of American Economy. For every small thing, they do patenting it and indeed, sue large organisations for adhering to the patent. I am all for inventors, creators who works hard to file a patent. But, as Sramana Mitra's article rightly points out that it is not just the patent which matters, it is the execution & market availability of the patent to conceive a product/service really matters. In his article, Mitra looks at the counter argument by Bruce Sewell, Intel’s General Counsel, who argues about why RIM needs to win and why NTP should be paid less - Troll Call [Subscription Req]:

Some excerpts from Sewell’s piece:

RIM, the company that brings BlackBerry service to four million subscribers, finally caved in to the threat of losing its business. It paid NTP, a small patent holding company reputedly comprised of just one inventor and one patent lawyer, $615 million to settle a four-year patent dispute. For NTP it was like winning the lottery, but for the rest of us, and for business in particular, it stinks.

NTP doesn’t have a competitive product. It isn’t even in the business of making products. It’s one of a large number of companies known as patent trolls. Trolls acquire and use patents just to sue companies that actually make products and generate revenue. A patent without a product isn’t worth much, whereas a patent tied to a revenue stream, particularly someone else’s, is a whole different matter. RIM was the best thing that ever happened to NTP, because by last Friday the only question left was how much of RIM’s pie NTP could get.

The distressing part of this picture is that RIM’s contribution of complementary technologies, business acumen, product R&D and marketing is what “enabled” the NTP invention to achieve commercial relevance.

I am completely with Sramana Mitra on somebody who takes pain in evengelising, educating the market place to create commercial establishment out of the "patent" filed by somebody. As an innovator and marketing Web 2.0 products, I am all for market capitalization than just for filing one patent and dont do anything on that. Marketability is the key in creating, sustaining the leverage of any patent. At the end of the day, People really matters in terms of accepting the technology than the patent saints.

patents inventions Enterprise Systems Technology Software

Why the big CTO's need to know about Web 2.0?

2006-04-11T16:21:00.000+05:30

Adam Green on the CTO's guide to Web 2.0;

The most common form of XML currently in use is RSS, but OPML is on the rise, and RDF based standards, such as Atom, are also gaining ground. In the long run, some form of global database resembling the Semantic Web will materialize. The key to all of this use of XML is the availability of a company's data outside the corporate database. While much is made of the emergence of APIs, it is the XML data that is available from these APIs that will cause the real changes in technological architectures. Just as Web 1.0 was built on loosely joined websites connected through HTTP and HTML, Web 2.0 will be built on loosely joined data structures based on data produced by many sources. So instead of a CTO building an application on a tightly controlled proprietary database schema, it will be necessary to plan for dependencies on data over which there is no control.

blogosphere opensource Web2.0 rss xml

Day 2 - Mobile Computing beyond PCs by Atul Chitnis

2006-04-09T11:40:00.000+05:30

Atul Chitnis has started with the "Grandfather's Clock" to talk about what is computing and how we misrepresent "computing". His presentation opened the eyes of many about the possibilities of a small screen interaction and why iPod, Palm OS, Treo are rewriting the rules of the game in the smaller screen. I have requeseted a copy of the presentation to be uploaded to the wiki, and you will get it in couple of days.

Bar Camp Chennai - Day 2 - 10.15 - 10.55

2006-04-09T10:27:00.000+05:30

Sorry for the Day 1 goof up. I was running around organising it and din't time to sit and blog about it. The Day 2 is started with Pratul, explaining about the next generation of Windows Office, codenamed something which i dont' remember. Office 2007 is demoed with a developer built by Pratul. It's a presentation with its own set of pro & anti-microsoft people of the bar camp crowd. Overall, Pratul did manage a good job in explaining some of the cool features of the upcoming Office. The presentation started with a video of Microsoft Office 2007. Guys, ask Microsoft interactive agency to look at Apple's videos, much before attempting to build one.

Covering Software 2006

2006-04-07T09:35:00.000+05:30

Software 2006 - the business strategy for software executives is covering Enterprise architecture, the future of software, offshoring, innovation dilema and more over there at US. Sadagopan is doing a brilliant job of providing synposis of much attended presentations incl. Ray Lane, Vanessa Colella, Dave Dewalt, Shai Agassi, C.K. Prahalad and more. Incidentally, i am currently reading C.K.Prahalad's one of the best sellers along with his peer Gary Hamel's "Competing for the Future" and his presentation seems to press the importance of emergence of India as an innovation hub. It is really encouraging to people like us, who still feel, about developing "Products" or "Applications" over here in India, than working on "per hr/dollar services".

Going thru the agenda, I am eagarly waiting for his blog post on Simon Witts (Microsoft), Andreas Kluth (The Economist), Adam Lashinsky (Fortune), Richard Sherlund (Goldman Sachs), Toby Redshaw (Motorola) and our beloved Ramadorai (TCS). Over to you Sadagopan! :)

software2006 Enterprise Systems Technology Software

Are Indian markets over-valued?

2006-04-05T22:54:00.000+05:30

The sensex in India is orgasmic. No, I am not joking, look at the numbers, 11,300 - 11,500 - 11,700, it's in a mood to party. Great, every person i meet is talking about sensex and the "power of India" in the global markets by saying, "We are arrived". Anand Sridharan has raised some valid points in the valuation of the Indian market.How long will be our "bullride honeymoon"?

India Markets Sensex

The State of Web 2.0

2006-04-03T17:58:00.000+05:30

Over there at Web Services Journal, Dion dissects
The State of Web 2.0

I also wrote a review of the year's best Web 2.0 explanations a while back and it goes into these elements in more detail if you want it. But there's a lot more to Web 2.0 than these high level elements would indicate. A key aspect not mentioned here, though I cover it in Sixteen Ways to Think in Web 2.0, is the importance of user ownership of data. The centrality of the user as both a source of mass attention (over a hundred million people, probably 2 or 3 times that many, are online right now) and an irreplaceable source of highly valuable data, generally encourages that the user be handed control of the data they generate. If control over their own attention data is denied them, they will just go to those who will give them that control. This gives some insight into the implications of Web 2.0 concepts, which were mostly gathered by examining prevailing trends on the Web.

Key Aspects of Web 2.0

- The Web and all its connected devices as one global platform of reusable services and data
- Data consumption and remixing from all sources, particularly user generated data
- Continuous and seamless update of software and data, often very rapidly
- Rich and interactive user interfaces
- Architecture of participation that encourages user contribution

Web2.0 Web Standards Social Software Emerging Technologies

Everyware : The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing

2006-04-02T16:21:00.000+05:30

Adam Greenfield's new book [Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing] explores the ubiqutiousness of technology & computing for the next generation. Everyware attempts to explains the details of "information processing embedded in the objects and surfaces of everyday life". Design and function embeds naturally in lot of things we encounter daily with.

To give an excerpt from Kamala Bhatt:

And with the coming of the IPV6,, the next generation Internet, Adam thinks that every grain of sand in the world could have an IP address. Every device at that point could have multiple IP addresses. Currenlty, we are using the older IPV4 technology, where we are running out of IP addresses for these rapidly proliferating devices. The fact that every object in the world could potentially have an IP address is partly what worries Adam.

Jeffery Zeldman & TadSpot [Everyware live - part 1, part 2 ] covers this in detail.

everyware design computing adam_greenfield ubicomputing standards

Does Standards really matter?

2006-03-31T11:47:00.000+05:30

While working on our TracBac, where we test the application against multiple browsers on Windows and Mac, and validating the code for HTML, CSS etc, suddenly i wanted to know whether the biggies really care about standards. Using the W3C's validator, i tried to validate the big most loved/hated companies on the net. For this I just took 3 companies - Google, Microsoft and Apple. It's much more easier to in this lineup to find out the bad boys or guys who get the ugly press - Microsoft.

