Guy Kawasaki's best posts

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/best_of/index.html

The Top Ten Stupid Ways to Hinder Market Adoption

1. Enforced immediate registration. 

2. The long URL. 

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Test: Can people communicate your site's URLs to others over the phone?

Extra credit: People using Verizon and can do this despite its coverage.

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3. Windows that don't generate URLs.

4. The unsearchable web site. 

5. Sites without Digg, del.icio.us, and Fark bookmarks. 

6. Limiting contact to email. 

7. Lack of feeds and email lists. 

8. Requirement to re-type email addresses. 

9. User names cannot contain the "@" character. 

10. Case sensitive user names and passwords. 

11. Friction-full commenting. "Moderated comments" is an oxymoron. 



12. Unreadable confirmation codes. 

13. Emails without signatures. 

14. Supporting only Windows Internet Explorer. 

Project 10^100

http://www.project10tothe100.com/intl/EN_GB/index.html

Check out the FAQ ... here is the best Q and its fantastic Answer ...

Q: What do I get if my idea is chosen? 

A: You get good karma and the satisfaction of knowing that your idea might truly help a lot of people.

:) 

Push technology on the Internet

All web applications are pull-based in nature, in effect meaning that the client (your browser) can request more data from a server, the server cannot send data voluntarily to the client. 

Thus while a client can ask the server for the body of a known email, the server is unable to inform the client of any newly arrived emails unless the client specifically asks. 

Hence, for data that may change without interaction from the current user (eg prices, bids, chat, email) the client must poll the server to discover any changes to the data set. Currently, this is how most of the web applications work.

Comet

Comet is a Ajax based technology which overcomes the push-limitation of the web by using the ability of a server to hold poll requests until either a timeout or an event occurs, so that the server can send a response at any time to communicate an event to the client.

A very nice layman intro to Ajax-Push or Comet technology can be found here

http://www.webtide.com/downloads/whitePaperWhyAjax.html

For more info:

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_(programming)
  
• How to Create a Comet App in 3 minutes 
  
• ajaxian.com/archives/comet-a-new-approach-to-ajax-applications
  
• Comet Library: http://code.google.com/p/pi-js/wiki/PI_COMET
  

Jabber

One technology which rivals Comet is the XMPP protocol aka Jabber - the popular IM service enabler. Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is an open, XML-inspired protocol originally aimed at near-real-time instant messaging (IM) applications. 

But this was recently expanded into the broader realm of message oriented middleware - like RSS readers, Twitter (or Jaiku) or VoIP. Technically speaking, XMPP is a technology for streaming Extensible Markup Language (XML) elements in order to exchange structured information in close to real time between any two network-aware entities.

How it works

XMPP lets one party signal to any XMPP server that it is available to receive any new information that's being delivered. When any other party sends new content through the XMPP server, the message is passed on immediately and automatically to all recipients who are marked as available.

For more info:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabber
• www.xmpp.org  
  
• http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/xmpp_web.php
  
• http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/meebo_to_bring_jabber_im_to_social_networks.php
  
• http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/gnip_grand_central_station.php
  

To be continued ... 

Good Analysis of App Architecture

For techies around ... 

All the offline-enabled applications we created had the following design issues that needed to be addressed:

• isolating the data layer
• deciding which features to implement offline (connection strategy)
• deciding on the app's modality
• implementing data synchronization

Read more: http://code.google.com/apis/gears/architecture.html

LITMUS Annual Event write up

The PGDITM programme at NITIE, is organizing its annual event - LITMUS' 08 on 20th sept 2008. Speakers at the event include:

Mr. Vinay Patkar, Senior Vice President - Sales & Marketing, NSE-IT 
Mr. Kaustabh Dhavse:Deputy Director, Frost & Sullivan, South Asia & Middle East 
Mr Mani Mamallan: Chief Executive Officer, C-Edge Technologies Limited
Mr. Vikrant Chowdhary: SOA Sales Leader, India/South Asia, IBM India Pvt. Ltd. 
Mr. Mahesh Narayanan, Practice Head (HP Decision Support Analysis Services), Hewlett-Packard 
Mr. Alok Tiwari, Founder and CEO, Aptivaa Consulting Looking forward to your participation. 
LITMUS comprises of two events:

1) Sync Quest: a case study competition for top notch b-school students.  This year, Proctor & Gamble - the market leader in FMCG and the IT Management Batch (PGDITM) @ NITIE present SYNC-QUEST, a platform to put forth your ideas with respect to real-life business scenarios, and come up with innovative solutions for existing industry problems.  

