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

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

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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Tags: Advertising, CrunchBase, Digital Divide, DTH, Facebook, Google, GUI, India, Indians, Internet, Internet Access Devices, journalist, mainstream media, Mainstream media, Media, Mobile, Smartphones, Social, techcrunch.com, traffic, TRAI, Twitter

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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Tags: 3G, Advertising, Amazon, Arch Linux, Assholes, Broadband, Browsers, CEO, Computing, Desktop Browsers, Digital Divide, FOSS, Google, Google Chrome, India, Internet Access Devices, laptop, Linux, Microsoft, Netbooks, Open Source and Access, Opera, operating system, Proprietary Software, Smartphones, smartphones, Tablets, tag, Value Added Services (VAS), Vodafone, Vodafone, web store, Wifi

Well, it could be the big news. I have always felt about the lackadaisical coverage in the Indian media about Broadband. If a ‘media watch’ blog is right, this could well explain why media hasn’t run after the Government of the day; chasing it like a mad dog running after a car.

To quote:

Not so long ago, a much-feared Indian publisher who shall go unnamed wanted the broadband expansion in India to be slowed down because, well, it would woo readers away from his newspaper to the world wide web.

However, Times of India has a vested interest to promote Broadband now. In a blatant attempt to publicize it’s web property (a cesspool of stinking crap called as Indiatimes), it has carried a series of “news” mentioning about why “Cricket is fun online”. Of course, it’s juvenile attempt from Times but important nevertheless. Their attempts are going to face an iron wall of crap connectivity on Indian soil.

One word. Assholes.

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Tags: Advertising, Assholes, Broadband, Broadband, Digital Divide, DTH, India, Internet, Mainstream media, Media, Mobile, Times of India, USD, World Wide Web