Over the past few months, I have become cautious about the privacy on the net. One of the first moves was to switch over the name to Administrator.  I had already moved away from Google; but more importantly, the last vestige was Google Reader; this too was given the boot in favor of Newsblur an independent developer based in New York and an excellent news reader.

Apart from this, I strongly recommend Ghostery and Noscript add-ons for your Firefox.

I have been following the 2G and the 3G scam but unfortunately, due to political compulsions, nothing has come out of the Supreme Court order. The key players are all out of jail.  So all that drama that ensued was all for the show.  Apart from this, there is no concrete action on ground regarding anything new in the pipeline, barring the 4G that is in the air. Airtel is rumored to launch it soon in key areas and beyond the wireline, Airtel is hoping that it would be a key determinant for it’s bottom line. Of course, the restrictions for “limited broadband” remain on course. You are unlikely to see “all-you-can-eat broadband” anytime now.

Interestingly, there is a trend of co-branded handsets for bundled offers for  data. It’s not a sign of matured markets but rather a sense of desperation on part of the telecom companies to be able to sell anything. I don’t have any clue about the development of mobile apps but with overt reliance on Android to drive Google’s penetration in the heartland, mobile phones are slowly becoming ubiquitous. Well, there are more mobile phones than the toilets in this country!

Lets wait and watch for 4G.  Lets see how it works out.  I’d be back soon.

There is no real update in the Telecom world; despite our shrill noises, there is no customer resolution. The companies seem to mind on their business in the customer acquistion while huge numbers are being trumped up for valuation. It’s an imperfect crappy model but that’s the way it is.

As usual, the best way is to keep yourself updated through RSS feeds; in absence of any other viable reader on line, Google Reader is recommended.

There are excellent guides available to enable your wireless networking on your Debian and then choosing Tata’s apn to access the Internet. I would not go in those details. I had used a 3G stick and after ensuring the proper network coverage, on a Windows machine, added it to my Debian based laptop. Although recognized, it failed to connect on to network and neither there was any way to install the company issued dialer.

However, it worked fine in Windows world; it was auto-recognized and I could work on that. What I noticed was the horrible lag and the ping times, clearly making it useless for any one for online gaming. It’s next to impossible. At the same time, the video buffering was relatively smooth although nothing to write home about.

With pathetic “download limits” and huge costs, I had to nix the plan of going in for Tata Docomo; although I must confess that they have a reasonably good customer care. My point of contact has been their on line chat and their email’s work, albeit very late. This, in my opinion, is better than the other companies who don’t give a shit about after sales.

Would you go in for an expensive hardware and huge recurring monthly expenses? 3G is NOT for the data but for more efficient spectrum utilization. The voice market dominates because these operators have no intention of improving on the value added services.

Thats where their bread and butter lies. If 3G data services were really to become “cheap”, to so called “market forces” would determine the outcome. I find it amusing when people crow about prices coming down eventually. There would never be an “unlimited plan” because shoring up the capacity on wireless networks is a huge sunk in investment which is not easy to recover.

For the time being, this is a worst case alternative to a proper wireline/wifi model. If you don’t have any other frigging option in this heartless world, go for it.

At best, the draft proposals sound what has been proposed; but the industry and their associations would definitely seek to water it down.  Any customer “friendly” variant is not welcome for obvious reasons. In any case, the draft policy (specifically on broadband) needs specific inputs rather than broad sweeping generalizations that cannot be fulfilled in the current scenario. The Government of India also needs to do away with self styled experts and focus on basics to understand the need to encourage the adoption of broadband.

Let me be honest. I haven’t read the draft proposal in it’s entirety. So I would prefer to link it to someone who has done it. As luck would have it, I stumbled again on Medianama  with their take on the proposed policy changes. I would only highlight the issues that I feel need to be addressed regarding broadband alone.

1) Definition of Broadband : Always on with a minimum speed of 2 Mbps and not as proposed  to be changed in the year 2015. This is because with the change at the centre, the policy decisions invariably get stuck in the red tape. The whole bunch of users have been clamoring for 2 Mbps as the basic benchmark in order to utilize the actual benefit of the broadband.

