Monthly archives: October 2004

Dr. Ned Roberto and Ardy Roberto answers the question should a small start-up company bother about branding ?

“As a small start-up company, should I be concerned about branding? I’ve always had the impression that I’ll bother about branding when I get big. Also, I’ve heard my partners in the business talk about corporate, family and product branding. If ever I decide to invest in branding, how should I choose among corporate, family and product branding?”

Answer: You have two separate but related questions here. Let’s diagnose the first one about branding when you’re just starting your business.

When you had your children, what was one of the first things that you and your wife did?

We’re quite certain that you were excited about choosing the name of each baby. (Unless, of course, you are like boxing legend-turned-infomercial marketer George Foreman, who named his four or five sons, George II, George III, George IV, George V, etc.) Nevertheless, naming kids was an act of branding.

You must do the same for your new “babies,” your two hotels and beach resort. You not only want to give them a name, you want that name known to prospective customers, and retained in the minds of their customers.

Times of India : From January 01 2005 .in domain names will be available.This will also help increase Internet speed in the country and reduce the high tariffs as due to a country domain name a lot of traffic will be generated inside the country.

Of a National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) formed by the Department of IT in association with the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI).

NIXI aims to ensure that the Internet traffic which originates within India and also has destinations in India remains within the country (instead of going to the overseas server in the host country, mostly the US), resulting in improved traffic latency, reduced cost and better security.

www.hackADay.com points to this hack from WeetHet. Having these bootable USB Flash drives may have many uses and misues .

Slashdot discusses how this world is changing into a wiki world :

Wikipedian writes “BusinessWeek asks are we headed for a Wiki World?. With US-based SocialText using their wiki to leverage just $600K in capital, and European competitor Team Notepad, not to mention freeware alternatives like TWiki and MoinMoin is the whole world going to be using wikis instead of the proprietary dinosaurs like Lotus Notes?”

Priya Sreenivas (CIOL) interviews Sivakumar N , author of the book “Debugging Indian Computer Programmers: Dude, Did I steal your job?”

Financial Express reports that Net telephony is failing to pick up due to the thinning difference between ILD tariff and internet telephony rates :

For an ILD call to the US, the tariff has come down from Rs 18 per minute to Rs 7.20 per minute over the last year or so. But the tariff for a similar call through the internet has remained at Rs 4-6 per minute.

And if this was not enough, “the ILD rates are likely to come down further”, according to a Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) official.

Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!

This paper provides quantitative data that, in many cases, using open source software / free software is a reasonable or even superior approach to using their proprietary competition according to various measures. This paper’s goal is to show that you should consider using OSS/FS when acquiring software. This paper examines market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and total cost of ownership. It also has sections on non-quantitative issues, unnecessary fears, OSS/FS on the desktop, usage reports, other sites providing related information, and ends with some conclusions.

Easy Message – the ultra-lite instant messenger for MSN, AOL, ICQ, and Yahoo!

There are places where Instant Messaging is barred and you cannot use MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger the two most popular instant messeging softwares being used in India.

There are web based versions of both – Yahoo and MSN Messenger launched recently but in the restrictive environment web access to these sites is also disallowed

The software hopster creates a http tunnel through your proxy so that you can use the Instant Messengers like Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Trillian bypassing the firewall rules, but due to some reasons Yahoo Messenger does not work under hopster.

To overcome this difficulty use a combinations of Hopster and Easy Message. In both the MSN Messenger and Easy Message ‘connection’ setting use your local loopback IP – 127.0.0.1 and port 1080 under teh Sock v4 proxy setting.

And there you go…. you dont need to your MSN Messenger

if you are using Easy Message. Only drawback however is no matter how many accounts you have logged in using Easy Message it just groups them as Online and Offline. So one may not be able to differentiate you are chatting with someone using which ID ?. In that case you can create groups manually and create groups mapping to your accound IDs.

Easy Message is devloped by Ryan Dewsbury and is free to use :

Easy Message is a unified instant messenger that connects to the ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and AOL instant messaging network. The messenger is licensed to internet service providers and web communities with their brand name. Since instant message programs are typically always open on the desktop it provides the companies with excellent brand recognition.

It is also distribted as a free download under the Easy Message Express brand. It has over 20,000 daily users and is the smallest and fastest instant messenger available today.

Rajesh Jain comments on the new Indian Broadband Policy :

The new Indian broadband policy was announced a few days ago. Considering that it was a few months in the making, it is a big disappointment. It will do little to spur broadband deployment across India. After all the thought that has supposedly gone into it, much was expected in terms of bold measures. And bold this policy is not.

It does not take up the most far-reaching measure proposed in the TRAI recommendations – unbundling of the local loop. It also does not address the issue of the hugely expensive bandwidth prices – both nationally and internationally.

So, yet another case of a missed opportunity. The Indian IT department and minister had a chance to jumpstart India along the South Korean path of large-scale deployment. But what instead is seen is a lack of both vision and will.

[Also read: my earlier Business Standard column on what is needed for boosting broadband in India.]

Tried googling ‘thirld world‘ today to know how much it knows about my place. Realized that there is…

Third World Network – discusses Trade, Technology, Environment and other issues.

Third World Traveller – alternative view to the corporate media about the state of democracy in America,and about the impact of the policies of the United States’ government, transnational corporations, international trade and financial institutions, and the corporate media, on war and peace, democracy, free speech, social and economic justice, and human rights, in the Third World, and in the United States.

Third World Newsreel – one of the oldest alternative media arts organizations in the United States. We are committed to the creation and appreciation of independent and social issue media by and about people of color, and the peoples of developing countries around the world.

Amy Smith – A scientist whose inventions can benefit Third Worlds.

Third World Band – a band from first world which has hijacked third world name. They were Grammy nominated for “AIN’T GIVIN’ UP”. Released by Shanachie Records in 2003.

A news link which will make India’s Left Parties happy – Do all these consultants really benefit the Third World? . Anyway Left is more happy to screw Anupam Kher. Thirld world politicians are most busy in important issue of appointing Censor Board Chiefs and not about child labour and juvenile whores. It’s too common in thirld world…

Last but not the least, yet unadulterated Geek World Makes Sense – Slashdot. News for nerds, stuff that matters.

Third World Research, Development & Innovation :

tovarish writes “It is nice to see that countries like India are trying to research communication techniques in backward and rural areas. While tech savvy people like us enjoy the latest gadgets it is quite a challenge to develop gadgets which actually help the poor and illiterate. While India’s satellite launches and outsourcing news are already covered in slashdot umpteen times, sometimes her sensible achievements should be covered too.”

Don’t just get exited by the post heading, read the discussion.