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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: 25% [?]

Christine Huang points to technology and media researcher Mauro Cherubini citing reasons of failures of mobile applications:

# Lack of market model. E. g., Mobile blogging did not really address a real user need;
# Lack of advertisement;
# Lack of awareness / lack of certainty. For instance applications might show an inconsistence mechanism of use or either they did not offer appropriate feedback. People could feel uncertain that the application will accomplish their communication intentions;
# Lack of culture. Either there is not a culture around a new service or the service might offer something which exist in other forms in other contexts;
# Ergonomic barriers. Usability issues like extremely complicate installation procedures or interaction mechanisms;
# Pricing/cost model. The user might feel uncomfortable if s/he is not sure of how much s/he is going to pay for using the system or the service;
# Tradeoff between responding to needs and creating new needs. I actually think that we should design following the first principle but most of the time is the other way around and this lead developers to design for false needs;
# Lack of standards. One of the biggest barrier for mobile development is the lack of standards. Devices offer inconsistent features and APIs and multi-device programming is extremely costly, and buggy…

Popularity: 20% [?]

Earthlink carries the mInfo  press release  What Were China’s 600 Million Mobile Users ‘Searching’ For Last Year? which provides insights on market trends and user behaviour of chinese mobile users.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Searchenginewatch reports about the new Live Search campaign Left Vs Right where "opponents from two sides of the political spectrum. Left-leaning "Patrick O’Neil" and right-wing "Britt Hayes" trade barbs about each other’s hygiene, political views, and intelligence"

Try ‘global warming’ or ‘india’ multiple refresh would make it more interesting

Popularity: 23% [?]

Writing Press Releases - Part 1 : Headlines

A headline is text at the top of a press release, indicating the nature of the news below it. Headlines are written in bold and is much larger in size that the press release text. The general headlines conventions include using present tense and omitting “a” and “the” as well as forms of the verb “to be” in certain contexts.

The press release headline should be brief, clear and to the point. In case of press releases, generally it would have an announcement tone to describe the latest achievement of the company, the recent event of the company, product or service announcement, partnership announcement and so on. For example, “XYZ Company announces strategic partnership with ABC Company in India & Us”.

The first word in the press release headline should be capitalized as should all proper nouns. Most headline words appear in lower-case letters. Do not capitalize every word.

You must include the company name in the headline for better visibility in search engines and for journalists and readers convinience.

Treat press release headline as the ultra-compact version of the entire press release content. But at the same time, keep it simple, clear and short.

The simplest method to arrive at the press release headline is to extract main points (highlights) and then the most important keywords from your press release. Now from these keywords, try to frame a logical & attractive statement. Using keywords will give you better visibility in search engines and it would be simpler for journalists and readers to get the idea of the press release content.

Press Release - Part 2 : Press Release Body / Copy

A press release is simply a written statement distributed to the media. It is a fundamental tool of PR work. Press release is a factual and a newsworthy statement.

The press release should be written as you want it to appear in a news story. The other word for press release in news release.

The press release content/copy should be compact. Avoid using very long sentences and paragraphs. Avoid repetition and over use of grammer and fancy language.

Press release must deal with actual facts - events, product, service, people, target, goals, plans, projects. Try to provide maximum use of these ‘real’ facts and contents.

The length of a press release should be atleast a page and maximum two or three pages.

The more newsworthy you make the press release copy, the chances of it being selected by a journalist or reporting increases.

Before writing a press release keep the audience in the mind, people who are likely to be interested in your news release.

A first paragraph or two three sentences must actually sum up the press release and the further content must elaborate it. In fast paced world neither journalists or other readers would read the entire press release if the start of the article doesn’t generate interest.

A simple method for writing an effective press release. Make a list of following things :

1) What is the actual news ?
2) Why this THE NEWS ?
3) The people, products, items, dates and other things related with the news.
4) The purpose behind the news
5) Your company - the source of this news.

Now from the points gathered from this 5 steps, try to construct paragraphs and assemble them sequentially for example - The headline > the summary or introduction of the news > event or achievements > product > people > again the concluding summary > the company.

