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Writing Press Release & Submitting it free on Newsmotto.com

2005-05-19T23:03:00.000+05:30

Writing Press Releases - Part 1 : Headlines

A headline is text at the top of a press release, indicating the nature of the news below it. Headlines are written in bold and is much larger in size that the press release text. The general headlines conventions include using present tense and omitting "a" and "the" as well as forms of the verb "to be" in certain contexts.

The press release headline should be brief, clear and to the point. In case of press releases, generally it would have an announcement tone to describe the latest achievement of the company, the recent event of the company, product or service announcement, partnership announcement and so on. For example, "XYZ Company announces strategic partnership with ABC Company in India & Us".

The first word in the press release headline should be capitalized as should all proper nouns. Most headline words appear in lower-case letters. Do not capitalize every word.

You must include the company name in the headline for better visibility in search engines and for journalists and readers convinience.

Treat press release headline as the ultra-compact version of the entire press release content. But at the same time, keep it simple, clear and short.

The simplest method to arrive at the press release headline is to extract main points (highlights) and then the most important keywords from your press release. Now from these keywords, try to frame a logical & attractive statement. Using keywords will give you better visibility in search engines and it would be simpler for journalists and readers to get the idea of the press release content.

Press Release - Part 2 : Press Release Body / Copy

A press release is simply a written statement distributed to the media. It is a fundamental tool of PR work. Press release is a factual and a newsworthy statement.

The press release should be written as you want it to appear in a news story. The other word for press release in news release.

The press release content/copy should be compact. Avoid using very long sentences and paragraphs. Avoid repetition and over use of grammer and fancy language.

Press release must deal with actual facts - events, product, service, people, target, goals, plans, projects. Try to provide maximum use of these 'real' facts and contents.

The length of a press release should be atleast a page and maximum two or three pages.

The more newsworthy you make the press release copy, the chances of it being selected by a journalist or reporting increases.

Before writing a press release keep the audience in the mind, people who are likely to be interested in your news release.

A first paragraph or two three sentences must actually sum up the press release and the further content must elaborate it. In fast paced world neither journalists or other readers would read the entire press release if the start of the article doesn't generate interest.

A simple method for writing an effective press release. Make a list of following things :

1) What is the actual news ?
2) Why this THE NEWS ?
3) The people, products, items, dates and other things related with the news.
4) The purpose behind the news
5) Your company - the source of this news.

Now from the points gathered from this 5 steps, try to construct paragraphs and assemble them sequentially for example - The headline > the summary or introduction of the news > event or achievements > product > people > again the concluding summary > the company.

Reasearch the actual press releases on the web for getting the feel of the tone of a press release, the language, the structure and the format of a press release.

Press Release - Part 3 : About The Company

About the company - section is a short information about the company who has actually submitted the press release and about whom the news is all about.

When a journalist picks up your press release for a story, he/she would logically have to mention about the company too in the news article. Journalists can then put the company information from this section.

The title for this section should be - About XYZ_COMPANY

After the title, use paragraph or two to describe your company with 5/6 lines each. The text must desctibe your company, it's core business and the business policy. Many businesses already have a professionaly written brochures, presentations, business plans, etc. - that introductory text can be put up here.

At the end of this section you must point to your website. The link should be the exact & complete URL without any embedding so that, even if this page is printed, the link will be printed as it is. For example : http://www.your_company_website.com.

Companies which maintain a seperate media page on their websites must point to that URL here. A media page typically has contact information and press kit (PDFs and Logos)

After this section - you can provide some extra information links which support your press release or close the press release with the contact information.

Press Release Part 4 : Contact Information

If your press release is really newsworthy, journalists would surely like more information or would like to interview key people associated with it.

If you are comfortable with the idea of letting your key people being directly contacted by media, you can provide their contact details on the press release page itself. For example, in case of some innovation you can provide the contact information of your engineering or research team for the media.

Otherwise, you must provide the details of your MEDIA/PR department in the CONTACT section. If you do not have dedicated team for this function, you must appoint somebody who will act as a link between the media and your people.

The contact details must be limited and specific only to the current press release.

The contact details must include:
(1) The Company's Offical Name
(2) Media Department's offical Name and Contact Person
(3) office Address
(4) Telephone & FAX Numbers with proper country/city codes and extension numbers
(5) Mobile Phone Number (optional)
(6) Timings of availability
(7) Email Addresses
(8) Website Address

For submitting your press release for free join http://www.newsmotto.com - a free press release publishing service. It also offers Press Release Feeds (XML/RSS) for a company, industry and country.

Newsmotto.com : What's your news, what's your motto ?

Alternate headlines :

1. Press Release Step by Step
2. How to write a press release?
3. How to submit press releases for free
4. What is a press release
5. Press Release explained and it's component

News Spamming or Flooding- The Google News

2005-03-04T15:48:00.000+05:30

I dont know if it is intentional or not, but if you search Google News with keywords as 'india business' you get the search results only from one site. The reason is - 'that' site is using 'those' keywords in the news title. I hope it is unintentional - b'cos there are lots of smart small news sites who can hijack the news search engines and aggregator and defy the whole purpose of it. See : Google Search: india business.

The idea for using the category name in the title is strange not very common.

It has also helped in populating the searches for any word combination with india

A Concise Guide to the Major Internet Bodies

2005-03-04T10:56:00.000+05:30

Slashdot | A Concise Guide to the Major Internet Bodies

Jef Raskin, Fater of Macintosh passes away

2005-02-28T13:17:00.000+05:30

Macobserver :

Jef Raskin, Apple employee #31 and father of Macintosh, passed away peacefully Friday, February 26, 2005. He was 61.

A professor turned consultant, Mr. Raskin wrote the BASIC manual for the Apple II in 1976 and joined the company on January 3, 1978. Less than two years later, he gained approval from the board for the Macintosh project, despite strong opposition from Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. Mr. Raskin envisioned the Macintosh as a departure from computers of the time. Instead of forcing users to toil with slots and cables, he conceived an all-in-one enclosure. Mr. Raskin also originally wanted to sell the computer for just $500-$1,000, but when Mr. Jobs took over the project it soon ballooned from a research project to a full blown product development that would arrive in 1984 as both a savior to Apple's failed Lisa computer and a $5,000 system.

Feeling squeezed and unhappy by how much of the Macintosh project Mr. Jobs had taken over, Mr. Raskin tendered his resignation from Apple on March 1, 1982.

After his departure, Mr. Raskin founded Information Appliance Inc., where he created the Canon Cat in pursuit of his vision that a computer should be an easy-to-use tool. The device never took off, however.

Look ma I am on Slashdot

2005-02-25T14:51:00.000+05:30

After rejecting my dozens of story submission, slashdot.org has finally accepted this interesting story : using air to recharge your cell phones which I had picked up from Rediff. To this interesting article I have recieved very funny, taunting & teasing responses and very few serious ones ;-).

COMMON.net business networking

2005-02-18T16:39:00.000+05:30

PR Newswire:

COMMON.net has launched its online business networking application, defining an entirely new approach to the industry. Successful people are good at networking, and they use COMMON.net to turn their Rolodex(R) into a controlled-access intranet to share Contacts with their friends and other members. Members let the COMMON Ground(TM) they share with others connect them to the people they need to reach.
The application introduces novel features to the relationship capital management industry:

-- best mechanism for establishing trust between members in an online environment -- new industry standards for privacy, confidentiality and discretion
-- multi-directional reputation system
-- platform suitable for individuals as well as enterprise employees.....

Times Company to Buy About.com for $410 Million

2005-02-18T16:29:00.000+05:30

Dot com are not do gones afterall : TheTimes Company to Buy About.com for $410 Million

43Things.com

2005-02-10T11:54:00.000+05:30

43things.com is a new entrant in social networking. I immediately fell in love with their idea, I wish I could come up with this idea. Just register within a sec, write your goal or task you want to do, the system will show you other users with similar goals and now you can network with each other depending on what you want to do and what are your goals.

Suppose you wanted to loose weight and submit it as your goal. 43things will prompt you all other users who share this goal. Now you can share tips, give advice, take advice, motivate each other or simply be friends. As simple as that.

Right from the list it seems to be more of social than business networking. But it can surely become a good tool for business networking also.

Mobile growth in India

2005-02-09T16:26:00.000+05:30

India's mobile base has crossed 50 Million and is expected to cross 80 million by the end of this year. In terms of overall teledensity we have touched 8.5pc. This local boost in the telecom is now encouraging "made in india" handset production and very soon India will starting exporting the mobiles.

Indian News Aggregator

2005-02-05T23:38:00.000+05:30

IndusNeXus.com (beta) | Free Social & Business Networking | Community Blogging | India has started a new service of news aggregator :

Your Online News Paper : News Aggregated from various sources
Read Online : * India Business | * Indian Blogs | *Indian News Headlines

From Pulp Fiction to BullShit

2005-02-03T17:31:00.000+05:30

Pulp Fiction writes about Contemporary Hindi Cinema :

Only mediocrity is worshipped all over the world. This world works on a formula and that is 'escapism' and 'feel-good'. Come what may, meaningful cinema is not going to take over in terms of the numbers. As I quoted Hesse a few posts earlier - "I know it today: Nothing in this world is more repugnant to a man than following the path that leads to himself."

We will always produce more garbage. The point is that instead of mediocrity, we are worshipping trash. The problem is that instead of producing more garbage than meaningful, almost all we are producing is garbage. And the worst part is that its being celebrated too. The 'karva-chauth' genre movies have taken over the box office. Not just that, its also taken over the society with its touch of feel-good. Thats the USP of the karva-chauth cinema.

We actually put so much masala in our movies that it ultimately becomes masala bullshit instead of biryani. I remember my favorite actor Naseeruddin Shah commenting in one of his interviers that after 20 years or so if our kids will ask us to show how we lived and how was india ? We wont have single movie to show the real india and indians.

Samsung Miniket multi-function diskless camcorder

2005-02-01T11:07:00.000+05:30

Slashdot reports about the Samsung Miniket, a digital camcorder the size of a pack of cards that also works as a portable MP3 player, webcam, voice recorder, storage device, and more. It will be introduced in US in Feb / March @ $600-$700 approx. The details of the Samsung Miniket are available at the official Miniket Page and Linux Device carries a brief profile

Nofollow the link condom

2005-01-24T17:46:00.000+05:30

Arstechnica informs about the google's initiative to outsmart tricksters by the introduction of a HTML attribute that will surely affect how page ranks in search engines. rel="nowfollow" tells the search engines that they shouldn't follow a particular link, nor consider the link as factor in their indexing algorithms. But some people are not happy with this as they think this is some type of link condom and others believe that its a great way to limit blog and comment spam. All the major search engines seem to be in agreement to support this

What is a Telethon?

