I attended this session by Google on Ad-Innovation, where they spoke extensively about Gadgets and  other innovation on Youtube etc.  If Google Docs is Google’s attempt at hitting at Microsoft (albeit a VERY long shot), Gadgets (IMHO) is aimed square at Yahoo! by hurting their biggest stronghold (rich media & innovation) by adding longevity (users can save ads) and no hosting/serving costs in a bidded marketplace.

Engagement is clearly the new benchmark.  The Live platform is rife with gadgets developed for it and given that these can integrate across the platform on Spaces or Messenger or any other catchment area owned by Microsoft…the only person missing this party is Yahoo!

Given their dependance on rich media (and the possible impact), it will be interesting to see how they comeback.

Share This

Contrary to popular belief the concept of a free lunch does exist….we call it freeware!  

Share This

If you happen to be of the first kind, i can confidently say that you gladly double up as a sysadmin to friends and family, not just for “best practices” / must have software, but more importantly during emergencies where computers refuse to work…nothing can be more frustrating than providing ‘blind’ telephone support and dealing with error messages that you’ve never encountered before.

Our pad in Gurgaon was pretty hooked up…a monster desktop, 3 laptops, 2 windows mobile computers, 2 smartphones and a long long list of peripheral devices hooked up around these…goes without saying that almost every gadget had multiple forms of connectivity with any/all other devices (wifi, bluetooth, usb, firewire)… and for any ideas i may have had, De had the ability to bring it to life….while we weren’t close to Googleplex capability, we’d easily excite any technology enthusiast in the region…

The most convenient mode of controlling a device on any network is when you can browse the device in first person…and essentially thats what “Remote Desktop Control” is all about. While the best application for local devices on a network is ‘Windows Remote Desktop Connection’, the best tool i’ve used to playing sysadmin for my folks back home is Crossloop.
It’s pretty light (couple of MB), extremely simple to use, doesn’t sap precious system resources nor cause conflicts with other programs running on your computer. I’ve been able to run all sorts of tasks remotely, without any issues and would strongly reccomend this to anyone looking for a remote screen sharing solution.

–
Update 1:
i just found out about remote desktop sharing via Windows Live Messenger (the process is outlined below) …however fails to work with folks on the Reliance network…

Share This

The internet is the world’s biggest democracy…i first came up with that line back in 2004 when i was writing my SoP for an eBusiness Management course for a school in england…i didn’t go due to a multitude of reasons, but the SoP really helped me crystallize my thoughts…and this was my opening statement…

The Internet has no parallel, it is the world biggest community (11.5% of world population)*, the world’s biggest marketplace (740 million users), and is growing and evolving everyday. We have witnessed the social implications it has had on our lives and how it has revolutionised the way we do business. Today, we are witnessing the second Internet revolution, the era of Wireless Networking. This will increase the reach and growth of the Internet making it a more central part of how we live and operate. I am driven by my passion for the Internet, and am decided on being a part of this global movement, that continues to add value to our lives.

That was 2004, 3 years in a conventional landscape (30 in cyberspace)…those numbers have already clawed up to a billion users globally (15% of global population…growing at 10% a year)…media moguls across the globe are now watching the wireless revolution evolve and attain critical mass…wi-fi and wi-lan are available in india, mobile access continues to grow at 5MM new users in india alone, mobile VAS revenues exceed P2P… we are all witnessing faster evolution of our species thanks to the ever widening proliferation of media and technology…the key trend we’re seeing is, the company that builds the best ecosystem, that allows for the fairest democracy, and that allows the user to be the real winner will eventually win…
Google made online advertising democratic when they first launched ad-sense…they weren’t the first online ad-network, but were the first the allow virtually everyone to run ads on their site and make money of it…in retrospect, the manner in which fastclick, advertising.com and the other networks treated small webmasters was pathetic, and thats why they paid the price…Google continues to grow, and in no small part due to the number of webmasters across the globe that run their ads, swear by their practices and, how their system allows advertiser, webmaster & user to win… the online ecosystem is built (and continues to grow)…Google is not aiming to be a destination….Google wants to be the platform…and has done everything it needs to do, to be the center of the world’s biggest ecosystem…
Don’t for a moment write Microsoft out of this game…they’re still very rich (USD 30BN in cash, billions in profit every quarter) and if you read between the lines of last weeks $3 windows student license announcement for developing economies…you find that they are the only company on earth that could aim at doubling the number of PC owners in the next 8 years… almost all of us use Windows, and alot of their products across the productivity (windows, office 2007, mobile) and entertainment axis (mediacenter, xbox360) are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition… we’re only too used to personalising our computing experience…the key here is we can personalise it because MS has built the ecosystem… even though some of their tactics can be mildly termed aggressive, that’s just business right? …. in the words of kevin kelly, the infinite game is played to keep playing, and to win at every level you play at….

