tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-230024512024-03-13T06:27:04.935-07:00Tech trends and business ideasAll things that motivate entrepreneursKrishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.comBlogger237125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-36383769055116377992016-10-25T21:23:00.000-07:002016-10-25T21:24:25.420-07:00Talking of digital dinosaurs when they should be citing Phoenixes <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Great post by <a href="http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2016/10/digital-rookies.html" target="_blank">Vinnie</a>...<br />
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Very relevant in the present day context when there is too much hype over digital India. To be fair to the Government, whatever little they do, be it simply taking utility bill payments online or provision of Wi-Fi services in remote locations of rural areas to promote social inclusion programs for the legions of unfortunate rural folk that have to put up with bad connectivity and broadband infrastructure, the same can't be said of India's smug IT outsourcing vendors sitting on cash hoards.<br />
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It's time someone kicks them right on the butt. And Vinnie just did that.</div>
Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-59808235362753344912012-07-24T10:29:00.000-07:002012-07-24T10:42:25.472-07:00Exactly what Infosys must be doing with its cash hoard...!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Instead of grumbling about client indecision on discretionary tech spends or reminding doubting analysts about its choice for <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-07-16/news/32698335_1_sd-shibulal-infosys-nr-narayana-murthy" target="_blank">marathon over sprint</a>, Indian outsourcing vendors like Infosys must be focusing on acquiring smart startups like NICIRA that VMware is seeking out to buy <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/infrastructure/switches/240004216" target="_blank">giving it a massive leap in its technology focus.</a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span id="SVsite"><span id="SVarticle">With its NVP, or network
virtualization platform, Nicira (pronounced "nice era") will ostensibly
do for networks what VWware has done for computers -- magically create
multiple virtual networks that work together in tandem but unleash much
more computing power than a single network could ever achieve.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span id="SVsite"><span id="SVarticle">Shibulal, are you listening...? It's time you let loose those purse strings after real tech innovators instead of chasing me too System Integrators. That will be a great favor not just to your existing shareholders but also a nice parting pat to those past employees waiting to liquidate their stock options at a fairly reasonable price that seems a daunting task now.. :-)</span></span></div>
</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-74221261279160927872012-07-13T07:25:00.000-07:002012-07-13T07:25:01.406-07:00Digg's digital suicide..or is it...?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
This is truly sad...I read the story that Digg is being <a href="http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_21064278/digg-sold-betaworks-buys-social-media-kevin-rose-downfall" target="_blank">sold for $500k,</a> that is a long way off from the valuation of $200 million that it commanded once... Like many before me, I too had been a great fan of the social media darling that did a wonderful job of filtering and aggregating quality content online from the mega clutter that is the www. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The epitaph should read " Digg ain't dead... It just slipped into the cloud" </div>
</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-34739303786574057812012-05-07T19:08:00.000-07:002012-05-07T19:09:08.685-07:00...It's not about the CEO lying as much it is off process gaffe<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Ok. So, Scott Thomson, CEO, Yahoo is not a Computer Science graduate. <a href="http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/05/07/yahoo-scott-thompson/" target="_blank">His resume is fake</a>. My question - What about internal controls and HR processes..? It's hard to believe that there is no such thing called credential verification in such a large corporation as Yahoo.. If HR has such major lapses while hiring its top gun, we can imagine how much sloth must have crept into other functions like Purchase, Accounting, Sales and Administration - something that explains why Yahoo is not able to shake off its `troubled' adjective even after close to a decade...<br />
<br />
Thompson was hired from PayPal in January, four months after previous
CEO Carol Bartz was acrimoniously ousted, and Yahoo — so far, at least —
has maintained that computer science degree or not, Thompson is
qualified for the job. He very well may be, but the perception of
impropriety may be too much for Yahoo to bear.</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-76997466429196365702012-05-07T04:50:00.000-07:002012-05-07T04:50:33.586-07:00Big Data - CRM by another name...?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The IT revolution has gathered steam with predictive data analytics (of known customer data) catalyzing enterprise fortune. In came CRM with a lot of noise and indeed it was noise and not much. People got frustrated as most marketing campaigns based on abstract data analytics misguided product launches and promotions religiously backfired, delivering lemons on their balance sheets. Company management lost interest besides money and CRM had its obituary written, for no fault of its own because it was the excessive expectation to blame. Not the concept itself because customer data is always valuable.<br />
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This is exactly what is being nicely <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/business/40320/?nlid=nldly&nld=2012-05-07" target="_blank">clarified by Peter Fader,</a> Professor at Wharton Business School while he says "There is a "data fetish" with every new trackable technology, from
e-mail and Web browsing in the '90s all the way through mobile
communications and geolocation services today. Too many people think
that mobile is a "whole new world," offering stunning insights into
