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Discovery vs. Connect - Social Media habits

From flickr by webtreats My first foray into Social Media was by starting this blog way back in 2004, a time when many of celebrated bloggers of India (such as Siddin Vadukut ) also started blogging. Having been the editor of my school magazine and a geek during my engineering, Blogging came naturally to me as a mix of writing and technology. My exposure to Social Media has only grown since then, Orkut – later Facebook, Twitter and even Foursquare are my regular haunts now. Having been an early adopter myself, I often wonder that today when most people in my generation use Facebook (and Twitter), what sets early adopters apart. Upon pondering I discovered that for most regular users of Social Media, it’s a way to stay in touch with people whom they know in real life but do not get a chance to meet - cousins, present and past colleagues, schoolmates, batchmates from grad school etc. However, those who are early adopters live in two separate worlds. They in addition to ‘real life

Who will win the Google Facebook Tussle
Part II: Facebook and Google are Apple and Microsoft of post-Web Tech rivalry

Flickr Image by  Sam Steiner Continued from  Facebook and Google are Apple and Microsoft of post-Web Tech rivalry In the last tussle between Windows and Mac - Windows won with a landslide majority - but there were to many variables. Apple got lost in its focus for a decade (after its visionary founder Steve Jobs was summarily expelled by the board from the company), which helped Microsoft evangelize developers to its platform. Piracy was rampant, making Windows one of the most pirated and hence most used software. Microsoft's dominance allowed it to "buy out" other markets like the initial browser market. Apple's hardware was overpriced due to its reluctance to adopt commodity hardware (ref: Intel processors). But the current tussle is nothing like the previous one. The initial success of Facebook has created pressure on Google to abandon the "open" philosophy so that now it is linking most other Google properties with its competitor social ne

Facebook and Google are Apple and Microsoft of post-Web Tech rivalry

The Tech Geek world is quite dry and mundane to the outsider but for insiders this is filled with philosophical nuances and comparisons. In the recent years, Apple has become the cool company thanks to the iPod and iPad while Microsoft has lulled thanks to the development hell most of its products are going through. However, reverse to the 80s and early 90s - Apple and Microsoft were two icons of the Tech world competing with each other and yet not directly competing with each other thanks to the divergent philosophies adopted by them. Apple believed (and still believes) in tight integration between Hardware & Software while Microsoft believes in decoupling Software from Hardware. Macintosh computers differ from competing Windows systems in that a single company is responsible for both the operating system and the hardware on which it runs. Windows computers are made by dozens of different manufacturers, and Microsoft cannot control either the minimum baseline of the hardw

Does Facebook take serendipity out of your online experience?

While reading this article on RWW , I went to Mark Zuckerburg's Facebook profile and lo! I see all of my own contacts on that page as people who subscribed to Mark. What I was probably expecting to see on Mark's page was a list of his close friends, a few close facebook employees or industry veterans etc; not people whose status updates I anyway see on my Facebook stream every few hours.  It's true that seeing that some of my own Facebook friends follow Mark's stream means that I too would be tempted to follow Mark - in fact this is even more true if the page I was visiting for not a public figure like Mark but a mutual friend of a friend, whom I wouldn't follow / subscribe to otherwise. However, Facebook takes the concept of familiarity to a complete extreme. In fact, wherever I go on Facebook, my own network follows me closely. For example, I go to a new Facebook page through someone's recommendation appearing on my FB Stream, it is usually the s

How the Cloud is transforming IT departments

Image Credit:  Kevin Dooley via flickr The Cloud is often considered an amalgamated progression of web2.0 (SaaS) and virtualization technologies(IaaS) - which it indeed is! However, the emergence of Cloud Computing also draws from a organizational shift in IT departments - from in-sourced to outsourced. What started in IT depts as routine maintenance outsourcing is now taking shape in form of the Cloud which promises to not just outsource routine operations but everything including financial management (move from  Capex to Opex ) of IT infrastructure owned by the company. As the organizational structure shifts from in-sourced IT to the Cloud - it impacts the role of the CIO, which has been a much talked about topic. However, what has not been talk about much is how the Cloud will impact the rest of the IT department and the roles of techies in it. To understand the impending metamorphosis - we need to understand the existing position of the IT department. Across organization

The most exciting period of Computing!

[Warning: Suited for techies and tech enthusiasts; others may find it boring] I was talking to one of the new joiners at our firm today - we were talking about a client using Sun's hardware for a project when he asked why Sun ran only Solaris and no other OS - I started to explain him that Solaris was actually a Unix variant when the conversation turned to free software, Linux etc. and generally into  the lineage of operating systems, the history of modern computing etc. During our brief chat I realized that for most of us post-90's generation, the seeming "excitement" times in computing were either the mid-90's when Linux and GNU/ FSF grew or it was even later when Web2.0, Software as a Service etc grew. But I think the most exciting times for the computing industry when the real "pirates" swarmed the industry was the period of 60s / 70s when the foundation of the personal computing world was being laid. The foundation of personal computing - unlik

In Memory of Steve Jobs

I read through this awesome interview with Steve Jobs taken way back in 1995 before he created the second revolution of his life (iPod et al). While each section of the interview is breathtakingly awesome, I wanted to reiterate some gems specifically, hence quoting them here. For the whole interview transcript go to this URL  http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/sj1.html 1. ...a lot of people come to me and say "I want to be an entrepreneur". And I go "Oh that's great, what's your idea?". And they say "I don't have one yet". And I say " I think you should go get a job as a busboy or something until you find something you're really passionate about because it's a lot of work ". I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I

Why aren't companies honest about their Cloud Capabilities?