Today we can install almost anything we find on the internet on a windows machine…and thats what affords us options, choices, freedoms which in turn empower us….we can now share our ideas with the world (this blog being a classic case), get feedback, collaborate and jointly evolve…this is the role that technology & media combined are playing in the evolution of mankind… technology was always supposed to be open, to be free, shared, transparent…and media today makes it viable… web 2.0 is the biggest attempt and success story ever towards socialization of media & technology … its anyones guess about which company will eventually prevail… but the one thing i can say with absolutely no hesitation is that the consumer will win (and is already winning) … we’re really really really lucky to live in this day and age… subsidised by media, empowered by technology… democratic, free and liberated!

This is just ONE more reason why i LOVE the internet…

Share This

Quality of Video is directly proportionate to volume of Streams.
TV Programming is high quality. (NBC + News Corp produce adequate content globally to keep every demographic entertained)
Y! + MSN + AOL = Huge Captive Audience (30% of online video is viewed on Y! alone)
Y! (and the others) have a lot of respect for rights & IP …
UGC quality still lags commercially produced content. (I illustrated this point in my post titled….the funniest phone review EVER)
A certain portion of the USD 1.65BN bid for youtube was premium to prevent the competition from getting their hands on a portion of it… a huge portion of this was for audience (since google video had poor adoption)
So Gootube now has a USD 1BN Viacom lawsuit to deal with (obviously factored in during acquisition), NBC + NewsCorp + Y! + MSN + AOL, Joost, Apple TV (will eventually converge), Grouper and the rest of the long tail of online video.

Excess pride in a nascent, evolutionary and shifting mediascape is dangerous.

I must add…all views on my blog are mine alone….i am not a spokesperson for any of the companies listed above…and as much as i’d like to believe i know enough, there’s still a long long long way to go

Share This

* – The only complaint i’ve got about Stumble has been from De. Between search, newsletters and RSS feeds he had enough of an information overload problem, and Stumble is exponentially increasing exposure to new sites/articles etc he just HAS TO SEE.

Share This

Businessweek recently wrote about Google ‘charging a few dollars’ for its ‘Apps for domains’ which would include the entire suite of programs from their Writely Acquisition to their homegrown calendar, gmail and notebook….Since they are chasing SOHOs, Educational Institutes and Public/Private Corporations it takes the Microsoft Office Live Suite which is priced at USD 39.99/month.

Seemingly unrelated, when Toyota launched in India, they launched with an outdated model called the Qualis. Some people argued that lanching with a ‘Multi Utility Vehicle’ was a strategic move primarily to ensure dealerships opened in B Tier towns,district capitals etc. While it was undoutedly a key factor, i learnt later that this was done for a slightly different reason. Reason being…to choke sales of their biggest potential local competitors…Tata (whose Sumo was their most profitable product) & Mahindra (India’s biggest MUV (people mover) manufacturer. Choking sales of the best sellling product would ensure that these manufacturers would have substantially less money for R&D of future launches, and so the beginning of the end of the competitor … classical Art of War stuff that Google is aiming to do to Microsoft.

Web companies are a product of the paradigm shift of computer to network & subscription to advertising…and thats just where MSFT is struggling. Billiions of dollars of R&D, need to be earned back… MSFT either passes the subscription cost to the consumer or advertising ROI to the advertiser. Google is offering lower subscription (the growth-lever is consumer adoption) and already offers good value to advertisers.