Why? Because 256 kbps is pathetic. You cannot video chat effectively. You cannot stream media applications. You cannot do zilch. Still, the definition remains stuck at mere “doubling” of the speed. 100 Mbps is a promised pipe dream.

2) There have been effective proposals for setting up interlink peer exchanges in India to replace NIXI. An excellent blog post (not written by me but Mathew), clearly details the methodology to achieve this.  The highlights (sic):

NIXI is supposed to be a non-profit organization (that part I believe), however it allows ISPs to essentially charge each other tariffs of Rs25 per GB. At 1gbit/s, with an in:out ratio of 3:1 and utilization of 80% or so, this comes out to a total monthly bill of Rs44 lakh, or about Rs17/GB.

That’s a hell of a lot of coin, considering that 2 months of that could pay for a year’s supply of bandwidth to Singapore. Yes, a year (well, a single STM-1 @ 155mbit/s, anyway, but the cost still only works out to about Rs13/GB).

As you can imagine, if I, as an ISP, can save Rs4 PER GIGABYTE, I’m damn well going to,

otherwise I have to pass that on to you – the consumer.

3) The proposed opening up of the last mile access by wireless is a useless idea. Wireless or any of it’s iterations cannot, I repeat cannot be relied on for data intensive applications. There is no draft proposal for public access of Wifi’s bankrolled by the municipal corporations. Wifi’s can be used for another lofty purpose. To route the mobile network calls in hard to reach areas. Another brilliant stroke would be to encourage the uptake of the VoIP.

4) Even if you have 100 Mbps rolling in a shiny FTTH all the way up to your home, the lack of “real application” is a dampener. What would the mass of humanity rolling in this country use 100 Mbps for? Facebook? There is no concept proposal for encouraging the uptake of the broadband applications, for fostering a community of developers, lack of clear focus on the e-commerce, overt valuations of the existing firms and the works.  Granted that this is chicken and egg situation,  100 Mbps broadband networks are mere pipe dreams till the time there is focus on backing up a reliable infrastructure and true “unlimited access”.

5) Unbundling of the last mile access: The PSU’s are like wives. You can’t live with them. You can’t kill them. Simple. However, it does not mean that the last mile should be unbundled without having a proper oversight of the sector. I had believed earlier that proper competition on the same copper would effectively bring down the prices. However, this is fraught with it’s own hassles. The copper is pubic property and I am sure that anyone investing money would extract his own pound of flesh in terms of ownership of the cable. (This one is a retort to Medianama).

This should not be encouraged. Instead, the companies need to be given incentives to invest in the cable, peer through a separate exchange, a unified license to allow them VoIP applications, create infrastructure for niche products. For example, there could be an ISP specifically for gaming. Let it have the best response times in terms of ping. A separate company for IPTV applications. A different company for say, tele-medicine solutions with end to end infrastructure. Back it up with rural broadband initiatives and then you have customized solutions for different segments.

Let these marginal players slug it out with the established partners. Let them expand the pie. Mobile telephony did not happen overnight but by relentless onslaught of the advertisements to create a need for the product. I am not a big fan of the mobile applications, but that does not bias my outlook for the explosive growth, even though the numbers are disputed crap.

Broadband is a niche application. The draft proposals are mere eye wash and they need to be understood in their context before we bleat and crow about being a fucked up IT “superpower”.

What I agree with Medianama is the crap “fair usage policies”. But I have already stressed on the “unlimited” access. This is hardly going to be achieved and despite claims by fucktards of downloading 100, 500 or even 1000 GB is hogwash. As far as the net neutrality goes, the “faster access” to certain businesses is a huge controversial issue. The ping times in this country are so awful that is hardly going to matter.

Hence, all the more the sarkari buffons need to be given a pat on their asses for making some effort to think over the issues. With all due respect, I am also uploading the critique to their proposals. I am not sure who is going to read them, but for sure, this is better than just sucking up and doing nothing.

It’s easy to see the bias of the author about the “impoverished” Indians but there is too much optimism about targeting the benefits. The fact that the Aadhar scheme doesn’t really address the basic issue of data privacy, it is too much of a gamble.

