@rgumental @dvisor

Whisky & Buttermilk are individually great.. But most sane people won't make a cocktail mixing two.. And you won't drink buttermilk by pouring it in a whisky glass...  And I think this Google plus is like a platform where they have attempted to bring two different social needs together. Fundamentally, facebook is about connecting to people whom you know.. Engaging in conversations where you expect people whom you know to reply..  On the other hand, twitter is aspirational to the core. You tend to follow celebrities, politicians, sports-persons etc..  What google plus has attempted to do is to bring these two fundamentally different social needs together... In a way, your public circle in google plus is equivalent to your twitter network.. And the other circles that you make are more or less your facebook networks. The tweets that you make are likely to be much different in nature from your facebook status message updates.. And vice versa as well..  ...

There's a joke that's going round here in Kuwait ( Yep.. I'm in Middle East again for a 2 month consulting assignment ).. Whoever who sits with their heads up in a discussion room / gathering is a Nokia phone holder.. whoever who sits by looking down is an iPhone owner ..because they will be fiddling around with the gadget in a perpetual manner :) .. I'm surprised at the level of popularity that this device has achieved over here.. iPhone & iPad are said to be perpetually running out of stock.. I checked couple of stores.. they keep only the latest version ( which is often exorbitantly priced ).. For eg: There is a huge price difference between iPad 2 with just wifi support & iPad 2 with wifi & 3G support.. And all the shops have only this wifi + 3G option available.. Smart sales strategy Unlike the Western markets, the 'App-Culture' has not quite caught up here. But no matter, people keep playing on with this device for whatever reason.. And peopl...

 If you have upgraded to the new version of Google profiles, you wouldn't have missed the uncanny resemblance it has with facebook ..My profile is at  https://profiles.google.com/ajithprasadb / The Buzz feed is sort of a stream update that you have on your facebook home page, the picasa links to your photo album... If you have configured maps, you would see a location snapshot as well.. And if google puts some intelligent thoughts into the data volume in the underlying gmail account, it can easily bring in a friends / connections network to that profile page as well.. Though, this is still far from where facebook stands in today's social web, i think finally google is getting into the social space in a correct way.. There won't be any big launches or anything like that... They may slowly start adding more & more services / features to that profile page..And in one year or so, I won't be surprised if that profile page becomes central to our social page communications...

Dear Nokia Share Holders, Over the last few days, you would have read & re-read the so-called open-letters ( letter 1 , letter 2 , & the revolting letter -3 ) many times.. If you were an institutional investor, you would have made handsome profits by shorting your dear 'NOK' if you knew what was coming. If you were a retail long term investor you would have been puzzled with the enduring hold/sell question seeing the wild market fluctuations that were coming minutes after each of those letters. One cannot collectively put blame on all share-holders for the mis-management happening. If your holding is/was small, you would have had absolutely no chance in influencing the decision to pick someone   - who has literally no big background in smart phone business - into the most important position in your dear 'NOK' . However, I cannot selectively address the audience. Hence I've to hold you responsible. What your CEO has done is to make your dear 'NO...

No..No.. Its not an expletive :) .. On the other hand, this Monday(15-Nov) could be a day when email communication gets redefined again.. Last time it happened was when G-Mail was announced in 2003-04.. And as per lot of  reports, Facebook might be coming up with a mail system.. News Links -  http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_16599333?source=most_emailed -  http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/facebook-gmail-titan/ -  http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/13/youve-got-fmail/ -  http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/10/facebook-november-event/

While I was studying engineering, there was a huge fan-following towards this Open-Source / Open Standards in technology.. I guess thats still there.. Microsoft is/was seen as the villain.. Linux was the holy grail of computer science folks.. 6-8 years have passed by after that .. Now, the villain is Apple , with its tightly controlled iOs,Appstore ecosystem.. And the perceived open-angel is Google with its Android ecosystem. Steve Jobs in his various interviews and talks insists a profound point about this open-ness. "Ultimately customers are not bothered about whether the product is open or not..They are bothered about the experience with the product"... There is this nice NYTimes article that I came across recently.. They are comparing the Mac-Windows phase with iPhone-Android 'battle' now. In the quest for perfection in experience, Apple has largely kept a close-knit system. In the quest for economies of scale, Android has taken a lot of manufacturers into it...

  There's this interesting joke that I came across in Seeking-Alpha " Intel bought McAfee because the bloatware that McAfee sells is second biggest driving force for CPU upgrades after Windows. And CPU upgrades are good for business at Intel"           Its a strange acquisition in many senses.. Intel paid a huge premium ( 60% premium @ $48 per share in an all cash deal worth $ 7.7 billion in cash ).. Never heard of a tech-acquisition that big in recent times.. Even the big buys made by Oracle were a mix of cash & share options. So, what made Intel buy McAfee which runs a seemingly unrelated business of anti-virus & security software ?          To understand this in a better way, there was this interesting debate between Steve Jobs @ Apple vs Adobe..It was over the unsuitability of flash for iphone..The letter by Jobs is still given on Apple site  .. A lot of points in this debate are on open vs clos...

