Entries from May 2008 ↓

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Robert Scoble & Productivity

I don’t see Robert Scoble having any productivity issues, but is still explaining and replying on his blog why he is so active in the blogosphere. He explains why he uses the latest stuff and also activity talking about those - it’s ultimately tied to what you want to do and what are your goals. I agree with Robert, for example I am not a great blogger and I don’t care if you don’t like it - I link to any random stuff that I like on the web, but it’s also my searchable diary, notepad and index of my interests.

Popularity: 39% [?]

Six Principles for Making New Things by Paul Graham

I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly. Via Stowe Boyd

Popularity: 35% [?]

Motley Fool on Rediff

Rick Aristotle sees all red, but Rick you cannot compare any Indian internet venture with Chinese for that matter and expect the same capitalization or the growth rate. Chinese Internet is quite protected and they very local heavy. On the other hand Indian internet ventures have to compete with global sites, offer local touch and provide global experience.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Panaboard comes to India

First it was blackboard, then it was Whiteboard now it’s Panaboard - a electronic board which is PC & Internet ready

Popularity: 33% [?]

Are newspapers ready to embrace Internet values?

Madhavan comments on Pradeep Guha’s (CEO, Zee Entertaiment) address at teh CEO Conclave of the Indian Newspaper Congress on May 16, 2008, in New Delhi.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Found this at Trak.in

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

Popularity: 38% [?]

Future Group forays into self- publishing

Overall seems to a nice print-on-demand and with Indian’s getting on to more varied and niche reading it may surely work out. Future Group can ofcourse give the reach and exposure to the budding authors. Though I am not clear with the Target Audience and the publishing segment, the biggest challenge it will have from online readership trends and what kind of content users would like to consume - fiction/non-fiction. The pricing & format also would be the key driver.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Naukri’s Education Portal Shiksha.com

Shiksha.com is a community answers site for education and careers. I see a nice integration with Naukri’s core offering and expertise in this area.

Popularity: 37% [?]

Windows Live Writer: Add Screenshot Images to Blogs Real Quickly

Thanks Amit, My blog is powered by Live Writer & this tip would definitely make my life easy

Popularity: 35% [?]

Last Call to Buy .ME Domain Names for Trademarks

Thank God! I bought SantoshMaharshi.com at the right time otherwise it would have been Santoshyesitsreally.me

Popularity: 37% [?]

Spider Solitaire is the #1 Game Raymond Chen who has also authored the book - The Old New Thing: Practical Development Throughout the Evolution of Windows has some interesting facts on games usage on Windows Desktop.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Top 50 Tech Visionaries

A nice article on Washington post but not that readable and images of the visionaries are missing. Forbes - though it will force you to click 50 times, does a better job of creating such lists.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Why Google News has no noise:

Robert Scoble is happy with the Noise in Twitter and finds it better than Google News or Techmeme. This forces me to think.

• What is news, is it 140 character headline or the complete coverage.
• On one hand, we talk about degrading values of  media and journalism and on the other hand - anything and everything is now News
• Are we removing fact checking, reporting and analysis from News & making it a Arm Chair Journalism
• What qualifies News - would be harmful to our future, if we remove the validity of the source and authority from it.
• What impact will it have on a fresh talented journalist, who wants to report ‘real news’ - he will find himself totally defeated as nobody is interested in his analysis but just the buzz.

But whatever Scoble says - he is saying it from his own personal experience and the kind of ecosystem he is part of on Twitter. Top bloggers like him have covered and provided insights on many a things that traditional media would not be able to as these guys are the extreme examples of early adoptors and have a unique style and vision. Twitter suits perfectly in this environment - to track the buzz in real time as it is happening and not like other mediums - tracking the buzz when it has happened.

But News is not just picking the buzz, it’s about the semantics that it encloses within it. A take on it’s past, present and future and it’s relation with the society. Out society in general, is well updated but not well informed.