2005-01-24T13:26:00.000+05:30

Found about Telethon through CRY Telethon - Homepage

Derived from the words "telephone" and "marathon", telethons are interactive television shows. Since the 1950's they have been phenomenally successful at tapping the reach and power of television to raise money for philanthropic causes. The biggest of them all, the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon, is a 21½-hour, star-studded affair that raised $60.5 million for the Muscular Dystrophy Association last year. It has been broadcast every year, since its debut in 1966. Telethons are also popular in Australia, U.K, and Canada.

Jerry Lewis has been my most favorite actor and comedian and I also admire him for his social work.

neoIT and Managing Offshore announce the Offshore 100

2005-01-24T11:51:00.000+05:30

[ Via IndusNexus ] neo-IT Press Release :

neoIT, the leading offshore advisory and management firm, and CMP’s Managing Offshore, the monthly newsletter for global-sourcing managers, announced today the results of the first annual ‘Offshore 100’ joint research project to assess BPO (business process outsourcing) and ITO (information technology outsourcing) service providers from around the world.

The ‘Offshore 100’ project was initiated in September 2004 with surveys issued to global service providers in 13 different countries to assess four primary areas: service provider company information, client data, operational capabilities and human resource policies. Over the ensuing 2 months, neoIT and Managing Offshore collected over 250 different data points from a wide range of service providers located in thirteen countries with strong representation from offshoring destination leaders India, The Philippines, China, Russia, Malaysia and Mexico.

2005 Silicon Valley & mixed estimates

2005-01-24T11:48:00.000+05:30

The New York Times writes about a report "2005 Silicon Valley "

The report's authors cautioned against drawing conclusions that were too negative. If comparing present-day Silicon Valley to 2000, things look grim by nearly every measure, as the area has seen a steep decline in everything from jobs to venture capital to funding for the arts and municipal services.

But if the comparison year is 1998, just before the dot-com phenomenon spun out of control, "then we seem to have returned to similar levels of performance, and embarked on a new period of incremental growth," according to the report's authors. The study also found that 40 percent of the regional population is foreign-born, up from 32 percent in 2000.

"I'd say it's not bad news coming out of Silicon Valley, but we have our challenges," Mr. Hancock said. Primary among those concerns is what he called the "Manhattan effect."

"Our worry is that Silicon Valley becomes this world center for people working on innovative enterprises who can afford to live here, but at the same time people who want and need to be here find that ours has turned into an economy that's not robust in terms of the middle," he said. That day hasn't arrived yet, Mr. Hancock said, but the study found that housing is so expensive that "it's difficult to retain young talent, teachers and service professionals."

From CEO to Entrepreneur

2005-01-22T15:54:00.000+05:30

IndusNeXus.com reports :

Economic Times reports that India Inc. CEO are getting bitten by the Entrepreneurial Bug and are quitting there high paid jobs to do their own thing. For example, ex-Ranbaxy CEO DS Brar; ex-Britannia CEO Sunil Alagh; ex-SRF CEO Ravi Sinha; ex-Max Healthcare CEO Noni Chawla; ex-Infosys worldwide sales head Phaneesh Murthy, ex-Oberoi Hotels president Ravi Bhoothalingam and so many others who are following the suit.

The reason for this are many :
- Sudden power equation changes inside the company.
- Motivation and challenge of running 'own company'
- Lack of Top Level jobs for a shift
- The 'new factor'
- Money not being the motivation after a certain stage

Plagiarism in the Indian Blogoshphere

2005-01-22T15:50:00.000+05:30

IndusNeXus.com reports about Amit Varma's experience with the Plagiarism in the Indian Blogosphere

Entrepreneurs need to be flexible

2005-01-14T17:40:00.000+05:30

Simon Paker , professor of economics and entrepreneurship at Durham Business School suggests that too much focus can hinder entrepreneurs

Deep Service: The Missing Link In Broadband

2005-01-14T17:37:00.000+05:30

TelecomWeb

Critical Telecom, an investor-backed DSLAM startup with between 40 and 50 employees, advocates that standards-compliant IP service features should be created and reside in network access elements closer to end customers, ostensibly then enabling a more efficient and more reliable delivery of offerings over any combination of wireline, fixed wireless and/or mobile wireless systems. A white paper issued by the privately-held company contrasts this newer concept of architecture and methodology against the current practice of creating broadband services within core service networks and then delivering the services to end users via broadband remote access servers (BRAS) located at the metro/access boundary, the so-called network edge. The white paper, Deep Service: The Missing Link In Broadband, can be found at www.criticaltelecom.com.

Indian Consortium To Offer 2 Mbps At $2.30/month

2005-01-04T16:47:00.000+05:30

Slashdot reports about the Indian Consortium which will Offer 2 Mbps At $2.30/month.

The State Govt of Andhra Pradesh in India, has awarded a contract for a fiber-optics based network to a consortium led by Aksh of India that aims to charge just Rs 100 (around US $2.30) a month for a domestic broadband connection. The project will provide services with a minimum bandwidth of 2Mbps. The execution of the project is scheduled to begin in April 2005 and will be completed by December 2006. The strength of the consortium is evident by the participation of top-notch Indian corporations which include Railtel Corporation India Limited, Tata Indicom, VSNL Limited, INcable Network (Andhra) Limited, Spectranet Limited and Nuziveedu Seeds Limited."

IT growth momentum will be sustained in 2005

2005-01-04T15:26:00.000+05:30

Computer Reseller News (India) reports that IT growth momentum will be sustained in 2005 as per the IDC's latest report :

The growth momentum attained in 2004 will be sustained in 2005 also and the domestic IT industry will reach another peak with 21.7 percent growth in 2005 over 2004, according to IDC India's recently published research highlights.

"Last year we predicted that companies which would emerge successfully through the structural transformation underway in 2004 would be big winners in the next upturn. And 2005 is going to be the year of execution of choices made in 2004," said Kapil Dev Singh, country manager, IDC (India).

Indian Engineers should learn the Japanese Syntax

2005-01-04T14:17:00.000+05:30

Anohar John writes :

Japan today is at the crossroads. It has a great cultural heritage, an economy coming out of the disasters of world war, and prosperous hard working mentality and, is looking up to information technology sector for a shot in the arm, but the Japanese IT industry is acutely short in human resources. It has been estimated that Japan would need half a million IT personnel in the next five years and a report from Japan says that the Government has decided in principle that foreign skilled labour must be used to keep the Japanese economy going and maintain the country's competitiveness in the global IT industry

Fast Company | The 6 Myths Of Creativity

2005-01-03T12:15:00.000+05:30

Fast Company | The 6 Myths Of Creativity: Via emergic
1. Creativity Comes From Creative Types
2. Money Is a Creativity Motivator
3. Time Pressure Fuels Creativity
4. Fear Forces Breakthroughs
5. Competition Beats Collaboration
6. A Streamlined Organization Is a Creative Organization

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami

2004-12-28T14:13:00.000+05:30

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami :

Some bloggers have set up a site The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami : SEA-EAT blog News and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts. Please visit this site and help in the efforts of various agencies and people engaged in the help and support of the victims.

India Quietly Introduces Software Patents

2004-12-28T13:45:00.000+05:30

Slashdot reports that India is introducing software patents quietly. The Business-Standard India Report and NDTV's Report. However, some slashdotters and myself are in little disagreement over the Software Patents : From one of the comments quoting Richard Stallman :his talk on the danger with software patents

This phenomenon of cross-licensing refutes a common myth, the myth of the starving genius. The myth that patents "protect" the "small inventor". Those terms are propaganda terms. You shouldn't use them. The scenario is like this: Suppose there is a brilliant designer of whatever. Suppose he has spent years starving in the attic designing a new wonderful kind of whatever and now wants to manufacture it and isn't it a shame the big companies are going to go into competition with him, take away all the business and he'll "starve". I will have to point out that people in high tech fields are not generally working on their own and that ideas don't come in a vacuum, they are based on ideas of others and these people have pretty good chances of getting a job if they need to these days. So this scenario, the idea that a brilliant idea came from this brilliant person working alone is unrealistic and the idea that he is in danger of starving is unrealistic. But it is conceivable that somebody could have an idea and this idea along with 100 or 200 other ideas can be the basis of making some kind of product and that big companies might want to compete with him. So let's see what happens if he tries to use a patent to stop them. He says "Oh No, IBM. You cannot compete with me. I've got this patent." IBM says "let's see. Let's look at your product. Hmmm. I've got this patent and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one, which parts of your product infringe. If you think you can fight against all of them in court, I will just go back and find some more. So, why don't you cross license with me?" And then this brilliant small inventor says "Well, OK, I'll cross license". So he can go back and make these wonderful whatever it is, but so can IBM. IBM gets access to his patent and gets the right to compete with him, which means that this patent didn't "protect" him at all.

43 things - a new social networking tool

2004-12-28T13:35:00.000+05:30

The Seattle Times:

43 Things, a new social-networking service created by a local team of technology developers called the Robot Co-op.

How it works: Put your goals up on the site and get back profiles of other people who want to do the same thing. Join a team with the same goal. Tell others about things you've already done.

Tracing back: The robots liked the personalization feature at Amazon.com (people who bought this also bought that) and wanted to combine it with elements of Web logging and online networking.

Craiglist gives newspapers a tough time

2004-12-28T13:28:00.000+05:30

CNET News.com reports that Craiglist is giving the local newspapers in US very tough times, something around $65 million. Craiglist is a community online classifieds site covering recruitment, dating, real-state, autobiles and majority of the products and services under the sun. This has affected in the revenue models of Newspapers who used to earn by providing classifieds and ads sections in the newspapers.

Craiglists 25% stake is now held by Ebay.com which has currently acquired Bazee.com and also interested in Rent.com. The success is of this is due to the simplicity and the fantastic utility it provides.

Steve Breen outsources santa from India

2004-12-25T16:13:00.000+05:30

Take it with a holiday spirit. It may be funny for some and not so funny for others. Wish You A Merry XMas and a Happy New Year

John Doerr's Startup Manual & House of pancakes

2004-12-25T13:33:00.000+05:30

[ Via Fast Company ] Michael S. Malone interviews John Doerr - The 46-year-old partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers (KPCB) is, by all accounts, the most influential venture capitalist of his generation. Over the last 16 years, he has built an unrivaled record of backing industry-defining start-ups in fields as diverse as computing, (Sun Microsystems, Compaq), software (Lotus, Intuit), biotechnology (Genentech, Millennium) and the Internet (Netscape, Amazon.com). But for all of those past triumphs, Doerr says, "there's never been a better time than now to start a company. In the past, entrepreneurs started businesses. Today they invent new business models. That's a big difference, and it creates huge opportunities".

