The Biz of Coding

Themes for Google Chrome

I like Chrome. Its home page links to often used websites and direct search in the address bar are really nifty features. But what a pain it is to use without the Google or Yahoo! Toolbars.

So, while you wait for the Google Toolbar for Chrome, you can definitely go ahead and beautify/personalize its experience using Themes.

Heres the video and the page from where you can get your own Chome Themes. Enjoy!Google Chrome Themes

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

So, What the Hell is Semantic Web or Web 3.0?

I agree the word “Semantic” is dense, opaque. Semantic = related to meaning — that doesn’t tell much. I agree the name “Semantic Web” is not self-explanatory. Then was Web 2.0 any more friendly a name?

Ok so what does Semantic Web mean for you? A product manager or a marketer or a lay internet user interested to learn more. Fine. Here it is, but first just a few moments to agree on two definitions — Web 1 and 2.

Web 1.0 — the www of connected documents via hyperlinks. Its the Web of Documents.

Web 2.0 – the participatory web. Here people collaborate, write comments. Its bigger than documents its about human participation. Further, Web Applications called Mashups exist to suck data from other Web Sites / Data Stores / Applications (all those who are willing to share that data). Mashups collect data from multiple sources and bring up a new representation. E.g. show Rental Properties on Google Maps.

See, Web 3.0 also called Semantic Web is the Web of Data. We had the Web of documents. Now the Web of Data. Insightful? Lets take a couple of scenarios.

Scenario 1: Lets say you want to add same friends on LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace — all you should need is a single address book and add all people to multiple web applications. Today its not that easy. Why? Because if you have friends on LinkedIn that Friends list is controlled by the LinkedIn Web Application. Facebook is a different Web Application. But you ask with irritation — the Address Book is “your data”. You should own it not applications. Well the ability of your address book or other data being easy to connect and use across applications would be the work of Web of Data. Though several Web 2.0 apps do this now — the magical work of standardization of data exchange mechanisms will be in the domain of Web 3.0. Read about RDF if you would like to know more.

Scenario 2: Another example would be you have photos (which are typically time-stamped by digital cameras today) and you have a calendar application. Could the calendar application show you photos by date — thereby giving you a brief life history?

This should get you started. To understand more do read this excellent presentation/tutorial on Semantic Web by Ivan Herman. This is the only tutorial you need to read to get a solid start.

To summarize. Web 1.0 allows you to create a web page, which has a hyperlink (a URL). You can connect pages by using the URLs. Web 3.0 will allow you to connect data via their URI’s and do much more. It is therefore the advent of the Web of Data.

Much work on Web 3.0 has already been done. See the link W3C site on Semantic Web to know more.

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

Y! Mail sports a Facebook like App Interface

Saw interesting stuff in the older Y! Mail “Classic” — not in the newer Yahoo Mail app.

On the top bar in Y! Mail if you notice on the right hand side you will see icons for My Yahoo, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! Sports. When i clicked on the Y! Finance icon, the interface seamlessly took me to Y! Finance keeping me logged into the Y! Network.

The roundtrip to Y! Mail wasnt bad at all. Clicking on the Mail link on the Left side of Y! Finance or Y! News page took me to my Inbox. Ofcourse this link is an old artefact on Y! — called the universal header. Is it just me noticing the other app icons for the first time or is this really new? If so, why not in the “New” Y! Mail?

Anyways if Y! is now trying to be more like Facebook its a good thing to learn. Or is it too late?

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

Internet Usage - India / World

India had 81 million Internet users by Nov 2008. Amongst continents Asia leads the rest of the world with the maximum number of Internet users followed by Europe and North America.

In terms of Internet Penetration North America leads with 74% penetration. Asian penetration even with the highest absolute number of users is a puny 17% — so you know why Google and Yahoo! see Asia as their next growth markets.

Asia makes up 41% of world internet users, followed by Europe with 24%, and North America with 15%.

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

Key Mobile Stats in India you should know

1) Airtel leads GSM players with a market share of 32%, followed by Vodafone and BSNL having 24% and 15% share of the market. (From June 09 data ). Full details in the table below:

2. Global Telecom revenue ending 2008 was approx US $ 2 Trillion and would grow at an average rage of 7.5%. By contrast in India the Telecom Industry would clock around US $ 30 Billion revenue in 2009. Indian Mobile user base crossed  425 million users by mid 2009. In Q3 of 2008 there were about 3.3 billion mobile users world-wide.

