From Neurons to Electrons...

New Blog URL (www.wirkle.com/blogs/lomesh)

2006-12-17T23:06:00.000-08:00

Hi Friends,

I have started blogging at my new URL: www.wirkle.com/blogs/lomesh.
Please update your bookmarks and feedreaders.

2006-09-05T19:34:00.000-07:00

test via LinkNSurf

Posted via Link'n'Surf.

Do they own the right on “Freedom to Express”? OR so they think

2006-07-18T02:42:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading up my Times of India newspaper where an article stuck my eye. After the brutal Mumbai blasts of 7/11 where more than 250 people were killed and hundreds of others were severely injured, the DoT (Department of Telecom) for some good enough reason decided to block famous blogging websites including Blogspot and Typepad. As I discussed this with my colleagues at Wirkle they pointed me over to a Digg article and a blog http://www.gonomad.com/traveltalesfromindia/2006/07/what-is-up-with-blogspot-blogger-sites.html which had further discussions around this.

Some of the testimonials include:
“I contacted the Spectranet callcenter (a major ISP) and this is big, they confirmed that they have blocked the site because they have a letter from Ministry of communication! I wish I had heard it wrong. Call your ISP providers that are blocking it and check it out for yourself.”

“Amit cannot access blogspot and geocities from Airtel now. Looks like Airtel has joined in. Can more people confirm this; I will myself do so once I reach home. My home connection is Airtel. (I cannot access .blogspot domain now from my home ISP Airtel)”

Shivam Vij has written an interesting article at rediff: http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jul/17blog.htm

To relate to this I can’t think of any other word than “Bizarre”. Such things were thought to be symbolic to a “Chinese Affair” with their communist government is known to be a master at such deeds. But since when did India become a New (a.k.a. Communist) China? What in the world could allow these people to try and prevent us on our right to express? Why are they blocking even those few bloggers? Do they have some facts which they want to hide from the public?

Well, thankfully we are in the same business and we will give a strong fight to the issue in all our capacity. We have started offering our mobile blog reading service LinkNSurf (www.linknsurf.com) for FREE to every mobile phone user. With LinkNSurf you would be able to search for all these blocked blogs, subscribe them and stay regularly updated with all the new happenings. Not only that I have created a new discussion community on LinkNSurf called “MumbaiBlasts” where everyone will be able to express their opinions, share blog articles and express themselves.

Is it the answer? (ESPN mobile, Helio et al)

2006-05-22T22:12:00.000-07:00

I had earlier posted about how I found the idea of an ESPN cellphone somewhat unimpressive (http://lomesh.blogspot.com/2005/10/now-this-is-what-i-call-ridiculous.html).

Another good example is "Helio for Myspace" (the only mobile client for MySpace). I think Myspace is absolutely cool and people would love to have it mobile. BUT at the cost of owning a new cellphone ?? What kind of fad is that ???

I checked both of these services recently and no doubt they are pretty impressive. So as a sports buff the best option to experience ESPN on my phone is to buy an ESPN phone and to access MySpace I need to buy Helio.

So from now on if I have to watch MTV, I'll buy a MTV branded TV cos that's the one that provides me with best MTV viewing experience and for watching CNN I need another TV cos that's the one that provides the best viewing experience for CNN. Going a little too further lets say a new PC for every website, for instance, I have to have a Google PC to access Google. I can probably view Yahoo.com on google PC but the experience is nowehere comparable to my best friend's PC who has a Yahoo PC.
Is that the answer ? The world is converging or so I thought!

What do you think ??

My favorite motivational email

2006-04-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

Michael is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood And always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, "If I were any better, I would be twins!" He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Michael was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Michael and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all Of the time. How do you do it?"

Michael replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood. I choose to be in a good mood.

Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I Can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it.

Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept Their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose The positive side of life.

"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.

"Yes, it is," Michael, said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice.

You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people Affect your mood. Your bottom line: It's your choice how you live life."

I reflected on what Michael said. Soon thereafter, I left the Tower

Industry

to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Michael was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Michael was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.

I saw Michael about six months after the accident when I asked him how he was, he replied. "If I were any better, I'd be twins. Wanna see my scars?"

I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone Through his mind as the accident took place. "The first thing that went through

my mind was the well-being of my soon to be born daughter, " Michael replied.

"Then,as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I

could choose to live or I could choose to die. I chose to live."

Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked.

Michael continued, "...the paramedics were great. They kept telling

me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really

scared.

In their eyes, I read "he's a dead man. I knew I needed to take action."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me," said

Michael.

"She asked if I was allergic to anything. "Yes, I replied." The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep

breath and yelled, "Gravity."

Over their laughter, I told them, "I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead ."

Michael lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because Of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the

Choice to live fully.

LinknSurf

2006-02-18T01:22:00.000-08:00

Everyone has to blog

2005-11-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

Blogs are memories, blogs are opinions, blogs are the way to keep your mind working rather than gawking at your TV all the time.

Everyone can use blogs differently...

It could be an autobiography which could be a digital impression of urself.Capture your memories, all those fun days at school or family parties everything can be captured, commented by the ones that matter and stays with you for your lifetime and even beyond. These memories could be accessed anytime, everywhere.

Now what's the point of snapping those dumb pictures (I call them dumb cos the only thing you can do is shoot pictures, no comments could be captured) which stays in your cupboard after the first 15 days of you attempting to show everyone around. More than that if you wanna see them sometime later, u gotta be at the cupboard. For instance, there are hundreds of my pictures lying back in India and I just cant reach them if I wanted to see them. Not just pictures there are dozens of such things that could be a part of ur blog. For instance,
- Students can use to keep their notes/assignments which could be accessed everywhere they want them.
- People can share stuff with a selected few, thus businesses can keep their market research on the blog.
- I read a good post about how elderly are starting to blog and realizing that this is the way to feel still motivated. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051110/ap_on_hi_te/geezers_who_blog
- Schools could use them to deliver everyday newspapers on blogs such that everyone can participate in discussions.
- Newspapers are old media, I wanna comment on everything I read.

..there could be dozens of more ways, its just a matter of creativity.

The sorry state of mobile phones: An analogy

2005-11-07T01:39:00.000-08:00

Mobile phones, as they exist today, are like a "Personal Computer" before the internet was invented (it has one extra feature that I'll talk about). It reminds me of my first PC - a 386 on which drawing something in paint to playing with Lotus, WS, Dbase, Solitaire, Mario... was as much fun as I could get out of my computer . And then came the internet which made it way way usable and a part of my life. Now, when I get up in the morning I open my laptop to check new mails and news before I barely open up my eyes. Would I have done that on my 386. Never !

Now what's the extra feature on mobiles that makes it better than my analogy of personal computer is that it has lets call it "Google Talk" - i.e. an ability for me to send/recieve voice calls or text messages to people (90% of which are in my buddy list). If "Google Talk" was the only flavour of connectivity and communication I could taste on my PC and you expect me to be satisfied with that, hell you are way wrong. Where's the thing that would motivate me to check my mobile every 5 minutes to see if there's something new?? Where's the thing that I need to see before I could open my eyes in the morning. If my PC can produce such an effect, I can guarantee that if such a thing existed on mobile it could have atleast a 5X effect than my PC, just because that's the only thing I carry with me all the time.

No matter how good the "Google Talk" is, I want to expand the sphere of my mobile communication from just that.

Mobile-blogging poised to explode, Stats

2005-11-04T09:35:00.000-08:00

via:
http://www.rediff.com/money/2005/nov/04spec.htm

Mobile-blogging poised to explode

Priyanka Joshi | November 04, 2005

When Merriam-Webster compiled a list of the most searched words of 2004, the word 'blog' (short for weblog) topped the charts.

However, blogging's younger sibling, the mobile-blog, is rapidly becoming one of the most popular online phenomenon worldwide. Mobile-blogging, or moblogging - basically, using camera phones to post pictures and text on a weblog - is captivating thousands of new converts every week from Atlanta to Zagreb.

A few numbers tell you why. More camera phones are sold than digital cameras, with one American research firm predicting global sales to rise from 150 million in 2003 to 650 million by 2008.

Little wonder the user base of popular moblog sites such as Text America (latest available figure: 500,000), Flickr (250,000), Yafro (100,000), Buzznet (20,000) and Mobog (16,000) is growing exponentially. The big daddy of them all, MSN Spaces, has more than 1.5 million users, but not all of them are mobloggers.

So what's the buzz all about? Well, moblogging provides a whole new dimension to the concept of a personal diary by providing the immediacy and intimacy of pictures taken anywhere, at any time. So, if you are inspired at your favourite local watering hole or on a road trip, you won't have to wait until you get back to your desktop to share your visuals with the world.

Not surprisingly, company after company has been coming out with applications and services to tap into what they think is a big blogosphere (and, perhaps, with the aim to also push other services such as MMS). But moblogging services from telcos lack the insight into blogging to actually make them useful tools.

Mobile-blogging tools enable one to post images, videos or text to a web location, but do little to engender the conversations that characterise blogs.

Rashmi Bansal, editor of JAM magazine, is an avid blogger herself and finds mobile-blogging a pretty "hassly job". "I cannot really express my thoughts in a three-line moblog. Additionally, there is no operator or service provider to direct me how to do it quickly," she says.

Bansal has had a tough time posting mobile blogs and has just given up. "I will wait until there comes a service provider who can simplify the process and also will be easy on my pocket."

Most 20-40 year-olds who remain hooked to their camera phones or communicators use their GPRS for a quick look at their inboxes or maybe send a quick message or two. The reason why they have steered clear of moblogging: service providers and telco operators do not provide ease of use.

Estimated figures predict that India will have 55 million online users and another 110 million mobile users by 2007 making it an interactive demographic for the mobile applications market. Taking the cue, a few companies like Coruscant Tec have stepped up to the plate.

Though not ready to take a big leap, Coruscant (a mobile content provider) is ready to release a new application named Moblogs.

The application promises to post blogs, edit posts, view and make comments, host your location to others, share posts with grouped communities, send out trackbacks, and much more. Initially, the application would be offered free of cost to all registered users.

Ajay Adiseshann, managing director of Coruscant, feels that mobile blogging is an emerging market but no one is clear as to how can this market can be tapped. "This is virgin territory. It is up to us to judge how to carve out a revenue model for this side."

The main revenue generator for mobile operators and service providers seems to be online advertisements. "The way blogs have become the new age signposts in marketing, mobile blogs can go the same way. Since mobile penetration is much higher, revenues can only be better," adds Adiseshann.

He earnestly believes that mobile blogging is the way to go but adds that the market in India is very small at the moment. With continuing growth of camera phones and interest in picture mail, moblogs are great places to document and store images. Most major blog sites offer some way to post to your blog with your phone, either via MMS or e-mail.

The only hassle is finding a telecom provider that supports this facility. And that, for Indian mobloggers, is not a pretty picture.

Mobile Data Too Hard, Too Expensive

2005-11-03T14:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.moconews.net/?p=4108

Mobile Data Too Hard, Too Expensive
Related Topics: Research — Permalink - [by james]

A couple of surveys have come out saying pretty much the same thing: People will be more encouraged to use mobile content if it costs less.
A study by A.T. Kearney of 4,000 mobile phone users in 21 countries was mostly positive, finding that more than half of mobile handsets are less then a year old and have “robust multimedia capabilities that are increasingly understood by their users”. 54% of multimedia phone users said they use their phones to access the internet or check e-mail at least once a month, up from 36% in 2004 — Nearly two-thirds of users said new services and functions were easy to understand and enjoyable to use.

* One third of users with these phones download music monthly, up from 21 % in 2004.
* Globally, 16 % of users with multimedia phones reported downloading mobile games at least monthly.
* 17 % of users (and 27 % of those under age 24) said they were willing to pay for mobile TV,
the most recently touted mobile entertainment service. However, two-thirds of users expressed a desire for time-sensitive TV content such as news and sports rather than entertainment shows.

However, a third of mobile users are worried about the cost of mobile data and about half say they are not willing to pay mroe than $5 per month for it…”Thirty-five percent of consumers cited poor content as the reason they don’t access multimedia services, a considerable increase from just 8 percent in 2004.”

Meanwhile, a new NOP survey commissioned by Olista (a service experience assurance company — take note) has revealed that users who encounter problems in using new mobile data services will simply give up rather than seek assistance. According to the survey of 1000 adults carried out in September 2005, 64% of those who had actually tried to use a mobile data service such as picture messaging, ring tones and gaming downloads confessed that they would give up trying after one or two attempts. A mere 2% claimed that they would actually seek assistance from their operator or content provider and 25% said they would carry on trying until it worked…When quizzed on what would encourage them to use more mobile data services, lower prices and easier to use services were top of the list with 53% and 43% of respondents, whilst 32% also felt that better help and advice at point of sale would influence them positively.

Now this is what I call ridiculous

2005-10-27T17:35:00.000-07:00

Maybe its a big hit, but still the overall concept on which this is based is driving me nuts.

---From MoCoNet News
I like this quote about the upcoming ESPN MVNO: “Given the ESPN name’s ubiquity and popularity, an ESPN phone and wireless service are no-brainers, said Terry Lefton, an editor at the SportsBusiness Journal trade publication. “Given your druthers, what is a brand you’d put on a sports product?” he said. “One would be Nike. The other would be ESPN.”
------

Now, if they were to innovate by making a phone which was better engineered or had a super superior UI, I would have really appreciated ESPN doing that, but just by looking at this phone it just doesn't seem that way. In order to get a particular content should I buy a ESPN branded phone ?? So does that mean next computer I am going to get it from CNN of NBC instead of IBM or Sony or Dell ..Hell NO !

