Oxford to set up first research centre outside UK in India

Rediff Writes :
Oxford University will invest 10 million pounds initially to set up its first business research centre, which will study a wide span of issues in the country starting from infrastructure and education to social entrepreneurship and business taxation.

London finance and business service sector to grow by 7% – its fastest since 2000

Lite (ThisIsLondon.co.uk) mentions (on 27th oct 2006) in the news print :

London set for faster growth :  The centre for economics and business research now expects the finance and business service sector to grow by 7% – its fastest since 2000 – while shops and wholesalers will see growth of 2.8% against 1.3% last year!!

Inspiring Entrepreneurs – Lord Karan Bilimoria

I must admit I have been a die hard fan of Lord Karan Bilimoria, more than Cobra Beer . Lord Karan is the Founder and Chief Executive of Cobra Beer. I have been following Cobra Beer’s innovative initiatives, be it the ultra cool Cobra Advertisements, Cobra Vision, Entrepreneur support activities like in TiE.

Through Cobra Vision, Cobra conducts, sponsors competition for producer, director, scriptwriter, AD film maker, etc.

One thing inspires me about this company is their sheer passion to “Be different”. Rediff (Indian online newspaper) has published an excellent interview with Karan. Some insights to how Karan has built Cobra with a decisive passion, commitment and eye for detail.

Rediff quote

Wasn’t it crazy of you to venture into business on your own?
My family thought I was mad! They did everything possible to discourage me. It all started when I was once playing polo in India. A polo stick maker said: ‘Look, why don’t you sell our sticks in England?’

I was 27 at the time. I always knew that I wanted to get into business at some point in my life. So I said why not give it a shot? I sold Indian polo sticks to places like Harrods and Giddons, the suppliers to the Royal family’s stables.

It was difficult. The buyer at Harrods was very rude to me. But eventually I managed to see the head buyer and got my foot in the door.

I discovered my core advantage was the fact that I was totally at home in England, and totally at home in India.

I could add value by putting the two countries together. I didn’t make much money. But that first year gave me the experience of importing, sourcing, market research and selling. Invaluable!

Did you have a mentor? Someone to guide you around the pitfalls of the business?
There was an Indian gentleman in London called Keshav Reddy. He introduced us to Mysore Breweries. He was the uncle of my partner at the time, Arjun Reddy. Arjun was a childhood friend who had an entrepreneurial bent: he’d been involved in managing his family farms and business from a very young age. So we teamed up to start Cobra. But he left the company a few years ago.

How did you raise finance?
In every possible way you can imagine! And that’s where being a chartered accountant helped a lot. It was always the biggest single problem I had: how to build a brand with no finances of my own. But one thing I believe in very strongly is the brand and the future of the business. So I’m very, very reluctant to sell my own shares. And that’s difficult because people say to me, your company is going places and I want to buy shares in it. No, sorry. You can’t.

MyBlogLog : Way to Create Your Own Blogging Community

We all bloggers happen to know each other through tag, feeds, in meetup events, via Blogging platfrom Dashboards, etc. Once known, either the connection remains through regular visits, feeds or in community meetup events or we again go back to the original mode of meeting by chance. Now for me that was big NO-NO in blogging. Why do we blog? Atleast I blog to participate in a community where I can learn and share.

I started with Blogging with Blogger, with its community flavour , I though it will be great to know fellow bloggers. But soon I was disappointed that there is nothing much tools to explore, and build my own community. Then the cool WordPress came and I was fascinated (I am still) in its community driven Dashboard, tagging and other features. However I was still felling some uneasy, why can’t I see my fellow Blogger communities. There is kind of fence separating the bigger community. I was also searching in an article how to find best bloggers
This week I landed in MyBlogLog through TechCrunch. I instantly got what I was looking for so many days of blogging!!! Communities which I can see, feel, join irrespective of what platform they use, whether I have them in my blogroll or not, even if I haven’t heard about them from anywhere!!

I am happy that I am no longer blogging alone

Google Co-op will seal fate of few Vertical Search engines

Google Co-op will seal fate of few Vertical Search engines
Have you heard about Google Co-op? You can build your own vertical search engine on top of Google using Google Co-Op !!!!!
Though this is released in May but now it has gone in full public mode and anybody can access this co-op partner program from Google.

