Who? Me??

I just read this, only in Bengal can this happen … maybe in Kerala as well. But at least the South Indian states have realized that reform can only be ushered in through economic development of the state.

If it is good for the country, does that justify sacrificing the lifestyles of a small segment of the populace? Logically speaking, I would say yes, but as the marathi saying goes – jyachi jalte tyalach kalte. Sometimes the ruler does have to make hard decisions, and those are the times when the opposition party is waiting for … to make a big hue and cry for garnering more votes.

Ughhh! What a mess … It really is surprising that how governments get anything done.

I was reading my feeds when I came across -

A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash and Now THERE’s a Teacher

Takes you back to movies like To Sir, with Love, doesn’t it? Just that the students are not half that bad. What often moves or works against the teacher are the preconceived notions of the students. In our lifetimes as students hell bent to finish the term as soon as possible, we sometimes forget the main task at hand – knowledge and learning.

I remember one of my Services Marketing professors in this regard, Prof. Ram Kumar, who was the faculty at IIM-A. In the second lecture, he gave us senior students as quiz, one simple question – “What is services marketing?”

Having finished our preliminary year with a lot of poppycock, we had learned the management mantra and more than eager to try it out. At the end of the quiz, Ram Kumar made us write a textbook definition of the same, 20 times on the back side of the question paper. Honestly, I felt like a school kid. The only thought that was going through all our collective minds was – “This is what they do at IIM-A, huh?” or “All this effort for doing this?”. The rest of the course was awesome, with presentations and assignments which made us think … no, really think. Come out with ideas, collaborate, discuss the merits and demerits of different services, and most importantly, learn to ask the question Why?

At the end of the course, the last session had us sitting in the class, with one minor change. The class’ mike was attached to a mini stereo system. Our disastrous quiz papers were distributed amongst the class … I was staring at my bad handwriting and wondering, what am I to do with this paper? Ram Kumar, then hit the stereo’s play button … and asked us to tear up the quiz sheet where we had expressed our rote learning and throw them in the air. The background music was – Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd.

Tearing up a piece of paper never felt that good.

I was mulling over Alexa this weekend, when I decided to compare the web traffics of the three networking sites; facebook, myspace and orkut. The annual traffic graph revealed an interesting picture I must say. The myspace traffic is more or less constant with its brief set of fluctuations, Fox Interactive Media should be a happy puppy. Their market share has remained solid,whew!!

But look at orkut and facebook, facebook (in red) has been steadily growing from milestone to milestone, and recently was crowned as the top social network site on the blue nothing (that’s the internet). The sudden spurt you see in all the curves, I think its the announcement of Facebook, when they announced their predator safegaurds. Remember that time in May, when a youth in India was kidnapped by some strangers through orkut? Well, could that explain the sudden dip in orkut traffic?

Strangely, during that time, orkut went the facebook way by having a few orkut apps, could this culture shift have thrown more traffic towards facebook?

I know a lot of people have not put too much thought into social communities, et al, but community management and monetization of the same is the only revenue models for both orkut and facebook. I wonder whether the orkut product manager is breaking a sweat on this? Incidentally, the orkut development and engineering team has shifted entirely to Brazil, where it is the no. 1 social networking site.

Addendum

I don’t know how he came across this blog, but Gaurav Dua gave a very logical explanation for the sudden dip in the traffic. If you see the Orkut url, then for Indian users it is nowadays orkut.co.in, same for Brazil, hence the traffic figures have dropped to 33% (approx.). I feel like such a dunderhead

This is a follow-up to Sudhir’s post on IPL. Yesterday I was reading the Economic times whilst the bai was cleaning my room (that’s the only time when I took a break from Sacred), and there it was … in the big headlines pattern.

IPL teams can raise capital through going public … or via private equity as well!! Imagine the Mumbai Indians being listed on the BSE, and everytime they have a match against some other team, the share prices would buckle, a cricket crazy nation … now putting their money where their mouth is. I am just waiting for those Sports Team Mutual Funds … wanna bet that Ravi Shastri launches one??

Read this in today’s morning news.

So MTNL has finally decided to go the developed country way. Opening up their offerings for not only other bulk buyers, but also for individuals like you and me. This means a stronger focus not on voice revenues, but on data revenues. 

A natural extension of this is Value Added Services (VAS) for fixed line networks. This trend makes more sense since MTNL was loosing market share of the customer’s talking time. The average Indian has stopped applying for land line since the mobile is readily available with cheaper and varied tariff rates. Heck, even I do not have landline number in Hyderabad! 

So, with India copying the trends of more developed nations like UK and US, it is only a few years when we see a mobile revolution taking place in our markets. The future is here, are you ready for it?

Got this mail today. Another one bites the dust!! I think its good for social networking as a phenomenon that the redundant networks are consolidating.

May 31, 2008

Dear Ringo member,
After much consideration we have decided to end the Ringo service.
As of June 30, 2008 the Ringo service is ending and you will no longer have access to your Ringo account.

How do I get my photos?
We created a new feature that will allow you to download your photos to your computer. Click here to download your photos.

You may also order a CD of your photos. Just sign in to your Ringo account, click on the “You” tab, click” Order prints” and then “Photo Disks”.

How do I get my videos?
Videos uploaded to Ringo were hosted for us by a partner. This partner has decided to end this service and after June 30 videos uploaded to Ringo will no longer be available.

Thank you for being part of the Ringo community.
The Ringo Team

First it was Dell, and now Asus!!

Its great to see the era of designer hardware in India. Where users get to sport their identity by the very laptop decoration they use. Gone are the days where executives would sit tinkering on their ugly, grey/black boxes looking so busy and mighty. Nowadays, you see young bachhas in faded jeans and t-shirts carrying lappies of all shapes and sizes, but very few of them would be actually working while waiting at the flight terminal.

Soon, we will see more customer centric models where the customer can completely customize the look of his/her laptop. I can hardly wait for that day!!

Imagine a platform or a web application that can make sense out of your mail, your other affiliated activities and even track where your friends are all in one go!! It can make schedules for a dinner meet up in one part of the town with your selected friends and suggest other viable venues. That is precisely what Yahoo! is set out to do.

God Speed fellas!

Read this here. How many of you lot have hit on/flirted with the opposite sex on some social networking site or the other? Oh … c’mon be honest, I know a lot of us have done it. In fact, there was is a social networking site dedicated solely for that purpose. So do not tell me that you haven’t, I know that you did (smug smile).

Trust us desis to find a unique usage for the likes of orkut, facebook, myspace, et al!! As they say – Majboori ka naam hain Mahatma Gandhi!!

Just came across this.

Now Google Apps premier users can avail of the famous Salesforce CRM, at a nominal price of course. Its an alliance of sorts to stave of the big bad monster from taking on the individual firms. To be honest, it is a one place solution for a lot of SMEs for a simple and yet effectively managed enterprise system.

Effectively, Salesforce and Google Apps are combining their users for a joint Go-To-Market, adding more value each other’s product offerings. De factor internal messenger for this would be the Google Talk gadget, which works like a charm.

For Google Apps basic users, who know that paying $60/user/year is slightly over their IT budget, they can use SugarCRM which comes absolutely free of cost!! Knowledge of XAMP is solicited before going ahead with SugarCRM.