Why isnt there an amazon type recommendation based book service in India ? Why should I as a reader be satisfied with firstandsecond.com , fabmall.com? When China with all the similarities that are talked of with India can have an Amazon type…why not in India ?

One of the biggest reasons is LANGUAGE. India with english speaking population really does not need a localized amazon..but wait a minute..There is a gap definitely in the delivery times of a book. If I order a book in amazon, there is atleast 20 days time delay in receiving the book. So, is there a gap for a service in India ?

Smart Mobs, Wisdom of Crowds, Tipping point,. Blink are some of the books which address this social systems..But if one has to create a system, one needs to have much more knowledge about the whole stuff..Little clueless here.

Flickr Id has immense use in web apps. If one needs to have a gallery that has to be displayed on the website, embedding Flickr slide using Flickr Id is the easiest way . Use idGettr - Find your Flickr ID  to  find your Flickr user or group id.  I am developing a website for an NGO in Bangalore. Displaying their past events using flickr was immensely useful to me. No longer one needs to copy all the images in public/images folder and create gallery layouts in your webpages..Thanks Flickr!

I was out to Mangalore to get my sister enrolled in one of the PG dental colleges. It was a pretty long journey and I picked up a couple of books for this journey , one being Kite Runner by  Khaled Hosseini . I thought this book would be a good filler amongst the non-fiction that I usually read. In the hindsight, it was not a filler at all. Once I started reading it , I could not put it down. I latched on the book and read whenever and wherever I could find time. Here was a book which was very gripping right from page 1.The book made me think about the various characters  in the novel (Amir, Hassan, Sohrab, Ali), their emotions etc, the idea of redemption, the phase of childhood , childhood friends, the brutal Taliban regime .

This is similar to Dodgeball which was acquired by google..18 member company in bay area.. Is there no scope for such service in India ?

A nice hack developed to automatically dial your favorite/favorites in reality shows. This software seems to have been downloaded quite a number of times..Time will tell whether it is close to its prediction

Another stat and argument which is PRO - Fairplay DRM

Internet and Mobile Startup fundings in India
2005 - VC investment in India - 7 deals - $35M
2006 - VC investment in India - 30 deals - $200 M
2007 - ??
any guesses ? Travel, Matrimony and Jobs are the regular ones that are making the splash..Whats the big thing that will kick off in India ? food for thought

When I travel from Bangalore to Hyderabad, sometimes I have used Raj Express Travels , a bus transport service provider . The service was introduced in 2005 and with in a span of 15 months has turned out to be a successful venture. I am not aware of the founder’s background nor the amount of capital that would have gone in to starting this venture, though i can guestimate. If one were to look from a BlueOcean Strategy framework, here is what they have done, atleast from a regular traveler’s perspective

An article on the wired suggests that besides scalability, AJAX was the major culprit behind Frienster flop

Wow! This is something..I have always imagined Solar power extraction with the help of solar panels etc..But using roads !! that’s something

Hackers tend to think business is for MBAs. But business administration is not what you’re doing in a startup. What you’re doing is business creation. And the first phase of that is mostly product creation– that is, hacking. That’s the hard part. It’s a lot harder to create something people love than to take something people love and figure out how to make money from it.

That is one of the key tenets of professionalism. Work and life are supposed to be separate. But that part, I’m convinced, is a mistake - Paul Graham

An innovative company called BandMerch crafted a remarkable promotion for the rock group Linkin Park. Buy a CD, put it in your computer, go online, and you can buy one of three thousand pairs of collectible Linkin Park sneakers, made by hip shoe brand DC Shoes. This works at so many levels, it’s scary.

First, it makes it worth buying the CD instead of listening to a friend’s. Second, it takes a sonic idea and adds the visual (sneaker). Third, it pays for itself. Fourth, it’s limited in time and size, so people need to get in early. “Hey, where’d you get those sneakers?”  They sold out of almost every size before the sneakers even got to the warehouse.This, not suing your listeners, is the way to grow the music business.

“I think, at the end of the day, that it is a mistake simply to pursue a job. Instead, you should pursue a way of life. The opportunity for me is to make a fundamental difference in people’s lives, both inside and outside the company. To lead a very successful enterprise that is not just focused on achieving business success. That’s a consequence of doing the right things for our employees and our customers. The challenge of operating a global company is a terrific, terrific opportunity. You cannot be successful as a CEO in the short, moderate, or long term if you don’t have a passion for what you’re doing. The challenges and the issues are so substantial that if you don’t have that passion, you’re going to wilt. Fortunately, I think I’ve got that passion.”