The industry's first Web services vulnerability assessment and management company,

2004-12-21T11:31:00.000+05:30

ADTmag.com informs :

Billing itself as the industry's first Web services vulnerability assessment and management company, Kenai is marketing a set of inspection tools for Web services developers. Its flagship offering, eXamine 1.0, released in beta in October, is standalone tool that enables developers to import WSDL files and test them for compliance with industry standards, such as XML and SOAP, as well as their own internally-developed best practices. Kenai's eXamineST is an advanced Web services inspection tool designed to enable developers to import WSDL files and test them for compliance with WS-Security standards and for other Web services security vulnerabilities.

Release the CEO of eBay India (Baazee) - a travesty of cyber-law and e-commerce - Signatures

2004-12-20T16:08:00.000+05:30

Mahesh Murthy has written an online petiition address Prime Minister of India Mr. Manmohan Singh.Please sign this petition if you believe in it and express your support :
Release the CEO of eBay India (Baazee) - a travesty of cyber-law and e-commerce - Signatures

The idea of arresting a e-commerce service provide is very stupid, infact when he has very remote involvement with it. One cannot argue in terms of legalities and in this case they have declared Avnish Bajaj as criminal first and now he has to prove his innocence.

1) If this appplied everywhere then 'A' send a porno pic / abusive SMS to 'B' via Airtel and is recieved on 'B' via Orange . Then next day you find that CEO of Airtel and CEO of Orange are in Tihar Jail.
2) In-on-paper contract justification : If there has to be ink-on-paper for everything (see petition) then railway reservation system, demat accounts, online banking, online transaction, credit card merchants and anything electronics is pure rubbish. The entire e-commerce industry in India will collapse by this.
3) When the original person who produced the movie is still not jailed cos he is a minor, what was the big deal and creating action packed arrest of suited CEO of Bazee.com (now ebay india) who has nowhere to run. Is he a Dawood gang member or something...???
4) There could also be a chance that, Bazee.com has just been acquired by Ebay.com and the smell of crispy green dollars is still fresh
5) In India as it is entrepreneur spirit is dim, and by this action of police people will be afraid to put their hands in internet or e-commerce business. Till now it was red-tapism, now you can get arrested just 'bcos nbobody understand your business and the laws are insufficient to handle your business domain
6) Again arrest and non-bailable arrest is little dramatic and non-justified. Is it that instead of child-girl-school-iit, the attention should divert to Bajaj who is just a kid at wrong place at the wrong time.

Its very hard in Swades.

What a e-waste ?

2004-12-16T12:56:00.000+05:30

The Economic Times reports about the rise of e-waste or electronics scrap in India.

Related :
JUST SAY NO TO E-WASTE: BACKGROUND DOCUMENT ON HAZARDS AND WASTE FROM COMPUTERS
Electronic Wate Guide
E-Waste: Dark Side of Digital Age
E-waste rules still being flouted

Ryan points to the future of VoIP Revolution

2004-12-16T12:48:00.000+05:30

Ryan informs - where is the VoIP revolution :

Holding a cold Kilkenny beer, sitting last night discussing with a Lucent and Juniper rep the future of VoIP, it became apparent that we all are supplying appliances for carrying VoIP Software, and the future is in the software. Companies all around the world are sipping a cold beer or a cup of java in the morning discussing VoIP and it’s disruptive nature for telecommunications and benefits for the world of internet communications.

VoIP software is a wide category from codecs to actual compilations of code creating softphones or pbx technology such as the softswitch. Strategies for deploying the technology require a lot of collaboration between carriers, ISPs, and the deployment of device manufacturers and software providers. Moving towards a world of high level development code deployed in a platform neutral environment, a frenzy of ideas, patents, and business models unfold. Keeping in front of the game is not easy and it has not been won by anyone by any means. So what are we doing to create this future?. Read more...

Social Networking will become a common feature & integrating it with ecommerce

2004-12-15T15:17:00.000+05:30

I am the latest entrant to the social & business networking in India - IndusNexus.com. But social networking is not going to remain as some special feature as the new generation web is turning into more writable / community driven web by the introduction of blogging and wikis. Social or business networking is also as such a remix of the existing tools and applying them more logically and innovatively - for example :

- Guest Book (existed on personal sites)
- Messaging / Private Messaging (Instant Messaging features)
- Friends List (Instant messaging features)
- Friends of Friend (new application introduction)
- Invite Friends (existed as refer this site)
- Networks (newsgroups and special interest groups / yahoo groups)
- Discussions (existed in community blogs / slashdot)

These features will come across as a standard features and can be applied practically anywhere - think community - think networking. The facitlities and features that were available through different mediums yesterday will now be available today through a single social / business networking panel.This thought is reflected by online DVD rental leader Netflix Inc. who is putting social networking on its website.

Integration of social networking on ecommerce sites seems to be wise decision also. For example, if Amazon.com goes social , instead of having auto generated link of 'people who read this book also purchased these books' , I could simply link with person who has bought that book may be make him/her my buddy and get recommended not only in the related book category but altogether different subject / different book. I would not only be on Amazon.com for buying books but also for other reasons and even if most of the people will be eating resources , if Amazon could convert get even 10% serious customers who would buy or help buy product it translates into an additional income. And what amazon has to do for this ? nothing... they simply have to provide a platform. If Google ads can work on , social networking can also work with ecommerce sites.

Already our buying decisions are based on peer reviews and experience. If you are thinking about buying a digital camera, where do you go ? . You would most probably hit google, find links to online brochures and if you are little bit more search engine savvy you will find product review portals and read what others have to say about different cameras, features and their recommendations. This is all at different places. Want to know more - hit comments, email authors, email friends and so on. But what if a social network for digitial photographer existed. You would just search around the archives, locate discussion related to camera which you have zeroed upon and if you were unsatisfied, you would post a new discussion or connect with some network member who seems to be more knowledgeable about the digital cameras.

However, having a social network on distributor's or reseller's ecommerce portal is OK, but having public discussion of some vendor say SONY is tough. Would they allow comments promoting competition or criticism, most probably not and nobody would like to be sued like Kottke. Again it would create difficulties for big brands ego clash with ecommerce site and its users. Big brands would surely not like public criticism or feedback at point of sale websites. Then moderation would come into the picture. There could also be a problem by spamming the social network or creating mischief through falsification and misleading the users through paid social networks who would pay per recommendation and there are some people who are screwing with Google Ads.

The future is messy, but social :-)

Storage Startup Candera Calls It Quits

2004-12-15T14:16:00.000+05:30

Eweek reports about the shutdown of the Candera which was a storage startup, this is the second company related to Storage solutions calling quits, the first one shut their operations some 2 years back - Kuokoa networks.

Support Michael Davidon's marathon for cry's mahita project

2004-12-15T13:01:00.000+05:30

CRY : Child Relief & You :
Michael Davidson is a native New Yorker, and a marathoner. Currently, he lives in London and works with Morgan Stanley as a Manager in the firm's Corporate Services Division.

With his 1st Marathon (New York, 1997), Michael raised funds for Incarnation Children's Centre for Children with HIV. With the 2000 Athens Marathon, he helped The Epilepsy Foundation, a cause dear to him since his mother has the condition.

Michael's 7th Marathon, Antarctica February 26, 2005, will be for Mahita, a CRY-supported project that focuses on issues affecting the girl child.

Why dropouts create so many successful businesses

2004-12-14T12:13:00.000+05:30

Common Sense Views on Technology :

Bill Gates is famous for having dropped out of college to start Microsoft. Steve Wozniak went back to college after founding Apple Computer. I understand many other businesses were founded by folks with little formal education.

When I was gainfully employed (still am, but am thinking of a period 15 years ago), our company layed off 25% of the staff over a year. Lacking a job, I became self employed for 2 years. I would never have quit a nice paying job to do what I did. But when that option no longer existed, self employment no longer seemed risky at all.

I think there may be a relationship with those, like the above, that lack formal advanced education and starting up new ventures. Their downside is little opportunity to make much money. Starting up a risky new venture is not really very risky - and the upside is tremendous.

This is why a recent article linked from this web site noted that when Cingular lays off thousands of workers near Seattle (the old AT&T Wireless headquarters), it will likely result in many new startup businesses. When you've already lost your job, starting a new venture does not seem risky at all. Which led to my satirical comment that the best way to spawn innovation is to lay everyone off!

> best way to spawn innovation is to lay everyone off!

Ouch that hurts....:-). In india and many developing nations I think more than half the population is an entrepreneur in non-classic chaotic sense. I mean from your panwala to milkman to newpaper vendor to fast food joint wala and others. But this is at the lower level where survival is the main issue and not the business and the business management and other practices. These all remain one man venture throughout the life, though they support the economy and even the lack of jobs situation - it doesn't create jobs, huge infrastructual requirements, stocks , etc.

The entrepreneurship itch is not seen that much in Indian educated or even semi-educated class, why ?

- The government makes it practically impossible due to redtapism. Even if somebody smart-ass starts daringly, he is more likely to get frustrated and drop in between.
- Indian education is one man activity - in india we dont provide the chance to do activities in team. Even in sports we are cricket fetish which is a team sport with stress on individual records.
- Parents play important part in decision making. A doctor's son is a doctor, a doctor's wife is a doctor and doctor's daughter in law is a doctors and so on. This area is seeing some improvement these days.
- Indian's are security hungry, there is so much survival game going on... I don't want to be the first one to play the game, if somebody else play a game, wins it and stays a winner then I may follow him.
- There is a lack of local inspiration from society and media. The television, society and the media is providing fast food junk thoughts for the mind, the politicians are either for entertainment and futile arguements (intellectual acrobatics) . There are every few handful inspirations like Late Dhirubhai Ambani, Narayanmurthy , Sabeer Bhatia, Azim Premji and others. Even being so successfull we indians just know them by there Names and Stocks Value and nothing more than that. If Indians are educated about the journey of these guys , I am sure people will be excited to take up their path even if it is hard.

Look ma I am in the google news...

2004-12-13T14:04:00.000+05:30

Thanks to Xtvworld and Google News I have appeared in the first page, first link of Google News. Here 'I' means IndusNexus.com ;-).