When will these guys understand its gonna be one device to bind them and one device to rule them all, so instead of coming up with branded phones ESPN should focus on how to reach existing phone users with their content.

Rewarding the most passionate users

2005-10-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/10/rewarding_the_m.html

Use of cartoons vs real characters in marketing

2005-10-17T20:59:00.000-07:00

Found this interesting stuff

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/10/the_best_thing_.html

In the classic (must must must read) Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud suggests that the more abstract (as opposed to photorealistic) nature of cartoons allows the viewer to identify with the character. An abstract, iconic face could be... almost anyone. But as photorealism increases, the likelihood of the user seeing himself in the character decreases. A cartoon happy face could be me. A photoreal image of a 25-year old male with cropped hair, a beard, and a pierced nose is clearly not.

List of top 100 blogs

2005-10-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

http://news.com.com/2310-10784_3-0.html

Blog Stats

2005-10-12T18:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.technorati.com/weblog/2005/08/34.html

Blackberry style devices stats

2005-10-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

The worldwide market for mobile devices configured to connect with corporate e-mail systems in real time remains tiny compared with the overall cell phone industry, accounting for just 8 million devices, according to Gartner Inc.

But the market is growing fast. RIM, which accounts for nearly half the market with 3.65 million BlackBerry users, reported last month that it sold 620,000 devices during its just-ended quarter.

from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051012/ap_on_hi_te/nokia_email_phones

The death of death ??

2005-09-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

Complete article at: http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,68962,00.html?tw=rss.TOP

Genetically altered mice discovered accidentally at the Wistar Institute in Pennsylvania have the seemingly miraculous ability to regenerate like a salamander, and even regrow vital organs.

Researchers systematically amputated digits and damaged various organs of the mice, including the heart, liver and brain, most of which grew back.

The results stunned scientists because if such regeneration is possible in this mammal, it might also be possible in humans.

The researchers also made a remarkable second discovery: When cells from the regenerative mice were injected into normal mice, the normal mice adopted the ability to regenerate. And when the special mice bred with normal mice, their offspring inherited souped-up regeneration capabilities.

The mice, known as the MRL strain, were genetically engineered and inbred to develop lupus. But researchers don't know why exactly the animals' injuries heal so well.

"If we identified the molecules that allow mice that don't regenerate to regenerate ... and I think we could be close to doing that, then I think the next step is to consider what these molecules would do in individuals," said Ellen Heber-Katz, a professor of molecular and cellular oncogenesis at Wistar, located on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia.

Heber-Katz discovered the strain in 1998 accidentally while working with mice altered genetically for studying autoimmune diseases.

She had pierced holes in the ears of the genetically altered mice to distinguish them from a control group, but they healed quickly with no scarring.

She and her colleagues wanted to find out what other parts of this strain of mice would grow back, so they snipped off the tip of a tail, severed a spinal cord, poked an eye and cauterized various internal organs.

The incredible wound-healing they observed abruptly shifted the focus of Heber-Katz's lab's research from autoimmune disease to regenerative medicine. The researchers began hunting for the specific genes that gave the mice their special powers. They are focusing on three specific genes at the moment, but she suspects that many more likely contribute to the regenerative abilities.

While some amphibians can regrow body parts, mammals for the most part do not have that ability, making this a very special mouse indeed. If the results can be translated to humans, it would be a dream come true for people who want to live forever.

stats cellphone penetration in different nations

2005-09-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.c-i-a.com/pr0905.htm

Java phone stats

2005-09-27T23:55:00.000-07:00

[via Answers.com]

According to John Jackson, senior telecommunications analyst of the
Yankee Group, 60% of all handsets sold worldwide in 2005 will support
Java, and the installed base of handsets exceeds 500 million devices.

Excerpt:

“Java is the most ubiquitous development platform for mobile
applications,” says John Jackson, senior telecommunications analyst of
the Yankee Group in Boston. “Sixty percent of all handsets sold
worldwide in 2005 will support Java, and the installed base of
handsets exceeds 500 million devices.”

ADT Magazine: April 25, 2005
A Little Action on Java-ready Phones
http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=11017

========================================

According to Sun Microsystems president and COO Jonathan Schwartz in
an article published February 26 2005, there are now over 500 million
Java-enabled phones in the world, and more than 60 percent of all new
phones will ship Java-enabled.

Excerpt:

“Sun Microsystems president and COO Jonathan Schwartz has been busy
evangelizing mobile data and, specifically, mobile Java since 3GSM
last week. He recently argued that the majority of the world has yet
to experience the Web, and that most of these people will first
experience the Internet not through a desktop but through a mobile
phone. Ten times as many people bought cell phones last year as PCs.
All of this, according to him, adds up to good news for Sun and its
mobile version of Java -- J2ME. Schwartz noted that there are now over
500 million Java-enabled phones in the world, and more than 60 percent
of all new phones will ship Java-enabled. Schwartz argues that this
will be a boom for Sun and J2ME.”

Trend: Mobile Java marches on
Sunday February 27, 2005
http://eyeonit.itmanagersjournal.com/article.pl?sid=05/02/27/0432223

========================================

Mark Herring, Director, Java, Web Services & Tools Business Sun
Microsystems stated in a recent article dated July 18, 2006:

“If you look at embedded Java today Java is in about 2.5 billion
devices, about 708 million Java-enabled devices are currently shipping
and 1.5 billion cell phones.”

Sap Info: July 18, 2005
http://www.sapinfo.net/index.php4?ACTION=noframe&url=http://www.sapinfo.net/public/en/article.php4/Article-2532842d264d5d4011/en

========================================

On April 4, 2005, The Financial Express published some numbers on Java
and how it stands today after 10 years of growth.

- 579 million Java enabled phones

Quoting from the article:

“Globally, over 4.5 million software developers work on Java.
Java is a $100 billion dollar per year industry.
$2.2 billion is invested yearly in Java application servers and $110
billion in related IT.
There are 100 carrier deployments and 579 million Java enabled phones.
Seven out of 10 wireless applications currently under constructions
will use Java technology runtime environment.
The Java mobile game market is estimated at around $3 billion.
Around 750 million Java cards have been deployed globally”

Financial Express: April 4, 2005
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=86910

========================================

According to John Loicano, Sun executive vice president for software,
there are 708 million Java-enabled phones worldwide.

Excerpt:

“Loicano cheered the troops with stats showing the growth of Java: 2.5
billion Java devices worldwide; 708 million Java-enabled phones; and
4.5 million Java developers. "Java is growing at an accelerated rate,"
Loicano said.”

Server Watch News: June 28, 2005
http://www.serverwatch.com/news/article.php/3516111

========================================

May 2005
With over 600 million Java enabled phones in use throughout the planet.
http://www.gameplasma.com/e3/article_010.php

========================================

“Zelos Group predicts that between 80 to 90 percent of all handsets
shipped in 2007 will be installed with BREW or J2ME, the lightweight
version of Java installed on mobile handsets.”

“ According to the ARC Group, Java will reinvigorate lackluster
handset sales around the world in the medium term and will ultimately
prove to be an important step along the road to 3G. The group also
predicts that such rapid growth will make Java ubiquitous in 2006,
with over 1 billion handsets incorporating the technology around the
world.”

Action Engine : Technical Whitepaper
http://www.actionengine.com/News/PressKit/JavaTechnicalBrief.pdf

Search terms used:
"500..900 million java enabled phones" 2005..2008
"million cell phones" 2005 java enabled
Percent of java enabled phones

I hope the information provided is helpful!

Best regards,
Bobbie7

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clarification of Answer by bobbie7-ga on 22 Sep 2005 20:52 PDT
There are over 120 million Java-enabled phones in the U.S.

"MSpot Music Radio will stream 17 commercial-free channels of original
audio content. The service, which is compatible with all Java-enabled
phones (over 120 million in the U.S., according to MSpot), is
currently available to Sprint PCS subscribers."

Marketing Y Medios: August 9, 2005
http://www.marketingymedios.com/marketingymedios/search/article_display.jsp?schema=&vnu_content_id=1001011789

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Request for Answer Clarification by ecarter-ga on 23 Sep 2005 22:05 PDT
Can you find the total number of mobile phones in the U.S.? Then we
could figure what percentage the 120 million java-enabled phones are
out of the total.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clarification of Answer by bobbie7-ga on 23 Sep 2005 22:26 PDT
Thank you for your clarification. I´ll do some more research and get
back to you as soon as possible.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clarification of Answer by bobbie7-ga on 23 Sep 2005 22:46 PDT
Hello again Ecarter,

I found the following information:

"90 percent of the nearly 200 million cell phones in the United States
have text message capability."

Tech News: July 28, 2005
http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1037501.php/Text_messaging_soars_in_U.S.

------------------------------------------------

"There are more than 153 million cell phone users in the U.S., and
because phones have a relatively short life — averaging 18 months to
two years — there are many retired phones not being put to good use,
said Travis Larson, spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications &
Internet Association"

Fox News: January 09, 2004
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,107794,00.html

------------------------------------------------

According to research and industry studies:

" By 2005, roughly 200 million cell phones will be in use in the U.S.,
and approximately 130 million phones will be retired each year.

A total of 500 million used cell phones weighing more than 250,000
tons are estimated to be currently stockpiled, awaiting disposal.

Cell phones contain hazardous substances, which can pollute the air
when burned in incinerators and leach into soil and drinking water
when buried in landfills.

The average American cell phone user has a total of three or more cell
phones in their possession.

More than 56% of the American population still stores their old cell
phones and over 70% are not aware that cell phones can be recycled."

EarthEasy: December 21, 2004
http://eartheasy.com/article_cellphone_recycle0105.htm

------------------------------------------------

Here is a graph of estimated subscribers from 1985-2004
http://files.ctia.org/img/survey/2004_endyear/slides/EstSubscribers_4.jpg

Geoblogger and location

2005-09-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

[via rajesh Jain]

Technology Review writes:

The mapping revolution could, in short, change the way we think of the World Wide Web. We've long spoken of the Web as if it were a place--with "sites" that we "go to"--but as places go, it's been a rather abstract, disembodied one. Now that's changing. Geotagging means the Web is slowly being wedded with real space, enhancing physical places with information that can deepen our experiences of them and making computing into a more "continuous" part of our real lives.

For example, users of smart phones and wireless PDAs with location technologies such as Global Positioning System chips may soon be able to automatically retrieve stories, photos, videos, or historical accounts related to their current locations, along with ads and listings for nearby shopping, dining, entertainment, and business outlets.

And the information is already flowing both ways: users can upload their own texts, photographs, and other data to the Internet and pin them to specific latitudes and longitudes. "Historically, maps were a 'read-only' medium," says Schuyler Erle, chief engineer at Locative Technologies and coauthor of Mapping Hacks. "Maps were only created by professional cartographers and professional GIS [geographic information systems] people. What has happened because of Moore's Law is that people now have the computing power on their desktops to manage the vast amounts of data that are required for digital cartography. Maps are increasingly a 'read-write' medium. That changes how we interact with them and the impact they can have on our everyday lives."

Blog stats

2005-09-26T11:24:00.000-07:00

At last count, according to Technorati, there are 16 million blogs in existence, growing 100K new blogs a day and generating a jaw-dropping 1.2 million new posts a day.

Why tagging is like sex

2005-08-31T16:11:00.000-07:00

An interesting post
[http://www.terryfrazier.com/1748]

Or, it’s about context, Stupid.

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How many times have you seen this? I see it every time I go to Technorati, which isn't often anymore. This service - and this general idea of tagging everything, everywhere, by everybody - is a real loser. It's the "1,000 monkeys typing Shakespear" theory, writ across the web. To believe that random acts of tagging, by unrelated people and for unrelated purposes, is going to give birth to deep meaning and the secrets of the universe is, well, bullshit. At least, it's bullshit if you want anything useful to emerge in the average human lifespan (which is about how long it takes for Technorati to return search results.) Tagging is a great idea, but there are some great ideas that just don’t scale. Like sex. Sex with one person? Great idea. Sex with 1,000 people? Bad idea. Tagging is like that.

More at: http://www.terryfrazier.com/1748

Podcasts, Videocasts vs. text blogs

2005-08-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

Podcasting or videocasting may not be as fun as it may first seem. An alternative of RSS to support and eventually replace text ? No, I don't think so

Podcasts and videocasts have a importance of their own, they maybe good for songs or some professional videos but that's pretty much it. I was trying to hear some news on a podcast the other day, it just seems so impossible to stay with the pace of the podcasting news reader. In the time I was able to listen to one news I could have browsed through maybe 10-20 articles. On the other hand I would have loved to hear songs or watch videos delivered via podcasts cos that's what I am supposed to do with audio or video (I can make out if the song is gonna be good or not if it catches my attention in 10 seconds, else its pretty much like TV where I have lots of other channels to switch to only in this case it is almost guaranteed that I am not coming back to this blog/podcasting/vcasting site as I have zillions of options available at my disposal). Even if lets say like a TV I were to hear the news I would go and download CNN or engadget podcasts not by just anyone as I will have no idea if its gonna be good or not. Blogs are interesting but lets face it not all blogs are good. If I don't get a guaranteed seal of quality (which is the case with blogs) I can spare a few seconds to filter out the content that I want from several text blogs but not audio or video for which I really have to spend the entire playtime of the podcast/videocast to figure out if it was worth it.

Normally I just read bites of the long article first to see if it makes a good read. Maybe something comes up tommorow that indexes the audio/video and allows me to switch to certain parts of audio/video which I find good then maybe someone can convince me but till then ...

podcasting or videocasting may be fun in social sense where I can tell my friends to listen to me but I don't really think that by podcasting in public u will make any impact unless u can bring up something really compelling for me in the first 5 seconds (even that time is way too much)

Businessman Vs. Entrepreneur

2005-08-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

Very interesting post

[Posted by Dana Blankenhorn]http://www.corante.com/mooreslore/archives/2005/04/28/the_entrepreneurs_secret_is_no.php

The secret to being a successful entrepreneur is learning how to handle NO.

