My blog on full time MBA at Imperial College London Business School & Mobile trends Updates

Happy to see congress voted to power in India

2009-05-17T15:34:00.004Z

Indian elections results are out and Election 2009 was an unqualified victory for the Congress. Results prove that for the People of India nation comes first rather than the religion which other leaders were trying to play on.

I am happy with result because the election has led to a stable government that will not have to succumb endlessly to the irritations of coalition politics and the threat of a midterm breakdown.

From my little following I can say Congress played it simple strategy wise ( speaking MBA terms now !!)

> It chose a single leader for PM right from the outset. Manmohan singh able, wise and regarded as a thinking man who could lead India out of the economic turmoil. Contrastingly BJP shot its foot by raising debate of national leader as Modi mid way through elections this confused the voters.

> Focus on youth: India has one of largest youth population in the world. By playing cards on this front gave congress a big boost. In the 1990s, the BJP was the natural party of the youth; today, the Congress is the beneficiary of India’s demographic transformation. The party must ask why the children of BJP voters aren’t comfortable voting for the BJP.

In short people voted for rice dhal rather than a kichdi of BJP or third front!!

In terms of delivering value congress now has less barriers in terms of implementing policies which it faced last time. So road is set for economic development of India lets hope people get benefited by riding once the road is laid !

"The top 10 (techie) people you should follow on Twitter"

2009-05-17T15:31:00.003Z

Found the list of good twitters from the link below. I especially liked Padmashree's tweets !
"The top 10 (techie) people you should follow on Twitter"
http://tinyurl.com/bjddzq

update from me

2009-04-06T12:13:00.007Z

Sorry its been a while ( almost more then 2 months) that i have posted. Last 2 months was quite interesting and hectic for me. Month of Jan we had remaining 3 core exams ( Business economics, accounting and Finance) . I got to say accounting was my most dreadful exam of all time i thought i would flunk at it although the results proved otherwise !! Overall I am happy with my results of 6 core courses ( marketing , strategy, Business economics, accounting and Finance).

Based on how i fared in these exams and also my involvment in these courses proved a point that finance is not my cup of tea !! Finance is good for any industry and very useful but it is not what i see myself doing for life. Also the recent recession proves that not many jobs are out there for finance and it is really not a good time to be in there.

So where do you want to be or where do you see yourself in next 10 years i asked myself whilst sipping coffee and looking at beautiful sunshine outside my flat.. My Gut said strategy, marketing and P&O would be my strong areas although i really appreciated economics and accounting. As of now i plan to get into business development or strategy consultant in telecoms or IT. Back up option in this difficult times would be to get into project management in high techs. Time will tell when my MBA ends sept 2009 till then i have few things to enjoy ...electives, IED project ( very interesting expereince till now , and final thesis)

........to be continued

3Iphones make 1 Tata Nano !! Why Iphone is not making grounds in India

2009-04-06T11:24:00.005Z

Tata Nano or popularily called "people's car" was launched At Rs 1,00,000 ($ 2,500 when announced and $ 2,000 on the launch day thanks to Dollar appreciation against Rupee) Tata Nano is the world’s most inexpensive, yet it is a very modern car that gives 100 Km for a charge of 5 liters of petrol, has a stylish finish and meets the European norms for emission.

It will be interesting to watch Tata Nano unfold in the market over the next couple of years. BBC endorsed it best when it calls Tata Nano a demonstration of Indian ingenuity. !!

The unveiling of Tata Nano, the cheapest car in the world, triggers an important event in the car market. The car cost brings down the cost of ownership of an entry level car in India by 30%

So what does tata nano got to do with my title "3Iphones make 1 nano !!Why Iphone is not making grounds in India". The topic of The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid

By C. K. Prahalad proposes that businesses, governments, and donor agencies stop thinking of the poor as victims and instead start seeing them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs as well as value-demanding consumers. He proposes that there are tremendous benefits to multi-national companies who choose to serve these markets in ways responsive to their needs. After all the poor of today are the middle-class of tomorrow.

Since India has a huge base of middle class families if the products satisfy the needs of those growing middle class indians then product will be a hit.

We all know Iphone was a paradigm shifter in mobile industry as it made most of the manufacturers to focus on

> User interface
> Touch

The phone is doing quite good overall with 30 million sales worldwide but still iphone is not huge sucess in India these are few reasons I could think of

> Pricing needs to be bang on ! The iPhone is also priced far beyond the reach of even many middle-class Indian consumers. Even though market research company, estimates iPhones cost less than $175 to build, both Apple and Airtel stuck to the approximately $700 price for the phone in India, vs. $199 with a two-year AT&T contract in the U.S. In India, then, three iPhones equal one Nano, the $2,000 car that Tata Motors (TTM) launched in India just two weeks ago. If we see why Nokia has been strongest player in India The price tags of every Nokia mobile phone is very reasonable. I mean, I can still get a GSM mobile phone for as less as Rs. 1200 ( 22 $) in India with all the basic features and that will last long enough to pay me back with my dues.

> Functionality : Indians just use their phones differently. With spotty data coverage and slow download speeds on non-3G networks, the iPhone just doesn't dazzle the way it does in the U.S. Also, Indian customers like to forward text messages; Nearly 70% of them do that at least once a day. Until recently, the iPhone didn't allow users to do that. "It's a big functionality issue" solved only recently

> Competition : Nokia the world leader in mobile industry along with other players launch mobile phones which are customised to indian needs for eg Nokia 1100 which is simple and easy to use phone which has a torch light which people can use during nights in India. Over 200 million Nokia 1100 cellphones have been sold since its launch in late 2003, making it the world's best selling phone handset

> 3G: Iphone is best used when we use it with applications !! such as google maps on iphone. This would need data connection which works best on 3g etc. 3g is yet to be rolled in India even after the promised to auctioned by Dec 2008. so hopefully launch of 3g and wimax

Many things happening in India ..polictics, launch of Nano, india gaining ground in G20 west finally understanding that fortune is "truelly at bottom of pyramid"

Year that was in 2008 !

2009-01-17T22:20:00.000Z

(Appeared in the Education Times Column of Times of India (Bangalore Edition) on January 5, 2008)

General

· Barack Obama getting elected as the first African-American President on November 4, 2008 and his first speech cheered the whole world.

· Chinese demonstrated their extra-ordinary skills in project execution by hosting Summer Olympics 2008 in Beijing and by winning the largest number of medals in the Games; India created a record of winning the first-ever Gold for individual sport, thanks to Abhinav Bindra

· ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) made India proud by putting Chadrayaan (lunar vehicle) into space on October 22, 2008 and successfully putting MIP (Moon Impact Probe) on to the Moon soil (with Indian tri-color painting on it) on November 14, 2008; they also put ten satellites into orbit in quick succession within tem minutes using an India-made launch vehicle PSLV on August 25, 2008.

· Tate Nano (the $ 2,500 people’s car) that was showcased to the world on January 10, 2008 grabbed global headlines. Singur in West Bengal unfortunately could not house the plant that was set to roll out Tate Nano in 2008, thanks to petty politics; Tate Nano will roll out of Sanand in Gujarat.

· Terror strike takes a heavy toll on India in the year 2008; Bombay terror attack on the “iconic” Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay on November 26, 2008 (India’s 9/11) and its scar will take years to disappear. This year saw terror attacks in Jaipur (13^th May), Bangalore (25^th July), Hyderabad (26^th July), Delhi (13^th September).

· Major tragedies strike India in 2008; Kosi flood in Bihar (13^th to 27^th September) affects millions; Himachal Naina Devi temple tragedy (2^nd August), Jodhpur temple tragedy (30^th September)

· Chinese earthquake in May, Myanmar cyclone in October, and blasts in Pakistan in October impacted many in the world

· Tripura, Meghalaya & Nagaland in March, Karnataka in May, Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram & Jammu-Kashmir get newly elected State Governments in 2008.

· Left parties withdrawing support to Manmohan Singh-led Government, and the support extended by Samajwadi Party made the Government very weak

· Inflation going past 12% in June 2008 hurts the common man most; luckily, it started climbing down by the end of the year.

· Rupee that was at Rs 47 / USD appreciated to Rs 38 /USD in before crashing to Rs 50 / USD by the year-end.

· Tatas did India proud by acquiring Jaguar and Land Rover brands from Ford in May

· Reliance starts pumping oil from Godavari basin and expect to get about 16% of India’s oil needs

· NASA Phoenix lands on Mars surface on June 1, 2008

· Private sector built green-field airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad started operations on 23^rd March and 23^rd May respectively.

· 123 Agreement (Nuclear Agreement) was signed by USA and India on October 10, 2008

· Central Government notifies the Sixth Pay Commission; the salary differentials between private sector and the government to reduce substantially; salaries for academic staff to increase dramatically.

· The “Sub-prime” crisis in the housing sector in the United States causes a global financial tsunami in November 2008 that is set to impact all the countries (including India); US Government nationalizes Freddie and Fannie, bails out AIG and Meryl Lynch; Lehman Brothers declares bankruptcy; the three US auto majors get bailout; Toyota set to declare losses the first time ever in 71 years. USA talks of 750,000 job losses in the year. Indian IT industry too will be affected, though it is too early to assess the impact

· Oil prices that started at $ 60 per barrel in January shoot up to $ 143 in November before crashing to $ 37 in December

Products

· Apple launching iPhone 3G on July 11, 2008 in USA (and August 22, 2008 in India) brought 3G and “Touch” to mart phones in a big way. Blackberry launches “Bold” in September and “Storm” in November; Nokia launches N96 in August, 5800 in October, N97 in November; Samsung launches Innov8 in November and Omnia in December; Sony Ericsson launches Experia in November; Palm launches Centro & Treo 800W; Apple and Blackberry push Palm way down – 8% by year end from 36% earlier) in smart phone sales.

· Ultra-thin notebook computers saw action along with low-cost “Netbooks” (small footprint, low power consumption and less expensive notebooks). Apple launched MacBook Air in January; Lenovo launched x300 in May

· Netbooks enter mainstream; sell more numbers than Apple iPhone; Asus Eee PC and Acer Aspire dominate

· Firefox 3 browser was launched on June 17, 2008; creates history with record downloads within a week

· Intel “Atom” processor (that consumes very low power) enters “Netbook” market and targets mobile users (including smart phones)

· Intel also announces next generation Core i7 processors; Intel engineers do India proud by designing an energy efficient processor for Xeon server

· Google enters mobile phone space by announcing G1 on October 22, 2008 (based on Android operating system); it also launches “Chrome” browser in September

· NVidia launches “Telsa” personal super computer in India

· Titan launches Braille watches for blind at Rs 995 along with National Association for Blind in November

· Microsoft launches Windows 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 in May; also beta versions of Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8 and Azure (cloud computing product); their “Silverlight” platform to counter Adobe Flash during Chinese Olympics gains traction

· DTH (Direct To Home) started gaining momentum with Reliance and Airtel announcing their products during Dasara and Deepavali season respectively (October and November)

Marketplace

· Japanese Daiichi Sankyo acquiring Indian pharma major Ranbaxy for $ 4.6 billion was indeed a big ticket acquisition; Infosys bid to acquire UK-based SAP practice company Axon was nullified by HCL Tech putting a bid for a higher price and winning it for $ 753 million; other acquisitions include Mindtree acquiring Aztec Software, Birla-owned IDEA acquiring the first Indian mobile service provider Spice for Rs 2,720 Crores and Times acquiring job portal “DICE” from Cyber Media. Swan Telecom and Unitech selling off within months of taking GSM license smacks of corruption.

· Globally, IT leader HP acquired EDS for $ 13.9 billion; Oracle acquired BEA for $ 8.5 billion. Verizon acquired Alltel for a whopping $ 28.1 billion; Microsoft bid to acquire Yahoo fails; JDA acquired Supply Chain software vendor i2 for $ 346 million; McAfee acquired Secure Computing for $ 465 million.

· HP annual turnover crosses $118.4 billion as of October 31, 2008 a record by any IT company (including IBM)

Technology

· HP researchers discover the 4^th circuit element (after Resistor, Conductor and Capacitor)

· MIT researchers demonstrate “wireless” electricity (may change power charging for mobile devices), “raw solar” (will help wider adoption of solar energy) and thermoelectric cooling (might help data centers)

· HP and QualComm announce “Gobi” chip for mobile phones

· Blue-ray wins the standard war in DVD storage format

· Lenovo and Apple launch super slim laptop products using advanced technology

· Sony announces “TransferJet” with speeds of up to 375 Mbps

· Zephyr solar plane clocks more than 83 hours of unmanned flying

Indian IT companies

Indian IT companies top the IAOP (International Association of Outsourcing Professionals) list of Top 10 global outsourcing companies with Infosys (3^rd), TCS (6^th), Wipro (7^th), Genpact (9^th) and Tech Mahindra (10^th) in the fray

Indian IT services revenue touches $ 52 billion by March 2008 (NASSCOM); IT services (including ITES) generate 1.6 million jobs; Karnataka benefits with IT /ITES jobs exceeding 500,000 (STPI November 200

Infosys headcount touches 100,000; gets included in “Global Dow” – 150 most innovative global companies

Wipro enters African markets by starting office in Morocco and Ethiopia

HCL acquires Axon for $ 753 million

Airtel (India;s largest mobile service provider) reaches subscriber base of 83 million by November

WNS gets $ 1 billion (over 10 years) contract from Aviva

Reputation Institute in USA puts Tatas in the 6^th position (out of Top 200) globally

TCS starts 1,000 seat facility in Ohio, USA

3i-Infotech turnover crosses Rs 1,000 Crores in 2008

MNC companies in India

· Nokia rolls out its 200millionth handset out of Sriperumbudur plant (near Chennai) in India

· Motorola plant commences production in April in Sriperumbudur (near Chennai)

· Dell laptops roll out of Chennai factory

· CSC talks of doubling India count from 16,000 to 32,000 (before meltdown)

· Chicago-based Agile software major “Thought Works”, expands in India

· Virtualization major VmWare expands India operations

· Fab-less semiconductor major ARM expand India operations

· Yahoo Labs start in Bangalore

· Juniper Networks increases headcount in India significantly

· Sutherland talks of 10,000 seat BPO in Chennai

· Semiconductor major (earlier part of Motorola) FreeScale

expands India operations

· French IT services major Steria has big plans for India

· Citix to invest $ 200 million,

· Intel 6-core energy efficient Xeon processor for servers is designed in India

· Hyundai starts second car plant in Chennai

Telecom

· Policy muddle in 3G and WiMax licenses, controversy surrounding the sale of Swan & Unitech Telecom stall India’s telecom growth story

· Mobile phone subscriber base to cross 380 million by Dec 31, 2008 (it stood at 374.13 million as of Nov 30, 2008 with monthly additions exceeding 10 million as per TRAI)

· IP telephony becomes legal from August 2008

· Japanese telecom giant DoCoMo enters India thru Tate Telecom

· India’s first 3G phone rings on December 13, 2008 thru MTNL

Education & Research

· Six new IIT’s start at Jaipur, Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad

· Indian Institute of Science celebrates the century year starting May 27, 2008

· Supreme Court upholds OBC reservation excluding “creamy layer”

· ACM Infosys Foundation Award for computer science takes off – Prof Daphne Koller is the first recipient

· Indian Science & Engineering research Council (on the lines of NSF in USA) gets Parliamentary approval in December

· Government starts 100,000 scholarships for outstanding high school graduates; SBI launches 100,000 merit-cum-means scholarships

Applications

· Reserve Bank of India announces “mobile banking” guidelines

· Airlines shift to 100% e-ticketing from June 1, 2008

· Hughes to provide Internet connectivity across trains using their satellite network

· Electricity Exchange take off in 2008

Infrastructure

· Airtel laying US Japan cable

People

· Barack Obama is the next US President

· Bill Gates steps down from full time Chairman position in Microsoft; Yahoo Founder Chairman Jerry Yang retires

· Nepal monarchy is gone; get its first President, Parliament and a new Prime Minister

· Pakistan gets a new President and a Prime Minister; democracy returns

· IIT Kanpur educated Dr Subba Rao is the new Governor of Reserve Bank of India

· Chandu Bhave is the new SEBI Chairman

· India-born Lakshmi Mittal-controlled Arcelor Mittel has annual revenue exceeding $ 100 billion in 2008

· Bharti Mittal of Airtel joins ITU Board (the first for any Indian)

· Kiran Karnick gives charge of NASSCOM President-ship to Som Mittal

· Former Prime Minister VP Singh, spiritual guru Maharshi Mahesh Yogi and social worker Baba Amte pass away

Visitors to India in 2008 include

· Prime Ministers of UK, Turkey, Nepal, French President, Syrian President and Prince Andrew

· CEOs of IT companies (ARM, FreeScale, Microsoft and RIM), FMCG majors (Coca-Cola, Pepsico, and Unilever), automation major Schneider and defence electronics major Thales

· Rupert Murdoch

· Presidents of Cambridge University, Oxford University, UC Berkeley and Purdue University

· Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunus

· Presidents of Royal Society, UK and IEEE Computer Society, USA

Interesting numbers

· India’s student population in USA in 2008-09 (94,000)

· Anil Ambani Power IPO subscribed 173 times (Rs 11,760 Crores)

· Foreign Exchange reserves start at $ 240 billion, surge to $ 343 billion, crash to $ 240 billion and rise to $ 250 billion)

· World lost $ 10 trillion in year 2008 stock market crash (the biggest ever)

· SWITCH (Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, TCSm Cognizant and HCL) holds 2.4% of global IT outsourcing ($ 667 billion)

· India’s GSM mobile subscriber base crossed 200 million; overall mobile subscribers crossed 300 million in March and 385 million in December

Happy new year to all my friends and readers

2009-01-16T21:50:00.005Z

Happy new year to all my friends and readers. I have now more then 2k visitors to my site feel happy to see people from various countries visiting the blog:)
Its been a while that I blogged !! its been a hectic/relaxing month so far. Hectic since exams are going on i am done with 4 out of 6 till and 2 more to go till next friday 23'rd Jan..I am waiting so much for 23'rd :) exams have been good till now. I will pen down details on my experience after exams. Till then bye and have a good time

Ciao
Praveen

My home town Belgaum

2009-01-16T21:37:00.004Z

I was amazed by this pic taken in Belgaum. It sort of gives new perspective or view to see belgaum :). Coincidentaly the place from where this pic is shot seems to be just meters away from my home sweet home in Belgaum. See the google maps link to my home

Bring it on says Belgaum i am very pleased to see it grow.. Although we hear rumours of tata project or IIT etc to be in Belgaum it has changed its image from pensioner's paradise to creating a niche in education, health industry, wide range industries from IT to hydraluics, Indal etc. I hope the growth continues ! This video shows it all

I am proud to be a Belgaumite and would love to contribute something to its growth sometime in my life.

Vote for it : Belgaum IT company in top 30 of hottest start ups in India !!

2008-12-17T20:31:00.001Z

Right now it is in 9'th position ...do vote for it by dec 22 in TATA NEN Hottest Startup

Vayavya Labs of Belgaum in top 30 for TATA NEN Hottest Startup Awards

The TATA NEN Hottest Startup Awards are a result of the combined efforts of TATA, a rapidly growing business group in India with significant international operations, and the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), a non-profit organization, and India's leader in entrepreneurship education.

Vayavya Labs, (Tata NEN hottest startup details) a Belgaum based IT/ Internet/ Software developer has been nominated in the top 30 hottest startups. Voting lines will open from 25 Nov and will be open until December 22. 5 winners will selected after December 22.

Vayavya Labs offers tools, which target the semiconductor, & design services firms. The flagship product DDGen (US patent pending) attempts to de-mystify the device driver development for embedded platforms.

IF

2008-12-13T00:59:00.000Z

IF.....

Very nice poem from http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm

very relevant still in our day today life

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

David Wood's visit to Imperial Business school

2008-11-30T01:24:00.003Z

Today we had a pleasure of having David Wood , EVP of Research at Symbian, Ltd ( my previous employer) in our Business school. David is now responsible for understanding and guiding Symbian's response to disruptive trends in technology, business, and society. I have met David for couple of times in Symbian from my personal opinion he is very humble, has always quest for innovation(which is core to symbian's value) and very well respected person in Symbian.

The talk we had was on "Building the killer mobile experience of 2013" detailing on Innovation, Platforms, Agility and Open source.