2) Biz Talk: a corporate panel discussion The topic of BIZ TALK is: "Credit Crunch Opportunity: IT Spending Imperative in a Time of Crisis". We believe the credit crunch faced by the industry will have an impact on IT spending of every organisation. 

For more visit: www.litmus.nitie.net

http://www.shabdkosh.com

Hindi to English Dictionary

Organizational Wiki Adoption

Organisational Wiki Adoption

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: intranet enterprise2.0)

E2.0

Enterprise 2.0 FTW!

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: enterprise 2.0 aiim)

Where to use a Wiki in the enterprize

http://www.businessweek.com/print/managing/content/aug2008/ca20080826_554250.htm

 

Many of the companies I talk to, from pharmaceuticals to construction, are worried sick over the expertise that is coming up for retirement in the next 10 years. They're desperate to retain it, but don't know how.

... companies won't solve the problem by cramming employees into classrooms and handing aging boomers a piece of chalk. Instead, the companies should encourage soon-to-be retirees to use digital tools like wikis, blogs, and instant messaging.

 

Why Wikis are not harmful IN the enterperize

http://michaeli.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/08/ways-to-commit-career-suicide.html

 

Vandalism and misinformation may be legitimate concerns on public sites like Wikipedia, especially after high-profile missteps like the infamous Siegenthaler incident. Inside the firewall, however, it's a complete non-issue.

The difference is that inside the firewall, every comment, edit, blog post, and personal profile are automatically attributed by to the author by name--by real name, the name on your door plate, your email, your desk stationary, and your pay stub.

We all have many opportunities every day to flame each other, vandalize each other's work, and spread faulty or under-scrutinized information around the workplace. I could fire off a few choice emails or leave some nasty voicemails right now that would really upset some folks. Why don't I do it? Human decency, professional courtesy and, yes, a desire not to get fired, all have something to do with it. But it's not because I can't.

 

Benefits of SaaS

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/office_20_day_2_recap.php 

In response to a question from the floor about whether or not SaaS is actually cheaper or whether that is just a marketing spin, Doug Harr from Ingres gave the example of a Siebel implementation for 150 salespeople that cost $1.5million. His new company implemented Salesforce.com which cost $140k/year for 130 users. 

 

Phil Wainewright brought up the issues around large businesses not going with SaaS due to their already sunken costs - again Doug Harr gave a great example where true total cost of ownership analysis can bring up surprising results - the costs and hassles with the old school behemoth software offerings are often sufficiently high to outweigh the monthly costs of a SaaS alternative. 

Ubiquity - new Firefox extension

It Doesn't Have to be This Way

You're writing an email to invite a friend to meet at a local San Francisco restaurant that neither of you has been to.  You'd like to include a map. Today, this involves the disjointed tasks of message composition on a web-mail service, mapping the address on a map site, searching for reviews on the restaurant on a search engine, and finally copying all links into the message being composed.  This familiar sequence is an awful lot of clicking, typing, searching, copying, and pasting in order to do a very simple task.  And you haven't even really sent a map or useful reviews—only links to them.

It's even worse on mobile devices, where limited capability and fidelity makes this onerous or nearly impossible.

Enter Ubiquity

Today we're announcing the launch of Ubiquity, a Mozilla Labs experiment into connecting the Web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily.

The overall goals of Ubiquity are to explore how best to:

• Empower users to control the web browser with language-based instructions. (With search, users type what they want to find. With Ubiquity, they type what they want to do.)
• Enable on-demand, user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs. (In other words, allowing everyone–not just Web developers–to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing.)
  
• Use Trust networks and social constructs to balance security with ease of extensibility. 
  
• Extend the browser functionality easily.

Ubiquity Tutorial: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_User_Tutorial

Content Marketplace Helium Launched

Source: TechCrunch.com
Content Marketplace Helium Officially Launches

21 Comments

by Duncan Riley on March 11, 2008

Citizen journalism site Helium has today officially launched its content marketplace after 7 months in beta testing.

Helium offers two services: a user generated content portal that's part Wikipedia, part Squidoo, complete with revenue sharing. The marketplace works in a similar way to oDesk, Scriptance and similar services, marrying buyers looking for articles to be written, with writers who can supply original content. Unlike similar marketplace services, individual writers are not selected for each job, instead submitting articles against job requests that can then be voted upon by other users. The publisher then selects the articles they want to use from the rank-ordered list.