I learned this lesson from an entrepreneurial friend of mine today, and it’s so important I had to blog it.

Entrepreneurs bring ideas to businesses and people. They sell these ideas, as businesses. They take a lot of meetings. And most of the time, maybe over 99% of the time, the answer at the end of the day is No.

“You have to turn it into an opportunity,” my friend said. You do that by finding someone else — a money source, another business — who will either run with your idea, finance your idea, or buy it outright.

And you keep moving.

The difference between entrepreneurs and other businesspeople is that most businesspeople are in the yes business. In a going concern you mostly hear yes. People do come in the door, people are satisfied, you do create systems that wind up giving value for money. If you’re not doing this, you’re out of business quickly.

Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are constantly being told no. It’s only when they get the yes that they have the chance to build that business they were describing, and this is usually the end of a long, long process. Yet the businesses an entrepreneur launches are often much better than those run by businesspeople, because they’ve been tested, vetted, and designed to grow fast.

Another point about entrepreneurs is they're seldom wedded to any business. People like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are anomolies. They got it right first time. Most entrepreneurs are people like Harland Sanders or Sam Walton. They get it wrong a lot before they ever get it right.

My friend has launched four different businesses over the last decade, in four different industries, all of which he had to learn from the ground-up, through repeated rejection. (I call this the no process.) The point is that he kept plugging away, turning no into opportunity, making another run at each door until it slammed shut in his face, then finding other doors, until he finally broke through. And he's broken through several times now.

Serial entrepreneurs like my friend are a special breed. They often get bored once the business gets going. I think it's because they're wedded to the no process, like fishermen or prospectors. Turning no into yes is a challenge. Hearing yes all the time just doesn't feel right. So entrepreneurial businesspeople are always looking to add new, cutting edge ideas to their lines, constantly risking no, knowing that's the only way to a meaningful yes. And when they can't get that in the business they're in, they leave to start another business.

yes.gif (This happy little guy escaped from a NASA Goddard Space Flight site, believe it or not. Yes, he is driving me crazy. Maybe I'm just an entrepreneur at heart.)

I don't think anyone is taught no in business school. I think most business schools teach people management skills, which only come into play once a business is established. Business schools teach yes processes. They should teach more no.

But my friend taught me an important lesson, even a vital one. Learn how to handle no. Learn to accept it as an answer, but never let it be the final answer. Always try to turn rejection into opportunity. Always stay optimistic. Always believe that yes is around the corner.

Still on dial up?

2005-08-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

Picture this...Something that lets you connect to your friends was sold for 648 million dollars. It reminds me of my dialup connection ...Think its high time to get a broadband :)

Connecting vs. Staying Connected ..the choice is yours!

Who wants to broadcast ?

2005-08-29T16:40:00.000-07:00

Who wants to shout in the dark when they know nobody is hearing them? We always joked about my 3 year (now he's 10) cousin who never cried when nobody was around even if he fell from the bed and hurt himself badly, but as soon as he found anyone entering home he would start shouting and crying for the fact that he was hurt 15 minutes back (as if it suddenly started to cause him pain;)).. a 3 year old understands it but maybe most of us don't get it still.

People communicate. They want to and believe me they really do. All they need is someone who can hear them. What's the killer app for web..clearly email as it gave them a medium to do so but they have a guarantee that whatever they are writing is reaching to someone they want to. What about SMS..its directed towards someone and its the most sucessful application on cellphones besides voice (which in itself is communication).

Now what are blogs? Why do people write them? Clearly, it gives them a way to connect to the world. But what if it is simply shouting in the dark.. will people blog? They need audience. A guaranteed audience. Is it that difficult to ensure?

Nivi : Greasemonkey will blow up business models (as well as your mind)

2005-08-25T15:18:00.000-07:00

http://www.nivi.com/blog/article/greasemonkey-and-business-models/

del.icio.us

2005-08-21T15:19:00.000-07:00

http://johnvey.com/features/deliciousdirector/

Making blogs browsable

2005-08-17T15:12:00.000-07:00

http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/categories/businessInnovation/2005/05/19.html#a1151

Dave Pollard writes: "By allowing blog articles to be indexed the way their author would organize them in a filing cabinet, and by allowing the reader to view blog articles by topic and sub-topic instead of just reverse chronological order, blogs would become much more useful for browsing, and this capability would also greatly enhance their value as business tools."

Blogs..what's in them

2005-08-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

Internet brought along a new era of communication ... Some of the most widely used applications have clearly been email, IM, chatrooms and almost anything that would involve interpersonal communication would be a sure sucess! But what next for this social animal that is always on the hunt for more. As I am seeing it, possibly an ability to create more shareable information or an ability to not just consume but actually use the information supplied to you. ..Well how ?

I will give you my personal experience, I somehow never cared too much to look into newspapers or news websites ... What I want is not just a standard set of opinions by some standard set of people day in and day out and that too without the ability to express my opinions on what they have written.

How many people have you seen that would write "Letters to editors" or even in the case of websites do you think editors at CNN or MSNBC even care about your opinions.

Blogging has changed my opinion altogether...it now gives me not just an information I can consume but something I can use...I want to choose to read the people whom I want to hear and that too I can change it anytime if I think they are not worth it..

And its not just me these days everyone is getting involved in blogs, a few stats:

- 11 million people write blogs in the US alone
- Fifty-seven percent of blog readers are men. Most are under age 30, higher-income and well-educated individuals. They are broadband users and Internet veterans.

More on it in my next post...

Were we born big or do we grow big ?

2005-08-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

One can take really long time to realize such a simple theory. I am still on the learning curve personally.

Imagine if every 1 year old kid starts thinking that "If I am not gonna be 20 tonight that is the end of my life"...The thought seems weird but that's what people(including me) have a hard time understanding. Miracle may happen to turn a year old into 20 rite away...but those who wait for miracles to happen are never gonna succeed.

Evolution, adaptation and survival ..these words mean a lot. We are all humans, have the same structure still everyone is unique and has the potential to do very different from each other. But above all what matters is everyone with a will to survive will survive, can evolve and grow bigger than the rest and it doesn't matter if he/she is 1 or 20 today !

The quest for a mobile killer app...

2005-08-09T10:59:00.000-07:00

Why is TV not the killer content on the web? Is it the bandwidth? Well, had it been the nineties I would have agreed to that but now when broadband is almost ubiquitous (atleast in the US and most parts of the world are getting there) that doesn't seem to be a valid reason.

Lets try and analyze at a high level how the TV and web story works:
-- Someone picks up a bunch of channels (a few hundred) based on the market needs and then there is one way flow of the information that you can receive. Its easy and involves minimal effort (except for the fact that most of the SOAP operas make your mind to work on a suicide/no suicide decision every second!). Then you have some amount of downtime where you are made to watch advertisements in the middle of something intersting which are obtrusive for sure.

On the other hand, on the web you have to spend more energy but you have a zillion load of information that you can scan, interact with and minimal to none downtime (thanks to Google ads and all the popup blockers of this world).

Now, why don't people use their computer to sit back and watch SOAP operas on the web (as interesting as they may seem). Well, one reason could be the people's perception of computer/web never changed (web that initially only allowed you to browse simple HTML's and was not capable of videos and stuff).. the people simply carried the perception in mind..got used to it and are not ready to change now...OR another more likely reason atleast according to me is that they got the feel of being able to interact and now even contribute (thanks to the blogging revolution) to the information or content they receive so that made a big change in their habits and thus internet encompassed the world like a revolution.

Where am I getting to with this...

What makes sense on a mobile phone..Is it gonna be an application like MobiTV (it is already successful and is being quoted as the killer app for mobiles) where they have around 22 channels for people's to peruse thru OR is it gonna be something that offers user an ability to interact, share and contribute to the information..and not just a limited information but variety to the order of what a web does . Let's wait and watch!

By Comscore

2005-08-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

[via A VC Blog]

Blog stats

Blog stats ..contd

2005-08-03T18:19:00.000-07:00

[via A VC Blog]

Interesting thing to note is that the number of visits/unique visitor for youth blogging sites such as Xanga is way more than blogger.com or typepad for old bloggers

Blog stats

data users stats US

2005-07-04T23:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/wireless/article.php/3498106

64% would advertise in blogs, 57% would place RSS ads

2005-06-06T13:53:00.000-07:00

-Posted by ZDNet

Advertising
Forrester says total US online advertising and marketing spending will reach $14.7 bln in 2005, a 23% increase over 2004. Online marketing and advertising will represent 8% of total advertising spending in 2010. Search engine marketing will grow by 33% in 2005, reaching $11.6 bln by 2010. Display advertising, which includes traditional banners and sponsorships, will grow at the average rate of 11% over the next five years to $8 bln by 2010. 64% of respondents to Forrester’s survey said they are interested in advertising on blogs, 57% through RSS, and 52% on mobile devices, including phones and personal digital assistants.

Gmail..Never delete a message!

2005-05-11T21:54:00.000-07:00

What makes Gmail different?

Well everyone's first answer would be it was the first to offer an enormous amount of storage way above the previous offerings. A not so less obvious answer would be that "Google really knows how to make people impossible to switch". Email should presumably be one of the most sticky applications EVER!. Yet, when gmail arrived I was just able to forward my few messages in my 2 MB hotmail inbox to a new gmail account and redirect all my incoming mails at my hotmail address to gmail and there I was distributing gmail as my primary address, thereby having no reason left to visit the hotmail page again. How much time did the switch take..Less than 5 minutes give or take.

One of the most interesting ulterior motive Google had at the time of offering such a behemoth email space and "Google's infinity plus one storage plan" offering the capability to never delete a message or in other words.."Even if you decide to make a switch someday you will have to come back several times a week to gmail to access your several GB's of previous mails and attachments which I have safely secured for you" i.e. making a switch virtually impossible.

To create a high barrier to switch from a service, things like the following would play a role

1: Make sure to keep what a user thinks is most personal and very important to him i.e. things like ALL the messages from friends and family, clippings, messages marked important, anniversaries, birthday reminders etc. saved in the backend.

2: Provide an ability for user to access those anytime, anywhere in the most easiest manner possible.

3: Make sure the user gets what he needs and only what he needs at any time so that he cannot easily retrieve and export all the info in one go and start using other similar services.

PS: "Keep Innovating" and outbeating competition so that you don't need to rely on the above 3 :)

Tech Talk

2005-05-02T12:15:00.000-07:00

Found a really interesting collection by Rajesh Jain about entrepreneurship

http://www.emergic.org/collections/tech_talk_from_employee_to_entrepreneur.html

M:Metrics: American Mobile Usage Stats - February 2005

2005-05-02T10:53:00.000-07:00

Must note for need based segmentatation

http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008444.html

Yahoo Blogging Service Boosts Content

2005-05-02T10:48:00.000-07:00

[via Yahoo.com]

John Ribeiro, IDG News ServiceMon May 2,10:00 AM ET

Yahoo plans to add the capability to import content, such as photos and music, from non-Yahoo applications to its new Yahoo 360 social networking and blogging service, according to an executive of the company.

"Some of the things that people very much want to do is to share content from other sources outside of Yahoo," says Paul Brody, director of community products at Yahoo. "[Yahoo] 360 right now does a great job of allowing you to share the content you might have already on Yahoo."

The Yahoo 360 service entered a limited beta period in late March and is available to users invited by Yahoo to try it out. The service lets them publish blogs, share content, and post pictures, and also control who can visit the site. It currently allows users to include content from other Yahoo services such as Yahoo Photos and Yahoo Music, Brody says.

To expand that capability, Yahoo 360 initially will allow users to include RSS feeds from other sources, according to Brody, who says Yahoo wants its Yahoo 360 service to be an "open" product. "If you have content anywhere on the Internet, you should be able to share it with friends and family through Yahoo 360," he says.
Widely Available

Yahoo 360 will be made widely available to the public in the next few weeks, at which time the capability to share non-Yahoo content will also be included, Brody says.

The beta period is designed to help Yahoo gather feedback from users to improve the service. For example, as a result of the feedback, Yahoo is working to give bloggers greater flexibility in customizing their blogs, and also to give them features such as "trackback," Brody says.

Early users also said they are interested in working with non-Yahoo applications, such as third-party instant messaging services, from within Yahoo 360, Brody says. That may take sometime, however. In cases in which application interfaces are not published openly, Yahoo may have to arrange sharing deals with companies offering the applications, he says.

Localized versions of Yahoo 360 will be launched soon in some countries in Asia and Europe, according to Brody. The Yahoo blog service is already available in some countries like Japan and Korea.

'Tags' Ease Sifting of Digital Data

2005-05-02T10:47:00.000-07:00

[via yahoo.com Associated press]

By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet WriterMon May 2, 7:27 AM ET

Here's how we tend to organize our digital photos: We stick them into a folder on our computer and label it "Hawaii trip," or whatever. Here's a new way: Forget folders or albums. Just "tag" the photos based on what's actually in each frame. Now, extrapolate this concept to the ideas, images, videos — and people — you meet or wish to find online. If they're properly tagged, they're far easier to find.

That's "tagging," and it's currently all the rage among the digerati.

Tagging has the potential to change how we keep track of and discover things digital — even whom we meet online. Several startups are banking their futures on it.

It could be our salvation as we attempt to sift through the growing clutter of data we're amassing on our hard drives and on that growing digital repository that is the Internet.

"People are awash in an overwhelming sea of stuff," said Joshua Schachter, founder of del.icio.us, a service for tag-enabled online bookmarks. "Our ability to produce content far outstrips the ability to sort and consume it."