These are all the results for you to see and it's surprising. We are drawing our battlelines against Microsoft [as evil] for everything which is relevant to web. Although they produce one of the worst nightmare for a web designer, surprising their website perfect validates. Microsoft for all its bad press, actually, silently did the right thing.

On the other hand, a company which pronounce "less evil" and advocates open standards in their approach, failed miserably with 50 errors for their super minimal homepage. Worse is the case of their homepage that they don't even have a DTD declared in their page. Sorry state of affairs for Google. For all those people out there, who swears by this emporor of the web, actually the Emperor wears no clothes.

Next comes, Apple, the darling of the designers & on the web. Problems again. Their HTML 4.01 Transitional has 7 errors in their document. For Apple, although, they make the best workhorse for designers to work with, their own iWeb actually creates a whole bunch of useless code competing squarely against Microsoft Frontpage for tag souping.

The bottomline can be divided into two. Are standards really matter on the web? If so, why these companies are not taking any step towards that? This is not a compliant. But this is the sorry state of affairs of the web. One end, when the WaSP is trying hard to convince Microsoft to make their browser stronger support for standards, they are fighting on something which finds no grounds in the real world web. Safari, may be a better standard compliant browser than IE, but what if the very company itself is not creating a standard compliant site to deliver better experience.

I am not here to argue the shortfalls of W3C validator. There can definitely be problems. When Doug Bowman in his semninal presentation showed how Microsoft needed to rethink about designing a standard compliant website for them, why are we following a double standard when it comes to Google & Apple. Aren't they also should be given the same argument for making the web, more standard driven for people. It's much easier to criticize Microsoft, because we believe they produce some sub-standard stuff for the people. For argument sake, if you agree, what better experience & standards were followed by their hyped, celebrated, "anti-MS" companies like Apple & Google. Is it time for us to appreciate Microsoft that they have lend their ears to the "standards" crowd and reworked on their website. Surely, Web standards and standard compliant web development needs to be the norm of the future of the web, while we hit our bad press against Microsoft, why not against Google and Apple ?

Isn't time for change or we are talking about a "utopian dream"

Apple Microsoft Google Web Standards Technology W3C

The New wisdom of the Web

2006-03-27T12:55:00.000+05:30

Newsweek's "The New Wisdom of the Web" says

The Living Web means that there may be plenty of opportunities to become the next Flickr, and hundreds of start-ups are trying to do just that. At Tim O'Reilly's recent Emerging Technology Conference, it seemed that 1,200 people had signed on to some collectively generated business plan: starting a company in a spare bedroom, outsourcing the programming to some Indian company they found on the Web, getting content from users and then having users organize the content by tagging, pocketing money from Google ads placed on the Web site and, finally, selling the company to Yahoo.

The future is just right here, right now! in India :)

Web2.0 Social Software Business Social Networking Live Web

Mesh Conference - Canada's web 2.0 conference

2006-03-24T08:29:00.000+05:30

Canada is a buzzing hub for emerging technologies. Closer to US, it has some exceptionally talented people in the area of Web 2.0. Like we organise BarCamps, [which is an unconference and a more informal event]our canadian counterparts on technology are organising Meshconference -Canada's web 2.0 conference in Toronto. Just going thru' their site, I am sheerly impressed by the speakers they have roped in. The best in the Web 2.0 and modern web thinkers are there with them. Om Malik, Steve Rubel, Stowe Boyd, Tara Hunt, Paul Kedrosky and my much beloved Jason Fried everyone is there. If you are in Canada or even in US, take up sometime, dont' miss this. This gives us confidence, that in coming months, it's very much possible for India to organise a similar event. Good show guys!

Events Web2.0 Web Standards Technology SaaS

Pour more "SaaS" to my plate

2006-03-21T19:50:00.000+05:30

It's official. It's accepted, screams the zdnet blog. Infoworld's article about SaaS [Software as a Service or Software applications delivered as service via Internet] makes Web 2.0 Evengelists like myself, jump out of seat and scream loud about the upcoming Wave. This Tsunami called "SaaS" will revolutionise the way we interact with the software applications. Post 80's saw the Desktop PC revolution. Mid 90's saw the dot.com / internet revolution and as a cycle, mid 00's will be the SaaS revolution.

For a CTO, SaaS is a no-brainer. Upload, integrate and run the application worldwide. No need for custom installations, no long implementation cycles, no operating system switchings and most imporatantly with SaaS, the portability of the applications are now easier. Our TracBac [in private user base] is based on similar model. No need for any installation, configuration and system specification to use the application. Your computer will be a part of the larger network as Jonathan says "The network is the computer"

SaaS as a model will change the dominance of big desktop players like Microsoft, Adobe, Corel among others. The future is now just a browser away!

Web2.0 Software Technology Social Software SaaS TracBac

War of Ruby & Enterprise Architecture

2006-03-20T12:54:00.000+05:30

Self proclaimed Enterprise Architectural genius (?!) James McGovern rips apart Ruby on Rails and says it is not enterprise ready and offers his own points of ruby bashing. David Heinmeier Hanson, the geek founder of Ruby on Rails offers his own take on that article and says why enterprise is dead. I certainly believe, Ruby on Rails has its own benefits in agile software development. With the Web 2.0 mania worldwide [yours truly is also a species of that genre] the requirement for doing something faster is getting fatter.

The traditional "Enterprise" which represents controlled systems, with system engineers, administrators and others has buried long time ago. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Amazon, Salesforce are feverishly pushing distributed computing architecture and browser/mobile based collaboration & technologies to organisations. The inflated, fat "ENTERPRISE" in 20th century is already on its way to its mortuary. World at large is moving towards, anywhere architecture than a cubicle driven, cafteria gossiped, closed user system.

I am not an authority in Enterprise applications, I leave that to Sadagopan to dig this deeper and analyse.

25 Things Danny hate about Google

2006-03-14T23:56:00.000+05:30

Over there at Search Engine Watch Danny Sullivan, one of the world's renowned Search Engine expert lists out the 25 things, he hates about Google. I was once a google affectionado and my choice today moved now more with Yahoo!. In this article, i like some of the points he highlights with the problems of Google. My favourites are below

1. Web search counts that make no sense. Why do search engines lie? has Robert Scoble recently poking at this, on how the reported counts don't always match reality. Heck, try class two contributions with "about" 59,800,000 matches. But then you find that only 879 are considered non-duplicates! Meanwhile, mars landing sites gives 1,050,000 matches while
mars landing sites earth gives nearly double that amount, 1,840,000 listings. It shouldn't. Adding that extra word should give you a subset of the original query. It should come back with less results, not more. I know, I know. It's a bug, or search counts are hard to do, or they do say "about." I know, they aren't the only ones, nor have they been the first (see
Questioning Google's Counts, Danny & Tristan Talk About Link Counts, Site Counts & Index Auditing and Who's The Biggest Of Them All?). Long experience in knowing the counts don't add up has perhaps left me numb to the issue. And goodness knows, I don't want a return to page counts on the home page. But then again, if you are going to put out a number, perhaps it should be accurate?

7. RSS feed for web search. OK, I know the results don't change much, and I know that RSS feeds of web search that Yahoo and MSN are hardly winning over mass numbers of users. Still, why not? Since you offer RSS for news search results and other things, let me monitor web search the same way.

19. Let Gmail display more than 100 items. After archiving 50,000 messages 100 items at a time, I really wished for the ability to view more than 100 items per page. I still want that when I'm having to review about 300 spam items per day. This can't be that hard. Can't we have it?

22. Stop opening products to everyone, then getting overwhelmed. The story is getting tiring. Everyone's invited to use Google Web Accelerator, then you pull it down. Come get Google Analytics, then you shut it down to newcomers to demand. Come get Google Page Creator, then it closes (Missed out? Just go use Yahoo GeoCities). You know whatever you roll out is going to get overwhelmed. Figure out another way to open it up. The demand is no longer making it seem like your products are hot. I was in an Apple store the other day with a huge line. It's making it seem like you are lame and can't anticipate or handle the rush.