Nandan also mentions about setting up a massive server farm for the data requests. The lack of Broadband at the peripheral level has hampered the data collection (that was a no brainer); which means that the basics have not been sorted out. The article also mentions about the queries to the database and problems cropping up later to be fixed. If I am not mistaken, this is as dumb assholism as it can get. Reason? All potential issues need to ironed out before data collection on a massive scale is carried out.

In my opinion, having a fault tolerant broadband over fixed line is imperative. The growth of the mobile telephony and hence the crappy 3G implementation is not in the public interest. Given the price structure of the data plans, there is no way that a reliable network geared for the public good is utilized for it’s need.

At the same time, public service networks like BSNL/MTNL need to be flogged for dragging their feet for missing the rural broadband plans. Wimax/LTE etc are good enough in theory but there is a theoretical limit to the extent of the data that can go through wireless.

Aadhar scheme is a hair brained exercise; much like the emperors clothes. Useless in execution with purported benefits not spelled out and absolutely no word on the data privacy.

Apart from this, there has been no earth shattering development in the past couple of months on the telecom scene. I am keeping an eye on it; shall be updating on it soon.

Thanks! As always, the best way to keep in touch is with the RSS feeds.

Opera Mini

http://imgur.com/PZwCF

If you look carefully, bulk of the developing and the underdeveloped countries utilize the mobile web to access social networking sites. US (and some other developed economies) are lower down the scale.

Interestingly, the data transferred per user is a pathetic 7 MB (averaged over the month perhaps?) which means that operators are still being generous with their limits. However,  this is a crude approximation. For once, we have a clear proof that mobile internet is definitely a part of their value added services kitty but is NOT the revenue driver for them. They are offering it because there is no alternative.

This also explains their aggressive stance to get the 3G spectrum; primarily to add more voice customers than to offer data services.

If you look at the snapshot of the popular phones, Nokia is still leading the pack but majority of them are NOT smartphones. These java based handsets are pathetic in terms of functionality and at best useful for “checking the status updates” on Facebook.

A surprise entry is that of “Micromax” handset; they have capitalized on aggressive marketing and low price entry point.

Unfortunately, this does not portend good for the broadband initiatives. A cursory glance at the top sites (Google leads the pack) is only indicative. Google has benefited from being the default search engine on the browser and hence the port of call for any search. I barely use my handset for GPRS (or EDGE) for web surfing because smartphones (and their form factor) is basically useless to transact anything useful. For me, the only reason to invest is for email.

Nevertheless, this report can again be questioned in terms of “growth of users”. It is not clear about how the methodology has been arrived at and what has constituted the “growth in real terms”. However, one thing is clear. Most of the web sites focused on Indian content don’t have mobile strategies to counter the growth in the user base. Pathetic.

Indeed, with majority of the young adults unable to read/write or even engage in meaningful conversations on Indian polity, this “dumbification” was expected.

Facebook, although shows some presence (in terms of mobile access), mobile broadband is still “not hot” in US of A. There could be myriad factors but then Opera’s state of web access is best a “snapshot” of the handsets and it’s deal with the OEM‘s to bundle the product.

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Image via Wikipedia

I have implemented a Tag Cloud (an excellent Word Press Plug-in WP-Cumulus).

The previous cloud was ungainly; it was a chore to navigate it. This tag cloud gives it some degree of interactivity.

Hope you enjoy it!

On a side note, I can actually see how dense the cloud really is; frankly it has helped a lot to semantically integrate the whole web site.

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Image by bhautikjoshi via Flickr

I have experimented with the tone and tenor of the write ups here. It’s impossible to update on a daily basis although RSS as a delivery mechanism is very powerful in it’s context; it’s easy to set up feeds to keep the blog updated regularly.

However, I personally feel that the sector as a whole has not evolved to a meaningful extent to report on the events. Vodafone has been dragged to the court. Airtel has botched up it’s 3G offerings. 2G scam has caught up with its final actors. However, this is still the “tip of the iceberg”. A lot goes behind the scenes and some unlucky few get caught up in the swirl. Indeed, they are just minor fronts for the systematic loot.