behaviors that were inconceivable before. But many of the basic patterns
are surprisingly consistent across these platforms. That doesn't make
them uninteresting or unimportant. But the basic methods we can use in
the mobile world to understand and forecast these behaviors (and thus
the key data needed to accomplish these tasks) are not nearly as radical
as many people suspect."<br />
<br />
Superb elucidation... Hats off to Prof. Fader...! </div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-53232181126328196152010-04-21T23:16:00.000-07:002010-04-21T23:30:27.945-07:00Adobe quits Apple pursuit<div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Sometimes,</b> no matter how hard you try to preserve a relationship, you reach a point where it becomes clear the two of you have simply grown too far apart and it's time to cut your losses. After a long and unsuccessful campaign to persuade Apple to embrace the Flash multimedia platform on the iPhone, Adobe has finally found itself at that point, and it's <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362911,00.asp">goodbye Apple</a> for Adobe now.<br /><br />According to Mike Chambers, the principal product manager for developer relations for Flash, the final straw was Apple's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/technology/companies/13apple.html">recent ban on apps</a> built with unapproved tools and converted into an iPhone-compatible format.<br /><br />IDC analyst Al Hilwa offered <a href="http://click1.newsletters.siliconvalley.com/khttmvpgddtjsqhfjrkshjbgwbjtzkwszrvkqzvfhrmptr_tpvbphvbzwpp.html" target="_blank">a big-picture view of Apple's developer restrictions</a>: "From a developer perspective, the new legal language is bad news. The application development field is very diverse and many platforms are inherently layered with API's often stacked on top of one another as application platforms evolve. Apple's legal language seems to preclude even Apple evolving its own platform down the road when new languages or interfaces become more popular as computer science evolves. ... While this restriction can be seen in the prism of the Apple and Adobe relationship around Flash, this is not just about Adobe, but potentially a problem for every developer runtime or language that wants to hold on to developers and maintain its longevity. It is about programmers maintaining their livelihood. Probably even more importantly, it is about the flexibility to evolve computer science and software development."<br /><br />Amen.<br /></div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-74638651356115880342010-04-01T03:24:00.000-07:002010-04-01T03:33:29.196-07:00Converting an IT horizontal into an industry vertical<div style="text-align: justify;">Leveraging IT is not just for outsourcing vendors in India. Other Industries are fast catching up. I would say it's a fantastic opportunity for sectors that are not particularly doing well, Real Estate and Construction for example. <br /><br />HCC is a Bombay based infrastructure and construction major in India. The industry is going thro some real rough weather but that doesn't seem to have influenced their business propensities. Though operational departments have been sagging, the IT department of the company has warmed up to the situation and is now pitching in with its own might of experience gained so far. It is trying to develop as an end-to-end IT solutions service provider for the infrastructure industry. According to <a href="http://searchcio.techtarget.in/news/interview/0,289202,sid205_gci1405067,00.html?track=NL-544&ad=759357&Offer=mn_ec040110INCOUTTS_1&asrc=EM_UTS_11228470&uid=7835701">Satish Pendse, CIO</a>, initially, the services sought to be provided by the upstart could be SAP implementation, GPS-based tracking devices, multiple-packaged application implementations, and end-to-end services going forward.<br /><br />Innovation does not just mean feature addition or product enhancement. It can also me converting a horizontal into a vertical.<br /></div>.Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-43873126068239015322010-02-13T17:11:00.000-08:002010-02-13T17:17:25.603-08:00Why I turned the Google Buzz offThere are three separate issues, only one of which is the defaults:<br /><br /><div align="justify">1) Having an engineering culture drive a social product.... And I'm not just trying to be snarky. Social isn't a technical problem it's a people one and Google's culture doesn't seem geared that way. </div><div align="justify">.</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">2) Layering a social sharing product (explicit social) on top of a private communication product like email (implicit social). Why would anyone assume that I'd want to do this? I might email business partners, clients, doctors (mine), lovers... why would you ever assume that frequency of email connections maps to 'want to share with the world?"</div><div align="justify">.</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">3) The settings. I despair of `society' as an industry sometimes. Ever since the earliest concerns over privacy a decade ago, people insist on ignoring obvious things - you don't opt people in just to build an audience and force them to opt out. You don't auto-subscribe them to a bunch of followers then make them removed those people one by one. You don't suddenly violate customer trust by changing the nature of a familiar product to suit senior management. These aren't hard or obscure lessons... but time and again otherwise bright people screw up by ignoring them.</div><br />.Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-28688320361720399612010-02-12T21:57:00.000-08:002010-02-12T22:03:58.443-08:00IT outsourcing vendors run for cover<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p><blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;">"In what could be an <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/538063/IT_Outsourcing_Landmark_Ruling_Against_HP_s_EDS_Gives_Customers_New_Power">important decision</a> for the IT outsourcing industry and its customers, a London court recently ruled that EDS (now division of HP) must pay damages to a former outsourcing customer for failing to live up to its sales pitch.