And with the growing production of photos, sound and video clips — material not easily searchable — tags become ever more important.

Take photos. You may have an album for your beach trip, another for a son's birthday party. But how do you find photos of your wife?

Before, you had to scan through albums one at a time. With tags, you simply label photos individually when you first store them — with descriptive words such as "birthday," "vacation," "fall 2004" and with the names of the people in each picture. You can then search for your wife's tag.

Flickr, which Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) bought in March, takes that approach — and more. Your friends can tag your photos, too. So while you might have neglected to tag your friend's daughter, your friend can do so.

"Tags enable you to slice through all the photographs that you've got in whatever way you want to find them," said Caterina Fake, Flickr's co-founder.

At del.icio.us, as in "tastes good," people tag and share Web links. Keepers of Web journals tag their entries to make them easier to find through a blog search engine called Technorati. Consumating.com lets you — and others — tag your dating profile.

Though many Web sites have long embedded search keywords, or metadata, tagging has a social component that gives it its power.

"Tagging is something selfishly useful. It helps you understand and categorize something for yourself," Technorati founder David Sifry said. "But I can take advantage of the fact that you and hundreds and thousands of people have also tagged the things" for themselves.

Tagging is fundamentally about tapping the collective human wisdom, rather than relying on a computer algorithm, for search, said Ben Shneiderman, who teaches human-computer interaction at the University of Maryland.

And that human wisdom is bound to help you discover information a computer might not otherwise know to retrieve.

Noah Brier regularly looks for bookmarks tagged "lifehacks" — for everyday productivity tips — and recently ran across an article on better ways to shave.

"I'm sure the author of this never imagined this was a lifehack, but a del.icio.us user decided this falls into that tag," Brier said.

Brian Dear adopted tagging for EVDB, an events listing service he launched a month ago, so people can find things they might never know to seek. View a listing, and you see a list of tags it uses. Click on one to get events just like it.

"You start being able to have other people discover things for you without you knowing you wanted to look for them," said Clay Shirky, professor at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Tagging saves labor costs, too. Dear would otherwise have to pay a whole staff to categorize and annotate listings.

Entire communities have formed around tagging.

Nearly 2,000 Flickr users are part of a "squared circle" group, all sharing a desire to crop into squares photographs of circular objects.

Other users tag satellite images of their childhood neighborhood "memorymaps" and annotate them with stories about growing up.

At 43 Things, where visitors list their goals, those inspired by the book "Getting Things Done" have tagged their goals "GTD." The tag helps users find what like-minded people want to accomplish and perhaps adopt those goals, too.

Conference-goers are frequent taggers.

Organizers of a blogging conference in Paris last week encouraged participants to tag their entries "lesblogs." Italian blogger Luca Lizzeri did just that and got hundreds of additional visitors.

Sites like Technorati not only let you search its own indexes, but also pull items from other sites. So a search for "tsunami" brings together Flickr photos and del.icio.us links besides blog entries — creating a mini-magazine of sorts on the fly.

Unlike hierarchical classification systems, taggers create categories spontaneously. There are no rules to craft on what categories to include and what falls under each.

Hierarchies "are more accurate, but they move less quickly," said David Galbraith, founder of a tag-based wish list called Wists. "It takes a long time for people to sit down and agree on them."

Matthew Haughey, founder of the community blog MetaFilter, considered a taxonomy to organize archival posts but "it's hard to make perfect categories and sub-subcategories." If you wanted to paint a fence, should you look under "home and garden" or "household"?

So he went for tagging.

The blogging site LiveJournal plans to introduce tags in the next few months as an alternative to categories, and Rojo Networks Inc. launched a service last month for tagging news stories, so no longer are you limited to sorting items by publisher.

Of course, tagging has its drawbacks, and some Webophiles aren't quite convinced it will evolve into the Next Big Thing.

Consider classifications for a common pet.

"If one group decides we're going to call them `canine,' another `dog,' another `puppies,' ... when someone goes to search for what they call the dog, they are not going to pick up everybody's tagged instances," said Geneva Henry, executive director of the Digital Library Initiative at Rice University.

Engineers recognize the shortcomings and are working on better tools.

Search for "automobiles" of Flickr, and you're given "cars," "car" and "porsche" as related options. Enough people tag photos both "automobiles" and "cars" that clustering software can tell they are related.

Another drawback lacks an easy solution, though. Once tagging takes off, marketers are bound to add irrelevant tags to hijack you to the latest Viagra ad.

Warns Danny Sullivan, editor of the online newsletter Search Engine Watch: "The noise and deliberate manipulation will probably just bring the system into a crashing halt."

Red Square Launches Podifier All-In-One Podcast Publishing Tool

2005-04-28T18:59:00.000-07:00

via www.podcastingnews.com

Red Square, an Australian Internet agency, has announced the release of Podifier, an all-in-one tool designed to simplify the publishing side of podcasts. The Windows-based tool is free, and available for download at the Podifier website.

Podifier is a Flash-based application that automates the creation of an RSS feed, the association of one or more MP3 files, and FTPing the files to a server.

"We've watched with interest the increasing topicality of podcasting and the phenomenal growth of the MP3 delivery devices market sector," said Tony Redhead, co-founder and principal of Red Square. "We wanted to take the complexity out of the podcasting publishing process and offer it to the Internet community at large."

"The potential for podcasting is enormous," said Mr Redhead. "It's more than just storing music or favourite broadcasts on an MP3 device. It's a potentially revolutionary tool and we are actively discussing a number of podcasting options with our national and international clients as a way to provide their mobile client base with relevant information, delivered via their MP3 devices and tailored to meet the specific needs of the individual."

Mr Redhead cites the travel industry as an example. "Here we have websites that provide detailed information on locations, airports, travel warnings but as soon as you leave the ground, in most situations, that information is no longer available."

"One solution is to provide targeted podcasts specific to the travel plans that your client is about to undertake and the destinations they will visit. For example, before departure the traveller indicates the itinerary and destinations, and a podcast containing information relevant to the choices is created from a content pool of recorded information. The traveller subscribes to the podcast knowing that any changes or updates will automatically be downloaded to their MP3 device right up to the second they pick up their player and walk out the door to start their journey."

Some Mobile phones stats

2005-04-28T16:46:00.000-07:00

Today, Illinois-based Motorola leads in North America (Interesting) and is investing heavily in China, said Garriques during a talk at the recent 2005 Wharton Technology Conference. Motorola's archrival, Finland's Nokia Group, the world's biggest cell phone maker, trounces everyone in Europe and has a hefty head start in the developing world. "The high-growth markets are India, Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and all of South Asia," he said. "These markets are dominated by Nokia, with over 60% market share. Nobody else has more than 10%."

Google

2005-04-28T16:41:00.000-07:00

[excerpt from emergic.org]

Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) is a successful business because it wastes computer power--it has some 120,000 servers powering its search engine--while it conserves its dearest resource, people. Google has fewer than 3,500 employees, yet it generates $5 billion in (current run rate) sales.

Ten Commandments for entrepreneurs

2005-04-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

http://106miles.blogspot.com/2005/04/ten-commandments-for-entrepreneurs.html

GPRS market stats

2005-04-12T01:55:00.000-07:00

Source: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=293746

Others : http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=403987

Penetration rates for Germany, UK, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands and Portugal.
31% penetration by 2005
55% penetration by 2010.
http://www.adlittle.be/downloads/Studies%2001%20GPRS-UMTS%20Services.pdf

According to a report from Researchandmarketing.com
GPRS users will account for over a third of Western Europe’s mobile
subscription base in 2006.
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/4681/4681.pdf

Demographics

Main users - 15–35 year olds and corporate users.
GPRS is likely to take off in the corporate market due to its wireless
email capabilities. Travelling employees account for 30% of all
employees.
Early adopters of GPRS are likely to be 20-35 year old professionals.
This report also contains a country by country analysis of the number
of operators and the number of new entrants. It predicts that new
entrants will be able to take 7% of the market.
http://www.adlittle.be/downloads/Studies%2001%20GPRS-UMTS%20Services.pdf

---------------------------------------------------
Usage estimate.

Average daily usage in the consumer market is predicted to be 10
minutes. Average daily use in the corporate market is predicted to be
16 minutes.
http://www.adlittle.be/downloads/Studies%2001%20GPRS-UMTS%20Services.pdf

Dell estimates that a typical user will consume between 10 and 20 MB per month.
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/topics/topic.aspx/emea/topics/offers/merchandising/gprs_bsd?c=uk&l=en&s=bsd&~section=007#6

------------------------------------------------
Handsets

Market share – 2003 (Source:Gartner Dataquest)
Nokia – 35%
Motorola – 14.7%
Samsung – 10.5%
Siemens – 7.6%
Sony Ericsson – 4.8%
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/8982.shtml

2005-04-08T16:33:00.000-07:00

US Mobile Subscriber Consumption of
Content and Applications in Previous Month
Projected Reach (000s) Percent
Sent or Received Text Message 65,041 37.4%
Received Text Message Alert 14,538 8.4%
Sent Photo Message to Phone or Email 11,761 6.8%
Used Mobile Instant Messenger 14,633 8.4%
Used Mobile Email 24,175 13.9%
Downloaded Mobile Game 5,720 3.3%
Downloaded Ringtone 22,393 12.9%
Downloaded Display Graphic 10,860 6.2%
Accessed News and Information via Browser 22,053 12.7%

Source: M:Metrics, Inc. Survey of US mobile subscribers, quarter ending January 31st 2005, n=35,381. Data for photo messaging, ringtones and graphics downloads for two months ending January 31st 2005, n=23,209.

http://mmetrics.com/press/PressRelease.aspx?article=20050307-benchmark

Metric: 43% of all US SMS messages are spam

2005-02-28T21:14:00.000-08:00

[via Fierce Wireless]
According to findings from Wireless Services Coporation, 43 percent of all mobile text messages in the US are now spam. That's almost double from 2003, when only 18 percent of text messages in the US were spam. In December alone SMS spam accounted for roughly 1.2 billion messages blocked by Wireless Services. The growth of mobile spam is being caused by spammers who are now branching out beyond traditional email to the wireless market, where they are specifically targeting mobile addresses.

mobile traffic app

2005-02-22T16:40:00.000-08:00

http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008318.html

more java stats

2005-02-22T16:34:00.000-08:00

Java is continuing to grow, and accelerate - on both the devices (and SIM cards embedded within them), and in the network infrastructure. There are now over 500,000,000 Java enabled phones in the world, and more than 60% of all new phones will ship, from the factory, Java enabled. The rush of new developers we're adding to the nearly 5 million Java developers are J2ME developers, folks creating the services (from commercial to social) through which the majority of the world will experience the internet.
And just in case you missed it, let me say it again: the majority of the world will first experience the internet through their mobile phones. We sometimes forget that 10 times as many people bought handsets last year as PC's. Round numbers, there were a BILLION wireless devices sold last year, and around 100 million PC's. To that end, the odds are much higher you'll watch broadcast broadband content on your phone than on your PC - and now that Nokia (and their peers) are the world's largest camera manufacturers (just think about that for a moment), the odds are far higher you'll even create broadband content on your handset. Talk about change. Comdex is dead, long live 3GSM.

Looks Count for Cell Phones ..the status symbol !!!

2005-02-22T16:12:00.000-08:00

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66655,00.html

In my opinion same would hold for anything cool looking om ur phone..such as dynamic idle screen or any application that does unch of stuff which others can't :) after all reality is just an illusion ;)

a cool way to access aggregated news

2005-02-22T15:44:00.000-08:00

check out tenbyten.org

There you go.. The future of RSS

2005-02-17T13:20:00.000-08:00

[via Emergic.org]

Richard MacManus writes: "In the not too distant future, more people will subscribe to topic/tag/remix feeds than feeds of actual people."

He adds in a follow-up post:
The killer app for RSS probably won't be geared towards the current ranks of bloggers and geeks. When RSS hits it big, it'll be because 'normal' people start using it - your Mom and Dad, Frank from Marketing, Jessie from Payroll, Dave from the local dairy. They won't be bloggers. They won't be interested in writing or podcasting or anything like that. All they'll want to do is track news and trends that are relevant to them.
Tools will evolve to let people easily set-up personalized searches for information relevant to them and subscribe to the results - using, you guessed it, RSS! Google will probably be the front-runner, PubSub will be another, current players like Bloglines and Technorati will be in amongst it, and who knows who else.
In the future RSS will still be a community enabler, but by far its biggest use will be as a means to subscribe to personalised news and other information important to the lives of non-blogging people. Examples of the information I'm talking about: stocks, bank statements, weather, information needed for one's job, sports news, niche information (the long tail), lots of other things we can't predict yet ;-)

Some stats

2005-02-15T14:12:00.000-08:00

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/afp/20050215/tc_afp/afplifestylefrance

Nokia is not being left behind, with its first-ever video-oriented 3G smartphone, the 6680. This year will see Nokia launch 10 new 3G phones that will retail from around 100 euros, Nokia's Tuutti told AFP.
Finland's Nokia said Tuesday that it expects to see a total of two billion mobile phone users globally by the end of 2005 and estimates the number will reach three billion by the end of 2010.
"There is tremendous growth in 3G," Nokia's Tuuti emphasised. Nokia estimates the number of 3G users will hit the 70 million mark by the end of 2005 compared with 16 million at the end of last year.
So-called smartphones, which enable callers to see each other while talking as well as handling entertainment downloads and instant e-mail access, are now the fastest growing segment, Tuuti said.

Nokia expects this market to grew to over 50 million units this year compared with 22 million in 2004 and hopes to scoop up 40 percent of all sales.

