Global groundbreaking software from India?Well..

Good article : I concur with the author that we should move towards more innovative product or ideas based rather then services based industry

Global groundbreaking software from India?Well..

Author: Ashish Sinha | Mar 21 2007 | | Email This Post

While India Inc boasts of groundbreaking services capabilities, fact of the matter remains that we haven’t yet built global IT products.

To a certain extent, iFlex/Tally have made a significant impact, but India scores a big zerO when it comes to B2C products.

There are hugely successful India specific products [Naukri.com/Indiatimes etc]; but then, these are not really global products. Infact, leaving Zoho aside, there is hardly any Indian product which has successfully made a dent in www.

Ankur [CTO, CellNext] summarizes the whole Indian experience [courtesy LinkedIn].

A groundbreaking product results not just from scientists/engineers — it emerges from the environment and mindset. The environment in US (for example) makes it quite ‘normal’ and routine for companies to innovate and come up with breakthroughs. There are already support systems and practices in place — eager financers, entrepreneurs, marketers, customers always wanting more… They have been inventing for more than 200 years now and see it very natural to solve problems using new ideas and technologies.

On the other hand, Indians learn technologies to get jobs. Instinctively, they don’t want to solve any problems using new ideas and rock the boat. They would rather live with status quo and quickly become tolerant (worse, ignorant) of small inconveniences. Our approach to technology is bookish — we learn things to get degrees and jobs, not out of real interest and curiosity. There are so many, e.g., who have high degrees in say, economics, psychology, engineering, etc but have least interest in these subjects.

Isn’t this an irony that Indians file more patents than China/Taiwan combined; but when it comes to innovation from India- we take a backseat?
I am aware of big product companies’ shop in India and surprised to see that most of these companies work on service/consulting mode [i.e. treat US counterparts as customers, instead of buddies!!], and have this *service* mentality very deeply embedded. Outcome of British slavery?

To cut the long story short, People with bended back cannot rule the world. Indian companies are way too risk averse and way too deep in services.

Maybe it’s time we become mavericks, and not powerpoint managers?
Maybe it’s time we talk about ‘Next Practice‘ and not ‘Best Practice’?
Maybe it’s time we start creating scientists/real engineers and not just $-hungry-IT professionals?
Maybe it’s time leaders get their hands dirty [and stop talking yada yada]?
Maybe it’s time we shake Indians out of their *comfortable zone* ?
Maybe it’s time we stop talking about job security?
Maybe it’s time we teach our kids to ‘leap frog‘ and not ‘baby steps’?
Maybe it’s time we shout “Where the mind is without fear! And the head is held high! Really high!”

Maybe?

What do you people think?
PS: I don’t mean to undermine Infys/Wipros of the world. They are okay, but…India is more than that. Atleast I believe so.

Top 10 reasons why you should be an Entrepreneur

Source : http://trak.in/tags/business/2007/08/11/top-10-reasons-an-entrepreneur-start-your-own-business-your-own-boss/

Why should I become an entrepreneur? Is it worth all the trouble of going through hardships and uncertainties of starting my own business? What if I fail ?

Here are the top 10 reasons according to me why you should be an entrepreneur:

1. The number one reason is also the reason why most of us are afraid to be an entrepreneur. To experience the uncertain journey on Entrepreneurship. You have one short life, and if you do not give a shot at it, you are missing out on a great experience. The journey of becoming an entrepreneur will itself teach you so much it is worth it only for that one reason. The zing, the high, the thrill - experience it and you will know what I am talking about.
2. To bring out the inner strength within yourself, that is rooted deep inside somewhere. That reserve of strength will bring out a new and confident you.
3. To make yourself proud by walking on a path that is less traveled. To stand out of majority of people and creating an unforgettable identity for yourself based on what you have done.
4. To show people around you that you are a man of strength and confidence. People will look upon you as a source of strength. They will seek your advice during their hardships.
5. To value your own skills and strengths, instead of giving off cheaply by working for someone else.
6. To be an inspiration and example for others.
7. To be creative. Yes, when you walk on the entrepreneurship path, the creative side of yours will surface in most unexpected ways.
8. To make a difference in lives of others. When you are an entrepreneur you will have the power of making a difference in the life of your employees, friends and customers.
9. To be happy. To love life and to love self.
10. And finally, to create wealth. Yes, this is important, but it is the last reason. All the above 9 reasons will give you much more satisfaction than this 10th reason.

Go ahead, start moving and walk on this wonderful path called entrepreneurship !