23. Charge for things! Seriously, I'm getting frightened. I love that anyone can get free analytics, email, you name it from you. But I'm fearful that people also can't get support for when things go wrong. I think this guy's still trying to get an official response on what happened to his lost Gmail account. Meanwhile, I worry that companies I want competing with you, to keep you on your toes, can't do so when you use advertising to underwrite everything. It just feels anti-competitive. Plus, aren't you kind of sick of shoving ads at us everywhere? Don't I have enough ads on the floor of my supermarket already? Can't part of Google's mission be to help reduce advertising in places where I don't need it?

Read the full article for an insightful view into Google's issues.

Google Web2.0 Web Standards Search

BarCampChennai - April 8 & 9 - Come, Geek & Rock!

2006-03-13T15:21:00.000+05:30

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. It's an unconference, so everybody will participate in the happenings, unlike traditional conferences, where one person talk and the other's listen.

India's first BarCamp happened in Delhi, and it turned out to be Asia's first. Well known bloggers in Chennai like Kiruba Shankar, myself and Vijay Anand are organising the Bar Camp Chennai. The BarCampChennai focusses on Web 2.0 and Next Generation Internet. The BarCampChennai's focus will be creating awareness about Web 2.0, showcasing some of the hot start ups work and also providing a wider network platforms for the people.

Although the event is named as "BarCampChennai", participants are from all over India. If you are a guy who says your browser is delicious or RSS is not a political party or XML is your Tshirt size, come join us. You can see the wiki set up for that and this is going to happen on April 8th & 9th of this year. Geek, sneak and rock!!

BarCampChennai, Web2.0, Ajax, RubyonRails, TracBac

Entrepreneurial Proverbs

2006-03-10T10:42:00.000+05:30

Oreilly Radar has some good advice and proverbs for the startup minded entrepreneurs. Check theirO'Reilly Radar > Entrepreneurial Proverbs

This is Smarter Marketing

2006-03-01T09:33:00.000+05:30

Search marketing is always a different animal to play with. What Monster India does this with this search is simply fantastic.

1. It connects well with the work offered for a single keyword.
2. It allows users to think in different directions for a keyword.

This is smarter marketing! Kudos to the search marketing agency which handles Monster

Tags: Search Marketing

Crystal Gazing: 7 big things in Tech

2006-02-26T12:17:00.000+05:30

Over there at MSN Money, Jim Jubak outlines the next 7 big things in technology, which are disruptive in nature. He also outlines some of the key elements in getting into the disruptive mindset. - via Sadagopan

Once you've identified a promising patch of destruction, how do you find the profitable opportunities? I'd offer three general rules:
Look for companies that actually have a plan for profiting from the disruptive shift in technology. Innovation is neat, but for investors it's not nearly as important as a profitable business plan.

Don't pay too much. Yes, it's notoriously hard to value the stock of a truly disruptive technology company. More than 20% of the readers who responded to my pre-IPO survey on Google thought the stock was worthless. But since the odds are that at least 30% of the stocks that you pick as disruptive opportunities will head south, the key is not to pay so much for them that the successful picks can't put your portfolio comfortably in the black.

Don't ignore established companies that are willing to cannibalize their existing business in order to reap the potential profits of disruption. Since these companies aren't betting the store on the disruptive technology, the returns to you, the investor, won't be as high as with a home-run-or-bust bet. But the losses won't be as large either.

Tags: Disruptive Technology, VC

Prosper: The eBay of Loans

2006-02-25T16:47:00.000+05:30

This is the most important roll out for this year, if it proved successful. In a world of Web 2.0 wannabes, one man trys to shackle the foundations of the banking system at its roots. Simply said, when traditional "market place" is moved to eBay today, why not "traditional banks" move away to another web based portal. California based Prosper wanted to be an eBay for Loans.

Post eBay, people worldwide have realised that you can still do a business with a person you are never going to meet at all. This invisible marketplace is now taking shape in a more serious area like "loans". Prosper says anything under $25,000 can be taken from a group of lenders for a borrower.

Businessweek's article clearly illustrates that the world is now getting bigger. Read the article - Prosper: The eBay of Loans?

» Web Office Suite: best of breed products | Web 2.0 Explorer | ZDNet.com

2006-02-21T20:39:00.000+05:30

» Web Office Suite: best of breed products | Web 2.0 Explorer | ZDNet.com

TracBac - Share | Comment | Interact | Revise | Collaborate

2006-02-13T21:22:00.000+05:30

Well. Well. This is sorta shameless self promotion. In the last 4 months, we are working with a secret project [next to Nasa, to be precise ;)] TracBac. TracBac is a web application [Web 2.0 application] which is predominently useful for advertising agencies, design fanatics, creative professionals and so on. The idea is to utilise the power of Macromedia Flash with some good old solid open source databases, digs deeply in PHP, XHTML, CSS, RSS and you get TracBac. Cutting the matter short, this is a visual project handling, digital white board, version tracking tool for the designers worldwide. We are taking invites now. The first month will be absolutely free. Go for a sign up now and help us to build a better product to the world

Technorati: tracbac, online collaboration, design, advertising,
web2.0

Gmail for your domain

2006-02-11T10:13:00.000+05:30

Google is providing a beta for hosting your organisation's email accounts with them. With this, google wants to kill the email client market dominated till now by Microsoft in the form of Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook. You can sign in for a beta here - Gmail for your domain

Web 2.0 Lifestyle

2006-01-30T20:06:00.000+05:30

Having decided to create a web 2.0 company from the scratch, the firt thing i have done is to uninstall applications from my laptop. The reason being is very simple. I want to testdrive the alternatives available on the net for my regular official / personal work.

Here is the list of web applications i use.

My Email client - Gmail, Mail2Web

For work & communication - Meebo [ I get my Yahoo!, Gmail, AOL, MSN everything in one single Ajax driven window]

Office suite - Thinkfree Office [I often user Word, Excel. Loading of the applet is a bit pain, once loaded you will work with superior comfort. Alternatively try NumSum for spreadsheet work, works perfect. At times I use either Writely or Writeboard for collaborative text / copy editing

Work assignment / tracking - Basecamp

Todo lists / personal milestones - Remember the milk

Blog / RSS feeder - Bloglines What else can come closer to this.

Bookmarks - del.icio.us aka Yahoo! It's even more easier with the Firefox extension.

File sharing - DropSend [ Dropsend is like every other file sharing application online, the difference is its brilliant desktop integration with a small desktop tool, so sharing files is actually a drag n drop from one folder to dropsend shared folder. Job done! very useful for people like me who used to transfer multiple MBs of files daily]

Photosharing - Flickr

Entertainment - YouTube - Well, you will say this is pirated. This is video sharing at its best. Currently i m viewing some of my favourite hindi albums [this, this] with youtube only.

Homepage - Google personalised Homepage where i configured my most visited blogs and news sites. So every time i use google, i know what's latest in the world.

But, overall, my feeling of using all these services is satisfactory. What's more i am no more limited with my desktop / laptop. My entire communication & work is now on various shared service file servers. So working anywhere is now realistically possible.

There are couple of tools which i am looking for syncing with my mobile which will be a separate list.

Google Code: Web Authoring Statistics

2006-01-28T11:33:00.000+05:30

Google does the good samaritan way for providing information for web authors and developers a set of good practices which gives more searchwidth.

Read more: Google Code: Web Authoring Statistics

Be a Demo God

2006-01-24T09:48:00.000+05:30

Guy Kawasaki is giving the "Demo Gods" their way to heaven. In the upcoming Demo event is a launchpad for emerging technologies. Guy drills down the art of showing Demo to audiences. Must read article.