Writing on all this is a chore. It’s pathetic to repeat the same thing ad-nauseum.

Image via Wikipedia

Hence, I prefer to write when I get a sudden burst of “inspiration”. This blog has definitely morphed from it’s rigid confines of Indian Telecom to something more of a “digital narrative”.

I could also write on the operators elsewhere; unrestricted data does not flow uniformly. Yet, in most of the developing countries, scarcity is something that is engineered. It holds no relevance for most of us to know about what AT&T is doing with it’s T- Mobile acquisition. Further, we have distanced ourselves, not only from the advertising, but also from reporting any industry sponsored events. I routinely get invitations (off and on) but they are mostly from clueless PR executives.

Daily updates is beyond the scope. Writing is a passion and needs to be stoked. Yet, there is no point in being pointless either!

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I have a Tata Docomo number; I have kept it for a temporarily.

Today, I was surprised to see that some SMS based service had been activated without my consent and I was charged for the same. At first, the customer care refused to accept it, despite my cajoling and raising my voice. After divine intervention, they agreed and refunded my amount.

What did I learn from this:

1) They are bad people and it’s a useless service.

2) Always take a complaint number. This is because, you can track down it’s progress by citing the complaint number in all the communication with the company. In the event of the matter landing in consumer court or forum, this is important.

3) Never bow down; if you have been wronged, fight them back.

By today evening, the issue was resolved, complaint closed and my amount refunded.

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Although I cannot publish the site stats here, but surprisingly, I am still seeing Internet Explorer 6 in the stats. While Windows remains a dominant platform, most of them are using a mix of Firefox and Explorer. Unfortunately, I don’t get to see Opera and none of the stats suggest that mobile browsers are being used in any way. ( I wonder when would Internet Explorer die and wither away).

I was keen to implement some plug in for mobile browsers but gave it up because I was not able to test it extensively. In any case, I recommend Opera Mini alone; with it’s latest update it inherits the best of the mobile browser breed. Specifically it’s tap to zoom since I was never a fan of the mobile version.

Image via Wikipedia

Firefox rules on my desktop now (Opera’s extension system leaves a lot to be desired), still it is maturing at a rapid pace.

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I have spent a whole day fine tuning the blog. Apart from messing around with the cache (which should improve the load up times), I have implemented the XML in the backend making it easier for the spiders to crawl through.

Maybe, I have really let go off my writer’s block and hence radically overhauled it. That’s again the reason why I stress so much on the RSS feeds as method of getting the updates.

Please do take time out to comment across the categories for engaging conversation around the posts.

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how would it be disruptive for the traditional cellular carriers.

A lot has been written skype’s acquistion (please see the related links below). Some people feel that it’s going to be good for the enterprise market, some feel that it is a useless deal with Microsoft bleeding millions of dollars everyday and a questionable “internet policy”. Perhaps all these rationales look at the whole question piecemeal. But no one has the complete answer.

I have been interested in the VoIP market for long. I have written about it earlier extensively (here, here, here) in the past. Yet, Skype’s acquisition takes the cake.

Image via Wikipedia

In an earlier post, I mentioned:

Image via CrunchBase

TRAI called for implementation of Internet Telephony and Carrier Access Codes.

This was mandated much earlier way back in 2001; however, this was opposed by Bharti. Reliance had entered with the premise of “death of distance” and had made STD calls ridiculously cheap….. If Internet telephony is implemented in it’s present shape, it would

see present rates crashing down to a large extent.

Image via Wikipedia

It would give a new lease of life to ISP’s like Sify and other fringe lunatics to scale up investments. I can foresee the entry of players like Skype as well as other SIP players which rely on open standards. It’s hard not to imagine the real gains to economy as a whole and it would benefit the adoption of setting up of WiFi hotspots on a larger scale.

In another blog post, I had written:

Govind says that Wifi can be used to carry calls which works out to be cheaper. Of course, I have explored these options way back earlier on; the current “competitive” scenario has resulted only in oligopolies and each new talk plan is basically a rehash of the others. Without disclosing upfront about the estimated monthly outgo, TRAI okays each plan without taking the consumer’s advantage in question. As a result we are fleeced to no extent. I really doubt whether WiFi can be used to carry out the calls-the investments are way too huge to justify parallel (and cheaper ) networks. Where would Bharti get it’s crores from?