Now think for a second what will happen to those vertical search engines having invested millions in building their own solutions!!! I think some of them are doomed unless they have value added service in addition to the vertical search. Let’s take example of Vertical Job sites (avoiding naming some of them , some of them are plain vanilla ones without any value addition. Now with Google Co-op anybody (with little higher technical knowledge) can launch a vertical job search engine in few days time. And on top they can put the investment completely to value addition services making mockery of the independent vertical search engines (non-Google ones)!!!

Remember: There is always room for innovations and in my example I am taking cases of those which are dummy vertical search engines)

For me now the real Vertical Search Engine war has begun. Also I think with this, Google is combining social search with vertical flavour and allowing community to mushroom around it.

Google has played the check step and launching the community soldier to play checkmate step.

How long you should take to implement and launch a new idea?

I met with an entrepreneur in City who has a great idea but he went “cheap route” to implement his idea. He outsourced his idea to an IT professional in some third world country with a condition that his cost of development will reduce to 1/9 and the developer will take 9 months in developing the solution!!! So if the cost would have been 9,000 GBP, it will cost him only 1000 GBP . Sounds cool on paper. But after 9 months he realised that what turned out is a crap product development and total waste of 9 months!!!

During this 9 months time, there is already slightly similar concept already in UK marketplace and his solution is still far from achievable. This case opened my eyes that how come entrepreneurs keep forgetting the basic market principles!! As a Startup entrepreneur, I think one should

-Move faster into marketplace

-Reduce entry barrier (mainly cost which is major factor for Startups) but not at the cost of time to enter to market!!! Very Very Very important

-Feel as if somebody else is dreaming your idea

-Invite partners to your idea (This reduces the burden of upfront investment)

- Build what is essential to enter to market

-Participate in the product development, be it marketing or on technology side

Any other key suggestions ?

Oracle is considering launching its own Linux operating system?

This article talks about a rumor : Oracle is considering launching its own Linux operating system?

If Oracle goes into Linux, it will be able to deliver custom-made complete packages that will include both the operating system and all applications needed.

Rumors are that Oracle has its eyes on Linux releasers RedHat or Ubuntu maker Canonical for partnership (buyout?!). Linux is a popular platform for database servers. It was rumored Oracle is looking forward to introducing an Ubuntu-anchored software stack (OS-apps software bundle). Oracle’s offer could include even a dedicated hardware solution for it.

==> I think this is bound to happen because Oracle is depending too much on IBM, MS and Apple for operating system. Linux is that zigsaw which will solve Oracle’s puzzle of having an OS and application on top of it and also drive into open source.
Will they buy Redhat ..with that they will get Linux and also JBoss which RedHat had acquired few months back. JBoss has become the best Java/J2EE Application Server whereas Oracle’s Application server could never be in the top league. Infact there was a rumor going on whether JBoss will be acquired by Oracle. But RedHat acquired. May be time for them to buy both at one shot

BBC outsourcing to India

BBC reports : The BBC is outsourcing some of its accounting and financing services to India in a move that will save it £20m a year for the next decade.

The contract, which includes managing payroll and financial management, has been won by Xansa.

Symantec says : Web apps and services prove high risk

The report worries about the ‘relative ease of discovering vulnerabilities in Web applications compared to other platforms’. Source code is easily obtained, they are frequently updated, and because there are few restrictions to distinguish valid input from invalid, web applications are ’susceptible to common types of input validation vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting and SQL injection’.

The technologies underpinning Web applications and Web services also give Symantec cause for concern…

Symantec is concerned that in the rush to develop Web services, the underlying Web applications that use them are not receiving the same level of security auditing as traditional client-based applications and services.

‘As Web applications continue to gain in popularity, Symantec expects to see an increase in the number of attacks taking advantage of the interconnected, interactive nature of AJAX to increase the number of potential targets.’

==> I think recent trend suggets that with newer technology and more focus on developing solutions faster rather than robust and secure is bound to create issues in future stability of the product. I keep hearing comments like “AJAX” enabled, hopefully they are secure and manegeable!!

User generated content, will money change everything?

In Clickz, there is a great post about User generated content, will money change everything by Rebecca Lieb.

She has excellent compilation of cases

Quote :

Social Sites Start Paying

Ignoring for a moment how high agency billable hours for conceiving and creating all the aforementioned campaigns might be, there’s a small but growing trend toward monetizing user-generated content. Revver appends ads to the user-submitted videos on its site and splits the take down the middle with the content creators. There’s even a cut for an affiliate, if one’s in the mix.