It appears as...

Intellect powered Social & Business Networking
Xtvworld Media Junction (press release), India - Dec 11, 2004
IndusNexus writes "The IndusNexus.com is an online social / business opportunities plus an intellectual capital exchange. It provides ...

If you want to publish your press releases absoulely free then I think Xtvworld is the best, tried and tested. Just register there, post your press release according to the categories and wait for 24hr or so for it to appear , since it undergoes moderation for apporval.

I have found another free press release service PRLeap, there you have two choose atleast 2 days prior to press release , I think I have choosen Monday and it will be posted by tonight due to India - US time difference.

These press release services are indexed by Google News, Newsgator, topix.net and another news aggregators.

Ukraine is 4th in the Programmer Population

2004-12-09T17:15:00.000+05:30

Slashdot reports that "after the U.S., India, and Russia -- Ukraine is the fourth in largest number of computer programmers in the world" and that "Even today, scientific institutes each year churn out some 50,000 science or technology graduates. Not surprisingly, Ukrainians don't see why their country can't become a big player in the global technology market, like India."

Are you game for advertising ???

2004-12-08T16:03:00.000+05:30

The Register informat that US company has just come out of stealth mode to lay claim to the world's first advertising network for multiple games on multiple gaming platforms for desperate advertisers and brands who cant find attention nirvana through 30 sec ads and sexy billboards.

Sony, Ken Jennings, and Kottke.org

2004-12-08T14:06:00.000+05:30

Big mighty corporations attack on bloggers : Sony, Ken Jennings, and me (kottke.org) :

Things may be a little quieter around here in the short term as I deal with some stuff going on in the real world. One of the reasons for the silence is that my legal difficulties with Sony about the whole Ken Jennings thing have yet to be resolved. I can't say too much about it (soon perhaps), but it sure has had a chilling effect on my enthusiasm for continuing to maintain kottke.org. As an individual weblogger with relatively limited financial and legal resources, I worry about whether I can continue to post things (legal or not) that may upset large companies and result in lawsuits that they can afford and I cannot. The NY Times can risk upsetting large companies in the course of their journalistic duties because they are a large company themselves, they know their rights, and they have a dedicated legal team to deal with stuff like this. In the current legal climate, it may be that the whole "are blogs journalism?" debate is moot until bloggers have access to a level of legal resources similar to what large companies have. I'm certainly thinking very seriously about whether I can keep this site going in this kind of environment.

Update: Thanks for all the support everyone...I've gotten many nice emails and various offers of assistance. Several people have asked if they can help monetarily, which I very much appreciate, but the process is not quite to that point yet (and might never reach it) and I don't want to be responsible for refunds or anything like that. But again, I appreciate the support.

Colas as pesticides : It happens only in india

2004-12-08T11:17:00.000+05:30

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Farmers tackle pests with colas :

For farmers in the eastern Indian state of Chhattisgarh it is cheaper than pesticides and gets the job done just as well. The product? Pepsi or Coca-Cola.

Agricultural scientists give them some backing - they say the high sugar content of the drinks can make them effective in combating pests.

Unsurprisingly, Pepsi and Coca-Cola strongly disagree, saying there is nothing in the drinks that can be used in pest control

Business Opportunities Weblog | The Most Hated Advertising Techniques

2004-12-08T11:07:00.000+05:30

Via Business Opportunities Blog
According to Jakob Nielsen, when users were asked how various aspects of online ads affected their Web experience, they rated the following attributes most negatively:

Pops-up in front of your window - 95%
Loads slowly - 94%
Tries to trick you into clicking on it - 94%
Does not have a "Close" button - 93%
Covers what you are trying to see - 93%
Doesn't say what it is for - 92%
Moves content around - 92%
Occupies most of the page - 90%
Blinks on and off - 87%
Floats across the screen - 79%
Automatically plays sound - 79%

End of Personal Blogging

2004-12-08T10:46:00.000+05:30

Om Malik comments on the end of personal blogging and the rise of "pro" blogs :

In last six months, something strange has happened in the blogsphere – the increased marginalization of the individual blogger. There was a time, when having a blog with your domain name, or even a blog-spot or TypePad account was the way to go. Your readers would find out through word of mouth, through blogrolls or perhaps through RSS. But that was then… today we are in the era of where big get bigger.

Let me explain. Yahoo garnered a lot of good will when it started including weblogs into their My Yahoo content reservoir. Great stuff, because it was the next wave of traffic boost, for my blogger friends. Or so I thought. I have looked high and low but I don’t find many individual blows represented on Yahoo. Instead dominating the list are more “pro” blogs like Engadget, Gizmodo and scores of others from say the Weblogs Inc, stable. (They added Buzzmachine.com to the list of lifestyle blogs, but I wonder if JeffJarvis.com would have made the cut, all things remaining equal.)

Here is a list of Tech Weblogs on Yahoo. No mention of Scobleizer or Russell Beattie’s or for sake of argument my own weblog. Google News will willingly bring in news from known blogs, like the ones mentioned before, but not from individual blogs, even if they are breaking news stories, and have more content than some of the aggregator-blogs. Google News rejected my big to get included in their Google News program, even though they include other blogs with more “pro” names....

Advice for startup jugglers

2004-12-07T12:52:00.000+05:30

Courier Journal offers a story of John Dintaman, s an office coordinator, providing field support for a silo distributor in day and by night, he's a small-business owner, crunching numbers to help other small companies manage their finances.

There is a piece of advice for such jugglers by Caroline Lynch :

New business owners often keep their day jobs while starting up at home. But to juggle jobs successfully, experts say owners should handle a few situations with care:

Telling the boss. New owners should tell their employers when they get beyond the planning stages.

Telling the clients. You might want to do this if your new business is affected by your day job. But know that some will see the company as less legitimate if the owner is doing it part time.

Quitting time. It shouldn't come before the new owner has sound financial projections and knows there's enough money to support the home and the business. But, if your day job is suffering, it's time to go.

Ethics. Don't start a business that competes with your former employer and try to steal clients.

Sick of your job ? Find your inner entrepreneur

2004-12-07T12:37:00.000+05:30

Sun-sentinel profiles two South Floridians who were sick of their dead-end jobs and became entrepreneurs, one a successful entrepreneur and the other a failed one.

Insights into the challenges of entrepreneurship in developing countries.

2004-12-07T12:34:00.000+05:30

HBS Working Knowledge :

When Liberia-born Monique Maddy (HBS MBA '93) started Adesemi to offer users throughout Africa a wireless system of pagers and public pay phones, she believed that tremendous pent-up demand would launch her company to success. But in fact, the company eventually had to be liquidated, a casualty not only of internal miscalculations but also of the bureaucracy, corruption, and environmental factors faced by start-ups in Africa and other developing countries.

But not all was lost. Maddy told her story in the memoir Learning to Love Africa: My Journey from Africa to Harvard Business School and Back, published earlier this year. And now she is working with global corporations to overcome the environmental obstacles she faced and to create a business development that will bring a wide range of consumer products and services to middle and lower income segments of the African population.

From her Cambridge, MA, home, Maddy shares her thoughts via e-mail about bureaucracies, challenges, and opportunities presented by Africa.

Jason Smiths' guide to sucess

2004-12-07T12:31:00.000+05:30

Jason Smith a 24 year old entrepreneur , the man behind GoSMG.com shares how he became successful through the following success mantras :

1. Test The Waters.
2. Get Educated
3. Find A Passion
4. Do Your Research
5. Define A Niche
6. Offer Value

Cisco confirms interest in router startup - BCN Systems

2004-12-06T14:41:00.000+05:30

Cisco has confirmed its interest a router startup BCN Systems, Inc. which architects, designs and produces a family of next generation networking products. Computer World :

We believe BCN is developing next generation enterprise/service provider edge routers to replace the 7600 and/or 10000 series at Cisco," state Nikos Theodosopoulos in a recent bulletin on Juniper's third-quarter results. This was mentioned in the Juniper bulletin as an example where Cisco and Juniper are poaching each other's talent to develop competing products.

The founder and CEO of BCN is Michael Beesley, who was the lead engineer on several mid-range routers at Cisco before his departure in 1997. After that, Beesley was also one of the lead engineers on Juniper's M40, the lead engineer on the M20 and "pivotal" in the design and implementation of the company's T640 core router, according to the BCN Web site.

Other observers believe some of the Procket Networks intellectual property Cisco acquired for US$89 million six months ago has found a home at BCN and in the next-generation 7600 and 10000 series successors. Back in June, Cisco Routing Technology Group Vice President Mike Volpi said the Procket engineers would be working on service provider edge extensions to Cisco's new, modular IOS-XR operating system, and a follow-on generation to the 40G bit/sec silicon packet processors Cisco unveiled with last May's launch of the CRS-1 core router, but oriented towards lower-end systems.

What India must learn from Japan :1 Re. entrepreneurial startup fee

2004-12-03T15:55:00.000+05:30

The Japan Times :

Setting up companies in Japan is getting easier as the government tries to encourage more people to become entrepreneurs.
Incorporating a company of a certain size basically requires either 3 million yen or 10 million yen in capital. Firms of those sizes are entitled to a legal and social status that more personal types of companies do not enjoy.

But a temporary law that took effect in February 2003 lowered the required capital to just 1 yen.

Startup's product aimed at cell queries

2004-12-03T15:54:00.000+05:30

SeattlePi :

Brian Roundtree started a kayak company at the age of 12, entered the University of Southern California physics program at 15 and dropped out of college to take a job with aerospace pioneer Bill Lear by the time he was registered to vote.

Now 45, Roundtree -- a high-tech inventor who has created companies in each of the last four decades -- is unveiling a new startup that promises to reduce customer service headaches for both cell phone users and carriers.

Startup Starts Up Unique Non-Profit

2004-12-03T15:52:00.000+05:30

emediawire :

Like hundreds, and even thousands, of other websites that sell cause-related products such as the popular “LiveStrong” silicone wristbands from the Lance Armstrong Foundation, www.nationalsupport.org gives a percentage of the proceeds to charity. That they pledge a full 100% of the net proceeds is indeed praiseworthy. That they pay other sites to share their web traffic is, well, remarkable.

eHarmony, Friendster Launch Online Matching System

2004-12-01T16:29:00.000+05:30

Socaltech: Friendster in partnership with eHarmony is lauching online personals matching systems.

May be I was smart enough to launch Matrimony and Match Making for Indians on IndusNexus.com.