We live in interesting times…robust sales of Tata’s low cost Indica & Mahindra’s higher cost Scorpio kept them out of trouble… i wish i knew the answer to the trillion dollar microsoft question!

Share This

Thanks to Capitalism, Democracy AND the Internet we live in an age of opportunity, in an age where doubt is something you address on a Search Engine.
IMHO the assurance that the answer exists out there somewhere further fuels curiousity (doubt). Living in an age as complex/connected as ours, multiple cycles of doubt, resolution, discussion, further doubt, further investigation….leaves little time for existential concerns. While cogito still holds water, quaero quero holds the key to success.

PS – So much for my $0.02, De coined ‘cogito ergo tum’ – ‘I think therefore you are’ years ago! The latin-hindi probably has Descartes turning in his grave but i don’t think De ‘thought’ about it!

Share This

Unfortunately if you’re a fan of Firefox or Macs, most Microsoft Office Live functions work only with Internet Explorer 5.5 and may require Windows 2000 or later versions. Google’s services, on the other hand, are compatible with Mozilla-based browsers and Internet Explorer, as well as with Macs and Linux machines.

Microsoft is giving away domain names for free, which otherwise cost around $10 from a third party. Via Office Live, you can park and keep www.yoursite.com for free, which is superior to using some lengthy URL embedded within Microsoft’s corporate domain. However, in return, Microsoft slaps the Office Live logo onto your Web pages.

Google, on the other hand, doesn’t provide personalized Web site registration and hosting, although you can reserve a clunky URL through Google Page Creator beta. Google doesn’t even suggest a registrar; it only links to Google search results for “domain registration.” Instead, you tailor Google Apps for Your Domain to work with a Web site that you’ve already reserved. Basically, this lets you display your company’s name and logo (rather than Google’s) within Google Calendar and Gmail. Thus, customers can e-mail you at, say, owner@yourbiz.com, while you open the messages within your customized Gmail interface.

Microsoft Office Live Basics is free, but there are expanded, paid services too. There’s no calendar or instant messaging within the free Office Live Basics, for example, while Google Apps for Your Domain connects to the beta Google Calendar and Google Talk. If you’re serious about managing a small-business site with Office Live, you can pay for a calendar as well as 19 other business applications. The paid Office Live Essentials and Collaboration are free to try while in beta testing.

Neither Microsoft nor Google wrap together a built-in online Word processor with their small-business packs, which is odd given Microsoft’s corner on the productivity tool market, as well as Google’s Web-based Writely and Spreadsheets. We also find it strange that Google Apps for Your domain makes no mention of Google Checkout, which lets you set up a shop on your Web site.

Office Live is available at http://officelive.microsoft.com. You can access Google Apps for Your Domain at https://www.google.com/a/.

Share This

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Share This

Is it just me or is it rendering funny to everyone?  Checked earlier today and it rendered just fine.  Looks funny on Firefox 1.5 as well as IE7 now.

Whats new are hundreds and gadgets at the Windows Live Gallery (finally MS awakes to personalisation and boy toys) and new social networking features which it hopes will allow it to snowball past MySpace kinda numbers. Another key point is deeper integration integration with other MS Live offerings .
The integration is interesting, Windows Live Spaces integrates with Live Contacts, which is also used in the Windows Live Messenger product. Instant messaging conversations can now be initiated through the Spaces site. (Why do i feel this is a hybrid of Y! 360 Contacts and Google Chat via Gmail)
MS has also added features to let users choose permission levels w.r.t. being contacted through their Space. (There is however a way of getting the IM address of the person whose space you are on…and works 80% of the time… the old naming structure was http://spaces.msn.com/members/maedi …. chances are the User ID on Live Mssngr is maedi …. this is because the default name given (unless the user chose while setting up to change it) was = Mssgr ID.  This however has been changed to http://maedi.spaces.LIVE.com

However, folks under 18 can only be reached via their Messenger Contacts. Issues surrounding easy access to children on social networking engines has become the topic of much controversy in the last couple of months, and MS is doing its bit for greater common good…

All said, for the enthusiasts in us, Wordpress still rocks…and for the folks who only want a blog that integrates with the rest of their online experience, it just got a whole lot better!

