Random Bytes...: Ramblings

Showing posts with label Ramblings. Show all posts

Showing posts with label Ramblings. Show all posts

9.1.07

Rise of blog culture - Top 3 concerns

A few days back my wife was searching for something on the web and most of the top results were from the blogosphere. She was frustrated and told me that with the rise of blog culture was making her life on the web tougher. Triggered by that comment we started discussing if that was true and yes like always with the lot of positives that go with rise of blog culture there are quite a few 'negatives' too.

We could come up with the following 3 observations

Facts vs. Opinions
Most blogs in an effort to make 'content' original tend to give a spin to the event that they would have heard or read about. The spin could be in the form of a value addition, analysis or opinion or simply more data etc. Whatever be the spin, any event that occurs is covered by innumerable blogs and the search engines (including Google) rank them on the top of the heap which sometimes causes problems.

For example try searching for "Walmart Bharti JV" on Google and the posting I made covering the news (with my own assessment of course) comes as the first page. Is this good - definitely for my blog yes, but for somebody who simply wants to read the news item its bad news, because he has to strive that much harder before he reaches there.

Ranking News vs. Ranking Opinions
In today's era where user generated content is king I probably still want to be able to distinguish between top ranking news items and top ranking opinions. For example Digg offers me no such distinction where they separate the top of the heap data vs. top of the heap blog posts which makes my life tougher.

But looks like people are thinking in this direction already. In fact just today I came across this new site Blogg-Buzz which seems to be offering a Digg alternative specifically targeted towards blog posts.

The idea is that people looking for facts should go to a different place than people who are looking for highly ranked 'opinions'

Signal/Noise Ratio
Any event that occurs in the world in the blogosphere get multiplied many many times creating a lot of related content. Although some percentage of that might be very useful there would also be a lot of which that is not very useful and this only decreases the signal to noise ratio on the web which makes it tougher to catch signals amidst the noise. If one were to count the comments and discussion on blogs it would only further degrade the S/N ratio.

8.1.07

101 Management Tips - Do these lists work ?

A couple of days back I was reading an article titled "101 Management Tips" and liked the simplicity of some of the tips. I will not go into each of the tips but the tips were organized into the following categories

Self before Service is the Key - Manage Self first
Time and Tide wait for no one - Manage Time
The Human side of managing people - Manage People
Make every penny count - Managing money pays off
Just do it - Managing Tasks takes talent
Sourcing Sources - Manage resources resourcefully
They are the reason why you exist - Manage your Customers confidently
Change is inevitable - Manage critical and chaotic crisis
Aims and aspirations - Manage objectives objectively

Well after I read it I was really stuck by the simplicity of the rules themselves then why is it that this common sense tips are not commonly found.

Could think of the following reasons,

After all the everything is in the details and if that is the case the simpler you make the rules - this higher the chances of misinterpreting it
The interaction of person to person makes the environment so complex that applying these rules is a herculean task
On some rules the result simply depends on the tools you use - so you might be simply be unable to achieve a level of success irrespective of how well you might be doing things if you are using the wrong tools

18.12.06

Free Calls for life - Applying the Blue Ocean Strategy

Was reading one of the new blogs that I stumbled upon, I read upon a posting which introduced me to what they call the Blue Ocean Strategy.

One of the standard approaches that companies have long engaged in head-to-head competition in search of sustained, profitable growth. They have fought for competitive advantage, battled over market share, and struggled for differentiation.

"Yet in today’s overcrowded industries, competing head-on results in nothing but a bloody “red ocean” of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. In a book that challenges everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne contend that while most companies compete within such red oceans, this strategy is increasingly unlikely to create profitable growth in the future. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than a hundred years and thirty industries, Kim and Mauborgne argue that tomorrow’s leading companies will succeed not by battling competitors, but by creating “blue oceans” of uncontested market space ripe for growth . Such strategic moves—termed “value innovation”—create powerful leaps in value for both the firm and its buyers, rendering rivals obsolete and unleashing new demand.

BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY provides a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant. In this frame-changing book, Kim and Mauborgne present a proven analytical framework and the tools for successfully creating and capturing blue oceans. Examining a wide range of strategic moves across a host of industries, BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY highlights the six principles that every company can use to successfully formulate and execute blue ocean strategies. The six principles show how to reconstruct market boundaries, focus on the big picture, reach beyond existing demand, get the strategic sequence right, overcome organizational hurdles, and build execution into strategy."

In summary the central idea is to create a new uncontested space in which to compete, rather than simply trying to “leverage” competitive advantage to compete against existing players.At least the first time I read this, it appeared to be a great concept to me. I have not yet read the book (adding to my list though) but tried looking at some examples of what companies might / can do to go this route

Can companies actively employ "Corporate Blogging" as a KM tool - Rather than a red ocean approach of fighting with competition to retain the knowledge of the highly mobile resources they can deploy a "blue ocean" strategy where users are allowed (even mandated possibly) to blog. A resource belongs to a company but the blog for the period the employee spends in a company A belongs to company A and so on. - Don't even know if this sounds silly - but just thinking aloud
Keep a common bench across all the Indian Software Vendors simply separated by Technology / Domain. Anybody can draw from that bench rather than everybody having a bench of there own.

If you are interested to read a more 'professional' application of the Blue Ocean Strategy read the posting titled "Gold from straw: profiting from “low-value” customers"

14.12.06

Death of the mobile as a communication device - Mobile 2.0

If I have to choose one dominant thread in all of what is happening in Web 2.0 - I would go for 'user generated content'. If one agrees to the fact that there seems to be a dramatic shift in balance of power from the consumers of content towards the generators of content. Needless to say, the next obvious question would be the 'how' of content generation and dissemination would also become equally important.

In my personal opinion, at a time when the mobile is not even fully seen a stable receiver of 'content from the previous generation' (professional created and edited content) the rise in user generated content is making mobile's evolution as a device all the more challenging.

Where is the mobile headed to ? User generated content (UGC) is strong enough it simply means that the mobile starts playing a very important device for two activities which it is barely used today

Content Generation - In the UGC world, in my understanding anything that happens around you in your day to day life is a possible content you can share and leverage. That being the case, what better than a personal device you can carry with you to capture that. Content capture devices which are both personal and mobile, such as audio and video recorders have existed for a long time but their usability in todays context has diminished to a large extern. You simply don't generate / capture content always for personal use !
Content Dissemination - The immediate step once I have captured is how quickly can I share it with the world around me. Although the web is evolving as a platform in the true sense of the world, all I need is simply a handle to get on to the platform and share the content. What better suited than a mobile again.

As a result of the above reasons, I feel that we will soon see the death of the mobile as a plain communication device and start evolving into a communication device plus as a partner for content collection and dissemination.

Should the device manufacturers focus on this trend that I mention - most definitely yes, simply because the market is big enough

A cursory look at reports pointing to the people who are 'generating content' the major source still remains secondary sources around the web. A mobile 2.0 device will give these content generators a great chance to scale to the next level to generate original content where ever feasible.
Most of these users already might have a mobile 1.0 but there appears to be a great chance to elevate them to use a mobile 2.0 device (more suited in the web 2.0 world for content collection and dissemination).

6.12.06

Biggest Mistakes in Web Design 1995-2015

Over the last many years that I have been browsing I have always liked some page designs and not liked some. What are the key mistakes that web page designers do when they come up with pages are summarized well in here. Give it a read.

