June 27th, 2006 § § permalink
Strange, isn’t it?
All of us hailed the coming of a shareable, collaborative web and ‘lovingly’ named it Web 2.0. But along with it came announcements and offerings, options and varieties; faster than anything else. So much, that the low murmur of the internet rose to a harsh, loud, incoherent noise. So much, that we are beginning to denounce it like no other.
Hypocrisy? Nope, I think “Familiarity breeds Contempt” is more like it…
Web 2.0 was a concept. Each one of us interpreted the concept and put forth ideas of their own. As a result, there was a rush of ideas and hence a flood of communication. People started ‘socializing’ on the web. Social networks boomed and people came ‘closer’.
IMHO, it all started with the advent of broadband connectivity. Being ‘always-on’ had a direct implication, that of being connected with all your near and dear ones. Web 2.0 looked upon the internet as one huge community, with local groups of people inhabiting it. This concept was publicized and then, taken too literally. Thus, were born the social networks of today.
The community is a market and markets have alternatives. Working on the same lines, social networks began to sprout, each claiming to offer something different from the other. But, the basic objective of these networks was the same – connecting people and conducting conversations across the globe.
The market analogy gives us yet another insight. Every product has competition. And every competitive product has a seller who is willing to canvass for it. The greater the competition, the larger the canvassing and the noisier the market. In the end the market become a large noisy mass of voices and nothing audible or coherent.
Get the drift?
The web as a marketplace has been inundated with offerings. The noise in the marketplace will remain until the day the sellers give up or the stocks dry up. Since, there is little chance of the latter happening, we will have to wait for the former to happen and pray that it happens sooner, rather than later.
The noise of the eMails and IMs that have been flying back and forth has overwhelmed us to the extent that we now want out. But without them, how would we communicate, let alone converse?
Or, are we wrong in assuming that eMails & IMs are the only methods of communication? What if there IS an alternative?
Will things be different?
Technorati Tags: web2.0, conversation, market, cluetrain
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June 7th, 2006 § § permalink
People are lapping it up.
Google launched Spreadsheet on Tuesday and it was promptly covered. There’s a rumour about Picasa coming as a Web-based version soon. Anything Google releases is a matter of hot contention. It is not a question to ponder whether the interest in the product will be sustained or will die off the very next day itself. As long as it exists in the minds of the people, it will always bring in the hits.
You may call me a Google-basher, if you wish, but it still baffles me why Google should churn out these services at such a high rate. There are so many better things to do! Like, for example, they could actually be fine tuning their Search algorithm or re-inventing it.
Maybe they are already doing it and these things are simply to throw the hounds off the scent. Or maybe, they don’t have a clue where they should be headed now. Whichever it is, the big picture is really hard to see right now.
In the last year, since the advent of Gmail, AJAX and Web 2.0, Google has been building up a veritable repository of Apps, sorry, FREE apps for the *public*. What they did not create, they bought. And what they could not buy, they bought the competition and gave it away for free.
Again, the concept of Contextual Text-Ads worked fine, but then other players have now entered the Market and they are slowly eating up into the marketshare. Not that it is going to affect Google’s ‘economy’ much, but yet, it is something Google cannot ignore for long.
Let’s take a look at the facts:
- Google has built up a large user-base based on one single product – Search.
- Google has introduced various offerings into the Webosphere, definitely keeping up with the trends. Yet, there has been no visible innovation seen in the recent times.
- Every new Google product or offering has one result assured – Love it or hate it, you can’t ignore it.
- And lastly, each of the newer Google products is *loosely* integrated with the other ones.
Take a look at the last one again. There are no links from any of the Google apps to the others, save for the standard footer (which is ignored most of the time). Except for a few isolated examples (Maps and Calendar in Gmail) there have been very few instances of product integration. Why hasn’t Google integrated attachments with Writely and Google Video? Or with Google Base for that matter? Surely, it is not unimaginable? Why are they ignoring/neglecting/forgetting/overlooking/whatever such simple points? Or are they doing it deliberately?
One fine day, if they choose to bring all services (the old ones, the current and the new ones) under one umbrella, then this is what your typical day might look like:
7 AM. Wake up. Ready yourself for your daily work. Breakfast.
8 AM. Check Google Mail. Add client appointment(s) directly into Google Calendar. Check Google Traffic* for driving conditions and consult Google Maps for best route. Drive to Work.
9 AM. Reach Work. Open Gtalk. Your Calendar settings have been imported and all your appointments have been sent automatic reminder mails/notices about your meetings. Check your Gmail. Collaborate on Software Requirement Specifications and make changes with your colleague in Australia and save it immediately.
10 AM. Create a presentation for your Client meet using GPres* along with the same colleague in Australia. Simultaneously tabulate all the requisite data, draw up some quick formulae with the help of your colleague in Europe. Voila! Google Spreadsheet is ready with a cost estimate instantly!
