थे beginning

Little more than last couple of years, I have been taking management classes. Though the subjects had varieties from Quantitative Methods, Productions and Operations Management, IT for Managers, MIS, etc.; my core area of interest is on the Internet side (ICTs, Convergence, e-Business, etc.). Over this period I also faced starting problem as expected to manage my presentations, teaching materials, cases, etc. And on top of it, as I love research more than teaching; I could devote less time on teaching. So on many a time, I did realize that I was managing my classes with sort of 'fire fighting' mode. Because on research, one can explore and discuss on lot many related topics whereas teaching needs to be much more focused, structured and there, unfortunately again, is a syllabus (and evaluation).

This blog is an attempt to structure my materials, ppts, articles etc. Another driver of this comes from the KM system that most Indian B-schools offer (or I could learn!). As most of the material essentially rests on our desktop environment (or at best in mails), it becomes difficult to assess them by any (myself or even the students, who should be the intended beneficiaries in the end), at any time, from anywhere. I am still not sure whether I can link my ppts from here (in say Google docs!

Here I came across another platform called slideshare, looked interesting ), however I am certain that there would be some ways. True, it's a bit difficult, even boring, and time consuming - however hopefully this effort would be justified as more and more materials get loaded here over the months, and more users use it and find it relevant.
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Can Nokia Recapture Its Glory Days?
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Google to Start Selling Own Phone Next Year : Couple of my students suggested this...they were right!
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UPDATE 1-Cyber Monday sales may hit record, Amazon ahead
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Lenovo to Buy Back Handset Unit for Double the Price
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The Ten Most Influential Internet Moments of the Decade: Surprised to see no mention of China...looks like a US-Govt./interest job in selecting this!
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Free Speech and the Internet .
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Price War Brews Between Amazon and Wal-Mart : Must wonder whether one of the figment editorials or true futuristic reality!
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H-P Gets a Boost from Services, Cost Cutting
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Report: Wikipedia losing volunteers: I think it's normal as it follows Nolan and Gibson's model (early successes (adoption) followed by contagion and now is the phase of control and the final phase will be on Integration (when Wikipedia - applying some artificial intelligence will need to auto-update/create new entries).
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Cellphone Entertainment Takes Off In Rural India .
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Microsoft, News Corp. Discuss Cutting Off Google, FT Reports & A Google News Defection May Dent The 'Franchise'.
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Google Offers Peek at Operating System, a Potential Challenge to Windows
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Is There a Method in Cellphone Madness? .
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Google Goliath Confronts David in BT’s Ribbit
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Google Introduces 'Go' Programming Language
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Google buys mobile ad firm for $750 million
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Intense Review Is Expected for NBC Deal
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Cisco’s New Collaboration Push Explained & Cisco Software Takes On Microsoft, IBM.
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EBay's PayPal Launches Open Payments System
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‘Bill Gates of Belgium’ Fights SAP With Free Software .
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Internet Turns 40 Today: First Message Crashed System
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SAP Cuts Software-Sales Forecast as Customers Reduce Spending
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Nokia-Apple row may last more than 1 year
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Mobile web usage surge raises hopes of gear demand
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Google's Great Expectations
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Android Adoption is About To Explode"
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M-Commerce's Big Moment
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Mobile marvels: Droughts, Grain Markets and Food Crisis in Niger , Jhang Model Pakistan, and quite a few more.
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Toward a Wider Wireless World
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FTC Sets Endorsement Rules for Blogs
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Two-Thirds of Americans Object to Online Tracking
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A $1 Million Research Bargain for Netflix, and Maybe a Model for Others
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Internet 'net neutrality' is endorsed by FCC chief.
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White House unveils cloud-based Apps.gov in bid to fix federal IT & Now, Even the Government Has an App Store.
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Ad Shift Throws Blogs a Business Lifeline
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We can certainly create checks and balances: Nilekani : Would be interesting to see how China does it (However, he said, there was no other country in the world where a billion peoples’ biometrics were captured and stored in an online database) - even other than biometrics. (China Set up Citizen Identification Information System)
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Free Speech, Now that Speech Is Free
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Google Everywhere: As the Search Giant Grows, How Much Is Too Much?
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Innovation, Black Swans & Disruption
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Mobile technology may help city dwellers hitch ride
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Google's investors look for next big thing
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Internet providers seek low broadband bar
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EBay CEO: Skype Investors 'Confident' Of Work-Around Software
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Server Revenue Reached New Lows in Q2, IDC Says: Roughly shows that the server market is bigger than (or equal to) the PC market (assuming 240 million sales and $1000 average price, excluding notebooks probably).
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Information Technology and the New Global Economy: Tensions, Opportunities, and the Role of Public Policy
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The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine
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EBay Is Said to Have Deal to Sell Skype
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I am not reading enough...I knew it's true over last few months since the expiry of my wife...however as my 8-year son puts it - we will have to live. As I was reading a few articles this morning, came out with a series of interesting articles: (1) Dial 'M' for Mackerel to (2) a relatively old but beautiful study on impact of mobile phone on fishing markets in Kerala (I won't say I understood everything!) by Robert Jensen and then (3) The economics of information by Branscomb (though I was looking one from Stigler as stated by Jensen).
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Microsoft bets on making "dumb" phones smarter
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Inching closer to the perfect e-reader for students