Technology has changed the production (traditional media vs social media) and the distribution (agents to social bookmarkers, bloggers, diggers, twitterers) but one thing it has not created any significant impact on - is the quality of the News and the quality of readership.

Popularity: 57% [?]

Anil Ambani group romances Hollywood

Reliance Big Entertainment, the media and entertainment company of Reliance ADA Group, on Sunday announced a slew of deals with production firms of Hollywood stars including Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt and Jim Carrey, marking its entry into the mecca of films

Popularity: 37% [?]

Green puppet show gets labourers’ kids global award

The children, who have never been to school, represented India in Hong Kong and competed with children from 23 other countries to win the second place for a wetland conservancy project. They are students of non-governmental Mobile Crèches, which provides education and daycare facilities to construction workers’ children. The monthly income of their parents amounts to Rs 4,000 to Rs 5,000.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Harman Baweja’s love story 2008 attacked on Wikipedia As a kid I remember playing cricket with Harman Baweja in Natraj Studio while we were shooting for Aaj Ke Angarey. Harry Baweja, his father, I guess had assisted B. Subhash before and used to meet him whenever he was around. This boy Harman must be 4-5 then, now has grown to become a hero . This makes me feel very old :).

I was also a kid then ( I was in 6th standard) but my beer belly would definitely hint Harman to call me uncle now. Somehow I also remember this habit of his father - Harry Baweja - who himself is dashing and handsome. He never used to comb his hair -  instead just used to run his fingers through his hairs. As it were my growing up days, I was a social mimic and tried my hand at managing hairs like Mr. Harry but my messy hairs didn’t ever get adjusted to it. But this copycat habbit lead to extra friction on my scalp and now I am balding

Popularity: 40% [?]

Proto.in 2008 Delhi

Proto.in come together once in every six months, bringing together entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, veterans, investors, technologists, bloggers, mentors, bankers, media professionals, hackers, mavericks, students, and even folks from the government bodies such as DST, NASSCOM, TiE, IAMAI, to build a cohesive and sensible ecosystem in India.

Popularity: 36% [?]

OnMobile Global, India’s VAS major, has acquired France based speech recognition software provider Telisma S.A - contentsutra

Popularity: 37% [?]

3 Mistakes of My Life (I mean Chetan Bhagat’s). Hmm… Not even Chetan Bhagat’s I guess.

The Luminar reviews: The plot is pretty simple, 3 average students, Govind, Ish and Omi having a hard time living think of entrepreneurship. In middle come an an entire big host of people, problems and pressures. Its about how they react, solve and live with those problems. Just like his older books, he chose a batch of people who truly represent a good proportion of urban India.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Anil Ambani To Launch DTH Service - Big TV

In next few weeks Reliance Communication is planning to launch Direct to Home DTH service across 4,000 towns and at monthly price of Rs.325. Now that’s what I call Karlo Duniya Mutthi Mein.

Popularity: 45% [?]

Track The Indian Blogosphere on Indimeme.com
Pranav does a nice review of Indimeme.com. I was waiting for service like this - a indian version of technorati/techmeme would give a great boost to blogosphere. Provided all the bloggers embrace it and it does become a gateway. It needs to be the part of the loop and not just an open entry point. Other thing, I feel is that this headlines and the sub- headlines are given the equal importance, which sort of defeats the purpose of quick scan and meme tracking

Popularity: 34% [?]

ContentSutra’s first look at In.com
It is indeed a big thing that the Web 18 guys are attempting to enter in the ‘portal and aggreaetor’ market. Closed beta and can’t comment much.

Popularity: 28% [?]

WebUpvan showcases the best designed Indian Web 2.0 Sites.

WebYantra: "Webupvan is a web gallery for the best designed Indian websites. Built on the line of the international design watering holes like CssGalleries, CssVault, CssElite, CssHeaven etc, WebUpvan aims to showcase and promote websites that can serve as an example to other Indian web developers. In a country that can safely be described as “design challenged“, surely this is a laudable effort. Webupvan is the initiative of Amit Mandaliya, a web designer and flash developer."