3. In Q1 2009, blended ARPU per month for GSM services in India = INR 205 (US $4.25)  – down 6.82 % from INR 220 in the Q4 08

GSM Postpaid ARPU = INR 543 or US $11.30 (down 2.8% from INR 559)
GSM Prepaid ARPU =  INR 181 or US $3.75 (down 6% from INR 192)

To see per player ARPU for Q4 2008 in COAI’s annual report.

4. VAS Revenue in India is expected to reach approx US $ 350 million in 2009. Indian Telcos earn lesser than 10% of their total revenue from VAS. Rajesh Jain on his Blog Emergic has given some nice recommendations to improve Mobile VAS in India. In 2008 Peer-Peer SMS dominated the value of the VAS pie by being 35% (of the 10% revenue). Other VAS categories are in the table below (from Pluggd.in):

5. Twitter is yet to catch on in India. Twitter audience in India is still small — about 120,000 unique users per month. Approx 50% of these users are 25 years old or younger. Predominantly males use twitter. This is similar to the predominance of males on India’s Internet usage.

6. 63 million Indians used Mobile Internet in the month of Feb 2009. Users indicate that about 70% users end up using mobile internet to check their email and user search engines. Other popular categories are Sports Updates 63% (read Cricket), News 53% and Entertainment (read Bollywood) 51%. Job search is done by an impressive 43% of users on their mobiles.Mobile Internet users

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

5 Key Points of Yahoo! - Microsoft Search Deal

News of the Y!-Microsoft Search deal is plastered all over the web and blogs today. The Search Box on www.yahoo.com will be served by Bing. This is the end of Y! Search for all practical purposes.

Some of the key points

1) Covers Web, Image and Video Search. Yusuf Mehdi states:

The deal covers “web, image and video search.” Mehdi explained there will be a single crawl and a single index that both parties will have equal access to — “parity” in his words. He made the additional point that Google never provided full parity to partners and third parties using its index.

2) Y! Sales will do the Search Advertising sales work. According to the official press release:

Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

3) BOSS and Search Monkey code and further development will be taken over by Microsoft:

Mehdi said that Microsoft will be taking them on (”the code and the responsibility”). Beyond this he suggested that Bing would be incorporating the best of Yahoo’s search assets and user experience into its platform and technology, including, for example, Search Monkey.

4) This deal is for 10 years. Display advertising is *not* covered in this deal. According to Carol Bartz

Gives MSFT a 10-year license to Yahoo’s core search technologies. will integrate into AdCenter, which will power both our search and theirs. Display is separate.

MSFT pays 88% TAC on Yahoo’s owned and operated sites for 5 years.

From the official Press site set up by MSFT and YHOO

Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo! at an initial rate of 88% of search revenue generated on Yahoo!’s O&O sites during the first 5 years of the agreement

5) There will be an Impact of Jobs in Yahoo! Search, some redundancies will come. But ofcourse this all will happen only once Regulatory approval for the deal comes. According to Bartz

Yes, there are certainly many Yahoo search employees who will be asked to take jobs at MSFT. There will also be search employees [who get redeployed]. Unfortunately there will be some redundancies in Yahoo. This is a transition over the next 2 and half years. Nothing will change until we get regulatory approval, but yes, there will be redundancies, but in the future.

Some of my other thoughts:

• Bing as a stand-alone search engine was something that Yahoo! should have done years ago. Loading an entire portal stuffed with ads and images slows down a user looking only for Search. Google home page loads faster than Y! and then Search=Google just is easier for users to remember.
• Not clear what happens to things like Local Search. Mobile for example is not a part of the deal. Same with Maps — which provides a different kind of Search experience. Will Y! *really* invest in all these areas or will they die a slow natural organic death?
• The reduction of competition to just 2 big players will impact innovation in the long term. In the short term with the heat coming from Microsoft, Google may attempt to innovate more. But once market share stabilizes, innovation will slow down.

With Qi Lu the ex-Technology head of Y! Search at Microsoft, this deal of Bing being the Real Search Engine - isnt as weird. Qi was also a huge believer in the India story and I guess in the longer term Search in Microsoft India may become an important focus area. Y! should have taken the 44 billion offer from Microsoft last year. Now there is just a down-slide.

Typically in such large semi-acquisition/merger situations all the action is in the US first. The ripple effects in India and other countries come later. Earlier, Y! employees didnt want to shift over to Microsoft due to cultural differences between the two companies. Do you think employees of Y! will shift over?