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Can Yahoo Make E-Mail Pay Off?
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Nokia Enters PC Market With Mini-Laptop Launch
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Time Warner, YouTube Reach Video, Ad Rev Agreement
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GM Cancels ‘Hideous’ Buick SUV After Would-Be Customers Twitter
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China Mobile Profit Drops for First Time Since 1999 .
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Unwired: The decline of the landline
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Nokia: To Make Handsets More Affordable In India
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Deadline for U.S. broadband grants, loans extended
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Smartphone battle opens door for OLED technology
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U.S. tests system to break foreign Web censorship and this one also Q+A - China's backdown over Internet filter plans
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Chambers Push Into Servers Pits Cisco Against Hewlett-Packard
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The Google vs. Apple War Begins
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Google Woos Business Users With Billboard Ad Campaign : I was under the impression Google never ads (other than recruitment, which could be wrong)...however it may show a big shift now...in industry structure.
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Google Summons Android for Smart-Phone Attack
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A Microsoft-Yahoo Deal
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Domestic market to lead IT growth
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Apple bars Google Voice app from iTunes store.
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The ICT Sector and the Global Connectivity System:
A sustainable development overview - little long, but quite good.
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World Poor Spell $7.9 Billion in Mobile Cash for Vodafone, MTN
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Barnes & Noble Opens E-Bookstore With 700,000 Titles
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New York Times Considers $5 Monthly Web-Access Fee
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Google Announces Chrome OS
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Google Investigates Service Inaccessibility in China - and while reading it, I came to know about herdict . Interesting.
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Nokia Failure to Beat IPhone Software Puts Market Share at Risk .
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New Military Command for Cyberspace
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SAP Loses Customers to Oracle on Ellison’s Acquisition Binge .
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T-Mobile announces second Google phone: I have been hearing the word 'smartphone' for some time...needed to understand what it was (as surely there's a future here) and what's happening. Wikipedia was again helpful to build the initia understanding.
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Chennai is now wi-fi-enabled : Interesting...however I didn't understand the business model of Zylog or how the connectivity begings (log on to wi5, but how - through a different service provider first?). It's the same question the EU customers would not receive PCs without a browser, here there is no ISPs to log onto wi5.
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I.B.M. to Help Clients Fight Cost and Complexity : I covered the topic (although it's also true that the topic remains a bit cloudy even now and probably would be so for some more years). I could not however digest the IDC estimate of 'By 2011, IDC estimates, there will be one trillion Internet-connected devices, up from 500 million in 2006'. That would mean, for globally around 7 billion people,(forget about large numbers of have nots, know nots and not connected ones so far), more than 100 net-connected devices per person. That's absolutely ridiculous. I think it would be 1 billion, however it can be more than that as well (1-4 billions range).
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EC to Pursue Antitrust Case Despite Microsoft's IE Decision
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China to Add Web-Censoring Software to PCs, WSJ Says
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Verizon Business launches cloud computing service with a note on concept of cloud computing from Wikipedia.
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Time Warner, AOL to Split by Year-End.
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ALL THINGS DIGITAL: News Corp.'s Miller: Free "Doesn't Work" .
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Google: The internet is 'the right programming model'
Track this topic Print story Post comment 'The web has won'.
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From Campaigning to Governing: Politics and Policymaking in the New Obama Administration
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Micro-Billing, Byte by Byte, Suits the World of Cellphones
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Forging Better Ties With IT
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Why IT Solutions Are Never Simple
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In Challenge to Microsoft, PC Makers Test Laptops Running Google Software
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Victim of Wikipedia: Microsoft to shut down Encarta
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Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries
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The Global Information Economy: Gives a snapshot of global IT market, segments, sizes, geographies. Little old - but useful. Both WITSA and ITAA can be good sources along with Gartner, and consulting firms (NASSCOM for India).
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Stephen Wolfram and the techno-dianetics of Google-ology.
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Woe Is PC: Sales to Fall Faster Than Ever Before

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Salesforce.com Beats 4Q Views, Lowers FY2010 Revenue Range
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Warner Music Removes Its Videos From YouTube as Licensing Talks Stall
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Visa and Google Team Up on Mobile Payments
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MySpace tries to strike new chord in digital music
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Oracle Is Entering Hardware Business .
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New WSJ.com Builds on Its Community of Subscribers
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Retailers Reprogram Workers In Efficiency Push: Somehow my heart didn't like such a system...there were few good articles on Google@10 as well elsewhere.
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Countrywide hi-tech network to track down terrorists
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Wal-Mart to deploy ‘smart’ shop network.
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Amazon Plans an Online Store for Movies and TV Shows
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Judge to Tiffany: Police Your Own Brand: We followed the earlier story...here is the follow up.
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Intel Sales Slowdown May Signal End of Growth Status
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Comcast loses: FCC head slams company's P2P filtering
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Apple’s Latest Opens a Developers’ Playground : I must admit I missed out Apple mostly, more so due to my nonassociation with any of its products. However this is a company that deserves attention as much as Google does. One key factor of future would be Google's Mobile platform against that of Apple.
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New York Times Drops as Lehman Cuts Profit Estimates : So the analysts wake up when rest of the world knows something for years...true, one can always expect NYT to innovate and increase online ad-revenue or even the online ad-industry itself can get more attractive.
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Newer, Faster, Cheaper iPhone 3G.
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Digital threat prompts movie industry downgrade: The journey from digital anarchy to creative destruction continues in newer and newer areas...
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Technology reshapes America's classrooms
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Google Changes Home Page, Adding Link to Privacy Policy
: I agree with the 1st comment..
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Mobile reach to triple in 4 years: Gartner : I think that's an overly optimistic figure...I would rather put the figure (realistic to a degree of optimistic) between 500-600 millions, rather than 737 millions.
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Medco, Wal-Mart Merging Electronic Prescription Networks
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EBay Ordered to Pay $61 Million in Sale of Fakes : In some sense, redefines liability in the online space.
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Google and Creator of ‘Family Guy’ Strike a Deal : Challenging task, indeed!
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Tech majors to join hands against patent suits.
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Ballmer Is Left With `Google Envy,' Sinking Stock .
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Introduction to the InfoTech Industry
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In new Web names, .sky is the .limit.
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Gates exits, leaving Ballmer in Microsoft spotlight
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Android vs. iPhone: ‘This is where the pain happens’: Then think about the dilemma in academic world...many academicians are still not confortable in referring news-media. But an area where changes happen too fast, too often and of too radical nature; news-media seems to be reporting that much faster than scholarly publications.
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Top music seller’s store has no door . Just few months back it ranked 2nd, and now...what a pace of change in the digital economy!
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Nokia buys social networking site Plazes
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Google's mobile phone plans hit delays - WSJ
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Media revenue to hit $2.2 trillion by 2012.
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Microsoft seeks support against Google-Yahoo deal.
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Internet Becoming America's Window to Politics
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U.S. Internet will shrink to 2 strong players: report: I didn't know of IAC Interactive (though have used ask.com and heard about match.com)...
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Technology Group Plans Wireless Network: A digital convergence for the future may be taking shape...
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Skype to sell unlimited international calls for $9.95/month
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Partners: Salesforce for Google Apps Proves SAAS Versatility.
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Sizing Up a Post-Yahoo Ad Landscape.
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Europeans warn search engines: Delete user data sooner
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Despite economy, online merchants see growth
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Dot-coms What Have We Learned?: An interesting, easy-reading type article. The hindsight back in 2000 must be appreciated. A must read. And also this one: Trend War: Internet Technology
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Open Questions for Verizon's Open Access: As telcos move from closed walls to open access, the questions would eventually get answered, expectedly.
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China Mobile Fourth-Quarter Profit Rises on User Gain : It's high time that in management classes, we pick up these Chinese firms more often now than the yesterdays when we used to give examples from American or European (and occasionally from Japanese firms). Almost $12 billion net yearly profit - compare with Airtel at $1.5-2 billion. And in user base, Airtel may be even less. 'The carrier's gain in subscribers hasn't been matched by an increase in customer spending as the company focused on rural areas, where the average disposable income last year was 4,140 yuan, a third of the 13,786 yuan for urban residents. Last year's average monthly revenue per customer, or ARPU, an industry measure of the size of a phone bill, was 89 yuan ($12.60), down from 90 yuan a year earlier, the company said in a statement to Hong Kong stock exchange. China Mobile's ARPU is about 20 percent of Japanese competitor NTT DoCoMo Inc.'s 6,290 yen ($61) for the quarter ended Dec. 31. China added 8.5 million mobile-phone subscribers for a total of 555.8 million at the end of January, according to official data. China Mobile, the world's biggest wireless-phone carrier by users, gained a record seven million users in January for a total of 376.4 million. '