Sure, the majority of citizen content creators are in it for the glory, a little recognition, a chance to be heard, or even to publish. And yes, winning a contest to create a Super Bowl ad would certainly spruce up an ambitious college student’s résumé.

But isn’t there something just a little miserly and crass about major brands like L’Oréal and Chevrolet turning the tables on Web 2.0 and customer control? Certainly their agencies can’t be happy when the account goes up for review and their rival’s willing to work for a one-year supply of breath mints.

Will it be long before diamonds in the rough emerge from corners of the Web other than the blogosphere and demand to be paid what they’re truly worth?

Corus accepted Tata takeover offer

Tata is one of India’s reputed and ethical company, it came into existence during British Rule (1860’s) and it has contribution to Indian Air lines, Steel, Administrative service, Software service (TCS) industries. More on Tata Group in Wikipedia

Infact TCS was the 5th best employer in UK in last year. Also Tata owns UK’s Tetley Tea.!! So they have been contributing to UK economy and a global economy. With Corus steel (formerly British Steel) acquisition, Tata is definitely going to propel UK’s steel industry further in global place. Such globalization is the mantra of next century whereby western countries continue to capitalize the marketplace by associating with Asian/South Asian/African/developing countries and brining the hope of prosperous life to all human being.

I believe world market is operating 1/30(a random number) of its potential because vast majority of market is still to be explored and bring into global market place.

Globalization is the way forward!!

Aussie Rules in Oval

I am in Oval today, ohh not for Ashes but for “Aussie Rules” I have been invited to watch Aussie Rules with my Australian friends. I had no idea about Aussie Rules… AFL Challenger Trophy 2006 Geelong v Port Adelaide. I got to know more about Aussie Rules before heading to watch the match.

USA is lagging behind Britain as foreign Student destination

FT.com article : According to the report, the US increased its international-student enrolment by 17 per cent from the 1999-2000 academic year to 2004-05, compared with gains of 29 per cent in Britain, 42 per cent in Australia, 46 per cent in Germany, 81 per cent in France and 108 per cent in Japan. Some observers claim the reason for the slow pace of growth is due to the perception that the US is unwelcoming to international students. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the US State Department imposed tougher standards on foreign students seeking visas to study in the US, which made visa processing times slow to a crawl.

Technolgy changes and its Impact on Export Pattern of Services

The export pattern for services is totally different than the export patterns for products. Fisk, Grove and John in their book “Interactive Service Marketing” suggests three patterns for services as follows

Outbound Service Export : Send the service provider to the foreign Market

Inbound Service Export : Bring the Customer to the Service Provider

Teleservice Export : Deliver the service to Foreign Markets Electronically

However I think the technology has already impacted services delivery and some of the export pattern have become anti-pattern. Here is an analysis

Outbound Service Export : Send the service provider to the foreign Market
In IT services industry, we have seen outsourcing companies from India, Eastern Europe travelling to host country to provide service. However with new ICT medium like on demand work force (oDesk, Elance, and others), virtual workforce spread across the world, it is no longer required for the service provider to travel to host country. Therefore as technology evolves, virtualization will enable service provider to provide service without entering foreign market.

Even Dell proved that staying back in USA, it can still serve the rest of world using supply chain partners instead of locating itself in every part of the world. Therefore enterprise applications, advanced inventory and delivery solution is enabling service provider to avoid this pattern Are we going to see a nice Curry freshly made in India travelling to London on demand rather than the curry shop trying to fit in the crowded curry marketplace in London

Inbound Service Export : Bring the Customer to the Service Provider

This is an interesting pattern, common example is foreign students travelling to host country Universities. Like Chinese or Indians travelling to USA, UK, Canada. However technology change is already impacting this pattern too. With Satellite based ICT medium, student can study in an USA university from Bangalore, India

As research reports suggests, the future advances in health care will enable Doctors to operate patients using IT tools and technology!! However Tourism industry might sigh a relief as it can’t be replaced by virtualization, unless I intend to live in Second life

The third pattern as suggested by Fisk, Grove and John is the solution to the above two pattern is as follows.

Teleservice Export : Deliver the service to Foreign Markets Electronically

This is the only export pattern that can survive for foreseeable centuries.