I was at Barcamp3 Bangalore today , the second day of the barcamp.Some of the sessions that I managed to attend were

Tinkering Culture OR How Intellectual Property is Screwing Us : A superb and riveting talk about the IP by Mr. Lawrence. The breadth of examples presented in the session was mindblowing. The talk was focused on umpteen number of cases where read web was becoming read/write web. The session concluded with the thought Rescension (Constant Retelling of old stories) was the way to go where every individual should have the right to recast the product / service and serve up to customers.
Pickle Life Moves Pickle It. Photo and Video Ramesh Babu: A demo of photo and video sharing site - http://pickle.com/
Yulop - My take was that it wont fly unless they focus on one thing. The concept was called citycasting where in the entire city would be on the net. The content would be generated by the users and the services included a host of services , and here is where the problem lies. I guess the service would make sense only if the founders focus on only one service.

This provocative titled book is not all that provocative when one starts reading it and digesting the ideas. Seth brings in a lot of  examples, anecdotes to illustrate 5 key points which resonate through out the book

They are

• Customers worldviews got there before you did

• People only notice new and guess

• First impressions start the story

• Great marketers tell the story they believe

• Marketers with authenticity survive

Why tell stories while marketing products and services ?
One of the first reasons is to spread ideas and ideas spread faster if there is a story element to it. Also, in the age of media glut where every brand is trying to vie for customer’s attention, how else can a product catch the attention of the customer with out a story element.
Customers worldviews got there before you did
People only notice new and guess

The Longaberger Company is America’s premier maker of handcrafted baskets and offers other home and lifestyle products, including pottery, wrought iron, fabric accessories and specialty foods. The company is based in Newark, Ohio, and there are tens of thousands of independent home consultants located in all U.S. states who sell Longaberger products directly to customers.

One of the special elements of the company is its retail store architecture..Now that’s a purple cow!

Most of us would have heard this statement - “What can I do about the situation? Everybody is behaving in that manner. My change of behavior is not going to change the situation?”

The above response could be in many situations in India like:

Why should you give bribe govt. official / middle man / for that matter anybody to get work done?
Why should you stop at a signal showing red, at the middle of the night?
Why should you care to throw garbage at some other place when the whole street is throwing it on the road?
Why should you care to use spittoons rather than spit on the road / wall?
Why does one stand to an injustice that is happening right in public places and doesn’t do any thing about it?
Why do people not pay up their student loans?

“Hardwork never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict and disease. They do not die of hardwork “- David Ogilvy

This books is superb book on ways to imagine things, see the issue from various perspectives. Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collage of essays stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905. Each essay views the TIME from a perspective and presents the scenarios of the world if TIME were to behave in a specific manner. The perspectives explored are :

• A world where Time is a Circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself , precisely

An thought provoking article on Online Adspace : The quest for the perfect online ad

IBM India employee strength is mind numbing..Out of the IBM - Total base at the end of 2006 - 355,766 people, India has 52,000 people ( up from 36,000 one year earlier, three years earlier, IBM had just 9,000 people )

15% of one of the biggest companies in the world is in India…Wow!! with this kind of talent, when will there be a superb product from India ?

From eStatsIndia.com,Indian e-commerce market - b2c and b2b combined - is about Rs 4,100 crore( 1 billion usd). Let’s compare with the global ecommerce market.Online shopping accounted for 3% of total retail sales in 2006, nearly double the share from 2002. E-commerce sales totaled $108 billion in 2006 with an expected 20% increase for 2007. E-commerce sales are forecasted to climb at a double digit pace for the remainder of the decade, accounting for 4.3% of total sales by 2010. (Source: US Census Bureau and Business Week)  . In comparison , there is a lot of catching up that needs to be done by India…Ok now back to India numbers

Lot of firms are trying to crack the video advertising puzzle ..to become the next google in video advertising..Firms that have making soe noise are

• ScanScout
• PodZinger
• Corp
• Blinkx
• Brightcove Inc.

Lots more to come I guess..It will be interesting to see which firm would finally crack the video ad puzzle

My friend is up to writing a blog which will make you think on something each day.There are a lot of nice questions which you can think about.
Link : http://www.drdoubt.com/

There have been a lot of sites in the recent past where user generated video content and the videos have spread virally among the net community.