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China's Alibaba 2007 net more than quadruples: $136 million profit is no doubt a big achievement. And if the growth rate persists, B2B must have made a success - in China at least. And less than 60% marketshare shows there are others. Revenue is around $300 million. And paid to unpaid customers are still 1:90.
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Gates Warns Congress : Science education in India is also losing stream, and is an omen of fundamentals being wrong.
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YouTube getting TV shot from TiVo: I wonder if this comes now as a result of Hulu
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The Search for the Killer iPhone App: Bill Gates said in 2000 '‘the Internet was an obscure network of large computers used only by a small community of researchers’ that preceded the Web, ‘the "killer application" that transformed the Internet into a global phenomenon was the World Wide Web. Developed in the late 1980s (1989) at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) from research by Tim Berners-Lee'. Now it's turn for mobile phones and iPhone, if it can have that first.
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Ad Wars: Google's Green Light: Expectedly, display ads would gain and already doing so.
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I often read about Thomson, more in financial and business reporting, however never visited its wite. Likes this history of the company and how it evolved to the e-media times from mass-media days: Into the new millennium:
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Testing Over, Hulu.com to Open Its TV and Film Offerings This Week : If I remember it right, it was created to take on YouTube primarily...

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H&M Buoys Stock With $15 Bikinis for Web-Savvy Women : B2C reported after long time...
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Airtel launches mobile payment solutions
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Microsoft Office On-The-Web Available For Public Trial : The writing is on the wall...Google Docs met its 1st success as competition from the leader comes.
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BUSINESS MODELS ON THE WEB: I liked this one since last couple of years, may be even more.
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Microsoft sees Yahoo role in software-as-a-service: 'Analyst Ray Wang of Forrester Research said Liddell's statement made sense considering Yahoo's reach on the Web.
"Yahoo is essentially a software-as-a-service company by definition, so there is a lot of merit there," he said. "On a more forward-looking scenario, you could see Yahoo serving as the distribution channel given the existing infrastructure."He said Microsoft could build on Yahoo to offer services to both consumers and businesses. "Imagine Outlook Calendar Live available to al Yahoo users or Online Office for personal, small, midsize companies via Yahoo mail," he said.
Referring to Microsoft's visionary chief software architect, he added, " Imagine all of Microsoft's capabilities delivered as live services as Ray Ozzie would envision."
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ComScore clarifies view on Google 'paid click' data: I doubt whether the research was sophisticated enough to state better quality as a reason for drop...does it mean they measured conversions as well.
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Google Goes After Another Microsoft Cash Cow: The challenge of Google would be to retain its search+web lead and snatch some core areas from MS or make one of their long-term mobile/other developments a big hit (external factor driven). Huge potential, but both very difficult as well.
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Adobe Blurs Line Between PC and Web :
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Microsoft President on Micro-Hoo: We Can Do It: We followed the earlier story of Balmer, now comes Johnson. Stating anything for sure may only prove one's stupidity in areas like this, however I will also doubt the synergies and value-additive potential of this deal (if goes through).
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EBay boycott begins, to uncertain effect : Interesting bad development, downside can be high and significant.
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Verizon Stabs Sprint With Unlimited Wireless Plan: In India, we often see this, primarily from Reliance Communications, as they offer even one paisa (equivalent to a penny) lower rates that what Airtel does.
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Yang's $2 Blackjack, EBay Failure Leave Yahoo Unready: Though the article is good, too much reliance on standard phrases and structures by not so expert columnists at times create confusions. Take for example: 'Three years of surging sales lifted Yahoo's value past $100 billion, then the technology market crashed, wiping out 97 percent of Yahoo's worth. While the collapse sent Pets.com Inc. and Webvan Group Inc. into bankruptcy, Yahoo survived and began growing again in 2002.' Does it mean that Yahoo's m-cap did fall to $3 billion odd during the dot-com bust days. True highly probably, but I am not sure about it...


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The impact of the internet on business: While literature review, found this old Economist article...
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Yahoo to Cut 1,000 Jobs, and Warns on Growth : As the Internet giants start reporting (in the backdrop of good reporting for MS, Intel, PC makers, IBM - true, few had poor guidance), Yahoo! disappointed again. I believe Yahoo! still can come out of the mess they have been in last couple of years, however they seem to be not able to synergise their strategies. Panama is good, however it's acceptance may still be less. They need at be more aggressive on their equivalent of AdWord and AdSense...period (and improve search engine).
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Cisco rolls out new data-center switch: 'Tech giant says network gear can copy all Internet data in less than 8 minutes'. Mind-boggling indeed!
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Cellular Unit and Internet Stand Out for Verizon : 'Verizon announced net income of $1.07 billion for the fourth quarter, ended Dec. 31, up from $1.03 billion in the period a year earlier, roughly in line with analysts’ estimates. Its operating revenue rose 5.6 percent, to $23.8 billion. For the year, revenue was up 6.1 percent, to $93.4 billion. The company’s cellular unit, Verizon Wireless, which is a joint venture with Vodafone Group, was the brightest spot, adding two million new customers in the fourth quarter for a total of 65.7 million. The number of home broadband subscribers grew 17.9 percent in 2007 from the previous year. The traditional telephone business was a different story. Verizon lost 10.6 percent of its residential lines in 2007. Over all, the total number of landlines, including business customers, fell to 41.4 million in 2007 from 45.1 million in 2006, a drop of 8.1 percent...Continued growth in the wireless business, of course, is the result of a continuing shift in consumer behavior as people turn to mobile phones not only to talk to friends and family, but also to listen to music, send text messages and use the Internet...Instead, he (Dennis F. Strigl, Verizon’s president and chief operating officer) said, the biggest challenge for companies like Verizon is competition from cable companies and newer entrants. “I think the impact of the economy on the business is much less likely than competition,” said Mr. Strigl. To retain more residential customers, Verizon is betting on its FiOS fiber-optic network, which allows the company to offer television, phone and Internet services in a bundled package. The company has more than a million FiOS TV customers, Mr. Strigl said. Over time, he said, Verizon expects to shift more spending from its core business to FiOS. When asked if traditional landline service would ever go away, Mr. Strigl said that its definition would be expanded to include video and data as well as voice. “I think we are rapidly transforming into something other than a utility,” he said. '. Makes sense
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America's 25 Fastest-Growing Tech Companies: Many are unknown names...need further explorations.