So what are the top mistakes and what do I think about them ... read on below

Believing people care about you and your web site - I do agree to a large extent that your visitors at your web page are looking for a solution to their problem (whatever that might be) at your site.
A man from Mars can’t figure out what your web site is about in less than four seconds - As a website designer I think one of the most important aspects that you need to figure out is 'what do my viewers want' and 'what they might want'. Agreed this is not science, but put your best judgment and ensure that all the items in the definitely want category can be assimilated by visitors in less than 4 seconds. It should also give a good picture of what your page does. My example for this would be Google - My hunch is 90% or even more of the people who visit www.google.com want to search something so that is the prominent thing on the page. But yes you as Google might also want then to go to GMail, Google Docs etc and so they can take a much less important space on the page.
Mystical belief in the power of Web Standards, Usability, and table-less CSS - I don't build web pages but I build other software and the situation there is the same. Skill in using any technology (the bleeding edge ones included) for building a page is simply to be able to project to the business user what impact it will have on him - will it increase revenues, decrease costs, get more customers, retain customers better etc etc.
Using design elements that get in the way of your visitors - Golden rule of making a sale at work - "Never do anything that gets in the way / delays a sale"
Navigational failure - My suggestion here would be to make a flow analysis of how users can get to different points on a page. At every point users are more probable of taking some routes than the others. The more probable ones should be available more prominent and handy as compared to the navigation via less traveled routes. Definitely web pages should find a way of collecting this route information and make necessary modifications on a continuous basis. Case in point is the recent change on the Google Mail page for replying to an email. Earlier one needed to go to more options and then reply which I guess users found it problematic (at least I did) and bang came in the change where you can now reply directly as your read the message.
Forgetting the purpose of text - After all the barrage of multimedia on several web sites I think that it is time we moved back to a simple text approach. Simply put suggestion would be - add any pictures, video and all the jazz if required by your visitors and not for any other reason
Too much material on one page - The only thing too much material on a web page can convey is that you as a designer don't know what your user definitely wants and what he might want. The signature on Gina Trapani's page conveys it all about the fight for brevity - "If I had more time I'd have written a shorter letter". Translating it to web page design one would probably say "If I knew my visitor better I'd have created a cleaner page"

There are a few others that are discussed on the original post here. But as a 'user' I think the ones I have mentioned above are the key ones.

5.12.06

Software Outsourcing - Top 3 issues

Given the way IT outsourcing started to India it was natural for us to look at ourselves in the eyes of our customers in the biggest markets and try to change ourselves to keep them happy and satisfied and give us business. Good starting point, but even today asking a question of what problems are plaguing the Indian IT Industry I guarantee you that there is a higher probability that you will find answers of what we need to do and how we can improve to serve our customers better.
Well great thinking but I don't totally agree with this approach as I believe that outsourcing to India is as much a need for our customers as it is for us. Added complexity is also of course that the outsourcing destinations are now across the globe which means that both outsourcer and the outsourced need to work together to make it a success.

So what do I propose to do I will try to highlight the top 3 issues and how in my opinion we can look at it from both sides. Limited by my knowledge I will look at the issues with India as the outsourced destination.

Issue 1 : Engineers don't see the big picture

Well I definitely agree that it is definitely a good scenario to have when the customer and the offshore vendor see the same big picture while most times the customers' feeling is that the Indian teams somehow missed the big picture.

Yes Indian team's rotate fast, transitions are the name of the game, utilization ratio of its engineers is a key handle for bottom line management but is all that alone responsible for the situation above. I think that is not the case. If we just take a quick poll of the % of project teams working in India who are aware of their customer's road map for that market / product my hunch is it would not be higher than 15-20% (somebody has data to disprove this - I would love to hear that). So if the customer does not involve a offshore team in the road mapping process he needs to be aware that he is building the 'implementor' mentality and that is all he will get.

If this situation has to change our people need to change too but so do our customers !

Issue 2 : Adapting to Cultures

When ever a fresh engineer travels to a customer location outside the country he definitely goes through a cultural orientation. That is great - Indian companies want to support their engineers in making their movement to a outside location smoother. I also appreciate the efforts by us to understand the cultures of the countries that our customer's work - celebrate their festivals, declare Christmas vacations etc etc.