IT can reduce regional disparities

2004-12-01T16:11:00.000+05:30

SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR ( The Times of India ) : provides some factual information on how IT is changing the regional disparities.

Frantic hiring in IT has created a serious shortage of skilled workers, a paradox in a country bedevilled by unemployment. IT companies find that workers they hire and train leave for better jobs within months or years. In the last quarter, Wipro and Satyam reported worker attrition of 18%, and Infosys of over 10%. So, they (and other IT companies) are moving to every part of India in search of English-speaking persons who can be trained to meet their inexhaustible needs.

They have penetrated the Marxist heartland of West Bengal and Kerala, where no manufacturing companies dare venture.

IT companies are less worried about militant unions since they create white-collar jobs, not blue-collar ones.

Besides, West Bengal has declared IT to be a public utility where strikes are forbidden. Kerala has welcomed the IT industry with open arms. After decades, these states are witnessing an explosion of new jobs.

If you're sick - stay home

2004-12-01T15:40:00.000+05:30

HBS Working Knowledge:

Employers worry a lot about absenteeism, but new research suggests a bigger threat to productivity is “presenteeism”: sick workers who show up at work but are not fully functioning. U.S. companies may lose $150 billion (yes, that’s billion) annually because of presenteeism, according to some estimates. This Harvard Business Review excerpt details what employers can do about the problem.

StartUp Logistics Announces $15 Million First Round Formation of SLV I

2004-11-29T17:11:00.000+05:30

Via PrWeb :

Startup Logistics (www.startuplogistics.com) announced the formation Startup Logistics Ventures I (SLV I), a venture fund for start-ups technology companies. Targeted to close over $15 million, SLV I will make seed and early stage investments in compelling advanced software, medical device, communications, digital convergence and nanotechnology companies.

"The high-tech community here is very fortunate to have the right mix of experienced entrepreneurs, intellectual capital of major research universities and leading medical centers, all of whom are developing new technologies that have the potential to be something great. We are excited to do our part in funding these great entrepreneurs and committed to fostering technological innovation and builds emerging business opportunities," states Managing Director and CEO of StartUp Logistics, David Lee. "It's a good place to do business." Over the next 5 years, StartUp Logistics plans to fund roughly 25 start-up technology companies, with initial investments ranging from $100,000 to $2 million.

Female entrepreneurship boom

2004-11-29T17:09:00.000+05:30

Business Week reports :

Female entrepreneurs may once have lagged behind their male counterparts, but now they're making up for lost time. Business ownership among women in general is growing at nearly twice the rate (17%) as all businesses (9%), according to a new report released this month by the Center for Women's Business Research. And the number of businesses owned by minority women, long the smallest segment of entrepreneurship in the U.S., is growing at six times the rate of all private companies, the study found.

Why the change? "First and foremost, women who want to start a business are seeing others who are doing it, and they think, 'Wow, I can do this too,'" says Sharon Hadary, the center's executive director.

The steady proliferation of capital and institutional resources has also helped make entrepreneurship a more viable option for women, allowing them more control from a professional -- and personal –- standpoint....

Social Networking Systems & Wikis

2004-11-27T14:51:00.000+05:30

Christopher Carfi [Cerado, Inc.] writes Social Networking Systems and Wikis are engaging more and more social customers :

Tony Perkins, creator of Red Herring magazine, has forgone the "one-way" communication of the print world and is debating with his readers online in real time. He makes a lot of typos while doing so.

Microsoft customers are spending their own time and money making unsanctioned and unsolicited videos featuring Microsoft brands and sending them to Redmond. The funny thing is, Redmond doesn't mind.

Customers are starting to get their say. They are doing so in public forums. Their comments are unfiltered. And, more surprisingly, so are the responses of the individuals representing the companies. No PR flaks. No spin. No highly-sanitized, focus-group-approved, completely meaningless Dilbert-speak.

In other words, real people interacting with real people...

Calling all the Bloggers from India :-)

2004-11-24T15:11:00.000+05:30

Dear Blogger Friends,

I have started my new venture - IndusNeXus.com. A community social, business and discussion and networking blog. I would request all the Indian Bloggers to have a look at the site, join and contribute in the area of Business, Science & Technology and oblige me.

Please feel free to provide me with your valuable feedback.

Regards,
Santosh Kumar
http://www.indusnexus.com (Beta)
Social & Business Networking | India

India's First Free Job Blog / Weblog

2004-11-22T17:16:00.000+05:30

IndusNexus.com : India specidic social and business networking site has introduced Job blogging service to its range of tools. This is India's first weblog based recruitment and employement service.

The Job Blog is categories in to
(1) Full Time / Part Time / Consultant / Contract & Freelance Types

(2) Experience range Fresher / 0-2 / 2-4 / 4-6 / 6-7 / 7-8 / 8-10 / 10+ years

(3) Industry or Role :
Administration & Support
Architecture & Interiors
Automobiles
Aviations & Aerospace
Banking / Finance / Insurance (1)
Sample Job Entry
Bio-tech / Pharma
Civil / Construction / Engineering
Education
Electronics
Facility Management / House Keeping
Fashion & Textile
FMCG & Consumer Goods
Health Care
Hospitality
Human Resource
IT - Hardware
IT - Internet, Web & Ecommerce
IT - ITES / BPO / Call Centers (1)
Efunds requires Team Members
IT - Software (1)
Wipro requires Technical Leads, Architects, Consultants & Engineers`
IT - Systems & Networks (1)
Wipro requires Technical Leads, Architects, Consultants & Engineers`
IT - Telecom (1)
Wipro requires Technical Leads, Architects, Consultants & Engineers`
Legal

(4) The various states of India with their Capitals and important cities
All India (2) Andaman & Nicobar Islands, -Port Blair, Andhra Pradesh -Hyderabad ,Arunachal Pradesh -Itanagar, Assam -Dispur ,Bihar -Patna ,Chandigarh -Chattisgarh ,Raipur ,Dadra and Nagar Haveli -Silvassa ,Delhi (1) -New Delhi ,Goa -Panaji ,Gujarat -Gandhinagar ,Haryana -Chandigarh ,Himachal Pradesh -Shimla ,Jammu and Kashmir -Jammu -Srinagar ,Jharkhand -Ranchi ,Karnataka -Bangalore (1) ,Kerala -Thiruvananthapuram ,Lakshadweep -Kavaratti ,Madhya Pradesh -Bhopal ,Maharashtra (9) - Mumbai (7) - Pune (1) ,Manipur -Imphal ,Meghalaya -Shillong ,Mizoram -Aizawl ,Nagaland -Kohima ,Orissa-Bhubaneswar ,Pondicherry ,Punjab -Chandigarh ,Rajasthan -Jaipur ,Sikkim -Gangtok -Tamil Nadu (1) ,Chennai (1) ,Tripura -Agartala ,Uttar Pradesh -Lucknow ,Uttaranchal -Dehradun ,West Bengal -Kolkata ,

You can submit jobs free , free recruitment ads, free employment ads and much much more

IndusNexus.com : Free Indian / India Matrimonials

2004-11-21T13:17:00.000+05:30

Submit free matrimonial profiles and ads at Indus Nexus. Not only the registration is free , you can also contact your dream mate free and communicate using private messages, email and other options.

Like other matrimonials websites IndusNexus does not disallow you from posting your contact information, everything is open and visible to others if you choose so.

You can search the matrimony profiles on the basis of age-range, mother tongue , religion / caste and residential state/city from India.

For matrmonial sucess you have to fill up your profile and the profile of a dream partner you are looking for. Please use simple, clear and precise information. Provide maximum, comprehensive, detailed and wholesome information.

IndusNexus.com - for : Marriage, Matrimony, Shaadi, Vivah, Sambandh, Matrimonails, Lagan, Life partner, Bride, Groom, Dulha, Dulhan, Banna, Banni - And Aboslutely free.

IndusNexus.com - Social & Business Networking - India

2004-11-19T16:14:00.000+05:30

IndusNexus.com a social and business networking site is open for registration and is in the beta release form.

You can post free jobs, free business opportunites, free classifieds , free events, free matrimonials, free forum discussions and much much more.

You are automatically a part of the all india network classified as per states and their capitals.

http://www.indusnexus.com
The Nexus of Indians. The Indus Nexus.

Teens Set Up Venture Startup - Daemonics

2004-11-16T11:08:00.000+05:30

The Korea Times reports :

In contrast to chronic job shortages frustrating college graduates, five teenagers have drawn much public attention by setting up an Internet-related startup called Daemonics.

Daemonics, established by four students of Sunrin Internet High School in Yongsan, central Seoul and a middle school student, has focused on developing a series of software named AppSys, which helps Internet users set up their own systems on the Internet such as a Web site or an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system easily.

The teen business entrepreneurs have already applied for five patents, which include three for their AppSys programs, a business proposal related to information providing services on subway systems and another concerning electronic business transactions.

The new software will be presented at the Korea Venture Startup Fair scheduled to be held on Dec. 3-6 at the Seoul Trade Exhibition Center in southern Seoul.

Korea Venture Business Association

Sabeer Bhatia Plans Anti-Spam Startup

2004-11-16T10:56:00.000+05:30

Computerworld reports that Sabeer Bhatia , the founder of Hotmail.com is planning to invest in a startup which will work on anti-spam technology :

Speaking to an audience of technology entrepreneurs in Sydney last week, HotMail co-founder Bhatia revealed he will shortly unleash a new product to liberate inboxes of unsolicited offers of sex, drugs and scams.

"I have invested in a [counter] spam company," Bhatia said, adding that spam had become a "real problem" and that "if someone could create spam-free e-mail, that would be revolutionary".

However, Bhatia remained wary of giving away any substantive detail on his new project, saying only that he considered there to be "intelligent solutions by putting an appliance at a network level".

"You have to give a powerful system to users without taking away [functionality]," Bhatia said before dismissing outright Microsoft's spam-killing proposal that users pay a nominal fee to send mail.

* Hotmail creator has a new message
* Mr Hotmail talks about globalisation
* Hotmail inventor inspires entrepreneurial hopefuls
* High-tech startup wizard to outline secrets

Slashdot | New Rules Make Domain Hijacking Easier

2004-11-10T16:59:00.000+05:30

Slashdot discusses about the new rule by ICANN which makes domain hijacking easier :

Tanktalus writes "Netcraft seems to have a little ditty about new rules from ICANN that take effect on Friday making it easier to hijack domain names. Essentially, if someone tries to take your domain, and you don't answer within 5 days, they now assume you are okay with the transfer. Previously, the default answer was no, and you had to explicitly state your acceptance of the domain transfer. Owners of small domains, beware: no more computerless vacations that last more than 4 days at a time!"