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AT&T, Verizon May Dominate U.S. Airwaves Auction : I don't understand the back-end technology...however digital transmission to reach handsets...for a long time, I have been using cells only to speak (rarely) or send sms'. I believe sooner or later I need to upgrade my model and skills to use it.
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Digital Music Sales Grow, but at Slower Rate
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Microsoft Bucks the Tech Trend: So Microsoft still remians the giant who grows faster than many of the Internet giants...and their product pipeline also looks impressive. Let's watch Google's result...would it's quarterly profit and guidance match in numbers that of MS, say even to 1/3rd. I doubt...but there can be big surprises none the less. 'The company said fiscal 2008 sales will be $59.9 billion to $60.5 billion and per-share earnings will be $1.85 to $1.88. That represents an increase from its earlier forecast for $58.8 billion to $59.7 billion in revenue and $1.78 to $1.81 in per-share earnings. Analysts' consensus estimate for the year was $59.3 billion in sales and $1.81 in earnings per share.' and with those numbers, a PE of 19 looks quite reasonable, with cash balance and order book. 'To be sure, there are still areas where Microsoft is vulnerable. Its online services business—mostly revenue from placing ads on the Web—widened its loss to $245 million during the second quarter, compared with a loss of $118 million a year earlier. "There are some pretty visible gaps in Microsoft's strategy, and the most visible one is in their online business," says Citigroup's Thill. And worldwide PC sales, which rose a healthy 13.1% in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to market researcher Gartner (IT), could falter, hurting Microsoft's Windows and Office franchises.'
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Wealth Funds Hear Disclosure Warning in Davos Meeting : ALl the liberalism may go when the need is over...true, I also support a code of conduct.
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AT&T Profit Jumps 62% as IPhone Lures Subscribers 'To fend off cable competition that is eating into sales, the company is spending as much as $7 billion over five years to expand its U-verse TV service, which uses fiber-optic lines and copper wires to transmit video'..
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Nokia's profits jump, market share grows to 40 percent: 'Nokia sold 133.5 million phones in the quarter, more than its three closest rivals combined, and beating analysts' average forecast of 130.7 million phones in the poll.' This morning itself I was wondering whether going forward we would see a slowdown of the process of buying a new handset for existing user. What I mean is, as of now the growth is coming from both new users and replacement sales. However as new user base slows down (true, lots of opportunity in India, China and Africa even now), it will be primarily driven by replacement sales. Here also we saw a lot of radical new features still getting added. However going forward, there is bound to be a saturation. And at that point, mobile phone makers need to relook at application-based revenue (by partnersing with others) than product-based revenue. Likely scenario...no idea. Even the opposite can also happen!...'Nokia said the average price of phones sold rose by 1 euro from the previous quarter to 83 euros, beating analysts' average expectation of 82 euros.'...Is Moore's law still applicable? I doubt. 'Helped by its larger scale, Nokia boasts much stronger profit margins than its rivals; the operating profit margin from its three cellphone business units rose to 23.8 percent. Its closest rivals in terms of profitability, Sony Ericsson
and Samsung, reported profit margins of 13 percent and 11.4 percent, respectively.'
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Growing Online, BBC Is to Join With MySpace : So the content revolution is taking place...remember Relentless Upheaval in the Media and 'It's e-Media, Stupid'.
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Trai for 74% FDI in mobile TV services: Good to see policy-makers already thinking about many of these futuristic applications (at least in India, true certain service providers offer it on certain handsets - but the compatibility factors and quality again is important).
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Bidding Set to Begin for Wireless Spectrum: 'I don't think the open-access pledges by AT&T and Verizon Wireless will change the market," said Jean-Louis Carrara, vice president of telecommunications at Gemalto, a digital-security firm. "What will change things is when manufacturers start making phones that work across all networks."..The large carriers say they will allow any device to be attached to their networks but don't say when. The radio spectrum up for bid is some of the best ever sold to the cellular industry, because it provides a stronger signal through buildings and across long distances. The radio-airwave licenses have been used by television broadcasters to transmit their signals, but they won't be using them with the transition to digital television in February 2009.
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IBM Targets Small Businesses: I myself do foresee maximum change and disruptive products services emerge in the enterprise section, more so for SMEs - bordering functionalities of individual applications and business applications.
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Time Warner's Pricing Paradox: 'Time Warner and other major Internet service providers (ISPs) often blame slowdowns on the 5% of users who consume as much as 50% of network capacity downloading vast numbers of large files, such as movies, videos, and songs. By charging such consumers more, companies could encourage them to curb excess use, or generate enough extra cash to enable their systems to handle higher data demands. "What we are trying to do is create the best experience possible for all of our users," Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley says. Unintended Consequences
But the plan could also stifle demand for movie-download services from companies including Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Netflix (NFLX), some consumer groups say. "It depends on how they structure it," says Art Brodsky, communications director of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group focused on digital rights. "You don't want to do it so you totally discourage uploading videos and downloading videos, and doing what the Net is used for."

Another unintended consequence of tiered pricing is that it could discourage some companies from launching new services that require large bandwidth, consumer advocates say. The plans could also penalize early adopters whose heavy use of new services helps developers come up with refinements that use up less bandwidth, says Marvin Ammori, general counsel for Free Press, a nonprofit consumer group that advocates laws that would bar network owners such as cable and phone companies from using discriminatory pricing and other methods (BusinessWeek.com, 1/29/07) to smother competition. "It could stifle new high-bandwidth applications. Time Warner intends to offer plans priced for up to 5, 10, 20, and 40 gigabytes per month, with middle-tiered plans running roughly the same amount average users currently pay for high-speed connections. (Time Warner offers high-speed plans for $29.95 a month in some areas.)...Time Warner isn't alone in considering higher fees for big Net users. Comcast (CMCSA), one of the largest residential high-speed ISPs, is evaluating such a system, says Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury. Cox Communications, which has 3.6 million U.S. subscribers, is also looking into variable pricing, though it doesn't have any immediate plans to adopt such a system, says spokesman David Grabert.

Verizon (VZ), which has been rolling out its own high-speed Internet service across the country, has no plans to adopt a similarly tiered payment plan, says Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe. "I think this is Time Warner's response to the cable companies' problem in a shortage of bandwidth," says Rabe. "We don't think that we are in a position that we need to do that." Currently, Comcast and others manage users who exceed bandwidth limits by warning them to curb their data use or upgrade to a business account, lest their service be terminated (BusinessWeek.com, 3/27/07). The strategy has resulted in loud complaints from customers and consumer advocates.

Time Warner's tiered service would also warn users when they are consuming more data than their plan allows and encourage them to upgrade to a higher plan. However, it would charge users fees for exceeding their gigabyte limit, rather than boot them from the service. "Time Warner's pricing test could be a welcome development for consumers and for the cable industry," Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said in a statement. "Cable companies could be able to better manage their networks and costs, so they won't have to resort to cutting off customers for exceeding phantom usage levels or throttling some applications." " The comments are also interesting: 'Instead of making us pay more, they should pony up the billions of dollars the US government has given them to establish a higher bandwidth offering at prices competitive with the EU. Our broadband is pathetic compared to theirs, and we were promised that wider bandwidth (Fiber) would be implemented by now. Well, it's not. Telco's got away with not providing, and Cable is complicit in charging more for already lousy bandwidth. Fix this, Congress, our you're out of a job next year.' was one



