Swoopo seems to have got it right

The concept is not new or novel, I am sure we may have seen it in one form or the other. But swoopo may have got the execution just right. The potential the site offers is amazing and the numbers once you start crunching them are mind boggling.

Its so simple in concept that you will hit yourself in the head for not doing it yourself. :)
But then its always the case after its been done by someone. Check out Swoopo here.

Unlocked iPhone 3GS is not Unlocked after all!!!

Earlier this year when Apple announced that the unlocked version of the iPhone was available, I thought I could grab one at last. But with the new iPhone 3GS in the offing at that point I decided to wait it out.
So last week I went to the nearby Apple Store with grand plans of picking up my iPhone. Apple ofcourse had other plans for me. I was told that even though the iPhone was available unlocked for $699 only, I could still use it only with an AT&T network. And further, it was locked to the geography as well.
That would mean I would not be able to use that unlocked iPhone, that i would have paid $699 for, with Apple Partners in other parts of the world :T Mobile in UK or Hutchison in India for example.
So what is Apple's idea of an unlocked phone?
According to the guy at the Apple store, the unlocked iPhone caters to people who would like to gift someone with an iphone but without a data plan.That person would ofcourse still have to have an AT&T plan to use the iphone!!
Somebody's got something wrong here. Apple, come on!!
The Apple store i went to is in St Johns Town Center, Jacksonville, Florida.

Nandan@TED

Some very valid points brought out in Nandan's speech at TED.com. Click here to watch this speech.

HTC Magic is here

But it looks like its not going to bother Apple... iPhone 3G S it seems will hold its ground after all...
See the review for the HTC Magic here.

iPhone3GS is on its way!! Go sign up Now!!!

And Apple seems to have sealed every hole in the iPhone with the Apple 3GS.

Its got everything you always wanted:

1. Cut, Copy and Paste

2. Video Recording

3. 3 Megapixel Camera with Autofocus.

4. A search feature to search through everything on your phone: Apps, Contacts, Msgs and mails...

And its touted to be atleast 2.5 times faster. Get to you apple store before the queues get too long..

The Palm Pre is out

I wanted this phone to come out so badly, simply because the iPhone was locked to AT&T.
Thats not the case anymore, the iphone is available unlocked. But now the question is, is it good enough? Certainly Not!! is what the Palm pre would retort to that.

Palm has finally cracked open what has been Apple's exclusive domain for the last 2 years.
And they seem to have figured a way to do it all better, setting a whole new standard for touch phones.

Let me summarize the key pros and cons and leave you with cnn's detailed review of the product:

Pro's:
1) Multitasking : You can run more than one app simultaneously.
2) Physical full QWERTY Keyboard that slides out
3) Cut, Copy and Paste. It is rumoured that an Apple release this year will bring this feature to the iphone as well. But for now its something iphone users can only hope for.
4) Multi touch screen - You can pinch to zoom in and out just like the iphone. Its really amazing how its taken so long for others to catch with Apple. But they seem to have finally. It almost seemed like an impossible task at one point. :)
5) Search : For applications or contacts or mails. Thats a cool feature i wish the iphone also had.
6) Integrated GPS
7) You can use the phone as a usb device. This can be painful on the iphone.
to list a few...

Con's:
1) Battery life isn't the greatest
2) No Onscreen keyboard yet.
3) Application catalog is still in beta. Not comparable to iTunes.
4) No video recording. Not yet available on the iphone either.
5) No Support for flash yet.
6) Only 8Gb of storage at present.

Apple likes to place themselves way ahead of competition. So it will be interesting to see what they turn up with. For us its great news!! :)

Where 2 Tech waves in Google wave

Found this interesting link on the google blog from the brains behind google wave..
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/went-walkabout-brought-back-google-wave.html

Mashable also has a few interesting links on google wave.

Techcrunch has this exciting article as well.

Well.. atleast its creating a lotta noise.. enough to counter all the Bing noise i suppose..

Time for the next Wave..