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">British Sky Broadcasting (BskyB) had signed a £48 million outsourcing contract with EDS to build a customer service system in 2000, but terminated the deal early in 2002 after what it said was "woeful" performance by the IT service provider. SkyB alleged deceit, negligent misrepresentation and breach of contract by EDS. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Although the total costs and damages will be determined at a later date, BskyB said it expects EDS will be liable to pay at least £200 million—more than four times the amount of the original contract."</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Enough India's famed IT vendors? Now don't go promise the moon and hope customers would tolerate project failures like before. Though the U.K. court ruling was decided largely on the basis of facts from one person's statements as opposed to systematic failings of the outsourcer or outsourcing vendors as a whole, dissatisfied outsourcing customers may go <a href="http://www.cio.com/article/529763/IT_Outsourcing_Why_It_Pays_to_Appraise_Your_Contract">digging through notes</a> from the pre-contract courtship phase of their relationships to see if arguments around fraud can be made. </p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-50259948800586760852009-07-28T05:20:00.000-07:002009-07-28T05:26:50.976-07:00Tweak that Kindle, Jeff !<div align="justify">Amazon Kindle gave me a lot of hope. I was looking forward to ever-fresh, non greying pages no matter how many times I read a book. I longed for bookmarking at the press of a button, no chopping woods for paper etc.etc. The Kindle, I was told was all that and more. </div><br />But it hardly seems to be the case.<br /><br /><div align="justify">Ok. There’s no clutter, no pile of paperbacks next to the couch. A Kindle book arrives wirelessly: it’s untouchable; it exists on a higher, purer plane. It’s earth-friendly, too, supposedly. Yes, it’s made of exotic materials that are shipped all over the world’s oceans; yes, it requires electricity to operate and air-conditioned server farms to feed it; yes, it’s fragile and it duplicates what other machines do; yes, it’s difficult to recycle; yes, it will probably take a last boat ride to a Nigerian landfill in five years. But no tree farms are harvested to make a Kindle book; no ten-ton presses turn, no ink is spilled.<br /><br />Too bad it doesn’t have a little kickstand,” . “You could prop it up like a dresser mirror and read while you eat.”<br /><br />I experimented with the text-to-speech feature. The robo-reader had a polite, halting, Middle European intonation, like Tom Hanks in “The Terminal,” and it was sometimes confused by periods. Once it thought “miss.” was the abbreviation of a state name: “He loved the chase, the hunt, the split-second intersection of luck and skill that allowed him to exercise his perfection, his inability to Mississippi.” I turned the machine off.<br /><br />Photographs, charts, diagrams, foreign characters, and tables don’t fare so well on the little gray screen. Page numbers are gone, so indexes sometimes don’t work. Trailing endnotes are difficult to manage. (Cook books / Recipes will suck when you try a new dish to see if the outcome tallies with the intention) If you want to quote from a book you’ve bought, you have to quote by location range—e.g., the phrase “She was on the verge of the mother of all orgasms” is to be found at location range 1596-1605 in Mari Carr’s erotic romance novel “Tequila Truth.”<br /><br />Read in the sun the letters began to disappear. Readers had to press Alt-G repeatedly to bring them back. I clicked Next Page as I reached the beginning of the last line, and the page flashed to black and changed before I’d read it all<br /><br />The Sony Reader’s page-turning controls are better designed than the Kindle’s controls, and the Reader came out more than a year before the Kindle did; also, its screen is slightly less gray, and its typeface is better, and it can handle ePub and PDF documents without conversion,<br /><br />You can’t give them away or lend them or sell them. You can’t print them. They are closed clumps of digital code that only one purchaser can own. A copy of a Kindle book dies with its possessor.<br /><br />And then you cut out the bad tobacco odor that you often get while opening books in a library.</div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify"> </div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-77410949427977398632009-05-29T01:24:00.000-07:002009-05-29T01:25:28.277-07:00The "Bing" outing<div align="justify">Ok. <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/may09/05-28NewSearchPR.mspx" target="_blank">Microsoft is out</a> with its own search engine, oops, they call it a decision engine – <strong>Bing</strong>.</div><div align="justify"><br />There will be inevitable exploration of the meaning of the moniker. (Bing has a certain ring to it. It's much better, of course, than the boring "Live Search.") Plus there is the bigger question of whether Bing will make a dent in Google's dominance. But search for clues to another issue Bing brings up: Will it end the Microsoft-Yahoo search flirtation? </div><div align="justify"><br />Anyways, Bing seems like it would be more useful than a Google or Yahoo search. If you're searching for something you'd like to buy, for example, Bing theoretically will serve up reviews, as well as places to buy the item and related accessories, laid out in a prettier and more organized way than just a simple vertical list of links. On a whole, a big positive for Microsoft: The depth of the searches seems to offer more opportunities for ad revenue.</div><div align="justify"><br />Of course, people think simple is best, which is part of why Google's so successful. Early impressions suggest Bing will lure some people who want to achieve a specific goal when doing a search, but that users' trust in Google to bring them the most relevant results in the most basic of manners won't wane. The trick will be to get people to think of Bing, too, when they think they might want an enhanced search. Microsoft will be spending a lot of money on the Bing branding campaign, take CEO Steve Ballmer’s word. </div><div align="justify"><br />So this brings us to what this means for the long-running Microsoft-Yahoo partnership possibility. Is it still going to happen? After all, would Microsoft invest so heavily in Bing if it really thought a deal with Yahoo was imminent? </div><div align="justify">.