Google goes Mobile with Motorola

2006-01-06T16:59:00.000+05:30

Google is a smart company. Instead of fighting with Microsoft on desktop [rumours were that Google is tieing up with Walmart for low cost PCs ] Google, takes the battle to the next frontier, Mobile phones. To me, it's a smart move. Google announced a partnership with Motorola, enabling google search on Motorola mobile phones. Some future motorola phones will even be expected to come with a Google button itself. This will put some ice in the minds of BillG, who boldly said that his competition is not with Google, but with IBM in the recent CES Show. On the other hand, the mobile eco systems will be far bigger than the PC eco systems in the coming years. The OS battle will eventually shift to Mobile, as future mobile phones will not just be phones with "talk & type" only features. For now, Google is doing a great job in concentrating on platforms which will be the choice of the future.

Full media release

2006 Web 2.0 Predictions

2006-01-02T13:59:00.000+05:30

KBCafe has released their 2006's Web 2.0 predictions. My take on these predictions are within brackets.

1. Let's start with some easy ones. Somebody will buy YouTube for $millions. I love YouTube. (agreed)
2. Somebody will release a new version of RSS or a competing syndication format.(Microsoft already released SSE and i doubt any other guys will enter into a new computing segment)
3. Yahoo will release RSS integration in Yahoo! Mail and Microsoft will release RSS integration in Outlook. Although both will be incomparable to Attensa and NewsGator, they will dominate the new adoption of RSS and will become the top two RSS clients sometime in 2007. Microsoft will trail Yahoo! in 2006, but surpass them in 2007. (agreed)
4. The number of blogs in the United States will exceed the number of citizens.(agreed)
5. Some Web 2.0 companies that failed to get purchased and didn't have a revenue model will begin laying off employees. The majority of the fall out will likely not occur till 2007. (mostly will happen)
6. The number of AdSense-based (or YPN or Chitika) Web 2.0 start-ups will accelerate, while free, no ad Web 2.0 start-ups will stagnate and might drop off.(Revenues based on Ads will be driven out of market. Alternative payment models will emerge)
7. MSN, Google and Yahoo! will continue to compete for the API marketplace. A new API will be released by one the big three in every month of the year.(agreed)
8. Advertising on the Web will continue to accelerate, but the massive number of new publishers and new ad servers will create a lot of chaos in the marketplace. More than one ad server will fail to make their payments to publishers and several, most, if not all ad servers will be sued by advertisers for click-fraud. Yahoo and Google will prevail through the storm, maybe Microsoft too!(Click frauds will be norm of the day. I am waiting how we are going to standardize the click thru comparisions)
9. Dave Winer will get pissed at somebody for doing something. And he'll blog about how much of a jerk he is for several months. I'm guessing it has to do with videocasting. (No comments!)
10. And here's the cake. RSS-based appliances will make there debut. Recipes on fridges, microwaves, ovens and through the roof from there. (partially agreed)

India - Enterprise & Venture Capital

2006-01-02T12:26:00.000+05:30

Sadagopan has outlined the issues, opportunities India as a country have for promotion enterprise. He rightly points out on the flaws of our system in terms of encouraging risk taking ability & entrepreneurial support. With Mallika in his side, he points out

"He adds that in the early-stage investing business, there are a few small funds that are local to India but have not done too many deals and highlights venture money goes into early stage, pre-product or pre-revenue companies in the US , while a majority of the private equity is going into late stage businesses in India."

The need for a greater dream & creating products out of India is all the more required today than merely providing IT services, as services always are "sword above your head" scenario. She also rightly points out on the issues of disruptive global innovations like Flickr come out of India. Early stage funding is literally dry in India. People wanted to bed on safer companies or companies with considerable past history. So it is very tough to have the next Flickr out of India.

Malika's Post | Sadagopan's Post

Blender 2.40 released

2005-12-28T17:59:00.000+05:30

I have been closely following the long development circles of Blender, an open source 3D modelling, animation and rendering software. 3D Modelling & Animation is a high price game. Leading softwares like Maya, 3D Studio Max, Softimage are costlier and requires a steep learning curve to master. Blender scores well in that. Open source software are available in web & application development but not in the entertainment industry. Entertainment is a multi billion dollar industry where everything is money. Having an open source software in that is not only amazing but also liberating from using pricy proprietary softwares. Blender was used in making Spiderman - 2 mash ups. Blender is a full fledged open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. Take the download from here and play around.

Internet Advertising & the future

2005-12-22T19:01:00.000+05:30

The future looks brighter for Internet advertising, the news report from Reuters says. Based on the findings from JMP Securities the global online ad market to grow at a 25% clip annually for the next five years, up from a previous forecast in the low 20% range. The Wall street predicts the ad market to grow to $26.4 B worldwide and $33.2 B in 2007. Reuters has the complete report here

Performancing for Firefox

2005-12-21T19:12:00.001+05:30

This is a great news if you are using Firefox as your defacto browser. Performancing for Firefox is an extension driven out of passion. This neat extension allows you to edit your blogs & post feeds to your blog within the browser itself. I am typing this in Performancing. What this does is very simple. Once installed, it provides an icon in the lower right corner of your browser. Once clicked it opens up a small, customizable rich text editor within the browser itself for you to type. This supports all the leading blogging platforms including blogger, livejournal, wordpress, typepad and movable type. Kudos Guys, your app rocks!

Yahoo! buys del.icio.us

2005-12-11T15:10:00.000+05:30

Yahoo! buys del.icio.us, the most famous tagging company on the internet. The move allows Yahoo! to have the complete "tagging" references made by millions of users. This will allow Yahoo! to know the referential tags of millions of news items, blog posts and so on. This gives the "media company" more information & provide improved search results. Google presently dont have a tagging system. Either Google can add tagging system in blogger or buy out any leading tagging sites.Considering the competition, either Digg or Technorati can be bought over in the near future to push more tagging based search results. For now Yahoo! leads this race with 1-0 against Google. The news of the buyout is here

Adobe Apollo

2005-12-10T15:56:00.000+05:30

Adobe is working on cross integration between Acrobat Reader and Flash player. Post acquistion of Macromedia, Adobe is slowly will test water this new product sometime mid of 2006. Presently codenamed "Apollo", this will be a universal client for flash, pdf files beyond browser. Learn more here

formerly Macromedia

2005-12-06T17:21:00.000+05:30

The sight of this is disturbing, yet that's the reality. Our beloved Macromedia post Adobe acquisition is now "formerly Macromedia". The legacy i hope wont stop with Macromedia, and Adobe will push it further.

Google Conversion University

2005-12-06T17:06:00.000+05:30

With the launch of Google Analytics and a tremendous response Google got for that, Google now adds Google Conversion University - a nifty small database of articles, tutorials and resources for small business and marketers. This is a nice way of extending your dominance in the online classifieds arena.

Technorati tag: Google, Analytics, Adwords

17 deadly mistakes of a startup

2005-12-04T11:45:00.000+05:30

There is an excellant article about the mistakes by the start up companies and budding entrepreneurs by the seasoned entrepreneur John Osher in entrepreneur.com. Have a go.

He outlines 17 most common mistakes and provides the success guidelines.

Mistake 1: Failing to spend enough time researching the business idea to see if it's viable.
Mistake 2: Miscalculating market size, timing, ease of entry and potential market share
Mistake 3: Underestimating financial requirements and timing.
Mistake 4: Overprojecting sales volume and timing.
Mistake 5: Making cost projections that are too low.
Mistake 6: Hiring too many people and spending too much on offices and facilities.
Mistake 7: Lacking a contingency plan for a shortfall in expectations.
Mistake 8: Bringing in unnecessary partners.
Mistake 9: Hiring for convenience rather than skill requirements.
Mistake 10: Neglecting to manage the entire company as a whole.
Mistake 11: Accepting that it's "not possible" too easily rather than finding a way.
Mistake 12: Focusing too much on sales volume and company size rather than profit.
Mistake 13: Seeking confirmation of your actions rather than seeking the truth.
Mistake 14: Lacking simplicity in your vision.
Mistake 15: Lacking clarity of your long-term aim and business purpose.
Mistake 16: Lacking focus and identity.
Mistake 17: Lacking an exit strategy.