What I definitely not appreciate is our partners not at all appreciating our culture - Try answering some questions below and you might get a sense of what I mean

How many project/product releases are planned during the Diwali/Deepavali and how many during Christmas ?
How many instances do you folks have where your on site counterparts have changed their 'vacation plans' ? [ Simple my customer might possibly plan one vacation for a couple of weeks together in a year where as a Indian might plan the same 2 weeks of leave spread over 7 festivals in the year - well folks its a cultural issue and customers need to appreciate it !]
How many times have you received gifts from your onsite partners during Indian festivals?

Issue 3 - Generalists vs. Specialists

One of the biggest concern of a European/American customer is that the association of a Indian engineer in a particular role/domain is very short. I personally feel that this is an area where we need to work first in sorting out the issues before customers can do anything. Simply put competition and lack of urge for a laid back life is not in the psyche of the Indian Engineer - all through his school, college life he is pushed hard by peer competition and there is always a reward for performance - so why not in work life ?

I don't have an answer for how this can be resolved, but unless we collectively try to address this it will have a cyclic impact on the first point !

27.11.06

Chinese manfacurers take imitation to the next level

Have you ever visited China ? Until last year I had always heard stories of how people were all impressed at the range of imitation merchandise that you get to buy in China. You ask for and get imitations of a Mont Blanc, Omega, Rolex, Nike, Adidas, Samsung, Panasonic and what more its at a fraction of what the original sells. My rhetoric always was that its simple enough to weed out the imitation from the fake - is it not after all why you pay for the original. One visit to Hong Kong last year to my aunt's house was enough to make me realize that if most of us cant anyways differentiate between the original and fake - why not just go for the fake ?

Quality and durability might be question marks in your mind - but after all with the ownership duration of most products (particularly electronics) going down this also might soon cease to be a reason why people might not just buy fakes.

Nearly 30-60% of most manufacturing is done out of China which has made "Made in China" a brand in itself. So this puts them in a highly enviable position to churn out fakes. As if pirating products which existed in the market was not a big enough problem, recently I came across this article here from which it appears that they have now gone one step further (after all innovation also has a role to play!). The Chinese seem to be faking the products even before the manufacturers can introduce the originals and this makes the originals look like the fakes ! Ripping apart an existing product and imitating is one level of piracy - but getting the specs of a product before the original product is on the shelves means outright theft.

It is foolish to think that China itself feels good about this. The efforts that one gets to read about what all China seems to be doing is huge - but the effects don't seem to be seen - you need to work smarter folks! I say smarter because whatever the decision makers seem to be doing or saying they are doing the manufacturers themselves don't seem to be following !

What might be the problems of piracy for China ?

If anybody reading this post feels that there is a Chinese 'brand' speak out - I for one cant think beyond Huawei
Even if there are Chinese brands - they graduating to the next level as a credible brand is a definite no no
People are happy to buy a "Made in China" product of an international brand more reading than just a made in China product.
Chinese are one of the biggest consumers of most of the products they imitate - which means even if you imitate you might need to meet the quality standards - so is it a big benefit to imitate in the first place. After all given the size of the markets for most products in India and China any international manufacturer will anyway reduce the price and play the volume game

Would definitely love to hear some comments.

15.11.06

Downloading YouTube video's - Whats the fuss about ?

Sequence of events on TechCrunch are as follows,

1. TechCrunch posts a note on how to get YouTube video's on a iPOD
2. TechCrunch receives a cease and desist note saying that this illegal under the YouTube 'Terms of use'

Now I will leave the details of the posts aside and put down what I purely think (pls note these are purely my personal opinions)

At the outset lets see how YouTube collects the data that it is trying to cover under its terms of use - it is uploaded by the users of the website - some of it is of course 'original', but well all of us know that a good percentage of it is probably not.

When people upload content on to the website, I don't know if there is a specific clause that says YouTube owns the rights to this content. On original content, it is the right of the owner to do what he wants, but I would suggest nobody should ever pass on these rights to YouTube - the simple reason being they don't earn anything for that rights that they passed on. On the content which is not 'original' the person who is uploading the content cant even pass the rights in the first place.