Excellent list of questions that management teams should ask

I read this post of Andy Sacks via Ed Sim’s blog.

1. What are the hardest problems in our current business approach – the market issues that we keep struggling with over and over?
2. What’s (surprisingly) easy about our business – the things that are working better than expected?
3. Where’s the parade?  What major trends are we trying to get in front of with our business?

What would our business look like If we:

• Stopped trying to do what’s hard,
• Did more of the things that are easy, and
• Made sure we were in front of the biggest parade we can find?

I think this is an excellent list of questions that management teams should ask themselves about their business every six months or so.

Valuable thoughts from Tom Peters on Noble Peace Prize Winner

Muhammad Yunus, the Noble Peace Prize Winner of 2006 is a rare hope to millions in Bangladesh and also bound to create more social entrepreneur in South East Asia.

Tom Peter writes in his blog

The story, of course, is amazing. Moreover, it dovetails with all of my Primary Biases:

Small can be beautiful & powerful!
People first!
Trust!
Women rule!!!!!!!!
Giant forests from tiny seedlings!
Self reliance!
Community based!
Self/Small group management!
Banish the bureaucrats!
Keep it simple, stupid!
Hands on!

Web2.0 Burst – Reality Check

There are predictions and analysis going around the web that Web2.0 is waiting to go burst!! Some time the Google -YouTube as the first hint of a bubble burst!! Some others say all this community participation, hit count is not measurable units for sustaining a Web2.0 growth!!

Here is straight question to them, when did you correctly predict the last dot com burst? After it happened, right? I might be on the wrong side of Web2.0 who passionately thinks Web2.0 is here to revolutionise the way we use “web” to do things. It has started its path of innovation and may be on the way it might burst but it will definitely have its impression the way web1.o had in terms of successful enterprises like eBay, Yahoo, Amazon and Google, many others. Yes Tom Dick and Harry website failed and they were the culprit of dot com crash because they thought anything can earn them profit in this crazy web market place.

However market has learned from that harsh reality and at least now we see only 1 in 10 Web2.0 solution having the old Web1.0 mentality of launching any damn solution in marketplace and capitalise from the hype. They are bound to fail but I doubt if they will take the whole Web2.0 with them.

Another major factor which is helping marketplace to stay stable and educate Web2.0 entrepreneurs is the Social Media i.e. the blogs, community reviews. New entrepreneur are able to learn what is happening in market place and able to “market research” before jumping which according me was completely missing during Web1.0. During Web1.0 every new entrepreneur thought in terms of “if they can do why can’t we”! However in Web2.0, the entrepreneurs I have met are thinking if they can do, let’s think what other way we can do the same/variant. You see the difference? Market research has reached to masses and they are aware of failure of copy cat solution and therefore staying away from polluting web2.0 marketplace.

During Web1.0, some VC ruled mind of entrepreneurs!! I think the VCs got blind with a new technology and potential of returns and forgot all the basics. Without educating/participating along with the entrepreneur to innovate services, they invested heavily thinking marketing is all the mantra to go big. But see what the successful players did like Amazon or eBay; they were purely innovative and followed principles of market leaders rather than spending to build services which customer can never use!! BTW there were intelligent VC’s backing these successful players

Now let’s take Web2.0 and VC!! These days you hear community, community…innovation…innovation and on the way you hear small related VC news. Frankly speaking many Web2.0 entrepreneurs are building services which are sustainable because they no longer need to spend millions in doing market survey, pay millions in advertising to seek user’s attention. User is right there with them from day one. In this scenario, VCs are investing in solutions which has already got market appeal or innovatively placed. There are exceptions but they are 1 in 1o.

Another major factor which will support Web2.0 is the success of global offshoring. During Web1.o, IT was still a new thing in many parts of the world therefore all innovations were aimed for US market only. However post dot com burst and with Web2.0 US is not the only market!! Take any case be it MySpace or YouTube(they are just an example), the global audience is behind their success. This has become possible because due to offshoring lot of new market has been created(or getting created) which now offers more potential than it did during Web1.0.

Demographic factor : Web2.0 has younger internet audience and participating across many parts of the world. We hardly saw them during Web1.0.