Shame on IDBI

2005-12-02T11:49:00.000+05:30

When I try to look at the new microsite promoted by IDBI, one of India's largest bank, i got this. This is absolutely shame on the part of IDBI and the design team behind the development of the website. Don't they know that the browser marketshare is steadily moving towards Firefox and other alternative browsers. Why is IDBI putting pressure on me to use Microsoft Internet explorer. This is violation of user's privacy and his choice of the platform. Web design & development as a profession should support multiple browsers and platforms. When people worldwide talking about standard compliant, semantics driven web development, what you get in India is this. Absolutely ridiculous. Look at this site - Paisabuilder.com

Some of India's big names still dont have a proper website and dont understand Web as a medium. IDBI is one among them.

Web 3.0 - What to expect

2005-12-01T23:37:00.000+05:30

What to expect from Web 3.0 by ZDNet's Phil Wainewright -- Web 2.0 is just a staging post. Web 3.0 is coming, and it's going to recreate our notion of the application as well as upsetting a few applecarts along the way.

Excerpts from the post

Today I'm going to start by mapping out a brief topology of Web 3.0. It's divided into three (and a half) distinct layers:

API services form the foundation layer. These are the raw hosted services that have powered Web 2.0 and will become the engines of Web 3.0 — Google's search and AdWords APIs, Amazon's affiliate APIs, a seemingly infinite ocean of RSS feeds, a multitude of functional services, such as those included in the StrikeIron Web Services Marketplace, and many other examples. Some of the providers, like Google and Amazon, are important players, but there is a huge long tail of smaller providers. One of the most significant characteristics of this layer is that it is a commodity layer. As Web 3.0 matures, an almost perfect market will emerge and squeeze out virtually all of the profit margin from the highest-volume services — and sometimes squeeze them into loss-leading or worse.

Aggregation services form the middle layer. These are the intermediaries that take some of the hassle out of locating all those raw API services by bundling them together in useful ways. Obvious examples today are the various RSS aggregators, and emerging web services marketplaces like the StrikeIron service. I'll have a lot more to say about these emerging platforms in several of my posts. There will be some lucrative businesses operating in this layer, but in my view it's not where most of the big money will be made.

Application services form the top layer, and this is where I believe the biggest, most durable profits will be found. These will not be like the established application categories we are used to, such as CRM, ERP or office, but a new class of composite applications that bring together functionality from multiple services to help users achieve their objectives in a flexible, intuitive and self-evident way. I'll have much more to say about these applications when I write about some of the companies I've mentioned in more detail. But an interesting example just surfaced in Swivel, Halsey Minor's new venture, which Dan Farber has been covering in his blog this week. Dan quotes one enthusiastic early user who describes the 'wow' moment of starting to use an application and discovering that it delivers utility he barely even knew existed. To me, that's a fundamental characteristic of a Web 3.0 application.

Serviced clients are the 'and-a-half' layer I mentioned earlier. There is a role for client-side logic in the Web 3.0 landscape, but users will expect it to be maintained and managed on their behalf, which is why I've chosen to call these clients 'serviced'. Whether those clients are based on browser technology or on Windows technology is moot point that I shall also be returning to. After all, everyone will want to know what role Microsoft might play in Web 3.0.

Ajax to AHAH

2005-12-01T19:19:00.000+05:30

The creator of Ruby on rails, David is working on a pet project which is aiming at creating a subset of Ajax. Listed as a project under microformats, AHAH, strictly is a subset of Ajax. The name is actually an acronym for "Asychronous HTML and HTTP". The use of XML Httprequest which is the base of Ajax, now webpages can be linked dynamically with strict, semantic HTML itself.

AHAH is intended to be a much simpler way to do web development than AJAX : "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML." Strictly speaking, AHAH can be considered a subset of AJAX, since (X)HTML is just a special kind of XML. However, it is a subset with some very specific and useful properties:

1. The lack of custom XML schemas dramatically reduces design time
2. AHAH can trivially reuse existing HTML pages, avoiding the need for a custom web service
3. All data transport is done via browser-friendly HTML, easing debugging and testing
4. The HTML is designed to be directly embedded in the page's DOM, eliminating the need for parsing
5. As HTML, designers can format it using CSS, rather than programmers having to do XSLT transforms
6. Processing is all done on the server, so the client-side programming is essentiall nil (moving opaque bits)

In fact, for any content that is destined to be viewed by the browser, it is virtually impossible to imagine any advantage to sending it as custom XML rather than structurally-correct HTML (with appropriate CSS-friendly class names, of course).

Technorati Tags: AHAH, Ajax, Ruby on Rails

Snakes and Rubies

2005-11-30T13:22:00.000+05:30

From the event called Snakes and Rubies

On December 3rd, Ruby and Python developers from all over Chicago will gather at DePaul University to hear two of the leaders in the Web 2.0 movement debate the merits of each other’s frameworks.
Adrian Holovaty, one of the creators of the Django framework for Python, and David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails framework will answer questions about their work and the future of Web application development.Hand picked questions submitted below will be selected by a moderator and presented to Adrian and David at the meeting.Learn more and RSVP!

Now this is interesting debate to look for. Two frameworks gaining rapid attention and changes the traditional way of working and they answer & debate on the merits of their frameworks for the worldwide developer community. Good to see, i think, this is the first time, such an event is happening. If you are in & around Chicago dont miss this and post as many questions as you want for the developers to answer.

Internet Connected Components

2005-11-27T00:53:00.000+05:30

Robert Scoble is trouble defining the alarming increase of "mashups" and internet based applications like Flickr, Google Maps and so on and terming them as "ICCs" [Internet Connected Components]. Nice name actually. While Microsoft called them "gadgets", Google just simply says them as APIs and Flickr call them "bits" truely they are revolutionising the way applications are meant to be written.

What is interesting is the way they are altering the internet landscape. Today i have a choice of providing location information with Yahoo! Maps, Google Maps and Virtual Earth from MSN and makes communication easier, faster and effective. With the introduction of SSE from Microsoft and the astonishing growth of RSS Feeds & Web 2.0 technologies the day is not too far off where everything in the planet will be mashedup and that will be an interesting scenario to watch.

Wiki Movies ?!!

2005-11-21T19:00:00.000+05:30

This is via Diggdot.us a commoner for digg | del.icio.us and slashdot. This is an interesting experiment. Someone is using Wiki's to write a 10 minute movie screenplay. Titled as "Evening of the Reanimated Corposes" this is supposed be the world's first wiki movie. Brilliant piece of execution of understanding technology & utilising it. I can see an extension from here in the future. Blogs once for all changed the way Journalism and now we have "citizen journalists" and the way news we gather has gone for a fundamental shift. Similarly, i think, there can be a way out for entertainment companies to utilise mobile film makers, screen writers, audiences worldwide in making the movie and you already will have a ready audience whom, will bring in their own sets of audience and will revolutionise the way movies & entertainment being built. Technology brings interesting ways to utilise.

Blogger Rights

2005-11-21T14:06:00.000+05:30

There is a new association called Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to protect bloggers and digital rights and outlines the rights of bloggers. The outline is based on the US law for now. From their introduction

"From the Internet to the iPod, technologies of freedom are transforming our society and empowering us as speakers, citizens, creators, and consumers. These technologies are increasingly under attack, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense, protecting our civil liberties in the networked world. EFF broke new ground when it was founded in 1990—well before the Internet was on most people's radar—and continues to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today. From the beginning, EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights."