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Sun Snaps Up Database Firm, MySQL: Quite a bit of a news...and if I am not mistaken, SUn always had problem with cashflows. Though many felt it had some of the best open-source category best products, it even had a settle down with Microsoft where MS paid some money to settle some Patent/antitrust issues. And now Sun is also on the move: ' The deal, which Sun Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz calls the "most important acquisition in the company's history," makes Sun one of the first major public companies to offer open-source software and puts the company head to head with the three big vendors in the $15 billion database market: IBM, SAP, and its former database partner, Oracle. Compared to those three goliaths, which provide database software to 86% of the enterprise software market, according to Forrester Research, MySQL offers a simpler and cheaper solution. That makes MySQL an appealing option for small- and medium-sized businesses, says Forrester analyst Noel Yuhanna. "Unlike IBM, Oracle and SAP, MySQL has never had 50,000 features, but it does have maybe 10,000 relevant features that are relevant to enterprises," he says. "That cost savings is one of the key reasons that users have looked at open source, and fewer features means it's easier to use and manage."...MySQL's lighter-weight database system may also fit into Sun's ambitions of becoming a major player in "utility computing," a model of information technology infrastructure that pipes in software applications, processing and storage over the Internet rather than from a company's own data centers. "All other databases on the market today were designed for an offline, back-office use," says MySQL Chief Executive Marten Mickos. "Our relevance grows as enterprises shift to Web-based architecture, and that's what's happening right now."...One billion dollars, split between $800 million in cash and $200 million in stock options, may seem a hefty price tag for MySQL, which gives its software away to 99% of its customers. But the 1% of MySQL users who do pay for support include big names like Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ), Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ), Nokia (nyse: NOK - news - people ), and Alcatel-Lucent (nyse: ALU - news - people ). As Sun's (nasdaq: JAVA - news - people ) size lends legitimacy and the guarantee of long-term service to MySQL, the acquisition will likely convince more and larger enterprises to sign on to MySQL's cut-rate database systems, Yuhanna says. "This makes Sun a major open-source vendor, and it will have a major pricing impact on the traditional vendors," says Donald Feinberg, an analyst with Gartner. The purchase of MySQL, which has built one of the best brand names among privately held open source companies, is yet more evidence of how tough it is for open source companies to go to the public markets. Red Hat (nasdaq: RHT - news - people ), which has a market capitalization of about $3.7 billion, remains the primary example of a publicly traded open source company: Last year, it bought open source middleware provider, JBoss, for $350 million. Novell (nasdaq: NOVL - news - people ) snapped up SUSE Linux in 2004 for $210 million.

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A Strong Intel Disappoints on Outlook : 'Intel, the world’s largest computer chip maker, is closely watched as an indicator of the strength of the technology industry, and its strong performance in the third quarter bolstered investor confidence in October. But the first quarter is often Intel’s weakest, and investors are increasingly concerned that tendency could be compounded by an overall slowdown.'

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EU-Microsoft II: The Rematch: My respect for regulatory authorities in the EU has gone up (be it Climate Change and the policy-makers pro-active decisions or on Antitrust or on inflations). 'They argue that with the new Vista version of Windows and Office 2007, Microsoft is trying to extend its dominance into even more areas of the market and threatening the open nature of the Internet (BusinessWeek.com, 9/14/07) by failing to release interoperability information.' That's likely true... '(Opera) accuses Microsoft of abusing its dominant position by tying its browser, Internet Explorer, to the Windows operating system and by hindering interoperability by not following accepted Web standards. In addition, Microsoft is accused of tying other separate software products, including desktop search and Windows Live, to Windows. Opera software accounted for only about 0.7% of Web browsers on PCs and mobile phones in December, according to Net Applications, a maker of Web traffic measurement software. Internet Explorer claimed a 76% share, Mozilla's Firefox browser had about 17% share, and Apple's Safari claimed 5.6%.


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Gates speech had been a disappointment, however now is the expectations getting build up for Steve Jovs. What Should Apple Do Next? amd the accompanying slides with notes are interesting. True, some sound far-fetched (and on a few I had least idea as I never saw/used the product nor read about their broader utilities), however it makes the choices open. This observation is great: 'The key, explains Yves Béhar, founder of fuseproject and a winner of a Gold IDEA/BusinessWeek design award, is that "Apple conceives its products as a symbiosis of hardware, software, and user experience." Under Jobs' leadership, he says, Apple has cultivated a corporate culture that inculcates this holistic type of thinking throughout the organization. One result: the so-called iPod ecosystem that includes not only the sophisticated hardware and technology inside the industrial design, but also the iTunes software and user interface, the online music store, and more generally the Mac operating system. "The joke around our offices is that everyone at Apple is a designer because they all think in this way," adds Béhar.'

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Bill Gates, Robbie Bach: 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES): I had been mesmerized by Gates'm address to Havard (distinguished drop-out!). And therefore I realized that his speech in CES (and one of the last before he talks more about AIDS) can bring a lot of insight in this forum also. However, reading it proved to be disappointing.
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Microsoft Heats Up Business Search: Also went through Fastsearch website and report of Gartner...but still can't say that I got it absolutely clearly. 'The deal could spur a wave of acquisitions in the enterprise search niche, similar to the one that saw Oracle, IBM and SAP (nyse: SAP - news - people ) snap up so-called business intelligence software specialists. In March, Oracle picked up Hyperion for $3.3 billion. In October, SAP agreed to acquire Business Objects (nasdaq: BOBJ - news - people ) for $6.8 billion. The following month, IBM agreed to acquire Cognos (nasdaq: COGN - news - people ) for $4.9 billion. Richardson says he and his colleagues had been betting that Oracle would acquire Fast.' The other players are Autonomy and Endeca. 'Meanwhile, Fast's offering will complement Microsoft's low-end search server express and its SharePoint corporate search software. Microsoft claims it has sold 85 million SharePoint client licenses...Fast's research and development team could also help Microsoft online, where its share of the search market continues to slip, even as it invests billions in new technology. Google's (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people )share of searches rose 3%, to 66%, in December, compared to the year-ago period, according to online traffic tracker Direct Hit. By contrast, Microsoft slipped to 7% from 10% over the same period. ' Yesterday, some students made a presentation on 123Greetings.com where they used Alexanet, and I was surprised to see a very high figure (0.17%) of all web-users to have visited this site (probably in a month or so). I rather expected a much lower figure.

