Posts tagged news

To IPL or to IPO?!?

Jul06
2008 10 Comments Written by Prasad

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??

Posted in business - Tagged ,

Convergence

Jun23
2008 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

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?

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Ringo goes down the drain

Jun02
2008 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

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

Posted in Technology - Tagged ,

Pimp my Laptop!!

May13
2008 8 Comments Written by Prasad

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!!

Posted in business - Tagged ,

Y! Open

May04
2008 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

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!

Posted in Technology - Tagged ,

Facebook a matrimony site?

May04
2008 4 Comments Written by Prasad

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!!

Posted in foo, Technology - Tagged ,

Google meets Salesforce

Apr13
2008 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

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.

Posted in business, Technology - Tagged , ,

Solving the wrong problem

Apr10
2008 14 Comments Written by Prasad

Well its all over the news … just read it in today’s news. There is now going to be an OBC quota for IIMs, question one should be asking really is – Why do you need reservation in a premier post-graduation institute?

So now, they (Arjun Singh and his myopic HRD cronies) have increased the total number of seats, and increased the OBC quota for students. Looks like the decision to hike the fees by A and B was a wise one … lets just say that the higher fees are a premium for excellence and leave it at that!!

At the risk of sounding arrogant, heres a question -
If the holes in a sieve are increased, do you still hope to get the same quality of refinement?

Sometimes I think these news are there in the just for the IIM group discussions and nothing else! In the end, its all foo.

Posted in Uncategorized - Tagged

IE8: We are not the Devil anymore

Mar08
2008 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

Microsoft in an official release to the public has announced what features (read enhancements) they can expect from the much hyped Internet Explorer 8. This was at the MIX08 conference held at Las Vegas … you can read about the entire details here (beware, it is encoded with the usual marketing spin). Will list down some of the salient features here -

  • Activities – Users can add more extensions to their browser (the way Firefox does already). These activities would enable the users to do more, in short, Microsoft gets a whole new way to bundle their failed products with the new and improved browser
  • WebSlices – Users can subscribe to content from within a page. The moment the content is changed, the users will be notified in their Links Bar.
  • Automatic Crash Recovery – That’s reassuring!! This feature is being marketed actively instead of an implicit indication that it was always there. Anyways, how is this adding value over Firefox or Opera for that matter.
  • Safety Filter (thats Anti-Phishing) – This is to be improved and enhanced, which will block sites known to contain malicious scripts. No comments here. I am actually hoping that this works, people do not realize how important this feature is. And those who do, do not use IE :-)
  • Compliance – IE8 will now be more compliant to the CSS standards. Finally, some sense, these days too many sites are relying more and more on CSS instead of flash or complex javascripts for glitzing up their websites
  • AJAX Navigation – Hmmm … this is a nice touch I must say. In all the AJAX based portals, whenever we click the back button of the browser, the browser goes to the page which was last submitted completely and not the last AJAXed state. Having this might be a blessing for normal users, I know the techies had just learned to live without AJAX navigation
  • Integration – IE8 promises ready made integration with Facebook and eBay, et al. So, thats a plus for all facebook and eBay users … dunno how many of them will actually use it though.

All this and a lot more kids! These have been promised to the doe-eyed of Microsoft … you can almost see the bunch of users in the background using their respective other browsers waiting and watching to see what happens next. I am one of them.

As of now, if you do want to try out the beta, try the IE8 Readiness Toolkit and then proceed for the installation. One word. Apprehension.

Posted in Uncategorized - Tagged

Microsoft to open up?

Feb22
2008 Leave a Comment Written by Prasad

Microsoft has started to take the power of the development community seriously. In a press conference yesterday, they have put a very verbose official release regarding increasing the interoperability of all the high volume MS products by releasing and maintaining documentation of their APIs on their site. As quoted from Steve Ballmer,

For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today’s announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency. Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies.

Read the complete release here.

The products whose APIs would be released are Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007, and future versions of all these products.

Can we have someone look into the revenue of these products as well?

Translated, will now have to buy a license and become a registered member of MSDN to understand the APIs for the “high volume products”.

Addendum
RedHat was not so much impressed with this release, read more of it here.

Posted in business - Tagged , ,
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