Learn more about EFF | Legal guide for blogger

Technorati Tags: blogging | digital rights | freedom of speech

UXMatters launches

2005-11-15T16:41:00.000+05:30

User Experience design is a rarely known field in India. Worldwide, with large application development teams, UX Designers are the guys who makes the decisions on how the application needs to be tweaked for common users. Don Norman has written a fantastic book on this "Emotional Design".

There is a new ezine launched exclusively for UX Designers and professionals called UXMatters, sponsored by Spirit Softworks. It's interesting to note that, off late with the entry of iPod and other design led devices, emotional design is a big industry. I hope this ezine will provide enough ammunition to those who are in this industry.

Will there be a "Dell" for mobile phones?

2005-11-15T10:00:00.000+05:30

Going thru Technology Review's article on how Nokia and other leading mobile manufacturers are looking at Nano technology to be embedded in mobile, this question loomed large?

Today a mobile phone comes with some definite features along with a great number of add-ons. Unfortunately, customer preferences for the mobile phones are continuously changing. Youths particularly are changing their mobile phone on an average of 180- 240 days. With this, why dont someone can look at "custom-building" mobile phones. Today the technology available for mobiles phones are available globally. Functional features like camera, video camera, MMS, organiser, office tools, FM radio, music functionality are available with almost every phone. Customers may/may not like all the options in a single phone. What if someone can take up and customize the mobile phones the way we wanted it and package it and give.

With Chinese manufacturers, the outer mobile case, batteries,chargers can be easily brought under "economies of scale". I am unsure about the Camera part, but again that is also doable. Rest all have their own proprietary and open source alternatives. Companies like Real,Macromedia will give their media players for free. Groud level functionality of a mobile phone can be done anywhere [voice,data,sms etc]

The mobile phone growth will happen in developing countries, where cost & functionality matters more. Like Dell revolutionised packaged PCs, will there be someone to revolutionise the packaged Mobile phones?

Technorati Tags: Technology review, Nokia, Mobile phones, Nano technology

Google Analytics

2005-11-14T21:52:00.000+05:30

Urchin morphed into Google Analytics. Sometime ago, Google bought the web analytics solution company Urchin. For starters, Web Analytics is a big game in the bad world of web development. How your site ranks up, no. of users came to your site, what operating system they used, which country are they from and so on and so forth. Web Analytics is a very important part of web development to measure the success of a website.

Formerly available for $199, Google Analytics is free with their basic web analytical information. Google Analytics has been neated integrated with AdWords makes it perfect if you are using pay-per-click Google search marketing programs. All you have to do is go to Google Analytics and sign up with your gmail account and fill the four step process and copy + paste the code given in the final step. That's it. You can start tracking your website's performance.

I am unsure, how far Google Sitemap is integrated with this Analytics tool to provide seamless integration of listing the website and tracking the same. Analytics provides some fanatastic features for free for starters. By providing site statistics, Google wants webmaster to come back to Google more frequently and also stirs the web analytics industry.

I have used Urchin for one of client website years ago and it was impressive. I have just added to our own website and post my feedback on the demographics Google Analytics gives us.

Technorati Tags: Google, Web Analytics, Urchin

iPod Shorts

2005-11-05T11:53:00.000+05:30

Heavy.com says Burger King has put in a series of "shorts" aiming at the new video iPod. Read the news. Sometime back, I have blogged here about the future of "shorts" as an alternative advertising medium for advertisers. It is now catching up the mainstream. There is a tremendous scope in creating "shorts" unlike the yesteryear's 30 second ad commercials. Shorts liberate creatives from limiting the message to 30 seconds and provides a vehicle to advertisers to create more memorable brand promotion. This can also be extended in the latter phase to Mobisodes are Small screen advertising.

With RSS Feeds and syndication, "shorts" can be directly accessible via any website or devices like video iPod or syndicated thru feed readers. It is exciting to know the possibilities of technology, as I am a firm believer of providing exciting options for the customer to opt for any forms of advertising or brand promotion.

Technorati tags: shorts, ipod, advertising

Can an Indian city become sillicon valley ?

2005-11-03T18:54:00.000+05:30

Sadagopan has teared the Indian hype about Bangalore. I for years strongly believe, there will be only one Sillicon Valley in the world. Bangalore for all the more reasons overhyped. The city is pathetic. Sillicon Valley is not just a place. It's a place full of ideas & experiments. Where Ideas are transacted into innovative products & services. Unlike Bangalore, where you will see swanky offices without additional parking space, too many one ways, narrow roads and tech coolies roaming the city. People will certainly get offended if I say, tech coolies are what Bangalore is all about. The truth is, Sillicon Valley is a place for experimentation. How many experimentation is happening in Bangalore ? India offers cheaper tech labour and our operating costs are less. We have certainly have some brilliant brains around. Few brains can't change the mindset of an industry or country.

To be fair to this statement, Badri talks about the investments to be made on IIScs, IITs and IIMs. India can't talk about competence with fewer brilliant brains. As C.K.Prahalad says there is money in doing business to poor. Unfortunately Indian techpreneurs neither takes the advice of doing the business with poor nor on technology. We as Indians although having a fair amount of basic education, we are very much poorer up in the ladder for technical & scientific education. India needs to invest atleast 50,000 crores in making this country really a power to reckon with the tech industry. Unfortunately we spend more than 80,000 crores for our defence and not for basic education & higher education.

A close look at the number of patents registered from Sillicon Valley and Bangalore will clearly give you an idea of how much we invest on R&D, Experimentation, Investing in new ideas and so on. To become the tech capital of the world is not just about having an army of coders, we need thinkers, ideators and an ability to take risk. Unfortunately, as Indians, we lack on all these and we can't claim that Bangalore or any other city for that matter, can become the next Sillcon Valley.

5.3 Billion searches > $16.2 Billion sales

2005-10-26T00:12:00.000+05:30

Our friend Maheshmurthy's Pinstorm has released its year end holiday season forecasting for 2005. I have already blogged about pinstorm in this blog here . This time going thru their blog, using their proprietary technology, they have predicted based on this year's Valentines' Day and Mother's Day for this year.

They predict around 5.3 Billion searches for gift articles and items and this will result in the revenue generation of $16.2 Billion in online sales. Seems to me, a bit heightened figure to work with, but still i trust their technology. They also predicted the cost per click will be 25% higher than 2004, which means, you will pay more per click and that hits your margin in the long run.

Read the complete whitePaper

Technorati Tags: SEO, Online Advertising, PPC

10 Trends for the Marketing/Advertising

2005-10-24T18:22:00.000+05:30

It is interesting to read forecasts. With iMedia connection on myside, Peter Sealey predicts the 10 trends that are going to change our professional and personal lives. iMeida Connection is for the marketing community in the digital medium. His trend forecasting can be debated separately, but i can certainly 3 out of 10 is already a possible trend.

His top 10 trends are:

1. Three Mega-Trends -- bandwidth, the cost of storage and processing power
2. Three Media Sub-Trends -- media is becoming digital, personal, and controllable
3. A revolution in the motion picture, television, and recorded music industries
4. IPTV: Internet Protocol Television
5. Performance based marketing
6. The demise of ad-supported TV
7. The rise of Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
8. New and accurate ratings system
9. Ad-ID and RFID
10. A Marketing Renaissance

To me, the third is an interesting point. iTunes rewrite the rules of the audio distribution. with the new iPod Video, there can certainly be a new generation of "shorts" like the one did by Coke or BMW. "shorts" will be a new medium for advertisers. Like ringtones, with youth, shorts will be a viral idea. How movie making & motion pictures will change is a case we need to wait and see.

The second, seventh and ninth is already on. With digital agencies controlling majority of stakes on global brands, media subdivision is happening. VoIP and RFID are already in and are in testing.