</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-34961464668498841122009-02-26T09:20:00.000-08:002009-02-26T09:22:12.838-08:00My new find "Twitter search"<div align="justify">What makes Silicon Valley so much fun? Nothing is invincible there forever.</div><div align="justify"><br />The motto posted on Twitter’s search page is intriguing <a href="http://search.twitter.com/" target="_blank">“See what's happening — right now</a>." And many people do exactly that. During a live event or amid breaking news, a growing number of people are turning to Twitter search to follow the conversations among its users.Very quietly, one of Twitter's most powerful applications has become its ability to allow people to conduct real-time searches. But the fact that Twitter's potential to disrupt the search market is being seriously discussed shows just how quickly the sands can shift under the feet of even a colossus like Google.</div><div align="justify"><br />Typically, when such goliaths are slain, it's because they failed to recognize the threat and make the necessary changes until it was too late. So, it'll be interesting to see how Google — or even if Google — feels the need to throw some kind of counterpunch. In theory, Google has created a culture to keep it flexible and innovative. On the other hand, its track record of new products has been a bit lackluster.</div><div align="justify"><br />There's always the chance, of course, that Google will quickly deploy real-time search and simply crush Twitter. But that's harder than it sounds. Twitter already has an estimated 6 million users and is growing rapidly. It would be hard to convince someone to switch to a new microblogging service at this point, and it might be just as tough to get users to search Twitter through Google when they can just do it through Twitter itself.</div><div align="justify"><br />It might be tempting for Google to try to take some of those billions of dollars stuffed in its mattress and overwhelm Twitter and its investors with an offer that dwarfs the reported $500 million Facebook offered for the company. But such a move could also attract a healthy once-over from antitrust regulators. “Then again, I wonder how buying a zero-revenue company factors into antitrust rules” – exclaims <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/alamedacounty/ci_11776452?nclick_check=1" target="_blank">Chris O’ Brien</a>.</div><div align="justify">.</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-67369944967407219052009-02-19T15:52:00.000-08:002009-02-19T16:00:15.668-08:00On Screen Protectionism?<div align="justify">When devices and apps talk to each other, content owners balk even at the screen format. Or so it seems from the recent <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/18/hulu-asks-boxee-to-pull-content-it-complies/" target="_blank">pullout of Hulu</a> from Boxee application. The advance of The Great Media Convergence — the content you want, at the time you want, on the device you want — would seem to be inexorable, based on its universal appeal to the consuming audience and the evolution of the enabling technology. But getting past all the entrenched powers is going to be a long struggle, and the early adopters on the front lines will have the wounds to show for it. To see how this disruption is driving the entertainment overlords into defensive positions based on arbitrary distinctions, just look at the current contretemps between <a href="http://www.hulu.com/" target="_blank">Hulu</a> and <a href="http://www.boxee.tv/" target="_blank">Boxee</a>.</div><div align="justify"><br />What happened? Boxee is media center software that makes it easy to watch online content on your television via a connected computer or device like AppleTV. Hulu beams TV directly to your portable computing devices, giving you more of the cerebral-gelatinizing shows you want, any time, anywhere, for free. That, is how Hollywood wants to see online video — as a supplement to "real" TV, not, heaven forbid, as a free living-room alternative to paying for cable or satellite service. To Portable Computing Devices or FROM your TV and not TO your TV. To your dumb-ass laptop, you smelly, hairy, friendless, gamer-freak nerd. (Sorry, I hate to talk about you that way, but that's how they think of the Internet. I think you smell great.) To Your TV is something completely different, and from the content providers' point of view, completely wrong. ... I'd guess Hulu had a deal to show 'content' on computers, and the 'content providers' balked when those computers started talking to their precious televisions.</div><div align="justify"><br />Of course, media-center computer owners can still watch Hulu's shows on the big screen — they just have to do it through a conventional Web browser instead of Boxee's cleaner interface. It's difficult to see how there's even a claim by the content providers at all. They put the content on Hulu so that anyone watching the content via the Internet on a computer within the geographic restrictions should be fine. Boxee is just an application on a computer. It's functionally identical to watching the content on your computer screen. The only real difference is that the 'screen' is a television instead of a monitor. But the mechanism is identical. It's difficult to see how the content providers can claim any right whatsoever to say that you can watch the content that they purposely put online only on a specific type of screen.</div><div align="justify"><br />Convergence may indeed be inevitable, but this is just the type of annoying and arbitrary turf protection we'll continue to see until the entertainment industry figures out a way to make the future its friend.</div><div align="justify">.