Assuming that wifi becomes available all around, what is the guarantee that telcos won’t use all means to block the calls via Skype or any other internet phone? High usage charges would spike any consumer interest because in all probability it would be a “value added service” which by it’s own argument, can be priced higher. Unless of course, people set up their own small WiFi networks. A long shot indeed.

And in the winning entry for “Big Ideas Contest”, Skype (or Internet Telephony) was mentioned in passing; actually leveraging the low cost of routing international calls and passing on the advantage to the customers.

Teleconferencing would make it easier for people to people contacts; Gujarat has shown the way! Why can’t India have something similar to Skype? (There is a move to have something similar in the GNU world where encryption would be based on open standards).

I don’t have any love lost for Microsoft; but as any corporation, it does what it has to do to survive. It’s a jungle out there and only the best survive by breaking through the clutter. There can be no easy answers to certain “defining moments”; we must wait for the answers to reveal themselves. The point here is that I have remained consistent in my assertions over the years and have called for opening up the standards instead.

Let’s look at what New York Times article has to say.

Image via Wikipedia

The telecommunications industry is already in a state of flux as more people disconnect their home telephone lines in favor of cellphones. Now the wireless carriers are looking for new ways to make money based on mobile broadband and applications, rather than voice minutes. “Eventually, everything migrates to a data channel,” said Brian Higgins, an executive at Verizon Wireless who is developing products and services for the company’s high-speed 4G network. “We’re moving away from silos of communication to one where everything is combined together.”

This assertion is not valid but rather a corporate spin and gibberish. The reason is that landlines offer higher rate of data transfer and wireless networks can easily get choked. Similarly for 3G networks being pandered about in India; main reason is to offer better voice minutes than spur on the data usage. Had there been any commitment for the same, the market would have reacted in a “bloodbath” to drop the rates and make it better to access the services.

Howsoever clueless these people are, data is definitely not on their minds. Hence, the question of “communication silos” does not arise at all.

But the Skype deal also signifies a larger interest in next-generation communications services. It is not just Skype that the wireless companies need to worry about. A bevy of mobile messaging applications, including WhatsApp, Kik, GroupMe and textPlus, allow people to send messages over data networks, sidestepping the cost of sending and receiving standard text messages.

Carriers already must deal with many new competitors in the communications game. Name companies like Apple, Facebook and Google are making services available that traditionally only carriers could offer. Google, like Skype, offers ways to make free phone and video calls over the Internet. Apple lets iPhone owners make video calls.

The ultimate risk for the carriers, analysts say, is becoming “dumb pipes,” providing only the data connection and not selling any more sophisticated communications services themselves.

Agreed on this count. The newer generation services mentioned here are really disruptive. However, they have not achieved a critical scale; not to the level that carriers start blocking them actively violating “net-neutrality”.

So how would the companies react to such developments? Possibly by lowering expectations of supra-massive profits at our expense and by “signing up deals”. Although Value Added Services (VAS) remains a viable channel, I still have to see any “developments” in that; it remains a subject of a future post.

Carriers have responded to the shift toward digital communication differently. Some seek to leverage the new wave of services to differentiate themselves and gain an edge over competitors. Sprint, for example, recently united with Google to let its customers link their Sprint phone numbers to Google Voice, a service that rings all of a person’s phones and even Gmail when someone calls that person’s number.

However, these efforts are half hearted approaches to the present dispensation. Skype is important, yes, in the VOIP Space. With the development of GNU Public Telephony project on fast track, I am sure something would definitely strike in for alternative access opportunities like SIP phones coming in the mainstream.

I remain positive for a Vonage like service over landlines and I strongly back that company (please, it’s not an endorsement). For a fixed amount, it’s possible to call in major countries and is totally “place agnostic”. I can make unlimited international calls all across for a fixed monthly fees. Thats the real power of broadband for communication. Wireless is not cool because of it’s inherent limitations and POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) is STILL the best bet.

