Is Minglebox tingling the Janta?

I recently came across a podcast interview with Kavita Iyer, one of the founders of a new social networking site - Minglebox.

My first thoughts when i saw the podcast link to Kavita's interview, was "not another one!!"

In many ways it reminded me of the *Pet.com mania during the dotcom
boom. Every other guy had a mypet.com, yourpet.com and almost every one
of these was funded by a popular VC firm.

So what am i doing in Minglebox!!!

One thing that Kavita did mention and that actually got me interested
was the list of features that this site potentially offered!!! So i
thought hey why not check it out. May be these guys do have something
different after all.

Here's my take on what i've seen so far.

Lets do the pluses first ..

They have indeed flattened the learning curve for most of their applications. Which is great...

This place certainly gives you a feeling of belonging. If you are a
true 'desi', you'll feel absolutely at home. I simply loved some of those typically desi wordings that add to give a great feel.

The campus feature is nice and has a comprehensive(well almost) list of all campuses in the country. Though, i do think it should allow people to add campuses,
probably with an approval process so that there is no duplication. One
of my campuses is missing and im not too happy about it(Please note!!!).

Adding friends. Well lets look at it this way.

I have a profile on orkut. I have created a profile on hi5, friendster
etc etc. So why would i register on minglebox? Surely not because it
has a very attractive chit-chat feature (Which is very nice indeed!!).

Well one potent reason i can think of, is because most of my friends
are on it. And there is a possibility of finding many more of my friends.

One way to make this easy for a lot of people who are already
registered and who want to move to Minglebox to use some of its good
features like chit-chat etc, is to allow them to import a contacts list
or send an invitation out to all their friends on orkut or hi5 without having
to mention each persons email id.

I think Gazzag is doing a great job on this front. And its never too
late!! I havent invited anyone yet. Waiting for that feature to be
added. :)

Well and looks like a lot of good stuff is still on its way.

So coming to the important bit now. Where is the money?

Many people get away saying, its too early and can be worked out etc.
Google can afford to run Orkut without a revenue model. They dont need
additional bandwidth. They have tons lying around unused that they are
paying for anyways.

Even google has ads on orkut these days.

Yes, Advertisement is definitely one of the revenue models. But relying
on advertisements or hoping somebody will buy out a site is no longer a
safe bet.

This being the case, what will be of utmost importance will be : who will use the site?

From what i see the site seems to be targetted at the college going
crowd. But its interesting to note that a majority of users on orkut or
other social networking sites are in their late 20's or 30's. Thats the
'working and single' crowd.

Thats good news. There is money in those wallets. And some of those mobile services that are to be offered on minglebox could hit it off with the crowd.


Having said that. There are quite a few sites eyeing the same space. Yaari, Jhoom, fropper to name a few... So lets differentiate people!!

All the best guys.

YouTube: From Concept to Hypergrowth

Jawed karim gives a presentation in Stanford. A very interesting video. A definite "must watch".

Itsyourstage

Pretty cool stuff... at 1 cent a pixel, looks like a great deal for the Youtube fans.

With google gobbling down Youtube, it is indeed the most sought after place on the web. But with so many videos being uploaded daily it is indeed very difficult to get someone to notice a particular video.

Itsyourstage (http://www.itsyourstage.com) gives everyone a wonderful platform to showcase their videos. Whats more, at 10 cents a pixel they have got a cracker of a deal.

Most importantly the site has been timed beautifully. With so much media attention on Youtube and google, anything thats got anything remotely to do with youtube is grabbing a lot of attention and eyeballs and mouse clicks .. and ....

As far as I see it, this is definitely going to be 10 cents well invested for a lotta people. For those of you who havent got there yet, go grab that pixel of yours before somebody else does.

Happened to read an article that may very well highlight why i think itsyourstage makes sense.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/25/technology/25agency.html?ex=1319428800&en=108d1712877c6f09&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

IE7 Launched!!!

IE7 is out at last and is available for download!!! So go get it!!!

Too many passwords? Not in the Google world and "Writely" so!!!

You see an interesting app on the web and register yourself. Rest assured you will not need to remeber your login and password for long. For very soon you will have the option of logging in with you gmail account and password!!

Google is apparently all set to announce a new product google docs (http://docs.google.com) at the Office 2.0 conference tomorrow. This product will combine writely(which google acquired last march) and google spreadsheets, and offer an online document management solution to users.

This along with Google apps for domains, a a free package that combined Google's e-mail, calendar, IM and page creation software, which was announced earlier this week puts google well ahead of Microsoft in the online document management space.

It does for now look like bitts and pieces of software stuck up together. But i guess once people do get used to working and sharing their documents online, things will start falling in place for google.

So congrats, all you need is a gmail account!!! :)

Youtube goes down the Google!!!

$1.65 billion !!! Thats no small amount. As far as Youtube is concerned, way to go guys!!!