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How to Track Ad Results Using Google Analytics: Other than the obvious synergy with Google's business model, I wonder whether Google Analytics can compete with other analytics tools in diverse areas (other than tracking Internet-based ads). However this is the area where growth and complexities would be the highest. Can be a simple tutorial for the ones interested (unless one does it, one never learns and by the time one does it, Google would bring next version).
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ICFAI University Press did take one of my case titled 'VoIP, Skype and disruptive telecom revolutions' (rather my first case which I wrote when I was with ICFAI Research Center) for their book.
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Worldwide IT Spending to Top $3 Trillion in 2007 (Gartner) : Came across this while researching some numbers...that's an interesting macro-number and never occured to me to look for this number so far.
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Will Apple Upset the Rental Cart?: New possibilities, although people like me are old styled...use cell for calls (when absolutely necessary) or SMS, and use computers to access information/news, and TV for news/entertainment and Home Theater for music/movies. I didn't know about Apple TV
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Online Holiday Cheer: For Amazon, with around 35% increased sales (?) when other physical retailer struggles to get 2-3% growth.
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Google Thinks It Knows Your Friends: Another of Data Warehousing and BI problem...intelligence is not so easy to gather. I also liked the name for this section of the NYT...Bits - Business, Innovation, technology (and all its impact on society). The comments (particularly from the old man who talked about party line in early days) are interesting. Do I follow that myself...?
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Assurances over US biometric data : The ultimate test of Data Warehousing and Intelligence...which so far has often failed to live upto its promises.
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No Winner In Blu-ray, HD DVD Battle: Chinmoy did a case on this, and the battle for industry standards continue...'"A lot of people have been looking at hardware sales as a bellwether, but we really should be looking at content sales not hardware sales," said Andy Parsons, senior vice president of product planning at Pioneer Home Entertainment Group and chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association Promotions Committee. Blu-ray has sold over 4 million software titles in the U.S. as of Dec. 1. That compares with 2.6 million software titles for HD DVD, he says. Blu-ray Disc movies have been outselling HD DVD movies by a two-to-one margin this year, Parsons says. The biggest drawback to either HD DVD or Blu-ray Disc is that content available on one format isn't always available in the other. Discs from the high-def formats won't play on the other's machines, except in pricey dual-format players.'
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Japan's NTT DoCoMo to tie up with Google-sources: Interesting move, more when one considers the gadget savvyness of Japanese consumers, and many of the successful mobile applications of NTT DoCoMo...'DoCoMo, which controls over half of Japan's mobile market, has been losing its market share amid a fierce price war.'
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Wikipedia Competitor Being Tested by Google : Posting it from IIT Chennai. Would it be a not-for-profit too?
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Google’s algorithm of life: rejoice and be wary
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Nokia Wins First Round of Phone-Chip Patent Fight With Qualcomm : It's more to do with broader technological issues (there was one on VoIP related sometime back). 'Qualcomm gets about three-quarters of its profit from licensing fees.' (It assumes that there is no cost to licensing fees and all thes topline goes to bottomline).

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On 12th December, today, I am suddenly told to take classes for Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing (a semeseter long course to be completed within couple of weeks at most!). I will be on couple of conferences from 14th to 24th, and the course needs to be over by 1st week of Jan. I spent some five-six hours, got some ppts, and also found these sites useful:

1. Why can’t experts agree on the terminology. The overall site is also good.
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2. Related courses
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3. BI.
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4. MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) for Data Mining
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5. MIT OpenCourseWare for Communicating with Data
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ALso take a look at American Intelligence. Though it looks like a satire, and must be credited as an example of 'magnificient failure'; one also needs to keep in mind the enormity and complexity of this exercise as a perfect example of DW and Intelligence.
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Here is the ppt of A Brief History of Decision Making, based on a HBR article (HBR has not yet freed its content, I wish they do it 1st, and quicker it is, better for all!); and here is another article: Competing on Analytics.
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China Can't Spell G-O-O-G-L-E as Search Engine Falters as Verb : 'Mountain View, California-based Google, so well-known in most countries that the Oxford English Dictionary lists its name as a verb, has less than half of Baidu.com Inc.'s 61 percent market share in China. Lee, recruited from Microsoft Corp. in 2005 to expand Google in China, said he will try new advertising strategies to overcome the language barrier. He declined to provide more information.
``Very few people know Google and what they stand for'' in China, said Charley Kan, managing director of Mediaedge:cia, a unit of WPP Group Plc, the world's second-largest advertising company. ``Compared to Baidu, it is in a weak position.''
China, the world's second-largest Internet market with 162 million users, may overtake the U.S. in three to five years, according to Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Sandeep Aggarwal in San Francisco. Online advertising, the source of 99 percent of Google's revenue, may quadruple to 20 billion yuan ($2.7 billion) in China in the four years ending in 2010, according to Beijing- based Analysys International.
Google generated 250 million yuan in search revenue in China last year, Credit Suisse Group estimated in June. That's less than 1 percent of the company's $7.3 billion total in 2006. Google doesn't disclose sales in individual countries.' Like most others, I too am a fan of Google. However from my limited understanding of Chinese markets (and more so the language part), I guess conquering China for Google won't be easy. And that's it even if Google is innovative, understands markets' pulses, and do have holistic plans. So Google in China is something which will be of immense interest to me. 'Yahoo! Inc., owner of the world's most visited Web site, is also struggling. Its market share in China slipped to 10 percent in the third quarter, from 13 percent a year earlier, Analysys said. Yahoo owns 39 percent of Alibaba.com Corp., which took control of the U.S. company's China unit in 2005...Baidu, meaning ``hundreds of times,'' widened its market- share lead to 61 percent from 57 percent after offering bulletin boards and an encyclopedia service, according to Analysys estimates. Google's share rose to 24 percent from 16 percent.
Beijing-based Baidu's shares have surged 15-fold since their August 2005 initial public offering, valuing the company at about 100 times projected 2008 earnings, estimates compiled by Bloomberg show. Google's stock more than doubled over the same period and trades at 35 times estimated profit. Yahoo trades at a multiple of 48.
`Very Good Company'
``Baidu is a very good company that has been able to meet the needs of the Chinese advertiser and user more effectively than Google,'' said Walter Price, who owns Baidu and Google shares as part of the $120 billion he helps manage at RCM Capital Management in San Francisco. ' So there is a similarity in name in Google and Baidu. 'Google has increased the number of engineers in the Greater China region to 200, its biggest research and development team outside the U.S., by offering higher salaries and perks such as free massages.'.
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Microsoft does ad deal with CNBC: As these increasing become norms, we see larger partnerships emerge between content generators and Internet firms (primarily search engines).
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IBM brings world's fastest chip to India (just for information), & IBM sees India as its global hub by 2010
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Dial Railways, get your SMS text ticket: Lalu’s new plan: Good proposal and sounds interesting for India due to high mobile penetration. However I have two complaints agaist present IRCTC charges...both for e-ticket and for i-ticket, there should not be any extra charges (other than the cost of courier applicable, for one of these). It saves Railways money, and there's absolutely no need to create a separate arm and charge service tax/anything. 2nd complaint is during one of my recent trips in the Heritage Himalayan railways (Darjeeling-Siliguri), the journey was truncated as work was in progress in the hills. Though railways (at least locally) knew about it, they still issued us the full ticket; and we are yet to receive the refunds.
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IT Spending Growth Expected To Slow In '08 : Definitely not a good news on top of falling dollar that Indian IT service firms are facing. '"Disruptive technologies have been a persistent theme in IDC's predictions over the past several years," Frank Gens, senior VP of Research at IDC, said in a prepared statement. "These technologies have been creeping into everything from enterprise software and hardware to consumer gadgets and telecom services, forcing vendors to rethink their offerings. In 2008, the era of experimentation will end as industry leaders get serious about transforming their products and services to take advantage of -- and meet the challenges posed by -- these new technologies and business models."