</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-27078426528934977022009-01-30T19:01:00.000-08:002009-01-30T19:04:27.357-08:00Come out of the cocoon, Mr.Ellison<div align="justify">Bob Evans of Information week in his <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/trends/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212903009&pgno=1&queryText=&isPrev=" target="_blank">open letter</a> to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to wind down its sinful 22% software maintenance cost –<br /><br /><blockquote><p>“No one's asking you to slash the 22% fee irresponsibly and give away your ability to create great new products and support the ones your currently have. But the longer you dig in and tell CIOs that you're not interested in the wicked expense challenges they're facing, the longer they're going to remember that when the current recessionary climate fades and new alternatives gain strength. As Manjit Singh, CIO of Chiquita Brands, suggested to InformationWeek, what about some alternative tiers for which you charge less and in turn provide less? Singh proposed a 12% fee that would offer bug fixes but not upgrades -- is that not an idea worth considering? Or 12% for support 9-to-5 rather than 24 hours? </p><p><br />Or 15% with support delivered by a third-party network of Oracle (NSDQ: <a href="http://www.techweb.com/financialCenter/index.jhtml?Account=techweb&Page=QUOTE&Ticker=ORCL" target="_blank">ORCL</a>)-authorized teams? Mr. Ellison, it's easy to see why you like the current system, where someone pays, for example, $4,000,000 for a software license and then pays you $880,000 every year for "maintenance." And maybe CIOs will continue to find that's a fair exchange of value. But maybe they won't -- as you know better than just about anyone, the IT industry is an archetype of creative destruction, where faster/better/cheaper alternatives relentlessly stalk, attack, and kill older/slower/more-expensive models. Perhaps the model you and Charles Phillips and the entire Oracle global team have built is so extraordinarily singular that it will endure forever and remain unassailable from the forces that have ground down every previous eternal model in the technology business. But may be not.”<br /></p></blockquote>Oracle is not immune to challenges of the times. No company is. Sooner they recognize and change, the better ! Hubris loses in the end, always. </div><div align="justify">.</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-21832027855159330352009-01-29T19:05:00.000-08:002009-01-29T19:12:02.059-08:00When the going gets tough, the bad get going<div align="justify">Former disgruntled Fannie Mae Employee and Unix engineer Rajendrasinh Makwana, 35 is not the kind to just pack up and leave quietly. After being fired from Fannie Mae, Makwana was apparently <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212903521" target="_blank">pissed off</a>…very pissed off. Proving that you can be highly intelligent and still be stupid before packing off for one last time from his workstation, he proceeded to imbed malicious code on Fanny Mae servers, which had it kicked into action like it was supposed to on January 31, would have destroyed data on all Fannie Mae servers. The script was thankfully spotted by chance before it went off. For his little stunt he is now facing up to 10 years in prison, though currently out on a $100,000 bail. Well done genius.<br /><br />In a recession, companies are often forced to take steps that leave a broad wake of unhappy and stressed workers, and according to a global survey, disgruntlement-driven damage is the No. 1 security worry of IT decision makers. The studies estimated that data theft and cybercrime breaches last year cost businesses worldwide more than $1 trillion in data loss and recovery expenses, and it warned that companies are more vulnerable now than ever. This could be a wake-up call because the current economic crisis is poised to create a global meltdown in vital information. Increased pressures on firms to reduce spending and cut staffing have led to more porous defenses and increased opportunity for crime. The economic downturn across the board is motivation enough for those who harbor hostility towards their ex-employers for their current sorry plight. It could be possibly on a lot of people's radar right now.<br /><br />No. I don’t work for a IT security solution provider and have no vested interest other than to spread a word of caution.<br />.</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-71526862997076244192009-01-27T00:05:00.000-08:002009-01-27T00:10:55.429-08:00Does web content aggregation violate copyright laws?<div align="justify">Content aggregation is not entirely risk free. </div><div align="justify"><br />I am referring to the recent <a href="http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090126/NEWS/901260354/-1/rss01" target="_blank">settlement</a> between <a href="http://www.gatehousemedia.com/" target="_blank">GateHouse Media</a>, publisher of community newspapers and New York Times Co., parent company of The Boston Globe and <a href="http://www.boston.com/" target="_blank">Boston.com</a> site. In context is a suit over the appearance of headlines and first paragraphs from GateHouse news publications on Boston.com's new hyper-local sites. In its lawsuit, GateHouse claims that Boston.com is building community-oriented sites that rely on the work of GateHouse reporters thereby violating its copyright and trademark laws by taking Gatehouse's newspaper headlines and lead sentences published on its home pages. GateHouse’s major worry is about the empowerment of Boston Globe’s readers that gain the ability to access GateHouse content while by-passing ads appearing in GateHouse home pages – and the extended fears of consequential loss of its ad revenues.</div><div align="justify"><br />The settlement envisages GateHouse will set up technical barriers to prevent Boston.com's scraping spiders from automatically scarfing up its headlines and RSS feeds, and Boston.com will honor those barriers. </div><div align="justify"><br />To me, on a first glance it's the perfect lose-lose solution. Boston.com readers lose an opportunity to be exposed to GateHouse stories, and GateHouse loses the traffic from those external links. And everyone loses if more sites take similar steps to restrict the entry points to their content. May be, the arrangement is not binding on others or it may not even set a legal precedent. But could it not persuade a Judge in another similar case to lean on the direction and terms of this verdict? Have web advertisers got on board without visualizing the extra mileage that linking freedom provides? To rephrase the question – would they have come to GateHouse Media if told that the extra ad mileage is snapped shut because of linking restrictions? </div><div align="justify"><br />I think it’s time to dust up and endorse Russel Shaw’s (of ZD Net) earlier <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=1404" target="_blank">proposal</a> to pass a “Freedom to Link” Act !</div><div align="justify">.