Posts in category Technology

Peerindex, Klout Beware!

Aug08
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

routed People who are in Social Media would already know of influence monitoring tools such as Klout, Peerindex, and Rapportive.

I started using Klout the minute I discovered it using the Rapportive add-on for Firefox. Measuring and monitoring your klout score seemed cool. Soon after that I chanced on Peerindex as well.

The approaches employed by Klout and Peerindex are slightly different. Whereas Peerindex considered the reach of your tweets and conversations, Klout seemed to focus on the richness. Both the web-apps seemed cool, since both of them gave you an indication of what and how to increase your respective scores. So I managed to hike up my Klout score from the low 40s to the low 60s. I was happy with what I had achieved, until one conversation with Sushrut at a Tweet-up made me realize, that a high Klout score or a high Peerindex score is not really the outcome.

The business model that both these web-apps adopt to monetize their influence measuring algorithms is pretty much the same. Organizations that need to reach out to the influencers and decision-makers in their particular niches can now do so … at a price of course. Peerindex for example, charges 50 GBP for identifying a single influencer in the topic of your choosing. Of course there are people who are willing to pay, but the question I want to raise is till when?

I recently read this article on the openview blog, and found this great directory of twitterati – Twellow. One simple search confirmed this, the application is a directory of topic-wise experts, whereas this might seem commonplace, what this means for Klout and Peerindex is that their premium services now seem overpriced. Why would an organization pay a premium for the same information which is available for free?

Agreed, that Klout and Peerindex do provide “perks” for influencers, but at the end of the day, the deliverable for which the organization is paying up good money is to get twitter handles of influencers to start engaging with them. Perhaps, if the engagement can be somehow integrated into these perks … but till then I am firmly sticking to Twellow!

Posted in business - Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why VC funding is important to SaaS industry

May14
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

imageIf you have worked in a start-up and have been a part of the core team in any start-up, you would be familiar with and know the importance of venture capital; and their steep terms and targets :-)

If you want a higher funding in the next round, give me more revenues.

How many of us have heard this line? In fact, it’s interesting to note that VC’s are not looking at higher bottomline, they are looking at increasing the topline. I am not complaining, it is a good perspective to hold if you want to keep an eye on the big picture.

This stand is also helping the slew of applications which are being launched as Softwares-as-a-Service (SaaS). Why? Read on.

As a business owner, one of the major targets dictated by a VC would be revenue targets. Not profitability. So I, as a business owner, will be willing to try out different new services in order to increase my offering. If a service exists which otherwise will take me ages to build or acquire, I am now more than willing to try it out on a month-on-month basis.

The overall cost of a SaaS pricing would be more, but the brunt of it on a monthly basis would be less. This impacts my profitability, but these days I am not looking at profits as much as I am looking at revenues. If I able to increase the reach or richness of my service offering using SaaS, then so be it. I will go ahead for the same at the cost of profitability.

Your thoughts?

Posted in business, work - Tagged , , , , , ,

The Infinite Debate

Apr05
2011 2 Comments Written by Prasad

There is a forum that I visit every once in a while, a place where a lot of youngsters flock for sharing ideas and seeking help on technical topics. As would happen due to my strongly felt statements, I recently got into a flaming match. Fortunately this is being conducted via IMs and not on the public forum directly.

I am finding it noteworthy because a decade back or so, I would have taken the stand that I am currently speaking against. The topic at discussion here is what should one do if one wants to build great websites. As always, I have chosen function over form and gone for learning design patterns, frameworks, understanding how logic is written and how algorithms can make you code better.