2005-02-15T13:52:00.000-08:00

[via Emergic.org]

Rich Skrenta writes about the difference between the Reference Web and the Incremental Web:
Google searches the reference Internet. Users come to google with a specific query, and search a vast corpus of largely static information. This is a very valuable and lucrative service to provide: it's the Yellow Pages.

Blogs may look like regular HTML pages, but the key difference is that they're organized chronologically. New posts appear at the top, so with a single browser reload you can say "Just show me what's new."
This seems like a trivial difference, but it drives an entirely different delivery, advertising and value chain. Rather than using HTML, the delivery protocol for web pages, there is a desire for a new, feed-centric protocol: RSS. To search chronologically-ordered content, a relevance-based search that destroys the chronology such as Google is inappropriate. Instead you want Feedster, PubSub or Technorati. Feed content may be better to read in a different sort of client, such as Newsgator, rather than a web browser.
And finally, there is a different advertising opportunity. Rather than the sort of business ads you see in the Yellow Pages, instead the ad opportunity is more about reaching a particular demographic or subscriber group. The kind of ads that are in magazines. How do you keyword target a breakfast cereal advertisement to fitness-conscious 21-25 year olds? You can't. You need to find something those people are reading, and put your ad there.
There are 4-8 million active blogs now. At this size, you can still "know" the top bloggers, and find new posts worth reading by clicking around. But when the blogosphere grows 100X or 1000X, the current discovery model will break down. You'll need algorithmic techniques like Topix.net or a Findory to channel the most relevant material from the constant flood of new content.Rich is on the right track, but there are a few additional points which need thinking:
Rajesh Jain adds:
- We need to think beyond just text to multimedia for mass-market content creation and management. [Think Flickr.]
- In emerging markets like India, the mobile and not the computer will be at the heart of the Incremental Web.
- The interface has to go beyond the search box to more natural navigational interfaces. [Think Speech.]
- The published content is being amplified/tagged by the mass market -- thsi also needs to be taken into account. [Think Del.icio.us.]
- A user's "subscriptions" will be the filter through which the user will want to see the Incremental Web. [Think RSS+OPML.]

How to make consumers addicted to your service..an example of multiplayer gaming

2005-02-14T09:14:00.000-08:00

[via Emergic.org]

There are many reasons why MMOGs make enviable businesses:
1. Recurring Revenues. Anyone who has ever sold software covets thepredictability of recurring revenues, particularly subscription revenuesthat are basically "good until cancel." Most of the leading MMOG businessesemploy some form of subscription pricing.
2. Competitive Moats. Warren Buffet is fond of saying he likes businesseswith castle-like moats (i.e., ones with high barriers to entry). As usersinvest more and more time into a persistent character, into an avatar, intoaccomplishments, into online relationships, and into the resultingreputation, the higher the costs to switch to an alternate platform.
3. Network Effects / Increasing Returns. There is no better online barrierto entry than a strong community. Witness how Amazon and Yahoo both failedto distract eBay users even when offering a free product. For most MMOGs,the more users a particular game has, the more compelling the experience isfor incremental users. This self-reinforcing form of Metcalfe's Law isalive and well in many MMOGs.
4. Real Competition. In the future, traditional software-based games willmerely be practice vehicles for the much more interesting endeavor ofmultiplayer competition. MMOGs allow for a sense of competitiveaccomplishment and provide vehicles for the human ego to be rewarded, all ofwhich drives extremely obsessive behavior.
5. Time Engaged. According to the previously mentioned Forbes article, "agood PC-based game has a lifespan of 30 hours of play; a good multiplayergame gets 20 hours in just a week." This puts MMOGs, from the perspectiveof today's users, on par with television in terms of time engaged.
6. Unlimited Complexity. In a world where other players are part of theuser experience, the number of permutations of experiences is quiterealistically limitless. From the relatively simple rule-sets and economiespresent in most MMOGs, astonishingly complex emergent behaviors arise. Thisoffers a stark contrast to previous interactive entertainment where the gamecan eventually be "beaten" by the user.
7. High Risk, But High Reward. The number one criticism of MMOGs is thatthey are "hit" businesses like Hollywood businesses. A closer look willreveal that the average successful MMOG has had a useful life of over fiveyears. What's more, sequels are amazingly popular. As such, it is notunrealistic for a title to last ten years. That said, there are many, manyMMOG efforts that fail to reach the break-even number of subscribersnecessary to have a positive return on investment. As with the entirehistory of finance, risk and reward remain correlated.

Blogs..adwords

2005-02-11T09:09:00.000-08:00

[from Slashdot]

Doug Nelson writes "Michael Buffington chose to build a weblog using highly automated content aggregation tools around a single keyword, asbestos, because of the high click through rate associated with the ad. 'The subject matter, while weighty and all that, is of little importance to me. It's not that I don't have opinions on asbestos and asbestos reform, because I do. The whole point of the site is to experiment with an idea. I built a tool that helps me aggregate topical news with the help of Google's Alert system. So far it works wonderfully. But there's a second motive as well. Right now asbestos reform and asbestos related litigation is on fire. Lawyers are paying anywhere from $15-100 per click through on Google ads. The second part of this big experiment is to see if I can capture some of that click through revenue while still providing a somewhat valid service to people who might arrive by search results.'"

Relaoding the path to digital freedom..part 1

2005-02-11T08:47:00.000-08:00

[via u-blog.net]

It is funny how sometimes History is surprising : coincidence are more present than we think.
One of the disappointment of our time is the time coïncidence of two human revolutions : Cell Phone and the Internet.
Mobile Phone system seemed to be just an iterative process of the century-old usage, the phone : nevertheless they have just been extraordinary successfull BUT have created a legacy Marketing Structure of prominent MOBILE OPERATOR (CELLCO) imported from the phone age.
Internet never aimed to be a massive users system BUT has finally revealed as the most robust, scalable and innovation fueled network stucture than humans have ever created.
The paradox is that the two revolution are strictly OPPOSITE in structure :
One is anarchic and decentralized vs. the other is centrally controlled and consistenly planned.
One is "End Point Centered" giving autonomy to the machines controlled by end-users vs. the other is "Network Centered" servicing people needs by carefully designed locking contracts.
These oppositions explain why all the primary attempts to merge the two environments failed : they took the most limitative path to go.
Internet world has overprovisionned the Server Part and recreate a telco model ("à la Mainframe") with giants such as Google or IBM : one of the most reason of that is the scarcity model of endpoint identifiers aka global IP adress that breaks the E2E Principle.
The cellcos has deliberately limited the capacity and functional autonomy of mobile and keep on marketing around the PHONE CONCEPT that is too much inconsciently embedded in people's mind as a "dumb" phoning system. They have also distorted the Internet by leveraging Walled Garden models, artificially made to keep people dependant of the French Minitel Model.
However, mobile phones has spread extraordinarly : they have destroyed the Space time limit of people communications. AND they have embedded in people's mind the CRUCIAL BREAKTHROUGH of a "Silicon Stuff" that follow people EVERYWHERE EVERYTIME, a point that Walkman never succeeded to do.

Changing Collaboration Tools

2005-02-11T08:41:00.000-08:00

[via Emergic.org]

Network World writes:
Ozzie says a changing world of online communication and collaboration, fueled by real-time tools such as instant messaging and wikis, could drive the evolution of online collaboration in any number of directions and users will have to consider if collaboration is best controlled by those at the edge of the network as opposed to centralized IT.
Ozzie said that for his kids, e-mail is dead. "They use IM. It is their e-mail. They only get e-mail from people they don't want to talk to."
He says the kids' actions show that users will assemble tools in terms of what works for them and what does not. "When [my kids] want to talk long distance they download Skype (a VoIP client). They experiment with blogs and wikis."
The point, he said, is that online collaboration happens at the edge of the network and not within centralized IT.

MasterCard Uses Cell Phones to Fight Fraud

2005-02-09T13:37:00.000-08:00

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/pcworld/20050209/tc_pcworld/119621

RSS ..Really Something Special ..

2005-02-08T13:15:00.000-08:00

[via VentureBlog]

RSS - Really Something Special?
By Kevin Laws on Internet Infrastructure

Is RSS for real, or is it today's Social Networking?
It is hard to travel Silicon Valley these days without hearing the term RSS. People who don't even know what the term means want to invest in it, create companies around it, or add it to their products. (VentureBlog's David Hornik correctly predicted the rise of RSS over a year ago). AskJeeves just purchased Bloglines this week, spurring more interest in the space.

Complete article at: http://www.ventureblog.com/articles/indiv/2005/001187.html

Verisign's plan

2005-02-08T13:02:00.000-08:00

[via Emergic.org]

Forbes writes:
[Verisign CEO] Sclavos is betting much of VeriSign's future on the growth in wireless. As wireless service providers rush to add services to their networks, and as people increasingly use cell phones and other wireless devices to communicate and transact business, VeriSign intends to provide the software that will make it all secure.
VeriSign's aim has always been to provide the infrastructure services needed so that companies can communicate and handle electronic commerce over the Internet as well as voice networks. But in the 1990s, its focus was to enable secure interactions between Web sites and consumers, secure e-mail and secure extranets.
Now, Sclavos' strategy is to bridge these voice and data services that enable business transactions--a move that will likely benefit the company's Telecom Infrastructure Group, which handles wireless and wireline signaling, database services as well as clearing and billing.

Blog..most popular word of 2004

2005-02-08T11:57:00.000-08:00

It's OfficialBlog was the most popular word of 2004, based on online lookups at the site of dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster; it's being added to the 2005 edition of the dictionary. Web-based journals were in the spotlight during the presidential election.

Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/zd/20050205/tc_zd/144867

some stats on symbian

2005-02-08T11:54:00.000-08:00

Symbian is the world's biggest producer of software for so-called smartphones, a new category of versatile phones that can have built-in music players and video recorders, and which run computer-like applications such as enterprise customer relationship software, car navigation programs and e-mail.
Today its software is the engine of some 20 million phones, available through 200 mobile operators around the world.

Market research group IDC forecasts 130 million smartphones will be sold in 2008 alone. Symbian receives between $5 and $7.25 for every phone that contains its software, depending on sales volumes.

'Podcasting' Lets Masses Do Radio Shows

2005-02-08T11:53:00.000-08:00

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050207/ap_on_hi_te/podcasting

Chinese portals hit by ban on horoscope advertising..Mobile messaging!!!

2005-02-08T11:40:00.000-08:00

Complete Story at: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ft/20050208/bs_ft/6dbd152079c311d9ba2a00000e2511c8

Some excerpts...

China's biggest internet portal has warned that revenues and profits will suffer sharp sequential falls this quarter after its business was hit by surprise moves by the state broadcasting administration and the dominant state-owned mobile telecom operator.

Sohu.com this week unveiled results showing revenues actually fell in the fourth quarter of last year compared with the previous three months - and forecast a further decline in sales and profits for January to March 2005. Netease releases its results later this month.
Sina, the biggest of the portal trio, said it was seeking ways to reduce its dependence on mobile phone messaging services after being taken by surprise by recent actions by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (Sarft) and operator China Mobile.

Sina is also suffering from moves by China Mobile, the country's biggest wireless telecoms operator, to change its billing process for multi-media message services (MMS). MMS can be much more elaborate than simple texting and are seen as a key source of future growth.
The billing change caused a "significant reduction in revenues" from MMS, Sina said, adding that further planned moves by China Mobile could help cut MMS revenues by half.

What websites do to TURN ON Teens ?

2005-02-08T08:30:00.000-08:00

[via Wired.com]

It begins with interactivity, Nielsen said.
"That seems to be the common denominator," said Nielsen, who for the study observed American and Australian teenagers using dozens of websites across a variety of genres. They want to be "doing something as opposed to just sitting and reading, which tends to be more boring and something they say they do enough of already in school."

Nielsen explained that the best interactive elements include message boards, polls, quizzes, the ability to ask questions of experts, and tools that let teens construct their own web pages.
Another element teens find attractive is the use of photographs and images that relieve text of the burden of communicating ideas, but that don't weigh down a page. And while adults don't like cluttered web pages or too much writing either, he added, they are significantly more tolerant of a heavier text-to-images ratio.

Teens are also much less willing than adults to stick around websites with useful content but poor presentation, Nielsen said.

"We saw that a lot in the study," he said. "After one or two pages, (teens) are ready to make their judgment. Adults aren't going to spend two hours, but they have more patience if they feel, 'I need this for my job or for my vacation.'"

ielsen pointed to several sites as examples of what teenagers like.
One was SparkNotes, which offers study guides on subjects from math to chemistry to SAT preparation. He explained that the teens in his study enjoyed the site's combination of useful information, uncluttered appearance and interactivity; its interface also made it easy for teens to find what they needed to complete school assignments.
Another example was Apple Computer's site, due to a clean presentation -- an appropriate amount of images and text presented on a white background -- and the ease with which teens were able to research future purchases.
"One of the things teens do (online) is a variant of e-commerce," Nielsen said. "I say variant because they might want to buy (a) product in a physical channel, but they do the research online. So it's important for companies that sell to teens that they have good descriptions."
Not all the sites teens like are trying to sell them things. Nielsen said sites like CSUMentor and TeensHealth both rated highly among the study's subjects because they smartly mixed information and presentation and didn't ask teens to work too hard.
"It just looks like it's not going to be very hard work to play on this website, and that's what pulls teens in," said Nielsen of CSUMentor. "It's not hard work. They maybe are kind of a little bit on the lazy side."
Other sites the study identified as teen-friendly include:
Community: createblog.com, MySpace.com, TeenChat.comEntertainment: RollingStone.com, CartoonNetwork.comGames: Real.com, GameFAQs.com, PlanetDreamcastContent: Lyrics.com, Ontario Consultants on Religious ToleranceShopping: LaCie.com, Wet SealSports: MLB.com, race-deZert.com
To Susanna Stern, an assistant professor at the University of San Diego who works regularly with teens, one of the most important factors in attracting teens to a website is making them feel respected.
"If you take teens seriously," Stern said, "they'll take you seriously."
Also important, she said, is enabling teens to explore their identity by providing them with an environment in which they can experiment with ideas of style, the way they talk, the way they dress and the way they think about the sensitive issues in their lives -- all anonymously.
But Stern said teens' need to be understood often leads them to worry less about privacy than do adults.
"It often surprises me how much teens are willing to self-disclose," said Stern, and "how much they are seeking ... validation or connection in this online setting."
And that means, she explained, that teens frequently look the other way when commercial sites ask for personal information, responding to the kinds of requests that drive many adults away.
"Young people are willing to overlook corporate intentions, or maybe not be aware of corporate intentions that ask for private information," she said. "My impression is that (it's because) they're so eager to be taken seriously."
The upshot, she said, is that teens appear not to worry that marketers are trying to take advantage of them.
"They're very savvy about advertising," she said, "but my sense is that they just don't care."