If you did begin wondering why you need to have so many different logins for your email, web messenger, social networking, instant messaging, blogging, micro-blogging etc. I guess its time somebody wrapped all this up for you in a single login.

And who better than Google to do it for you. Welcome Google Wave!! Googles biggest launch in a long time.

Google wave is an open source based real-time communication platform, that will bring everything you will ever need onto a single platform from project management to micro-blogging.
Like facebook, it will allow users to develop their own applications which can be embedded freely on any page.
It will be real time, so you can see the message being typed by another user as he types it.
Sounds pretty exciting..
We will have to wait and see if Google will give us a radically new interface experience, getting rid of the "usual" google feel for once.

Answer in no more than 4 tweets...

The wired features a very interesting article today: Tweet the new size of thought?.

Twitters success has been a much debated topic in the tech circles. And I am yet to see a convincing argument in favour ot twitter. The way we have kept in touch with our friends and family has seen dramatic changes in the last decade.

From email to chatting to social networks to micro blogging. Yet what is it that twitter has that none of the above can offer?

The thought that a twit could be the new size of thought is at the same time a very scary thought indeed. The pessimists would view this as the beginning of the end of coherent thought. And they would seem right, if you were to look at the seemingly pointless twits that people seem to be sending. However there is an opportunity here.

Historically all our published works have been coherent sets of thoughts that have concluded something based on a lot of serious thinking. However, what about all those incomplete thoughts that do not get published or discussed as they have not been taken to a logical conclusion? Are they lost for ever?

What if these could be taken to completion by someone else? This is what twitter has the potential to do.

The silliest of ideas that would normally not be talked about could become serious discussions on twitter.

However will it go down that path? Will twitter result in the next great invention? I guess only time will tell. But we are ready to capture every thought that occurs to people. Go send that twit out people!!

Mesothelioma

Wondering what the hell that title means? Well i just came across an article that says that this is the costliest word on the ad world.

This is what wikipedia has to say about Mesothelioma - "Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by previous exposure to asbestos.[1] In this disease, malignant cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most of the body's internal organs. Its most common site is the pleura (outer lining of the lungs and chest cavity), but it may also occur in the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity) or the pericardium (a sac that surrounds the heart).

Most people who develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles, or have been exposed to asbestos dust and fibre in other ways, such as by washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos, or by home renovation using asbestos cement products. Unlike lung cancer, there is no association between mesothelioma and smoking [2]."

That proves one thing for sure.. "Health is wealth!!". Mesothelioma costs as much as 84$ per click.

PPA Advertising

Google today announced its new 'pay per Action' advertising product today.

Advertisers will need to pay only for completed actions that they can define, like submitting a request, filling a form, buying a product etc. This will make the entire ad world a lot more complicated. It will not be sufficient for google to monitor clicks now. They will also need to know what the user does after clicking on the ad.
The advertiser will need to report these actions back to Google.

Now ofcourse the advertiser has an incentive to not report these actions as he will need to pay for the same. But Google can effectively counter this by ranking the ad based on profitability to Google and value of each click to the advertiser.

Now all this makes sense in say a country like the US, where purchasing something online has become the order of the day.

In a country like india for example. Online sales are still not very common. Even the most tech savvy indian would prefer to check the product out online and then go down to the store, examine the product and then purchase it.

Online advertising in India, has never been the most attractive of options. As an advertiser, all you could expect from an 'online ad' is only visibility and mindshare and not an actual purchase online.

This being the case PPA is an attractive option from the advertisers perspective, as in most cases an advertiser in india is not looking for anything more than visibility. No 'action' is expected online.

So if given a choice they would gladly jump for PPA ads to CPC ads any day.

So is google taking a big risk here? Or do they have the wares to ensure that advertisers dont get what they want without paying a dime for it.

Techcrunch has a well written article describing the impact this could have on the advertising world.

GizmoSMS

Michael Robertson, the man behind mp3.com and Linspire has added a new twist to his Gizmo free phone project. Gizmo has launched its new Gizmosms service.