So on any form of content on the website, there seems to be a problem in YouTube owning the complete rights on the content. If this is the case, how can it ever block people from downloading content and redistributing it.

I always believed that the major problem for Google is how it will avoid sites which will download and duplicate the content it has on the YouTube website? Well all that is needed for the whole website to crack is its network to crack. If not enough people upload content on the site and there not enough people coming there to view at the videos everything about the site is lost !

13.11.06

My data - Always free for all ?

In the last few days with Web 2.0 Conference in focus the number of companies who have been launching applications on the web are increasing at a furious pace. What is the underlying assumption in all this - my data is available for access in a public manner in a good percentage of the ones.

Just saw that there are a small percentage of companies Multiply and Vox for example who are focusing on allowing a restricted access of my information to a network where I decide who is in and who is out.

Read the article at TechCrunch for a comparison between Multiply and Vox

Downloads - Mozilla : Skype

Free high end mobiles - Not very far away !

Was thinking on what might be the impact of the exploding number of mobile users and I did come up with some thoughts. Would love to get your feedback on this.

1980-1990 (shift it by a few years forward or backward depending on where you are in the world)

Mobiles were probably just getting introduced, and it will not be hard to realize that during the initial years owning a mobile was itself a big thing. Nobody used it for anything other than just making calls and it was used for necessities only. Landlines were still probably the preferred mode of communication.

1990-1995 (shift it by a few years forward or backward depending on where you are in the world)

Mobile usage became more rampant, and people were spending more and more time on the device. It started getting used as a device to remain in touch rather than just being used only when a need came up. Text Messaging started picking up too. In summary people started spending more and more time on the device.

What did this do - the calling minutes and text messages that users sent out was able to subsidize for the device itself. Operators were able to come out with schemes where device would be offered free if the subscriber could commit a certain usage for a reasonable length of time. Well well, I agree that churn was also an important factor in driving these schemes but the I still think that usage was able to subsidize the device to a large extent.

Today (2006)

Device capabilities are going up and more and more devices are moving to support multiple forms of media support and communication support. Can calling minutes still subsidize the device - a definite no for the high end devices. But in my opinion the day is not very far when advertising for example can subsidize the high end devices. Some challenges would definitely have to be tackled before this can become reality

a. People need to master the art of marketing to the highly segmented mobile user group.
b. Advertising on a small screen is a big big challenge
c. Difficult to decide if there is a need to pay for ad's on a mobile device - the price / device will fall anyways - the time to market pressure will always play on all participants in this chain (price of a Razr is now a fraction of what it was introduced at)

Download : Mozilla : Skype

10.11.06

6 Secrets and Myths about Salary

Did you go through a salary negotiation recently ? I am sure that you are feeling that you got a raw deal at whatever the figure or jump you got. Dont worry you will learn with time :)

Came across this interesting link about secrets and myths about salary levels. Check it out...

Secret 1: Your pay doesn't necessarily reflect performance and seniority
Secret 2: There's more raise where that came from
Secret 3: When you're told they can't pay you more now, budget may not be the issue

Myth 1: Your pay is all about you
Myth 2: Bosses pay more if they like you
Myth 3: You can't negotiate severance

Downloads : Free Browser - Mozilla for a great browsing experience : Skype 3.0 BETA

8.11.06

3 reasons that differentiate a mobile market from others

The number of mobile users over the last few years has faced tremendous growth and is over 2 billion users and almost knocking on the doors of 3 Bn users. The set of mobile users are significantly different from what markets companies have been addressing thus far. It has a number of factors which differentiate it from the other markets of which I think the following 3 are really key

Any company which can get access to the mobile user means that any advertising done via the mobile is definitely reaching its end point. Lack of surety of this aspect was one of the major disadvantages of a TV, Radio or any form of Print Media. Mobile changes this whole equation and offers the potential to establish a dedicated link between the sender and receiver of information. So the challenge seems to shift from getting to the right person to getting the right information.