• Revver, a pioneer the usage of still frame ad at the end of video pays the content creator based on the clicks - adsense model
• Metacafe pays creators $100 when their video has been viewed 20,000 times, and $5 for every 1,000 additional views.
• TurnHere and ExpertVillage.com, offer upfront payments
• Brightcove, DivX Stage6 and Cruxy, allow a video’s creator to set a price viewers must pay to view it, and exact a small transaction fee.
• Break.com is more digg like but it pays the content generator if it manages to get to the home page of the site

What makes some videos hit and some flops – no one has a clue …

There have been mixed feelings about home prices in USA in the past few years. A few years back I was part of a team trying to design a model for a mortgage bank to increase the percentage of acceptance of a HELOC as soon as a customer is qualified for a mortgage loan. However the VP of the company was expecting a burst and was worried about a scenario where the bank would be saddled by a set of high risk HELOC portfolio. He allowed the roll out of the model on a small acquisition base and wanted to wait till the housing effect cooled down. In the hindsight, it appears as a correct move.

Here’s a quote which emphasizes the importance of being in the NOW

“We start from what is, not from what should be; we encompass contradictions, painful feelings, fears and imaginings, and - with out fleeing, blaming, or attempting correction - we learn to soar like the far-seeking hawk, over the landscape.” -  “The Art of Possibility”

Cisco starts its acquisition game , now in social networking space. Its recent acquisition is
Five Across 

About the firm
Five Across is a leading provider of social networking and community building technology that helps organizations ranging from small businesses to large enterprises connect to their community constituents and customer base. Connect, the company’s flagship product, is a rapid-deploy web platform enabling organizations to strengthen and grow user communities with dynamic multimedia experiences. Organizations using Connect can grow user demographics within their brand and build a profitable business model with on-demand and user-generated content.

A CNN money article mentions that India is being hyped as a super power and there are problems far too many that it should solve in a systematic manner for it to become a super power. One of the remarks by Prime minister sums up the problem  -  “Our biggest single problem is the lack of jobs for ordinary people.”

Link : India won’t be a superpower until it alleviates poverty

Are we going to see the one to one marketing nirvana soon ?

Via NYT:

“If there’s a man and a woman watching television in two different houses and you are Procter & Gamble, it would be more efficient to show one of them an ad for a Gillette’s men’s razor and the other a woman’s ad,” said Mark Read, director of strategy at the WPP Group, an advertising holding company that has invested in Visible World and Spot Runner.To customize ads, the companies, to a varying degree, link ZIP codes with census and other third-party data to develop local demographic profiles, isolating viewers more finely than typical cable operators.

‘Think in the morning, act in the noon, read in the evening, and sleep at night.’
-- William Blake

Will the Music Industry go with Steve Jobs call i.e No DRM ?

The news item was indeed the validation of long tail in advertising..62% of the revenues came from adsense as compared to 25% couple of years back. Reminds me of Goto.com case where the revenues from syndicate business reached 90% of their total and the management for some reason decided to concentrate on syndicate business ..Thus goto.com as a search destination slowly vanished…Such situation will never happen with google..or will it ? What if 99 % of the revenues come from adsense ? What will be the fate of adwords ?

via NYT : A Star Is Made

Ericsson and his colleagues have thus taken to studying expert performers in a wide range of pursuits, including soccer, golf, surgery, piano playing, Scrabble, writing, chess, software design, stock picking and darts. They gather all the data they can, not just performance statistics and biographical details but also the results of their own laboratory experiments with high achievers.

Their work, compiled in the “Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance,” a 900-page academic book that will be published next month, makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of clichés that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular clichés just happen to be true.

Malcolm Gladwell shares his views on Prodigy - Quite an insightful article
Link : The Myth of Prodigy and Why it Matters

Here’s an account of how pixar became what it is today
Link : The Pixar Story

It’s only few companies that achieve $5 billion in revenue in the first 5 years of its operations. One such company is Google. John Battle in his book “The  Search” has used Google as a background and has narrated a beautiful account of the most important facets of the internet industry. He gives the reasoning that search as a problem is only 5% solved and says that innovations in search technologies is going to make web experience 95% more richer that what exists today. He views a world where search would enable to make a database of intentions and the web would easily facilitate Recovery of information and Discovery of Information to the user.
The book first describes the main components of a search engine which are, Crawler, indexer and run time indexer. Crawler as the name suggests crawls the web , brings various links and their context and stores them in a database. The indexer then creates an inverted pyramid where a set of key words map to certain URLs. These associations are then dropped in to a runtime index server from which the user requests are served. Much of the developments have happened in the indexing space from various search players and Google has a great advantage with its page rank algorithm which indexed various URLs.

