Packaged Software to cost even more in India

.... the Budget 2008-2009 has not been favourable for the software industry. During his Budget proposals in the Lok Sabha on Friday, Finance Minister P Chidambaram proposed raising the excise duty on packaged software from 8 per cent to 12 per cent. The finance minister took this step to bring packaged software on par with customised software.

Why automated recommendations might never work

Freeconomics

Even more problematic is funding. How do you fund a startup that a priori can not charge the user?

... how do you compete with free? Suppose someone has a great idea for improving web mail. Entering the market is really difficult. ... Not that long ago the concept of better and cheaper allowed startups to make the bet. But now that cheaper has been replaced with free, that axis is shut out.

One might argue that we're now living in an ads-only monetization world, which of course we are, but things are not that simple. First, how many startups are actually making money on ads?

Inspiration for Bootstrappers

So… We've managed to build a really successful business through word of mouth. We've dabbled in text ads here, and a couple display ads there, but it's our customers who are responsible for spreading our word far and wide. In four years we've probably spent less than $25,000 on advertising.

Facebook cluttering ... an example

Searching Tags

A service from Keotag is a great tool for bloggers and those researching a topic in the blogosphere. The site lets you just search for items that are tagged with a particular keyword. To use the service, you enter in your keyword and then select the search engine to use. The engines available are Technorati, Blinklist, Del.icio.us, twitter, Google, Icerocket, BlogDigger, Tailrank, MSN, Bluedot, Newsvine, Blogpulse, Blogdimension, Bloglines, Digg, Reddit, Yahoo, and YouTube. Those results can then be subscribed to as an RSS feed or saved as an OPML file.

ZFS - an overview

Perhaps the easiest way to communicate the underlying concepts of ZFS is a comparison the Sun developers drew during the design stages of the file system back in 2001. When you add RAM to a server, you don't partition it and allocate one DIMM to this application and another DIMM to that application; you throw all of the RAM into a pile and let the memory manager decide who gets what and when. That simple, pragmatic view forms the basis of ZFS: There are no partitions and no fixed block sizes, no file system consistency check, no RAID initialization procedure, and no inodes – there's just a pile of disk with ZFS in between.

Digg - dominated by few?

at the same time that Digg is becoming more mainstream, the variety of its sources for top news has dropped. Is this a good thing? Obviously not for some of us tech blogs. But I'd argue it's also not good for digg readers, who are not getting the diversity of tech stories they used to get.

Lesson for Entreps

Net-acquired hipster dating/social site Consumating announced that it will close down in mid March. Movie reviewer Ben Brown founded Consumating some time between 2003 and 2005, as a joke.

Add this to the list of reasons that getting involved with bigger companies is not pure fun. Presumably no one central to Consumating, or other startups acquired then shut-down, is too heart broken since this risk is part of the deal. If you sold the company then the money was more important to you than the future of the company and that's ok.

I want to see a user-centric model emerge with strength on the web but it's going to have to be either economically viable or go on in a nonprofit environment - and nonprofits tend not to be much fun. Such is life, whatever happened to Tribe (?) and thanks for reading.

Measuring Engagement

Measuring Engagement

When looking at criteria like number of visits, recency, and depth of visits, you can't really determine a user's engagement, either positive or negative, with your site. According to NuConomy CEO, Shahar Nechmad, "engagement" has become somewhat of a buzzword lately, often used synonymously with "attention," so he wants to be clear that his product truly measures engagement, in the real definition of the word. Engagement is not only how many pages someone has viewed, but how engaged they are in the site's brand and activities.

The engagement levels are measured by using the combination of user interactions on the site, which includes things like purchases, media, uploads, ratings, comments, share with friends, and more, all depending on the nature of the site. These interactions are measured then combined to get an "engagement" rank for each one of the web site's users or content pieces. Since every business is unique, everyone will need to measure different things. With NuConomy, the formula of what engagement means to you can be adjusted, giving more wight to some things, and less to others.

Financial product comparison website

ECompare works like a financial price comparison service. It contains financial details about home loans, credit cards, bank deposits, personal loans etc offered by different Indian banks. You can use the web interface to do product comparisons, select what's suitable and apply for the product. Your application will be forwarded to the respective bank (or its DSAs) and followed up by them.