It was really a good talk and personally it inspired me in some front for my MBA thesis !! Thesis topic isnt decided yet by me but i think I am moving towards it :)

bye for now need to head for some sleep

Cheerio

why Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) will be the next big business opportunity for India

2008-11-29T12:35:00.003Z

Gaurav makes a very good case why Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) will be the next big business opportunity for India after Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO).

Social media practitioners often talk about it in cryptic “conversation is an art form” terms, but you can break down the social media delivery process in six discrete steps that correspond to the oft-quoted Listen -> Understand -> Engage model:-

1. Data collection
2. Data mining
3. Data analysis
4. Insight delivery
5. Consulting
6. Solution delivery

If you look hard at these six steps, you’ll find that many of them are driven by dynamics that make them very susceptible to outsourcing –

Sudhakar Ram writes below in his column about the first two waves after that i have posted column on third wave of outsourcing !! interesting read go on

As a participant in and observer of the Indian IT industry for over two decades, I can clearly see that software and services exports from India have gone through two waves and that a Third Wave is now unfolding.

Wave 1, which we can trace to the 80s and 90s, clearly established that Indian IT professionals were competent and could be trusted to deliver world-class work. This was the staff augmentation era of the industry, largely serviced through onsite services.

Wave 2, starting off in the mid-90s and currently at its peak, established India as an offshore programming destination. With labor arbitrage as the basic value proposition, Indian companies established large offshore development centers that had competent technical staff, mature CMM processes and world-class infrastructure. While the trigger for Wave 2 was the offshore initiatives by companies like GE, Motorola, Nortel etc., the Y2K bug gave it the necessary momentum. Although things slowed a bit after the dotcom bust, the shrinking IT budgets actually gave an impetus to large Fortune 500 companies to use offshore centers as a mainstream sourcing option.

India Making Millions Servicing U.S. Social Media Ecosystem

By Daya Baran at October 19, 2008 8 Comments

While U.S. companies struggle to figure out how to monetize social media, India’s tech industry has quietly figured out a way to make hundreds of millions (maybe billions) by servicing it. Everything from simple comments on blog posts, to breaking sophisticated Google CAPTCHAs, Craigslist listings, Gmail invites, Yahoo personals, MySpace profiles, YouTube uploads, Facebook friends, and now I hear Twitter tweets are all being performed in India on behalf of social networking sites, blogs, photo sharing, video, and other social media and Web 2.0 sites that depend heavily on online advertising as a revenue source are using these services to boost traffic and users.

For a mere $2 a thousand CAPTCHAs can be solved and a thousand blog comments or MySpace friend requests can be sent generating lots of traffic and links for that property and hence, increasing its online ad revenue. Workers in India process the data using CAPTCHA syndication web based kits, API keys, and thousands of proxies to make their work easier, and the process more efficient.

In fact, entire social media and online advertising campaigns featuring cool graphics, widgets, RSS feeds, and other sitewide interactive features are being created and executed from India. “Anything that can be outsourced is being outsourced today in India,” said Rajdeep Sahrawat, vice president of Nasscom, or the National Association of Software Service Companies, an Indian software industry trade organization that closely monitors trends in outsourcing.

India is no longer a call center outsourcing destination. It has rapidly become a global hub servicing the U.S. social media ecosystem and as well as the higher knowledge industries. Services such as tax filing and preparation, medical diagnoses, legal work, and financial portfolio analysis are turning to India for sophisticated knowledge processing and analysis work. A start-up that provides such services is PreMedia Global and in two years, it has grown from a brother-and-sister operation to a company with 900 employees. Initially, they considered launching a call-center operation, said co-founder Kapil Viswanathan, who studied engineering at Stanford University. However, they quickly saw that the nature of outsourcing was changing. “High-end, knowledge-based services — that’s where the growth is coming from,” he said. “We think this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

The California Fair Trade Coalition said virtually any job that uses a computer could be outsourced, and it argues that U.S. trade laws should be changed to make it more difficult for companies to send work overseas. “Those countries have large and rapidly growing pools of talented people with much lower incomes than people with similar skills in the United States”, Imelda Abarca, director of the coalition. But other experts say the threat to high-end American jobs is overstated. India remains “an undergraduate factory,” said Raffiq Dossani, a Stanford University researcher who studies higher education in the South Asian country. “This limits the kind of work that can be outsourced to India.”

Pervez Sikora, a former U.S. newspaper executive who is now chief operating officer for 2AdPro Media Solutions said he’s been approached by Silicon Valley companies that want to outsource their marketing work. It is not just U.S. companies that are flocking to India. European, Japanese as well as Arab companies are tapping into India’s legions of highly trained graduates that India’s vast college system produces every year. But the number of U.S. companies using these services is expected to increase due to the financial crisis which is forcing them to cut costs.

And, it is no longer simply tech companies that are looking to cut costs using these services - Disney, DreamWorks, and drugs manufacturing companies are also tapping the India pool. “We are getting multiple inquiries a day”, said Todd Brownrout, chief marketing officer at 2AdPro, which expects to expand from 350 employees to 1,000 next year. Two years ago, it was a tough sell to convince newspaper executives that someone sitting halfway across the globe could produce ads that are accurate and on-time. Sanjiv Gupta, chief executive of Hyderabad-based Pressmart, which provides Internet technology services to publications, argues this outsourcing model can be applied to editorial content. “It’s outsourcing of creativity,” he said.

While the debate continues over just which American jobs may be vulnerable to outsourcing, executives like Sikora acknowledge that the new global economic order is forcing Americans to reposition their careers. “People have to understand how jobs are changing and start reinventing themselves,” he said. “No one will be able to stop this now.”

Where Are The JOBS In India

2008-11-19T12:32:00.001Z

An interesting read in TOI today !! Purely shows how outsourcing/growth of india is still Intact

Where Are The JOBS In India

Citigroup on Tuesday cut 53,000 more jobs, triggering fears of more layoffs by other companies across industries. TOI, however, has decided to be contrarian. Instead of only writing about pink slips, it hunted out companies that are actually hiring. Here’s the lowdown on

FINANCE & CONSULTANCY
SBI to hire 25,000 new hands, according to bank chairman O P Bhat. The fresh recruitment will be done this fiscal – 20,000 in the clerical cadre and 5,000 supervisory staff
Bank of India to hire 10,000 over the next few months. This, on top of over 30,000 fresh recruitments in 2008-09. In the next 2 yrs, the bank plans to take in 75,000 Accenture will hire 10,000 people in India by 2010, says COO Stephen J Rohleder
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, top global mgmt consultants, looking to hire 3,500 in India in 3 yrs
MetLife, a new private insurance co., will recruit 30,000 agents and 2,000 managers by March 2009, says CEO Rajesh Relan
BPO
Aegis BPO Services will add 1,000 people per month this fiscal
CAMPUS HIRING
IIM Bangalore and IIM Calcutta say all their students have got placements for next year
INFOTECH
Tata Consultancy Services to hire 30,000-35,000 people this year, says a spokesperson. TCS made 24,789 technical campus offers for 2009-10, a 13% jump over this year
Infosys is sticking to plans of hiring 25,000 people this fiscal, says CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan. Infosys has made around 20,000 offers for next year
Satyam plans to hire 8,000-10,000 people this fiscal, according to its HR head, S V Krishnan
MANUFACTURING
L&T will hire 10,000 people over the next 3 yrs, according to CMD A M Naik
Maruti has decided to hire 1,000 fresh hands despite the sluggishness in the auto sector, says a company spokesman

Is 3G and WIMAX disruptive for India?

2008-11-15T22:57:00.003Z

As India is preparing for the rollout end of this year to mid next year of 3G and WiMax services it represents a significant move forward for the Indian mobile telecoms Industry. I could find some very positive news that India to have 230 m 3G subscribers by 2013

3G and variations of it first got rolled out in Japan back in 2001. 3G essentially allows you to shift data faster over the mobile phone network thereby opening up many new services and possibilities (such as video telephony and high speed data services for downloading information and surfing the web). WiMax is similar to home wireless technology. Where-as home wifi only reaches out a few hundred feet, WiMax has a much wider range many across kilimeter. It also offers speeds that are far greather than 3G. To WiMax in to reality, just image that you can be anywhere in the city of Mumbai, lets say, and flip open your laptop and get on to the web instantly regardless of where you stand. Work from the park, the local Cafe Coffe Day, from home or at the airport terminal. WiMax allows this and that too at high speed.

The advantage of 3G to mobile phone operators is that there are a lot of phone models in the market aleady which already support 3G out-of-the-box. With further investment in installing 3G transmission towers the basic infrastructure for 3G in India can be rapidly rolled out. WiMax, on the other hand, could take a little longer to become widespread. The equipment necessary to receive WiMax signals isn’t readily available in India yet and transmissions in the WiMax spectrum is some-what limited to date. In India, Tata Communications has been experiementing with a WiMax trial and Bangalore and hopes to expand this across Mumbai and Delhi once spectrum has been allocated.

What really interests me is that WiMax has the potential to reach remote rural populations in India where existing mobile coverage is patchy or non-existant. This would open up the possibility of bridging the digital divide and binging the advantages of access to the Internet to whole new communities. History has shown that Internet access in rural areas of India has been mostly a good thing with a great examples being the e-Choupal project, which enables farmers to get price of grain and seed direct from market instead of going through the middle man via internet terminal in their villages and farms.

Access to the internet in rural areas also spreads the influence of better and wider education to all of India’s population, helping to unlock the latant tallent of a youthful and eager work force. Ultimately, however, as technologies like WiMax and 3G reach the masses, it will enable India to innovate and invent in ways it hasn’t done so before. Entepreneurs up and down the country as well as would-be entrepreneurs will suddenly have a new medium to release their ideas through. When I look at the divide between the uptake of broadband internet and mobile telephony in India, the choice today is clear. More Indian’s today own and use a mobile phone and the number of mobile subscribers dwarfs the number of broadband intenet subscribers. Everyone from your ricksha-wala to duba-wala, city slicker to gardener, cleaner to call centre worker now owns a mobile phone and the uptake is unstopable.

Although market saturation of mobile phone ownership is some years off in India, like its global counterparts, Indian telco’s will eventually start to feel the pinch and one way to sustain and increase revenue is to expand sevice offerings.

3G and WiMax will enable Indian telco’s to offer their subscriber base a multitude of new services including premium video content, video to video chat between hand-sets (and cross network), selling software to mobile phone business users and innovating in the burgeoning mobile phone games industry. Like it’s console games counterpart, mobile gaming is booming in International makets and there’s no reason why this shouldn’t be the case in India once the networks enable people to download large files to their phones. Culturally, Indian’s differ in many ways to the world at large and one of those differences is the high value placed on education. Nintendo already realises this and its DS games console, coupled with the plethora of recent educational titles that you play on the Nintendo DS is taking off like hot-cakes. This is a natural appeal and fit with the Indian psychi and mind-set.

Finally, 3G will allow Indian users to upload photos and videos from their phones to the web and partipicate in the mobile social networking space beyond the confines of SMS and becomes what is coined as citizen journalists. Indian teleco’s will probably offer a selection of data packages to subscibers, although like the west, most teleco’s will no-doubt standardise data tarrifs on flat rate “eat as much as you like” structures to reduce confusion and streamline billing.

There are countless ways the Indian telco’s and consumers will benefit from 3G and WiMax and I cannot wait for this market to blossom in India. With over 71 countries now offering 3G to its consumers, it’s time for India to join the 3G club and perhaps suplant it altogether with WiMax.

Go India go !

Ever wondered why Americans are more “private” than the BRIC countries

2008-11-15T22:37:00.003Z

Ever wondered why Americans are more “private” than the BRIC countries..
I found a interesting hypothesis on how the attitudes of people towards privacy ( broadly in terms of social network) of different countries in world !!

India could be seen as both highly social and also not afraid of government action. And Brazil would be highly social (Gaurav calls Indians and Brazilians “hyper-social”), but Brazilians seem somewhat afraid of government action (see their recent wiretapping scandals).
This model has lot of questions unanswered but I really appreciate the thought process in collecting data..read further for more information
https://digitalcommons.georgetown.edu/blogs/isdyahoofellow/hypotheses-about-privacy-attitudes/

Top 250 movie alltime

2008-11-08T01:00:00.003Z

http://www.imdb.com/chart/top

I was surprised to find myself in having seen only 15 of top 100 :( altough next one year is going hectic i wish to tick off atleast another 50 from list !!

It would be nice to know from my dear readers on how many you have seen!!

Diwali celebration : MBA

2008-11-06T00:13:00.006Z

We bunch of Indians in MBA class arranged for few sweets to all our classmates. The same evening we went to diwali party. It was fun = good food, good dance and good way to know your batch mate. My perception is you get your friends in class in a bit different angle at parties. the point i am leading to is parties are good for networking ;).

We went to a restaurant called as urban turban.. the food and ambiance was good !

Leadership brand

2008-11-05T23:55:00.001Z

This video talk by harvard business school gives good insight on how one can develop his own brand. Basically it means how I can use my strengths to deliver more value to others.

Obama becomes new US president

2008-11-05T23:01:00.003Z

One interesting aspect about Obama:A guy born to a Muslim father of African origin and a Christian mom, An American, half Kenyan, half white, half black,raised in Indonesia and graduated from Harvard, who have Hussain in his middle name can became US president.

So that means people actually vote for the most competent guy in the race, especially during a crisis, color and race wont matter during tough days.

Hope we will see changed world which Obama promsies !! and no wars please.
Though I have read that his policies are good for indian americans but not as a whole for India when compared to republicans. I think world peace is more important in this point of time.

Nokia Research on Mobile Phone Usage

2008-11-05T02:54:00.003Z

Pretty interesting to know that nokia is going to bottom of pyramid for mobile innovations

Communication Literacy Design

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: literacy delhi)

Shared Phone Use

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: charging power)

Why Ideas remain as ideas

2008-11-05T02:51:00.001Z

Why do we fail to take idea's forward and execute it??

We are totally not convinced that the idea will work
we dont have passion to execute an idea and thus don't take the risk
we don't have necessary skill set to execute it
we assume things will work in a certain way, but reality will be something else
we are not sure whom to trust and wont share ideas with others
we don't want to move out of comfort zone
Probably your ideas are ahead of time
You shared it with wrong people
You lack the environment, which encourages ideas

may be ..hmmm may be..End of the day what matters is whether you executed it or not

What is management consultancy?

2008-11-04T22:22:00.004Z

What is management consultancy?

As a MBA student all we hear in today's world( after credit crunch and pretty low investment banking jobs) is shift towards management consultancy. I could gather very good idea of the information below.

Consultants are hired by companies who need a fresh outside perspective along with the problem solving and analytical skills.

Management consulting firms can be classified on the basis of their functional area such as specializing in giving advice on general business strategy question, or providing advisory services in niche and specialized areas like technology, marketing, finance, operations or HR. An alternative/parallel way of classification can be on the structure followed, i.e. some concentrate on a specific industry area like financial services or retail, while there are some which are huge and have divisions that provide advice on everything from top-level strategy, to choosing which software to install, to interesting things like saving money on paper clips.

Consulting firms are typically organized according to industry and type of problem as well. For example, a firm like Bain & Company might focus on strategy problems only but in virtually any industry. On the other hand, there can be firms which focus on a particular industry only but advise on nearly any type of issue. Many of the larger firms however have a matrix organization, with both industry practice groups and functional practice groups.

Saying this, there is one thing which management consulting firms have in common: they all are powered by their people, their IP. The only product which a consulting firm ultimately has on offer is its employees' ability to solve the problem. As a consultant, you are that problem solver.

Types of Consulting Services
Management consulting firms provide services in 6 primary categories: Pure strategy, Operations strategy, marketing strategy, IT strategy, Financial strategy and HR strategy. The figure below shows how these areas fit together.

Strategy Consulting: It helps client's most senior executives understand and face the macro level challenges of running their companies. Eg. Recommending a new strategic direction for a growing telecommunications company or to understand why a particular company always lose money and how they can reposition themselves to milk profit from new markets.

Marketing Consulting: Consultants work with senior marketing or BD leadership to shape overall marketing plan or develop detailed approaches to launch a new product or optimize existing ones. E.g. To evaluate the ROI in various marketing and sales activities

Operations Consulting: Investigating customer service response times, reducing inventory and backlog levels, looking at the supply chain are some of the works that a consultant working in this domain does.

IT strategy Consulting: Helping clients achieve their business goals by leveraging in depth knowledge of computer and telecom hardware, software etc. There are two kinds of consulting, IT strategy and IT implementation consulting.

Financial Strategy Consulting: 3 primary categories, Corporate Finance, Risk Management and Insurance, and Corporate restructuring or turnaround consulting.

HR strategy Consulting: Putting the right people with right skills at the right place at the right compensation is what an HR consultant will do. They also restructure organizations, and help in change management.

Gordon Brown's visit to Imperial Business school

2008-10-27T21:52:00.002Z

Today morning Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited Imperial College London today to meet with academics, business leaders and MBA students and discuss the global financial crisis.

He met few of my class mates ..asked them how to solve credit crunch etc :)
It feels great to be part of this institution. Hope I get to met such celebreties too !

You can watch video of him talking to my collegues here http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_27-10-2008-15-47-44?newsid=47817

Comedies must see

2008-10-26T22:31:00.003Z

I got this list from my friend but i do agree most of the ratings are credible !!
I have seen friends, two and half men , simpsons, whose line is it anyway and bit of small wonders i love them !!

njoy these if you can.. I am not sure if i can see any in my hectic MBA schedule but i will try and
see few

jokes/comedy craziness sentiapp story  characters total
 (25)  (10)  (-5)  (10)  (10)  (50)

1. Scrubs 20  8  -3  8  10  43
2. Family Guy 20  10  0  8  10  48
3. Simpsons 15  8  -5  7  8  33
4. Futurama 20  8  -2  10  10  46
5. Friends 15  5  -5  6  10  31
6. Wonderfalls 15  8  -3  9  10  39

7. Joey  18  8  -2  6  9  39
8. WonderYears 15  5  -5  6  8  29
9. LifeOn... 18  5  -2  5  6  32
10.A Bit of .. 20  10  0  6  10  46
11.Mr Bean 15  10  -2  6  9  38
12.Home Imp 15  8  -3  6  8  35
13.SmallWonder
10  5  -3  6  6  24
14.WhoseLine 20  10  0  6  8  44
15.Seinfeld 20  10  -1  7  10  46
16.Malcolm 18  10  -2  7  10  43
17.T7S  15  8  -3  6  9  36
18.Everybody 18  8  -2  6  9  39
19.Committed 15  5  -3  5  6  33

20.Two Guys A. 18  5  -1  6  10  38
21.Caroline 20  8  -2  6               8  40
22.FullHouse 15  5  -3  6               6  29
23.JustShootMe 20  8  -2  6               8   40

New:
24.Arrest.Dev.  20  7  -2  9  9  43

25.2.5 Men 21  7  -1  7  9  43
26.My.N.Is.Earl 18  8  -3  9  8  40
27.H.I.M.Y.M.   18    7  -5  8  8  38
28.Tr.The.Riff. 19  8  -2  9  9   43
29.Southpark    20  9  -4  8  9  42
30.IT
 Crowd 20  7  -1  8  9  43
31.Pepper D. 15  7  -3  8  8  35
32.Coupling 20  8  -3  8  9  42


In other words, lets analyse this a wee bit furthur:

If you are below the age of 10,
you are likely to find items 2,3,4 interesting simply becos they're animated..

you might want to try items 11, 13 and 22 becos they are meant to be for kids.
(they suck!)

If you are between 10 - 14
you would like 11, 13, and 22 plus a bit of 12 and 18. Anything else may be way out

of your league.

Range of 14 - 18
you will start hating 8, 13 and 22. you'll watch the rest anyway.

18 -
Now we're talking..
if one is a beginner to comedy, i'd suggest starting it light, but with the

best. Seinfeld is an ideal bet, classy mix of craziness, slapstick and jokes.
It may be more than a mouthful in the beginning, but it grows on you.
Once you've tried Seinfeld, try one of these : t7s, Two Guys.., Caroline..,

Friends, Joey, Everybody Loves.., Life On..., Wonder Years
These are all very similar serials with similar fundae. None of them are out
of this world, yet all of them have a few interesting characters whom you

would like to focus your attention on :) - Like Erics mom in T7S, Matt Perry
and MattLeBlanc in Joey/Friends, Rays brother in Everybody Loves..
I'd say ditch Friends and Life On a Stick. Try one or more of the rest.