24 hours on Craigslist

2005-02-08T08:28:00.000-08:00

Wired news has a very interesting post:

For people who have successfully used the online überclassifieds marketplace known as craigslist to buy something, sell something, get a job, find a date or anything else, there is often a sense that they're in on a secret.
In part that's because of craigslist's rudimentary design -- no graphics, and simple text layouts that look like they could have been done by a 12-year-old.

But as Michael Ferris Gibson's new film, 24 Hours on Craigslist -- currently playing at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival -- demonstrates, there are a lot of other people in on the secret as well -- and their secrets may well be a tad more salacious than yours.
Gibson's film chronicles the outcome of more than 80 craigslist postings from a single day: Aug. 4, 2003. Ferris' eight film crews -- all found on craigslist -- followed people's stories from the beginning, in some cases mere minutes after midnight on Aug. 4, until the conclusion, sometimes days later.
Along the way, we're introduced to a bizarre cross section of craigslist users in search of the most mundane things -- think roommates and band members -- to the truly weird. And everywhere in between.
There is no question that craigslist, with more than 1.7 billion pageviews a month and a presence in nearly 100 cities worldwide, has changed the way many millions of people buy and sell things, meet people, and look for jobs and places to live. Yet at its core, it is just a classifieds service, and in many cases no wilder than what you might find in the ads in a New York or San Francisco alternative weekly newspaper.

Complete story at: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66530,00.html

www.24hoursoncraigslist.com adds:

In 1995 craigslist.org was born: a free, down-to-earth and uncensored bulletin board that revolutionized the ease and speed with which people could communicate, exchange goods and services, and create community. Primarily focusing on housing, jobs, items for sale and personal ads, the site soon became a hub for San Francisco's wired community.

2003. Craigslist is big. Really big. Over 1/3 of all Bay Area internet users utilize craigslist on a regular basis. Outside of the Bay Area, craigslist has spread to 31 cities across the globe, with no sign of slowing. In San Francisco alone, the site receives over 23,000 posts daily, with page views close to 29 million daily. With no advertising, no commercialization and only word-of-mouth promotion, craigslist has become a phenomenon. And it's still free.

Tagging

2005-02-07T13:22:00.000-08:00

Tagging [via Emergic.org]

Martin Tobias writes:
So a lot of people are trying to put a meta layer on top of the web and blogs and other types of data. Technorati with Tags is trying to aggregate blog entries, Flickr photos and del.icio.us entries. Technorati watchlists only search for the keyword you want in blog postings (just like typing in biodiesel on their search box). Del.icio.us serves up web and blog matches in reverse chronological order (and will automatically generate an RSS feed that matches). Del.icio.us only gives you bookmarks that its members have tabbed, they don't do any crawling. Then PubSub gets all the pings and does keyword searching much like Technorati (although the results are different yet again). Google takes web sites and blog entries (no flickr) and applies their page rank to the results.
So, which do I like better? Well it depends on what I am looking for. If I wanted a javascript sidebar that shows me the latest news/posts about biodiesel, I would stick with Technorati or PubSub since they do a better time with the real time posts. If I were looking for a good list of general biodiesel resources, especially the most authoritative SITES, I would use Google or maybe del.isio.us. Would be nice if I could take any or all of these lists and have them auto javascript sidebared for me. That would be a cool service.Dave Pell adds: "The content keeps moving out of the container. And you can search it and soon subscribe to it in different forms that meet your need. Want a personal news feed on everything anyone has to say about San Francisco? Fine. Want that to be limited to people who are describing travels in San Francisco. No problem. The poster is incented to label their content so you can find it. And the community will further label that content because, well, damn, that's just the sort of thing the community does."
Micro Persuasion writes: "Tags are a natural complement to search because they empower users to create structures that organize unstructured consumer-generated media. Last week I wrote about the need for marketers and communicators to monitor folksonomies. However, the online marketing opportunity here is actually much greater. As tagging takes off, the next step will be for all of these sites to monetize this content by launching contextual advertising programs, perhaps powered by Google Adsense. This will give the marketer new ways to reach engaged consumers by sponsoring tags across one or more sites that carry folksonomies. I call this 'Tagtextual Advertising' and it's a coming."
Russel Beattie writes:
It seems to me that tags should be, for the most part, universal. The question is how to do it and keep the usability which has popularized their usage to date?
One thought is this: If I say "bug" am I talking about the creature or the problem in my computer code? One way would be to do "combination" tags so that tags are ambiguous unless combined with other tags ("computer bug", "creature bug") - this is how we communicate as human beings no? I don't stop what I'm saying and give you some sort of universal definition, though admittedly I may point down at the ground or at my computer to give you some sort of context.
The other thought is to have each tag point to a universal definition of itself. I'm not talking about some sort of universal ontology organized in to some massive hierarchy. It's been tried before. I'm talking about just a simple dictionary definition out there to give people context. Think about a WikiPedia for tags that everyone can point to. Let's call it "Tagopedia". Now as I'm writing out my tags, I can include a URL like http://www.tagopedia.com/wiki/bug#computers if it's really important for me to make sure that everyone knows what I'm talking about. If there is no such entry on that page, well, it's a Wiki, so I can just go add it. I guess this could just piggyback on WikiPedia instead of creating yet another repository, but I like the idea of being able to tag something "/wiki/russellbeattie#1" as well. The most important bit is that these URLs aren't just identifiers, but actually resolve somewhere. Like pointing at the thing you're talking about, it gives tags and keywords context.
This it seems would go a long way towards the dream of the semantic web. You don't have to universally identify *everything* like in RDF, you just associate some keywords. Then suddenly it becomes much easier to organize, aggregate and search intelligently. [via David Weinberger] BurningBird adds:
I believe that ultimately interest in folksonomies will go the way of most memes, in that they're fun to play with, but eventually we want something that won't splinter, crack, and stumble the very first day it's released.
...no matter how many tricks you play with something like tags, you can only pull out as much 'meaning' as you put into them.
...the semantic web is going to be built 'by the people', but it won't be built on chaos. In other words, 100 monkeys typing long enough will NOT write Shakespeare; nor will a 100 million people randomly forming associations create the semantic web.Nova Spivack adds: "Imagine a folksonomy combined with an ontology -- a "folktology." In a folktology, users could instantly propose or modify ontological classes and properties in the same manner that they do with tags in tagging systems. The most popular ontological constructs (the most-instantiated classes, or slots on classes, for example) would "rise to the top" and self-amplify, while the less-instantiated ones would "fall to the bottom" over time. In this way an emergent, self-organizing, and self-pruning ontology could emerge within a community. Such a system would have the ease and adaptability of a folksonomy plus the semantic richness and formal structure of an ontology."

What's eduaction. :)

2005-02-07T10:47:00.000-08:00

A poor, ill educated man created billion dollar Reliance industry.
Two business graduates from Stanford and Wharton Business School, busy breaking it up.
That's education.

Wireless Business & Technology

2005-02-05T02:27:00.000-08:00

Wireless Business & Technology

US Mobile Data Market to Reach $1.5 billion by 2006

2005-02-05T02:22:00.000-08:00

US Mobile Data Market to Reach $1.5 billion by 2006

PRESS RELEASE: 2.4 billion Java handsets in the market by 2009

2005-02-05T02:18:00.000-08:00

PRESS RELEASE: 2.4 billion Java handsets in the market by 2009

Nice one...

2005-02-04T13:58:00.000-08:00

One day LOVE asked FRIENDSHIP, "why are you in the world when i am here?" Friendship smiled & said "TO SPREAD SMILES WHERE YOU LEAVE TEARS!!!

The Weblog Question

2005-02-03T10:13:00.000-08:00

[via informationweek.com]

People are starting Weblogs in growing numbers, but the owner of the content isn't always clear

Story at: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=4LIZMGIVEVVQ4QSNDBGCKHSCJUMEKJVN?articleID=59100462

Rand McNally Offers Traffic Info For Mobile Phones

2005-02-03T10:10:00.000-08:00

There you go, I remember discussing this a few days back with varun :)

[via yahoo.com]

Map publisher Rand McNally has launched a service that provides real-time traffic information for cellular phone users.

Rand McNally Traffic is a downloadable application that's available for Sprint PCS, Verizon Wireless, AT&T Wireless and AllTel subscribers. Once installed, the software can receive and display traffic information on accidents, congestion and lane and road closures.
The service, which covers 94 metro areas, also provides regional maps and information on public transit, weather conditions and sporting and concert events.

Rand McNally Traffic costs $3.99 a month on Sprint and Verizon, and is available to AT&T Wireless subscribers through its mMode service. Rand McNally Traffic was "coming soon" to AllTel subscribers.

Chinese Internet users expected to reach 134 mln by late 2005

2005-02-03T10:01:00.000-08:00

[via yahoo.com]

BEIJING (AFP) - The number of Internet users in China will hit 134 million by the end of 2005, consolidating its position as the second largest market in the world after the United States, a research firm said.

Complete story at: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/afp/20050203/tc_afp/chinainternet

Rojo ..RSS + Social Networking

2005-02-02T21:02:00.000-08:00

[via Emergic.org]

Technology Review writes:
San Francisco's Rojo is one of dozens of RSS aggregator companies. Like some of its competitors, Rojo has an RSS feed search function and gives readers the ability to flag stories they find important or interesting. But in enabling users to draw on the insights of friends, family, colleagues, and others in their social networks, Rojo departs from most of the competition. Rojo users can invite others to sign up for Rojo accounts; those accounts are linked, much like the accounts on the popular website Friendster. Rojo users can see what RSS feeds the members of their networks are reading and which stories they are flagging. Network popularity also affects the ranking of results when the user searches RSS feeds. "We all depend on our community for content discovery," says Chris Alden, Rojo's cofounder and CEO. "Any successful media service has to tap into that."
Alden says Rojo is the first company to combine RSS aggregation with social networking, but it probably won't be the last. Rojo is one of a growing number of companies turning social networks into a tool for better managing and sharing online content. Of course, the makers of longer-standing RSS aggregators like Bloglines predictably point out that Rojo is missing a lot of features that their own services provide and charge that Rojo's website isn't easy or intuitive to use.

News.com adds:
Rojo, a San Francisco start-up in the blog aggregation business, "is wrapping a communications capability around content consumption," said Andreessen, Web browser pioneer, Rojo investor and Opsware chairman. "And the killer app for the Internet is and always has been communication."
Like Google's PageRank algorithm and other search engine technologies, Rojo examines the link structure of the so-called blogosphere in order to call attention to blog items and feeds that have proved popular with other readers. Along the same lines, it follows e-commerce sites like Amazon.com in recommending related feeds.
And like social networking sites such as Friendster, Rojo narrows down the community of blog readers to those within a user-defined network of friends and associates.

Pure Entrepreneurs

2005-02-02T16:20:00.000-08:00

[via Emergic.org]
Boston Globe has an article by Scott Kirsner:

Pure entrepreneurs are loopy and obsessed. They have a vision of the future, and while others are casting their lines into the water to see what will bite, pure entrepreneurs are jumping over the gunwales and swimming after the white whale.
Pure entrepreneurship, by my definition, is often driven by a belief that a major shift is coming -- and thus it's hard to find customers who already understand that they need the product a pure entrepreneur is developing.

Pure entrepreneurship is often a solo enterprise, funded by credit cards, consulting projects, and second mortgages. It sparks revolutions and spawns big companies.

''Something just clicks, and you say, 'This is worth doing, and I think other people will be interested,' " Dan Bricklin says. ''It hits you that there's a need, and that pursuing it is worth the risk."

Questions for Entrepreneurs

2005-02-02T16:19:00.000-08:00

[Via Emergic.org]

Chris Wand's Questions for Entrepreneurs (June)

This is one of those lists which no entrepreneur should do without. Every now and then, it is a good idea to review these questions and answer them for the venture that you are doing. Better still, the entire management team should independently answer these questions and then compare notes.

1) WHAT IS YOUR VISION?
- What is your big vision?
- What problem are you solving and for whom?
- Where do you want to be in the future?

2) WHAT IS YOUR MARKET OPPORTUNITY AND HOW BIG IS IT?
- How big is the market opportunity you are pursuing and how fast is it growing?
- How established (or nascent) is the market?
- Do you have a credible claim on being one of the top two or three players in the market?

3) DESCRIBE YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE
- What is your product/service?
- How does it solve your customer's problem?
- What is unique about your product/service?

4) WHO IS YOUR CUSTOMER?
- Who are your existing customers?
- Who is your target customer?
- What defines an "ideal" customer prospect?
- Who actually writes you the check?
- Use specific customer examples where possible.