Share This

I’ve heard many an ignoramus state ‘the game is all over for Microsoft’. The core thing to remember though is that, Microsoft owns the platform. And with them actively partnering with companies including LG, Samsung, Motorola, Palm, MTV, Toshiba and Intel, MS is weaving a different kind of web around users. Centralised software, keeping everyone (i.e. Mom, Dad, the kids and Granpa) in mind.

MS announced the launch of their own music player, Zune. With their partnership with MTV Networks (Urge), this should garner decent marketshare in the music download front. (If you have any doubts on that, look at any MS service that was written off initially….be it Windows Media Player if nothing else).

Came across this tongue-in-cheek site on the Zune…..Google threw it up as part of my personalised search.

Share This

Share This

I didn’t stop there (check the post titled 2019 for the abridged version) but the rest was more wishlist and not what i’d need to be seamlessly integrated with my online oxygen.

For the blissfully ignorant, IPv6 is short for “Internet Protocol version 6”. A replacement for the aging IPv4, which was released in the early 80s, IPv6 will exponentially increase the number of available Internet addresses or IPs (from 32 to 128 bits) and consequently the number of devices attached to the Internet. It would serve as a base for data delivery from everything from telecom to television. There are a host of resources which talk about the benefits and features of IPv6, some of which can be found here and here!

Combine IPv6 with Wimax/WiFi, the growth of embedded systems and AI and you find yourself in wireless paradise where all your devices i.e. car, fridge, camera, phone, tablet, TV talk to each other! Sound like sci-fi fiction? Opera already has a dedicated division which builds internet browsers for devices! Still sound like Star Wars? Before i give you a host of other reasons about why its not, i’ll give you some background on where the web is headed and the concepts behind Web 2.0.

To quote wikipedia “Web 2.0 is a term popularized by O’Reilly Media and MediaLive International as the name for a series of web development conferences that started in October 2004. It has since come to refer to what some people describe as a second phase of architecture and application development for the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 applications often use a combination of techniques devised in the late 1990s, including public web service APIs (dating from 1998), Ajax (1998), and web syndication (1997).“

This IBM Page (courtesy De) is a great resource for developers.

To put it simply, the next wave is server based & collaborative computing, limitless bandwidth and seamless connectivity. Any analysis of M&A activity by Internet heavyweights will give you a good idea about Web 2.0 products and why they’re where any netrepreneur needs to be focussing his attention. There is already a long list of products from companies like 37signals, Salesforce.com, Trumba, Adventnet (Zoho) which deal with life management systems ranging from CRM to online collaboration. Flickr & Live.com are Web 2.0 products that need no introduction.

A peek at Google’s portfolio of products and services and Google’s acquisitions all point in one direction – Owning the Web 2.0 platform. Microsoft is what it is because it owns the PC platform. And that’s just what Google has aimed to do.

Yahoo! isn’t a stranger to 2.0 either, the new Yahoo! Mail, Live Words and Widgets are all 2.0 products. In addition to that, their acquisitions include Oddpost, Flickr & del.icio.us

While it’s easy to lose yourself admiring Google, you could very easily lost sight of Microsoft and be fooled into believing that they’re not very active on the 2.0 front. Ever wonder why the rumoured MS acquiring Macromedia didn’t work out? Maybe, for Vista to be a success, it had to be more nimble. A little digging into MS Investments & Acquisitions throws light on my humble 2cent theory. Sharepoint, Windows/Office Live, Origami, Windows Mobile 5.0 are not just concepts! MS publicly can now be in every room of the house & Windows has long been associated with BMW. Origami is WiFi enabled, it does have a tablet version of XP running on it (and should be able to run Vista). There are no limitations on the browser, the connectivity, the OS. Whats there to stop them?

It’s hard to imagine that something as big and wide as the Internet, can evolve so fast! While i still haven’t been able to identify any opportunities that the Semantic Web will present, i’m sure i’d be just as amazed, just as curious and just as ignorant as i am now.