The data is simple, but not easy to find all at one place for direct comparison. Ecompare gathers the product information on a daily basis using a combination of manual and screen scraping processes. They have just launched a mobile plan comparison service as well.

Founded by an ex SBI banker with 20 yrs exp based out of Hyderabad and 

Alertle - a new RSS reader

Make your own "TV Show"

What itsmy has done is create a way for any registered member with at least 10 content items, like pictures or video, turn that content into a mobile "TV show" with one click.

Content items are combined with ready-to-use sound files as well as ten different "TV" designs, using themes like "Rock," "Comedy," or "Love." Every show is between 30 seconds and 2 minutes and can be viewed by streaming or download. Users can promote their show by sending out invitations to their friends via SMS or email. By surfing with their mobile phones to their personal itsmy.tv address (for example: http://yourname.itsmy.tv) users' friends will immediately find their TV show.

Tiinker - Recommendation Without Organization

Media player that integrates with all web video

Requiring users to navigate from page to page on multiple sites isn't as intuitive as what we're used to from television. Instead, users should be able to browse multiple videos from multiple sources from within a single player.

His goal with the media player framework is to build a single media player that is capable of sucking videos from any online source and display them in a way that is TV-like and familiar to users. Yanez also hopes to create a player that can be used on multimedia devices like the Nintendo Wii.

"My goal is to build a media player that integrates with all web video, be easy to use, have a television style feel and have capabilities to be fully integrated with multimedia devices such as the Wii and mobile phones," he writes. "The television without a doubt was one of the biggest inventions of the 20th century. I believe web video is going to be one of the biggest breakthrough's in the 21st century."

Beginning is more important!!

[This book] isn't intended to be a comprehensive guide to ... I certainly wouldn't say that my way is the only, or the "correct" way to do things. .... you'll want to explore many other approaches. The local library, quilt guilds and stores, bookstores, and the Internet are all great places to look for information and inspiration.

The important thing is to begin.

Sound advice, whether you're quilting or coding!

Fwd: It's never too cold to burrp!

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	February 2008 | Issue VIII (M) Browse our archives
Welcome to the February issue of the burrp! newsletter, plugged-in! Even as Mumbaikars continue to brave record low temperatures, nothing stops them from providing co-burrpers with real, honest reviews of what's hot and what's not in Mumbai! So this month, whether you're heading out for a bite to eat or a swig of the good stuff.. don't forget to burrp! tried-n-tasted Just know it to be great when rated excellent on the burrp scale! We've pulled out 10 of the best burrp! experiences this month that you ought to indulge in! WHO? WHAT? WHERE? kapilb original falafel Falafel's Veg Hummus House deapubhi strawberries & cream Gokul Ice-cream yashesh paneer khurchan Caravan Serai chicmagnet best chicken/ pork fried rice Jim-me's Kitchen spitwideopen authentic italian White: The Italian Restaurant ballerina cutting chocolate Le Cafe nozaic great down to earth service Ideal Restaurant, Bakery & Store rapidsnail excellent food & service Sahakari Bhandar imagine pizella, pollo alla grigilia con spinaci Mia Cucina khanak pizza ai salami & beef lasagna Don Giovanni look who's cool jarna For bowling us over with his reviews of Kareem's, Cafe Penne, Garcia's Pizza, Out of the Blue, 210 Degrees, Coffee World, Morokko Bar & Kitchen, Subway, Barbeque Nation, Banyan Tree Cafe & Bakery, TGI Friday's, Mocha, Yoko's Sizzler & Da Vinci khanak For great accounts of Don Giovanni, Indigo, Bread talk and U Turn: The Lounge gaurav For always giving us brilliant honest accounts of places he visits.. this time they being Saffron, Flamboyante, A. Ramanayak Udipi Shree Krishnna Boarding, Corleone, Namak & East VinitaBhatia For her magnificent informative reviews of Bombay 72 East , Pause and Traffic chicmagnet For such perfect accounts of It's Mirchi, Poison, Jim-me's Kitchen and Bistro Grill It's never too late to be cool on burrp! To feature on this section, all you need to do is start writing reviews right away smashed on burrp! Cafe Ivy For disppointing mystimysti with pathetic service, tiny portions of food and cheap Re. 1 Kissan sachets Hard Rock Cafe For serving diluted drinks to gandhi and their terrible service standards Urban Tadka, Kandivali (E) For bad management and not giving gjmatrix the discount he rightfully deserved Busaba For serving quayler a bad fillet of lamb, arguing its beef, terribly slow service and ruining his evening Moti Mahal For disappointing spitwideopen with their exhorbitant rates and losing that authentic touch Indigo Deli For letting cockroaches crawl around the dinner area, being unaffected and unapologetic and marring mystimysti's overall impression of such a fine place Cheers to all you guys for telling us about your unpleasant experiences. High time these places get their act together!	in this issue tried-n-tasted did you know ? look who's cool new added places smashed on burrp! did you know? burrpers are watching movies at our expense!!! Literally, burrp! rewards the best reviewer every week with FREE movie tickets to ANY show of their choice across the country! Here's this month's winners! You can win too! newly added Scrumptious, Versova by deapubhi Scrumptious, Versova by deapubhi Poush, Vasai (E) by poush Dum Laga Ke, Malad (W) by VinitaBhatia Bollywood Mischief, Bandra (W) by GoingOut
Stay Tuned Whats new on burrp! burrp! Blog burrp! Newsletter Need Help? Faq's Search tips Get in touch Top Rated Restaurants Bars & Clubs Lounges Desserts Cafes More on burrp! Bangalore Pune Chennai Hyderabad Kolkata Mumbai Delhi Ahmedabad Blah