5) WHAT IS YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION?
- What is your value proposition to the customer?
- What kind of ROI can your customer expect by using buying your product/service?
- What pain are you eliminating?
- Are you selling vitamins, aspirin or antibiotics? (I.e. a luxury, a nice-to-have, or a need-to-have)

6) HOW ARE YOU SELLING?
- What does the sales process look like and how long is the sales cycle?
- How will you reach the target customer? What does it cost to "acquire" a customer?
- What is your sales, marketing and distribution strategy?
- What is the current sales pipeline?

7) HOW DO YOU ACQUIRE CUSTOMERS?
- What is your cost to acquire a customer?
- How will this acquisition cost change over time and why?
- What is the lifetime value of a customer?

8) WHO IS YOUR MANAGEMENT TEAM?
- Who is the management team?
- What is their experience?
- What pieces are missing and what is the plan for filling them?

9) WHAT IS YOUR REVENUE MODEL?
- How do you make money?
- What is your revenue model?
- What is required to become profitable?

10) WHAT STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT ARE YOU AT?
- What is your stage of development? Technology/product? Team? Financial metrics/revenue?
- What has been the progress to date (make reality and future clear)?
- What are your future milestones?

11) WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR FUND RAISING?
- What funds have already been raised?
- How much money are you raising and at what valuation?
- How will the money be spent?
- How long will it last and where will the company "be" on its milestones progress at that time?
- How much additional funding do you anticipate raising & when?

12) WHO IS YOUR COMPETITION?
- Who is your existing & likely competition?
- Who is adjacent to you (in the market) that could enter your market (and compete) or could be a co-opted partner?
- What are their strengths/weaknesses?
- Why are you different?

13) WHAT PARTNERSHIPS DO YOU HAVE?
- Who are your key distribution and technology partners (current & future)?
- How dependent are you on these partners?

14) HOW DO YOU FIT WITH THE PROSPECTIVE INVESTOR?
- How does this fit w/ the investor's portfolio and expertise?
- What synergies, competition exist with the investor's existing portfolio?

15) OTHER
- What assumptions are key to the success of the business?
- What "gotchas" could change the business overnight? New technologies, new market entrants, change in standards or regulations?
- What are your company's weak links?

2005-02-02T16:18:00.000-08:00

[via Emergic.org]

Apple's iPod Platform

Steve Gillmor writes that Apple is organising around the iPod:

1. The iPod Shuffle
Though most of us boomers can't fathom the idea that "life is random" is a feature, the Shuffle's secret sauce is its Playlist mode, turned off by default. Attention: iPodder developers-if you develop SmartPlaylist functionality in your aggregators, you can use attention and other explicit metadata to program iTunes to download, sort, and sequence podcasts while you sleep. Remember, the iPod is the delivery system, the data cache at the end of the pipeline. Of course, if some smart 3rd-party vendor adds a microphone that clips onto the Shuffle, it's a data recorder hanging around your neck.

2. The Mini

For podcasters, this is a $500 studio-in-a-box. GarageBand now supports multitrack recording (eight channels each with their own eq and effects) and the ability to create your own loops. Combine GarageBand with Smart Playlists and slice and dice your podcasts up into "songs" that you can sequence and, more importantly, pull "quotes" for inclusion in other podcasts. Once again, remember that the iPod is the endpoint of the production environment. The Mini is the studio, the mastering lab, where you cut the virtual grooves between the tracks of these next-generation podcasts.

3. "Tiger"

The next version of OS/X will load just fine on the Mini, too. It comes with Automator, which, if hooked up to GarageBand, would provide an automated way to refactor existing long-form podcasts into this new track model. Automator could also build consoles to automate real-time, radio-style production with multiple audio inputs, taking advantage of Tiger's enhanced ability to handle multiple virtual audio devices.

4. iWork and iLife

Keynote, Pages, and iMovie are morphing into a podcast-to-video porting environment. Use Automator consoles to load in podcast segments and annotate them with links, iPhoto transitions, and attention-influenced intelligent caching of related pod- and Mini-casts, and you're well on your way to a read/write version of the RSS-powered multimedia Web. While DRMForSure coddles the cartel, the iPod Platform plays to the customers in the seats.

XML based Universal Business Language

2005-02-02T16:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/05/14/UBL10

A morning in Africa

2005-02-02T16:11:00.000-08:00

[via emergic.org]
Atanu Dey quotes a wonderful short poem with plenty to think about

It is morning in Africa and
As the sun rises over the plains
The gazelle awakens knowing that
If it cannot outrun the fastest lion
It will be dead.
It is morning in Africa and
The lion awakens knowing that
If it cannot outrun the slowest gazelle
It will die.

It is morning in Africa and you had better start running.

Intuitive Design

2005-02-02T15:54:00.000-08:00

Source: Emergic.org

[via Amy Wohl] Jaerd Spoll asks: "What does it mean, from a design standpoint, when someone desires a design to be intuitive?"

In our research, we've discovered that there are two conditions where users will tell you an interface seems `intuitive' to them. It only takes meeting one of the two conditions to get the user to tell you the design is intuitive. When neither condition is met, the same user will likely complain that the interface feels "unintuitive".
Condition #1:
Both the current knowledge point and the target knowledge point are identical. When the user walks up to the design, they know everything they need to operate it and complete their objective.

Condition #2:
The current knowledge point and the target knowledge point are separate, but the user is completely unaware the design is helping them bridge the gap. The user is being trained, but in a way that seems natural.

The biggest challenge in making a design seem intuitive to users is learning where the current and target knowledge points are. What do users already know and what do they need to know? To build intuitive interfaces, answering these two questions is critical.

For identifying the user's current knowledge, we favor field studies. Watching potential users, in their own environments, working with their normal set of tools, and facing their daily challenges, gives us tremendous insight in what knowledge they will have and where the upper bounds are. Teams receive a wealth of valuable information with every site visit.

For identifying necessary target knowledge for important tasks, usability testing is a favorite technique of ours. When we sit users in front of a design, the knowledge gap becomes instantly visible.

Moreover Technologies Provides MSN With RSS Feed Search and Access Capability

2005-02-02T14:04:00.000-08:00

RSS Search -- Unlike other RSS search tools that only search across information about the RSS feed, Moreover enables users to find relevant content by providing the capability to search against the full content of the originating posts.

Complete article at: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050202/sfw004_1.html

Interesting article

2005-02-02T13:22:00.000-08:00

By Russ:

http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008231.html

Have you looked at your phone today

2005-02-02T10:13:00.000-08:00

Russell Beattie presents a really interesting case: http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008243.html

By Russ:

This is a pretty simple question. Did you look at your phone today? In other words, did you use it for something else other than making phone calls? What did you do? Did you just look up a contact in order to make a phone call? Did you check the time? Did you get or send an SMS Message? Did you take a picture? Did you view a web site? Did you play a game?
I always make the distinction between "looking at" your phone verses simply saying "using" it because it helps define the area that I'm mostly concentrating on. There are voice services and VoIP opportunities out there, I just don't know much about them (except for the little that I've written about here). What I'm mostly interested in is what happens when people are looking at their phone. This is the core of the "Shibuya Epiphany" right? So it's an importnt distinction to make.
At the end of the day I ask myself these questions above. Lately I haven't been looking at my phone much and it makes me wonder why not. I can make excuses like I've been at my desk more and haven't needed to use my phone, or there hasn't been a specific mobile context which demanded the use of my phone. This may be true, but I don't need much of a context to use my computer do I? I can browse the web, check email (my primary uses lately), write, play games, use IM, or a whole host of other apps. I can and do spend hours on my computer without needing any sort of excuse or context to do it. Television is also like this. I can sit down at my TV and spend hours, and I don't need to be much more than "in the mood" to watch television. What makes this connected multimedia device in my pocket any different?
I've got what is arguably the most powerful mobile phone in the world in my pocket. It's a 3G device with a variety of communications and media capabilities, yet it sat there for the past 72 hours with nary a button press. In *my* pocket. Why? Obviously there are other devices and offline activities (sleep, mostly) which are competing for my loving attention. And honestly there's also really a dearth of apps and content for the phone - I've played with most of what's available already (but that hasn't stopped me with fiddling with all that stuff before). But I think what the real reason I haven't used my phone is this idea of context.
Mobile phones still need that killer app which takes out the need for context. They need to get to the point where they are less devices that you use while out and about, and considered more destinations in their own right. In other words, the current crop of apps are mostly created with that "mobile context" in mind. So you could say I haven't looked at my phone lately because I haven't been moving much. This is wrong. It's limiting a platform which can potentially do anything that a small computer with broadband access can do. The person who comes up with the app that compels a person to use their phone without considering the fact that it's a phone is going to have a killer app on their hand. One could argue the opposite, that mobile phone apps *should* only be used in the mobile context, but I think that's too narrow minded.
Anyways, these are my thoughts on a daily basis. If you're developing mobile products or services, you have to ask yourself the same questions if you go a few days without messing with your phone. Why? And what can I do to change that?

Content Aggregating.. Is it legal ?

2005-02-02T09:59:00.001-08:00

http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008249.html

Content Aggregating.. Is it legal ?

2005-02-02T09:59:00.000-08:00

By Russell Beattie:

Copyright law is very simple: You create something and its yours. It's not a trademark, or a patent, but a copyright. It's automatically given to you when you create something and if anyone wants to use your content for any reason, they need to ask you. Things like the Creative Commons license and the Gnu license *do not* supersede this basic right. You create something and its yours and you get to do what you want with it, but others need to ask. Period. I see developers all the time get confused about this - they wonder if they can change a license on their work after they've published it. It's *YOUR* copyright, you can do *whatever* you want with it. Licenses are for others.

So this guy is basically saying that all commercial aggregators are illegal, and I think he's right. That includes My Yahoo, BlogLines, MyWireService, etc. You can't take for granted the fact that the content is out there in an RSS format made for syndication. It doesn't matter. In reality it's no more or less formatted than these words are right now. If you want to republish or use someone else's copyrighted material, you have to get permission. Period. That's how it works, digitally packaged up or not. And it doesn't matter if the aggregator is free or not, if it is re-publishing the content (i.e. not from the original source) it's against copyright law.

And again a few months ago:
I can put ads on this site because it's all my content, but on a site with a bunch of external feeds - several of which are marked for Personal Use Only? That doesn't seem either right or legal. The whole idea, actually, of putting ads on other people's content just doesn't seem right. I'm not the only one. Anyone else besides me notice that neither Bloglines, Technorati or Feedster have advertisements? That's nice, but how are these sites going to make money? And how different is aggregating RSS feeds from what Google does (aggregating HTML pages)? I mean, they put ads on a summary of my pages, just like an RSS feed. They also have an archive of my site online as well, which is against my personal copyright of this site, but no one seems to mind just yet. There seems to be this craze for organizing and displaying all the info out there for profit - but I wonder if that's enough "added value" to justify charging for that service. I guess it is, as Technorati, Feedster and NewsGator have all gotten funding.

I wonder how long you can add value to a free service and charge someone money for it? I guess we bottle water, right?

Complete post @ http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008249.html

Solution to growing content..personalization, filtering

2005-02-02T09:25:00.000-08:00

Some interesting thoughts by Russell Beattie:

Something dawned on me while reading that Gawker has launched a couple more weblogs including LifeHacker. It looked pretty interesting, so I signed up. In doing so, however, I started questioning the business model of these sorts of blogs. What happens when all the niches have been filled? And what happens when we're all using our aggregators for most of our online reading?
Then I started to think about the coming advertisements we're going to see in RSS feeds. There's already some sites out there doing it, and I assume it'll become more common soon. I started realizing some of the effort I put into some posts lately to drive traffic, but how for the most part I still use this blog for personal rants, etc.
What's happening is that online content is becoming a series of single serving content bits, sent around and filtered in a variety of ways. It's the same way that online music stores like iTunes have pushed singles back to the forefront again. Remember when you used to buy singles on records, and then it became a waste and you just bought the whole album? But now kids just buy the one song they like and don't waste money on the rest. Those that really like the song will explore the rest of that artists catalog, but for the majority, the one song is fine.
Weblog posts are like that as well, no? Back when I first started blogging, I modeled my blog software on Radio Userland's style. One page per day, with # anchors on the different posts of that day. Eventually as I continued to write, I decided that since my posts were generally longer, needed titles, and usually completely unrelated to anything else on that day, I switched to one post-one html page like Moveable Type, or WordPress. This works well for comments as well - that first post becomes the beginning of a discussion, and I don't have to worry whether my readers have weblogs or not to respond.
When the post goes out over RSS, however, it's completely devoid of all context. It's just my content in a self-contained post. Right now I imagine most people continue to read each post in sucession, as an easy way to keep up to date with a weblog they happen to like. However, as the number of RSS feeds increases, we're going to need filtering even on the blogs we've subscribed to! (Those information sources we've ostensibly filtered already by adding them to your aggregator). I've got 300+ weblogs in my aggregator (you can see them in my favorites page).

This is already becoming hard to manage, especially if I happen to skip a few days.
What's going to start happening is that I'll be looking to pick and choose the content via filters or searches or whatever new system we come up with tomorrow like tags. Desktop search for weblogs? The problem is that unlike the web search engines which point to individual websites that are able to monetize the traffic with banner and text-ads, a blog desktop search would be pointing at just your internal cache. That site may have a click-though to the original site in order to read the content, or, as is more common, the RSS feed has the entire content of the post and there's no reason to go back to the website. Thus you have the per-post RSS adverts.
But what are ads other than someone else paying for the content you get to read for free? Is that square inch of space on your aggregator worth something to you? Maybe we're entering the age of micropayments finally. They didn't make sense before, but now that we've all started to deal with online content not as "sites" to visit, but as "posts" to read, there's going to be pressure on the system like there is in the music world, to monetize the singles rather than the bundle.
Would you pay a third of a cent to read this article? I mean $0.003 doesn't seem like a whole lot of money, no? My posts get about 10,000 individual readers a day, which would bring me $30 a day. About the same as the $30 a day that Google AdSense is delivering me, except that my readers would be happier without ads... Now how this system would work and how to prevent it from being gamed, I don't know. But the thing I'm pointing out is the macro-view of online textual content following the similar route as music. I think it's an interesting observation (and probably one that's been made 1000 times before, but I just grokked it, so it's cool to me...)