Nandan Nilekani: The 6 things that changed India

Source : http://churumuri.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/nandan-nilekani-the-6-things-that-changed-india/

Nandan Nilekani, the co-chairman of Infosys Technologies and Thomas L. Friedman’s muse for The World is Flat, is working on his own book titled Imagining India; his attempt, as he puts it, to address a gap in understanding India.

Delivering the global leader lecture at Johns Hopkins University’s school of advanced international studies last week, Nilekani spoke of the six things that changed in the mindset of india, “which is really responsible for the dynamism, the vitality, the energy you see today in India,” reports Aziz Haniffa in India Abroad.

1) Earlier, population was looked at as a burden and a lot of things that happened in the 1960s and ’70s—like family planning and sterilisation and the Emergency and so forth—were related to the belief that population was getting out of control and that it was actually a problem to have a large population. Today, we think of it as human capital. And, this has become even more critical because India is going to be the only young country in an ageing world and that really makes a huge difference.

2) Entrepreneurs are no longer viewed with suspicion but as icons of economic growth. Since 1991, there has been a huge expansion of enterprise, there is a far bigger role for the private sector and for industry. India today has the largest pool of entrepreneurial talent outside the United States. Indian entrepreneurs are not afraid of liberalisation any more. They are very confident and globally competitive and they are not only investing abroad, they are buying companies abroad.

3) English is no longer viewed as an imperial language that has to be jettisoned but as a language of aspiration that has to be really cultivated. All the political angst about English has disappeared largely because of the growth in the economy, the growth of outsourcing, the growth of jobs. More and more people, whether they are in villages or small towns, are realising that if they want to participate in the global economy and bring more income to their lives, they have to learn English. And the political system has accepted this because more and more states which had stopped teaching English are now going back to teaching English from class one.

4) The notion of democracy has undergone a major transformation from the time of india’s Independence. In the 1950s and ’60s, it was really a top-down idea. It was an idea of the leaders who had a certain vision of the kind of country they had to create, and it was given or gifted to all the people who may not have necessarily understood the value and import of what was happening. Today, it has gone on to become a bottom-up democracy where everybody understands their democratic rights. You see people taking charge and doing things without waiting for the state to do the job.

5) Technology has helped India leap-frog several decades from a very antiquated system to a very modern system. What people don’t realise is it has played as much a role in India’s internal development as it has in terms of the $50 billion in IT exports. The entire national elections of 2004 across were done digitally using electronic voting machines—there was no paper. Today, thanks to technology, India has the most modern stock markets in the world. The mobile phone has become accessible to everybody. It is touching every individual and we are seeing more and more applications, causing a quantum leap in productivity, fuelling economic growth.

6) India has adopted a progressive view of globalisation. Fundamentally the confidence that India has gained has made our worldview on globalisation far more positive. Our companies have become globally competitive and are willing to go out. More and more people are beginning to become far more comfortable with globalisation and they are realising the benefits of an open economy, of having their workers and their people all over the world, and of Indian companies exporting capital abroad.

Bangalore is global No 2 Tech Spot

Great news :0))

As per the latest global tech spot list of Silicon.com, Bangalore is only next to Silicon Valley.

http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/techhotspots/ lists the top 20 global hot spots

1. Silicon Valley
2. Bangalore
3. London
4. Tokyo
5. Boston
6. Cambridge
7. Shanghai
8. Tel Aviv
9. Seoul
10. Beijing
11. Chennai
12. Pune
13. Singapore
14. Helsinki
15. Moscow
16. Hong Kong
17. Hyderabad
18. New York
19. Sydney
20. Shenzhen

India & China have 4 each; US has 3 and UK has 2; while Australia, Finland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Russia and Singapore have 1 each.

Interestingly America has 3, Europe has 4, Middle East has 1, Australia has 1 while Asia has 11!

Why S60 apps suck

Source : Why S60 apps suck

http://tamss60.tamoggemon.com/2008/05/19/why-s60-apps-suck/

By admin

Michael Mace has been on my radar for a long time - being a former PalmSource employee and running a nice blog definitely qualifies you to be on my watchlist(as I also run a Palm OS site). He recently posted an article about why Nokia’s S60 platform will fall behind the iPhone eventually - he claims that it all has to do with marketing. And - unfortunately - I happen to disagree(*).

For me, S60 sucks because of a variety of different reasons:

Rampant piracy AND signage crap
S60v§ introduced the need for application signing. If your app wanted to do certain things, you needed to get it signed(which cost you 180 Euros or more). No signage, no workie.

This is similar to the concept Tapwave used with its Palm OS-based game console - but there’s one major difference here. Tapwave’s Zodiac checked if a signed app was modified, and refused to run modified apps.