The youth (I am assuming that he is one, since his language reflects the brazenness of a college brat), has a simple argument. Since the end point of all websites is HTML, one should learn HTML inside out (HTML, CSS, JS, validations, the works). In all probability, I would have chosen the same answer … but that’s what decades are for – telling us our past answers were wrong :-)

As I was trading IMs, I realized that perhaps there is more to this question than a simple answer -

  1. Form V/s Function: Firstly, there is the age old looks v/s functionality argument.
  2. You have the what makes a website great topic (Purpose, Usability, Functionality, what?)
  3. Then there is the Purpose of a website tangent
  4. And if that’s not all, you have the you cannot teach creativity argument

All the aforementioned approaches can enable one to make websites. They are tools. But first, do you have an idea as to what problem are you solving with your website?

Get an idea.

Posted in foo - Tagged , , ,

Open letter to all channels

Apr03
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

Dear Channel providers,

I am sure that all of you are complaining about piracy of your shows and content over the internet. In fact I won’t be surprised if you think the bit torrent technology is the scourge of all paid content models. Here is a suggestions -

If you can’t beat them, join them

Why don’t you start providing your premium content for download over the internet? Go ahead put your advertisements in them as well. Not only are you increasing your advertisement exposure, but also you are making money off the very thing which was a threat to you earlier.

The cool part is that even if your content then gets pirated, you are still getting the advertisement exposure. Isn’t that what you wanted?

Posted in business - Tagged , , , , ,

RBI and the poppycock it calls vision

Mar03
2011 2 Comments Written by Prasad

Got to see a peek at the IT Vision document of Reserve Bank of India, thanks to a tweet by a friend. Go ahead, read it, I am not going anywhere. I will save you the effort though, I can summarize it in one word.

Hogwash.

In more colloquial terms, Bullshit.

There cannot be a more generic document which meanders around superfluously. It touches upon literally all the peripheral topics which one can bring up when the words Information Technology are mentioned, but it fails to take a stand on any topic.

I gave them the benefit of doubt and went to the Contact Us section of their website. After I keyed in a longish feedback to their vision document, when I submitted the request, I got a very nice error message (shown below)

Capture

Great execution of the vision RBI! Not only have you declared that your vision for technology is a blurred mixture of all corporate jargons, but also one of the most basic functionalities on your website is not working.

Further reading on the report informed me that a committee had been setup to create the vision document. Committees are the perfect excuses for being faceless, blameless and gutless. You do not have to take any stand and you do not have to do any work.

Good job o ye Banker of Banks!

Posted in social - Tagged , , ,

Your own URL shortener!

Mar02
2011 2 Comments Written by Prasad

So I was checking out bit.ly, and I noticed that the bit.ly Pro is free for individual users. Turns out you can have your own short url running with bit.ly’s engine.

Out came my credit card and kdkk.in was bought. Now all the urls that I shorten using bit.ly will be on this domain. The configuration is through your bit.ly account and could not be simpler. All you have to do is verify that you own both the domains and point your main domain to the shortened domain.

A simple two step process and voila, my own url shortener, powered by the good folks at bit.ly!!

Tagged , , ,

The Parity Bit

Feb22
2011 4 Comments Written by Prasad

Here’s an interesting mind bender for you (do note that this question is used in a lot of job interviews) -

A warlord has captured 1000 villagers, and has decided to put their wits to test. He has put 4 different coloured hats (say Red, Blue, Black and White) on these thousand villagers and arranged them randomly in a long queue. The arrangement of this queue is such that each villager can see all the villager’s hats in front of him, but he cannot see the villagers behind him.

Each of them now have to guess what colour their hat is. If it is the right colour then the villager is allowed to live and is freed, if not … then let’s just say he won’t be having any more headaches.

The villagers are allowed to discuss as a group to decide on a protocol (an algorithm of sorts) to decide how to call the colours so that the maximum no. of villagers survive. What is this algorithm and how many villagers will survive?

Hint: The title of the post

Taken from Wikipedia,

A parity bit is a bit that is added to ensure that the number of bits with the value one in a set of bits is even or odd. Parity bits are used as the simplest form of error detecting code.