You may want to try a few of simpsons before going ahead, and see if you like
them. Animated sentiapp/crazy comedy.
Once you've done one or more of these, you're ready for pure comedy :)
one that comes with no strings attached, no sentiapp. Try Whose Line..

first. If you like it, stop. Dont watch too many of those, they are
way too precious to be gobbled up in a sitting. Keep some for a day when
you are feeling down. Now, you're ready for CRAZY comedy: Futurama, Family Guy,

A Bit of Fry.. Dont miss ANY of these.
If you like sarcasm, you may want to try Scrubs, you wont regret it!
Thats it!
You are now a fully qualified comedy connoisseur!

My current top 5:
1. Family Guy (now, and forever!)

2. IT Crowd (can totally relate with these complete geeks)
3. Two and a Half Men (who writes the dialogues for this show!!)
4. Seinfeld (all time favorite. the perfect sitcom. period)
5. Scrubs (crazy shit. its been through some rough times, but it still rules)

6. Arrested Development (classy humor. you dont need background laugh cues when ur this good)

Sub prime

2008-10-23T21:37:00.005Z

I received a Email forward on sub prime !! please read it only for a fun. No harm intended for the people who lost job/money in subprime.

President Bush said clients shouldn't be concerned by all these bank closings. If the bank is closed, you just use the ATM, he said.

George Bush said that he is saddened to hear about the demise of Lehman brothers… His thoughts at this time go out to their mother as losing one son is hard but losing two is a tragedy.

The problem with investment bank balance sheets is that on the left side nothing is right and on the right side nothing is left.

There are 30 billion prime numbers below 700 billion. The rest are all subprime.

Why are all MBAs going back to school? To ask for their money back.

For Geography students: What's the capital of Iceland? Answer: About Three Pounds Fifty...

A trader: "This is worse than a divorce. I've lost half my net worth and I still have a wife."

What's the difference between a guy who just lost everything in Vegas and an investment banker? A tie.

What's the difference between a bond and a bond trader? A bond matures.

Lehman have changed their recommendation on Lehman from hold to sell.

Forty years ago I sold fifty shares of my company stock and had enough money to purchase a brand-new 1967 Ford pickup. Last week, I checked it out, and if I sold another fifty shares, I'd have enough money to buy a 1967 Ford pickup. So, the market has stablised.

Q: What is the definition of optimism?
A: An investment banker ironing five shirts on a Sunday night

Q: What is the one thing Wall St and the Olympics have in common?
A: Synchronised diving

Q: What is the difference between a pigeon and a merchant banker?
A: A pigeon can still put a deposit on a Ferrari

Q: What do you say to a hedge fund manager who can't short-sell anything?
A: Quarter pounder with fries please

Q: How many commodities traders does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None, they don't change bulbs; but the trading price of darkness plummets due to oversupply

Three things in life

2008-10-23T00:16:00.001Z

I got a very nice forward so thought of posting this for future rollback :) very simple but true things !

The: Three things in life that, once gone, never come back -

(1)- Time
(2)- Embedded Words
(3)- Opportunity

Three things in life that may never be lost -

(1)- Peace
(2)- Hope
(3)- Honesty

Three things in life that are most valuable -

(1)- Love
(2)- Self-confidence
(3)- Friends

Three things in life that are never certain -

(1)- Dreams
(2)- Success
(3)- Fortune

Three things that make a man/woman -

(1)- Hard work
(2)- Sincerity
(3)- commitment

Three things in life that can destroy a man/woman -

(1)- Alcohol
(2)- Pride
(3)- Anger

Three things in life that, once lost, hard to build-up -

(1)- Respect
(2)- Trust
(3)- Friendship

Three things in life that never fail -

(1)- True love
(2)- Determination
(3)- Belief

Take care of these things ..

Optimism wanes as crisis reaches India

2008-10-19T23:24:00.000Z

Optimism wanes as crisis reaches India

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7676719.stm

- My view India wont be effected as US UK but there is some amount of effect on finance and housing market in india. My view is that Indian growth is domestic growth so it will be least impacted however impact will be there but not as a earthquake rather a small tremour.

will miss you dada

2008-10-17T17:36:00.003Z

Ganguly announced his retirement !! This was bit of shock to me but it was inevitable with the way selectors were ploying around him.

Few great things I like in him

Most important thing I like in Ganguly, is the way he made an amazing comeback into the Indian cricket team after being thrown out.. It was a huge mess.. & only the will power and determination of Ganguly that got him back into the team..

He is a great guy who had one of great offside shots and would come down the track and smack the bowler! Best compliment to his offside shots is well exemplified by Rahul Dravid , "on the off-side, first there is God, then there is Saurav Ganguly."

I love his leadership skills he would always back his decisions and never afraid to experiment. I would say he is the person who brought "never give up attitude" to indian team. This attitude has infected others too :) present breed of youngsters i feel are the fruits of his seeds.

Hail dada.... you are true sportsman and your life is inspirational not only to upcoming cricketers but your leadership spirit, innovative skills, never give attitude can be applied to all spheres of life.

Sourav Ganguly - Winning is Everything

Learning to Act Like a Leader

2008-10-14T20:31:00.001Z

Listen more respectfully
• Pick up on subtle cues
• Demonstrate trust
• Value opinions

The power of improv comes from the instant feedback that the games provide. You can quickly see what habits you need to break, have the opportunity to practice new skills while receiving continuous reinforcement, and have fun at the same time.

To demonstrate how improv builds leadership skills let’s look at a few principles of improv:

Say “Yes, And”
Leaders often need help breaking the “no, but” habit. A basic principle of improv is to accept all offers. There are a number of improv games that teach this principle and in the process demonstrate that people are more energized and engaged by leaders that say “Yes, and.”

Make Each Other Look Good
Great improvisers can bring an audience member on stage and have that person leave the stage feeling like a brilliant improviser. That is the “make each other look good” principle in action. Improv is a true collaborative activity. Success isn’t measured by how brilliant you look, but how well you support the efforts of others. You don’t have to worry about your success: the rest of the group is doing that for you!

Take A Back Seat
Many beginning improvisers try to control the scene. They are referred to as “drivers.” They are adding too much value and not leaving enough room for others. They aren’t trusting that others can make them look good. Great improv, like great leadership, requires the willingness to take a back seat and let others drive.

These are just a few examples of the improv/recognition connection. The lessons that improv teaches introduce and reinforce many of the behaviors that make great leaders.

Cindy Ventrice is the author of Make Their Day! Employee Recognition That Works. You can visit her website at www.maketheirday.com.

First week at MBA

2008-10-14T19:49:00.004Z

My First week was a fun week where we had good induction. We are class of 65 and a very diverse one !! few interesting facts

> Class has people from India 30% ( 20 people), Greece, south america, USA, Germany , china, South Korea, Singapore etc
> Very diverse work profiles...We have Surgeon, Lawyer, PHD's, BBC editor, as usual tons of Indian IT folks :)
> Age ranges from 23 to 45 !

First day we had team collaboration event where team was asked "to make rocket and make it fly" it was fun and indeed our rocket did fly very high in air..few snaps are below

We had a around 3 parties in first week seems fun isnt it ;) however I have to admit that next one year looks to be very hectic and packed up.
We were introduced to courses for next one year. Imperial focuses a lot on innovation and entrepreneurship.

This term we have 3 courses

> Accounting
> Economics : Macro and Micro
> People and organization

Followed by

> Strategy
> Marketing
> Finance Management

Then Project on IED( innovation design and entreprenuership) , 3 electives and Final project.

My Objective from MBA is being more focussed on Strategy and get into Strategy Consulting.

My next 2 months blog will be focussed on learnings on Accounting, Economics, People and organisation.

Ohh BTW i have joined Table tennis, Tennis and cricket club in Imperial college ..so I plan to reduce 10 kgs in next one year. Hope I achieve that :)
Till then off to studying ...bubye

Good News !!

2008-10-14T19:24:00.003Z

Hi Guys,

I havent updated for a while !! A good news I have left my job at Symbian and heading back to education :)... I started my full time on Oct 6 2008 at Imperial College London.

for next one year my blog will be mainly focused on

> MBA updates: I will use the blog as my diary /placeholder to update on goings
> Telecom trends: this is my passion so i will continue this posting

Cheers
Praveen

State of Iphone Satisfaction

2008-10-01T11:07:00.001Z

http://technologizer.com/2008/09/30/iphone-satisfaction/

For Non-SWE: non-technical persons guide to working in technical forums

2008-09-26T12:54:00.000Z

or the open source community, or Programming DBs, etc.
Ok, so it's written about hackers but I relate to a lot of what is written and it's amusing too!

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

"Serendipity " Does this always happen to you ?

2008-09-24T15:48:00.002Z

"Serendipity "

is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.

This happens many a times for me !! very nice word too na

8 hacks to make Firefox ridiculously fast

2008-09-23T10:11:00.000Z

In Depth: 8 hacks to make Firefox ridiculously fast

Firefox has been outperforming IE in every department for years, and version 3 is speedier than ever.

But tweak the right settings and you could make it faster still, more than doubling your speed in some situations, all for about five minutes work and for the cost of precisely nothing at all. Here's what you need to do.

1. Enable pipelining

Browsers are normally very polite, sending a request to a server then waiting for a response before continuing. Pipelining is a more aggressive technique that lets them send multiple requests before any responses are received, often reducing page download times. To enable it, type about:config in the address bar, double-click network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining so their values are set to true, then double-click network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and set this to 8.

Keep in mind that some servers don't support pipelining, though, and if you regularly visit a lot of these then the tweak can actually reduce performance. Set network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining to false again if you have any problems.

2. Render quickly

Large, complex web pages can take a while to download. Firefox doesn't want to keep you waiting, so by default will display what it's received so far every 0.12 seconds (the "content notify interval"). While this helps the browser feel snappy, frequent redraws increase the total page load time, so a longer content notify interval will improve performance.

Type about:config and press [Enter], then right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) somewhere in the window and select New > Integer. Type content.notify.interval as your preference name, click OK, enter 500000 (that's five hundred thousand, not fifty thousand) and click OK again.

Right-click again in the window and select New > Boolean. This time create a value called content.notify.ontimer and set it to True to finish the job.

3. Faster loading

If you haven't moved your mouse or touched the keyboard for 0.75 seconds (the content switch threshold) then Firefox enters a low frequency interrupt mode, which means its interface becomes less responsive but your page loads more quickly. Reducing the content switch threshold can improve performance, then, and it only takes a moment.

Type about:config and press [Enter], right-click in the window and select New > Integer. Type content.switch.threshold, click OK, enter 250000 (a quarter of a second) and click OK to finish.

4. No interruptions

You can take the last step even further by telling Firefox to ignore user interface events altogether until the current page has been downloaded. This is a little drastic as Firefox could remain unresponsive for quite some time, but try this and see how it works for you.

Type about:config, press [Enter], right-click in the window and select New > Boolean. Type content.interrupt.parsing, click OK, set the value to False and click OK.

5. Block Flash

Intrusive Flash animations are everywhere, popping up over the content you actually want to read and slowing down your browsing. Fortunately there's a very easy solution. Install the Flashblock extension (flashblock.mozdev.org) and it'll block all Flash applets from loading, so web pages will display much more quickly. And if you discover some Flash content that isn't entirely useless, just click its placeholder to download and view the applet as normal.

6. Increase the cache size

As you browse the web so Firefox stores site images and scripts in a local memory cache, where they can be speedily retrieved if you revisit the same page. If you have plenty of RAM (2 GB of more), leave Firefox running all the time and regularly return to pages then you can improve performance by increasing this cache size. Type about:config and press [Enter], then right-click anywhere in the window and select New > Integer. Type browser.cache.memory.capacity, click OK, enter 65536 and click OK, then restart your browser to get the new, larger cache.

7. Enable TraceMonkey

TraceMonkey is a new Firefox feature that converts slow Javascript into super-speedy x86 code, and so lets it run some functions anything up to 20 times faster than the current version. It's still buggy so isn't available in the regular Firefox download yet, but if you're willing to risk the odd crash or two then there's an easy way to try it out.

Install the latest nightly build (ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/), launch it, type about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Type JIT in the filter box, then double-click javascript.options.jit.chrome and javascript.options.jit.content to change their values to true, and that's it - you're running the fastest Firefox Javascript engine ever.

8. Compress data

If you've a slow internet connection then it may feel like you'll never get Firefox to perform properly, but that's not necessarily true. Install toonel.net (toonel.net) and this clever Java applet will re-route your web traffic through its own server, compressing it at the same time, so there's much less to download. And it can even compress JPEGs by allowing you to reduce their quality. This all helps to cut your data transfer, useful if you're on a limited 1 GB-per-month account, and can at best double your browsing performance.

Good Books on Innovation

2008-09-16T14:12:00.000Z

Good Books on Innovation

If you’re looking for more insight into the successful application of innovation, here’s a list of thought-provoking books you'll probably enjoy:

“Making innovation work - how to manage it, measure it, and profit from it”
by Tony Davila, Marc J. Epstein, and Robert Shelton

“The ten faces of innovation: IDEO’s strategies for beating the devil’s advocate & driving creativity throughout your organization”
by Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman

“Open innovation - the new imperative for creating and profiting from technology”
by Henry Chesbrough

“The Kaizen way - one small step can change your life”
by Robert Maurer

“Dealing with Darwin: how great companies innovate at every phase of their evolution”
by Geoffrey Moore

“The elegant solution: Toyota’s formula for mastering innovation”
by Matthew E. May

“Fast second: how smart companies bypass radical innovation to enter and dominate new markets”
by Constantinos C. Markides and Paul A. Geroski

cool graphical tool for doing Google searches

2008-09-15T09:28:00.001Z

Was demonstrated this tool when viewing a Screencast. It is a Java application to explore the connections between related websites. If you are doing any type of internet research, needing to find related websites, or maybe wanting to find how many of Nokia's websites link to Symbian's, then this is the tool, for fun and for work:

http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

It gives you a good idea of the hierarchy behind the websites

walk to TATE modern

2008-08-12T13:20:00.001Z

Just had a stroll after lunch to TATE modern and Millenium bridge both are just behind the building where I work...for the interested one's my symbian address is SE1 0SU
Enjoy these snaps !

US recession has least impact on India !

2008-08-08T14:20:00.003Z

Following my earlier post in india about recession in india ...here is one good reason why recession didn't effect India

Source

Sonia Gandhi should thank Finance Minister Chidambaram for resisting proposals to put part of India's foreign exchange reserves into a Sovereign Wealth Fund, which would buy equity shares in top global companies. Such a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF)—an idea backed by eminent economists, the Prime Minister and the Planning Commission—would have suffered huge losses because of the collapse of global stock markets since January.

Neither Opposition politicians nor the public would have been satisfied by explanations that stock markets yield high long-term gains, notwithstanding short-term fluctuations. The Left Front would have accused Chidambaram of gambling away the country's precious assets in casino capitalism. Others would have accused top Congress politicians of having been bribed or arm-twisted into making dubious investments.

The government would have protested its innocence, and pointed out that the SWFs of many other countries—from China and Abu Dhabi to Singapore and Norway—had also suffered in the market slump. But Indians are quick to see scams when anything untoward happens. The reputation of politicians is so poor that many voters will believe accusations of manipulation and venality.

The US share price of Citibank, the world's biggest bank, plunged from $56 last year to a low point of $19 last week. Citibank was hit, along with many other top banks, by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US. Now, investment experts will find much logic in all SWFs investing a bit in companies like Citibank, since it is the biggest bank in the world. Yet, had Chidambaram set up an SWF, and had it invested in Citibank, Opposition politicians would have screamed “scam” after the latest price crash. Marxists would have claimed that the US had arm-twisted India into investing in sinking banks as a price for the nuclear deal!

Now, there is indeed an economic case for a Sovereign Wealth Fund. Many countries with surplus forex reserves—mostly oil exporters, but also China and Singapore—have set up SWFs that invest in equities. The total assets of all SWFs are almost $3 trillion. India has experienced a huge inflow of dollars in recent years, raising its reserves to $ 290 billion, vastly in excess of any balance of payments needs.

In a seminal paper two years ago, economist Larry Summers, former US Treasury Secretary, made a strong case for developing countries to put excess reserves into stock markets. He argued that, for balance of payments security, a country's forex reserves should equal one year's short-term debt. As an abundant precaution, he assumed that countries would hold reserves of double that amount. Even after that, he calculated, 121 developing countries would have excess forex reserves of $2 trillion, equal to 19% of their combined GDP in 2004.

He further pointed out that these reserves yielded pathetically low yields when invested in short-term gilts—the traditional, safe practice. History showed that investment in equities would yield far more, despite short-term fluctuations. So, Summers proposed that all developing countries should put excess reserves into SWFs that would invest in shares. In India's case, he calculated that the additional yield from such an SWF would be 1 to 1.5% of GDP (or Rs 40,000-60,000 crore) per year.

This was by no means the only rationale for SWFs. Fast growth had made China a massive importer of raw materials, and so its government invested in commodity companies globally. Indeed, it gave massive sums in foreign aid as an additional sweetener to African commodity producers.

Many in India wanted to follow suit. Their aim was not simply to earn a higher yield on forex reserves, but to secure long-term sources of raw materials—oil, gas, coal, non-ferrous metals, even palm oil. The ONGC invested in several oil and gas ventures abroad. Tata, Birla and Sterlite invested in foreign mines for commercial reasons, unrelated to deploying excess forex reserves.

However, Chidambaram and RBI Governor Y V Reddy opposed any SWF for India. Reddy said SWFs were appropriate for countries with mineral windfalls (such as oil exporters), but not India. Indeed, India ran a modest current account deficit, and so needed to import dollars. Now, the world had flooded India with far more dollars than it could absorb, but this was not a structural surplus.

Chidambaram took refuge in a further technical argument. He said that SWFs made sense for countries with excess savings, reflected in a fiscal surplus. But India ran a large fiscal deficit.

However, these technical economic arguments pale besides the political ones. The stock market is seen by both Opposition politicians and the general public as a dodgy place full of crooked manipulators (remember Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parekh). Making money on the stock market is seen as risky, if not actually sinful. Indeed, the Left front has stymied attempts to put pension/provident fund money into Indian equities.

In these circumstances, Chidambaram has shown sound political judgement in refusing to set up an SWF. This might in the long run yield some financial gains. But it carries short-term risks, as has just been demonstrated by the slump in stock markets. So, it needs to be avoided in the run-up to the next general election.

Five Key Trends in Mobile Devices Through 2009

2008-08-06T10:09:00.001Z

Source : Gartner

Gartner has identified five major trends that will impact the mobile device market through 2009, in areas ranging from partner “ecosystems” and competitive landscapes to innovations in device usability and interfaces. The trends include:

Established Vendors Consolidate and New Players Join the Fray. New device vendors, such as Apple and Garmin, are looking to differentiate themselves, while big-name vendors, such as Motorola, face pressure as market shares decline and design innovation becomes increasingly challenging. The lower cost of mobile phone reference designs and modules, as well as the appeal of such a large market, will attract more conventional consumer electronics companies to join the market.

Device Vendors Build Out Ecosystems. Pressure from operators to lower the price of devices will drive some established players to seek out new sources of revenue from content and services sold to end users. This trend is epitomised by Nokia with Ovi, Sony Ericsson with PlayNow and Apple with its iTunes store. This new market will bring changes in relationships between vendors, operators and content providers. Applications relevant to enterprises, such as location and navigation, will increasingly become available directly from device vendors that are integrating GPS into their products.

Devices Makers Will Focus on Removing Complexity for the User. Increasing device functionality and a need for differentiation will drive demand to simplify the user interface (UI) and service experience. As a consequence, mobile device vendors need to build up their UI competencies while retaining familiarity as well as considering how users can move horizontally across their devices’ applications, rather than simply vertically within them.

Mobile Devices Increasingly Become Lifestyle Statements. Style will play more of a role across the range of devices, driven not only by fashion trends but also by consumers’ desires to reinforce their lifestyle choices. Vendors need to have established platforms on which small changes to casings and colours can be made without impacting costs. They will also need to consider partnering with nonmobile companies and brands — such as consumer electronics, fashion or sports companies — to increase the lifestyle appeal and consumer reach of their products.

High-End Device Platforms Become “Field-Refreshable." As cellular technologies become part of increasingly expensive consumer devices, vendors must manage ongoing support, upgrades and enhancement of drives. Because many users will hold onto high-end devices longer, these platforms will need more life cycle management in the form of upgrades and enhancements. Some vendors are implementing these “field refreshes” that can be made to support new digital rights management (DRM) requirements, download bug fixes, or download new applications, wallpapers or skins to keep devices up-to-date.