Reasearch the actual press releases on the web for getting the feel of the tone of a press release, the language, the structure and the format of a press release.

Press Release - Part 3 : About The Company

About the company - section is a short information about the company who has actually submitted the press release and about whom the news is all about.

When a journalist picks up your press release for a story, he/she would logically have to mention about the company too in the news article. Journalists can then put the company information from this section.

The title for this section should be - About XYZ_COMPANY

After the title, use paragraph or two to describe your company with 5/6 lines each. The text must desctibe your company, it’s core business and the business policy. Many businesses already have a professionaly written brochures, presentations, business plans, etc. - that introductory text can be put up here.

At the end of this section you must point to your website. The link should be the exact & complete URL without any embedding so that, even if this page is printed, the link will be printed as it is. For example : http://www.your_company_website.com.

Companies which maintain a seperate media page on their websites must point to that URL here. A media page typically has contact information and press kit (PDFs and Logos)

After this section - you can provide some extra information links which support your press release or close the press release with the contact information.

Press Release Part 4 : Contact Information

If your press release is really newsworthy, journalists would surely like more information or would like to interview key people associated with it.

If you are comfortable with the idea of letting your key people being directly contacted by media, you can provide their contact details on the press release page itself. For example, in case of some innovation you can provide the contact information of your engineering or research team for the media.

Otherwise, you must provide the details of your MEDIA/PR department in the CONTACT section. If you do not have dedicated team for this function, you must appoint somebody who will act as a link between the media and your people.

The contact details must be limited and specific only to the current press release.

The contact details must include:
(1) The Company’s Offical Name
(2) Media Department’s offical Name and Contact Person
(3) office Address
(4) Telephone & FAX Numbers with proper country/city codes and extension numbers
(5) Mobile Phone Number (optional)
(6) Timings of availability
(7) Email Addresses
(8) Website Address

For submitting your press release for free join http://www.newsmotto.com - a free press release publishing service. It also offers Press Release Feeds (XML/RSS) for a company, industry and country.

Newsmotto.com : What’s your news, what’s your motto ?

Alternate headlines :

1. Press Release Step by Step
2. How to write a press release?
3. How to submit press releases for free
4. What is a press release
5. Press Release explained and it’s component

Popularity: 13% [?]

I dont know if it is intentional or not, but if you search Google News with keywords as ‘india business’ you get the search results only from one site. The reason is - ‘that’ site is using ‘those’ keywords in the news title. I hope it is unintentional - b’cos there are lots of smart small news sites who can hijack the news search engines and aggregator and defy the whole purpose of it. See : Google Search: india business.

The idea for using the category name in the title is strange not very common.

It has also helped in populating the searches for any word combination with india

Popularity: 12% [?]

Slashdot | A Concise Guide to the Major Internet Bodies

Popularity: 12% [?]

Macobserver :

Jef Raskin, Apple employee #31 and father of Macintosh, passed away peacefully Friday, February 26, 2005. He was 61.

A professor turned consultant, Mr. Raskin wrote the BASIC manual for the Apple II in 1976 and joined the company on January 3, 1978. Less than two years later, he gained approval from the board for the Macintosh project, despite strong opposition from Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. Mr. Raskin envisioned the Macintosh as a departure from computers of the time. Instead of forcing users to toil with slots and cables, he conceived an all-in-one enclosure. Mr. Raskin also originally wanted to sell the computer for just $500-$1,000, but when Mr. Jobs took over the project it soon ballooned from a research project to a full blown product development that would arrive in 1984 as both a savior to Apple’s failed Lisa computer and a $5,000 system.

Feeling squeezed and unhappy by how much of the Macintosh project Mr. Jobs had taken over, Mr. Raskin tendered his resignation from Apple on March 1, 1982.

After his departure, Mr. Raskin founded Information Appliance Inc., where he created the Canon Cat in pursuit of his vision that a computer should be an easy-to-use tool. The device never took off, however.

Popularity: 11% [?]