Gens added that, as industry leaders rebuild their core businesses on disruptive models and principles, their efforts will "redefine their identity as well as their customer base." ' (Here is the actual report - thankfully of 14-pages titled IDC Predictions 2008: The Post-Disruption Marketplace Takes Shape (needs free registration). I didn't notice Kindle of Amazon (or for that matter how exactly ISVs come into play with IBM/MS or BEA Systems); and the note make those clear. But the most powerful statement must be on opening up of so long walled-gardens by mobile operators: 'Does this sound familiar? Mobile operators are discovering the "Internet rules" that
SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, salesforce.com, and others in the IT marketplace have
already learned — that walled gardens imprison the gardener. In an exploding online
marketplace, the only way to survive — and grow — is to open up and invite in others
that will help you create much more value for customers, much faster. Going it alone,
or overcontrolling your market, is the fastest way to limit your growth opportunities.' I also liked the concept of 'text analytics' and its applications. This point also highlights another war I talked about in my case of VoIP, Skype and disruptive telecom revolutions: 'Telephone companies are losing 1 million residential lines per quarter, while cable MSOs are gaining 1 million residential telephone subscribers per quarter.'


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IBM Advances Supercomputer-On-A-Chip Technology : Though I don't understand how copper wires drive dataflow inside a chip now and how this new tech. proposes to do it with light beam; however the point is there are too much innovations happening, few of them will succeed and the industry is changing too fast, even now. I wonder when can we see some stability in this industry...
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Google, Yahoo Clash With AT&T, Verizon on Mobile Ads : It's the same story of convergence and disruptive potentials again...on a different dimension that I talked about in my case VoIP, Skype and disruptive telecom revolution. 'At stake is a market that may surge 10-fold to $16.2 billion globally by 2011, says EMarketer Inc., a research firm in New York. Google, based in Mountain View, California, sees as much as half of future sales coming from mobile phones. While the U.S. accounts for about 50 percent of global revenue from promotions viewed on computers, the figure drops to 27 percent on phones and may rise to 29 percent by 2011. ``The carriers are too busy trying to protect the money they are making now to look at the next way to make money,'' said Chad Stoller, who heads the mobile practice at Organic, a San Francisco ad agency. Phone companies ``want to control every aspect of the relationship between the consumer and the phone.'' Even though they would share in the revenue, U.S. phone companies haven't yet embraced ads because they're wary of giving up control of their networks, ad buyers and Internet companies say. Phone companies say that while they are interested, they are moving cautiously to protect customers.
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Trailing Japan
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The top U.S. wireless companies boost earnings by selling add-ons like ring tones and Web access. They don't offer cheap all-you-can-eat Internet plans, meaning just 13 percent of U.S. subscribers surfed the Web on phones last quarter, said Nielsen Co. in New York. More than half of Japanese mobile users access the Web, according to Tokyo's Video Research Interactive Inc.
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And there are so many different networks, phones and programs that it's tough to create ads in the U.S.
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``It's a hairball,'' said Scott Ferris, a senior vice president in Microsoft's Atlas ad unit. ``There are no standards.''
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Google, Microsoft and Yahoo want to sell ads that appear as banners on mobile Web pages, link to on-the-go Internet searches, promote nearby attractions on driving directions and send coupons for products via text messages. Phone-service providers would get a cut of ad sales in exchange for participation.
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Telecommunications companies worry that ad-funded Internet and phone services may jeopardize revenue from subscriptions, said Phil Asmundson, a vice chairman at Deloitte & Touche LLP in Stamford, Connecticut. Cheap Web access would make it easier for consumers to go directly to Google, bypassing the carriers' pages and services such as searches, driving directions and videos.
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Viewing Ads
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Ralph de la Vega, who runs the wireless unit at San Antonio- based AT&T, the biggest U.S. mobile operator, said he's concerned users with less-powerful phones would have trouble viewing ads.
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``We want to do this one right,'' de la Vega said in an interview. ``It's too important.''
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Verizon Wireless, based in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, is ``committed, but we're going to be methodical on how and when we implement our solution,'' said John Harrobin, vice president of the No. 2 U.S. wireless company.
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On top of the $40 to $50 the average customer pays each month for basic calling plans, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Nextel Corp. typically charge $30 to $40 for full Web browsing on handsets. Services that let people find shops near where they're using the phone can run an additional $10.
. Google, the most popular Web search company, aims to generate half its revenue from mobile phones within 10 years, up from almost none today. Microsoft, the biggest software maker, wants a revenue source outside of personal computer programs. Mobile subscribers will outnumber PC users by 3 to 1 by 2008, says Credit Suisse Group...Few American mobile users surf the Web, and the carriers have too many types of networks and phones, said Georges-Edouard Dias, the Paris company's e-business leader. In the U.K., the company promotes mascara by distributing a 1-pound-off ($2 off) coupon through handsets.
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Brian Arbogast, who runs Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft's mobile services, still expects wireless ads to be worth several billion dollars. How soon he doesn't know.

``The biggest determinant is really going to be the willingness of the network operators to experiment,'' he said.

Apple Inc.'s iPhone, with a $20 monthly Internet plan, is spurring interest among U.S. consumers in mobile Web surfing and may force telecom companies to change, ad executive Stoller said.

More than 10 percent of Virgin Mobile USA Inc.'s 4.88 million customers signed up for a ``Sugar Mama'' program that awards free phone minutes in exchange for viewing ads or answering surveys, said Virgin Mobile's Scott Kelliher, the Warren, New Jersey-based company's director of mobile advertising.

Other phone-service providers are warming up to ads, Arbogast said. In September, Microsoft struck a deal with Sprint for the first U.S. service that lets users speak a search term like ``car wash'' into their phones to view nearby matches.

``Once you already have a customer spending a lot of money with you every month, it's hard to get them to spend another $10 or another $5 or another $1,'' Arbogast said. ``The incremental dollar in advertising revenue might be a lot easier to get.'' '

Nice article - copied a significant part here, however the full article is a must read for many trying to understand future implications of ICTs.
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And here is some good reading and conceptual understanding for Neural Networks, inclusive of supervidory learning and unsupervisory learning systems.
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One of the students talked about OSI model while discussing compatibility issues, and (as usual), I found the 7-layers concept to be much more extensive and elaborate than the 4-layers (or many others) that we come across often in IT (or in networking/others).
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EchoStar's Surprising Spectrum Bid : 'The concern is that not only is the spectrum expensive, but once a company has the spectrum it would have to build out the infrastructure, such as phones and mobile software, to go along with it, which would take all new capital. “It’s one thing for Google to bid when their market cap is $212 billion. It’s another thing for EchoStar to bid with a market cap of $18 billion,” Horace said.' Echostar btw is a satellite television operator.
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(I like the Forbes way of Internet ad...the quote that we got in the interspercial (? or what is it called, BTW?) window before leading to the news-article was of Churchill: 'We make a living by what we get, we get a life by what we give' - interesting one)).
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Microsoft Removes Windows Vista 'Kill Switch' : So MS is retreating from '"Again, Microsoft is a master at shooting the customer in the foot."' mindset, though we understand the counterfeit issue well (in India, and probably in other emerging nations).