Reader Alert : Controversial and based on non-verifiable facts As a part of my day job, I often interact with vendors - IT service providers, equipment manufacturers, software / middleware providers, and even consultants like me. Ever since the market for Cloud based services has opened up (sometime since 2009) - vendors across the board have come up with their variation of Cloud services. As I explore more and more Cloud products on the ground - I find that vendors are mostly rehashing old products and technologies under the Cloud label. Well, this isn't surprising because the Cloud is not something completely new. As I have previously written , the Cloud is just an evolution over Web2.0. However, what concerns me is that vendors are brazen enough to go to market without even making the minimum necessary changes to these products before they can be labelled as 'Cloud'. Simply rehashing the packaging and some time not even that. Let me elaborate - true that if you a

Yahoo Groups Spam

In the last few days, I am getting a lot of spam from YahooGroups. Spamsters have found a simple way of spamming: create a group, add people's email addresses to the group suo-motto! The spamsters are so brazen to create group names which look Spam in the first look. This is not so much trouble than being an irritant, because as soon as I see the invite, I quickly go to the group and "leave" it. But thanks to the cumbersome process flow of Yahoogroups, to do this, I have to spend at least 4 clicks to do this. Go to YahooGroups Home → Click Manage Groups → Browse to the concerned Spam Group  → Click 'Set Profile'  → Click Edit Membership  → Click Leave Group. And this is assuming you are a seasoned YGroups user who knows his/her way around (folks like me)! Though the simplest way is to unsubscribe by replying to the 'add' mail; but the on-screen process can be simplified by providing a "Leave Group" button on the Manage Groups page itself.

How big is the Cloud Computing World?

Click to enlarge Via: Wikibon Related Posts: Is 'Cloud' the future of Web2.0?  |  More posts related to Technology

Is 'The Cloud' the future of Web 2.0?

Web2.0 - the term coined by Tim O'Reilly gained a 100% acceptance in the 2008-2010 period; however the term Web3.0 never found a similar acceptance in Industry or Blogging circles. Of late the term -The Cloud - also referred to as Cloud Computing has gained a lot of popularity. With big and small names calling themselves Cloud Providers - it is the new buzzword for the internet economy. Web2.0 was the name given to the new breed of 'websites' which came about post the dot com bubble which converted websites from mere information portals into interactive 'services' which could be availed online. Web2.0 websites had interactive (Ajax enabled) user interfaces and provided collaborative platforms. As explained in detail by O'Reilly in this article [ http://oreilly.com/lpt/a/6228 ] - while Web2.0 is a combination of  lot of factors; the key is to harness collective wisdom through use of interactive interfaces and by providing features as services to users. The Cl

Is the Blackberry a dying platform?

Blackberry is headed for a decline – so says this analysis  which was endorsed by Fred Wilson (a well known Silicon Valley VC). Indeed the analysis is quite convincing the graph does show that BB may be at its peak and on its way to decline as a platform. But I have 3 reservations for this analysis: Its too early to comment – the subscriber growth drop is only 1 quarter old trend, not something to base a future scenario on It ignores the power of network effect – while apple and android are growing faster than BB, we must acknowledge that blackberry already has a large installed user base and hence it’s not so easy for the whole platform to wipe out instantaneously. More importantly, BB users are primarily corporate users and it’s quite difficult for them to migrate away from the platform based on individual will and whims. The corporation must decide to change before the end subscriber moves. The opinion is based on sample surveys – this objection especially applies to the ‘OS

Winamp is still a great music player but ...

I remember my college days when Internet access was only through the nearby cyber-cafe or the college labs. Home speeds were pathetic (thanks to dial up access - no broadband), where you would take 1/2 hour to check your mail and if you wanted to do extended reading you'd rather download the page, disconnect internet and read the document offline. However, computers were still the primary forms of listening to music - hostel rooms used to buzz with all kinds of songs from dawn till late nights. There were no iPods but students used to carry their songs in USB drives and CD's. I even remember once removing the hard-disk of my PC, connecting it as a slave to my friend's PC and copying my 10GB music library to his computer. In these pre-iPod/iTunes days - the music player of choice across the world was Nullsoft Winamp. Winamp was a pioneer in the 'app design' space. Unlike any existing Windows applications, it did not have a title bar, its colours were not shades of gr