After rejecting my dozens of story submission, slashdot.org has finally accepted this interesting story : using air to recharge your cell phones which I had picked up from Rediff. To this interesting article I have recieved very funny, taunting & teasing responses and very few serious ones ;-).

Popularity: 11% [?]

PR Newswire:

COMMON.net has launched its online business networking application, defining an entirely new approach to the industry. Successful people are good at networking, and they use COMMON.net to turn their Rolodex(R) into a controlled-access intranet to share Contacts with their friends and other members. Members let the COMMON Ground(TM) they share with others connect them to the people they need to reach.

The application introduces novel features to the relationship capital management industry:

– best mechanism for establishing trust between members in an online environment — new industry standards for privacy, confidentiality and discretion
– multi-directional reputation system
– platform suitable for individuals as well as enterprise employees…..

Popularity: 12% [?]

Dot com are not do gones afterall : TheTimes Company to Buy About.com for $410 Million

Popularity: 12% [?]

43things.com is a new entrant in social networking. I immediately fell in love with their idea, I wish I could come up with this idea. Just register within a sec, write your goal or task you want to do, the system will show you other users with similar goals and now you can network with each other depending on what you want to do and what are your goals.

Suppose you wanted to loose weight and submit it as your goal. 43things will prompt you all other users who share this goal. Now you can share tips, give advice, take advice, motivate each other or simply be friends. As simple as that.

Right from the list it seems to be more of social than business networking. But it can surely become a good tool for business networking also.

Popularity: 12% [?]

India’s mobile base has crossed 50 Million and is expected to cross 80 million by the end of this year. In terms of overall teledensity we have touched 8.5pc. This local boost in the telecom is now encouraging “made in india” handset production and very soon India will starting exporting the mobiles.

Popularity: 11% [?]

IndusNeXus.com (beta) | Free Social & Business Networking | Community Blogging | India has started a new service of news aggregator :

Your Online News Paper : News Aggregated from various sources

Read Online : * India Business | * Indian Blogs | *Indian News Headlines

Popularity: 12% [?]

Pulp Fiction writes about Contemporary Hindi Cinema :

Only mediocrity is worshipped all over the world. This world works on a formula and that is ‘escapism’ and ‘feel-good’. Come what may, meaningful cinema is not going to take over in terms of the numbers. As I quoted Hesse a few posts earlier - “I know it today: Nothing in this world is more repugnant to a man than following the path that leads to himself.”

We will always produce more garbage. The point is that instead of mediocrity, we are worshipping trash. The problem is that instead of producing more garbage than meaningful, almost all we are producing is garbage. And the worst part is that its being celebrated too. The ‘karva-chauth’ genre movies have taken over the box office. Not just that, its also taken over the society with its touch of feel-good. Thats the USP of the karva-chauth cinema.

We actually put so much masala in our movies that it ultimately becomes masala bullshit instead of biryani. I remember my favorite actor Naseeruddin Shah commenting in one of his interviers that after 20 years or so if our kids will ask us to show how we lived and how was india ? We wont have single movie to show the real india and indians.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Slashdot reports about the Samsung Miniket, a digital camcorder the size of a pack of cards that also works as a portable MP3 player, webcam, voice recorder, storage device, and more. It will be introduced in US in Feb / March @ $600-$700 approx. The details of the Samsung Miniket are available at the official Miniket Page and Linux Device carries a brief profile

Popularity: 11% [?]

Arstechnica informs about the google’s initiative to outsmart tricksters by the introduction of a HTML attribute that will surely affect how page ranks in search engines. rel=”nowfollow” tells the search engines that they shouldn’t follow a particular link, nor consider the link as factor in their indexing algorithms. But some people are not happy with this as they think this is some type of link condom and others believe that its a great way to limit blog and comment spam. All the major search engines seem to be in agreement to support this

Popularity: 12% [?]