So let’s hold on to the theory of burst. Let’s concentrate on how Web2.0 gets it’s full due.

aql : Impressive Mobile Solutions!!

aql has developed fantastic application all aimed at making your mobile really participate in day today world!!  Though you can view all about them in their website, I felt it will be worth to let my readers know in brief about various product/service they provide. They are as follows

Ex SMS-WAP customer?
We have developed a gateway which attempts to emulate the old sms-wap ringtone, logo and text HTTP Post interface.

Email to SMS Gateway (outgoing messages)
If you are looking for a quick and simple way to add SMS functionality to your service, or your systems are already setup with email notification then have them relayed to you as text messages via our email to sms service.

Premium rate billing (Shortcode) services
aql offer a simple-to-integrate API for use with our premium rate mobile terminated (MT) billing services. Click here to download the connection documentation. Ordering a shortcode cannot be done via our website – please contact us to discuss any aspect of our shortcode or premium services. If you are unfamiliar with the SMPP protocol, we also offer an HTTP/HTTPS gateway which offers simple integration.

HTTP/HTTPS Gateway (outgoing messages)
Developers can use HTTP posts to interface with our systems for outgoing messages, now supporting postback confirmation for message delivery, for more details click here.

HTTP/HTTPS Speech Synthesis (text to voice call)
Developers can send HTTP post data to our speech synthesis gateway. Our platforms will then convert this text data into speech (english only) and call a specified number with the synthesized message. This service is ideal as the basis for services for the blind or visually impaired or for messaging to networks which cannot accept text messages.

Extended HTTP/HTTPS Gateway (address book and distribution list sync)
Developers can integrate our address book and distribution list features via this powerful API. This includes uploading and modifying addressbooks, distribution lists. (note – needs to be used in conjunction with our standard Gateway).

SMPP/SMPP(SSL) Gateway (outgoing messages)
High volume operators can use our SMPP gateway for message delivery.

XML-SOAP / Web Service Gateway
Developers can use our SOAP Gateway to quickly interface their systems to aql.com. SOAP is supported by most of the available technologies including  the .NET Framework and Java.

MMS Gateway
Ringtone Gateway
Ringtone Content Gateway
Resellers – SMS site bundle

In response to numerous enquiries from resellers, aql has created a collection of scripts which form a simple SMS website which can be re-branded by resellers and hosted on their own servers. It allows users to sign up and also for an administrator to assign credits.

I also heard they have a solution which does SMS to RSS feed conversion!! Though couldn’t locate more about this in their website, do you know any such convrter app (SMS to RSS Feed)?

Who would have thought 20 years back that Elephants will get to wear Microchips

Who would have thought 20 years back that Elephants will get to wear Microchips

BBC article : Microchip for Mumbai Elephants.

Elephants in India’s financial capital Mumbai are to receive microchip ‘licence plates’  …The implants cost 200 rupees ($4.40) and will be ready to be implanted into the animals’ ears over the next month.

In Another article,e-ration card is being introduced to check black marketing of daily goods

A computer-based automated ration card and public distribution management system would be set up under a pilot project which would connect the shopkeeper, the warehouse and the consumer through computers,” said an official.

The company said the e-ration card system would enable monitoring of fair price shops from one place, which in turn would help checking black marketing of commodities.
==> We human being believe technology is the cure for all evil but then we also create evil to break the technology. Anyway to change the evil (like black marketing & corruption) which has lasted for centuries in India, I think technology solution will be one angle to solve this..

I think the social media and explosion of new media will revolutionise countries like India, because information is flowing and can no longer be hidden from layman and can’t be manipulated for goverment agency benefits. However there must be initiative from government to create independent information hubs which assures relaibility of information. I will address this in a separate article.

Enterprising Young Brits!!

Part of the Make Your Mark – start talking ideas campaign, the competition is open to anyone aged 30 and under who has grown their own idea, exploited an opportunity, or developed a new way of doing things. The judges are looking for a balance of commercial flair and creativity, and will reward not just the quality of the idea, but also how you made it happen. This could be by starting up a business, developing a social enterprise, or doing something enterprising in order to help others.

THE CATEGORIES

Business Entrepreneur –
For enterprising individuals that have started their own business, large or small.

Social and Environmental –
For ventures combining the principles of a successful business with an emphasis on the social and community benefits it can provide.

Innovation at Work –
For someone who has had an idea and made it happen within their workplace.

Teen –
For anybody making an idea happen who is aged 13-19.

Creative –
For enterprising individuals, businesses and endeavors in the creative industries.