Why india is better then China

2008-08-06T09:58:00.002Z

Very nice article by Shashi Tharoor in TOI

In an April 20 column, I argued the case for Sino-Indian economic co-operation, suggesting the two countries had complementarities that could make such co-operation mutually beneficial (as some companies in both countries are already proving). I also dismissed any talk of comparing India to China, arguing that the two countries' systems are so different that we simply can't compete with China in the growth stakes. Lest some readers infer from this that i think China is superior to India in every respect, let me assure them that they are wrong.

Certainly, in absolute numbers, the Chinese are way ahead. Their export of electronic goods now tops $180 billion a year. One out of every three shoes exported in the world is made in China. They make 75% of the world's toys. Foreign direct investment is at the level of $70 billion a year (for comparison, India gets $15 billion). Shanghai alone has nearly 4,000 skyscrapers (more than all of India, and exceeding Los Angeles and Chicago combined). China has built an estimated 60,000 kilometers of expressways in less than two decades and will soon outstrip the total length of the US highway network. Per capita income has risen nearly 10-fold since 1978 to over $6,000 a head, and the number of people living in absolute poverty has dropped from 425 million two decades ago to 26 million today. The population is almost totally literate; life expectancy is reaching developed-country levels. This year, China is expected to overtake Germany to become the world's third largest economy, behind the US and Japan. It won't stay Number Three for long.

Against this, though, are a number of factors suggesting that not everything is rosy in China. Economic growth has occurred at breakneck speed, but that means some necks have been broken: the human cost of development has not been negligible (population displacement, farmers thrown off their lands, villages flooded by dams, mounting pollution, low-wage labour in appalling conditions, widening disparities between the rich and the poor, an absence of human rights and few checks on governmental abuses). The Chinese have seen great and rapid improvements in their Internet access, but Beijing employs some 40,000 'cyber-police' to monitor politically-undesirable activity on the Web.

Equally important, China's success has not just been China's; a disproportionate share of the benefit goes abroad, to the foreign companies who have set up factories in China. It has been estimated that of the $700 American price of a Chinese-made laptop, only $15 remains in China. Only four of the country's top 25 exporters are Chinese companies, according to Forbes magazine's Robyn Meredith, who adds that in practice, 'Made in China' really means 'Made by America (or Europe) in China'. The Chinese financial system also leaves much to be desired. Where India has been running sophisticated stock markets since the early 19th century — and Indians are so skilled at doing so that they got the Bombay stock market up and running within 24 hours of the 1992 bomb blasts — China is new at the game, and not particularly adept at it.

The financial information provided by China's companies, especially those in the large governmental sector, is notoriously unreliable, and standards of corporate governance are low. There are no world-class Chinese companies with sophisticated managers to match Tata or Wipro or Infosys. China's capital markets are weak and its banks inefficient: the Chinese banking system carried an estimated $911 billion in unrecoverable loans as of 2006, mainly to government firms. State-owned enterprises still account for half of China's economic assets. China has yet to master the art of channelling domestic savings into productive investments, which is why it has relied so extensively on foreign direct investment.

And the world has yet to develop any confidence in China's legal system (where a contract still means whatever the government says it means). In other words, it still lags behind India on the 'software' of development — not just technical brainpower or engineering know-how, but the systems it needs to operate a 21st century economy in an open and globalising world.

And then there's politics. Whatever you might say about India's sclerotic bureaucracy versus China's efficient one, our tangles of red tape versus their unfurled red carpet to foreign investors, our contentious and fractious political parties versus their smoothly-functioning top-down Communist hierarchy, there's one thing you've got to grant us: India has become an outstanding example of the management of diversity through pluralist democracy. Every Indian has been allowed to feel he or she has as much of a stake in the country, and as much of a chance to run it, as anyone else: after all, our last elections were won by an Italian woman of Roman Catholic heritage who made way for a Sikh to be sworn in as PM by a Muslim president, in a nation 81% Hindu.

And our largest state is being ruled by a Dalit woman, from a community once considered 'untouchable', who bids fair to rule the entire country if she can make the coalition arithmetic add up right after the next election. She wasn't promoted by the Brahmin elite in New Delhi; she rode to the top on the ballots of her political base. Contrast this with Beijing, where political freedom is unknown, leaders at all levels are handpicked from the top for their posts, and political heresy is met with swift punishment, house-arrest or worse. India's politics means its shock-absorbers are built into the system; it has endured major road-bumps without the vehicle ever breaking down.

In China's case, it is far from clear what would happen if the limousine of state actually encountered a serious pothole. The present system wasn't designed to cope with fundamental challenges to it except through repression. But every autocratic state in history has come to a point where repression was no longer enough. If that point is reached in China, all bets are off. The dragon could stumble where the elephant can always trundle on.

comments please :(((

2008-08-06T09:39:00.003Z

I have more then 1000 visitors to my blog !! thanks for spending time to read my blogs
> 1000 visitors is certainly interesting news for me :))

Since i majorly post what interests me do you have any suggestion on what I could add or improve on ?... comments welcome

Personally I think i just comment on what is written by someoneelse so I wondering why be reactive rather take the lead and write your opinions ! just a thought

Would love to hear from you all

Keep the Spark

2008-08-04T19:31:00.000Z

speech given by Chetan Bhagat.

Keep the Spark

Good Morning everyone and thank you for giving me this chance to speak to you. This day is about you. You, who have come to this college, leaving the comfort of your homes (or in some cases discomfort), to become something in your life. I am sure you are excited. There are few days in human life when one is truly elated. The first day in college is one of them. When you were getting ready today, you felt a tingling in your stomach. What would the auditorium be like, what would the teachers be like, who are my new classmates - there is so much to be curious about. I call this excitement, the spark within you that makes you feel truly alive today. Today I am going to talk about keeping the spark shining. Or to put it another way, how to be happy most, if not all the time.

Where do these sparks start? I think we are born with them. My 3-year old twin boys have a million sparks. A little Spiderman toy can make them jump on the bed. They get thrills from creaky swings in the park. A story from daddy gets them excited. They do a daily countdown for birthday party – several months in advance – just for the day they
will cut their own birthday cake.

I see students like you, and I still see some sparks.. But when I see older people, the spark is difficult to find.. That means as we age, the spark fades. People whose spark has faded too much are dull, dejected, aimless and bitter. Remember Kareena in the first half of Jab We Met vs the second half? That is what happens when the spark is
lost. So how to save the spark?

Imagine the spark to be a lamp’s flame. The first aspect is nurturing - to give your spark the fuel, continuously. The second is to guard against storms.

To nurture, always have goals. It is human nature to strive, improve and achieve full potential. In fact, that is success. It is what is possible for you. It isn’t any external measure - a certain cost to company pay package, a particular car or house.

Most of us are from middle class families. To us, having material landmarks is success and rightly so. When you have grown up where money constraints force everyday choices, financial freedom is a big achievement.

But it isn’t the purpose of life. If that was the case, Mr Ambani would not show up for work. Shah Rukh Khan would stay at home and not dance anymore. Steve Jobs won’t be working hard to make a better iPhone, as he sold Pixar for billions of dollars already. Why do they do it? What makes them come to work everyday?

They do it because it makes them happy. They do it because it makes them feel alive. Just getting better from current levels feels good. If you study hard, you can improve your rank. If you make an effort to interact with people, you will do better in interviews. If you practice, your cricket will get better. You may also know that you cannot become Tendulkar, yet. But you can get to the next level. Striving for that next level is important.

Nature designed with a random set of genes and circumstances in which we were born. To be happy, we have to accept it and make the most of nature’s design. Are you? Goals will help you do that.

I must add, don’t just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order.

There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup. There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.

You must have read some quotes - Life is a tough race, it is a marathon or whatever.. No, from what I have seen so far, life is one of those races in nursery school. Where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same with life, where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling
of being excited and alive, will start to die.

One last thing about nurturing the spark - don’t take life seriously. One of my yoga teachers used to make students laugh during classes. One student asked him if these jokes would take away something from the yoga practice. The teacher said - don’t be serious, be sincere. This quote has defined my work ever since. Whether its my writing, my job, my relationships or any of my goals. I get thousands of opinions on my writing everyday. There is heaps of praise, there is intense criticism. If I take it all seriously, how will I write? Or rather, how will I live? Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really
temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It’s ok, bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices.

I’ve told you three things - reasonable goals, balance and not taking it too seriously that will nurture the spark. However, there are four storms in life that will threaten to completely put out the flame. These must be guarded against. These are disappointment, frustration, unfairness and loneliness of purpose.

Disappointment will come when your effort does not give you the expected return. If things don’t go as planned or if you face failure. Failure is extremely difficult to handle, but those that do come out stronger. What did this failure teach me? is the question you will need to ask. You will feel miserable. You will want to quit, like I wanted to when nine publishers rejected my first book. Some IITians kill themselves over low grades – how silly is that? But that is how much failure can hurt you.

But it’s life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would cease to be a challenge. And remember - if you are failing at
something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that’s where you want to be.

Disappointment’s cousin is frustration, the second storm. Have you ever been frustrated? It happens when things are stuck. This is especially relevant in India. From traffic jams to getting that job you deserve, sometimes things take so long that you don’t know if you chose the right goal. After books, I set the goal of writing for Bollywood, as I thought they needed writers. I am called extremely lucky, but it took me five years to get close to a release.

Frustration saps excitement, and turns your initial energy into something negative, making you a bitter person. How did I deal with it? A realistic assessment of the time involved – movies take a long time to make even though they are watched quickly, seeking a certain enjoyment in the process rather than the end result – at least I was learning how to write scripts , having a side plan – I had my third book to write and even something as simple as pleasurable distractions
in your life - friends, food, travel can help you overcome it. Remember, nothing is to be taken seriously. Frustration is a sign somewhere, you took it too seriously.

Unfairness - this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is how our country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful faces, pedigree find it easier to make it – not just in Bollywood, but everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to make it happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some people luckier than you.

In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this speech in English means you are pretty darn lucky by Indian standards. Let’s be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what we don’t. I have so much love from my readers that other writers cannot even imagine it. However, I don’t get literary praise. It’s ok.
I don’t look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are more beautiful than her. It’s ok. Don’t let unfairness kill your spark..

Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is isolation. As you grow older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you still are a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be different from even the people closest to you. This can create conflict as your goals may not match with others. . And you may
drop some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give up something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family. But in doing that, the spark dies. Never, ever make that compromise. Love yourself first, and then others.

There you go. I’ve told you the four thunderstorms - disappointment, frustration, unfairness and isolation. You cannot avoid them, as like the monsoon they will come into your life at regular intervals. You just need to keep the raincoat handy to not let the spark die.

I welcome you again to the most wonderful years of your life. If someone gave me the choice to go back in time, I will surely choose college. But I also hope that ten years later as well, you eyes will shine the same way as they do today. That you will Keep the Spark alive, not only through college, but through the next 2,500 weekends. And I hope not just you, but my whole country will keep that spark alive, as we really need it now more than any moment in history. And there is something cool about saying - I come from the land of billion sparks.

Why Understanding Principles Is Essential in Coaching Others.

2008-08-04T11:37:00.002Z

very nice article .. it may be applied to all spheres of discussion in life

http://www.netobjectives.com/blogs/why-understanding-principles-is-essential-in-coaching-others

Posted August 1st, 2008 by alshall

Whenever I attempt to coach others, I have to acknowledge two things:

People will only do what's in their best interest
You can only get people to change their mind if it makes them right to do so

(Take a look at Joe Caruso’s excellent book, The Power of Losing Control, for more about this).

These strongly inform my beliefs about how to help people learn new approaches. I am often asked how to get other people to learn about Agile or Scrum methods. It can feel frustrating when you feel that the team should be doing something differently from the way it is currently being done… how do you get them to change?

In this blog, I discuss my approach and why understanding the principles underlying the practices is so important.

Look at the concerns behind the approaches

Imagine you are in a situation where someone is doing something you don't agree with. The first tack is often to look at what they are doing rather than what concerns they are really trying to address. That is not effective. I suggest that, almost always, the concerns they have are right but the solutions they have for addressing those concerns are wrong.

For example, suppose someone says, "Look, we need to do this design up-front to make sure that we have an architecture that works." They are taking a waterfall-ish approach. As an Agile person, you might be so taken aback by this approach that you miss what their real concerns are. Now, in this case, what is wrong and what is right? Look at the concern being expressed:

Solution: Create a good architecture that works.
Concern: Don't want to re-write code/architecture

What do you do?

You could tell them that their approach is wrong; but this will likely put them on the defensive. And that is not a good place for a constructive dialog! Instead, start by looking at their concern. If you cannot deduce it (and even if you can), you can always just ask. In this case, I'm pretty sure they are afraid they will lose time re-working the architecture if they don't get it right up-front. In other words, they want to be efficient. Or, perhaps they are concerned it will take too long to make changes to their code if they get the architecture wrong. In either case, they are concerned that the efficiency of development is not be compromised.

Well, I am concerned about this, too! I can agree with them. But I have a completely different solution.

The question is "why do I have a different solution?" The answer is because I am operating from a different set of beliefs. And these different beliefs result in a different set of practices that address the same concern.

Beliefs lead to practices

Discussing beliefs can be difficult because people often don't challenge them. Rather, they just assume they are true or act as if they are. Trying to change someone's beliefs directly is often difficult because it feels like an attack on them personally.

Working from the two principles I mentioned at the start of this blog, if I can get them to learn something that throws their belief into question for themselves, they may change their beliefs on their own... and thereby change their practices.

It works. But first, you have to understand what those beliefs are. And that is hard.

Discern the belief system

When someone does something I don't agree with, I start by asking myself,

What belief system would have someone think these practices are best when I believe those practices are not right?

In the example above, my first question would be, "What does this person believe that has them think that designing an architecture up front will work?" I can imagine many options. First, they believe that it's possible to do design up-front. Second, they believe that architectures cannot be designed to change over time. Those are probably good assumptions.

An even better approach would be to ask. This follows another good rule: Assume Nothing!

Another approach is to look at what they are focusing on. Beliefs are often informed by what people are looking at… what they assume to be true and real. That informs what they believe works.

Leading to change

You have several options available to you to help change behavior. Contrast the things someone is looking at and ignoring with the things you look at and ignore. Ask which things tend to be more predictive. This can be an objective conversation. You both are just trying to learn.

If you've observed enough evidence about how things behave, you may be able to state a principle about how what you are looking at affects the things you want to change. In my manufacturing case, the principle would be that minimizing delays will lower cost and improve quality. What's powerful about this is that you can talk to the person and they can see from their own experience how this belief system makes sense. They start realizing that looking at something different from what they previously looked at will be more effective. They have changed their belief system based on their experience by your having had them shift what they are to look at. True, they have to change their minds into looking at something differently (or at different things), but they adopt the new belief because they believe it now and it is consistent with what they are looking at. They are smarter than they were – not dumber. It is not a right Vs wrong thing anymore, but a making both people smarter. They have actually convinced themselves (OK, so you helped). By the way, if it turns out your belief system was wrong, then you learn something – which is also good.

My suggestion is to learn which beliefs are useful to have and which ones aren't. Discover what your associates (clients) believe. See what principles they follow that support those beliefs. See what principles you know would question those beliefs. And then, have a conversation with them about it. In essence, you look at the concerns they have (which are likely good) then deduce the beliefs that they must have to follow the practices they are suggesting. Find principles that throw these beliefs into question if your experience is that they are wrong. If you are right, your associate may learn something. If you are wrong, then you may learn something.

It's a win-win.

Alan Shalloway

Professor Randy Pausch is no more

2008-08-04T11:25:00.002Z

CMU Professor Randy Pausch of “the last lecture” fame is no more. He died of cancer on July 25, 2008.

On September 18, 2007, Professor Randy surprised everyone in CMU by giving a talk with an unusual title “The Last Lecture – Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”.

If you haven’t seen the video, you can see it here

http://randygoruk.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/leadership-development-2/

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5700431505846055184&q=randy+pausch&ei=240QSPHLHpzA4ALSpqGnBA

Quoting from his personal experiences he related to the career goals and personal goals of students during their formative years. It was such a touching, inspirational and thought provoking talk that millions of students watched his lecture that became the top video in YouTube video sharing service.

He was just 47; has 3 small children. The positive way in which he took life as it unfolds – cancer of pancreas and with just months of life left – is a lesson for all human beings.

Cuil - long on marketing, short on effectiveness

2008-08-04T11:18:00.001Z

in my previous post it was an description of the new search engine...latest reviews suggest cuil is not that good !

Cuil - long on marketing, short on effectiveness

Cuil - long on marketing, short on effectiveness
By philipbradley on Search engines
(from http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2008/07/cuil---long-on-marketing-short-on-effectiveness.html)
'Cuil' is pronounced 'cool' or more likely 'kewl'. It's never a good sign when you have to start by telling people this, but at least it's not gone down the double 'o' route. Cuil has been around in stealth mode for a while, but it's exploded onto the general public scene in the last few days with a blaze of (unwarranted) publicity. It's making great claims, and some people are talking about it as the latest Google killer. I've played around with it for a while, so lets take a look at some of the features and functions.
It indexes 120 billion pages. I think that I'm supposed to be impressed by that, but I think we left the macho posturing of 'We index more than you' behind a long time ago. It is interesting to note that Google released their little note last week about being aware of a trillion webpages - they didn't actually say that they indexed that many, just that they knew about it. Even if it's the largest index that simply means that there's even more pages that I'm not going to look at, with the whole long tail business. Having said that, having run a few test searches against Google, Big G still comes out with more results. So, the size of the index doesn't mean a great deal to me. However one could argue that if Cuil does have a bigger index it behoves it to use that effectively. This brings me onto my second point, one of functionality.
I'm quite frankly astonished that there is no indication on the site of search functionality. As regular readers know - one of my hobby horses is help pages or cheat sheets. Google's pretty good on this, with examples, cheat sheets and so on. Cuil has *nothing*. They are expecting their users to either whack in a few words and thats it, or they're so confident of getting good results they think they don't need to provide help. However, I've got to play around and see what Boolean operators work, proximity, what file formats are searched, does it limit by country or language, can I limit by time/date - I have no idea. I'm going to have to waste MY time trying to do THEIR work for them, and quite simply it's not going to happen that quickly. So, functionality is limited to heavens knows what and there's no advanced search function. Which, if the index is as big as they say it is, is pretty poor.
The display of results is a little different, in that it's in magazine style. This isn't unique - Silobreaker for example takes that approach as well, and Exalead allows for different displays of results. Users can choose if they want 2 or 3 columns. We're expected to guess which is the relevant result - is it in the top left hand corner? The top 3 results? Who can say - it's just part of the Cuil guessing game. There are two further search/display options. The first are a series of tabs across the top of the page to focus on particular categories. Great in concept but poor in execution. A search for 'Everton' for example brings me up tabs for Everton FC and Everton Football. Quite what the difference between them is I'm not entirely sure, and I'm not going to waste time getting into a guessing game. The other option is an explore by category approach. Cuil gives us the option of exploring Premiership teams, and of the teams they list in this section 80% are not IN the Premiership. This is not right - it's not even wrong! It's hopelessly inept, and quite frankly inexcusable. This does not give me any kind of trust in their system at all.
It gets worse. Next to a lot of the results entries are images. These apparently relate directly to the result but they don't. I ran a search for me (the way you do) and up popped a link to my Flickr collection. Sensible and good so far - except that the image shown isn't one of my images! I have no idea where this image comes from and have no way of finding out. Disgraceful. This isn't a single error - it happens time and time again - images do NOT relate to the pages that are returned. Total shambles.
Cuil is hot on the concept of privacy - to the extent that they don't keep any kind of information on who is searching for what. No problem with this, but it does mean that they've tied themselves into a system where they're not going to be able to offer personalisation, and given that this is going to be an increasingly hot topic in the future means that they're sidelining themselves from the start.
I hope that Cuil improves - the more, and better the engines, the more we'll all benefit. However, this is so ineffectual that it's not going to be competing with Google - ever. If people are looking for the elusive Google Killer they'd better get used to the idea that it's not going to be this one. If you're looking for an alternative to the major players - Exalead is still (in my opinion) your best bet.

How does innovation happen in Google : secrets !!