Found about Telethon through CRY Telethon - Homepage

Derived from the words “telephone” and “marathon”, telethons are interactive television shows. Since the 1950’s they have been phenomenally successful at tapping the reach and power of television to raise money for philanthropic causes. The biggest of them all, the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon, is a 21½-hour, star-studded affair that raised $60.5 million for the Muscular Dystrophy Association last year. It has been broadcast every year, since its debut in 1966. Telethons are also popular in Australia, U.K, and Canada.

Jerry Lewis has been my most favorite actor and comedian and I also admire him for his social work.

Popularity: 11% [?]

[ Via IndusNexus ] neo-IT Press Release :

neoIT, the leading offshore advisory and management firm, and CMP’s Managing Offshore, the monthly newsletter for global-sourcing managers, announced today the results of the first annual ‘Offshore 100’ joint research project to assess BPO (business process outsourcing) and ITO (information technology outsourcing) service providers from around the world.

The ‘Offshore 100’ project was initiated in September 2004 with surveys issued to global service providers in 13 different countries to assess four primary areas: service provider company information, client data, operational capabilities and human resource policies. Over the ensuing 2 months, neoIT and Managing Offshore collected over 250 different data points from a wide range of service providers located in thirteen countries with strong representation from offshoring destination leaders India, The Philippines, China, Russia, Malaysia and Mexico.

Popularity: 12% [?]

The New York Times writes about a report “2005 Silicon Valley ”

The report’s authors cautioned against drawing conclusions that were too negative. If comparing present-day Silicon Valley to 2000, things look grim by nearly every measure, as the area has seen a steep decline in everything from jobs to venture capital to funding for the arts and municipal services.

But if the comparison year is 1998, just before the dot-com phenomenon spun out of control, “then we seem to have returned to similar levels of performance, and embarked on a new period of incremental growth,” according to the report’s authors. The study also found that 40 percent of the regional population is foreign-born, up from 32 percent in 2000.

“I’d say it’s not bad news coming out of Silicon Valley, but we have our challenges,” Mr. Hancock said. Primary among those concerns is what he called the “Manhattan effect.”

“Our worry is that Silicon Valley becomes this world center for people working on innovative enterprises who can afford to live here, but at the same time people who want and need to be here find that ours has turned into an economy that’s not robust in terms of the middle,” he said. That day hasn’t arrived yet, Mr. Hancock said, but the study found that housing is so expensive that “it’s difficult to retain young talent, teachers and service professionals.”

Popularity: 11% [?]

IndusNeXus.com reports :

Economic Times reports that India Inc. CEO are getting bitten by the Entrepreneurial Bug and are quitting there high paid jobs to do their own thing. For example, ex-Ranbaxy CEO DS Brar; ex-Britannia CEO Sunil Alagh; ex-SRF CEO Ravi Sinha; ex-Max Healthcare CEO Noni Chawla; ex-Infosys worldwide sales head Phaneesh Murthy, ex-Oberoi Hotels president Ravi Bhoothalingam and so many others who are following the suit.

The reason for this are many :

- Sudden power equation changes inside the company.

- Motivation and challenge of running ‘own company’

- Lack of Top Level jobs for a shift

- The ‘new factor’

- Money not being the motivation after a certain stage

Popularity: 11% [?]

IndusNeXus.com reports about Amit Varma’s experience with the Plagiarism in the Indian Blogosphere

Popularity: 12% [?]

Simon Paker , professor of economics and entrepreneurship at Durham Business School suggests that too much focus can hinder entrepreneurs

Popularity: 12% [?]

TelecomWeb

Critical Telecom, an investor-backed DSLAM startup with between 40 and 50 employees, advocates that standards-compliant IP service features should be created and reside in network access elements closer to end customers, ostensibly then enabling a more efficient and more reliable delivery of offerings over any combination of wireline, fixed wireless and/or mobile wireless systems. A white paper issued by the privately-held company contrasts this newer concept of architecture and methodology against the current practice of creating broadband services within core service networks and then delivering the services to end users via broadband remote access servers (BRAS) located at the metro/access boundary, the so-called network edge. The white paper, Deep Service: The Missing Link In Broadband, can be found at www.criticaltelecom.com.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Slashdot reports about the Indian Consortium which will Offer 2 Mbps At $2.30/month.