How Google could have saved Wave

Google killed the Wave project on 04th August 2010, while promising to "extend the technology for use in other Google projects". "Wave has not", Google said, "seen the user adoption they would have liked". Wave was an exceptional product, a revolutionary way to look at communication and documentation in today's world. As Lars Rassmusen, one of the brains behind the Wave said Wave was answer to the question - "What would email look like if we set out to invent it today". And it was not just that - wave was: how a word processor would look like if it was invented today; how a calendaring solution would look like if it was redesigned today; how people's text-chat would get logged if it was logged today, and; most importantly, how web-pages / web-apps would communicate with the server if the protocols were defined today. The last bullet is important because Google Wave was not just a jazzy collaboration web-app but a platform in itself. &qu

Intel & Microsoft of mobile phone market

If, for some reason, we make some big mistake and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter a computer Dark Ages for about twenty years. - Steve Job s May be we did enter a dark age, for almost 20 years, no iPod, iPhone or iPad came - no hardware manufacturer or electronics company launched differentiated products which people would aspire to buy, but the price of the PC dwindled over these two decades which in itself lead to a much wider proliferation of the PC. Had the PC remained the high price aspirational device which Apple wanted it to be, probably we would have had lot lesser people with computers in their homes. How did the PC price revolution happen? Apart from the lowering absolute price of hardware components, it happened as a result of breakage of the vertical integration model ( followed by Apple where it facilitates all aspects of its hardware and creates its own operating system that is pre-installed on all its computers). Today's PC market is fi

बिजली, सड़क, पानी और Broadband
Power, Transport, Water and Broadband

Just about an year ago Finland declared broadband internet access as a legal right and now BBC has come up with a survey that 80% people in developed world believe that internet access should be a fundamental right. Image Credit: BBC , March 2010. Link to detailed results [PDF] People equate internet to a fundamental right stating its impact on other fundamental rights [Ref: UN Declaration , Articles 18, 19, 26, 27 and 29] such as freedom of thought, conscience, right to speech, opinion and expression, and right to education and full development of personality. The whole concept may look outlandish in the developing world where the basic necessities of food and shelter are still not available to all citizens, but for a large part of the "access enabled" population, the internet is becoming as fundamental to the very existence of modern lifestyle like banking services or water or electricity. For example, check out his conversation which happened late night earlier this week

How Flickr helps cleartrip sell more travel packages

Cleartrip.com - an online travel portal has started a new section called Small World. The feature showcases select destinations around one's residence or internationally. This a is really novel service - not only users get to 'preview' a holiday location, the approximate travel and lodging expenses are flashed immediately on the screen. Once you click on a chosen destination, you are taken to a detailed view of the destination with a Google Map 'to' the location, a slideshow of photos from the destination, flight and hotel details arranged in 4 boxes on the screen. The flights with their prices are displayed in a calendar format while the hotels can be rearranged by their tariffs and traveler rating using sliders. The Google Map widget also has markers for Sites, Restaurants, shopping destinations and entertainment hot spots. The fun part is that Cleartrip has partnered with Yahoo / Flickr and Lonely Planet - the slideshows showcasing are made using photos from flic

My First Knol

When Google Knol first came, it was considered a competitor to Wikipedia - but looking at it now, Knol has evolved into its own type. With facilities like Citation and 'Collect this Knol', Knol has become a tool for people to write articles similar to research papers. Knols may as well be called 'informal' research papers or research papers in draft. I wrote my first Knol a couple of days back on the subject of ' Classification of tweets '. An excerpt below: It should be practically possible to build a web application / extension to twitter which will tentatively classify tweets and display them to users in say a newspaper like layout. Thereafter it should also allow users to suggest changes to the classification if they think this is not a correct classification. Read More

Breaking News: Reliance acquires Codemasters

Well, not exactly an acquisition, but Reliance Big Entertainment (part of ADAG group and owner of Zapak Games) has acquired a 50% stake in Codemasters a leading British Gaming company. Codemasters is a big player in European gaming circuit - in the US its content is distributed by none other than Warner Brothers. Codemasters creates games for a plethora of platforms including the leaders XBox, PSP and handheld leader Wii. According to Zapak.com press release, Zapak will oversee the investment on behalf of Reliance. This is a great news for Zapak which is reaping the benefit of being a part of a larger group company. The development will have far reaching implications for the Indian gaming ecosystem. Other gaming bigwigs such as IndiaGames too may now need to seek international investment and collaboration to stay afloat We may see more international games of the PSP/X-Box/Wii family. Prices may also drop. However, the Indian gaming scene is expected to see more action on the mobile pho

Jobs and more ...

Whether the topic is technology , entrepreneurship or corporate leadership - Steve Jobs is definitely a case study worth researching. His iconic leadership style , his resounding success with technology lifestyle products as well as animation movie world and his valiant turnaround of Apple - a company which he co-founded but was kicked out from. However, Steve is also a case study for those of us interested in philosophy, self help, and spirituality. Jobs started as an arrogant, over-the-top young prodigy CEO. Everything about him was perfect from his cute boy looks to the elegant ideas he had. In those days, he looked no less than Tom Cruise. But he soon found trouble at his doors when both his personal and professional life tanked. He was officially ousted from working on his pet project - the Mac, and was later relieved of his position as the chairman of Apple forcing him to quit Apple altogether. In personal life, his history of of LSD and hippy lifestyle, his failure to acknowle