2008-07-28T14:23:00.001Z

"The 70 Percent Solution - Google CEO Eric Schmidt gives us his golden rules for managing innovation"
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2005/12/01/8364616/index.htm

Google is known to use the 70/20/10 model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/70/20/10_Model) in order to provide time for innovation to all Google engineers:

A Google's engineer blog on how the 70/20/10 model works
"Google 20% Time"
http://www.eightypercent.net/Archive/2005/03/24.html

Also see
"Google Product Development/Management Process"
http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/files/GoogleProductDevProcess.pdf

Former Employees of Google Prepare Rival Search Engine

2008-07-28T13:46:00.002Z

Interesting times ... sure open world does not want monopoly by one company ( google) as we need a change and change is always healthy ..rightly by Kaizen models :))

/Praveen

Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/28/technology/28cool.html?_r=2&ref=technology&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

SAN FRANCISCO — In her two years at Google, Anna Patterson helped design and build some of the pillars of the company’s search engine, including its large index of Web pages and some of the formulas it uses for ranking search results.

Skip to next paragraph

The makers of the Cuil search engine say it should provide better results and show them in a more attractive manner.

Now, along with her husband, Tom Costello, and a few other Google alumni, she is trying to upstage her former employer.

On Monday, their company, Cuil, is unveiling a search engine that they promise will be more comprehensive than Google’s and that they hope will give its users more relevant results.

“I think it will be better,” Mr. Costello said in an interview. “But there is no question that the public has to decide.”

Cuil, pronounced “cool,” is only the latest in a long string of start-up companies that have been founded and financed with the goal of competing with Google, as well as Yahoo and Microsoft. (In June, Google accounted for 61.5 percent of search queries in the United States, while Yahoo held 20.9 percent and Microsoft had 9.2 percent, according to comScore.) Some of the most prominent include Powerset, which Microsoft recently bought, and Wikia, which was founded by Jimmy Wales, one of the creators of Wikipedia. So far, none have managed to make a dent in the search market.

But some analysts say Cuil has potential, in part because of the pedigree of its founders.

“This is the most promising thing I’ve seen in a while,” said Danny Sullivan, who has followed the online search business for more than a decade and is the editor of Search Engine Land. “Whether they are going to threaten Microsoft, much less Google, that’s another story.”

Mr. Costello, a former researcher at Stanford, said that with 120 billion Web pages, Cuil’s search index is larger than any other. The company uses a form of data mining to group Web pages by content, which makes the search engine more efficient, he said. Instead of showing results as short snippets of text and images with links, it displays longer entries and uses more pictures. It also provides tools to help users further refine their queries.

Google would not comment on Cuil and would not disclose the size of its own index. But in an e-mail statement, Google said that it maintained “the largest collection of documents searchable on the Web” and welcomed competition.

Mr. Sullivan said he was unimpressed by Cuil’s claim that its index includes more Web pages, noting that that could mean users are “overwhelmed by a whole bunch of junk.” But he said that Cuil’s new approach to ranking pages and presenting results could prove to be a hit with some users.

“If it turns out that they have good relevancy, I could see that the word of mouth” would bring Cuil some popularity, he said.

Ms. Patterson left Google in 2006 to found Cuil. The new company has other prominent ex-Google employees, including Russell Power, who worked with Ms. Patterson on the large Google index, and Louis Monier, a former chief technology officer at AltaVista, a pioneering search engine. Cuil, which has about 30 employees and is in Menlo Park, Calif., has raised $33 million from venture investors.

Grow your mobile in a pot? Maybe someday, say Nokia researchers

2008-07-23T13:09:00.002Z

Certainly interesting article !!

Source http://www.physorg.com/news135927830.html

The world's leading mobile phone maker Nokia has worked for years with top experts to determine the needs and wants of tomorrow's customers in order to stay ahead of aggressive new competitors

With a mobile phone you can make calls on the go, shoot photos and pinpoint your position on a map. And who knows, maybe one day you'll be able to grow your phone in a pot, if the futuristic ideas of technology researchers come true.

The world's leading mobile phone maker Nokia has worked for years with top experts to determine the needs and wants of tomorrow's customers in order to stay ahead of aggressive new competitors Google and Apple as well as the more traditional device makers Samsung, LG and Motorola.

In 2007, the Finnish company spent some 5.6 billion euros (8.9 billion dollars), or about 11 percent of its 51-billion-euro net sales, on research and development.

About 27 percent of its employees, or more than 30,000 people, work on research and development, 700 of whom are part of Nokia's long-term research unit.

The Nokia Research Centre is a global organisation with activities in Britain, the United States, China, Switzerland and Finland, among others.

"Right now we are looking for things that could be relevant for Nokia in 2015. It might be that the patent for a product is relevant in 2015 but that the actual product is further away," Leo Kaerkkaeinen, a chief visionary at the Nokia Research Centre, told AFP.

He would not disclose the industry secrets Nokia was working on but said the starting point for researchers was that anything was possible.

"We are playing with possibilities. Maybe some time in the future mobile phones will grow in a pot like plants or maybe you could print a new phone," he joked.

Built-in antennae are one of the centre's inventions and they are now a part of every mobile phone on the market.

A more recent example is the Nokia Sports Tracker, which uses a GPS sensor to record sports enthusiasts' location, speed, distance and time, enabling users to store the information on the website and share with others.

The Sports Tracker software has been downloaded more than 1.6 million times and it has 75,000 active users, according to Nokia.

In February, Nokia launched its "Morph nanotechnology concept" with the University of Cambridge which could result in mobile devices made of flexible and self-cleaning materials within the next seven years.

A jogger might find it handy to wrap his cell phone around his wrist or head during a workout, especially since the phone repels perspiration -- and mud.

But what makes companies want to invest vast amounts of money in experiments that will only bear fruit many years down the road, if at all, at a time when investors are increasingly focused on quarterly profits?

"Futures research can help companies evaluate coming risks and possibilities, while giving them time to react and a competitive edge over their competitors," Sirkka Heinonen, a professor at Finland Futures Research Centre at the Turku School of Economics, told AFP.

She noted the three main principles of futures studies -- the future cannot be precisely predicted, it is not predestined and people can have an impact on it. "Today's choices and decisions make the future.

"The future is like a landscape that we try to see more clearly and to which we will draw road maps," Heinonen explained.

People have always wanted to know what tomorrow will bring but systematic, modern futures research began in the 1940s when German professor Ossip K. Flechtheim started to talk about futurology.

In the 1950s, some US firms began studying scenario analysis. In Finland, futures research only took hold in the late 1970s.

While companies like Nokia or lift and escalator maker Kone have since been actively involved in the field, not all industries have risen to the challenge, with many opting for immediate profits over long-term investments.

Heinonen said the Finnish paper industry, struggling with rising costs while overcapacity has kept a lid on paper prices, was one industry that could really benefit from drawing up a forward looking scenario.

Nokia meanwhile takes its future seriously.

"Nokia is not just looking to expand its product portfolio but also for new services to expand it. The Research Centre's job is also to look for something totally different -- like should Nokia start making household robots or medical diagnosis systems," Kaerkkaeinen said.

Kaerkkaeinen revealed that Nokia was conducting trials on mobile phones that could help diagnose illnesses, technology that could be used in regions where the nearest doctor is far away.

In Palo Alto, California, Nokia has also studied whether GPS censors in mobile phones can be used to forecast traffic flows.

"We put a hundred cars into traffic and followed how they impacted the accuracy of traffic forecasts. The results were encouraging," Kaerkkaeinen said.

During the past few years growing demand for consumer products, such as cell phones in emerging markets like China and India, has been important for Nokia's success.

Last year nearly 20 percent of its sales came from the two countries.

The company is now conducting studies to improve its understanding of future emerging markets in order to better meet customers' needs.

In India's IT hub Bangalore, Nokia's team is collaborating with Srishti School of Design and the MIT Media Lab in a project studying how urbanisation impacts society and technology's role in it.

"We are looking into how to narrow the digital divide when people do not have any technical background knowledge whatsoever," Kaerkkaeinen said.

Go Kiss the World!

2008-07-21T10:23:00.002Z

Today @ IIMB, there was a very nice talk by Subroto Bagchi.. Mr. Subroto Bagchi is the Co-founder of MindTree..

The audio file can be downloaded from here: http://coffeewithsundar.com/SubrotoBagchi.mp3

Hope you enjoyed listening to it.. I am sure, it will make you introspect!

Two years back, Mr. Bagchi gave a talk to the class of 2006 (@ IIMB) on defining success.. He concluded the talk with the words “Go Kiss the World!”.. These were the same words which his blind mother told him before her last breath. And this talk @ IIM Bangalore inspired Mr. Bagchi to write his book - “Go Kiss the World!”

The following is the talk which Subroto Bagchi gave 2 years back. This was taken from here: http://www.mindtree.com/subrotobagchi/iim-bangalore-speech/#more-1

Subroto Speaks

Go Kiss the World

I delivered this speech to the Class of 2006 at the IIM, Bangalore on defining success. This was the first time I shared the guiding principles of my life with young professionals.

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was, and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep - so the family moved from place to place and without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father.

My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system, which makes me what I am today and largely, defines what success means to me today.

As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government- he reiterated to us that it was not ”his jeep” but the government’s jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep - we could sit in it only when it was stationary.

That was our early childhood lesson in governance - a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father’s office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix ‘dada’ whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed - I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, ‘Raju Uncle’ - very different from many of their friends who refer to their family driver, as ‘my driver’. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe.

To me, the lesson was significant - you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother’s chulha - an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was neither gas, nor electrical stoves.The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman’s ‘muffosil’ edition - delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson.

He used to say, “You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it”. That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios - we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios - alluding to his five sons.

We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply,” We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses”. His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant.

Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father’s transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, “I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited”.

That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper - end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness. Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term “Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan” and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University’s water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination.

Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

Over the next few years, my mother’s eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, “Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair”. I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, “No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed”. Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes.

To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life’s own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life’s calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places - I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world.

In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him - he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, “Why have you not gone home yet?” Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self.

There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what the limit of inclusion is you can create.

My father died the next day. He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion.

Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts - the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant’s world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions.

In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking.

Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said,

“Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world.” Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and God’s speed. Go! kiss the world.

What is innovation and creativity?

2008-07-16T19:17:00.002Z

I asked myself What is innovation and creativity? Is it in the mind or is it in the output? Is it in many small things or a great idea that will change the world forever? Is it something that flows out of genius's mind.

Innovation and creativity is a state of being. It does not get taught in MBA classes. It shies away when simplicity is shorn and we seek sophistication. It is a flow, a spontaneity and a continuum.

Bottomline :It is trying doing something new and doing it differently .

Good summary of whats happening in mobile market

2008-07-16T11:26:00.004Z

See the video below !

http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10&vidid=3098&view=video&page=1

Assignment: Platform Wars: Will Android allow the IT industry to Seize the Mobile Value Chain?

What are open platforms and open networks, and why are they important? New operating systems such as Android & LiMo appear to be more than just new technologies. Do they really challenge the current mobile network operator business model by turning the mobile terminal into a mobile applications platform rather than a services terminal? This programme looks at this clash of ideas by identifying the three different players: 'openness advocates', 'bit pipe avoiders' and 'middle wayers'.

Name: Sy Choudhury, Geoff Blaber, Masayoshi Son, Kai Oistamo, Nigel Clifford
Title: Staff Product Manager, Director of Devices, President & CEO, EVP, CEO
Company: Qualcomm, CCS Insight, Softbank Mobile, Nokia, Symbian
Recorded: 15/07/2008 - Various

Microsoft Ready to Hit Back at Mac Guy

2008-07-14T14:01:00.001Z

I would love to see microsoft advertise their strength rather than drawbacks of MAC etc !! go MS go

http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/07/09/microsoft-ready-to-hit-back-at-mac-guy/
Microsoft Ready to Hit Back at Mac Guy

Microsoft is set to strike back at Apple and others who have spent the last year and a half criticizing its Windows Vista operating system.
empire_art_160_20080709173057.jpg
Is this image too obvious?

We wrote about Vista’s image problem last winter, when the operating system was facing a barrage of negative press and a clever ad campaign by Apple that alleged Vista was a failure and full of problems. At the time, Microsoft told us that it had no plans for a counteroffensive or even to defend itself against the charges. Instead of acknowledging the attack ads, Microsoft hoped to change minds by continuing to talk up Vista’s benefits.

That didn’t work. Vista’s image is as bad as ever. Even businesses say they’ll avoid upgrading to it, according to one report. Last week, Microsoft replaced the advertising company it used for its business-to-business campaigns. Yesterday, Brad Brooks, a vice president in charge of Windows marketing, speaking at a Microsoft conference, said that the time had come to fight back. Finally.

“We’re drawing a line right here on this stage,” he told a crowd of Microsoft business partners, according to a transcript. “You thought the sleeping giant was still sleeping? Well, we’ve woken up and it’s time to take our message forward,” he added. Brooks specifically mentioned Apple and that company’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads.

Over the next few weeks, Microsoft will roll out an ad campaign intended to change peoples’ minds about Vista. The company is tight-lipped about what those ads will look like, but they should be more aggressive than anything we’ve seen to date. A rather conventional full-page ad for a version of Vista aimed at small businesses that ran in today’s Journal isn’t a part of the campaign, a company spokesperson tells the Business Technology Blog.

So what will the new ads look like? Microsoft isn’t saying, so we’ve come up with some ideas: A hip-looking professionals tries to use business software that doesn’t run on a Mac; a man talks about the improved security in Vista, and we learn at the end of the ad that he’s an Apple employee; a Pepsi-challenge-style computer taste test; a deep-voiced narrator rehashes every strategic blunders Apple has ever made while ominous music plays in the background — paid for by the Friends of Vista, of course.

Any other suggestions for Microsoft’s counterattack?

The Top Ten 3G iPhone beaters

2008-07-11T11:59:00.002Z

source : http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/07/11/round_up_iphone_rivals/

I dont quite agree to this top ten list since there are SonyEricsson P1 and W960 which could be easily in this list. anyhoo here goes the list by reghardware

Round-up Sick to the teeth of 3G iPhone this and 3G iPhone that? Then express your anti-Apple anger by selecting one our list of the top ten feature-packed alternatives. Counting down, in reverse order, we kick of with the
with the...

Motorola Z10
Click here for the full review

The Z10 is a step up from the original kick sliding Z8, but it’s still not up there with the very best smartphones. Top-level features like integrated GPS and Wi-Fi support are absent on this phone, though it does have high-speed HSDPA 3G data connectivity. The camera is decent but not a top-notch shooter. There’s the size factor too - you may expect a larger display given the phone’s footprint. General phone performance was good but there were issues with occasional software glitches and sometimes sluggish keypad responsiveness on our review sample.

Reg Rating: 70%

Palm Treo 500v
Click here for the full review

Palm's Treo 500v isn't the 'power users' Windows Mobile device - no Wi-Fi; no HSDPA just plain old 3G - but it's an impressive attempt at bringing the handset family into the reach of the mainstream. It's wonderfully compact and it looks good. Palm's new UI is a big improvement on the standard WM one, and its micro-keyboard is as easy to use as anything on a BlackBerry or HTC device.

Reg Rating: 70%

Samsung SGH-F700
Click here for the full review

It's hard to ignore the slight whooshing noise the F700 makes as it slips between two stools. If you want a cool gadget for surfing the web and media playback you're going to want an iPhone, with its Wi-Fi and better-than-the-rest browser. If you want something that does just about everything your PC does but is phone-sized and you're not concerned about using a stylus, you'll be wanting an HTC TyTn II or something similar. Should Samsung have perhaps partnered up with Google for the F700's OS, given it 8GB of memory and Wi-Fi and then really gone iPhone-hunting under the guise of the first Android smartphone?

Reg Rating: 75%

Motorola Moto Q 9h
Click here for the full review

Not the prettiest of smartphones, and crucially lacking Wi-Fi, document editing and GPS, the Moto Q 9h is nevertheless very easy to use. Its robust and well-spaced keys make it easy to handle messaging and the entertainment functions outperform its uncool, BlackBerry-wannabe looks.

Reg Rating: 75%

HTC Touch Diamond
Click here for the full review

The Touch Diamond may not be perfect, but it's small, light, well equipped and comes with a smooth, clever and reliable 3D user interface that looks great and keeps you well away from Windows Mobile. The screen and web browser are both particularly fine. Our biggest concern is the lack of a memory card slot, which on a high-end smartphone in this day and age is tough to explain or justify.

Reg Rating: 80%

Nokia N78
Click here for the full review

From its sleek, minimalist good looks to its raft of impressively well-integrated features, the N78 is a gorgeous little number. The 3.2-megapixel camera, feature-packed music player, Assisted GPS and maps, quality web browser plus documents readers and email make it an ideal travelling companion for business or pleasure.

Reg Rating: 85%

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HTC Touch Dual
Click here for the full review

This is the phone the original Touch should always have been. A faster chip, the addition of a slide-out Qwerty keypad and high-speed HSDPA 3G along with various minor tweaks here and there have resulted in a handset that is easy to use, versatile, smart and robust. Good to see HTC back on track.

Reg Rating: 85%

Nokia N81 8GB
Click here for the full review

If you’re looking for plenty of track storage in a smartphone, the N81 is a lower-cost alternative to the N95. It doesn’t come with the same wealth of functionality as the N95 – no GPS and a lower-quality camera than the N95’s five-megapixel job. The design's slick but the plastic casing gives the N81 a cheap feel. And while the controls are cluttered and definitely not as ergonomic as they could be the music player performance is excellent.

Reg Rating: 85%

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O2 XDA Orbit 2
Click here for the full review

What's not to like about the O2 XDA Orbit 2? For the money, you're getting a perfectly decent Windows Mobile smartphone and a capable satnav system. When you consider that you can get the thing free with a £45-a-month contract or for only £50 with a £35-a-month contract and that it comes bundled with £80-odd worth of CoPilot 7 software, it's also quite the bargain.

Reg Rating: 90%

Nokia N95 8GB
Click here for the full review

With the N95 8GB, Nokia has added significant improvements to an already feature-loaded multimedia mobile. The enhancements aren’t solely cosmetic - it’s not just an iPhone-challenging memory upgrade either. Nokia has refined the screen design to make it more media-friendly, enhanced the GPS system, and worked in a number of software upgrades. Battery performance has been extended. It’s still quite a large handset, which may put off some buyers. But the real heavyweight you get is the package of useful and entertaining features in what is a sophisticated smartphone.

Reg Rating: 95%

iPhone 3G: Faster, cheaper but still not perfect

2008-07-10T18:13:00.000Z

Source : http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/iphone-3g-faster-cheaper-still-not-perfect/2008-07-09?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal&cmp-id=EMC-NL-FW&dest=FW

The handful of lucky reviewers to have early access to the iPhone 3G have revealed their analysis of the new device, which goes on sale Friday, July 11. The conclusion: the iPhone 3G is cheaper and faster (if you're lucky enough to be in one of AT&T's HSPA markets) but it still has some issues such as battery life (higher power demands from the 3G network cause the battery to drain quicker) and there's no Bluetooth or video capabilities. Here's a snapshot of the reviews:

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal. Pro: The new iPhone is much, much faster at fetching data over cell phone networks because it uses a speedy cellular technology called 3G. And it now sports a GPS chip for better location sensing. Con: The iPhone 3G's battery was drained much more quickly in a typical day of use than the battery on the original iPhone, due to the higher power demands of 3G networks. This is an especially significant problem because, unlike most other smart phones, the iPhone has a sealed battery that can't be replaced with a spare. For more, read the article or watch this video of Mossberg's review.
David Pogue of The New York Times. Pro: The audio quality of the iPhone 3G has taken a gigantic step forward. "You sound crystal clear to your callers, and they sound crystal clear to you. Few cell phones are this good." Plus, Pogue praises the iPhone App Store, which he says is a central, complete, drop-dead simple online catalog of new programs for the iPhone. Con: AT&T's 3G coverage is spotty. A coverage map reveals that in 16 states, only three cities or fewer are covered. In 10 states there is no coverage at all. For more, read the review here.
Edward Baig of USA Today. Pro: Messages and calendar entries are "pushed" to the device, so they show up right away, just as they do on other computers. Set-up is a cinch. Con: You still cannot shoot video or take advantage of Bluetooth stereo or dial with a voice command. For more, see the full review.

An iPhone with a keyboard?