I just went through the google analytics report of my blog indicating the keyword searches that lead people to my blog...Some of the interesting ones given below.. 1. Satanic worship in Kerala , Devil worship in Kerala ( 6 ppl searched for this ... :) ) 2. NRI going back to India ( Was that a matrimony related search :P ) 3. Whats happening In the economy ( Ah..atleast google considers my writings on these worthy enough ) 4. Aim of my life ( People do tend to ask this question.. But finding out answer to this question from web looks to be a bit weird :) ) 5. Keralamatrimonynair ( ahem!!!...Google is intelligent :) ) 6. Ponds facepowder product presentation ( Ah...this should be some MBA student ) 7. Spending money in MBA is good or not ( I wish it is good :) ) If I go through some of these keyword targeted posts, I might be able to find some word-based relation between the keywords & what i've written .. For eg..The satan / devil related searches were actually landing on...

    About an year back, I blogged about Google Phone .. Quite a few developments have happened in this area after that..And a few days before, Google came up with its first Android based phone  , manufactured by HTC..        Quite a few of the applications in this G-phone or G1 happens to be similar to what I thought about last year.. quoting Larry Magid's article, " there is already an application called iSkoop that lets you make free or inexpensive international and domestic calls using Skype".. -- This is a key point to Google's overall strategy..10  years later ( or maybe even before that ),  G-phone will be a device just to connect to internet..No SIM card as such..U'll talk to people using G-talk ..Just take the g-talk in your phone, tap the person's user ID, and make a call.. No complicated maths like STD/ISD rates or anything like that..Infact, the much hyped about number portability will come into existance this way..i.e, as long as u have ur gmail ID...

Finally I got to operate an iphone.. And man..what a device..No wonder ppl queued up in front of Apple stores to buy this .. The safari browser, video/audio quality, touchpad keyboard, image quality...everything.. all looks too good.. So, my next phone has to be this or Google should come out with their G-phone soon :)

Caution :- Heavy technology – business related article.. Quite long too.. People who are not interested, please skip .. This is an article which can bring brickbats or bouquets to me some time later :) Over the last few months, blogosphere has been abuzz with news about a mobile phone that Google is about to launch. The frenzy over this so called G-phone has reached such proportions that people have started coming out with imaginary designs of the G-phone.. Being someone who is extremely interested in this search – revenue related Google business or rather g-business, I’ve too joined the group by launching a g-phone blog and hoping to rake in some ad-revenues :) .. However, this post is not just about speculation ..This post is about some facts of the search industry and why does it make sense for Google to get into mobile phone related business . The Search – Revenue Entangle Some people laugh at Google’s pay-per-click policy. And most of us can count usin...

The most awaited gadget of the year / perhaps the decade , hits US markets on this friday - June - 29th at 6 PM . Below is a link to review of apple i-phone from Walter Mossberg. Apple I-phone Review . After seeing the video ( I cannot embed it here..Go to that link and see it ) , my impression is .. " This is really something very good " . I wonder when it'll be available atleast in the grey markets of Delhi and B'lore :) , Not to buy at the first go..but atleast to check it out. ( PS:- Apple's Safari - 3 browser was made available for windows about one month ago.. I tried it out.. Looks kill, but bugs also kills you :) .. It seemed to be a classic example of beauty without brains. ) Ajith

Should have put up this post sometime back.. Neways, better late than never.. I finally said a temporary goodbye to my good-old Nokia 1100 .. Switched to Motoming - A1200 , which I bought through my friend at Motorola getting a good discount :) .. I'm no geek to review a mobile-phone.. So, restricting it into some points.. Pros Stylish, Voice quality is good, Camera is good, Opera web browser is OK,Pretty stable, Hand writing recognition is fine, Battery charge stays on for quite a good time...etc Cons It has only Realplayer support..I havent yet managed to install divx codec in it :( , There is a business card reader, which is actually quite useless.. The phone has a 200 odd pages user manual along with it, which I chucked after 2 days. Aftermath Seriously irritated with the Airtel customercare centre.. Had a hell lot of trouble for enabling browsing in it... Still lot of things to sort it out on that front.. Notably, though I can browse blogs...

I've got stuck to wikipedia for some time as I'm in search for a vast variety of topics these days..Ranging from Probability distributions to Indian history, i've been reading a lot .. Compared to google, if u know the exact phrase to be searched, wiki is a better option. 99% of the searches in wiki will get the correct pages. If it doesnt have info , it clearly says that. And many of the google searches invariably lead to wiki. I think this is perhaps the tool which will challenge the hegemony of google once it gets popular among the average user... A bit busy, so an abrupt stop to the blog today... Ajith