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

NYT snubs snobbish Top US B-Schools & Rankings

In a revealing report “Five Ways to Fix America’s Schools” The New York times tells all the well known secret - about how US B-schools game the ranking system and make-believe applicants that they can get in — when in reality they cant because they arent wanted. NYT points out that top B-Schools just want a lot of applicants via their slick yet deceitful marketing statements to improve their “Selectivity Rankings” by dinging students that take the bait. (Anyone who has gone through the US B-School app grind knows this).

Here is the open secret revealed by Harold O. Levy of NYT

Unseal college accreditation reports so that the Department of Education can take over the business of ranking colleges and universities. Accreditation reports — rigorous evaluations, prepared by representatives of peer institutions — include everything students need to know when making decisions about schools, yet the specifics of most reports remain secret.

Instead, students and their parents rely on U.S. News & World Report rankings that are skewed by colleges, which contort their marketing efforts to maximize the number of applicants whom they already know they will never accept, just to improve their selectivity rankings. Meanwhile, private counselors charge thousands of dollars claiming to know the “secret” of admissions. Aspiring entrants submit far too many applications in the hope of beating the odds. Everyone loses. Opening the accreditation reports to the public would provide a better way.

The question is, “Is the Obama Administration Listening”? There is a bigger question. Even after these questions are raised in respected Media reports can’t folks still correlate the current economic crisis with the murky business ethics of MBAs trained by big-brand B-Schools who lend them the fake halos of authority, riches, and the amoral right to cheat? Who will force and twist the arm of B-Schools on the issue of ethics in recruitment practices that leads people - who know the game to become gameplayers themselves? As I write this post my stomach chruns with disgust.

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

Facebook giving out Vanity URLs

After Google its Facebook’s turn to allow users to create vanity urls aka username aka profile name. I logged into my Facebook profile today and got the following notification:

Starting on Saturday, June 13th, at 9:31am, you’ll be able to choose a username for your Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to your profile.

Check out the Facebook Blog for more information or send yourself an email with the details.

What it means is explained on the Facebook Blog:

Till now The one place…where your identity…(on Facebook wasn’t reflected was)…in the Web address for your profile or the Facebook Pages you administer. The URL was just a randomly assigned number like “id=592952074.” That soon will change.

Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names. Your username will have the same privacy setting as your profile name in Search, and you can always edit your search privacy settings here.

We’re planning to offer Facebook usernames to make it easier for people to find and connect with you. When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your profile or Pages on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser. This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you. We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future.

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

Lessons from the Satyam Scandal

Today I read an interesting news report that mentions that the Satyam Scandal started with a small “adjustment” of Rs 10 crore 5-6 years ago.

Its been four months since the Satyam Scandal became mainstream news. Four Buyers (L&T, Tech Mahindra, Cognizant Technologies, and investor Wilbur Ross) have also lined up since Ramalinga Raju resigned as Chairman, stating Satyam’s balance sheet of 30 September 2008 contained:

What is most important to me is the lesson from this scandal. The reason such scandals happen is because there are Assumption of Truthfulness in Corporate Hierarchy; that in integrity and trutspeaking CEO > VP > Dir > Mgr > Individual. This to my mind is the only reason that Raju could get away with “adjustments” for 5-6 years. This is the reason that other large scale scandals such as Enron happenned and powerless individuals could not come out fearing they wont be heard after all. The media makes too much out of CEOs and Business Leaders — making societal gods out of them for their power, influence and wealth.  Who would then dare to go against such media “gods” even in normal corporate interactions? Our society and media need a fix not just Accounting standards before Satyam like scandals would get arrested.

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 0 comments

Mindomo — Free Online Mind Mapping Tool

If you have used desktop based Mind Mapping tools then you might be interested in Mindomo. This is a web based mind-mapping tool promising "mind mapping software in a Web browser - with no complex software to install or maintain….Create, edit mind maps, and share them with your colleagues or your friends….Mindomo offers the business user an online, always on, and everywhere accessible project and plan organization, scheduling, and presentation tool."

The Basic Account is Free and a Premium Account costs $6 per month. I did a quick test drive and found the UI very slick and responsive. Dragging and dropping various elements was a breeze, so was editing text. Zoom-in/out is slider easy. Though I am yet to run this app through a stress test — first look is very positive. Try it!

Read More - Mindomo — Free Online Mind Mapping Tool

By Ujwal Tickoo -- 1 comment