2008-07-02T12:07:00.000Z

By Guy Kewney, NewsWireless.Net http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/30/iphone_keyboard/

Published Monday 30th June 2008 15:41 GMT

It is an article of faith, of course, that whatever Steve Jobs does is right. And so, since the iPhone currently has no keyboard on it, it must logically follow that it is wrong to have a keyboard, and therefore that Steve Jobs will never produce a version that does have a keyboard.
Fervent fans can therefore see no reason to change the iPhone from its current "type on the touch screen, or not at all" design. As one of the more zealous remarked when the suggestion was even mentioned: "The only people who think it needs a keyboard are people who have never used it."
Rumours from inside Cupertino suggest that Jobs himself doesn't have this sort of religious hangup about his own work. Reports from inside mobile operators show that whether or not he ever makes it work, he is already trying to make a "slide-out" keyboard for a corporate version of the iPhone.
If this version does appear on the market, it won't be this year, and certainly won't be aimed at the consumer market. Consumers love the sleek, elegant design of the iPhone, and quickly fall in love with the on-screen keyboard.
But Steve Jobs can do the sums. In America, iPhone has perhaps overtaken Blackberry in total sales - but these sales are in what they call "the executive corridor."
Worldwide, it has not escaped the attention of mobile network execs that the bulk of corporate sales are not into the executive corridor. Rather, they are phones which are provided for staff, and the vast bulk of them have full-QWERTY keyboards - and all the best-selling ones, Nokia, Sony-Ericsson and HTC alike, have slide-out keyboards. The popular Danger Sidekick, too, has a slide-out (spin-out) QWERTY keyboard.
The market which buys these phones, wants QWERTY and they don't want to type on the screen. They "just know" that they wouldn't like it.
Arguably, they're wrong, of course. Quite conceivably, after a week of sending emails typed on the touch-screen of the iPhone, they'd "get it" and love it. But how will they ever find out?
Compare the numbers: those who have never used it, versus those who have. It may cross your mind that perhaps it would be a good option to provide if you want to increase sales and expose sceptics to the new user interface.
The issue is, of course, a classic religious wars subject. We had similar wars over Intel chips, when the faithful maintained that the PowerPC chips inside the Apple Mac family were four times faster than Intel processors, and that Jobs would never abandon them.
And before that there was the operating system. The Mac OS was inherently superior to anything *nixy and so no Unix system would be able to keep up. Before that, the Motorola 68000 family was equally sacrosanct.
Will Jobs launch an iPhone with a keyboard? He says "definitely not" and is emphatic about it. So that's that.
Well, yes, and then again maybe. What he is apparently doing is canvassing the idea with operators. "If you had a keyboard version, how many would you take?"
And he has taken this beyond just chatting: actual prototypes - not just mockups - have been sent to senior executives at some operators. I'm not allowed to even hint which operators... but I can report that the keyboard has "issues" which are not yet resolved.
In another part of the forest, of course, Apple's rivals have the opposite problem. They want touch-screen technology and they are working hard on it. And they, too, have "issues" with making it work properly.
Sources inside one operator say that there definitely will not be a slide-out keyboard this year. But, I'm told, they are definitely expecting to see one, aimed specifically at corporate buyers, around this time next year.
Like all rumours it's premature, and people can change their minds. But it's not speculation. The prototypes actually exist and they (nearly) work.
It's also worth remembering that operators aren't Apple. They don't have the Apple design flair, the creative vision, or the urge to rock the boat. And they are looking at a surge in sales of HTC phones, all based on Windows Mobile, and many with really cute slide-out keyboards. "If that is where the mobile buyers are going," they think, "we should go there too."
If Jobs actually launches one to capture this market, will it succeed?
That's another question entirely! Contrary to the protestations of the zealots, this would not be the death-knell of the iPhone.
After all, the no-keyboard iPhone does not depend for its credibility on the absence of an alternative keyboard version. It either works or it doesn't. Anybody who has learned to use it will know that it works adequately, but you will find people who say that they'd prefer a real keyboard.
My own experience is that it works for iPhone standard things. That is to say it's great at web browsing and all the functions that iPod music playing requires, and wonderful for scanning photographs. It is, in short, a genuine innovation in user interfaces, and a successful innovation.
But innovation isn't what users all want. Many of us are conservative. Long memories are needed to go back to the days of WordStar text editing, and the resistance that people trained on WordStar put up when asked to use WordPerfect. And in their turn, WordPerfect users absolutely refused to adapt to Microsoft Word, however innovative the GUI might have been; Microsoft had to produce a version of Word which obeyed WP keystrokes.
In the phone business, users are notoriously conservative. Users of Sony Ericsson devices denounce Nokia as "plain wrong!" and vice versa; and yet really, the differences are trivial.
When it comes to keyboard skills, texting speedsters regard predictive T9 typing as wimpish. Both T9 and triple-type texters regard QWERTY phones like the Nokia E61 or the Blackberry or the HTC devices as perverse.
So it really isn't much use going to the dyed-in-the-wool qwerty button-pusher and saying: "But this is inherently better!" in evangelising tones. Like a small child who won't try porridge because they don't like it, they know they don't like it... so they won't try. And many people who hate Guinness have, similarly, never tasted a drop. That's human nature!
In the long run, it really doesn't matter to Apple whether people who get a keyboard on their office iPhone end up never using it. As long as they get an office iPhone, they have the chance of trying it, and maybe falling in love. As long as their company phone is a Blackberry or an HTC Touch or a Sony Ericsson X1 or a Nokia E61, they'll use it and regard the iPhone with suspicion.
Steve Jobs switched from Motorola to PowerPC to Intel chips. He does what he needs to do to sell stuff. If he has to put a keyboard on the back of some iPhones to sell more of them, my bet is he'll do it

How To Get Started in Your Own Business?

2008-07-02T11:41:00.000Z

http://drhowell.net/preparing-to-get-started-in-your-business.html

The biggest problem I had in “Getting Started” on making my idea into a practical business reality was my own fear. Whether it was fear of the unknown, fear of failure, or some other unknown fear I possessed, it was keeping me from reaching my potential. What I learned through experience, and to quote FDR, “The only thing to fear in starting your business, is your own fear itself”.

With proper research, planning and delegation of responsibility, there is no reason your idea, service, or product cannot succeed. In your pursuit towards fulfilling the goals you have laid forth, you must stay focused on the management of your daily routine; however you should always be thinking toward the future. Remain creative in your approach towards using conventional tools, methods, and processes that are needed to succeed in business. In today’s society, we have unparallel access to all the necessary resources and tools you would ever need to educate yourself on various business subjects.

The question becomes, how do I access the vast amount of resources that are available in the most productively efficient manner? The short answer is; visit a consulting firm which offers a step by step guide to starting your business. The Motivated Entrepreneur is a full service consulting firm that offers a wide range of services that vary from simple incorporation consultation packages at very economical prices, to more complex detailed full business packages which include business plan preparation, along with marketing, public relations, advertising, and financial services.

As far as information is concerned, there are numerous places to access business tools and information on the World Wide Web. As mentioned above The Motivated Entrepreneur is a great online source of business information. However, the best source on the internet to supply you with the documented information you are looking for is the Small Business Administration website, SBA.gov. No matter what route you choose to take, whether it is through business consultation or solely through your own hard work and ingenuity, you should always review the government information provided on their website to make sure you are heading in the right direction.

The next step is to start organizing your information and material so that you can develop a clear direction and begin to integrate this direction into your business plan & organizational structure. The first step is to develop a rough business plan, a rough business plan is necessary for you to verbalize your thoughts into a visual medium. This will allow you to gain an added perspective for use as critique on your own thoughts; it is a great aid to helping establish the type of legal form of organization that will best suit your structure of business from a tax perspective.

When approaching you rough business plan, you should break it down into sections. Below is a simple guideline that can be used to conceptualize your plan.

Introduction
• Give a detailed description of the business and its goals.
• List the skills and experience you bring to the business.
• Discuss the advantages you and your business have over your competitors.

Marketing
• Discuss the products/services offered; identify the customer demand for your product/service.
• Identify your market, its size and locations.

Financial Management
• Develop a monthly operating budget for the first year.
• Develop an expected return on investment and monthly cash flow for the first year.

Operations
• Explain how the business will be managed on a day to day basis.
• Discuss hiring and personnel procedures.
• Account for the equipment necessary to produce your products or services.
• Account for production and delivery of products and services.

Concluding Statement
• Summarize your business goals and objectives and express your commitment to the success of your business

Ok, you have your rough draft business plan together and you are interested in incorporating! Here’s the next step… research, research, research! As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, in today’s society our access to the enormous amount of information that exists gives us a great advantage. It is time to start thinking about your legal structure and the type of organization that will best suit your needs, not just now, but for the successful future you are seeking. I have listed below some information to consider when you begin thinking about incorporation. Another option is to use a full service consulting firm who can give you advice from different perspectives, such as legal and tax implications, as well as expansion management.

When organizing a new business, one of the most important decisions to be made is choosing the structure of a business. Factors influencing your decision about your business organization include:

Legal restrictions
Liabilities assumed
Type of business operation
Earnings distribution
Capital needs

The easiest form of incorporation is the Sole Proprietorship. It also is the least expensive and has the least barriers to incorporation. The majority of small businesses start out as sole proprietorships; sole proprietors own all assets and profits of the company. The business is easy to dissolve, if desired, which can also be a benefit. The downside, is that that sole proprietors have unlimited liability and are legally responsible for all debts against the business. In addition, they may be at a disadvantage in raising funds and are often limited to using funds from personal savings or consumer loans.

Another very popular form of incorporating is the Partnership. A partnership is easy to organize but must have an agreement. In a partnership, the partners have unlimited liability; however they receive all the income from the business. With more than one partner, the ability to raise funds is increased, but since decisions are shared disagreements can occur.

The last form of legal structure is the corporation. The corporation is considered by law to be a unique entity separate from those who own it. A business may incorporate without an attorney, but advice is highly recommended. The corporate structure is usually the most complex and more costly to organize than the other two business formations. Control depends on stock ownership. Persons with the largest stock ownership, not the total number of shareholders, control the corporation. Shareholders have limited liability for the corporation’s debt’s or judgments against them.

The process of incorporation requires more time and money than other forms of organization and corporations are monitored by federal, state and some local agencies, and as a result may have more paperwork to comply with regulations. There are different structures that may be best suited for your needs, such as the C-corporation, Subchapter S-corporation or Limited Liability Corporations. You should seek professional consulting advice before deciding to choose which form of corporation is most applicable to your business.

© Copyright 2004-05 by www.motivatedentrepreneur.com

How does Firefox make 100 million a year?

2008-07-02T11:38:00.001Z

...runs out in November 2008. It'll be interesting to see how much this is valued at. Not that Mozilla need to worry, they have significant retained earnings from the revenue they've generated in the last few years.

More here;

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-9802922-39.html

Source: http://ninetofiveblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-does-firefox-make-100-million-year.html

This is a sneaky way of making money by piggybacking on Google ads.

Mozilla Foundation chairman Mitchell Baker... disclosed how much money Mozilla made from their Firefox web browser in 2005: $52.9 million.

Figures were not disclosed for 2006 but Baker did say the foundation’s 2003 revenue was $2.4 million and 2004 revenue was $5.8 million. You can take a guess at 2006 revenue and project 2007 revenue based on that. Now the obvious question; How does Firefox make money?

You see that little Google search box on the upper right? If you use that box to make a search and click on one of the Google ads from the results page, Firefox gets an estimated 80% of the money. In addition to the search box, Mozilla also makes money from searches made on the Firefox start page .

The Google search box adds value and income to Firefox and that is the key to making big money on the Net. Users of Firefox don’t see the Google search box as advertising. Instead they see is as a value added service and they don’t mind that Mozilla makes money from the sponsored links. Most of them don’t even know Firefox makes money from it. I’m sure if they find out it made over $50 million in 2005, they will be shocked. LINK.

Global groundbreaking software from India?Well..

2008-06-26T10:54:00.001Z

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

2008-06-25T23:33:00.000Z

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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
To value your own skills and strengths, instead of giving off cheaply by working for someone else.
To be an inspiration and example for others.
To be creative. Yes, when you walk on the entrepreneurship path, the creative side of yours will surface in most unexpected ways.
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.
To be happy. To love life and to love self.
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

2008-06-08T12:48:00.000Z

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

2008-06-08T12:28:00.000Z

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

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

2008-06-04T13:14:00.000Z

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

2008-06-04T13:08:00.002Z

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 ?

2008-06-04T12:56:00.000Z

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.

Reasons for indian mobile industry boom

2008-05-07T10:52:00.002Z

Making talk cheap

Manoj Kohli

Mobile telephony is increasingly taking the shape of a mass movement in India. The country is adding eight million new subscribers every month. With over 260 million consumers, we are now the second largest market in the world. Today, the mobile is an essential device for the masses, a sea change from the times when it was regarded as a luxury.
Telecom is a rare sector where tariffs have gone down despite inflation reaching a three-year high of 7.5 per cent. Call charges have fallen by about 95 per cent from its 1997 level of Rs 16. At Re 1 per minute, Indian mobile tariff is the lowest in the world, despite the fact that taxes and levies still account for as high as 30 per cent of revenues. An average American pays around Rs 13 per minute. UK and France have a rate of around Rs 7-8. Brazil, which is often compared to India, has a call rate of more than Rs 6 per minute.
People often wonder how this seemingly impossible task of cutting tariffs on a continuous basis has been achieved.The dream story of Indian mobile industry has been about constant innovations to achieve hyper growth and bringing down costs. In 2004, a unique business model of outsourcing networks and IT applications to strategic partners was tried out. This business model not only helped optimise cost but made the cost structure more predictable. Today, this has been replicated by other operators in India and globally.
Rapid network roll-out and deep distribution has been the mantra for Indian operators. Today, the mobile network covers over 70 per cent of India’s population. The mobile companies have been able to create a deeper retail footprint than FMCG marketers. What has also helped is that the price of handsets has also come down tremendously.
Mobile tariff innovations over the years have played a big role in the rapid penetration. Free incoming calls, lifetime-prepaid cards, recharge coupons as low as Rs 10 were all innovations which opened the service to a huge mass of potential customers. Along with the sharp drop in the rates, there has been increasing simplification and transparency in the tariff plans.
It is not just the local tariffs that have beaten India’s inflation though. Long distance and roaming rates has also seen bursts of huge cuts. While national long distance rates have fallen from a peak of Rs 24 to Rs 1.50, international long distance rates have dropped from Rs 96 to a low of Rs 7. Roaming rates have fallen from a high of Rs 10 to Re 1. Broadband rates too have been cut rapidly. In fact, customer additions in broadband have taken off by more than 50 per cent during the last one year alone.
Indians are heavy mobile phone users. An average Indian talks more than 500 minutes in a month, which makes India second among all nations on mobile phone usage. Two important demographic changes have made this possible. For millions migrating to urban cities, it is the only means of keeping in touch with families and friends. The other important change lies in the fact that 25 per cent of world’s under-25 population lives in India.
Telecom continues to beat inflation hands down. But it’s not just about beating inflation. The sector is effectively adding to everyone’s purchasing power by slicing off cost of communication continuously and significantly. Add to that the sector’s ability to create opportunities for direct and indirect employment all around. By making communication affordable and widely available, the sector is aiding the productivity of even the remotest farmer and shopkeeper in the country. In fact, we have just started realising the huge multiplier of speed, efficiency and productivity effect that the sector has on other sectors of the economy.
The telecom sector will face a stiff challenge of coping with increasing inflationary pressures on all its input costs to maintain the affordable tariff levels in the next few years. However, the good news is that the sector will continue to overcome any recessionary or slowdown trends in the economy, as there is still another 800 million population to be covered as well as the pent-up desire of a billion Indians to connect with each other.
The writer is CEO of a telecom company.

Where will the internet in relation to mobile be in 5 years?

2008-03-31T11:57:00.000Z

Where will the internet in relation to mobile be in 5 years?

http://www.intomobile.com/2008/03/12/where-will-the-internet-in-relation-to-mobile-be-in-5-years.html

Nokia is holding an event in London tomorrow where they're inviting a few of the local bloggers to a round table discussion where they'll discuss the future of mobile handsets, the internet and the direction Nokia needs to be heading in to be prepared for the future. I'm glad to see Rafe Blandford from All About Symbian is going and I hope he sees this before he gets on a train tomorrow and prints it out and gives it to the people at Nokia UK.

Devices will get better cameras, faster processors, longer battery life and snazzier interfaces. What this piece focuses on is the future of the internet in relation to the mobile ecosystem.

The industries that were built around microprocessors, social networks, displays, software and services will intersect within 5 years due to what is currently happening in the mobile telecommunications space. It may not seem obvious right now, but that little device in your pocket will change everything.

It all begins with the chip. Processors today are cut from 300 mm silicon wafers. As the size of transistors decreases from 65 nanometers to 45 nanometers to eventually 32 nanometers, more chips can be extracted per wafer. There is already a push for the companies who participate in this industry to transition to 450 mm wafers; when you combine that with 32 nanometer technology the math says that only 7 fabs will be needed to satisfy the world’s needs for transistors. Where are you going to put those extra processors?

People want to see and manipulate information in rich ways. The number of LCD displays being shipped grows 30% year on year and in 2011 over 165 million units are predicted to be sold according to analyst firm iSuppli. Sharp expects that in 2015 the average size of a television set inside European homes will be 60 inches. The majority of displays today are next to useless without the aid of an external output device or an antenna to display a picture. In 2007 LG introduced the first television with built in WiFi, HP later presented a model that also had wireless networking along with Microsoft’s Windows Media Center Extender software preinstalled. Televisions are starting to become smarter.

The world has never been this small. FaceBook is the most talked about social network today, while MySpace remains the most popular in terms of numbers of users, neither of these services can talk to one another and likewise the other social networks such as LinkedIn and Bebo remain oblivious to the each other’s existence. People today are getting tired of having to declare who they are and restating their relationships to their friends and acquaintances. The trend towards a singular identity is already underway with OpenID and as of July 2007 there are over 120 million people and 4,500 sites using the technology. Defining your relationships is currently being worked on; two possible solutions are FOAF (Friend of a Friend) and XFN (XHTML Friends Network). Why don’t we manage the list of people we know and our relationship to them from one location and let services be created around this information?

HTML, for the most part, is platform independent, now it’s time to bring that same philosophy to other forms of information. Operating Systems are becoming less and less relevant today as software is moving towards becoming but a mere website inside a browser, sadly this method of information delivery doesn’t fully exploit the potential of the hardware underneath. The rich capabilities and experiences that were enjoyed by natively written applications are beginning to come back thanks to the rise of Rich Internet Application runtimes. Adobe, which rules the browser thanks to Flash, is moving on to the desktop space with Air and trying to increase Flash Lite penetration within mobile devices. Microsoft, which rules the desktop arena, is trying to get into the web with Silverlight and into mobile with the same runtime. Nokia purchased Trolltech for their Qt framework which spans Windows, Mac and Linux and will soon bring that runtime to all their S40, S60 and Maemo devices. Write once, run anywhere is being attempted, again, but this time across multiple platforms that each have their own unique experiences.

Tying this all together, the future of all these industries will be impacted by mobile in a way that is too mysterious and grand to currently comprehend, but some general predictions can be made:

Our phone book will manage our single identity and our single list of contacts. When the switch to IP v6 is complete everyone on this planet will have their own namespace and everyone’s mobile phone will act as a server. Everything you do, whether it is in the real world or on the internet, can and will be enhanced by the social element; our social networks will be like air. Displays will surround us everywhere we go and they’ll be connected to not only the internet, but to our mobile devices via a local connection. If one were to walk into a hotel room, a friend’s house or a bar there should be a display that detects your phone, asks you if you would like to initiate a connection and then present you with a stunning interface that can be manipulated with your mobile device. I’m not talking about TV out ladies and gentlemen; I’m talking about a separate user interface created specially for my television using one of the new cross platform runtimes that connects to my mobile and enables the keypad, touch screen or accelerometer inside my mobile device act as an input mechanism.

In the future the content we create will be not be hosted in silos such as FaceBook and LinkedIn, our content will be hosted in the cloud and services will ask us for permission to interact with it in ways we currently can’t imagine. In the long term I’ll be able to go any website or service and see what information my friend added to it; this data will not be hosted on the website’s server however, but instead on my friend’s device and storage space which I have access to since I’m a trusted party. The era of hyper-personalized services begins when the old philosophy of putting data into a system to be aggregated and displayed in a useful fashion collapses and is replaced by the new human centric belief that systems have to ask for permission to interact with our data before presenting it in new and innovative ways that add value to our lives.