Crackers had to either break the entire DRM system(which they couldn’t do) or had to resign the app(which would have forced them to give up their address and real name).

The two factors above made the Zodiac a piracy-free platform; and thus made developers accept the burden of application signing. Nokia, on the other hand, insists on signing but does not offer any benefits in exchange…

Stupid development mantra
I have developed applications for Palm OS, Windows Mobile and a variety of other systems(including even 14bit PIC MCU’s). Each system definitely has its own oddities - but Nokia’s S60 is full of weird crap.

Leaving functions? A cleanup stack? The four-object base model? Views? Loads of concepts that are unique to the S60/UIQ world.

This makes developer training expensive and development hard - and reduces the motivation for the development of S60 apps.

Carbide.c++ costs a LOT of cash
Finally, Carbide.c++ costs a load of money. For me, this is the straw that lays the camel flat - have a totally fuxated development model AND charge big bucks for the IDE. If Nokia wants to grow its followership, give away Carbide Pro with a book for 100€. Restrict it to single-developer shacks. But do it…

Cutting a long story short: for me, the reason for Nokia’s problems lays in the operating system’s architecture. Sure, S60 is a great, stable and well-usable OS - but developing for it is a huge pain in the butt. Eliminating piracy would put Nokia into a unique position on the marketplace - but the opportunity apparently has not been realized by anyone in the S60 camp so far…

Top reasons why people dont buy application software for smartphones

Quote from http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2008/05/nokia-goes-for-1-market-share-in-us.html

There are a lot of reasons --

1. lack of awareness that they can do it,

2. lack of a built-in software store on the device, incompatibility between various versions of S60, etc.

3. But one huge reason is because no one has ever made a compelling case to most users on why they should care about smartphone software.

Mobile presence an upcoming trend ?

Extending mobile presence - the need for context and device state information

I speak to a broad variety of vendors and operators about presence in a mobile context. It crops up repeatedly both for operator-centric developments like IMS and RCS, and also for independent applications like mobile VoIP and corporate unified comms.

In theory, mobile phones ought to be good platforms for presence information - both rudimentary connection details (online, offline, idle etc) and some personalised state or emotional content as well ("Dean is currently thinking about lunch" and so on).

In addition, the network is sometimes able to add some extra information about the user - maybe location cell ID, whether the user is on a call, whether they are connected via fixed or mobile and so forth.

All this is useful, and currently highly under-exploited. There is a lot of work needed just to prove the current user experience and gain adoption. Although I can't see anyone actually paying for presence directly, it potentially enhances other services, and could also generate increased traffic and call completion.

But at the same time, I think the mobile presence industry is missing a trick. The presence client on a phone ought to be able to pick up a lot more information about the device's - and the user's - context. In particular, it would be fantastic if it could pick up details from the underlying phone APIs, and enable that data to be exploited by clever applications in the network, or directly by a contact. So for example - whether the phone is on charge, or is running low on battery. Or whether the user is using a Bluetooth headset. Or that the accelerometer can detect motion that looks like walking or driving. Or that the memory for SMS's is almost full.

These are just some ideas, but you get the picture. There are all sorts of clever things that could be achieved with this approach.

(Yes, clearly privacy is a huge concern here, but let's assume that we can simultaneously invent some form of reasonably-effective permissioning system - perhaps an easier version of that seen on sites like Facebook)

Now clearly a fundamental issue is that phones differ in many of these regards. I don't think there's a standardised API for % battery remaining for example, and the SMS memory may be split between phone, SIM and memory card. Different OS's and models of phone have very different capabilities which would make creating "common denominators" extremely difficult.

But maybe we could start with a couple of basic aspects - perhaps standardised by OMTP or OMA - and then incrementally add more features over time.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no easy way to catalyse development of this type of concept. Bodies like the 3GPP shy away from dependency on mobile phone-resident software, often naively believing that everything of value can be done from the network core. It may be that we will need to rely either on operator-customised handset platforms (DoCoMo, maybe?) , or third-party software providers, probably from VoIP or IM backgrounds (Truphone? Skype? social networking clients?). We're getting there first with location context (Loopt, fring and others do this), but that still not providing data at the level of "device state".

On the other hand, one of the downsides of any extensions to current mobile presence technology would be the amount of extra signalling traffic involved. I'm already hearing that the IMS-centric view of a "presence enabled phonebook" is running into scaling problems. If you have 100 entries in a contact list, and you expect all of them to be continually updated, this causes a huge amount of (typically SIP) traffic. It also requires presence clients to be running continually in the background on devices, with consequent implications for power consumption.