And the coolest bit about this stuff? Singles and Posts fit *really* well on mobile phones. :-)

RSS/Blogs -- The best future marketing strategy

2005-02-01T11:26:00.000-08:00

Found an article on the web:

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is The Best Internet Marketing Strategy to Pursue in 2005, Say Tech Pundits VALLEY VILLAGE, Calif., Feb. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- As marketers are preparing their strategies for 2005, the Internet is taking center stage. According to eMarketer, web content syndication and corporate blogs are key internet marketing strategy developments for 2005 and the integration of RSS within MyYahoo has helped promote these technologies. The Pew Internet and the American Life project shows that blog readership jumped a full 58% in the last year with 32 million Americans now getting their news and information from blogs. Figures like these have prompted many businesses to start a corporate blog. The Blog Business Summit held in Seattle last week focused on the on the many benefits of corporate blogs. This increase in blogging and blog readership kick started a technology that has been around for some time -- syndication of content. Six million Americans now use newsreaders to get their news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich websites as it is posted online. These are the early adopters marketers prize so highly -- veteran Internet users, who are well educated and spend time reading online. Although companies realize they have to embrace Internet marketing to reach their audiences today, many marketers don't fully understand this new technology. A new book by Rok Hrastnik, e-commerce Manager for Studio Moderna, the leading Central and Eastern European direct marketing company, and editor of Marketing Studies, explains it all in easy-to-understand English. "Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of Real Simple Syndication -- a marketers guide to understanding and taking advantage of RSS," goes through every question you might want to ask about web content strategy and syndication -- and then some. "RSS will become a critical tool for marketers, yet today most marketers still 'don't get' it," says Alex Barnett of Microsoft UK. "This guide is exactly what is needed to close this knowledge gap. It's the most comprehensive I've seen on using RSS as a marketing tool." "Understanding the importance of Internet content delivery is the key to unlocking your Internet business success," says Hrastnik. "Chances are more than half of your email subscribers aren't receiving or reading your messages anymore." Double Click, a company that delivers millions of email messages for its clients, reports that their average open rate is only 34.3% and the click through rate is 8.3%. "Your business suffers when you don't maximize your content delivery efforts," says Hrastnik. Blogging and syndicating your content can find new audiences, increase your readership, drive more traffic to your website, increase the response to your marketing messages and improve your search engine placement, says Sally Falkow, Internet Marketing Strategist at Expansion +. Falkow contributed the case studies on how blogs and RSS feeds affect search placement and online brand awareness. "Corporate blogs with news feeds are the most effective Internet marketing strategy right now," says Falkow. "One client went from zero page one results to over 100 in four months in the fiercely competitive Voice over IP market. As search marketing gets more and more competitive, and pay per click costs rise, blogging and news feeds will become a key marketing strategy." Savvy marketers will be reading "Unleash the Power of RSS" before they go into strategy meetings this month.

J2ME device listing

2005-01-29T18:06:00.000-08:00

Complete listing of the available J2ME devices

http://developers.sun.com/techtopics/mobility/device/device

Hosteller vs dayski .. excerpt from Abhinav's blog

2005-01-06T02:06:00.000-08:00

Found this really cool post at my friend's blog...for all those who have stayed in the hostel, this really means a lot

-----In the words of Dr. Reddy

A Hosteller:

Is supposed to stay in hostel for atleast for 6 days a week, even if it is a 5 day working week.
Should never get up before the Lunch is about to be served. (Make it around 12 at noon)
Shouldn't leave any opportunity to hunt down the lunch-boxes of any of the dayschi's.
Should be able to be awake all thru the night, even if there's no need to do so.
Ought to have a Nickname
Should be amongst the last ones to enter the classroom
Has to develop a capability of sitting in the canteen day-in and day-out, without bothering over the petty issues over who'll pay, at the end of the day
Would have attended more marriages in the hostel, than the number even attended altogether in whole life
Wouldn't be the one to let go of any dayschi's, as and when the opportunity comes
The notes are never meant to be in order for a hosteller
Would be running around the house of the prof, the night before the exam, to get any clue of what's going to be the pattern of the exam
Will surely not have all the course with him the day before the exam, and would be seeking help either from a dayschi, or a girl hosteller (Ahem! Ahem!) [from a boy in case of a girl hosteller]
Should be accustomed to play all sorts of games & sports, even if he knows nothing about it
Should have a heavily inclined bias towards fellow group-members, as compared to other hostellers, and especially dayschi's
Ought to have a clear, but deniable bias towards the other sex
Must have atleast one case of kaatofying of his/her fellow mates
Should be able to prove his innocence as and when caught into the acts of unfairness
Has to have such a rapport that all the dayschi's should cater to his/her proposal, whenever there's a decision to be taken for the whole class
Should identify a room, strictly other than his own, to consider his own for all the acts of life
Should be able to tell the stories of his hostel life long after he's out of it
Dare not regret that he was a hosteller some time
Shouldn't care that its already 22nd law, and its still going on
Would consider his hostel time as the best time of his life
Wouldn't fail to give a comment on this post/blog
Would be eagerly waiting now what a dayschi's laws would include.

Now that its enough for the hostellers, and its clear that the laws for hostellers are never gonna end, we should get over to the traits of a dayschi. It is a well-known fact that for hostellers consider 1+1=11, when it comes to standing up against the dayschi's. I'll take the liberty of calling 1+1=11 here as well, and so, the immutable laws for dayschi's would be-

A dayscholar:
1. Loves to attend classes, and moreso, loves to go back home
11. Would fear going in for a marriage party, and wouldn't bother for anything happening after 8 in the evening.
11+1. Doesn't care for the college after passing out of it
11+11. Would hate anyone calling him a "dayschi"

Hello Google!

2005-01-04T22:20:00.000-08:00

Well the first instance I saw that google acquired a company picassa, myself and varun tried to get a hang of what the hell google would do with this! Guess I found my anser today when I tried to copy a image to my blog, it directed me to BloggerBot...

" Just use Hello to send your pictures to BloggerBot. BloggerBot will automatically resize your JPG pictures, add your captions, and publish your pictures to the Web. "

You don't have to resize pictures by hand, transfer files, format HTML posts, or even find a place to host your images - Hello does all the work for you. And, it's totally free.

Blogging making waves in the US

2005-01-04T22:10:00.000-08:00

A recent report by Pew Internet and American Life Project talks about Blogging in US:
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_blogging_data.pdf

Few key points from the report are:

- Blog readership shoots up 58% in 2004
- 6 million Americans get news and information fed to them through RSS aggregators. But 62% of online Americans do not know what a blog is !
- 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use the internet say they have created a blog or web-based diary. That represents more than 8 million people. - 27% of internet users say they read blogs, a 58% jump from the 17% who told us they were blog readers in February. This means that by the end of 2004 32 million Americans were blog readers. Much of the attention to blogs focused on those that covered the recent political campaign and the media. And at least some of the overall growth in blog readership is attributable to political blogs. Some 9% of internet users said they read political blogs "frequently" or "sometimes" during the campaign.
- 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online. This is a first-time measurement from our surveys and is an indicator that this application is gaining an impressive foothold.
- The interactive features of many blogs are also catching on: 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs.
- At the same time, for all the excitement about blogs and the media coverage of them, blogs have not yet become recognized by a majority of internet users. Only 38% of all internet users know what a blog is. The rest are not sure what the term "blog" means.

I also found blogger demographics interesting...

Blog creators are more likely to be:
• Men: 57% are male
• Young: 48% are under age 30
• Broadband users: 70% have broadband at home
• Internet veterans: 82% have been online for six years or more
• Relatively well off financially: 42% live in households earning over $50,000
• Well educated: 39% have college or graduate degrees

Blog posters

More than one-in-ten internet users (12%) say they have posted material or comments on others’ blogs. That represents more than 14 million people and is a threefold increase from April 2003 when we first asked a question about those who contribute to others’ blogs. Many of those posters themselves have blogs and a quarter of young adult internet users (those 18-29) have posted to other blogs.

Readership of political blogs
Just under one-in-ten internet users (9%) said they regularly or sometimes read political blogs during the campaign such as the Daily Kos or TalkingPoints Memo or Instapundit: 4% said they did so regularly and 5% said they did so sometimes.

Why weren't we warned, aggrieved India asks ??

2005-01-01T15:42:00.000-08:00

"My dear, it was a Sunday. Time was taken by the officer to get ready and get into the car -- but there was no delay.". Oh Boy !!! what's going on here.

Yes I am talking about the recent Tsunami that has claimed over 140,000 lifes at present with around 5 million more homeless. The above statement is from our honorable Home Ministry's secretary in charge of disaster management, AK Rastogi as told to Reuters. Can somebody tell me what's going on here ? How could some f***** OFFICER knowing the potential possible impact of this catastrophe on the lives of people take time to GET READY.. or was he dumb enough that he took his time searching for a lexicon just to be able to roughly interpret the warning message with terms like earthquake, tsunami ..clearly out of his/her vocabulary.

Here's the excerpt from the news article on Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/977779.cms
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The waves struck Indonesia, Thailand and then submerged an air force base at Car Nicobar, 1,200 km from the mainland. Finally, minutes before the deadly waters struck, the sea began to rapidly recede from India's eastern shore. In some places, children scurried onto the beach to pick up shells.

Faxes were sent between government departments, but still no warning was given to the public. Finally the tsunami struck, with devastating effect. "At every stage, there was a shrinking window of opportunity to warn people. But nothing happened," said Barun Mitra of Liberty Institute, a New Delhi-based think-tank.

"A country that hopes to run the call centres of the world could not call its own people." India's grief over Sunday's tsunami has not yet given way to anger, with most people too stunned by the awesome power of nature to blame their government. But the media are beginning to ask the question -- was the bureaucracy fatally complacent?

Reports say the top brass of the Indian Air Force knew their Nicobar air base had been submerged atleast an hour before the waves struck the mainland coast.

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Is Skweezing content bad? Or how people get the wrong impression

2004-12-30T21:29:00.000-08:00

Article can be found at:
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=3849

Podcasting for cellphones ..Well Almost

2004-12-30T14:49:00.000-08:00

Podcasting is already starting to make some big waves in the iPOD community. Also MS mobile mentions of it being used with MS windows based smart phones. However, due to limitations in memory and bandwidth, it might be a little while before it becomes possible to transmit .mp3 podcasts to cellphones wirelessly without the desktop.

Just a simple thought..Could having some simple client functionality at the wireless device which transforms text RSS feeds to audio (or maybe a set of PPT frames to a video) generate an experience similar to podcasts ? I had talked this previously with Varun and Sunil but guess this will make much more sense now (after the user acceptance of podcasts is really showing some heat) . I am thinking of something similar to speakeasy.com which has the functionality to convert text to audio in different pitches.

Normally the feeds available on podcast are also available in text. Thus, another interesting thing could be possibly at the server side try to determine the approximate pitch of the audio file and then send the decibel value with the text RSS feed to the client. In this way the audio convertor at client could possibly try to adjust its voice differently for every different RSS feed, thus possibly creating a similar experience to the original podcast.

MS mobile feeds

2004-12-30T01:18:00.000-08:00

Companies have started offering different set of feeds for mobile phones (no images, minimal text) along with the regular web based feeds. I came across one such offered by MS mobiles: Compare the two:
http://xml.msmobiles.com/
and http://xml.msmobiles.com/mobile/

Really Simple Mobile Surfing

2004-12-29T14:23:00.000-08:00

Came across this interesting news article:

http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=101226

Talks about how RSS could revolutionize the content services on mobile phones..Some interesting things talked about in this article are:

One problem with the development of the mobile Internet has been an overdependence on technical jargon and terms that are meaningless to consumers. But RSS is so simple, so easily described or managed as "subscriptions" or "updates" or "news feeds", and so flexible, that it could become the standard for information delivery to mobile devices, and make the mobile Internet an integral part of people's lives, or at least much more integral than it is today.

The real breakthrough here would be to develop a mobile RSS reader designed for the non-technically inclined, then support it with a Web-based management tool so users could maintain their subscriptions and update their reader over the air. It could be branded by a carrier (or whoever, really), and made to fit in to their existing content portals, and the reader software could be given a simple UI based around subscriptions or some other easily digestible paradigm

MocoNews thinks AOL might be up to something like this, based on a job posting for a development position there in "Wireless RSS".

RSS makes a lot of sense for the mobile space. It lets content be preloaded, taking out the waiting time inherent in browsing on many of today's 2G networks. Content providers could throw nearly anything into an RSS feed, and users could have it stored locally on their handset. Not just news or blog updates, but things like movie listings or sports scores, and even group messaging. It's also great because as much as the content can be self-contained, it can also be a jumping-off point for a browsing session. Say a user opens up the movie listings, and finds something they want to see. They click a link in the showtime entry, and they're taken to the ticketing provider so they can buy a seat. Click a link in a score update, and they;re taken to a content provider's page with live play-by-play.Part of the challenge in this is getting content providers to make this sort of information available in RSS.

This, of course, isn't a challenge for AOL, which owns several properties like Moviefone and CityGuide where it's got content it can port to the format, and it's also got considerable stroke with third-party providers to get them onboard.

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