US startup's product to cut costs

2004-11-10T16:53:00.000+05:30

Business World reports:

Azul Systems, a US-based startup, has announced the launch of a chip-based network attached processor. It is an appliance which is connected to the network and attempts to reduce the number of servers an enterprise deploys to run a variety of applications.

While the company has not yet decided on the price of the boxes, it expects clients using the devices to reap an overall 10:1 cost benefit, that is taking into account the operation and maintenance saving to be made by not having to run all those servers.

The appliances, which physically look like a couple of stacks or panels, are in the nature of super computers which have shrunk in size as a result of the strides taken by processors. But these processors are designed for running enterprise applications and do not undertake any scientific work.

It is a two-year old company which has so far received three rounds of funding and employs 150 people. No further financial information is available. At least 20 customers have shown interest and the boxes will undergo field trials at some of these Fortune 200 customers without any commitment of revenue.

Wireless LAN switch startup Extricom raises $8 million

2004-11-10T16:46:00.000+05:30

CommsDesign reports :

Wireless LAN (WLAN) switch startup Extricom Ltd. received $8 million in second-round funding for a "breakaway architecture" that it claims can eliminate the coverage and capacity limitations of traditional WLAN architectures, as well as the need for cell-planning and site surveys.

Based in Herzlia, Israel, the company will use the funds to accelerate the penetration of its WLAN products into the North American and AsiaPAC markets. Those markets are already being hotly contested by startups such as Trapeze Networks, Aruba, Airespace and Chantry, as well as networking incumbents Cisco, Nortel, Foundry, Extreme, Proxim and Symbol, all of which have announced their version of what a WLAN switch should look like.

Blog on Web Hosting Startup

2004-11-10T16:41:00.000+05:30

Jonathan Wold of WebHostStartup.com has started a startup blog. This is his story on his journey to build the next successful web hosting company.

From newspapers-jobsites-ebays-craiglists to RSS

2004-11-09T11:24:00.000+05:30

Silicon Beat writes about the reshaping of the classified ads model with the help of RSS aggregators.
* Google's Price Absurd, but Business Model Has a Long Tail
* The Digital Media Jobs Blog, from paidContent.org

The New Entrepreneur :: AO

2004-11-08T16:48:00.000+05:30

[ Via Emergic ] William Reichert of Garage Technology Ventures writes :

Intro to the article :

Silicon Valley did not invent the entrepreneur, but it certainly shaped the stereotype over the years: from Bob Noyce and the Fairchildren with their Cold War pocket protectors and engineer buzz cuts, to Jobs and Wozniak shaggy and jean-clad, dropping out and changing the world from their garage, to Page and Brin parlaying a Ph.D. project into billions. Famous entrepreneurs throughout high tech are elaborations and variations on the stereotype—Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell—and have created for us the model of the bold, brash, aggressive, passionate, wildly successful entrepreneur.

As the tech world emerges from its long, painful drought, investors hearken back to these standards of entrepreneurship. Gone are the "tourists," as one VC disparaged the dot-com generation. Back are the "old-fashioned entrepreneurs," as another VC referred to them: the gritty company builders who want to create something of lasting value, not just make a quick buck. As my partner Guy Kawasaki puts it, the post-drought generation of risk-averse investors is now more interested in "serial" entrepreneurs who have been there and done that, and less interested in "cereal" entrepreneurs who are still eating Cap'n Crunch for breakfast.

To be sure, the entrepreneurs starting companies today are not like the ones we saw, and now ridicule, in the late 90s. But they are also not like the ones we saw in the 80s and early 90s. We are not going back to an earlier breed of entrepreneur. If you are an investor looking for the kind of entrepreneur who built companies in the "good old days," you are making a mistake. The innovators who are creating companies today represent a new breed of entrepreneur, a species that can trace its lineage back through each of the species that went before, but which is very different nonetheless.....

Tech Whiz Aims to Boost Third World Care

2004-11-08T13:35:00.000+05:30

ABC News reports about Vikram Kumar and his health care startup - DiMagi:

Vikram Kumar poses at his office at DiMagi in Cambridge, Mass., Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2004. As a teenager in India, Vikram Kumar saw firsthand how villagers can adapt to new ways despite skepticism from local politicians and government officials. The 28-year-old MIT graduate, Kumar is both a doctor and an engineer, also knows the power of handheld electronics to overcome geographic, language and literacy barriers in the world's resource-poor areas. A startup Kumar runs pairs developing-world resourcefulness with handhelds' abilities to tackle health care challenges. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

About Dimagi :

Dimagi provides technical consulting and outsourcing services to businesses and academic institutions in the fields of healthcare, clinical trials and population research.

We specialize in the development of mobile and wireless solutions that empower researchers, healthcare workers and patients outside the traditional hospital setting.

Socialtext : How far this startup can go ?

2004-11-08T12:20:00.000+05:30

E-Commerce News has an article on the upcoming startup Socialtext :

At first glance, Socialtext doesn't look like a company running on a shoestring budget. Founded less than two years ago, it now has more than 50 customers around the world, including Walt Disney and Eastman Kodak (NYSE: EK) , which use its Web software to help people collaborate online. Yet a peek behind the slick Web site reveals a truly virtual company: no offices, only 10 full-time people -- all working at home, and a chief executive who answers the phone himself.

Socialtext co-founder and CEO Ross Mayfield makes no apologies for the threadbare setup.

Increasingly inexpensive and ubiquitous information technologies such as the Internet, wireless connections and cheap computer servers, he says, allow him to run the company with far less money and fewer people than he could have a decade ago -- without scrimping on features or quality. Says the 34-year-old serial entrepreneur: "This is the prototype of the new Internet startup."

Open Source OR Outsource

2004-11-06T10:14:00.000+05:30

Rajesh Jain quotes InfoWorld CTO Chad Dickerson who says "commercial software has its place, but open source and hosted solutions now dominate." :

I'm finding the "open source or outsource" question at the center of my IT decision-making process these days. My team is still implementing scalable and flexible systems that I'm confident will serve the needs of our business for the foreseeable future, but I'm buying very little software these days. Custom-developed software built on reliable open source frameworks wins the day when the benefits of slick commercial software can't outweigh the licensing costs.

On the other hand, when done for the right reasons, outsourcing can save money and reduce unnecessary distractions for in-house IT teams. I have never been a fan of outsourcing as a dumping ground for IT problems, but outsourcing is becoming increasingly attractive in two particular scenarios. The first instance deals with outsourcing relatively generic functions that rely on widely used commercial software packages that require specific expertise and near-perfect uptime -- think hosted Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes. In these scenarios, it's difficult to run these systems noticeably better than an outsourcer.

The second, more interesting emerging scenario is the Web-based hosted service with a well-documented Web services API, an offering pioneered by Salesforce.com with their sforce platform. In this type of outsourcing arrangement, you get all the benefits of a core service without having to own software or hardware, but you retain the option to extend the system to address specific needs of your business. I think of this phenomenon as "open outsourcing" -- a service that sits outside of my datacenter with secure access to a rich API. Platforms such as sforce dispel the notion that outsourcing is about cramming a variety of square-pegged businesses into a single hosted round hole.

Richard Epstein: Why open source is unsustainable ? And my answer

2004-11-04T13:48:00.000+05:30

Richard Epstein (FT.com) writes Why open source is unsustainable. This is a law professors' article hence he digs things, things which if applied to proprietary stuff will also make it unsustainable.

To explain opensource you don't need a Lawyer you need a biologist. Opensource is governed by law of nature. Forget the sustainibility part , it would be very stupid to make this world slaves of few IBMs, Microsofts and Oracles. The natural course - was to create the competition for these, the software market decided to go opensource, it is not one man propoganda. Similarly when bunch of people were busy making high end bulky computers for fortunate fews, some people from Apple, Microsoft and Intel were thinking about Desktop and at those time this people were nobody.

So if open source is not sustainable there will be a market correction available for it also. And in Computing I dont think there is anything like sustainablity, there is only one word "innovation". The computing world has to stick with innovation and not sustainability, nothing can be planned and no holistic statements can be made in agreement/opposition of open source/ proprietary softwares. They both have their places.

Even if opensource becomes extinct in the future, it would have actually evolved in something else may be something more open, easy and more sharable. Or it may not but still the derivative or that 'something new' would still be a by product or a derivative of opensource. The commercial computing world is hardly few decades old and to come to conclusion at this is very funny.

To my belief Richard Stallman , Linux Torvalds, Eric Raymond, Steve jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and many more are not the end of the computing scene they are just the initial torch bearers and there much more to computing than proprietary / opensource. By taking the sides of any one is projecting a one-eye vision. Google is not even a decade old and has snatched the search engine market from the hands of Microsoft and Yahoo.
May be something like this can also happen in software programming, but how can we neglect or understate the importance of sharing the immense knowledge created by the opensource softwares and the markets created by proprietary softwares.

Can't they co-exist and grow simultaneously. The timeline on which we are sitting is not governed by governments, rocket scientists, stock exchanges and billiondollar entrepreneurs. There will be no other Bill Gates in the future and there will be Linux Torvalds in the future ? History is in the making and we have just flipped the cover.

Wait and Watch. No holistic comments please.

Digital Camera Comparison By Output / Samples

2004-11-02T15:50:00.000+05:30

Camera Database and Museum at PBase.com : From last few months I am thinking of buying something for me a good music system / digital camera . But I have a very noisy brain, I start comparing things, features and prices and when I mixup all these things I land up with a professional system config ranging in thousands and lakhs and end up with not buying anything.

Just today in the morning I made up my mood to look for a entry level digitial camera and start doing something and laded here at Pbase.com Camera List.

if the database is correct, then it is really helpful to see the output or sample image from the camera that you are thinking of buying. For example, youc an actually see how a camera works in outdoor and indoors, potraits, landscapes, macros, etc. This web site almost covers all the digitial camera models from practically all the digital camera vendors.

But again, I am confused between Nikon 3200, Nikon 4100 / Nikon 4500 and Canon Powershot series A75, A85 etc. The sample outputs are round about similar but more you read more you get confused. I dont know which camera I will end up buying or not buying....

Joe Kraus on Potting Plants

2004-11-02T12:32:00.000+05:30

Joe Kraus provides the tip to unwind & pot plants :

I was trying to recruit someone recently for my new company. Despite hours of pushing by me and the team, they ultimately concluded that they needed to take time off before deciding what to do next.