During its beta phase, Helium Marketplace signed up over 100,000 active freelance writers. Payments per article range from $20 to over $100, with a 20% transaction fee going to Helium.

Google Products

While we wait for the Chrome release ... here is a list fo other Google Products / Services ... Just FYI ....

 

Android

Blogger

Gmail

Google Ad Manager

Google Alerts

Google Analytics

Google App Engine

Google Blog Search

Google Book Search

Google Calendar

Google Checkout

Google Code

Google Connect

Google Contacts Data API

Google Custom Search

Google Desktop

Google Docs

Google Earth

Google Finance

Google Gears

Google Groups

Google Health

Google Images

Google Labs

Google Maps

Google Mini Search Appliance

Google News

Google Notebook

Google Patent Search

Google Product Search

Google Reader

Google Scholar

Google Search

Google Search Appliance

Google Site Search

Google Sites

Google SketchUp

Google Social Graph API

Google Special Searches

Google Talk

Google Toolbar

Google Translate

Google Video

Google Web Toolkit

Google iphone app

Knol

Lively

Orkut

Picasa

iGoogle

Google Chrome

Just in case u haven't seen this - http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/


Check out how these guys have explained a complex concept using a storyboard approach -

Tag Cloud for ftp blogger blogs

Thanks to Thomas ... we have a method to put tag Clouds on old blogger (ftp based) blogger blogs which we have used on arbitmba ...

Check this out http://developernotes.thomaspowell.com/2008_07_01_archive.php

PS: Needs a php server ...

Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn enable small biz scale up

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/rssarticleshow/msid-3429347,prtpage-1.cms

A small, pioneering group of entrepreneurs is proving that peer-to-peer networking sites can be fertile grounds for business. Sites like Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, Ryze, etc, which initially targeted young, urban crowds the world over, have found a new relevance in the age of Enterprise 2.0.

The massive growth in Internet penetration levels in the country, as also the widespread popularity of these sites, have created new vistas for SMEs to strut their stuff on mass network. The best part is that most of this is free of cost, there is direct (almost human) contact-and one is free to be as creative as one wants.

According to technology and market research firm Forrester Research, the demand for Web 2.0 tools, such as wikis, is expected to grow strongly in 2008, with the IT sector among the first to embrace them. Web 2.0 tools are Internet tools that allow multiple users to share data using the Internet as a platform.

Another report by LodeStar Universal estimates that there are 17.8 million active Internet users in the 16-54 age group in India, many of whom would have also used tools, such as instant messaging and discussion forums. Around 15.1 million or 85% of such Indians read blogs online, while 15 million users watch video clips. The case in favour of taking your small business online is compelling.

The Narula Travel Group, based in New Delhi, was one of the earliest companies off the block. It has uploaded about 30 travel videos depicting various Indian themes, such as the famous dabbawalas, Indian religions and places to see on Youtube.

It was a smart move on the part of the Narulas. A large chunk of their business comes from foreigners who want to visit India for the first time. These exotic videos of the Indian landscape are designed to generate curiosity and interest in the mind of the viewer.

Sapna Jewels specialises in customised diamond jewellery at competitive prices. When Gupta was looking to exand her business, she decided to leverage Facebook to her advantage. She set up a group on the website for her company and using Facebook's built-in advertising mechanism, released a series of ads aimed at young, affluent women in key markets of India, Pakistan and the Middle East.

Her group, 'Sapna Jewels', achieved a membership count of 750 women in the first two months itself! The members include working women, Bollywood starlets, corporate high fliers, and socialites. From the first month itself, Gupta had orders coming in from India, Pakistan and the Middle East. The group also spread word about Gupta's products to their contacts. "I have used Facebook's networking to maintain existing customers and get new ones, through them," says Gupta.

The women who join her Facebook group can access catalogues online, discuss design changes via email or phone and make payments via credit cards and online bank transfers. The lower overhead costs of this efficient business model enable Gupta to keep prices up to 40% lower than her big-brand competitors, she claims.

"We have much lower margins, at 10-15%, which keeps the price lower. Also, we have no expenses on new stores as we operate online and get the jewellery designed in our workshop," says Gupta. In the last three months, Sapna Jewels has executed 18 orders, with the average individual order value ranging from Rs 80,000 to over a lakh.