Internet

10
Dec 09

Rediff exodus is an ominous sign

Since August, Rediff has lost four key executives -

– Long time product head – Zaki Ansari – who quit in August to join UTV New Media

– India Abroad editorial director Prem Panicker quit to join Yahoo India

– CFO Joy Basu left in August

– Most recently, Salil Chandrashekar, director of product development (was also spearheading Rediff’s minimalist approach)

A couple of executive moves here and there could be easily dismissed as normal. However, when 4 key executives quit in a short span of time, its definitely not a good sign.

Either there’s some internal turmoil @ Rediff or something else. None the less, such an exodus is a huge blow to Rediff, who I honestly think has already faltered with its minimalist strategy.



Internet — 13 comments

22
Sep 09

When will Indians learn to take themselves a little less seriously

Apparently, a tweet by Shashi Tharoor, the minister of state for External Affairs, about some joke related to ‘holy cow’  has landed him in some shit. I kid you not – it has offended Indians and Indian politicos. So much so that Sonia Gandhi held a meeting with him about the ‘controversy’.Rumors also floated that he might lose his job.

Quite a number of tweets talking about the ‘controversy’.

Seriously, when will we learn to take ourselves a little less seriously ? The slightest mention of Indians / Indian society / religion riles us up to defend ourselves.



Internet — 3 comments

14
Sep 09

Google is king of the Indian market

To most of you, it wouldnt come as a surprise that Google reigns in the Indian Internet market. From Blogger to Orkut to Google search to Youtube, it is one of the most visited network sites in the Indian market.

For every online hour spent in India, 18 minutes are spent on a Google site. Or in other words, 29 percent of the total online time in India goes to Google network of sites – NYT

I have said this way before and I will say it again – Microsoft and Yahoo battling Google in the US market is probably a battle lost already, but ignoring markets like India and Brazil will basically be repeating that very same mistake again.



Internet — 3 comments

23
Apr 09

Marketplace for private stock – another liquidity option for startups

Fred Wilson has a pretty interesting post about a marketplace for private stock.

Let me illustrate what that means:

In a startup, stock options has become one of the common forms of the total compensation package.  Those stocks indicate your equity in the company – in other words, how much of the company you ‘own’. The stock is worthless unless the company goes public or is acquired by another company.  The folks who own this private stock have no means of selling this stock, which is what they could have done if the company was traded on the public markets.

However, going by the example of Facebook, where several employees sold private stock to others, he talks about the need for a marketplace where people can buy-sell such stocks.  This would provide a ‘much needed’ 3rd alternative for liquidity.

While the concept sounds great, my only concern is if such a marketplace should be / would be regulated ? There have to be some checks in place for accountability and auditing. Unfortunately, I’m not very well versed with the legalese, so feel free to chime in your thoughts.



Internet — 3 comments

21
Apr 09

101 Indian students make it to Google Summer of Code 2009

The finalists for the Google Summer of Code 2009 have been announced and about 101 Indian students have made the cut. Thats the 2nd highest number of candidates after US (212 students). There were about 610 applicants from India, again, the 2nd highest number of applicants after US (744).

In terms of percentages, ~28% of the US applicants made the cut while ~16% of Indian applicants made the cut.

If you are a student and would like to know more about GSOC in India, they have a group for that.



Internet — 3 comments

7
Apr 09

Rediff API – where are the apps ?

Its been about 9 months since Rediff anounced the launch of its application development platform. The platform mirrored the Facebook API in terms of structure and usage. Rediff also announced a grant of Rs 2.5 lakhs to application developers as part of the API launch.

9 months later, I’m yet to see any publicly launched app using the Rediff API. I tried hard to locate any apps on their website, but my search results came up empty.

An application development platform is only as good as the apps that are built on top of it. Nurtured and marketed well, it could launch a complete new category of startups (iPhone apps, Twitter apps, Facebook apps) based on the platform. Lack of apps pretty much signals the doom of the platform.

With not a single app launched publicly, is the Rediff API headed for the deadpool ?



Internet — 13 comments

7
Apr 09

India is Google’s third largest operation in the world

While Google does not provide any financial or operational data for India, Vinay Goel, country head for Google products in India, has confirmed that India is Google’s third largest operation after US and China.

Vinay also provided a couple of additional insights in the interview:

  • Growth in mobile Internet has helped Internet usage to grow by 50% as compared to last few years
  • Google is working on an on-screen keyboard to support different Indian languages (Google already provides a pretty neat transliteration tool to support Indic languages)

via FT



Internet — 3 comments

6
Apr 09

Google launches mashup site for Indian elections

Google has partnered with Hindustan Times to launch a mashup site for the upcoming Indian elections.

On the site, you can:

  • confirm voter registration status
  • discover your polling location
  • view your constituency
  • know more about the candidates
  • access content across blogs, news, videos etc. related to the elections

The site is available in both English and Hindi and definitely provides some great, interactive and personalized content for users. Google has partnered with a number of NGO’s to develop the site, specifically to get data.  Yahoo launched a similar site last week, but it pales in comparison to Google’s offering.



Internet — 2 comments

17
Mar 09

Why are BJP and Advani suddenly embracing new technology ?

BJP recently unvelied its outlandish IT vision document in an effort to seek out voters for the impending elections. Some highlights of their so called IT vision:

  • 12 million IT jobs in rural areas
  • 10 million laptops at Rs 10000
  • Broadband Internet in every town and village at less than Rs 200 per month
  • All schools colleges to have Internet enabled education
  • Unlimited VOIP access to everyone

You can read more of their great vision here.

For anyone who understands what the above means, I’m sure their first reaction is gonna be WTF !! The IT vision sounds more of a joke than a serious manifesto.

10 million laptops at 10K ? Broadband Internet in town and villages for less than 200/month ? VOIP access to everyone ?

Never mind that the current broadband penetration rate in urban India is still in the low single digits. Never mind that illiteracy is a bigger problem in rural areas. Never mind that more than 98% of the folks may not know what VOIP is.

buycrap(photo credit: punditkitchen.com)

Continue reading →



Internet — 20 comments

16
Mar 09

IBM India develops technology that enables voice access to the Internet

IBM India has developed a new technology – HyperSpeech Transfer Protocol (HSTP) – that will enable users to ‘talk’ to the web. Similar to the hyperlink in regular web pages, a ‘hyperspeech’ will link to voice applications and you can navigate the web using voice instead of a mouse click. This could be a game changing technology just because this means that Internet could be accessed by non visual interfaces.

Especially in a country like India, where mobile based voice technology is much widely prevalent than computer based Internet.  Imagine if users could talk into their phone and navigate across the site and other HSTP enabled links and applications. The potential for innovations if this technology becomes wide spread is simply mind boggling.

If you are interested in the research paper explaining the technical details of HSTP, you can find it here (PDF).

via ET.



Internet — 3 comments

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