HOW TO ENTER

Find all details in http://www.starttalkingideas.org/youngbrits/

October 23 is deadline for submitting your entry!!!

Why Government web sites are so dumb?

One thing is common across many of the government websites : they are so dumb. There are 1001 govt. policies aimed to make IT reach masses like web accessibility, easy to use, informative to citizens but while applying the govt. websites itself miss to implement those policies!!! Ohh thats rude but I am afraid that’s right.

I read an article about BrandIndex, which is a daily measure of public perception (in UK) of more than 1,100 consumer brands across 32 sectors, measured on a 7-point profile: general impression, ‘buzz’, quality, value, corporate image, customer satisfaction and whether respondents would recommend the brand to a friend. We interview 2,000 people from our online panel of more than 130,000 each weekday, more than half a million interviews per year.
Having focus on IT industry, I thought I can see all the reports and clicked “DailyData” in the menu. I was asked to login I looked option to register!! O Gosh I dint find register option, the only option I see is Sign up for our weekly newsletter!!

I dont get this,BrandIndex is about daily measure of public perception and they have online panel…. etc…but the very basic Web Accessibility not in place, navigation is poor ………….

I then clicked on “YouGov” link which took me to YouGov page where I see “New panel member Sign here” …common BrandIndex Web Team, the layman will never know that they have to go to YouGov, where did you mention that?

Matt Buck’s Cartoons & experience of internet impacts

Have you seen Matt Buck’s Blog http://www-hack.blogspot.com/

I got to visit his blog while reading Guardian Unlimited, his following post opened my eyes of how Internet is changing pattern of doing things and thereby creating and also destroying innumerable industy.

Courtesy Matt Buck’s Blog : Working in the print industry, as so many cartoonists do, has been a very interesting experience this year. The second coming of the internet appears finally to have arrived and many of our traditional markets are disappearing as business finally cottons onto the fact that people like getting their news via screens.

This implies a massive change, not only for the self-employed seeking new places to work, but also more brutally for a lot of staffers who are discovering that there is no real job security in a moving marketplace. …..

Attached is his Cartoon

Some statistics : Get Online Safe Study by the UK Govt

BBC Reports of Get Online Safe Study by the UK Govt, here are some statistics on market capacity and to think what kind of solution will fit customer needs in UK.

**57% of UK households had a internet connection and 69% of those were linked up via broadband.
** In the first six months of 2006, British shoppers spent more than £13bn online
**17% of people had no anti-virus software and 22% had no firewall

Sell time, Buy time?

Slivers-of-Time is a new way of working. You list the hours you would like to work and local employers buy them. The Slivers-of-Time programme is funded jointly by the UK government and private companies.

Many people can only be available for work at irregular times. Many companies and parts of government need to top up their workforce for peak periods, which can come unexpectedly. At the moment, these irregular bookings of temporary labour carry too many overheads and are too likely to cause problems. That is now changing…. with Silvers-of-Time.
Benefit to Employers:-

For employers, this new marketplace means the end of muddling through short staffed because of unpredictable requirements. It can cut the overtime bill and bring in new pools of staff who want to work at the times you need them. Induct a pool of Slivers-of-Time workers and you have a pre-trained additional workforce to be turned on and off as required.

Some Type of Work that one (time sellers) can do :-

 

Call centre/Customer service

• Answering calls from the public
• Making calls
• Helping customers fill out a form
• Directing customers to the right department
• Typing data into a computer

Sales/Interviewing

• Asking questions from a form and writing in answers
• Explaining the benefits of a product or service
• Approaching members of the public with questions
• Handing out leaflets

Teaching

• One-to-one coaching
• Explaining how a computer works
• Help with basic literacy/numeracy
• Assisting people as they begin work

=> I think this is a great programme having backing of Govt and this will support many small scale and large scale organisation to leverage seller’s time(flexi employee) without getting them on board with all the hassles of employment criteria and operational issues. Such programme will help UK  industry continue to leverage the local employment market and not depend solely on low cost offshoring.

It is amazing that the UK introduces excellent and favourable conditions for employment market in comparison with USA. For instance any skilled worker anywhere in the world can come and search for work in UK legally and without having an employer (through HSMP)!! Dependent work permit holder can legally work. Whereas in USA, even a high skilled dependent can’t work!! and worst is you need a H1 sponsor to get you inside USA. Many of my friends are living in USA for last 7 years and their wives can’t work although they are skilled like MBA, Bachelors of engineering in IT, etc

Good that UK industry is still competitive in introducing  innovative schemes.

