Google seems to have taken the first step in leveraging its social efforts by integrating search results with results pertaining to the searchers’ social circle. Though the news about Google trying to integrate social with search has been around for a while, i am observing this as part of the search results for the first time. The social circle here seems to be folks whom i have emailed as indicated by Google – It says “connected via gmail”.
Mail has been a under-leveraged property till now, and this is probably the first major attempt by a biggie to extract value out of it – I am now waiting for Yahoo! & Microsoft to follow suit..
In olden says, capturing a messenger might tell you where the enemy’s army is heading; today having the ability to track down a terrorist is closely linked to tracking his correspondences with the nexus he belongs to. Communication channels within a country are of strategic importance for intelligence and thereby for the security of the country.
The Indian government wants the ability to monitor the following services – 
(a) Phone calls from one phone to another (the latter may be BB or not)
(b) SMS & MMS from one phone to another (the latter may be BB or not)
(c) Email from one BB to another BB
(d) Chat between one BB and another BB
(e) Email from one BB to a different phone
Out of the above only (c) and (d) cannot be monitored today; others are possible to be intercepted with the help of service providers.
It is important to understand that the issue is because Blackberry is more secure, and that is the irony of the whole argument. While the high level of encryption on data transfers has been one of the biggest advantages for many Blackberry subscribers, this has now turned out to be a grave security threat for many Asian countries. It is a hard reality that terrorist attacks are real, and just like we are subjected to security checks & frisking at key joints within the country, our communication privacy will also be scrutinized.
There’s no point cribbing about privacy these days, and i believe RIM (Research in motion) who is the manufacturer of Blackberry should understand it as well. Till now they have taken a very tough stance on the matter, and are risking the operations pertaining to 1 million subscribers in India. The technological reason they are giving about not having the key to decrypt the message is “B*** S***”, as they are not even talking about their willingness to change it and make it similar to other phones in the market.
Historically, emails and phone call sniffing has led to the uncovering of the people behind key terrorist attacks (2008 October bomb blasts, 2000 Red Fort attack etc). I am unsure if RIM is being sensitive to the issues facing the Indian government. Companies should have a worldly mindset to understand and operate across the globe and are responsible for the local consequences of their actions. An interesting article that comes to mind is “The Five Minds of a Manager” by Jonathan Gosling and Henry Mintzberg where they prescribe operating with the five perspectives which are key to success in a global environment. May be Michael Lazaridis should have a look….
Back to blogging after a long break!!! – I am hoping my return this time is for real and am aiming at posting at least a post a day or 7 posts a week. They seem to be lofty goals to begin with, but hey, i have spent on a spanking new domain and paid for the web hosting as well – hence it might just stick!! -
I found bluehost.com to be pretty decent place to host your wordpress sites @ $6.95 per month. WordPress.com itself provides domain name association with the wordpress hosted blogs at a lower rate, but i wanted slightly more control over my own site - hence decided to go with bluehost. I am using the Librio wordpress theme, which is a minimalistic, mac style, 2 column theme which i believe provides a good reading experience. Pictures seem to be lifting interest in any website, and i am in the search for a good photo editing tool which can help me craft those images. I am using the “Creative Commons Licensed content” filter from the search engines to find out pictures i can put on my blog. Tracking statistics through both wordpress stats as well as using Google Analytics Plugin for wordpress!!
Its amazing how much you learn on an endeavor to set up your own stuff – No wonder entrepreneurs get a kick out of incubating their own stuff!!! Doing is learning!
Stark is the word – a movie about slum dwellers in India makes waves across the world especially in ceremonies studded with celebrities and the elite. See link.
Just makes me wonder if the intention behind the movie was to showcase slums for the elitist population of this world.
Photo Credits – @s3rioussam – flickr (Samrat Sharma)
Learning to Boost Traffic, Engage Visitors
What do people want from a website?
Taken from “Nathan Richardson’s Modest Proposal” -
People want voice, breadth, aggregated search function and blog content from news sites. Give that to them and you get super sticky engagement.