</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-90954431075351488402009-01-14T13:24:00.000-08:002009-01-14T13:34:57.508-08:00"Happy Birthday, spreadsheet"<div align="justify">PC Mag columnist and tech critic <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2338796,00.asp" target="_blank">John Dvorak</a> on spread sheets.</div><div align="justify"><br /></div><blockquote><div align="justify">"2009 marks the 30-year anniversary of the now-ubiquitous spreadsheet program. And society as a whole has deteriorated ever since its invention. It was the spreadsheet that triggered the PC revolution, with VisiCalc the original culprit. Can anyone say that we've actually benefited from its invention? Look around: I think we've suffered. </div><div align="justify"><br />For one thing, the spreadsheet created the "what if" society. Instead of moving forward and progressing normally, the what-if society questions each and every move we make. It second-guesses everything. Because of the spreadsheet we've been forced to "do the numbers" whenever possible; once the numbers are in the spreadsheet, the what-if process can begin. </div><div align="justify"><br />In fact, the spreadsheet has resulted in the rise of the once-lowly accountant/bean counter to a position of influence—and often the executive suite. How often in years past—the pre-spreadsheet era, that is—did an accountant take over a company? When and why did the CFO become a title? These people, at best, were once known as comptrollers.</div><div align="justify"><br />I don't blame any of these folks for taking advantage of the spreadsheet and the evolution of what-if. But why give them the keys to the car when you knew they couldn't drive? Look around and see what's happened. You can thank the spreadsheet for all of this junk. Happy birthday." </div><div align="justify"> </div></blockquote><div align="justify">Well, putting an accountant in the driver's seat is certainly not advisible if the business seeks innovation $$ and relies a lot on open pipe R&D. They would never come to terms with something that yields return over the long term, something that is an exclusive preserve of the visionary. But guess who gets called in when you need those dollars to kick it in? Go to an investor and the first thing he would ask is "show me the RoI" ; and the bean counter is ushered in - that is to say, spread his sheet :-)</div><div align="justify">. </div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-2119027602485385002009-01-13T04:40:00.000-08:002009-01-13T04:44:41.493-08:00Google says "No, I don't pollute the planet enough"<div align="justify">A recent report by a Harvard physicist estimates that a Google search generates about seven grams of carbon dioxide based on the electricity required to keep the company's servers running. </div><div align="justify"><br />The headlines <a href="http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece">about the study</a> quickly proliferated around the globe, with the UK's Inquirer chiding, "<a href="http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/351/1050351/googling-pollutes-the-planet">Googling pollutes the planet</a>." Well, sure, but so does just about every other human activity. And it is in that context that Googling and Internet usage must be judged. </div><div align="justify"><br />In short, the Google says it's not just me. Here is a <a href="http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/searchenergy.html">good comparison </a>of google choking with other gas guzzler - the boring automobile...</div><div align="justify">.</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-87221552449023639512008-12-29T18:55:00.000-08:002008-12-29T19:08:29.574-08:00Cisco in your living room ?<div align="justify">For several years, <a href="http://www.cisco.com/">Cisco Systems</a>, the leading provider of the routers and switches that handle Internet traffic on the way to your front door, has been looking for ways to get into the house. Looking at the increasing sophistication of home networks, Cisco sees a sweet spot for its expertise if it can just get consumers to start associating its name with Apple, Sonus, TiVo and others aiming to help people access video, audio and online content on an assortment of devices scattered around the house. A daunting task, but in the new year, the push will begin in earnest. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the New York Times reports, <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://click1.newsletters.siliconvalley.com/xdwbssztm_pwgrpzgnqrr_mxmlvlsv.html" target="_blank">Cisco will introduce a line of entertainment products for the home</a>, including its own wireless digital stereo.</div><div align="justify">.</div><div align="justify">The appeal of the residential market is obvious. With sales directly to consumers representing only 2 percent of Cisco's $40 billion total in the most recent fiscal year, the growth possibilities are tantalizing. And the company can leverage not only its own plumbing technology, but its acquisitions of cable-equipment supplier <a href="http://www.sciatl.com/">Scientific Atlanta</a> and home networking company <a href="http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Content_C1&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1115417027773&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper">Linksys</a> as well. Plus, whatever Cisco starts with now will serve as a beachhead on the way to the big prize -- bringing easy, high-definition video conferencing to the family room.</div><div align="justify">.</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-68265898341371759862008-12-29T05:48:00.000-08:002008-12-29T05:50:02.088-08:00Is Amazon a solipsist...?<div align="justify">Amazon <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?guid=%7BC106CE07%2D9275%2D49F4%2DB818%2D68BA53FBD755%7D&siteid=rss" target="_blank">claims</a> 2008 holiday season has been its “best ever”.</div><div align="justify"><br />It laid out some stat for support - The online retail giant said it sold more than 6.3 million items worldwide on its peak day, Dec. 15, or the equivalent of "a record-breaking 72.9 items per second." Last year, the company claimed it sold about 5.4 million units on its peak holiday shopping day, which in 2007 was Dec. 10. </div><div align="justify"><br />Unclear is how a shortened holiday season affected Amazon's results. Because Thanksgiving fell on a later date this year, the shopping season was about five days shorter than a year ago, meaning consumers had to crunch more shopping into a smaller window of time. Amazon's statement came during an overall slump in holiday sales and global economic turmoil. Data released by <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/early-signs-gloom-retailers-e-tailers/story.aspx?guid=%7BB234AC7C%2DD6B0%2D447B%2DB76E%2DF96555B5CDD1%7D" target="_blank">MasterCard SpendingPulse</a> unit showed total retail sales, excluding automobiles, fell from the year-earlier period by 5.5% in November and 8% in December through Christmas Eve.