Performance based marketing is the most imporatant of all the things. Today's advertising agencies are far less accountable than their actual spending. Marketing agencies are agencies which work on the strategy, positioning of the product/service. Already this turf is beeing brutally fought between management consultants and big ad. agencies. Like Google's AdSense, people finally are started looking digital performance let mediums for marketing. But real performance based marketing is more than just Adsense. Performance based marketing will work more than just a search query. With RSS/Atom Feeds spearheading the globe, it will be interesting to watch how the feeds are being used by the marketing fraternity for their advantage.

Read the full interview

Technorati Tags: Trends, Marketing, Advertising,

Beware Splogs are in

2005-10-20T21:07:00.000+05:30

The scourge of e-mail--spam--has reinvented itself for the world of blogs, in a phenomenon experts have dubbed "splog." And Google is in the hot seat. Offlate, my blog is one of the victims of the splogs. Sploggers or the attackers used automated tools to create thousands of fake blogs loaded with links to specific websites (mortgage, poker, sex sites). The counterfeit blogs also triggered thousands of RSS--Really Simple Syndication--feeds and e-mail notifications, swamping RSS readers and in-boxes.

You can help kill splogs by providing the fake URLs here at Splog Reporter. There is actually a Firefox extension available to report Splogs with Splog reporter here.

Splogs are polluting the blogosphere. "Splog" was gained importance in late August 2005. The idea of all these Sploggers are by providing fake IDs with URLs listed in their comments, the no. of web URL linking is increased. This directly affects the PageRank algorithm, with which Google ranks the websites.

News.com has a detailed report on this

Technorati Tags: Splogs, Google, Spam

Flash Lite is BREWing now!!

2005-10-19T13:06:00.000+05:30

From yesterday's MAX conference, one most important and interesting development in the mobile platform has been announced. BREW is one of world's fastest growing mobile platform & framework from Qualcomm. Macromedia and Qualcomm have signed an MoU to port Flash Lite (mobile Flash player) to the BREW platform. In India, both the CDMA providers Reliance Infocomm and Tata Indicom are using Qualcomm's CDMA technology along with a bigger development team for working on applications in BREW. It will be exciting news for Flash development companies in India to look at one more future revenue stream.

This is very significant move, since the mobile technoloy wars between GSM and CDMA is hotting up worldwide. Already for GSM mobiles, Flash Lite is available. With this move, Macromedia has flattened the platform choices for running mobile applications, games, video in the CDMA arena. For developers, now they can look into serving both the platform customers with single development framework.

Excerpts from the Press release

Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) and QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM) today announced an agreement under which Macromedia® will create a version of Macromedia Flash Lite™ as an extension for BREW. As a result of this agreement, the large BREW developer community and more than two million Flash® developers will be able to create rich, engaging mobile content on the Flash Platform for the BREW solution, QUALCOMM's established content delivery and monetization system.

Expected to ship next year, this new extension of Flash Lite for BREW will help further evolve the wireless value chain worldwide. BREW developers will realize the benefit of rich mobile experiences and the return on investment when they add Flash to their applications, while Flash developers will have a new channel to monetize their mobile work. Subscribers will ultimately benefit from a wide array of the richest services and content possible. The announcement today builds on an existing QUALCOMM and Macromedia agreement.

"By providing an extension of Macromedia Flash Lite for BREW, mobile developers will have a prime opportunity to bring compelling Flash services and content to mobile devices globally," said Al Ramadan, executive vice president and general manager of mobile and devices, Macromedia. "We are excited to extend our partnership with QUALCOMM to bring great mobile experiences to more than 56 operators."

Macromedia has been an important industry player when it comes to providing a great mobile experience. The combination of our two technologies will be a boon for developers and subscribers alike," said Gina Lombardi, senior vice president of marketing and product management, QUALCOMM Internet Services."

Qualcomm's Press release

Technorati Tags: Macromedia, Qualcomm, Flash, Flash Player

Yahoo! Podcast

2005-10-10T11:57:00.000+05:30

Yahoo! joins the podcast bandwagon with their own podcasting location. Seems what Apple said when they launch the podcast is coming true [Radio Reborn]. Listen Yahoo! Podcast

Tags: Podcasts, Yahoo

Microsoft Turns 30

2005-10-08T17:17:00.000+05:30

With this month started, Microsoft turns 30. It's interesting to note that Myself and Microsoft share the same age. Blitz did a wonderful job in celebrating Microsoft turns 30. Look into the video and predictions for Microsoft 50, although i don't share Microsoft's enthusiasm for next 20 years it is interesting to watch.

Tag: Microsoft

Writeboard goes live

2005-10-03T22:20:00.000+05:30

Jason Fried and his team at 37 signals have launched their fourth web application in the series. Writeboard is a simple note sharing application thru which you can share your information with people and do collaborative writing. Quite useful for screenplay writers, document developers among others.

Back on the successful BaseCamp, BackPack, TadaList, Writeboard does only one thing and it do it better.

Take your FREE writeboard

Making of Flash 8

2005-09-29T09:14:00.000+05:30

It seems like the team in Macromedia really worked hard enough to bring in Flash 8. The recent Making of Flash 8 Video presentation in MM site gives you the behind the scenes look of what went in developing Flash 8. Surely and certainly, this is a nerve-wrecking exercise when you have achieved a cult status on the web in terms of how visual the web can be. All over the world, designers, developers are raring to go on the next version of the authoring system with new capabilities, faster development time, it is surely are hair-picking days for the development team.

Hats off to all the engineers in Macromedia US and India. On a sidenote, i believe, the Macromedia Flash Player 8 is developed in their IDC in Bangalore. That's my 2 cents.

Watch the video here | Download Flash 8 Trial | Download Free Flash Player

Category: Flash 8, Macromedia

What is Web 2.0 mindset ?

2005-09-28T10:39:00.000+05:30

Sadagopan blogged it about John Hagel's perspective of Web 2.0. He argues about Web 2.0 being a mindset. Web 2.0 is not technology. Web 2.0 is a state of mind. Web 2.0 is a platform. John Hagel neatly summarizes this "state of being" Going by the discussion i think like God you can only explain the characterstics of Web 2.0 and not actually what it is. Of all the important features of Web 2.0 distribution, collaboration and participation are the keys to create realistic, people-friendly web.

John Hagel's take

Platform. Platform is an important concept because it suggests a foundation that is meant to be built upon rather than self-contained.

Emerging. It is emerging because it supports extensions to itself, facilitating a bootstrapping process to create very complex functionality from very simple building blocks. Web 2.0 is far from a finished product, it is a rapidly evolving platform.

Network-centric. In contrast to other technology platforms like PCs or mainframes, it is not a standalone platform, but instead Web 2.0 is built upon an open network, making it pervasive, extending across the entire globe. As a network-centric platform, it is device-independent – it is meant to be accessed by devices of all kinds, ranging from PCs and mobile phones to RFID tags and bio-sensor devices.

Creation. The ultimate purpose and significance of the platform is to support creation, not just communication or participation in sharing of interests. This is what makes it truly distinctive relative to previous generations of networks. We’re also not just talking about creation of media or digital products and services – this platform is becoming central to the creation of a broad range of physical products as well.

Users. Rather than viewing creation as a highly specialized activity, this platform encourages users of all types to become involved in the creation process. The well-established boundaries between producers and consumers and professionals and amateurs are rapidly eroding.

Distributed. Because it is pervasive, Web 2.0 facilitates distributed creation – it doesn’t matter where the individuals or communities reside, they can access the platform.

Collaboration. Because it is built upon a network, it also enhances the potential for collaboration. We are not talking about isolated nodes of creation, but instead the ability for individuals and communities to connect together in the creative process in ways that were never possible before.