Scenario 1: I walk into a bar and bump into a friend of mine I haven’t seen in a while. I ask him for his contact information so we touch our NFC enabled devices for a split second and we’re now in each other’s address book. He not only gets my name and phone number, but a list of all the services I’m currently using and have set to public. All of this data generated via my publicly declared services is pulled down and aggregated onto his device and is listed under my entry in his address book, think of it as FaceBook’s Newsfeed, but open and 100% under my control. Later that night I decide I want to let him access my personal blog so I go into my device and grant him the ability to see my private blog entries. He doesn’t have to do anything since the list of services I use is in my contact card and when I manipulate permission settings they automatically update for the people who have me in their address book. My friends will always knows what I’m up to and I don’t have to tell him to check out a particular website to see my data, it is my data after all, the fact that I have it being displayed on service A versus service B does not and should not make a difference.

Scenario 2: I walk into a bar I regularly enjoy coming to with friends and sit down at a table. Since the bar is in my address book it knows I’m a trusted party, I tap my NFC enabled device to the corner of a display near me and a menu appears with meals and drinks based on my previous orders, not only that, I get to see recommendations and ratings my friends left the last time they were in here. This information isn’t hosted by the servers in the bar, instead the UI pulls data that my friends left for this particular establishment which is either hosted on their devices or in their storage clouds. I can read it because they’ve granted me permission. I use my mobile device as a remote control, the touch screen acts as a trackpad, to order a drink and pay for it. Around 10 seconds after I finish making that purchase the screen fades out and the basketball game with my favorite college team shows up, this is possible because my mobile device is smart enough to know my preferences for the type of media I like to consume and can communicate that information to the display.

What other scenarios can you imagine in the new hyper-connected world that will arise in the next few years that will hopefully put you, the individual, in the center of?

Confused about Choosing your perfect mobile device! here the answer

2008-03-07T13:45:00.002Z

Grid comparison of current smartphone solutions
(Choosing your perfect mobile device!)

Source: http://3lib.ukonline.co.uk/grid.htm

The idea here is to score most current PDA/smartphone solutions and see which one comes out on top. The scores for each criteria are my own personal evaluations. You can apply your own weightings, though, and the page will multiply everything up and work out your most suitable smartphone solution. Models and scores: (10=excellent, 1=terrible). Weightings: 'Not'/'Quite'/'Very' multiplies scores by 0, 1 or 2 respectively.

Updated 24th November 2007

Note that you must have Javascript enabled in your browser for this to work! To use the Grid:

Work your way down the 30 left hand side criteria, rating each according to how important it is to you
Read off your personalised scores from the bottom row - which is best for you?

Criteria	Importance to you	Apple iPhone	Nokia E61i	Nokia 9300i	Nokia E90	Nokia E65	Sony Ericsson P1i	Nokia N82	Nokia N73	Nokia N95	Nokia N95 8GB	HTC Kaiser	HTC S620	HTC Touch	HTC S710 (Vox)	HTC Advantage

Calendar/Agenda	Not Quite Very	7	8	8	8	7	8	7	7	7	7	8	8	8	8	8
To-do/Tasks	Not Quite Very	1	5	9	5	5	7	5	5	5	5	7	7	7	7	7
Contacts	Not Quite Very	8	8	8	9	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8
Email	Not Quite Very	9	9	9	9	8	8	8	8	8	8	9	9	9	9	9
Web browsing	Not Quite Very	9	7	7	9	6	6	8	7	8	8	6	6	6	6	9
Wider connectivity options (EDGE, WLAN, GPRS, 3G, HSDPA)	Not Quite Very	5	8	5	10	7	7	10	5	10	10	10	4	4	4	10
Local connectivity options (Bluetooth, infrared, UPnP)	Not Quite Very	5	10	10	8	10	10	5	10	10	10	5	5	5	5	8
Word processing	Not Quite Very	0	8	8	9	4	7	4	4	4	4	8	1	3	5	8
Spreadsheet	Not Quite Very	0	6	8	8	2	7	2	2	2	2	8	1	4	4	8
Database	Not Quite Very	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Video playback	Not Quite Very	9	9	6	8	9	6	9	9	9	9	8	7	7	7	8
Music playback (over phones)	Not Quite Very	10	5	7	9	9	9	10	9	10	10	9	9	9	9	9

Still photography	Not Quite Very	4	3	0	7	3	7	10	8	10	10	7	2	3	3	7
Video recording	Not Quite Very	0	5	0	8	5	4	9	5	9	9	4	1	1	1	5
Indoor screen clarity	Not Quite Very	10	10	9	9	9	8	8	8	9	10	9	9	9	9	10
Screen contrast outdoors	Not Quite Very	9	9	9	8	8	8	7	9	8	9	3	4	4	4	3
Standalone compatibility*	Not Quite Very	7	8	10	8	8	9	9	8	9	9	9	8	8	8	10
Multitasking/ speed	Not Quite Very	9	7	6	7	6	8	8	7	8	9	7	7	7	7	8

Text entry speed	Not Quite Very	5	7	6	7	3	5	3	3	3	3	6	7	2	5	6
Touch screen input/ doodling	Not Quite Very	6	0	0	0	0	10	0	0	0	0	10	0	10	0	10
Battery life and options****	Not Quite Very	4	10	9	8	9	4	6	6	4	6	4	6	7	7	5
File management	Not Quite Very	1	6	10	6	5	7	5	5	5	5	6	6	6	6	6
Convergence**	Not Quite Very	7	6	3	10	8	8	10	8	10	10	8	5	7	8	10
Size/weight (double weighting!)	Not Quite Very	9	9	8	3	10	8	9	9	9	8	5	7	9	9	1
Screen size/resolution	Not Quite Very	8	6	6	9	4	6	5	5	6	7	6	5	6	5	8
Robustness	Not Quite Very	5	9	6	8	7	6	8	7	7	6	4	8	2	5	3
Software stability***	Not Quite Very	7	10	9	8	8	5	7	7	8	7	7	7	6	7	8
Built-in positioning and GPS functionality with maps	Not Quite Very	0	2	0	10	2	0	10	1	10	10	8	0	0	0	8
Size of third party software catalogue	Not Quite Very	2	8	5	6	8	6	8	8	8	8	9	8	9	8	9
One handed operation?	Not Quite Very	5	7	1	7	10	4	10	10	10	10	3	9	2	8	0
Cost*****	Not Quite Very	1	6	5	1	6	4	5	7	4	3	3	6	4	5	1

Overall		171	220	195	225	204	208	222	204	227 Runner-up	228 Winner	209	177	181	186	211

* How compatible is this solution with the outside world? Is it effectively tied to a PC?
** How far does the solution go towards helping you travel with less gadgets? (MP3 player/radio, camera, camcorder, etc)
*** i.e. how often does it crash? This is somewhat subjective, I've had to rely on reports from owners. 10=super-stable, 1=buggy as hell
**** Includes consideration of battery life per charge and whether the batteries are replaceable
***** I've included cost as a factor, both for initial (new or second-hand) purchase reasons and also for ease of repair or replacement in case of problems. Rating 10 means £100 or less, 7 is £200 or less, 4 is £300 or less, 1 is £400 or less, etc.

European vs. American mobile phone use

2008-03-07T13:41:00.000Z

Source : European vs. American mobile phone use

In last week's post about Palm's phone plans, I made a passing comment about the right way to display your mobile phone at dinner in Europe. It turned out to be the most popular part of the post, and produced a couple of requests that I say more comparing European and American attitudes toward mobile phones. I don't pretend to the world's expert on the subject, but I'll summarize what I've seen. Here goes:

In the US, a cellphone is a tool. In Europe, a mobile phone is a lifestyle.

I guess I ought to give a few details. Let me start with a disclaimer: It's very dangerous to talk about "Europeans" as if they're some sort of unified cultural group. Europe is a continent of many nationalities, and each one has a different culture and history. National regulations on phones also differ dramatically within Europe, which has an important impact on mobile use.

I saw a good example of this in the responses to my last post. I said all Europeans put their mobile phones on the table during a meal. I got replies from some countries agreeing with me, and others saying I was completely wrong. It turns out the table thing differs from country to country.

It's only slightly less hazardous to talk about a "typical" American mobile phone user. The culture in the US is more uniform than it is in Europe, but there are profound differences between various market segments. The average 16-year-old in the US views a mobile phone very differently than the average 40-year-old. (Come to think of it, I suspect average 40-year-old mobile users in Berlin and Chicago probably have more in common with each other than either of them have with the 16-year-old.)

Now that I've hedged thoroughly, here are those details:

Vocabulary

The differences start with the words we use to talk about the industry. In Europe, a mobile phone is usually called (in English-speaking countries) a "mobile." As in, "I'll ring your mobile." In the US, mobile phones are most often called "cellphones," and that's sometimes shortened: "I'll call your cell."

The term differs in other European countries, of course (for example, Hermann on Brighthand says the term in Germany is "handy.") I do know that if you say "cellphone" pretty much anywhere in Europe, people will look at you like you're a dork. Found that out the hard way.

Occasionally young people in the US use the term "mobile," but it's not very widespread. I try to use the term "mobile phone" in this website because it's understood on both continents.

There are also differences in the terms used to describe the companies that sell mobile phone services. In the US they are generally called "carriers." But the second easiest way to piss off a European mobile exec is to call his or her company a carrier. They are "operators." As the distinction was explained to me, an operator actively runs a network, while a carrier merely delivers something passively.

(In case you're wondering, the first easiest way to piss off a European mobile exec is to ask how his MMS revenues are doing.)

The operator vs. carrier thing is very confusing in the US, because to most Americans an "operator" is a person who runs a switchboard. The archetypal operator is Ernestine, a character created by actress Lily Tomlin. She snorted annoyingly, was rude, and reveled in her ability to manipulate customers:

"Here at the Phone Company we handle eighty-four billion calls a year. Serving everyone from presidents and kings to scum of the earth. (snort) We realize that every so often you can't get an operator, for no apparent reason your phone goes out of order [snatches plug out of switchboard], or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn't make. We don't care. Watch this [bangs on a switch panel like a cheap piano] just lost Peoria. (snort) You see, this phone system consists of a multibillion-dollar matrix of space-age technology that is so sophisticated, even we can't handle it. But that's your problem, isn't it? Next time you complain about your phone service, why don't you try using two Dixie cups with a string. We don't care. We don't have to. (snort) We're the Phone Company!"
–Ernestine

Some people might say that's a good metaphor for a mobile phone company, but it's hard for an American to understand why any company would want to apply the term to itself.

The mobile phone culture

To me, one of the most pronounced differences between mobile use in the US and Europe is that Europe has a more developed mobile phone culture. There are huge variations in attitude from person to person, but on average, people in Europe expect the mobile to play a more prominent, recognized role in the structure of society, and many people look to the mobile as a central source of new innovations. The belief is almost that the mobile phone has a manifest destiny to subsume everything else. This love affair with the mobile phone is far more common in Europe than it is in America.

You can find a good example of this attitude in an essay about the future, on the website of the Club of Amsterdam, a think tank based in the Netherlands:

"Every machine will be a mobile phone, talking to their owner but mainly to other machines.... In 2020 the world is one big video screen, one big video camera, one big mobile phone.... The mobile will act as a "trust machine". It will be our most important lifestyle instrument. It will probably be decomposed with its core elements scattered all over and inside our body."

People in the US can be just as enthusiastic about mobilizing technology, but they often think in terms of shrinking and mobilizing the PC and Internet, rather than growing the cellphone. In the US, the cellphone is often viewed as a necessary tool rather than something to love. For example, an MIT survey in 2004 found that Americans rated the cellphone number one in the list of inventions they hate but can't live without, edging out the dreaded alarm clock.

If you're still having trouble picturing the difference in attitudes, look at it this way – many people in Europe feel about their mobiles the way that Californians feel about their cars.

Okay? Got it now?

The European love of the mobile phone has several facets to it...

Fashion. To many people in Europe, their mobile phone seems to be a fashion statement. It says something about you, much like your clothing. Americans also care about the look of their phones (just take a look at my daughter's Razr, covered in stick-on jewels and shiny dangling beady things). But in general I don't think Americans identify with the phone as deeply.

It seems much more common for someone in Europe to change phones than it is for someone in the US. All phones in Europe are GSM, and people generally understand that you can pop out your SIM card and pop it into a new phone anytime you want. The mobile is just a skin that you wrap around your phone contract. Major retail chains, like Carphone Warehouse, sell large numbers of mobile phones independent of any operator.

Although you can do the same sort of phone swap in the US if you have a GSM phone, it seems like relatively few people do it, and very few phones are sold outside of the carriers' stores. I'm not sure why. I think awareness of the capability is lower (I'll bet a majority of American GSM users couldn't even find their SIM card). And of course many mobile phone users in the US are on CDMA, forcing them to go through the carrier if they want to switch phones. But also, I think there's just less desire to constantly update your phone in the US, because people don't pay as much attention to it.

Design. This is related to the fashion topic, but it deserves a separate discussion because it's so surprising, at least to me. In most consumer goods, there's an approximate consensus on design between the US and Europe. You can find exceptions, but in general clothing, pop music, cars, and furniture considered to be cool in one continent are admired in the other. In fact, a lot of Americans think of "European design" as automatically stylish. But mobile phone styling and features often polarize people in the US and Europe. In Europe, people generally hate external antennas on a phone. In the US, most people don't notice the antenna, and if they do notice it they may well like it because they assume it'll give better coverage.

Many people in Europe love candybar phones. Most Americans think they look cheap and dislike them. Instead, many Americans love flip phones. I think they feel the flip cover prevents accidental calls, and keeps the screen from getting scratched. Maybe they also feel a bit like Captain Kirk when they flip open the phone.

Many Europeans hate flip phones. I don't know why (although I'll speculate that the flip cover makes it inconvenient to send and receive a lot of SMS messages).

SMS vs. IM. Speaking of SMS, it's vastly more popular in Europe than it is in the US. Some of this difference is generational – young people in the US are much more likely to use SMS, whereas it's extremely rare among older Americans. Some of the difference is also training – most Americans don't have a clue how to enter text on a keypad. But even among young Americans, who do the most texting, I think PC-based instant messaging is still the king, now often tied to webcams.

History helps to explain the difference. The US started with a more PC-centric culture, and then IM was pushed aggressively by AOL in the United States, years before many mobile phones here were SMS-capable. There was no great champion for instant messaging in Europe, and besides PCs with Internet connections were less common there in the early days of IM. So SMS had a lot less competition.

Because of differences in mobile phone billing plans, I'm told that sending an SMS was often much cheaper than making a voice call in Europe. US mobile plans, with their large blocks of monthly minutes, supposedly create less of an incentive to use SMS. (In fact, many American mobile plans don't by default include any pre-paid text messages; you pay separately for each one. There's an amusing television commercial by one of the US mobile carriers showing a father relentlessly pursuing his teenage daughter around town – not to keep her out of trouble with her boyfriend, but to keep her from sending text messages on her phone.)

I did a quick spot check of Orange (UK) and Cingular (US) mobile plan charges, to look at the current price differential between voice and text. The main difference was actually that everything in the UK cost more than it does in the US, perhaps due to the horrific dollar-pound exchange rate. The difference between the US and UK in treatment of text messages was not as dramatic as I expected, but it was there. Today the US and UK both charge more for voice than text, but the plans I looked at in the UK almost all either bundled text messages in the base plan, or had options to get a lot of text messages for free if you spent a certain amount on your voice calls. In the US, text messages were always an option that you had to purchase separately, and there was no opportunity to get free text messages. Basically, you have to plan on spending extra if you want to do texting in the US.

(The details: Using a prepaid plan, Cingular in the US will sell you 900 minutes a month for $60, but you'll have to pay $5 extra per month to get 200 text messages. That same $60 spent with Orange in the UK will get you just 325 voice minutes, but 150 text messages are included in the base price. The UK plan creates a strong incentive to substitute text for a voice call when you can.

(If you look at pay as you go plans, Orange charges 38-76 cents a minute for voice calls [depending on whether the call is to a mobile or a land line], and 19 cents for each text message. So a text message is half to a quarter the price of a voice call. However, Orange also gives you 1,000 free text messages if you spend more than $19 a month. Most people would end up getting the free texting, so their effective price for text messaging drops to almost zero. Cingular charges you about 25 cents a minute for voice calls, and five cents per text message. Texting is one fifth the price of a voice call, actually a better ratio than Orange. However, there's no option to get free text messages, so you know you're paying for them no matter what.)

Differences in market structure

Operator power. In general, the US carriers have more power over their customers than the European operators do, for several reasons. The first is that pay as you go plans are much more popular in Europe than they are in the US. In some countries (Italy, for example), almost everyone was on pay as you go the last time I checked. In other places in Europe, users are split between pay as you go and contracts. But I don't know of any place in Europe where as many people are on contracts as they are in the US (please speak up if I've got that wrong – it's hard to find numbers on the percent of users on each type of payment program).

The second difference is mobile phone number portability (which lets you keep your number if you switch mobile operators). Many countries in Europe had it years before it came into the United States. For example, the UK got portability in 1998, Spain and Sweden in 2000, and Italy in 2001. Americans didn't get it until the end of 2003.

Another important difference is that in parts of Europe phone subsidies are illegal. I know about this one because at Palm I used to track the sales prices of mobile phones, and they varied wildly from country to country. I finally figured out that the subsidies were skewing the numbers. The subsidy laws are changing, and they may be allowed in most countries by now.

I think the relatively weaker customer control of European operators has driven faster innovation in Europe, because the operators have to do more to attract customers. They also can't lock a phone vendor out of the market completely, the way the US carriers have been strangling SonyEricsson.

Mobile versus fixed. Fixed-line phone companies in Europe are often monopolies, legendary for high costs and poor service. I have been told by many friends in Europe that it was faster and cheaper to get a mobile phone there than to wait for a land line, which drove very rapid movement toward mobiles. In the US, land line phone service is generally reliable, quick to install, and cheap, so there's much less incentive to get away from it. Some younger people in the US are starting to get rid of their land lines, but the movement is much slower than in Europe.

Reliability of coverage. In much of Europe, mobile phone coverage is more or less ubiquitous. There are always exceptions, of course, but generally you can make a voice call anytime you want to.

This really came home to me recently when I had the good fortune of taking a driving vacation in the fjords of western Norway. That's some of the most mountainous landscape in Europe, but I never noticed a spot where I was out of coverage (check out this coverage map). Contrast that to a driving vacation in the western US, where once you get out of the cities it is almost impossible to get a signal anywhere. For example, when I was in Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona a couple of years ago, I couldn't get a mobile phone signal anywhere in the park.

The usual American excuse for its poor coverage is that US population densities are low. That doesn't hold up to close examination – Norway has about 15 people per square kilometer, the same density as Arizona, which is not exactly crowded. The US overall has about 33, more than double Norway's density. I think Europe is just more dedicated to universal mobile coverage.

Brands. The prominence of mobile phone brands varies tremendously from continent to continent, and even from country to country in Europe. In general, Nokia is much better known and respected in Europe. Motorola is much better known and respected in the US (although it doesn't have the rock star status that Nokia has in Europe). And there are national champions like Siemens, which is heavily respected in Germany but nowhere else I know of. Samsung's brand awareness has been steadily rising in both the US and Europe, and LG is trying to tail along after it.

The differences over Nokia are the most surprising to my friends in Europe. Throughout Europe, and actually most of the world, Nokia is one of the top elite brands, like Nike in sports or Microsoft in computers. It produces an immediate aura of respectability. In the US, Nokia is lost in the crowd of semi-anonymous Euro-brands -- names like Saab or Peugeot that you've heard of but have never experienced personally.

I think Nokia recently compounded this problem with its "It's your life in there" television commercials in the US. The commercial that stuck in my mind was about "Jill," who praises the phone's ability to delete an ex-boyfriend from her phone's address book:

"It is so great because when you go to the phone and you delete and your phone asks 'Are you sure?' You look at your phone and you're like, 'oh yeah, I'm sure.'"

She then gives one of the most annoying, braying laughs I've heard on TV since...well. Ernestine.