Now thats one hell of a deal these guys have struck.

Somebody please explain why google would build google videos, which i did not think was doing too badly on its own, and then spend such a huge sum and acquire YouTube!!!!!

There has got to be better logic than same business goals and sharing the same vision!!!

Considering the fact that this whole "videos" area is yet to be scrutinized especially around DRM et al, i just cant seem to put things together here.

Congratulations, Youtube!!!

Is the 'Hot'mail man heating things up again?

My cousin TP just happened to mention blogeverywhere.com Sabeer Bhatias new venture. It would be difficult to call the idea novel or something new. Im sure we have all come across it in one form or the other.

So i just thought i'll dig up a little more into what else he is up to these days..

And here's a few links i found after an initial probe...


Navin.com, India's largest provider of Voice Mail services

BlogEverywhere.com, allows you to read and write comments on any web page as you surf the net. Also has a Hotmail enhancer that allows email downloading for better performance and an Outlook-like preview function that allows an entire mail message to be viewed directly in the Inbox.

InstaColl.com, a contextual collaboration solution.

Hotseasons.com, a travel website that will focus on hotel ratings.

VoiFi.com, a project using VOIP

telixo.com, A project that turns your mobile phone into a personal organiser

Things do seem to be hotting up again for Mr Hotmail.. :)

IBNLive : Live Video Feeds!!!

IBNLive has a live video news feed thats comes in two options Low Res and High Res. If you are on a broadband the service is really good.

But what really takes the cake is that ibnlive is not charging you for this live video. Its absolutely free and is as good as watching the channel itself.

Not sure if this is intended to remain this way or its just an attempt to grab some eyeballs from sites like ndtv.com etc.

In fact while i was at it, just realised the number of sites offering video services.

I could name a few on the fly like google videos, youtube, videosift, Break. Im sure a search on google will get you plenty more. There are plenty of sites being built around these services. For example VideoDL is an excellent site that lets you download videos from google videos, youtube and break.

And the news is, that Amazon will be joining the fray soon with its unbox service. This would be a service based on windows media player and DRM, letting you purchase or rent videos from its site. The service will ofcourse need to compete with the likes of iTunes and indirectly with services like netflix and blockbuster.

Software Production Lines

Having been a part of the software industry in the last 2 years, I could not help noticing a radical change thats taking place in the industry. The pronounced impact of this change is on the developers and those that are still playing technically inclined and find themselves in the software services industry.

Gone are the days when an Architect was required to have an understanding of all the technologies involved and the developer needing to be skilled enough to deliver the solution. We are walking into the SOA age and developers are working on very high level languages.

Some of the tools that i have had a chance to work on like TIBCO BW, SAP XI or an Oracle BPEL PM and many more on the same lines like Savvion, Pega, Fuego, Staffware etc that are in the market, provide you with GUI's and require you to just drag and drop images and build entire flows.

With SOA coming into the picture and each application / end point being exposed as a web service, enterprise integration is just a matter of dragging and dropping a sequence of activities in the right order. What would normally take a design phase and almost 10 days of development can now be completed within 30 minutes. Ofcourse this is not to say these products are perfect and do not introduce any bugs, but what they have achieved is the ability to produce mass software within no time.

This has helped software service providers to set up a software development production line where you can deploy a huge number of resources and can still develop exactly the same quality of software rapidly.

Will knowledge still have a say in the years to come? Or will it just be a software production line with yet another 'resource' being required to meet deadlines.

If the count is all that is going to matter, India and China certainly have a lot to look forward to.

Blummy

Been really busy shifting cities :(. Landed myself back in india earlier this week. Settled down and rearing to go atlast!! :)

Came across this excellent tool that lets you access your favourite web services at the click of a mouse button. Its extremely simple and neat.

Check it out!!!

Is this MS Office's Last Mile?

This is in light of some of the events that have happened in the last few weeks, like the Google-Sun Agreement and some applications/technologies that are very much being talked about(like Thinkfree, AJAX Office Suite etc).

Microsofts Key Strength is the popularity of its Office Suite. We have had a number of free Office Suites like the OpenOffice, Staroffice etc who have not been able to make any significant dent on Microsoft.

Microsofts Office formats like the .doc, .xls and .ppt are still very much closely guarded within the walls of the Redmond giant. While the Word 97 format was publicly documented, all updates to those formats have been withheld from the public domain. The format documentation is however available to Microsofts partners.

These formats are Microsofts strength. Their popularity have forced competitors to support these formats(atleast to extent of the documentation openly available).

As long as Microsoft continues to guard these formats, it will be indeed quite a daunting task to displace Microsoft from its pedestal as the Market leader.

Word 2003 however has an option to use a publicly documented schema called WordProcessingML and Microsoft has stated that it will soon be supporting an XML based format on all its Office products.