Popularity: 28% [?]

Flytxt delivers usable mobile marketing technology for marketers to run sophisticated campaigns themselves.

Got to know about this company on IndiaWeb@Ning group and they have done some cool things:

• 1st CRM campaign with Smash Hits
• 1st on-pack campaign with Cadbury “Txt ‘n’ Win”
• 1st text to screen campaign with Channel 5
• 1st short code donation campaign for Comic Relief
• 1st point collection campaign for Coke “Text to collect”
• 1st large-scale couponing campaign with Orange
• 1st book publishing campaign with Harper Collins
• 1st US magazine publishing campaign with Time Inc.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Messenger TV comes to India - Now you can watch videos available on MSN Videos (India) with you friends and buddies through Windows Live Messenger

How to enable Messenger TV in Live Messenger:

1. In Internet Expolorer go to Tools > Internet Options > General > Languages : Change your language to English(India) [en-IN]
2. Go to MessengerTV’s India page and follow the steps to add MessengerTV Agent as your buddy in Live Messenger.
3. Sign-in to Windows Live Messenger and start chatting with a friend you would like to watch videos with. Double click on your friends’ name and open the chat window.
4. Click on the ‘Activities’ menu button on the toolbar above the chat window. Select ‘Messenger TV’ to send an invite to your friend.
5. Start sharing loads of great MSN videos!

What all things you can watch with your friends:

All the cool stuff that MSN Video - India has :). Video clips available across the channels like News, Entertainment, Music, Lifestyle, Specials and Sports.

Popularity: 39% [?]

Shah Rukh Khan unflustered at Aamir’s blog dog comment

SRK is a genius, he chose to concentrate on conquering bollywood and now the entire entertainment industry instead of replying to frustrated souls : Commenting on the whole episode, Shah Rukh said: “Earlier people used to name their children after famous people. Somebody naming a dog after a known person is a new beginning in that direction. I don’t have a copyright over this name if used non-commercially.”

Popularity: 24% [?]

Rajni’s 20 avatars in ‘Kuselan’ song

Superstar Rajnikant would, reportedly, appear in 20 different get-ups for a song sung by Daler Mehndi, Sadhana Sargam, and Chitra in his latest film ‘Kuselan’. Tough fight for Kamal’s 10 avatars in Dasavatharam. But audience doesn’t mind they are crazy for both of them.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Cafestocks.com is another
attempt at social investing..

Participation and gathering the wisdom of crowd will be the key for the success for recommending stocks and investing. This is indeed a cool idea and best luck guys if you can involve some really brainy market guys in this. Not people like me, who even fail and mutual funds investing. The time would have been more appropriate in the bull market, since the market is bearish, users may be little apprehensive at taking recommendation. In bull markets any tip is a tipping point.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Gaadi.com - car portal 2.0.

Need some time to figure out how it is different from Carwale.com. And to tell you the truth, I open my eyes on Mouthshut.com. How did this guy get a pure domain name like Gaadi.com

Popularity: 34% [?]

Murali Gopi on Moral Policing & Celebrities.

Peeping Toms that we are, we love to watch without being watched :). Our nation ranks high in corruption and in moral policing too - that’s called "Masala Society.". Mallika Sherwant has not even shown the fraction of the stuff that some of the hot babes in 70s and 80s have shown. She is just one of the best examples of a celebrity with a great PR IQ. She won’t even manage to be at the 100th position in "Skin Show Hall of Fame". Hmmm… Not even Rakhi Sawant for that matter. But they are most successful in managing the media and the publicity. In film industry you need to be in news and that’s what these babes are good at.

Moral Cops : Long time back I had seen one documentary on our very own Doordarshan. There was this interview of some poor villagers in Orissa and in one house they wanted to interview a mother and her young daughter, but they never faced the camera together - because they had just one Saree. Many years have passed, but this picture must have not changed, why ?… b’cos the moral police handles sexy stuff only. Mind it!!!

Popularity: 26% [?]