Cumulative. Perhaps the most important aspect of this platform is that it encourages cumulative creation. This stems from the modularity that is a key design principle of Web 2.0 and it has profound implications for creative activity. It means that wherever and whenever creative activity occurs, it can be appropriated and built upon by others, further strengthening the bootstrapping process. Since what is being created is meant to be shared, it becomes less and less useful to think of the output as products and much more important to view the output as services that in turn support the creation of other services.

Category: Web 2.0

Generation: Roaming

2005-09-27T09:26:00.000+05:30

2006 may mark the beginning of round 2 of the great Internet era. Whatever today's tech evangelists speak about are same old wine packaged in a new bottle or a good wine receipe years before not implemented properly now being implemented with panache. Business 2.0 covers this perspective which i have been thinking for quite sometime. Like fashion, where Retro is uber design today, re-enginner an old idea and present it to the VCs with cash and voila you hit the success formula.

World will be a better place if anyone can do anything anywhere without the need for any special/proprietary softwares & hardwares. May be a far-fetched vision but truly achievable. Ajax gives you the functionality of the desktop to your browser. E4X will take away the treachary middleware required for simple information sharing between two interesting individuals. Blogs are now, uberly titled as citizen journalism. Wikis are collaborative knowledge sharing. RSS is the new "Bookmark" & Reference. VoIP is the new larger EPABX for enterprises. Modern day technology allows people to perceive their hidden subconscious mindset of being a Gypsy or a hippie. Roam anywhere without any worries about what you can do for living.

The very reason Web 2.0 is debated, discussed in detail is the mental shift of working from an office to working anywhere. As Apple proclaims, Random is the new order, similiarly Mobility is the new Chair. Like the aboriginals we are now species fond of roaming. So every modern day comfort should be available while we roam. Our GIS,Hybrid Mobiles, iPods, Ajax applications, Wiki's are all based on the simple principle of mobility.

Modern Web is like a pickle. It needs time to gain more value before it tastes so good. I believe the pickle is getting its due for now.

7 Technologies that change everything

2005-09-27T09:04:00.000+05:30

Credit goes to Om Malik. He has written an extensive article on the "new found" love affairs in technology. His list includes Ajax, Biogenerics, Deep web search, HD Audio, Hybrid cell phones, Micro Fuel Cells, and WiMAX. What's interesting is Om Malik valiantly gives a definition in less than 2-3 sentences for each technology, when the whole world is crying to define what is Web 2.0 :-)

To me the missing link here again is games & distributed learning [Wiki] and of course there are few rappid alication development frameworks liks Ruby & Django.

Read Om Malik's blog | Business 2.0 Article

On a side note, Malik also notifies the demise of Palm as we know it. From yesterday, Palm pulled its plug from their proprietary OS and moved into Windows OS for handhelds. Microsoft wins eventually with Palm.

Ajax Apps & Changing face of applications

2005-09-15T09:19:00.000+05:30

We recently completed an web application for one of our client here in Chennai. Having understood the importance & functional value of Ajax (for the uninitiated, it is Asychronous Javascript and XML) I specifically instructed the development team to use Ajax wherever it will provide value to the client. Having said that, the world is slowly ajaxed in all cornors. I have reported about Writely, a neat Ajax-based web application some time before.

With Om Malik on myside, let me introduce Meebo, a web-based Trillian like all IM combo in one single screen. An Ajax-driven IM Client, Meebo cut thru a lot of things like installation of various messengers, rights of installation in user's machine, administrative controls and so on. Presently with Meebo, you can use your AOL, Yahoo!, MSN & ICQ IMs. Surely, the world is embracing the browser with much love. Try out Meebo (still in the alpha stage!)

Zimbra is another innovation on top of the browser. Zimbra is an open source, Ajax-driven full featured, i repat, full featured email client. Absolutely a delight in knowing someone has developed a complete email client in the likes of Outlook, Thunderbird, iCal running inthe browser. I haven't downloaded the collaboration suite yet. But going by their hosted demo, I can visualise where they are looking at. Infact, with the proliferation of Ajax-driven, browser-centric, no-server-troubling apps, we can depend more on your browser than to install/uninstall and do whole sorta nonsense on every crash. Download Zimbra Collaboration suite source.

Google BlogSearch goes live

2005-09-14T13:12:00.000+05:30

Looking at this location from the morning, i found it went live. Read the complete FAQs.The search looks cool. It gives you the information of the blog, last updated timing and relevant keyword highlighting. For "CSS" it shows 81,139 results.The advanced blog search tab looks great, with the option of post dates, selected post timeline and by author. If you have a blooger account, the new blog search tab is visible in your Dashboard. Blogger's blog search is here.

My recommended features in the future would be,

1. Based on the keyword search, Google needs to provide something similar to subscribe with bloglines or My Yahoo!
2. With selective results, i should be able to build a opml list to be used in my desktop RSS aggregator or push things as a live bookmarks in Firefox
3. Like Pluck, Google can come out with a small web-based RSS aggregation application, and blogsearch results can be directly integrated with that.

For now, it looks good. The likes of icerocket will have a tough competition ahead for now.

Microsoft Office 12 Core Applications UI

2005-09-14T11:03:00.000+05:30

This via SVN [aka Jason Fried]. With the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2005, Microsoft unveiled the sneak peak of next version of Office tagged as "Office 12 Core Applications". Office 12 comes with an altogether different UI. With Microsoft PressPass's interview, Microsoft is seriously thinking of changing their fuddy-daddy image of providing gray bars with highlighted icons. The Office 12 Core application's UI is more matured with larger icons, functional grouping, user-centric groups and so on. The one feature which is strikingly different from the earlier UIs are offlate, Microsoft understand the proper usage of colors, graphics & sequential groupings for better customer experience. Although, still not matching the bubbly icons & UI elements of Apple, Microsoft this time has moved certainly few inches ahead.

Some of the UI improvement in the words of Larson-Green, group program manager for the Office User Experience at Microsoft.

There are far too many features to describe in any detail, but here are a few of the key innovations. The main part of the user experience is code-named the “ribbon.” It’s the one place you go to find the commands that are all about authoring –creating the document, the presentation or the spreadsheet you’re working on. There’s no longer a stack of task panes and menus and toolbars to look through. There’s just one place to look for commands.

Another feature is “galleries.” Galleries give you a visual representation of the kinds of formatting choices you can make in your document without needing to set a number of individual elements to achieve it. For example, if you want your margins to be wide or narrow or short or tall, you can go to a gallery for a visual image of what that would look like all at once instead of needing to changes several items in a dialog box. The galleries also offer “live previews” in many instances, so you can see exactly what the document is going to look like before you make the choice, which makes it easier to experiment. For example, with something simple like fonts, you can select the text in your document, go up to the font drop-down menu, and by just rolling down the menu you can see the font change happen simultaneously in the document before you’ve selected the font you want. It makes it easier to create a document that looks the way you want it to look. These live galleries are almost everywhere in the product – it’s a try-it-before-you-buy-it kind of thing that cuts out lots of steps.

A feature code-named “Super Tooltips” integrates Help topics into the product in a new way. One of the main problems that people have with Help topics today is that they don’t know the terms used to describe features. Super Tooltips are integrated Help tips that provide quick access to information about a command directly from the command’s location in the ribbon. The tooltip itself will usually give you enough information about what that feature does so that you can use it.

Another feature is the “Quick Launch Toolbar,” which allows you to customize the UI by adding as many commands as you like to a toolbar. It’s a place where the user can collect the specific set of commands they use frequently. There’s also a feature code-named “Floatie” which is a formatting tool that presents the most common text formatting features on a tool panel that “floats” over the selected text - improving formatting efficiency by eliminating mouse trips to the command area. So, for instance, if you’re in the picture tools and you notice that your heading needs to be bold, the Floatie means you don’t have to switch all the way to another tab just to make that change.

Have a look at the screenshots Word screenshot here. Excel screenshot here. Powerpoint screenshot here. Read the full interview here.