Image via Wikipedia

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I have implemented Word Press Cache; the home page should refresh better. The beauty of Word Press is the extensibility. Although, I have a personal preference for Drupal as Content Management System (CMS), still Word Press Install is the best platform for blogging. The only time taken is to access the different cloud services (Livefyre) and the images hosted from external solution providers.

The only downside is dependence on the external third party sites. I depend on Imgur for image hosting (and most of the images are either from Crunchbase and Wikipedia). I am also planning to install Embedly making it easier to play around with external embedding. Some under the hood changes have been made to Zemanta and it’s a pleasure to see a very active community around the product.

Image via CrunchBase

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I had the unfortunate instance of coming across an Idea Cellular subscriber. The complaints were related to call drops and inability to connect to international numbers.

While mobile number portability is an attractive option, yet the only drawback is that it cannot transfer the remaining balance to the operator you wish to get ported to. Repeated emails to their customer care went unanswered; I am glad we got rid of it.

A recommended option is to avoid it totally and look around for MNP.

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I have been thinking about this; the direction that this blog needs to take. Blogging is not a full time vocation for me and neither I am getting anything out of it. However, the idea is to broaden the expanse of thought process and add more depth and perspective to the issues.

That seems to be a reasonable option for further direction. Hence, the changes made to the interface and well as the deeper integration of semantics.

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I have argued against excessive reliance on social media; it is a stupid decision to hail Facebook and Twitter as the “next destination”. This is the problem with the marketing executives either from the mobile companies or handset manufacturers. For example, it’s not difficult to miss the blurb that accessing Facebook is “easy” by a “single click button”.

The experience on ground is different. Let’s assume, for a moment that there are over 600 million users. How many of them are active? What is the “engagement matrix” on the web site? What is the actual cost retrieved by

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook from it’s advertisers; i.e. how effective is advertising on the platform? Is social engagement really effective? I mean, it’s stupidity to see links from Facebook friends streaming in Bing (which has implemented the feature and live on to crow that they are up in the pissing game with Google).

If you dissect the issue further, accumulating a number of “likes” on the platform does not mean that it likely to translate into action. I was moved by this interesting blog post and they

Image via CrunchBase

gave explicit reasons why they are moving away from facebook hype: (emphasis mine)

1. The Facebook API changes too often. The plug-ins are buggy, the API changes without notice rather often, and there are too many rules constraining how developers can use the API in building applications. As a platform, it is unstable, period. ……

2. Facebook is overhyped. Personally, even though Facebook actually has 600 million active users, developers still tend to overestimate how many people actually 1) have a Facebook account, 2) use it regularly, and 3) are comfortable using it as a third-party authentication method. Many consumers across different niche markets are simply not familiar with how Facebook works; developing Facebook-only applications marginalizes this segment of users, who may be substantial in number.

3. Facebook is still mainly social for most, and exclusively social for some. We are still not completely convinced that Facebook can be an effective platform for any commercial activity…….Of all the new variants of ecommerce, the one that might actually take off is, in our view, mobile commerce.

More interestingly, Facebook and other industry “leaders” are opposing the proposed bill to protect the user’s privacy. I am not sure how this is going to pan out but this is good enough indication that some sense has dawned to protect the users from advertising onslaught.

California could force Facebook and other social-networking sites to change their privacy protection policies under a first-of-its-kind proposal at the state Capitol that is opposed by much of the Internet industry……social-networking sites would have to allow users to establish their privacy settings…

….like who could view their profile and what information would be public to everyone on the Internet – when they register to join the site instead of after they join. Sites would also have to set defaults to private so that users would choose which information is public

These measures would not apply to India or it’s privacy laws though I heard they have been tightened in recent times; the impact on end users has not been discussed.

There’s one more compelling reason to avoid reliance on Facebook; falling traffic. Countries that were on the path to early adoption is seeing a fall in the traffic (perhaps an indication of slow and waning interest).

The average decline over months has yet to become negative, though. There are other possible factors at work, too, such as bugs in the Facebook ad tool that we get this data from…. in order to identif the long-term directions here is crucial for planning how to capitalize on Facebook’s success, or lack thereof.