11 PM. Client is online. (Need we mention free WiFi, here?) Hold a webmeeting with your client using Gtalk and conduct a video conference simultaneously. Close the deal and send a link to the already drawn up MoU and NDA along with the cost estimate that you just ruffled up with your colleague in Australia
1 PM. Open Google Search. Look for birthday Gifts for kids under ten years with a special interest in Pokemon. Find appropriate Gift. Pay using GMoney* and get it delivered instantly to your Office.
2 PM. Lunch Break
3 PM. Repeat steps 3 to 5
6 PM. Check your Gmail. Check for Google Calendar reminders/notices. Check Google Traffic* and Google Maps again. Drive home.
(*Coming Soon to a Browser near you. Please submit your eMail address for a special beta preview invite.)
The keen reader may observe that I have touched upon barely a few of the current offerings of Google. I have merely implied the potential what Google could capture with its current offerings. Whay are they holding back then? Is it to be a surprise attack, a Blitz-Krieg of some kind? If suddenly Google chooses to generate revenue out of all the (currently) free services
Google is building isolated chunk of applications. For us, they seem like unseemly, strange shapes. But they might well turn out to be smaller pieces of a mastermind Jigsaw puzzle. Google could well be on its way to building the only competition to, and yet not compete against Micro$oft.
Confused? Picture this: The Google WebOS and the Google Office.
The world is moving towards the virtual. Google might well stand to gain from this movement. At the same time as Google builds a monopoly on the Web, Microsoft keeps its monopoly on the Desktop. This might sound like a random conspiracy theory, but it is supported by hard facts.
Note that Google has not pushed any independent standards with any of its Applications. Writely supports .doc format as well as other formats. Spreadsheet claims “Familiar desktop feel” and that you can “Upload spreadsheets or worksheets from CSV or XLS format – all your formulas and formatting will come across intact.”
Wouldn’t a company seeking to remove M$ out of the competition promote other standards so that they could force the users out of the habit?
Consider this: Of late, there have not been any major innovations and releases in Google desktop paraphernelia. Those that are released have a distinct web connotation, for instance, GDS 4. In the other corner. M$ seems to have slowed down its work on the web front. Ray Ozzie and his Live clipboard are being handled by tech enthusiasts, who realize the implications of the tool. But the man himself, (Ray) seems to have faded somewhere into the horizon. The first impression of this is each of them is sticking to known battlegrounds.
And if they continue to do so, is it not a precursor of the things to follow? Is it really a random conspiracy theory, then?
Technorati Tags: google, microsoft, conjecture, theory
May 2nd, 2006 § § permalink
My last post on WebOSes and the corresponding comments on ZDNet and Performancing resulted in interesting conversations.
Performancing users and authors had very interesting opinions. Dave, for instance, said:
…they could bring down the price of computing massively. All you would need on a desktop is effectively a thin client that handles inputs and outputs, and
connects to the internet.
… while georgemanty was worried about security:
Do I really want a third party to have access to everything on my computer’s hard drive???
searchengineblog put it really well with:
The problem is that there is no problem to be solved. In 2006, fat clients (read: PCs) aren’t expensive – bandwidth is.
The security concerns do make a valid point. But I guess, with the way things are moving, third-party storage (read: online storage with desktop synchro) is the thing to watch out for in the near future.
Technology has not only enabled cheaper and communication, but it has also been revamping the field of transportation. As travel becomes cheap, we will find ourselves at different places at different times. And then we will need one central location to store our data. Which is where third-party storage comes in.
One option would be a personal FTP server. Like your hard-disk away from your PC. Again, the only hindrance I see currently is the band-width (in terms of access). Thus it boils down, essentially, to two things:
- A radically new, faster method of accessing the internet.Condition: It must support huge amounts of bandwidth so as to enable each one of the 6 billion people whoo will soon be online in the near future.
- A safe and secure online storage system.Condition: The privacy concerns of the users must be put to rest. Each such third-party supplier must be liable for any leakage of information (intentional, or otherwise) occurring from their servers.
On ZDNet, 3D0G said:
There are still far to many people out there using computers who have no
clue how computers work and don’t want to know. They just want to browse the web and read email. There are also many people who know they know nothing about computers and so don’t buy one. Something like this would at least open the internet and email up to them
This would be like saying, we need hand-cranked cars because some old-timers cannot adopt to automatic transmission. Not a very good analogy, I agree, but just because people don’t know how to use the net does not mean we step back to thin-clients.
A similar attempt was made (if my memory serves me correctly) with public Internet Access kiosks (at least in India) But it was a huge failure, simply because:
- People did not want to make their ignorance of the Internet public.
- The kiosks were not supported by adequate bandwidth. They were too slow.