How to find Best Bloggers?

Folks, tell me how do I find best bloggers on variety of topics. I don’t want to go via Technorati or search thousands of Feeds, any other route?

I think having a social blogger network which rates blogger based on content and endorsement/appreciation from fellow bloggers and other aspects will solve the problem of searching top bloggers. For instance I found Helen’s Musings of a mobile marketer blog via Ewan’s blog SMStextNews, Beers & Innovation blog and Marketing Nirvana via Roger’s  Technological Winter Blog.

I instantly liked all the above blog, their contents are excellent and they have fellow blogger appreciation.

But can we apply the same parameter to create a bloggers rating system? There are already such mechanism in place like http://www.top100bloggers.com/ but I don’t think they work as there is no way they let me know who wrote an excellent article on innovation on mobile recently, whose article has been read across many part of the world, etc etc.

Suggest if you know such rating systems.

Google Code Search Vs Krugle

TechCrunch about Google Code Search… I did a comparison between Google Code Search and Krugle

I had done couple of searches using Krugle in the past here here, I had found plenty of reference to stale projects in SourceForge or some other Forge !!
To be a smart Code search engine, there has to be certain algorithm (PageRank type) which ranks search results based on usability, reference in other code and various other factors..
I did a search again today to compare Krugle and Google Code search for “shopping cart” and language “java”. Krugle showed 90% Sourceforge project code and Google showed 90% code from variety projects!!!  I like variety.

I think Krulge folks will be left behind in this game unless they get away with this drop down feature to choose language (put that in advanced) and index variety of proejcts, only “nutch” based search won’t help once Google enters in the game!!

Web 2.0: Quick Software Development & Issues with changing Operational Process

During my conversation with Roger (his blog :  Technological Winter) on certain Web 2.0 companies, I asked Roger what stops a web 1.0 company to quickly adopt to a web 2.0 feature? Roger had a perfect answer: Because Web 1.0 companies are built in such a way that they can’t become web 2.0 in record time as there are issues involved in shifting to a new operational process.

That was a perfect insight of why new players in Web 2.0 have stormed market place and giving web 1.0 companies run for their money.

However as web progresses to next phase (some call it Second life and some call it web 3.0), I think some web 2.0 company will wash away because they are trapped in the same issue that web 1.0 company faced!! That is they had developed the software quick and dirty way which is tightly coupled with an operational process.

Let’s take an example: A social networking hub web 2.0 companies has launched successfully and attracting great community around it, the software has all web 2.0 features like community content, trackback, people collaborate and share information online. So the software solution is aligned with the trend and perfectly meeting with the business requirement. Let’s say the web has transitioned to Second life/Web 3.0 and operational process, user’s preference and way of doing things has changed which the present software solution can’t handle!! So the company is stuck to be washed away.

This is where Software architecture matters, if the web 2.0 solution is designed using practices like
**”Loose coupling” (the  subsystem must be loosley coupled and easily replacable)
**”Behaviour aspect separation” (User or community behaviour must be captured separately and designed to evolve with time)
**”business process workflow”(you get these as open source using JBoss JBPM, in 30 minutes we can create a operational workflow),
**”Framework based approach” (solution must use frameworks which are evolving in community like Source Forge, Rails, etc ..and making it easier to adopt new approaches)
**”Plug and play” (solution must have open interface to plug any new feature, like widgets..an example)
**”Easy migration” and many other factors

Then it becomes easier for the software solution to accommodate any operational changes in the future. Though it makes sense to launch a quick solution in marketplace to gain FMA (First mover advantage) but I think it must be replaced by a scalable solution sooner based on the above mentioned practices. With this, your web 2.0 solution can easily transform to next phase of innovation in web.

Some blog articles on Second life, web 3.0 :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
http://www.personalizemedia.com/index.php/2006/08/27/virtual-worlds-web-30-and-portable-profiles/
http://yuri.typepad.com/yuri_blog/web_30/index.html

Blog direct from train :)

Yeah you read that perfectly, I liked the concept of (mob)blogging  from train, got to know about it via SMS Text News blog site …find out more about train blog : http://www.trainblog.co.uk/web_index.php

Also read the comments some funny ones as below

29.09 09:07 Ipswich Station

“Is it me, or is the man working at WH Smiths in the Station in the morning the rudest, miserablist bloke in the world ? Puts me in a bad mood even BEFORE I get on the train !”