It is most likely to be argued that India would perhaps be a “fantastic growth opportunity” but is corporate gibberish. Even if the “dark populations” are lighted up, in absence of aggressive promotion of localized content, it is unlikely to see a massive expansion. It seems that most of the companies keep their “outposts” in India to hire cheap labor for “translation” efforts. It’s not a generalized statement, but thats the reality. Again, there is NO reliable data to break up the traffic specific to the sites or universally agreed metrics to track traffic to popular sites (however, Opera Mobile‘s stats are likely to be more reliable).

Where do we go from here? It is important not to rely completely on the “social aspect” of the net. It is a matter of time before it fades away for perhaps a better “personalized approach” (more so as semantic web matures and we have better ontology) to deal with. That also comes as a rider but there is no “perfect ideal approach”. This is something that the next generation access devices and advertising agencies should keep in mind before they can actually deliver better “value added services”.

Related articles

• 3 Reasons that We are Moving Away from Facebook as a Platform (zuupy.com)
• Social-networking sites face new privacy battle (seattlepi.com)
• Social-networking sites face new privacy battle (sfgate.com)
• Facebook’s Stealth Attack on Google Exposes Its Own Privacy Problem (wired.com)
• Facebook is Passé. Pt. 2 – Here Comes the Mob(ile) and Those that Do no Evil! (trak.in)
• Does Anybody Really Care About Facebook’s P.R. Fumble? (allfacebook.com)
• Why Facebook Smeared Google (insights.chitika.com)
• Naukri and Monster, a no Longer Purple Cow, for Job Hunters in India (digitalgossips.com)

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

This post, was in part motivated by Shyam’s incisive commentary on FirstPost. It is promoted by Network18.

First Post primarily remains an “aggregator” of news; perhaps the underlying motivation is SEO tricks of identifying the trending topics and create topical interest by paying “journalists” to create blogs around it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like this. Trying to covert the traffic into “unique visitors”, cross promoting it on other media channels and identifying the “trends” to write on issues smacks of Huffington Post‘s tactics.

I personally believe that much of criticism that stems for Huffington Post comes from the mainstream media; possibly they are unable to comprehend the huge gains that this site has made in a short span of time. The owner has been able to do a web alone business, “aggregate” or scrape content, pay out dimes for it’s star bloggers and more important, get the advertising $$$. Hence, it tends to get the ire of the “purists”.

Indians, of course, wish to replicate a proven model. No one, wants to adapt to a new order or invest serious resources in building up a web property that has a lasting value proposition. Top of the mind recall is Techmeme and is my first

Image via CrunchBase

stop everyday in Google Reader to identify the breaking stories as it happens (it utilizes RSS feeds in the background; you could search for it’s leaderboard OPML file on their site to read the stories). A simple implementation (e.g. Webmeme) would have sufficed and promoted it’s journalists to blog independently of the constraints of “mainstream media”.

How is this really concerned with the ethos of the blog? Well, for starters, social internet is all useless hype. Twitter and Facebook are not here to stay; Orkut was a huge failure and Twitter is growing without a service model. It still doesn’t know about advertising nor is

Image via Wikipedia

there any reasonable model to influence it’s evolutiton. Nevertheless, in this internet access challenged country, this is a huge let down.

Perhaps the people behind the product are blissfully unaware of mobile access dominating the landscape (I doubt whether they have a mobile interface optimized) or of the “niche audience” that would be attracted to something like this. However, a cursory glance at the written articles leaves a lot to be desired.

(Highly recommended write up).

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• Twitter’s different news agenda from mainstream media and blogs (reportr.net)
• How Did You Hear about Osama’s Death? Take the Quiz (marketersstudio.com)
• What to believe about Twitter And its role in the evolving media landscape (impact.webershandwick.com)
• Is Twitter Really “Mainstream”? (markevanstech.com)
• Arianna & Dale, They Can Huff & PuffBut They Won’t Blow Guido’s House Down (order-order.com)
• Mainstream Media are Liars Cowards and Traitors for Shielding Obama- This Poll Proves It (truebluenz.wordpress.com)

Image via Wikipedia

I have cleaned up the sidebar; unfortunately, in it’s prior avatar, it was rather bland. Changes were made to the tag cloud and a category cloud has been added.