- The thin clients were actually confusing and they allowed only one browser window – no tabs back then.
- Around 25% of the screen space was consumed by ads that were run to support the costs of running these kiosks.
I have realized that, the more you attempt to make technology easier for people, the lazier they become. “Give a man fish to eat, he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will never go hungry for the rest of his life.”
If there are any such laymen, we need to teach them how to surf the waves and not try and make things easier for them. Simplicity does not always mean simplifying the product. It could also mean simplifying the process.
Let’s face it, the internet is a skill and not a toy. You have to learn it and the more inquisitive can even attempt to master it. Any attempt to simplify things further will only allow the lazy to become lazier. Do we really need WebOSes? The argument of thin-clients and simplification of things seems pretty thin to me…
I mean, is it really that difficult?
(It’s a pity that I have to summarize my Blogosphere Conversations here.)
April 19th, 2006 § § permalink
Over at ZDNet, Marc Orchant has this to say in his article Foldera: Measure twice… cut once:
I applaud this strategy. The more forethought and preparation put into the launch, the better.
Marc was talking about the eMail sent out by Foldera CEO Marc Orchant stating that Foldera is postponing its launch, simply because:
“we didn’t have the firepower in our datacenter to handle the sort of demand indicated by so many registrations.”
I wish to make it known for the record, I haven’t received the mail, this snippet has been extracted from the mail extract that Marc posted in the article.
Marc goes on to say that even after the resounding success of Gmail and the early frustrations of Gmail users, Google did not learn. The result was apparent for everyone to see with the initial pull-backs of Reader and Pages.
Some (personal) observations:
- Personally, I believe Google did not pull back Pages because of high demand. It was probably due to a bigger glitch, something I have previously blogged about.
- Foldera may be stretching the public interest a little too far. Going by the conversation on Mike Arrington’s Techcrunch, Foldera should have been launched and here many times over by now.
- However, interesting a tool may be, the longer you take to launch, the shorter the buzz post-launch.
At least that’s what I think happened with Origami. Of course, Origami was a little early, about three years early, by my guess. In a world where laptops and palm-pilots have not yet become commonplace, introducing a gadget that was a level up in the futuristic scale seemed to me, a crazy idea.
One thing I have realized so far is:
“You can’t hurry up or slow down the future. It comes when it comes. You better be prepared for either case.” Probably that’s what Foldera is thinking. Or are they?
PS: I have decided to be a little more regular now. Hope to live upto my words…
Technorati Tags: foldera, google, peeves, launch
March 16th, 2006 § § permalink
The blogosphere is nothing but the
online equivalent of a human society.Chris Garrett, over at Performancing notes:
Remember todays A-Lister could be tomorrows “remember him?”, and they all started out somewhere. The audience you are ignoring could be tomorrows A-List.
If you define your A-list according to Technorati Top 100 or equivalent, then yes, it could be so. Also, the A-listers have something we don’t.
Let me start with a tentative OD (Operative Definition) of an A-lister:
“A-lister: Any person owning or authoring a blog which commands statistical superiority in a particular category/subject/topic over other ‘fellow’ blogs (and bloggers) in certain matters of detail.”
The certain matters of detail being outlined below, along with tentative operative definitions, for a randomly chosen category:
- Traffic: Daily page views in thousands
- Reader-base: in thousands (RSS/Atom Feed Subscribers)
- TrackBacks: Anywhere between ten to twenty per day.
- Comments: Genuine:S**k-up ratio of 1:10 (may be)
- Flamers: Flames:Comments ratio of 1:10
And last, but definitely, positively, not the least:
- Private/Closed Beta Invites
Scoops. The A-listers get the scoops. And the public seems to hang on to every word. And you and I are equally to blame on that front.
Think about this. You visit a blog and read an excellent article. Then, you scroll down and see zero (0) comments and you think, “Hmmm, no comments? Looks like this guy gets no traffic at all. So why bother, he’s not gonna miss me any way, heck he doesn’t even know I came here!” The next guy comes along and does *exactly* the same thing. And the blog ends up wth a meagre 20-30 unique visitor traffic with no returning visitors.
On the other hand, an A-lister blogs about his vacation in Miami or his Blogosphere experiments and watch the traffic shoot!
Are we hypocrites or what?
I am not saying that we suck-up to them all the time, but if you draw up the stats you will see that 80% of the “A-list” bloggers’ posts have been reviews/reports of ‘the next big things’ or stupid PR experiments. Occasionally, there are a few flames too. When was the last time you saw an A-lister come out with something genuine and refreshing?
Bloogging may not be all about the traffic, but it is human tendency to seek some recognition especially if one believes he/she is worth it. I will not blog for the masses if they are not going to acknowledge me. What’s the point? Isn’t it a failure? It is like a startup which does great things but doesn’t sell.