Sometimes people wonder why there is Struct and Class in C++ language. They have identical functions except that all the variables defined in struct are public by default and those defined in C++ are private by default. The need for both of these to coexist seems redundant. This is where one needs to go the history of c++. The struct was very much a part of C language and to evolve in to a much richer form, Class was an invention so that it would give a choice / flexibility for people who wanted to stick to struct or change to Class. This thinking was on the assumption that the evolution of class would not be hindered by the syntactical restraints of Struct. This thought was that of Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of C++ in 1979 at Bell Labs. History has proved him right!

Mistakes can be like ice . If we resist them, we may keep on slipping in to a posture of defeat. If we include mistakes in our definition of performance, we are likely to glide through them and appreciate the beauty of the longer run
      - From “The art of possibility”

One of the best Regex stuff I have come across. A short and well explained tutorial on Regex.
Here is the link :  Learn How to Use Regular Expressions

Just for Fun is an autobiography of Linus torvalds, the creator of Linux, a successful operating system. The reason for the popularity of the OS has more to do with the way in which it was created, OPEN SOURCE.A new term was coined, thanks to Linux and subsequently influenced the IT software industry like never before. This book is written in a remarkably witty manner at the same time explaining the business philosophy behind open source.

You can do something the brute force way, the stupid, grind-the-problem-down-until-its-not-a-problem-anymore way ,or you can find the right approach and suddenly the problem just goes away. You look at the problem the other way and you have this epiphany: It was only a problem because you were looking at it in a wrong way.

There is a story of Carl Friedrich Gauss, the great mathematician which illustrates the above point. Gauss was in his school and his teacher was bored, so to keep the students preoccupied he instructed them to add up all the numbers between 1 to 100 .The teacher expected them to take all the day doing it.But the budding mathematician came back 5 minutes later with the correct answer:5050.

Meaning : The gurgling sounds made by the stomach after eating.

Usage 1: The plural is “borborygmi” and the adjective “borborygmic.” Borborygmi form the
gastromantic data base (see WotD Archives for “gastromancy”). “Borborology” is a both rare and archaic alternate with an unexpected meaning: profanity. However, it is difficult not to believe that gastromantics are students of borborology, not of profanity but of
borborygmi.

Suggested usage: Today we offer you a more presentable expression for the less acceptable “gut-rumblings.” Use it judiciously, “The conversation around the campfire was accompanied by borborygmic remnants of the evening meal.” Elizabeth Fenwick wrote in ‘Long Way Down’ (1959), “The room was very quiet, except for its borborygmic old radiator.”

“Programming is one of the most interesting things in the world. It’s a game much more involved than chess, a game where you can make up your own rules and where the end results is whatever you can make of it. With the confines of the computer , you are the creator "

--Linus Torvalds

Another classic success where a physical product is created by the customers of the product. Slim devices  products are built by customers as well as employees and each of the customer has access to the complete firmware of the product. Its a fascinating tale of a company which pulled off a linux story on a physical product. Here are the numbers :

Slim Devices will bring in around $10 million in revenue this year. Its
fans include music stars Herbie Hancock and Alanis Morissette. And its
latest product, released last September, the higher-end $2,000
Transporter, has reaped three times the expected orders.

    Unexpected property: This piece of cardboardlike paper works like a tape recorder, complete with record and play buttons. An ultrathin recording device and battery are embedded in the page. Step/stretch/leap: Personalized talking postcards; sticky notes that allow for longer, more-detailed memos; intelligent books that let you play “The Gettysburg Address” and record your notes on it.

Another classic success where a physical product is created by the customers of the product. Slim devices  products are built by customers as well as employees and each of the customer has access to the complete firmware of the product. Its a fascinating tale of a company which pulled off a linux story on a physical product. Here are the numbers :

Slim Devices will bring in around $10 million in revenue this year. Its
fans include music stars Herbie Hancock and Alanis Morissette. And its
latest product, released last September, the higher-end $2,000
Transporter, has reaped three times the expected orders.