I understand what Nokia was trying to do – it was making a sophisticated effort to tap into the mobile phone culture in the US. You can read a detailed ethnographic analysis of the ad campaign here. The problem for me was that, first, the mobile phone culture Nokia's trying to tap into is pretty weak in the US; and second, that Jill has just a whiff of trailer trash about her.

(Nokia has pulled the website for the campaign, which perhaps tells you how well it was received, but you can still find the commercial on the site of the agency that created it. Just follow this link and move your mouse around on the slider at the bottom of the page until you find Jill. You can also check out the other losers Nokia featured in the series.)

Americans tend to respond best to aspirational ads that make them feel good about themselves for buying a product. So buying a Mac will give you kinship with Einstein and Gandhi, which is outrageous but Steve Jobs can pull that off. Nokia's unintended message was that a Nokia phone will turn you into "a sniveling Sex in the City wannabe," as Gizmodo put it.

I think this is typical of Nokia's inability to connect with the American public.

What about the rest of the world?

There are even bigger variations in the mobile market in other parts of the world, but I didn't have the time (or the knowledge) to discuss all of them here. Mobile phone services and features in Japan and Korea make both Americans and Europeans look like techno-hicks. In Japan, the operators have so much power that phones are sold virtually unbranded, and Japanese phone manufacturers struggle to operate anywhere else in the world because the required reflexes are so different. It will be interesting to see what happens in Japan when number portability is implemented there, in late October. Surveys have said that large numbers of Japanese mobile phone users, especially those on Vodafone, would switch operators if the could.

The market worldwide is so complex that I think it's impossible for any one person to understand it all. So please help me out -- if I missed your country, or if you'd like to add to or correct something I said above, please post a comment.

Purpose Your Day: Most Important Task (MIT)

2008-03-07T12:36:00.000Z

Purpose Your Day: Most Important Task (MIT)

I’ve mentioned this briefly in my morning routine, but I thought I’d explain a little bit more about MITs - Most Important Tasks. It’s not an original concept, but one that I use on a daily basis and that has helped me out tremendously.

It’s very simple: your MIT is the task you most want or need to get done today. In my case, I’ve tweaked it a bit so that I have three MITs — the three things I must accomplish today. Do I get a lot more done than three things? Of course. But the idea is that no matter what else I do today, these are the things I want to be sure of doing. So, the MIT is the first thing I do each day, right after I have a glass of water to wake me up.

And here’s the key to the MITs for me: at least one of the MITs should be related to one of my goals. While the other two can be work stuff (and usually are), one must be a goal next-action. This ensures that I am doing something to move my goals forward that day.

And that makes all the difference in the world. Each day, I’ve done something to make my dreams come true. It’s built into my morning routine: set a next-action to accomplish for one of my goals. And so it happens each day, automatically.

Another key: do your MITs first thing in the morning, either at home or when you first get to work. If you put them off to later, you will get busy and run out of time to do them. Get them out of the way, and the rest of the day is gravy!

It’s such a small thing to implement, and yet I’m raving about it like it’s a huge revelation. But it is. Sometimes small things can make big differences. I highly recommend you give it a go.

The rise of the information ecosystem: How mobile devices, personal computing, media, and the Internet all fit together

2008-03-07T11:42:00.001Z

The rise of the information ecosystem: How mobile devices, personal computing, media, and the Internet all fit together

Source : http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2007/02/rise-of-information-ecosystem-how.html

Fair warning: This is going to be one of those philosophical posts on strategy. If you're looking for quick gratification, I recommend browsing the archives here.

Anyone still reading?

Okay. The other day I got a bit of flak for posting a note about Hollywood's view of the Web. "Your weblog's about mobility," the comments said. "Stay on topic."

I sincerely appreciate the feedback, but it was a surprise. As far as I was concerned, I was staying on topic. But then I realized that I've never actually explained what I'm trying to accomplish in this weblog, and so of course people might confused. I'd like to fix that right now.

I started this weblog to comment on the mobile industry, but as time went on and my work at Rubicon exposed me to a wider range of tech companies, I found that the boundaries of mobile were getting harder and harder to define. I'm now convinced that you can't understand the mobile world as a separate industry, because it's deeply interconnected with three other industries that deal with information: the Internet, personal computing, and the media (including video, print publications, games, and so on).

All four industries like to think of themselves as separate. But in reality, they depend on each other heavily, and the connections are deepening all the time. In each industry, it's commonplace for people to be blind-sided by unexpected changes, or for major initiatives to fail dismally. I think that's a symptom of the growing connections. Because we can't yet see all the connections, success and failure become more a matter of luck than skill.

The idea that those industries are merging has been around for years -- I remember a colleague making that argument at Apple back in the early 1990s. But I think "merging" or "convergence" isn't the right metaphor. What's emerging is more like a tropical jungle where a rare tree is the favorite roost of a bat that's fed on by a mosquito whose larvae are eaten by a fish that secretes the cure to cancer in its skin. Everything's connected in subtle ways that we don't understand.

Call it the information ecosystem.

Some very bright people have used the term "information ecosystem" in the past to refer to the Internet or Web 2.0, but I think it encompasses all four industries.

That ecosystem is what I'm trying to map in this weblog, because that's where the opportunity is. I don't pretend to have all the connections mapped yet; nobody does. But what we can see so far suggests that we're still in the early stages of the new ecosystem. I think the big changes are still to come.

The new information ecosystem

Back in ancient times (around 1975), the old information ecosystem looked like the diagram below. Most information (and I'm using that word very broadly to include everything from written words to movies to photographs) was passed through a distribution hierarchy that filtered and distilled it down to the most marketable items. Delivery of information was generally through mass media -- bookstores, magazines, newspapers, television stations, etc. The prevailing metaphor was one-to-many, with information flowing from a relatively small elite of creators to the population as a whole. People also communicated directly between one-another, of course, but most of that communication was one-to-one or one-to-few via letters, meetings, and phone calls.

Even before the Internet, this old ecosystem had already started to erode. For example, computer-based desktop publishing in the 1980s made it much easier for small groups and individuals to create newsletters and magazines, giving them some of the power of mass media (although their creations still had to be printed and distributed through traditional mechanisms).

"Freedom of the Press is guaranteed only to those who own one." --AJ Liebling
"Let's give everybody a press." --Simultaneous thought of several million Internet users, sometime in the 1990s

The new information ecosystem. It was the rise of the Web that really challenged the old structure. Although we're still in a transitional period, I think it's clear that the new information ecosystem will look something like the diagram below. In the new system, the filtering role of the publishers and commentators is radically eroded. Any information that anyone wants to share can be fed directly into the Internet. Tools like the personal computer make it much easier for people to create information, and mobile devices are also starting to play a minor but important role in info creation as well (for example, at the end of 2006 a cellphone video of the execution of Saddam Hussein created worldwide news and intense political debate). The net effect should be that information flows faster, and between more sources, than ever before (by the way, that's an assumption I want to test in future posts; I'm not sure it's correct).

The diagram shows why mobile devices can no longer stand alone as a separate industry. As soon as they get any data capabilities, they're embedded in the larger ecosystem. Want to add apps to a mobile device? You need to understand the trends driving PC and Internet app development. Want to tie your customers to you more closely? Make sure you know how online communities form (and why most of them fail). Want to play content on a mobile? Don't link yourself too closely to a content company that was part of the old ecosystem -- you might be pulled down by the suction when it sinks.

What's the most important part of the ecosystem?

A lot of people would tell you that the center of the ecosystem is the Internet; that the other industries are just appendages. On the other hand, many mobile enthusiasts would tell you the dominant part will soon be the mobile phone, and I'm sure Microsoft and Apple would tell you that it's the personal computer. But I think they're all wrong. The most important part of the ecosystem isn't any technology, it's the ideas themselves: the articles and music and essays and videos and memes that we use to make decisions and entertain ourselves. The Internet and the servers that hang on it like Christmas ornaments are the storage and transport mechanism for those ideas. PCs and mobile devices are capture and playback systems, and the software programs we run on those devices are the tools that we use to create and work with the ideas.

Meanwhile, the publishers, producers, editors, and critics who used to control the idea factory are struggling to find relevant roles in the new world. I think some will succeed, and many will fail.

The real mobile opportunity

So I know it'll feel irrelevant to some people, but I'm going to be writing more about subjects like web apps and communities and Hollywood, because they're all part of the same system. I'll try to label the posts that focus on the broader ecosystem, so you can skip them if you want to. But if you're working in the mobile world I think you should tune in. You need to understand the whole ecosystem or chances are you'll be left twisting slowly in the breeze by a competitor who does get it.

The real mobile opportunity of the 21st century isn't mobilizing technology, it's mobilizing ideas.

That's what this weblog is all about.

The three laws of technology strategy

2008-03-07T11:39:00.000Z

A very nice article by a experienced veteran !

The three laws of technology strategy

The other day when I was writing about the fate of mobile apps (link), I mentioned one of the laws of technology strategy. It made me realize that although we in the industry talk about those laws all the time, I've never seen them all written down in one place. There are probably more than three laws, but these are my favorites. Please post a comment if you want to add some more.

Here we go, twenty years of industry experience boiled down to three lines:

1. An elegant business model paired with mediocre technology beats an elegant technology paired with a mediocre business model.

To put it another way, if you create a marvelous tech product that has no way of making money, you get a long and passionate entry on Wikipedia. If you create a lousy tech product that prints money, you get to be Bill Gates.

Windows is the best case study here, but this one has been proven over and over again in the history of the tech industry. But companies keep tripping over it because they're often run by engineers who have been trained to value technical elegance as an end in itself.

Don't get me wrong, elegance is great. The most wonderful tech companies are those that combine elegant products and great business models. But you must pay the bills or you don't get to keep playing. And wads of money can buy a lot of patches and kludges.

2. Design for a need, not a desire.

A serial entrepreneur once expressed this to me nicely: "I focus on aspirin issues." In other words, if someone has a serious enough problem that they feel pain, they'll be much more likely to pay money for an answer. (I wish I could remember who told me that -- I'd like to credit him by name.)

Very often tech companies will fall in love with a concept that is compelling to people in the company, but not to non-technologists. They'll convince themselves that people will want it because, well, they ought to want it.

A related problem: A company will come up with a product that's nice, but doesn't really address an aspirin problem. You know you have this problem when someone in the company says that need a marketing campaign to explain to people why they should want the product. The really good products need marketing for visibility, not persuasion.

I think this is the underlying problem behind most failed web applications. They do something interesting, as opposed to something compelling.

What makes this whole problem especially tough is that you can't just ask customers what they need. They aren't engineers, they don't understand what you could build. All they'll ask you for is improvements on the products they already have today. What you have to do is get inside the customers' heads, understand how they live, and figure out what you could do to improve their lives. That's what the best product managers do.

3. Software designed for one platform usually fails on another.

We teach this one to ourselves every time the industry goes through a platform transition, and then we promptly forget it again:

A computing platform isn't just a technology, it's a mindset, with a huge set of unstated assumptions about customers and business practices attached to it. When you port software from one platform to another, you take those assumptions along with you, and usually they don't fit.

This is why the software leaders in one generation of computing usually fail in the next generation. Check it out -- which software products led in the DOS world? Lotus, WordPerfect, Ashton-Tate. Did any of them thrive in the Windows/Mac world? Nope.

Then did the software leaders in Windows/Mac -- Adobe, Microsoft, Symantec, Intuit -- dominate in the Internet? Nope, the new startups without the mental baggage dominated.

Which leads to an interesting question: Do you think the leaders of mobile Internet will be the same companies that led the PC Internet? Or is the next Adobe/Lotus/Google a little startup out there, rethinking what it means to be connected in a mobile setting?

Think about it.

Was Windows XP Microsoft's last good OS?

2008-03-06T15:46:00.001Z

Was Windows XP Microsoft's last good OS?

Windows Vista is a disaster. Windows Mobile is unusable. Is there hope for Microsoft?

http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9065938

March 1, 2008 (Computerworld) Everybody's talking today about "Drivergate" — internal Microsoft e-mails that show senior Microsoft executives personally struggling to use hardware products sporting the "Windows Vista Capable" sticker. The e-mails also show that Microsoft lowered its standard for some hardware compatibility, apparently to help Intel impress Wall Street.

This revelation is simply the latest in a long series that add up to one inescapable conclusion: Windows Vista sucks. (And making it cheaper won't help, either.)

Compatibility of drivers is just one issue. Another is a convoluted user interface that prevents ordinary users from gaining a sense of control over the OS.

Windows Mobile, Microsoft's operating system for cell phones, suffers from a similar problem. The Windows Mobile OS isn't horrible per se, it's just that it's completely wrong for cell phones and other small screen devices.

Windows Mobile clearly compromises usability to mimic the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointing device) focus of Microsoft's desktop operating systems. To quote Dr. Phil: How's that workin' for ya? It hasn't helped eroding desktop Windows market share, and it hasn't helped Windows Mobile, either.

The biggest problem isn't that the company's newest products are unusable, but that Microsoft may have actually lost the "ability" to make good operating systems. It may not be able to let go of its dogmatic insistence on the flawed vision of the same Windows "experience" from wristwatches to supercomputers.

And there is evidence that delusion or, at least, wishful thinking, prevails at Microsoft. The company's founder and chairman, Bill Gates, said last week that "Microsoft expects more Internet searches to be done through speech than through typing on a keyboard." Hey, Bill: Do you want to bet $10 billion on that? I doubt even that Microsoft will fix its Vista driver problem within five years. This is the same guy, by the way, who bragged that Microsoft would "solve" spam by 2006.

It's imperative for Microsoft to get the next major OS right. The secret lies in the company's Surface initiative.

Microsoft has never understood the importance of "simplicity," a fundamental design concept it has always swept aside to make room for "feature rich" (i.e., bloated and complex).

Right now, the Windows Vista type user interfaces are in their final days. The future belongs to what I call the 3G user interface, which replaces flat icons and folders with multitouch, gestures, physics and 3-D.

It's imperative for Microsoft to get the next major OS right. But how?

The secret lies in the company's Surface initiative. Sure, Surface is at present a little more than a semishipping demo usable for product marketing.

The Surface demo dazzles with its 3G goodness. But what's impressive and surprising is that somehow someone at Microsoft was allowed to create a user interface unburdened by "compatibility" with two decades of spaghetti code. What a concept! And no "Start" button!

Another hopeful sign is that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer appears to agree that Surface is important — or, at least, urgent. He announced earlier this month that Microsoft is accelerating the development of a consumer version.

Here's what I believe Microsoft needs to do to save its vitally important operating systems business:

Never compromise on driver compatibility, not even for Intel.
Insist on the highest standards for compatibility stickers, then use your marketing millions to drive customers to partners that have earned those stickers. Drive the laggards, the cheaters and the inadequate vendors out of business. They're poisoning your swimming pool.
Make an operating system for each computer type — cell phone, UMPC, consumer desktop, enterprise desktop, enterprise server, supercomputer — optimized for that type, not as a dogmatic slave to the limitations of the generic desktop Windows vision.
Emphasize usability and simplicity over "feature rich" complexity. We don't need more options, features, capabilities, applications, peripherals and hardware vendors. We need better ones.
Emphasize usability and simplicity over backward compatibility for the consumer version of Windows. The 1990s are over. Don't sacrifice the future for customers and partner companies that are living in the past.
Throw everything they've got at getting the consumer version of Surface right. Surface is the future of the company. And Apple won't wait around. That company is aggressively patenting elements of the user interface of the future, and you know they'll build and market it successfully.
Be afraid of Apple, Google and Asus. Apple is eating your desktop marketshare because they succeed with simplicity and UI elegance. Google might do so with its cell phone UI. And Asus, a two-bit Taiwanese motherboard maker, was able to cobble together a quick-and-dirty UI for Linux that's way better than Windows Vista for UMPCs.

Microsoft: I'm rooting for you. I really am. But you've got to get your act together with your core business and ship an operating system that works, or this could be the beginning of the end of the company's leadership role in the industry.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. He blogs about the technology needs, desires and successes of mobile warriors in his Computerworld blog, The World Is My Office. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com or his blog, The Raw Feed.

Who Will Control the Heart of Handsets?

2008-02-26T10:17:00.000Z

Who Will Control the Heart of Handsets?

Symbian has a strong position among mobile operating systems, but announcements from Microsoft, LiMo, and others show the competition's heating up

by Jennifer L. Schenker

Google's new software platform for mobile phones entitled 'Android' in its prototype form on demonstration at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Getty

In years past, when the mobile-phone industry gathered for its biggest annual convention, the talk was mostly about bells and whistles—who had the sexiest, thinnest, or most feature-packed handsets. Not this year. At the 2008 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the center of attention has shifted to the software inside phones that most consumers don't ever think about.

From flashy newcomer Apple (AAPL) with its hit iPhone, to gate-crashing Google (GOOG), to stalwart Nokia (NOK), the titans of tech are locked in a high-stakes battle for the heart and soul of mobile phones. At stake is nothing less than the future of mobile communication—and, by extension, of the Internet, as a growing number of consumers around the world access the Web from handheld devices.

It's no wonder operating systems have become the industry's new focus. The majority of today's handsets are still based on proprietary operating systems developed by makers such as Nokia and Motorola (MOT) for use in their own phones. These closed software environments are costly for makers to maintain and upgrade, limiting the opportunity for economies of scale that would be possible if phones from many makers shared common software.

What's more, by fragmenting the market, closed systems make life more difficult for operators and suppliers of mobile software and services. Paris-based Gameloft (GLFT.PA), for instance, the leading seller of mobile games, has to separately develop, test, and support hundreds of versions of every game it makes thanks to the lack of software standards in mobile phones and differences in operator network configurations.

Industry leaders are fed up. "Today there are 30 to 40 different operating systems for mobile, and that is too many," said Arun Sarin, the chief executive of Vodafone (VOD) during a Feb. 12 speech in Barcelona. "We need to narrow that range to three, four, or even five." To get there, Sarin urged his rivals to join forces in defining the handful of operating systems that could power mobile phones in the future.

Fight for Midrange Phones

Undoubtedly, one of the strongest contenders is London-based Symbian, a software maker owned by a consortium of phone makers including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung Electronics, and Panasonic. Symbian is already used in nearly half of the smartphones—high-end devices with computing capability—sold today. But to stay in the game, the company is scrambling to move its software onto less expensive midrange devices of the sort now powered mostly by proprietary homegrown operating systems.

It will face far stiffer competition there. Microsoft (MSFT) and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIMM) are eyeing the same opportunity as they try to move beyond business-oriented devices into the consumer market. And the elephant in the room is search giant Google, which is spearheading an initiative called Android that seeks to create a Web-friendly software platform, based on open-source software, for midrange phones.

Nokia unwraps bendy nanotech phone

2008-02-25T15:31:00.000Z

Nokia unwraps bendy nanotech phone

12 comments

By James Sherwood [More by this author]

25th February 2008 11:17 GMT

Nokia and the University of Cambridge jointly designed a concept mobile phone that allows users to mould the handset into different shapes.

Nokia's Morph: formed from shape-altering substances

Dubbed Morph, the handset has been designed to demonstrate the possible future benefits of nanotechnology for mobile devices. Morph is both stretchable and flexible, but a Nokia spokesman claimed that nanotechnology could also allow future mobile phones to incorporate self-cleaning surfaces and see-through electronics.

On-the-fly interface adaptation

Although very little has been said about the Morph’s technical capabilities, pictures show how, in theory, the handset’s able to alter its state between a watch-like mode, a credit-card shape and a traditional mobile phone. No dimensions are given, but the Morph appears to be extremely thin no-matter what state it’s in.

The project, which has been roughly one year in the making, doesn’t mean the Morph will be on shelves anytime soon though. Nokia admitted that it could be seven years before elements of the Morph will be available for integration into other off-the-shelf phones.

However, the Finnish mobile phone giant claimed that, eventually, nanotechnology could help reduce manufacturing costs and introduce complex features at lower prices.

One day, all mobile phones will be made this way. Apparently.

"GiFi" — Short-Range, 5-Gbps Wireless For $10/Chip

2008-02-22T17:01:00.000Z

Source: http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=

"The Age reports that Melbourne scientists have built and demonstrated tiny CMOS chips, 5 mm per side, that can transmit 5 Gbps over short distances — about 10 m. The chip features a tiny 1-mm antenna, a power amp that is only a few microns wide, and power consumption of only 2 W. 'GiFi' appears set to revolutionize short-distance data transmission, and transmits in the relatively uncrowded 60GHz range. Best of all, the chip is only about a year away from public release, and will only cost around US $9.20 to produce."