While the SMS market is huge, 45 billion dollars worldwide approximately. This service is certainly not the first of its kind.
So whats exciting about this service, besides the man behind it all, when we have already seen so many sites providing an sms service.

a) With Gizmo, you do not need to know the carrier of the number you are smsing(or texting as it is known in some parts).
b) There doesnt seem to be any restriction on which carrier is supported. Or a large number of carriers are supported and this ofcourse is hidden from the user.
c) That makes the user interface clean. Requiring you to just know the number and the country where the sms needs to be sent to.
d) the site doesnt require you to register.


Michael does make tall claims of it being the best of its kind and the fastest. But I havent received my sms in the last 15 minutes. But all u text freaks, do check it out.

Gmail is down!!!

Gmail seems to be down for a while now. Wonder what google's up to?

Its been almost 15 mins since i noticed...

Google Maps : Zoom away

Well i havent checked this out yet... im going to do it as soon as i get home.. :)

But if this is possible.. wow!! but google may have some answering to do...

Time to go see if your car is still where u left it...
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-03-07-n12.html

:Derailed on Ruby tracks

Well if you have been trying to figure your way around ruby on rails and have been wondering what the so called :action's and :controllers and :id's are.

and Why do you need them in the code for?
and What do they do? etc etc. You have come to the right place.

Firstly these are called Symbols. And many have tried to explain the concept of symbols and have failed quite miserably.

Alas!! Its not me thats going to solve the mystery here for you. But yes I am going to show you the path : http://glu.ttono.us/articles/2005/08/19/understanding-ruby-symbols


A neat little blog by Kevin Clark that finally clears the air a little.

Cheers

Spotplex

Spotplex has added a twist to the Digg story. Here users do not submit stories. Instead sites that want to participate include some java code in their sites. This code then monitors the traffic to blog posts on the site and decides which ones need to appear on the Spotplex page.

This makes Spotplex clean as it cannot be manipulated externally. However i think these guys will still need to build trust around their algorithm and it is this that will prove to be their ‘tipping point’.

Like Michael A correctly mentions in his article on Techcrunch, the algorithm must prove itself to be unbiased to the already popular blogs.

We’ll have to see if this NKOTB will turn out to be the Digg killer.

Like.com

Riya 2.0 has been launched as like.com. And it aims to do pretty much what the site says. Find images like the one you upload.

Well it has been said for a while that its not enough to search text and that we need to peek into those images and understand what the image contains and be able to then search these images.

They are currently offering searches under the following categories : handbags, shoes, watches, jewelry and celebrities and are expecting to add many more every day.

Like.com will offer exciting options. We just cannot put everything we want to look for in words. If you like the pattern on a piece of clothing, its not something thats easy to describe or search for in words.

Revenue ought to come from ads and ofcourse lots of online shopping is expected to come this way. A lot will depend on how relevant the search results are ofcourse.

So we will have to wait and watch google is up to, having acquired Neven Vision, another image search company.

Meanwhile, Riya.com will continue to remain a face recognition tool and will be developed and improved in parallel.

Lot more exciting things to come im sure. lets wait and watch!!

Orkutalk!!

Finally, the social networking space has heated up enough to get google to finally do what was being expected for a long time now.

Gtalk has now been integrated with orkut. Gives all those users using orkut without a gmail id all the more incentive to get themselves a gmail account now.

i like the way google is merging all their apps. The day is not far when you have a single sign on where you can do your social networking, your emailing, your document collaboration, your chats, your voice calls, video conferences etc etc.

The Google Way

Its interesting to see what google is up to.

Put yourself in google's position. They dont have to compete against just one Microsoft or yahoo. Each of their little applications has to compete with thousands of site's, often startup's. Competion for example has been from youtube, writely, jotspot, bluedot, friendster, flickr etc etc etc...

Now there are a couple of ways in which you can handle competition.

a) Beat them at their own game. But when there are so many guys trying to out do one another that may not guarantee you success. Besides google's core still remains its search. Whether it is investing or should be investing the same amount of effort and resources on each of its other applications as it continues to spawn many more out everyday, is a question thats been debated in almost every forum and by every name worth a mention.

b) Simply acquire them. And there is no one to compete against really.