An acronym for our qualifying criteria was ASPIC, which stands for Aggregation, Search, Personalization, Integration and Community. Nowadays we’re focused on video integration, mobile, editorial, community and thinking about the “X” factor.
Saw couple of movies recently – Kung Fu Panda, Slumdog Millionaire.
Kung Fu Panda is a kid movie which everyone can enjoy, contrast that with Slumdog millionaire which is for a more mature crowd. – One could argue that these movies are meant for totally different set of audiences, but essentially both are “underdog making it big” stories.
Slumdog is a collage of many hindi movie storylines, and a very familiar game show. I found the acting especially by the grown up version of the characters very amateurish – There are much better bollywood movies which never made it big in the international arena, which means that ultimately international recognition is the outcome of good marketing and networking.
A R Rahman is no doubt a genius, but can you call the sound track of Slumdog his best work till date? Com’on you should be kidding. Our maestro had made Rang De Basanti, Lagaan and Kannathil Muthamittal earlier, but nobody noticed all that till Danny Boyle got him onboard. Summary is that there is no dearth of talent in India, and that we are very much capable of doing world class things. Its just that it pays to do some marketing as well!
I personally liked Kung Fu Panda much more than the Slumdog’s jackpot. The lovable Panda rediscovers itself by kindling a lot of self belief within and doesnt depend on lady luck alone to make it big. Thats the best way to do it, isn’t it? Its an awesome movie for kids because it gives several valuable lessons -
They’ll be fascinated to learn the secret of the Dragon Scroll as well as the secret ingredient of Po’s father’s noodle soup, both of which will surprise them and possibly teach them a valuable lesson. There is one is for elders as well – “yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift–that’s why it’s called the present” – sweet!
Picture Credits – Toni Girl @Flickr
The next world order by Gurcharan Das – published on NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02das.html
My Note – Lack of a set vision enables public to do whatever they want. Their energy is set in self maximizing principles without the constraint of the state itself developing, end result would be considerable trickle effects on the state. Freedom and democracy motivates further growth for the self maximizing public, that makes the trickle in India a massive flow making it a rather developing country.
Am testing the new wordpress app which pops up inside my Yahoo! Mail interface, and hence this post.
I havent blogged for quite a while, but this one feature sure drove me to try it out!
check out the yahoo blog post on the new application features that are being introduced in Yahoo! mail.
There are seven applications which are available for the beta users to try out, and i find Xoopit (pulls up photos out of your mails and shows them together) the best of the lot. Greetings and WordPress applications also add to the occasional convenience.
wordletagcloud-kseeker-till-aug-08
Created with Wordle – http://wordle.net/
August 25th, 2008 in
General |
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The concept of Signs of Life is core to any commercial venture in the retail space which is pitted against lots of competition. Imagine the following scenarios
- Case 1 – Its a cold evening – You are hungry and are searching for a place to eat when you see two restaurants – one empty and the second one having a lot of people. You don’t have any information about the quality of food in any of the cases.
- Case 2 – Same situation – You see two restaurants – one with a glass window showing a lot of people inside having piping hot food, another one which is completely closed for view.
In a world of asymmetric information, social influence could be a key signaling factor for people to make their decision. In the above cases when people are searching for a place to eat, there could be an implicit assumption that since many people are already eating in a restaurant it should be better than the other one. People tend to be risk averse in a lot of situations, and believe in taking decisions with some confidence as opposed to ones with none at all.
Similar cases could be drawn for Apparel stores, Fast food joints, Cafe shops, Gaming centers, and even for social networking sites. When websites leverage signs of life well,people gravitate towards them as opposed to the ones which just add to chaos in the world already filled with choice. Even in the case of human beings, a happy, cheerful talkative person shows better signs of life and will have increased interactions with the rest of the world than a reserved person.
To read more on social design and signs of life – http://bokardo.com/
August 22nd, 2008 in
Strategy,
Web 2.0 |
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