The rationality behind this move is tough to explain. In fact, its tough to understand. Im sure the guys at Redmond have their reasons. But yes it certainly will give competitors to have a go at the giant.

There is also the danger of a web based application suite (like thinkfree) gaining popularity over a desktop based application suite.

However having had a chance to use Microsofts web interface to its exchange servers(Outlook) and having seen their browser based implementation of Microsoft Outlook, Im sure competition will have to really get their act together to pose any real threat to the giant from Redmond.

Online office!!!

I'd mentioned an AJAX based office suite that'd let you do all your word processing using a browser.

Thinkfree lets you do exactly that. I am still in the process of installing plugins that'll let me use it. But its a wonderful service and will definitely find a lot of takers.

OJOS is on its way

Ojos is here atlast. Almost here!!!
Munjal Shah has posted a few snap shots of whats to come on his blog and it certainly does look good.

Can't wait to get my hands on this one.. :)

Yet Another Aggregator

I guess its stale news already, but i thought i'll mention it anyways.

Google seems to want to have a share of everything on the web. And so they have an aggregator. Is it any good? Any different? I dont think so. Its just another aggregator. Whats the idea google???

Work!!!

Works caught up with me!!! The forecast for the next few weeks looks bad too. But im hoping to keep the blog going.

Leave you guys with the Blook.

Skype for eBay's Customers

Overnight, Skype has transformed from being the global telephone company threatening major telco's to a communications tool for eBays customer's.

eBay will be acquiring Skype for a whopping $ 4.1 billion.

Why would an online auctions company want to do with a Internet based Telephone Company?
Even if it somehow made sense, they could have developed their own IP based application for communication or bought so many other applications available at a much lesser cost.

Besides if eBay users did get to interact with each other directly, would they need eBay. They could make deals outside eBay too. So whats the idea here??

Somehow, one cant help feeling eBay has made a lot more money in this deal that its paying out :).

That pretty much leaves this space open to the other players like Google Talk, Gizmo, MSN, Fwd Networks , IPTEL etc who will be vying for this space.
However it is highly unlikey that one of these will dominate the scene like Skype did. But whats also important is most of these players are SIP based and do not run on propietory standards like skype or voiceglo.

With many players coming into the picture now services such as xConnect may soon be extremely popular.

AJAX Office

An entire office suite will soon be available on your web browser.

AJAX Office suite will be to MS Office as gmail is to Outlook. Cool eh..

Yahoo!! Google!!! could probably hold all our files on their servers, making everything accessible from anywhere!!! It'll definitely give Microsoft something to think about. Just imagine, you wouldnt need the MS Office suite anymore!!!

YubNub

TP just passed on this very interesting link.
Yubnub- Social Command line for the wed, as the site describes itself, is a very simple idea thats in line with our migration to the concept of the WebOS.

Developed by Jon using a new framework thats rapidly gaining popularity called the Ruby on Rails, it is a very simple concept. It lets you create your own commands for the various services being offered on the web.

You can create a command for any web service available on the net.

For eg: g Yubnub : would result in a google search for yubnub. gmap Melbourne would result in a google map search for Melbourne.

Most popular/useful web commands are called Yubnub Golden Eggs. Its pretty cool. Check it out and lay a few golden eggs if possible :).

Unblokt is yet another service that i came across on Jon's blog. It creates a "web" story, by giving you two sentences from a story and allowing you to enter the sentence in between. The end result should be an interesting read!!!

Gizmo all set to take on Skype

Michael Robertson of the MP3.com and Lindows/Linspire fame is all set to take on Skype with his Gizmo Project as part of his new venture SIPPhone.

How Gizmo compares to Skype is yet to be seen. A couple of links from the Gizmo site suggest that the argument leans slightly towards the Gizmo camp at the moment.

Where Gizmo does score over Skype is that it uses the open SIP Protocol in comparison to the proprietary technology used by Skype.

Though Gizmo is unlikely to make any immediate dent on Skype, its definitely likely to give Skype a run for its money on the long run.

Ojos : Revolutionizing Image Search

A product thats likely to be launched very soon, Ojos may revolutionize image search on the web.

It certainly does not sound like a new concept, with many sites like flickr, Picasa already offering services that let you upload, organize and search images.

The key differences seem to lie in the way Ojos is going about doing it. They are relying on two main technologies :face and text recognition. The software according to a couple of blogs that i did get to read, lets you tag your images. It then searches/recognises other pictures of yours and tags them for you.
Aptly named Ojos, which is spanish for "Eyes", it seems to be doing a great job of recognising different pictures of the same person, according to early demos.

It certainly sounds like a product many of us would like to use. What remains to be seen is how much of whats been said is actually going to be made available?

You can catch the latest on the Ojos front on Munjal Shah's blog(the founder of Ojos), which he calls recognizing Deven(his son), seemingly suggesting what ojos is capable of doing.