Going by recent events you would be tempted to say google's going the option (b) way.

And rightly so. Its the smartest thing to do.

Here's a few reasons why i think so.

a) Google's main area is search. And they should stick to it and not lose the advantage they have in this area right now.

b) Google stocks are worth a lot today. And going by history this may not be the case a few years down the line. What better to do with a stock that has a price to earnings ratio of more than 60? It is clear that maintaining such a high growth rate as the P/E demands is not very likely. So what better to do with an inflated stock than buy out all their competition?
Its simply brilliant. Google has little to lose, as its not buying out competition paying cash. Its using the current valuation of the stock, which hit its peak on 23rd Oct to buy out really good companies.

So yeah, if you can get yourself somewhere close to competing with google, you might just land yourself with lotsa google shares. And of course, if you do that, dont waste time cashing them out. :)

Mama Pendse : Everybody's new best friend

My cousin Satish recently introduced me to mama_pendse. And i must say it was well worth the "networking" exercise.

All you need to do is add mama_pendse as your friend on yahoo and he is always there for you.

Mama pendse is the latest craze on yahoo and orkut. Everyone wants to be his friend.

So who is this guy???

Well mama_pendse is the latest java BOT, that provides you with a host of services on Yahoo messenger. You just need to send him a message with the right command and yo uget a response back immediately with what you are looking for.

This is a wonderful idea considering the fact that almost all of us are always online and on some messenger at any point in time, especially with so many blackberries etc doing the rounds.

Here is a list of services mama_pense is capable of providing as of today :

Command Name tracknumber
Description This will tell you whose phone number is this( USA , pune , mumbai , bangalore ) )
Usage : tracknumber , tracknumberusa, tracknumbermumbai,tracknumberbangalore,tracknumberpune

Command Name rail
Description This will tell railway timetable ( only for India )
Usage : rail deccan OR rail shatabdi ;

Command Name horo
Description Horoscope
Usage : horo aries OR horo sagittarius

Command Name explain
Description This is a online Dictionary
Usage : explain beauty OR explain revenge
Command Name findinfo
Description Searches addresses and telephone number of person , Only in US
Usage : findinfo firstname surname

Command Name country
Description Gets Information of any country
Usage : country India

Command Name to_spanish
Description Translate into spanish
Usage : to_spanish Some text in english

Command Name to_french
Description Translate into french
Usage : to_french Some text in english

Command Name to_german
Description Translate into german
Usage : to_german Some text in english

Command Name to_italian
Description Translate into italian
Usage : to_italian Some text in english

Command Name from_spanish
Description Translate from spanish to english
Usage : from_spanish some text in spanish

Command Name from_french
Description Translate from french to english
Usage : from_french Some text in french

Command Name from_german
Description Translate from german to english
Usage : from_german Some text in german

Command Name from_italian
Description Translate from italian to english
Usage : from_italian Some text in italian

Command Name phonespell
Description Convert your phone number into easy to remember words?
Usage : phonespell 1-883-792-8791

Command Name distance
Description find distance between any two cities in the world
Usage : distance mumbai, orlando

Command Name time
Description Know time in any country
Usage : time usa

Command Name xrate
Description Gets Exchange rate between two countries
Usage : xrate usa India

Command Name google
Description Search the internet ,(Uses google (TM) api to get search results from internet)
Usage : google tajmahal

Command Name climate
Description Gives Climate information of any city in world
Usage : climate orlando , climate mumbai

Command Name quote
Description This will tell you Share Price
Usage : quote VRTS OR quote MSFT

Command Name traffic_usa
Description Know about traffic condition around your area, send me command traffic_usa zipcode
Usage : traffic_usa 10001,traffic_usa 32771

Command Name comment
Description Let me know how I am doing , please send me your comments about me
Usage : comment "your comment goes here"


So guys, no prizes for guess who's everyone's new best friend!!!

Whats interesting though is, how does mama_pendse make money? Certainly not through advertisements. I dont see any ads as yet. Its possibly an option going forward.