StartupDunia

The number of Indian TV channels is skyrocketing. Emergence of DTH and IPTV provides customers with a pleothra of TV channels to choose from. But all this adds chaos and dilemma to the consumer - what to watch, what not to watch. Its difficult to keep track of TV programs you may find interesting.

Well, IndianTVSchedule hopes to make your lives a little easier.

IndianTVSchedule is a feature rich, AJAX based, TV listings guide for Indian television. The site provides a tabular view of all the TV channels - the channels form the rows while the time slots make up the columns. You can filter the listings by the time frame you are interested in. So, for instance, if you are interested in finding out whats on TV during prime time, just select primetime from the dropdown list and the the listings will gently slide onto the selected time window - ohh and with a touch of AJAX. You can also view the channel listings for other days of the week. Another powerful filter is the option to limit listings by the channel genre. Select ‘Sports’ and only the listings for sports channels will be displayed.

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You can read the transcript of the entire speech here. Contrast this with Steve Job’s speech at Stanford.

You decide - which seems more inspiring.

AOL COO Ron Grant will be in Bangalore to announce launch of AOL India portal and also availability of AOL email in India. David Filo, Yahoo co-founder, will also be visiting India to announce,among other things, appointment of a new CEO to share bandwidth with current MD George Zacharias.

Lets wait and watch what else Filo announces. As for AOL email, isnt it a tad too late in the game ?

Rest here.

Ever since I discovered Techmeme, I have become a huge fan. I visit Techmeme several times on a daily basis to find out what is hot in the blogosphere. On the whole, Techememe does a great job at giving a clustered view of what the blogosphere is talking about.

However, there have been a couple of instances when I’ve been disappointed. Like today.

Jason Calacanis blogged a rant on how Wired reporters preferred to do interviews over the phone instead of email. And in no time, there were all the overly eager, supposedly A-list bloggers discussing about what is a better medium for an interview - email or phone.

What the fuck ?

To begin with, I agree with Mike - I still fail to see the reason why Calcanis had to blog about this incident. Ok, probably his mastery at linkbaiting is to blame. But then, whats wrong with these A-listers ? Are they unaware of how big a linkbaiter Calacanis is ? From a stupid rant, the incident unfolds into a major topic of discussion - email over phone.

And therein lies Techmeme’s drawback. You see, based on the number of cross-linking between all these blog posts, Techmeme assumes it has to be of great importance - and voila ! This discussion hogs the limelight on Techmeme. Much ado about nothing. Value to the reader - absolutely zero.

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As per Google’s Zeitgeist for the month of March, below are the top search queries for India:

1. Daniel Craig
2. Drake Bell
3. Toyota India
4. Travel guru
5. Maria Sharapova
6. Hrithik Roshan
7. Premier League (EPL)
8. Maruti Alto
9. Jharkhand public service commission
10. Govinda
11. Mahindra Bolero
12. dhoom2
13. dainik Jagran
14. Hanna Montana
15. Victoria Beckham

I was surprised to see #9 and #10.

I’m surprised that Cricket world cup did not show up in the top 15. I guess people were already getting enough cricket dosage from the TV channels.

However, Cricket world cup showed up as the number 1 Google News query.

Yesterday, I had dinner with an entrepreneur friend of mine. He had rejected a cozy, full time job offer to become a full time entrepreneur. The initial traction and he and his company seemed to be getting were pretty amazing. But after a short lived buzz, his company lost steam and the venture finally fizzled out.

Why ? What happened I asked.

“Blame my hyper enthusiasm”, he said. He went on to elaborate that even after launching his company, his mind kept brainstorming all these ideas which he felt had immense potential. After launching the company and getting all the buzz, I no more found the idea to be challenging. My mind kept brainstorming and bouncing off all these other great ideas out there. I started working on another idea as a side project. In between of all this mind-wavering, my focus unknowingly got shifted from the company I had launched. Losing my focus led to my lack of focus and ultimately the demise of my company.

Hmm…I came home from the dinner with a great, valuable, first-hand lesson - never to lose focus. It is very easy to get tempted by the next great idea, but you need to persist and keep your ultimate goal in perspective. Other startups will emerge and the thought will cross your mind - ‘Damn..why didnt I think of that idea before’. But in doing so, you are wavering from your chosen track. Your single handed focus should be to nurture your baby and help it grow.

Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) has teamed up with Lockheed Martin and IC2 institute, Univ. of Texas, to enhance growth and development of India’s entrepreneurial economy. The program involves delivering knowledge related to innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization strategies to companies and entrepreneurs.

As the first phase of the program, FICCI is organising a three-day workshop on ‘Commercialisation strategies for Techno-Entrepreneurs‘ starting April 23, for which 65 participants from various sectors have been selected.

The workshop would help domestic entrepreneurs to commercialize their processes and prepare them to access global markets. Of the total participants, 30 would do in-depth assessment of their technologies under the guidance of University of Texas and FICCI.

via DNA

Mohammed Iqbal, creative planner for O&M, has a guest post on AgencyFaq’s about leveraging and tapping emerging media such as blogs, social networks etc. for advertising and marketing.

The article is mainly intended towards an advertiser / marketing audience - and tries to bring them upto speed with emerging media.

None the less, if the topic interests you, give it a read.

The GSM-based cellular operators’ initiative for mobile money transfers (MMT) from abroad to India and also within the country via SMSs (through mobile handsets) has crossed its first regulatory hurdle. The RBI is learnt to have given an in-principle nod to Bharti and SBI to launch the project in the country. However, the RBI has given the service providers the option to launch financial services as ‘not-for-profit companies’ under Section 25 of the Companies Act.

This implies, they will not be permitted to offer services as a profitable bank under the banking regulation.

via ET

Welingkar Institute of Management, a Mumbai based B-school, is planning to make class lectures available online as podcasts. Indicast is helping the school with their podcast efforts.

I personally like podcasts which arent too long. 10-20 minutes tops. Beyond that, I’d prefer a text transcript of the podcast — I can sift through the text transcripts faster and more effectively and focus on the section of the transcript that interests me the most.

What do you think ? Would you have preferred to have podcasts as a medium for your college lectures ?

Rest of story here. Kamla, you get a noteworthy mention in the story too .