Share This

Excited as i was on getting my hands on a new toy, i shot off an invite to De (not as soon as i wished i could though) …and we discussed the number of bugs (or should i say, lack thereof) in the beta version. (there is one though…which i’ll post later…while i continue digging for more )

The irony of Arun’s handle is that MS has released a beta which is spot on, offers new features (like sharing folders) , and in a very Google manner has stitched it all perfectly well. Would be really interesting to see how well this integrates with Yahoo! Messenger when they merge both messengers.

Messenger 8.0 Beta – A Mini Review

a) One nice feature is the ability to colour your messenger (Main Window & Conversation Windows). I love the default orange and the square tabs ….
b) Watch out Google….MS wants to throw in Search in as many places as they can…..even if it means throwing in a ‘Find Contact’ right above your contact list….helpful feature though….esp with all those changing handles….(it automatically searches handle & ID)
c) Another small change that finds favour with me (being as lazy as i am) is the number of mouse-over options offered to interact with a particular contact.
d) Users who are ‘Away’ are represented by Light Green logos thus differentiating them from those ‘Online/Available’.
e) Can’t help say this out loud….Google’s shouting Google Video….and so MSN’s driving traffic to http://video.msn.com/ right from the bottom of the Messenger window….and wait a min…..there’s an option to search the web there too…..
f) Whats best about WLM is the Add Information for this contact feature….De mentioned that he had added info into his Hotmail Address Book ages back….forgotten all about it….and now he’s found old numbers/addresses etc….moving into Plaxo turf are we?

For now, Windows Live is the hot topic of conversation and speculation… http://ideas.live.com throws light on some interesting apps coming our way….on the other hand there is one more app that i can’t get enough of, my beloved Firefox…got a bunch of updates today and Thunderbird 1.5 is here too….when are we getting that MS Outlook beater Mozilla? They’re already talking about Windows Live email…

God bless and have a rocking weekend!

Share This

I’ve finally decided to start blogging. On the advice of the wise Govind Menon, i’ve adopted the open source WordPress. Though a slight convulated install, feels good to be powered by the most powerful open source editing tool available .
What can we look forward to in 2006?

Loads actually….from Redmond, we can hope to get our hands on Vista, a peek at MSN Biz Apps, pay-per-go Office, MSN (India) Rich Media and India specific Ad-Center, Growth and evolution of Windows and Office Live! IE7, upgraded newsbot and personalised search are other areas we can expect activity on….

From Google we can expect pay-per-call advertising, Google Wallet, increased activity on Google Base (which would result in a showdown of sorts between eBay and Google), a more accurate analytics software (currently google analytics has inconsistent data) and more tie-in between AOL/Google. Another thing that would keep the attention of industry watchers are Google’s plans of Wi-Fi, their investment in black fibre and internet over power grid.
Jobbs and Co. have technophiles all excited with more powerful and affordable Intel processors powering Apple computers…can’t wait to get my hands on one of those….

The gods of open source should hopefully beef up OpenOffice and if all goes well an integrated Google Linux could be with us soon…..the only question being when….also Mozilla, we want a MS Outlook killer soon…..thunderbird falls way short….

All that i’m looking forward to from the Yahoo! stable this year is the new Yahoo! Mail Beta….am already on the wait list….and will be posting a detailed review as soon as i get onto it….

As far as the Indian Internet scene goes….with PC and Internet access costs spiralling southward we should continue to witness growth like we have in the last couple of years…with marketeers understanding that the Internet is a necessary part of the media mix, we should find newer and more interesting advertising solutions….expect some great ideas from mOne this year….we’re ready to rock the market!

I’m lucky to be a part of this revolution thats already changed the way millions of people work, live and function across the globe. It’s the same platform, accessible to everyone…a land of equal opportunity, the world’s biggest democracy, the world’s biggest community, the world’s biggest playground…with nothing to limit you, except yourself….have fun people…while the cyberwars of 2006 have netro-sexuals like me enthralled, it’s never been better for the end-user!

Go, Play!

Share This