</div><div align="justify"><br />Why does the word “solipsist” come to mind…?</div><div align="justify">.</div><div align="justify"> </div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-65229352591294147952008-11-24T16:29:00.000-08:002008-11-24T22:48:01.766-08:00The cleantech myth bashing<div align="justify">Vinod Khosla at his <a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/107304-black-swans-and-greenwashing-solar-and-wind" target="_blank">buzzkill</a> best. He is beginning to like “black swan solutions” that cause technology shock <a href="http://greenlight.greentechmedia.com/2008/11/21/black-swans-and-greenwashing-738/">as he believes</a> that many of the current concepts of cleantech investing are just "greenwashing" and not a solution to the climate issues. He’ll find a lot of backers from among the puritan VCs.</div><div align="justify"><br />He finds photovoltaic panels in the booming $20 billion PV market are not scalable and not sustainable without subsidies. The Prius Hybrid cars? Not a solution to the energy or the climate problem nor did they meet the Chindia test - since they don’t seem to compete with the $2,500 Tata Nano. He calls hybrids "an inefficient carbon solution". Biodiesel, Clean Coal and Zero Emission Buildings are not the solutions either. Carbon capture and sequestration also do not serve the purpose as they are not economical. Solar PV, wind and biofuels are “little markets”. </div><div align="justify">.</div><div align="justify">Now wait a minute.... Can they deal with the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/world/25climate.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin" target="_blank">financial crisis</a> and reduce emissions at the same time? Take the Big Three automakers in Detroit (or its users). Who will expect them to invest in fuel efficient engines as they fast slide into insolvency? Isn’t gas available at $2 a gallon now?</div><div align="justify">. </div><div align="justify">Makes no sense.How about the VCs that have sunk some real big money? Poor fellas’ they get killed often by the publicity they give themselves. They had better learn to swallow some wily pride. At least it’s non fattening! </div><div align="justify">.</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-74471641610586396712008-11-20T07:34:00.000-08:002008-11-20T07:35:35.232-08:00The Yahoo! crystal gaze<div align="justify">I can’t say this about fortunes of the company, but there is hardly a dull day at Yahoo!<br /><br />Jerry Yang, founder and outgoing CEO said this earlier in <a href="http://kara.allthingsd.com/20081117/jerry-yangs-entire-memo-to-his-employees-on-stepping-down-as-ceo/" target="_blank">a memo to the troops</a> - "All of you know that I have always, and will always bleed purple. I will always do what I think is right for this great company. While this step will be an adjustment for all of us, I know it's the right one."<br /><br />He exits not only bleeding, but battered into a stunning shade of aubergine after months of public pummeling for passing on a Microsoft buyout and failing to firm up a viable alternative strategy as the stock tanked. The initial burst of enthusiasm that sent the company's market cap <a href="http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20081118/jerry-yang-yahoos-2-billion-man/" target="_blank">up by about $2 billion</a> in early trading reflected a consensus that this was a step that had to be taken before anything else could happen, and a later partial retreat showed those hopes tempered by the reality of the challenges that still face Yang's successor. <br /><br />So now what? Attention has quickly turned to <a href="http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/11/yang-successor.html" target="_blank">speculation on a successor</a>, and the perception that Yahoo's problems are systemic bodes ill for any in-house candidates, like President Sue Decker. "The next hire has to be a statement; it can't be from inside the company," said Rick Munarriz, an analyst with the Motley Fool. "You don't need a Yahoo again. The first thing they should do with the new CEO is cut him open and if he bleeds purple they kick him out."<br /><br />But then there is the big Carl (Icahn) pushing for someone -- anyone -- who will get the deal done so he can cash in and check out.</div><div align="justify">.<br /> </div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-48876784188950642702008-11-07T04:40:00.000-08:002008-11-07T04:47:43.718-08:00Why wouldn't they bitch it?<div align="justify">For all those skeptics of Cloud computing economics, <a href="http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/11/the_new_economi.php" target="_blank">Nick Carr</a> has a tell all with a NYT illustration. It’s a long post. I am pint sizing it here.</div><div align="justify"><br /><blockquote><div align="justify">“The history of computing has been a history of falling prices (and consequently expanding uses). But the arrival of cloud computing - which transforms computer processing, data storage, and software applications into utilities served up by central plants - marks a fundamental change in the economics of computing…</div><div align="justify"><br />In late 2007, the New York Times faced a challenge. It wanted to make available over the web its entire archive of articles, 11 million in all, dating back to 1851….That's not a particularly complicated computing chore, but it's a large computing chore, requiring a whole lot of computer processing time….Fortunately, a software programmer at the Times, Derek Gottfrid, had been playing around with Amazon Web Services for a number of months, and he realized that Amazon's new computing utility, Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), might offer a solution. Working alone, he uploaded the four terabytes of TIFF data into Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) utility, and he hacked together some code for EC2 that would, as he later described in a <a href="http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/self-service-prorated-super-computing-fun/">blog post</a>, "pull all the parts that make up an article out of S3, generate a PDF from them and store the PDF back in S3." He then rented 100 virtual computers through EC2 and ran the data through them. In less than 24 hours, he had his 11 million PDFs, all stored neatly in S3 and ready to be served up to visitors to<br />the Times site.