Blogging for the market and Blogging for the masses are polar opposites. Blogging for the masses is when you provide value and generate conversations, even if it means discussing whether the weather is good for flying or not. Blogging for the market means that you HAVE to look at the traffic. Remember, your blog is no different than the advertising bill board off Freeway 66.
After all, you have to make every stopover count, right?
Disclaimer:
Intelligent readers will please note the following very important points:
1. I have not linked any of my subtle references back to Robert Scoble of Microsoft, PR guru Steve Rubel and Jeremy Zawodny, for fear of getting flamed.
2. The A-lister stats in the Operative definitions were simple guesswork. If anybody has conducted appropriate research and can give me the correct figures, I would be only too happy to post them on my blog.
3. Yeah I know, I am lazy.
Technorati Tags: blog, a-list, market, masses, peeves
February 28th, 2006 § § permalink
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer…All humans are born equal. but we just have to admit the fact that some men are more equal than the others. The society was, is and always will be divided into classes based on the financial status. Money is the deciding factor. Some people will always have more money than the others. It doesn’t matter where the money comes from. What matters is whether you are able to sustain it.
There is always gonna be an invisible glass-ceiling stopping you from reaching there. If you are a novice and you want to break the glass ceiling, you have to either try VERY hard or circumvent it somehow. There is no short-cut of course. The only way to ‘circumvent’ it is to somehow grab the attention of any one of the elite class. If you have done that, you have done the hard work. The rest is simply smooth sailing.
So how do you grab their attention? There are two ways of doing it:
1. Flame them – Oppose them vehemently so that they rant against you. Like someone said, there’s no bad publicity, only publicity.
OR
2. Claim them – Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Give them good references and you will be rewarded someday.
Are you done reading it? Very well, now follow these instructions:
1. Replace every occurence of the words ‘humans’ or ‘people’ with the word ‘Blogs’
2. Replace every occurence of the word ‘society’ with the word ‘Blogosphere’
3. Replace every occurence of the word ‘money’ with the word ‘traffic’
4. Replace every occurence of the phrase ‘elite class’ with ‘A-list’
Surprised, eh?
Yes, apparently, you can treat blogs the blogsphere on par with human evolution human society. Just as the human society is divided into classes, so are blogs. And, every blog is a part of some closed community.
The Flame approach worked for these guys who started off as a rant blog. Look where they are today – among the top 10 in WordPress Blogs.
Like society, there is no dearth of writing talent in the Blogosphere. It just takes some time to be discovered and some discoveries happen too late. Some happen too early.
Some don’t happen at all.
I think I know what hapens to mine.
Technorati Tags: Blogs, capitalism, A-list, society, comparison
February 23rd, 2006 § § permalink
The Big Brother launched Google Pages yesterday. Of course, it is in Beta.
Here’s how they are plugging it:
Want to create an online photo tour of your vacation to Bali? An overview of the South American precipitation cycle for your science class? A shrine to your pet ferret?
Google Pages comes five days after Microsoft’s Office Live, which was recently launched amidst fanfare among the A-list bloggers. That’s fast.
Compare this to the launch of Pages and the blogosphere opinions on Google Pages:
- “Google Pages Released” by Nik Cubrilovic on Techcrunch
- “Google Page Creator” by Matt Cutts of Google
- Jeremy Zawodny’s Google Page – Spammers hit the Motherlode!!
- None from Scoble… Interesting…
Some first impressions:
- Google Pages follows Google’s clean design policy.
- Ajaxified Geocities?
- There is a 100 MB limit. ‘Nuff said…
- Intuitive working interface.
What struck me initially as pleasant and later as funny was this: Google Pages in OPEN beta. Seems like they are sending a message across to someone…
So, now, with its foray into personal pages, Google has literally become an all pervading force on the Web. I think I’d better create a list of Google products on listible. Wait, they are gonna buy that one too, right?
There seems to be a 100 page max limit on each user account. Hmmm…
Currently the user accounts are stored as yourgmailusername.googlepages.com which, I admit is ugly. C’mon guys, unleash the spam upon me! Would you be willing to risk that?
But I suspect, they are in the process of securing a deal with one or the other hostname providers to get your own domain name for free.
My bet is it will be either GoDaddy or Register. The former because it is the most popular, the latter because it’s, uhh well, never mind…
There are they haven’t yet incorporated Google Analytics into Google Pages. I suspect it won’t be too long before they do that.
It remains to see how long Pages remains in beta. But I do admit, pages is pretty slick even for a beta. Although it kept going offline quite frequently (every hour or so, frequent by Google standards) You can access mine here.
By the way, I don’t know how many of you have noticed, but all our clicks in Gmail are redirected through this site. Read through the content. eMail marketing, eh? Seems my fears are turning out to be right. Well, time to shut down my Gmail account or what?