One of the major changes in the side bar is addition of Duckduckgo as the default search engine for this site. I have been using it extensively over the past few months and I recommend it thoroughly. I have been in touch with it’s developer, who’s put in his own money and has interesting ideas that are being implemented. My only concern about not using other search engines is the opaque policies on privacy and building up an online user profile to track down the individual customer. The technology isn’t perfect but a major impetus on social network has it downsides.

I am a big fan of RSS; I can’t imagine my life without it. Flipboard and other news readers have gained prominence in recent times, are all RSS readers. Unfortunately, a reader is as good as dead; I haven’t seen any major revamp of Google Reader as yet. I do have some ideas panned out about an ideal RSS reader (namely extraction of data and analyzing and categorizing data in real time), but there has been no development of late. (The only example that comes to my mind is Mutt, but it does not have a GUI front end and it’s terminal interface appeals to it’s users so it’s static there). Feed Daemon is a great client for Windows but I don’t use it so it’s disappointment again.

Nevertheless, now you can have RSS feeds for each category listed. The default has been applied after the revamp so you would get to see it more prominently on the cloud.

I haven’t updated “About” page so a cleaning there is also warranted.

The idea is to make it easier to port OUT the content; rather than the people coming on to the main site. Please email me in case you find any problems in accessing the content since I have extensively checked the implementation on my side.

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• RSS and social media icons (airodysseynet.wordpress.com)
• Flipboard: Threat and Opportunity (mondaynote.com)
• Wanted: A Smarter Alternative To Flipboard (fastcompany.com)
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• [Insite] Making the most of RSS: readers reviewed (journalism.co.uk)
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• DuckDuckGo Brings Private Searching And Zero Click Results To Android (androidpolice.com)
• DuckDuckGo – The Next Major Search Engine? (appreaders.com)
• Google’s New Search Layout Test: Borrowing From Blekko & DuckDuckGo? (searchenginewatch.com)
• SeatGeek Powers Artist Listings For DuckDuckGo (seatgeek.com)
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• Flipboard To Release New Version Thursday: Here\’s What\’s New [PICS] (huguesrey.wordpress.com)
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• Blekko (broadbandblog.in)
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A lot has been made up for Google Chrome OS and it’s notebook. It transpires that Samsung and Acer would manufacture laptops for chrome OS.

Is cloud computing inherently better than the “offline model” we have come to rely on? If the recent Amazon outage is any indication, I would prefer not to stick with it. In the same vein, I prefer my data to stay with me.

However, there is a huge business opportunity lurking behind such an initiative. Manufacturers in India (for netbooks/laptops/tablets) are dependent on Microsoft for a tapered down version of it’s utterly useless operating system. They could have easily sponsored a home grown “Indian initiative” for Linux and installed it on a bare bones hardware with Wifi and 3G connectivity. I reckon that using ARM processors, a basic display unit with a keyboard would suffice the price limit of around $200-250. It can be done.

One doesn’t need dual cores to run the fancy software; in any case, I hardly use the computing power at my disposal. But there was no choice in the market. Antix (a derivative of SimplyMepis) or even Arch Linux are good enough alternatives (not to forget Fluxbox and XFCE or E17) as the alternative desktop platforms to power the applications.

The telecom companies could have easily subsidized the model, charging it in their monthly bills. A win win situation. An operating system free of any hassles and companies get to spread the hardware with bundled data plans. I had earlier explored the same option but I guess the fancy CEO’s (who are glorified assholes anyway), are not interested in the blurb.

So you’d find the Vodafone Zoozoo enticing people to try out 3G in a market where computing is still a luxury and smartphones market sorely limited.

Thats stupidity compounded by assholism (of the extreme); because crores are being spent on advertising to milk the few customers who venture to buy out the expensive data plans.

Blah blah blah.

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• SlashGear 101: Google Chromebook (slashgear.com)
• First Google Chrome OS Notebooks Available June 15 (mashable.com)
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• Google Announces Expensive Web-Only ‘Chromebooks’ (techland.time.com)
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