A mobile is a personal device and knowing a person can mean I can tunnel more and more relevant information to the end consumer. This would have benefits in all forms of push information be it advertisements, request for support or anything else. So the challenge is not towards designing information based on broad segmenting of say for example channels / programs but on actual information of the person who is using the mobile.

Most of the phenomenal growth that is happening in the mobile world is from markets like India, China etc. This is throwing up a new challenge where new consumers are getting available, but they are not following the curve that advertisers and companies are used to. These consumers have taken a leap and offer a whole lot of information about themselves which most firms dont even know how to use it.

On the same note came across this interesting write up - Metrics and Trends by J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., VP & Chief Analyst, Mobile & Wireless , Frost & Sullivan

Links : Wireless Watch : TechCrunch

Download Mozilla today - Its a great browser : Get your download of the day

2.11.06

How different is YouTube from Napster ?

Remember Napster - the hugely popular music sharing site which shot to fame when it allowed people to exchange music freely ? Although it was not user generated content UGC in the spirit of the word, it could definitely be used as a platform to share music that its users generated.

Fast forward a few years, you have a company which probably just search+replace of music with video in the Napster business plan (ok ok with a few more changes may be) and launched YouTube - for Google's sake I would love to be proved wrong ! Anyways, YouTube is where people post video's possibly a mix of what they have generated and what is copied from various sources others can view and download it freely.

Content owners like CBS, Viacom, Time Warner, NBC Universal, News Corp and others are getting worried again at this blatant violation of content legality. Google somehow has to ensure that the content owners are satisfied and kept happy to ensure success of the 100 Mn plus YouTube videos that get distributed.

With Google behind you its not easy for YouTube to go down the same way Napster did. Google has already paid $10 Mn dollars to music companies and is now looking at $100 Mn upfront payments video and film to get the rights to distribute their stuff for 2 years. This strategy might click but definitely worth watching how the drama unfolds in the coming weeks and months.

26.10.06

mReminders

How often do you get promotional offers - a few times a day ? People are bombarded offers through all possible means via email,phones, pamplets, magazines, SMS alerts and anything else you can think of.

But how often do you use this information - I dont have any numbers but personally I dont feel too often. One of the biggest reasons for this is probably the timing when these offers come in. In most cases you are not looking for that information at that point of time and it probably directly reaches the trash. A focused approach is definitely more beneficial.

To make this promotional content more suited we can possibly focus on two key parameters - content and timing.

1. Google has probably mastered the art of getting the content right on the promotional ads. If I two parties discuss on a particular topic one of then is interested in what is being discussed and same is true for forms of mobile messaging as well. Why not push the ads based on what is being sent / recieved on mobiles ? Can extending the similar approach of placing ads based on content in email messages be extended to SMS/MMS - Are there privacy issues involved in this which is absent in emails ?

2. Push ads and promotional material based on where exaclty a user is at the given point of time. Based on the location of the user operators can push ads which the user can use where he is. Operators can present better coversion rates to the advertisers and better options for the user.

Folks what do you think - Comments ?

mTranslator

Imagine you are travelling to a country for the first time. You have prepared yourself to handle the issues you might face including the cultural ones and consider yourself well prepared. Despite all this preparation one thing that they cant change much is the fact that local language is what is prominent no matter where you go in the world. Suddenly, basic things like reading sign boards, making a phone call, buying a coffee, travel in any form of public transport become difficult activities. In my opinion some factors which can aggravate this problem is high language diversity and the low level of acceptance and/or knowledge of English.

What do you think you want at this time ? Probably nothing more than an 'assistant' who can talk the local language and help you out.

In the current scenario where all over the world more and more services are becoming m-enabled, there is probably no better medium than a mobile to offer this service. To keep things simple, we could possibly look at a SMS based solution for the expected solution. SMS has been hugely successful with many billion messages exachanged and this service will only probably add to that - ARPU goes up for the operators and travellers have an assistant that they can reach at all points.

Folks what do you think - Comments ?

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