The State Govt of Andhra Pradesh in India, has awarded a contract for a fiber-optics based network to a consortium led by Aksh of India that aims to charge just Rs 100 (around US $2.30) a month for a domestic broadband connection. The project will provide services with a minimum bandwidth of 2Mbps. The execution of the project is scheduled to begin in April 2005 and will be completed by December 2006. The strength of the consortium is evident by the participation of top-notch Indian corporations which include Railtel Corporation India Limited, Tata Indicom, VSNL Limited, INcable Network (Andhra) Limited, Spectranet Limited and Nuziveedu Seeds Limited.”

Popularity: 12% [?]

Computer Reseller News (India) reports that IT growth momentum will be sustained in 2005 as per the IDC’s latest report :

The growth momentum attained in 2004 will be sustained in 2005 also and the domestic IT industry will reach another peak with 21.7 percent growth in 2005 over 2004, according to IDC India’s recently published research highlights.

“Last year we predicted that companies which would emerge successfully through the structural transformation underway in 2004 would be big winners in the next upturn. And 2005 is going to be the year of execution of choices made in 2004,” said Kapil Dev Singh, country manager, IDC (India).

Popularity: 11% [?]

Anohar John writes :

Japan today is at the crossroads. It has a great cultural heritage, an economy coming out of the disasters of world war, and prosperous hard working mentality and, is looking up to information technology sector for a shot in the arm, but the Japanese IT industry is acutely short in human resources. It has been estimated that Japan would need half a million IT personnel in the next five years and a report from Japan says that the Government has decided in principle that foreign skilled labour must be used to keep the Japanese economy going and maintain the country’s competitiveness in the global IT industry

Popularity: 12% [?]

Fast Company | The 6 Myths Of Creativity: Via emergic

1. Creativity Comes From Creative Types

2. Money Is a Creativity Motivator

3. Time Pressure Fuels Creativity

4. Fear Forces Breakthroughs

5. Competition Beats Collaboration

6. A Streamlined Organization Is a Creative Organization

Popularity: 11% [?]

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami :

Some bloggers have set up a site The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami : SEA-EAT blog News and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts. Please visit this site and help in the efforts of various agencies and people engaged in the help and support of the victims.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Slashdot reports that India is introducing software patents quietly. The Business-Standard India Report and NDTV’s Report. However, some slashdotters and myself are in little disagreement over the Software Patents : From one of the comments quoting Richard Stallman :his talk on the danger with software patents

This phenomenon of cross-licensing refutes a common myth, the myth of the starving genius. The myth that patents “protect” the “small inventor”. Those terms are propaganda terms. You shouldn’t use them. The scenario is like this: Suppose there is a brilliant designer of whatever. Suppose he has spent years starving in the attic designing a new wonderful kind of whatever and now wants to manufacture it and isn’t it a shame the big companies are going to go into competition with him, take away all the business and he’ll “starve”. I will have to point out that people in high tech fields are not generally working on their own and that ideas don’t come in a vacuum, they are based on ideas of others and these people have pretty good chances of getting a job if they need to these days. So this scenario, the idea that a brilliant idea came from this brilliant person working alone is unrealistic and the idea that he is in danger of starving is unrealistic. But it is conceivable that somebody could have an idea and this idea along with 100 or 200 other ideas can be the basis of making some kind of product and that big companies might want to compete with him. So let’s see what happens if he tries to use a patent to stop them. He says “Oh No, IBM. You cannot compete with me. I’ve got this patent.” IBM says “let’s see. Let’s look at your product. Hmmm. I’ve got this patent and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one, which parts of your product infringe. If you think you can fight against all of them in court, I will just go back and find some more. So, why don’t you cross license with me?” And then this brilliant small inventor says “Well, OK, I’ll cross license”. So he can go back and make these wonderful whatever it is, but so can IBM. IBM gets access to his patent and gets the right to compete with him, which means that this patent didn’t “protect” him at all.

Popularity: 11% [?]