</div><div align="justify"><br />The total cost for the computing job? …Gottfrid told me that the entire EC2 bill came to $240. (That's 10 cents per computer-hour times 100 computers times 24 hours; there were no bandwidth charges since all the data transfers took place within Amazon's system - from S3 to EC2 and back.)”</div></blockquote>Amazing economics. Now why wouldn’t they (high cost, license based, on-premise enterprise s/w makers) bitch it?</div><div align="justify">.</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-52100353611333215232008-10-16T20:32:00.000-07:002008-10-16T20:42:33.776-07:00Speculation time?<div align="justify">When stock prices take the kind of beating that we're witnessing, the emergence of potential bargains always leads to a sort of fantasy league for takeover speculation, in which analysts and pundits play at making matches between the vulnerable and their possible suitors. These hypotheticals should always be taken well salted, but they still can make for interesting thought exercises.<br /><br />The player is Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek, who gave fresh legs to <a href="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/08/30/a-match-made-in-hell-microsoft-eying-rim/" target="_blank">a possibility</a> -- that Microsoft might <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/innovationNews/idUSTRE4988H620081009" target="_blank">snap up RIM</a>. The logic - Microsoft would have its own smartphones to compete with Apple's iPhone and the devices running on Google's Android platform.</div><div align="justify"><br />Peter Misek feels RIM is a massive strategic fit for Microsoft and they have a standing offer to buy them at $50 (a share). RIM's shares traded at close to $150 just a few months ago, but stock price slides so fast lately and it's within a few bucks of that offer. The way things are going, that's hardly a stretch as it would make the deal worth just over $28 billion, and Microsoft is flush enough to pull it off without having to tap the credit markets. The question is whether MSFT really feels compelled to get into <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/10/what_would_micr.html" target="_blank">hardware wars</a> or if it's satisfied to compete on the platform side with Windows Mobile. Neither company graced the speculation with a comment. </div><div align="justify"><br />Meanwhile, up at RIM the folks I guess are trying to stay focused, getting the just unveiled iPhone competitor launched ("<a href="http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2008/10/blackberry-storm-successfully-weathers-first-round-of-reviews.html" target="_blank">BlackBerry Storm"</a>) and as rumor has it, they are already working on the <a href="http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/10/10/blackberry-super-phone-in-the-works-storm-2-and-3-coming-soon/" target="_blank">next two generations</a>. </div><div align="justify">.</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23002451.post-4193304964201636402008-10-10T21:16:00.000-07:002008-10-10T21:18:05.577-07:00Googlogic<div align="justify">Has Google lost the fine art of going to market?</div><div align="justify"><br /><a href="http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_10681936?nclick_check=1" target="_blank">Chris O’Brien</a> of Mercury News asks whether Android is going the way of Google’s open social initiative (to counter Facebook). The challenge starts off way Android figures down the list of operating systems for smart-phones. At the top of the heap are BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, the iPhone and Symbian. This last one is produced by a consortium of the largest cell phone manufacturers in the world, including Ericsson and Nokia.</div><div align="justify"><br />Given that Symbian will soon become open-source, Android’s pitch appeal – one of developer freedom, pales. Throw in the fact that a group called the LiMo Foundation is developing a Linux-based operating system for mobile phones, and Android becomes just one of three open-source options after counting in the restricted freedom allowed to developers by Apple’s iPhone. And then came Chrome browser from Google stable. It turns out that even that will take a while before it becomes the choice browser in Android phones.</div><div align="justify"><br />So why is Google doing this? Here’s how I can explain it.</div><div align="justify"><br />Google sees everything as a media real estate. Be it the web pages where its ads are served up, the videos on youtube and now to operating systems and open source applications. It can’t have enough of walls to stick its bills. It is fearful that some day it will exhaust its relevance if web goes out of fashion and so it wants an upper hand on anything that remotely seems like competition. There you get it. Competition. Google feels it’s easier to chase than to lead. So up comes a feature rich product that the world loves, say iPhone, Google wants a slice of that. It goes ahead and develops Android – the open source operating system. Microsoft leads the browser market? Google wants a piece of action there. In comes Chrome browser. Google can’t afford to lose consumer mindshare. It just has to be there, at the core of people’s mind. Think media mileage, consumer outreach, think Google!</div><div align="justify"><br />Didn’t we express shock when Google paid $3.1 billion for YouTube? Now we wonder the same way how Android or Chrome browser will make money. May be, we’re wrong. It’s advertisement for Google, the way Google builds its brand value. The money it makes the old fashioned way – by serving ads. And that’s not going to change anytime soon!!!</div><div align="justify"><br />Except if a web equivalent of Wall Street meltdown threatens redefining the space… </div><div align="justify">.</div>Krishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03845854083034849173noreply@blogger.com0