There was a time, five years ago maybe, where I would have tried to push through their reasoning.

"You'll miss an incredible opportunity"

"There will always be time to take off but not always a time to have a huge impact like this"

You get the idea.

This time I let it go and wished them well. Why?.....

should a small start-up company bother about branding ?

2004-10-30T15:55:00.000+05:30

Dr. Ned Roberto and Ardy Roberto answers the question should a small start-up company bother about branding ?

"As a small start-up company, should I be concerned about branding? I've always had the impression that I'll bother about branding when I get big. Also, I've heard my partners in the business talk about corporate, family and product branding. If ever I decide to invest in branding, how should I choose among corporate, family and product branding?"

Answer: You have two separate but related questions here. Let's diagnose the first one about branding when you're just starting your business.

When you had your children, what was one of the first things that you and your wife did?

We're quite certain that you were excited about choosing the name of each baby. (Unless, of course, you are like boxing legend-turned-infomercial marketer George Foreman, who named his four or five sons, George II, George III, George IV, George V, etc.) Nevertheless, naming kids was an act of branding.

You must do the same for your new "babies," your two hotels and beach resort. You not only want to give them a name, you want that name known to prospective customers, and retained in the minds of their customers.

.in domains for India

2004-10-30T14:43:00.000+05:30

Times of India : From January 01 2005 .in domain names will be available.This will also help increase Internet speed in the country and reduce the high tariffs as due to a country domain name a lot of traffic will be generated inside the country.

Of a National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) formed by the Department of IT in association with the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI).

NIXI aims to ensure that the Internet traffic which originates within India and also has destinations in India remains within the country (instead of going to the overseas server in the host country, mostly the US), resulting in improved traffic latency, reduced cost and better security.

How to boot from a USB Flash Drive ?

2004-10-29T14:12:00.000+05:30

www.hackADay.com points to this hack from WeetHet. Having these bootable USB Flash drives may have many uses and misues ;-).

Its A Wiki World

2004-10-29T13:41:00.000+05:30

Slashdot discusses how this world is changing into a wiki world :

Wikipedian writes "BusinessWeek asks are we headed for a Wiki World?. With US-based SocialText using their wiki to leverage just $600K in capital, and European competitor Team Notepad, not to mention freeware alternatives like TWiki and MoinMoin is the whole world going to be using wikis instead of the proprietary dinosaurs like Lotus Notes?"

Dude, Did I steal your job?

2004-10-29T10:59:00.000+05:30

Priya Sreenivas (CIOL) interviews Sivakumar N , author of the book "Debugging Indian Computer Programmers: Dude, Did I steal your job?"

Net telephony fails to pick up

2004-10-28T13:34:00.000+05:30

Financial Express reports that Net telephony is failing to pick up due to the thinning difference between ILD tariff and internet telephony rates :

For an ILD call to the US, the tariff has come down from Rs 18 per minute to Rs 7.20 per minute over the last year or so. But the tariff for a similar call through the internet has remained at Rs 4-6 per minute.

And if this was not enough, “the ILD rates are likely to come down further”, according to a Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) official.

Affordable computing

2004-10-26T13:42:00.000+05:30

Many companies are trying to bring down the cost of computing. The definition of a PC is not what it used to be. The computing world which used to run on the clock speed game has run out of the GHz. Why the hell do you need a Terra GHz machine to run couple of office utilities and browsing. ? As somebody from IBM at the early stage had made a holistic statement that in this world only few Universities and Defence organization needs computers and why somebody would need it at home. Now the PC industry is doing the same thing that users needs more Speed and Bits and MIPS to run those intensive calculations, alogorithms and bleeding eye games.

Most of the people simply need some kind of access to the internet, mobility, simple spreadsheet and word editors and thats it.

* Slashdot | How Cheap A PC Can be
* AMD launches campaign for $249 PC
* Intel targets developing countries

Rajesh Jain writes an interesting post affordable computing solutions :

Last week has an interesting one from the point of view of affordable computing solutions. Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer talked about the need for $100 computers, and AMD announced a $185 computer ($249 with monitor). I will discuss the significance and impact of these developments. But first, let us look at the motivation that is driving the need for computers for the next users – what I will refer to as Massputers (a term coined by Om Malik).

There are two key factors which are making computer makers finally wake up to the opportunity in emerging markets:

Slowing Growth in Current Markets: The developed world is awash in computers – there are over 500 million users across these countries. This is now primarily an upgrade market – almost everyone who needs a computer has one. While computer growth continues to be strong (176 million computers will be bought in 2004, according to ZDNet which quotes IDC), this is being driven by two factors: depressed growth in previous years, and increasing offtake in emerging markets. The next new fast machine is no longer a driving factor in purchase, as evidenced by Intel’s decision to de-emphasise clock speeds for its processors.

Increasing Demand in Emerging Markets: The developing countries of the world are where the next users of computing are going to come from. China and India are emerging as two hot growth markets. China overtook Japan in 2003 to become the second largest PC market with sales of over 13 million units (US led with 51 million units), according to ITFacts.biz. India is expected to have sales of about 3.5-4 million computers in 2004. Affordability is going to be increasingly important in these markets.

The emerging market opportunity was elaborated on by Om Malik in his Massputers blog post: “Technology’s biggest opportunity that is staring them in the face. It is what I call a Massputer a computer that costs $300 for the computing hungry masses in emerging economies like India, China and Brazil. Users of this massputer should be able to do basic tasks like writing documents, Internet surfing, email and perhaps some business-related tasks like data entry. There are nearly four billion people who live in these emerging markets and assuming that only 10 per cent of them can afford $300 it is still a market of 400 million.” ..........

Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!

2004-10-26T13:23:00.000+05:30

Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!

This paper provides quantitative data that, in many cases, using open source software / free software is a reasonable or even superior approach to using their proprietary competition according to various measures. This paper’s goal is to show that you should consider using OSS/FS when acquiring software. This paper examines market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and total cost of ownership. It also has sections on non-quantitative issues, unnecessary fears, OSS/FS on the desktop, usage reports, other sites providing related information, and ends with some conclusions.

Using Hopster & Easy Message to bypass proxy/firewall and use Yahoo & MSN Instant Messengers

2004-10-20T17:38:00.000+05:30

Easy Message - the ultra-lite instant messenger for MSN, AOL, ICQ, and Yahoo!

There are places where Instant Messaging is barred and you cannot use MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger the two most popular instant messeging softwares being used in India.

There are web based versions of both - Yahoo and MSN Messenger launched recently but in the restrictive environment web access to these sites is also disallowed

The software hopster creates a http tunnel through your proxy so that you can use the Instant Messengers like Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Trillian bypassing the firewall rules, but due to some reasons Yahoo Messenger does not work under hopster.

To overcome this difficulty use a combinations of Hopster and Easy Message. In both the MSN Messenger and Easy Message 'connection' setting use your local loopback IP - 127.0.0.1 and port 1080 under teh Sock v4 proxy setting.

And there you go.... you dont need to your MSN Messenger
if you are using Easy Message. Only drawback however is no matter how many accounts you have logged in using Easy Message it just groups them as Online and Offline. So one may not be able to differentiate you are chatting with someone using which ID ?. In that case you can create groups manually and create groups mapping to your accound IDs.

Easy Message is devloped by Ryan Dewsbury and is free to use :

Easy Message is a unified instant messenger that connects to the ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and AOL instant messaging network. The messenger is licensed to internet service providers and web communities with their brand name. Since instant message programs are typically always open on the desktop it provides the companies with excellent brand recognition.

It is also distribted as a free download under the Easy Message Express brand. It has over 20,000 daily users and is the smallest and fastest instant messenger available today.

India's Broadband Policy

2004-10-18T22:37:00.000+05:30

Rajesh Jain comments on the new Indian Broadband Policy :

The new Indian broadband policy was announced a few days ago. Considering that it was a few months in the making, it is a big disappointment. It will do little to spur broadband deployment across India. After all the thought that has supposedly gone into it, much was expected in terms of bold measures. And bold this policy is not.

It does not take up the most far-reaching measure proposed in the TRAI recommendations - unbundling of the local loop. It also does not address the issue of the hugely expensive bandwidth prices - both nationally and internationally.

So, yet another case of a missed opportunity. The Indian IT department and minister had a chance to jumpstart India along the South Korean path of large-scale deployment. But what instead is seen is a lack of both vision and will.

[Also read: my earlier Business Standard column on what is needed for boosting broadband in India.]

Thirld World : Googling the 'third world'

2004-10-16T13:12:00.000+05:30

Tried googling 'thirld world' today to know how much it knows about my place. Realized that there is...

Third World Network - discusses Trade, Technology, Environment and other issues.

Third World Traveller - alternative view to the corporate media about the state of democracy in America,and about the impact of the policies of the United States' government, transnational corporations, international trade and financial institutions, and the corporate media, on war and peace, democracy, free speech, social and economic justice, and human rights, in the Third World, and in the United States.

Third World Newsreel - one of the oldest alternative media arts organizations in the United States. We are committed to the creation and appreciation of independent and social issue media by and about people of color, and the peoples of developing countries around the world.

Amy Smith - A scientist whose inventions can benefit Third Worlds.

Third World Band - a band from first world which has hijacked third world name. They were Grammy nominated for "AIN'T GIVIN' UP". Released by Shanachie Records in 2003.

A news link which will make India's Left Parties happy - Do all these consultants really benefit the Third World? . Anyway Left is more happy to screw Anupam Kher. Thirld world politicians are most busy in important issue of appointing Censor Board Chiefs and not about child labour and juvenile whores. It's too common in thirld world...

Last but not the least, yet unadulterated Geek World Makes Sense - Slashdot. News for nerds, stuff that matters.
Third World Research, Development & Innovation :

tovarish writes "It is nice to see that countries like India are trying to research communication techniques in backward and rural areas. While tech savvy people like us enjoy the latest gadgets it is quite a challenge to develop gadgets which actually help the poor and illiterate. While India's satellite launches and outsourcing news are already covered in slashdot umpteen times, sometimes her sensible achievements should be covered too."

Don't just get exited by the post heading, read the discussion.

The 3rd World : Corruption / Corrupt Childrens

2004-10-15T13:18:00.000+05:30

My blogs has mainly remained as a linklog. I thought may be I should enlighten all the dedicated readers of my blog with my knowledge and wisdom. After all I live in Thirld World - you just need to breath with your open eyes. You don't have to be adventurous to go out and seek the experience. Experiences come to you, 24x7x365 otherwise you must either by dead or living only on page 3 of some toilet paper.