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Wiki in an organization

1. Get a small group of core community members to whiteboard a high-level information architecture in the form of a few categories (not more than 4-8) and subcategories (not more than 1-2 levels deep)

2. Create a series of blank pages or "stubs" hyperlinked  to reflect the category structure

3. Assign each category to an individual member of the group to flesh out

4. Reconvene in 1-2 weeks to review what everyone has done, share learnings, and revise the category structure

Citizen Journalism

On recruiting

Requiring X years of experience on platform Y in your job posting is, well, ignorant. As long as applicants have 6 months to a year of experience, consider it a moot point for comparison. Focus on other things instead that'll make much more of a difference. Platform experience is merely a baseline, not a differentiator of real importance.

In turn that means you as an applicant can use requirements like "3-5 years doing this technology" as a gauge of how clued-in the company hiring is. The higher their requirements for years of service in a given technology, the more likely that they're looking for all the wrong things in their applicants, and thus likely that the rest of the team will be stooges picked for the wrong reasons.

Who designed your blog template?

Google Speaks!!

GReader has a tooltip now

Software company cum Seed fund?

Curious Office is both a seed stage investment firm and a software development company. We make early investments in the web sector and we choose to build our own companies at the same time. We have worked with many great technology entreprenuers over the last 15 years and we have accrued extensive experience ourselves working for or starting our own great software and web companies. Learn more about how Curious Office could possibly help your company grow to the next level.

Photoshop Tutorials

Donnie Hoyle has created a hilarious series of "You Suck at Photoshop" tutorials:

Volume 1: Distort, Warp, & Layer Effects

Volume 2: Covering Your Mistakes

Volume 3: Clone Stamp and Manual Cloning

Volume 4: Paths and Masks

Volume 5: Select Color Range

Startup stages

"All startups should think of the long road in front of them in three phases: during phase 1, you need to be passionate about the product (or service); during phase 2, you need to be passionate about your customers (and the product); during phase 3, you need to be passionate about revenue (and customers and the product)."

For the Minimalistic design lobby

 Why gigantic screens are the best computer upgrades ever.

A text editor without distration:
http://they.misled.us/archives/501
 http://they.misled.us/dark-room

Saving a Webpage or Bookmarking content

Apple AIR Design

Anyway, enough pouring my heart out in love for Apple's industrial design and ability to capture that feeling of future so perfectly. I'll try to live with the machine over a week and report back with findings.

M$FT and Yahoo!

Yahoo! has created a web presence with more traffic than almost anyone else on earth. That's what they are good at and the issue is that they haven't been able to make money off of it.

Invitation to SugarSync Beta