27.09 15:46 Known problems ahead

“Why do One wait until you’ve boarded a train and moved 100 yards before telling you there are massive delays ahead? I’d rather know BEFORE I get on.” See more of these comments in http://www.trainblog.co.uk/blogs.php?page=3

I liked this concept because

–I can use it to tell my wife (instead of spending on phone call, can send SMS to train blog that I am stuck inside train (I have been pissed of  innumerable times for the travel between from Guildford to Wimbledon)

–Instead of browsing all possible rail operator website (btw they never update it or update when there is no problem ..I can reliably browse Train Blog site to know travel updates instantly. Note – Hey Train Blog folks, I think you should add a feature to categorise, like user adding travel issue comments (like accident, train line blockage, etc) should go under category “Travel cautions”. I believe this will help community a lot. But reliability of such updates will be an issue.

–I can read real time funny comments

All the best Train Blog team ! way to go!

Principles that all countries can follow to mount an effective response to offshoring

ACM report on Globalization and Offshoring of Software.

There are some general principles that all countries can follow to mount an effective
educational response to offshoring:
1. Evolve computing curriculum at a pace and in a way that better embraces the changing nature of IT.
2. Ensure computing curriculum prepare students for the global economy.
3. Teach students to be innovative and creative.
4. Evolve curriculum to achieve a better balance between foundational knowledge of computing on the one hand, and business and application domain knowledge on the other.
5. Invest to ensure the educational system has good technology, good curriculum, and good teachers.

Offshoring benefit for Startups

ACM has released a report on Globalization and Offshoring of Software. Here is snippet of what the report says about the startups getting benefitted due to Offshoring to India.

It is tempting to view offshoring by startups (whether to an Indian firm, say, or to their own overseas subsidiary) as an unmitigated loss of jobs for US workers. Nevertheless, the real situation is more complicated. Lowering the cost of undertaking a startup could mean that the barriers to entry are lowered, thus encouraging greater entrepreneurship. The jobs created by this entrepreneurship should be counted against those lost by offshoring. So, correctly estimating employment net effect of offshoring in the case of startups is very
difficult.

Mixers and other events in October

PaidContent folks are here in London on 17th Oct http://www.paidcontent.org/london-mixer-on-oct-17th-venue-rich-mix

New Media Knowledge folks are doing Beers & Innovation: Aggregators & Upsetters event on  17th Oct http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2006/10/17/beers-innovation-aggregators

Software workforce in Britain

FT.com has an interesting analysis on software workforce in Britain

*This year a restatement of gross domestic product, which took into account software development, increased GDP by 1 percent.!!

*Software industry is contributing £20bn a year to economy.

*Each year, 40,000 IT jobs move offshore.

*The number of students studying IT has halved in past five years!

*Industry, academia and government must work together to encourage IT as a competitive career choice.

Why Asian Startup companies can’t create revolution to topple established players?

Startup in USA and many other western countries are known for their persuasive breakthroughs bringing radical changes to customer’s need and preference and thereby causing massive impact to the established players. Recent example being Skype(causing trouble to established telcos), Jobster (causing trouble to Monster), MySpace (displaced Friendster), many other such examples.

However if you analyse Asian market, once a player gets established, it is fairly difficult for a Startup company to topple them. Why so?

I don’t know the exact answer, but yes I have few suggestions that may be some of the following factors are the reason behind such phenomena. Note – These factors are generalized but there are exceptions

1. Asian market has more loyal customers attached to an old service provider and they don’t try new service provider ?
2. Fear of failure, therefore Startup companies are very reluctant to try something different ?
3. Because Asian culture and mindset in general is “survival” type ?
4. Lack of funding or investment support to make that BIG decision ?
5. More Asians are follower type than leader type?

There can be more…

Downtime blights council sites

Computing Magazine says : ‘In terms of maintaining availability of web sites, councils are failing miserably,’ ….‘One web site in the study was down for nearly a week.’
Flintshire, Mid Beds and Westminster councils were the worst performers of the 100 sites monitored over a two-month period. Between them they were unavailable for 357 hours.