The Corruption :

Some days back a school kid came to me and my friend asking for donation for the upgradation of their School building. We were having a first world drink - *** cola at that time.

We were looking at the form and some other local kid came and said, "Uncle, don't give him anything, I used to study in the same school earlier. They used to send us for the same type of collection drive, but never did anything for the school, it all went in to their pockets".

But since we didn't want to upset that kid who must be hardly 10-12 ( and the kid who educated us was also 10-12 something ) we both gave the kids - few bucks.

The beauty is see how educated our third world childrens are. First world kids can't even spell 'corruption' at this age and our third world kids - know it by experience.

Q. Why that kid called me uncle ?
B'cos we are third world people are knitted with a tight social fabric. Never know who might be of help for a favour or recommendation. Stupid first world people need online social networking site to socialize, what a waste...

Come On Yelp! Me. Domain Names getting Y'ed

2004-10-15T12:19:00.000+05:30

These days local net is getting a great kick. Yahoo and Google are finding ways to become more locally aware. Craigslist leads the race since it's content is all user provided and not some algorithm defined query result. Yelp! is the new entrant in the area , it is about - sharing the local knowledge and recommendations through the network. From finding a reputed Medical Practioner to finding restaurant or plumber, dentists, hairstylist and what not.
[ Spotted on Om Malik's blog ]

I have noticed a new trend here in the name and that is modification in the Domain name : Ryze.com (Rize), Bryght.com (Bright) and now Yelp.com (Help) & Indian oldy Indya.com (India) . "Y" is cool these days...

Leadership's Lasting Lessons

2004-10-15T12:00:00.000+05:30

[ Via E M E R G I C . o r g Knowledge@Wharton writes about a new book - "Lasting Leadership: Lessons from the 25 Most Influential Business People of Our Times."

Lasting Leadership also identifies eight attributes of leadership, each of which has its own chapter in the book, that are evident to varying degrees in these individuals.

1. They are able to build a strong corporate culture.
2. They are truth-tellers.
3. They are able to find and cater to under-served markets.
4. They can "see the invisible" - that is, spot potential winners or faint trends before their rivals or customers.
5. They are adept at using price to build competitive advantage.
6. They excel at managing and building their organization's brand (which in some cases may be their own name).
7. They are fast learners.
8. They are skilled at managing risk.

Google , India & Shakta (?) Energy

2004-10-14T13:17:00.000+05:30

Google Inc. founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were on a hiring trip to India.Google's Bangalore center will act as a 'ideas centre'.

Researchers in Bangalore will work with their counterparts in Google's U.S. offices to conceptualize new services and develop software, they said.

This includes developing search engines that will present results based on speech input or drawings, ones that will work in more languages than at present, personalizing search results to suit individual preferences, and new features for Google's new e-mail service, they said.

However I am not able to understand Inquirers headline : Googling in India produces shakta energy
What is this shakta ?

And another thing I am not able to understand why they wanted to meet our h'ble PM and why it was called Off?. Were diverted to meet Soniaji instead or got enlightened by Laloo ji. And by the way where are the leftist comments on these foreigners.

What VoIP Is Actually Good For ?

2004-10-12T13:13:00.000+05:30

[ Via Slashdot | What VoIP Is Actually Good For ] If you thought that VoIP is just another cheaper call option, think again. Two Bell Lab scientists Sudhir R. Ahuja & Robert Ensor explain how host of IP applications are changing the scene. This 4 part paper is available at ACMQueue [VoIP: What is it good for? ], divided into :
1: Growth
2: Implementation
3: Integration and Sessions
4: The Future

* Does VoIP Spell the Death of the Traditional Telephone System? - Part 2
* You Don't Know Jack About VoIP
* Will VoIP Kill the PBX? - Slashdot
* Not Your Father's PBX ;-)

IITs, IIMs breed business startups

2004-10-11T16:19:00.000+05:30

Sudhir Chowdhary & Srinivas R (Express India) write about the startups being breeded in IIT-Delhi and IIM-Bangalore.

@ IIT Delhi
* Nine Cloud Entertainments is working on animation and other entertainment projects.
* SeNate Communications is developing firewall security solutions
*Voice Tech Solutions provides IT solutions to the telecom companies

@ IIM Bangalore
* Meta-I - Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Education Support Services Company
* EmbedX - working on embedded systems on vehicle tracking.

Rashmi Bansal (Business World India) has written a wonderful article - can Business Schools really 'teach' entrepreneurship. It covers some successful examples and also the gaps in various areas :

Originally, entrepreneurship courses were meant to literally 'produce entrepreneurs'. In 1947, Harvard Business School (HBS) developed an elective titled 'Management of Small Enterprises' for students eager to start their own businesses after World War II. The real thrust into teaching and research in the area came in the early 1980s when HBS graduate and pioneering venture capitalist Arthur Rock funded the first professorship in the field of entrepreneurship at HBS.

Under legendary Professor Howard H. Stevenson, entrepreneurship came to be defined not just as an 'innate trait' but a particular type of managerial behaviour available to virtually all managers in organisations of all kinds and sizes. Today HBS requires its 900 first-year students to take a course called 'The Entrepreneurial Manager', and offers almost 20 elective courses in the area to its second-year students. American B-schools, including the likes of Wharton, offer entrepreneurial management as a major, "preparing students for careers as autonomous entrepreneurs, family-business entrepreneurs, or entrepreneurs in corporate setting". Entrepreneurship centres have also become an integral feature at campuses in the US, thanks to corporates and individuals who are keen to fund them. The University of Michigan, for example, got $10 million to set up such a centre in 1999.

In contrast, Indian B-schools have made a more modest foray into entrepreneurship education. Every self-respecting B-school offers at least one elective in the area as part of the second year of the postgraduate programme (PGP). And interest from students is high. At IIM Lucknow, the 'New Venture Planning' (NVP) course has seen an enrolment as high as 70 per cent in some years. The course gives perspectives from all functional areas like marketing, finance, operations, strategy and also preparation of business plans. IIM Bangalore offers as many as four electives covering the entire gamut - from the regulation 'Managing New Ventures' to the gung-ho 'Entrepreneurship from the Trenches: A Real World Perspective'. Further, a course in 'Social Entrepreneurship' is being introduced. In March 2002, IIM-B set up the Nadathur S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) with a generous grant from N.S. Raghavan, one of the co-founders of Infosys Technologies (See 'Incubation, The New Buzzword').

* List - India Business Incubators *
* NSRCEL : Ideas to Implementation
* Incubetees at KreSIT

Tux lands in Portland

2004-10-11T15:46:00.000+05:30

Brier Dudley ( The Seattle Times ) reports how Portland is tranforming from a hardware centre to the center of Linux Development:

In tech circles, Seattle is known as a software town because of Microsoft. Portland is a hardware town because of its semiconductor industry, driven largely by Intel.

Yet over the past decade, a cluster of software companies involved with Linux and other 'open-source' software that's distributed free of charge has appeared in Portland.

Nearly every major tech company backing Linux, including longtime Microsoft competitors, has programmers here working on the software. Their expertise has helped transform Linux ? an operating system for controlling the basic functions of a PC ? from a hobby into a direct competitor of Microsoft Windows.

Capping it off, Linus [pronounced LEE-nus] Torvalds, 34, the Finnish programmer who created Linux in 1991 and still oversees its development, moved to Portland in June.

However Microsoft does not want to accept it openly (as it does not believe in open standards ;-).

"If they were in Portland or if they were in Redmond or if they were in Bangalore, India, I don't think it would make any difference," said Martin Taylor, who leads 10 strategists in Redmond working to fend off Linux.

Microsoft's monopoly on desktop computers is intact, but Linux is growing faster than Windows in the lucrative, crucial market for data-serving computers used in corporate and government networks.

The risk is great enough that Microsoft warned shareholders about it last month in its annual report. To the extent open-source products such as Linux gain acceptance, the report said, "sales of our products may decline."

Finding Jobs through Social Networking

2004-10-11T15:38:00.000+05:30

ContraCostaTimes.com has a article - how social networking sites like LinkedIn, Friendster, Ryze , Spoke & Tribe are helping job aspirants to find right jobs through contacts on these social networking sites.

Social networking has opened a new door in the job search for the thousands of Bay Area employees who lost their jobs since the boom went bust. Members are using the sites to find out about job openings and to connect with people who could put them in touch with the right hiring director.

"It's a great way to network, to learn about the company, to gain a competitive advantage when you're up against other candidates and trying to land a job," Shakked said.

Shakked had been unemployed for about a year, working temporary jobs, when he registered at LinkedIn. First, he constructed a network, entering e-mail addresses to see whether his friends and colleagues were already members or wished to join. He then started running searches for contacts at the companies where he wanted a job, online travel sites such as Hotwire and Travelocity.

When he found the right contacts, he started the process of requesting a meeting. The request would go to a person in his network, who then had to either reject it or approve it and send it on to another link.

REM previews album via online social networking portal

2004-10-11T14:54:00.000+05:30

After the 'The Apprentice' exposed itself to social networking site Friendster its time now for REM a US alternative rock band REM is to offer its albym "Around the Sun" on a social networking portal MySpace.com

Make your own Ringtones

2004-10-09T13:00:00.000+05:30

MrBass.org has a 'make your ringtones' (graphical) guide - using opensource software combination of Audacity, Lame and BitPim

VQube : Indian VoIP Startup

2004-10-09T12:26:00.000+05:30

Esqube is a Indian startup founded by the facultes of the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore who carry over eight decades of experience and fundamental knowledge in the field of DSP and Telecommunication. Thre first product is VoIP software ::..V Q u b e - V O I C E L I N E C O M M U N I C A T I O N M A D E E A S Y (a Skype like stuff). VQube is available for download at download.com. It has been reviewed by 13 users till now and all have given their thumbs up to VQube.

Vqube has some useful features & advantages like - ability to work behind NAT & Firewalls, High Quality Voice with Very Low Bit Rates, Instant Messaging with VQube Chat, etc.

Some features to look for as per the VQubes sites are - Call Conferencing with P2P technology, Answering Machine Facility, Friend's List, PBX Functionalities (Call Forward, Call Transfer),File Transfer , Call Recording, Integration to Outlook. In latest Business.

Google SMS Launched

2004-10-08T12:39:00.000+05:30

Google launches Google SMS

Google SMS (Short Message Service) enables you to easily get precise answers to specialized queries from your mobile phone or device. Send your query as a text message and get phone book listings, dictionary definitions, product prices and more. Just text. No links. No web pages. Simply the answers you're looking to find.

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