The villagers have to use the concept of parity in their answers. Instead of taking a guess at what colour his hat is, the last villager is the parity bit. His answer gives an indication to everyone else in the queue as to what could be their colours. How? Here is so -

Each colour is denoted a no. (Red=1, Blue=2, Black=3, White=4). Since the last man can see all the hats in front of him, he takes a total of all the number before him and does an operation (total mod 4). This is the parity (or the error-correction answer). Now the man in front of him can see all the hats (except his of course) and also knows this value error-correction value. What he has to do is do the same operation for all the hats in front of him, and subtract that value from the previous mod. That’s the colour of his hat.

The cool thing about this is that even if there is one fool of a villager who miscalculates, the villager next to him can detect this error and can correct it immediately.

Now, where would we be using this? (In other words, why did I bother with this problem?)

Networks! Computer networks use the concept of parity bit to detect transmission errors for quite some time now (have you ever faced that pesky CRC error? That’s your parity bit right there).

Tagged , ,

Intensity of technology adoption

Feb16
2011 4 Comments Written by Prasad

Everybody you know, will probably agree with this, that Technology can be a great enabler.

It’s one of those motherhood statements (like “Shit happens” or “Life sucks”) that arguably can’t be denied. As someone who has often taken upon himself to forge this enablement with the demands of the business, I want to take a different stand.

Technology CAN be an enabler, only if you possess the know-how of implementation and your audience possesses the temerity to bear the brunt of teething and adoption problems, then can it be an enabler. How many cases have we seen that an organization wide technology upgrade has failed simply because the intended audience does not adopt it, but merely reverts to the easily available alternative.

My mother heads the medical department of State Bank of India, she in fact is the Chief Medical Officer. She tells me that they had tried three times to implement some form of an enterprise system for their department, Each time it had failed. Why did it fail? Not because the implementation was incorrect. We can’t say that, the moment we do – the implementation partner will pull out the requirements sheet, the scope document or some form of agreement which indicates that there was no breach of contract from their side.

And that is the problem I want to point out. Technology is not a function which can run in a silo. It permeates through the organization, from the most mundane of activities like checking email, to most complex of them like implementing a Decision Support System to help the top brass in strategic decision making.

Technology adoption therefore has to be intense. So intense that it should change the identity of the organization. If done properly, it can vault the firm into the next level.

The next time someone tells me that technology CAN be a great enabler, I will tell them that if my aunt had a moustache, then she CAN be my uncle.

Posted in business, work - Tagged , , , ,

1984 to 2010

Dec06
2010 6 Comments Written by Prasad

image

We are in the process of formalizing our IT and Electronic Access Policies. In this process, often the team drafting the initial proposal finds it pretty easy to switch to the Orwellian mode of 1984, wherein Big Brother is always watching.

Although the intent of these people often stems from the fact that they desire to protect both the system and it’s users, but that sometimes requires that extra bit of control. However, it becomes extremely difficult to tell the need for control from genuine to paranoia.

Further, due to some unforeseen events happening in the recent past, these rules are doubly strict ensuring that the past mistakes of a few have to be borne by the entire team. Only to ensure that something that happens out of the blue should not happen again (and rightly so!).

The problem at hand is how to ensure that people are enabled to work and co-create with each other, but are still protected from any malicious ill will that might exist outside (and even within the system). How can Big Brother start co-operating instead of watching?

One clear method is to assume that all people are good and need to be enabled. The other is to work closely with them step-by-step and layout a simplified process and get the end-user buy-in on each of the steps. Till that happens, Big Brother will continue to exist … we are watching you!

Posted in business, work - Tagged , , , , , ,

Google Fonts!

Jun18
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

Came across Google Webfonts, decided to try it out on this blog.

Instructions are pretty simple, as long as you are using CSS on your site. Otherwise you will be forced to CSSify your site first before implementing Google’s webfonts.

Include the Google Font definition in your head section, and simply update the “font-family” attribute in your body CSS definition to the desired font family.

Pretty simple and elegant. Trust Google to come up with this.

Tagged , , , ,
← Older Entries Newer Entries →