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Motorola CTO lands at Cisco: I think I heard/read about Padmasree Warrior earlier also, but can't recall the context (other than an Indian lady holding high profile technological role?)
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Banks ready NextGen mobile payment: model Many of these get covered in m-commerce and m-payments (DoCoMo m-payment model and other versions of it now).
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IBM websphere tops application software market : In MJ, while working on the retail front, we decided to work on websphere...
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EBay to Try Again in Japan by Using Help From Yahoo Didn't know about Rakuten...'EBay and Yahoo Japan, which together have about 4 trillion yen ($36 billion) in annual successful bids, will first start a Japanese-language site on which Yahoo Japan users can bid for eBay items, spokesmen from the two firms said. The companies said they would call the site Sekaimon or “gateway to the world.”

Yahoo Japan, which estimates it has more than half of the online auction market in Japan, is about one-third owned by Yahoo and 40 percent by the Softbank Corporation. Softbank’s shares gained 2.1 percent, to 2,665 yen. EBay has been seeking local partners to bolster its Asian operations in the face of mounting competition.
In China, it is working on a joint venture with the TOM Group’s TOM Online to compete against Alibaba.com. In Thailand, it plans to start a joint site with a domestic partner, Sanook. Yahoo Japan said Shop Airlines, a unit of the online sales services firm NetPrice, would manage the site, payment services, customs clearance and delivery. ' With Softbank, I recall that this bank had so much exposure in dot-com firms before the crash...I am not sure how much money they finally recovered with the few success stories.
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Cell phones will revolutionise Indian retail’ : Though I think it's a bit of overblown story, it talks about practices and possibilities in retail (more than taht of IT).
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Blog site that is popular in Russia is sold: I guess I know a few working for LJ (or its competitors). 'In the United States, where two-thirds of users are female, teenage girls (15-20) are known as stalwart users. By contrast, in Russia, LiveJournal's second-largest market, the site attracted intellectuals early on and functions now as an alternative forum for many of the country's best-known authors amid the government's crackdown on independent media.' This is interesting stats...may be the boys play more in the US...


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Dell: Confounded by Costs: Siddhartha Paul (of IRCK) focused on this area, and had a few cases. It's a god reading for BPR than for IT per se.
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Google versus the telecoms: I talked about such a scenario in my case (VoIP, Skype & disruptive Telecom revolution). Google, by not generating any content controls, most of the content. Similarly by controlling bandwidth, search capabilities, it can again contain most of the mobile applications and mobile content. This also partly explains why the spectrum war of words in India is getting heated up..."Spectrum is king; you own everything...The 700MHz spectrum, which has been used to provide analog TV service, travels far and penetrates walls. As a result, it's considered the last remaining chunk of attractive wireless airwaves and is viewed as an opportunity to expand the Internet to a new frontier. The spectrum auction is scheduled to begin on January 24, and the deadline to apply to participate is Monday.Google and other Internet companies have been hampered in their ability to expand their markets into the wireless space because carriers have had such a tight hold on the cellular industry. Right now, U.S. consumers are locked into the handset they use, the network it operates on, and the software it runs.
This situation has crippled consumers' ability to use the Internet on their mobile devices, compared to how they use it on their PCs. Google executives say their aim is to bring the PC-style of Internet openness to the mobile world so that users have more choice in mobile services and applications, as well as price. " This also changing,albeir slowly lately.
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'Google has managed to turn Web search into an $11 billion business on PCs by selling simple text ads that appear with search results. Imagine how lucrative that market will be when the ads, including local advertising, can get to the far reaches of the world where there aren't any PCs.

Right now the global PC search market generates about $20 billion in revenue, assuming each PC owner conducts an estimated 35 searches a month, according to Citigroup research. If they do just one search per month on the four billion mobile phones expected to be in use in 2010, they could generate $2.3 billion in revenue, assuming PC search advertising economics migrate as-is to the wireless world, Citigroup said in a report this week.

For Google, that could translate into $700 million in incremental revenue in 2010, according to Citigroup. A new network on the spectrum isn't expected until 2010 at the earliest, analysts say.The wireless spectrum bid dovetails nicely with Google's moves to unify handset makers, software developers, and carriers on Android, an open mobile platform.

Mobile isn't the only place Google is eyeing the wireless access business. The company is dabbling in Wi-Fi-based services for PCs, building its own free wireless network in its hometown of Mountain View, Calif. It had also partnered with network provider EarthLink on a proposal for San Francisco. Despite initial support from city officials, the approval process stalled and EarthLink backed out in August amid a company restructuring and significant layoffs. Even if Google doesn't win, its actions have already shaken up the stagnant mobile industry, said Derek Brown, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald.

For Google, "there is a risk that they get in way over their heads in a field in which they are late to the party and in which they have no expertise," he said. "But history suggests Google has made some very good strategic, operational, and financial decisions and seems to have done as good or better a job at investing toward the future than many other similar companies." '. Good article...
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Came across quite a few ppts, however what stood apart is this one by Lotfi A Zadeh, on birth and evolution of IT. I wondered many times that I have the opportunity to see the birth and evolution of Internet (at least in Indian context), and that's been a fabulous experience. I wondered if someone did that for IT since 1970s...and here is LAZ doing that from Shannon in 1940s or 50s...
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Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking : The challenge, as it was in the beginning of dot-com boom, is to convert the neyworked eyeballs to money; and it's not easy. I talked about Avaaz, unsubscribe-me earlier today in my other blog; and moveon.org also qualifies in same category. I am sure a lot of these are gaining popularity fast. Issues on pravacy violation would come into play again and again...
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Yahoo and Adobe Team Up to Put Online Ads in PDFs: Lot of evolution here ...it took some time for me to understand the relevance and applicability...and then like a tubelight (ha ha) it stuck me. Yes, great idea. I am not sure what % of web content is in pdf format and whether it's rising or falling. However from pdf content (where we see a more serious audience), one as of now does not get any ad-revenue. So the model has a readymade user segment. This can also encourage academic publishers (who lately are going subscription based - not good for them and for others as well) to make their content available free to end-users. Should be great move...the challenge would be again revenue sharing model...content generator, Yahoo!, Adobe (future service providers like Google...I believe Google has a stake/tie-up with Adobe, so I was surprised to see the Yahoo! partnership), and then finally the client (who puts the ads) and end consumer. So the links are vital, and revenue share amongst the few ones need to be streamlined for win-win models to succeed.
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Yahoo, AOL May Abandon Web Radio After Royalties Rise : Well, I didn't know much about Internet radio, so good reading to know the trends and challenges.
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AMD's Struggles Knock It Off Top 10 Chip-Maker List: I was rather interested to get to know the top ten chip-makers, and was a disappointed not to find that easily from this article.
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Google Service Uses Cell Towers to Locate Users: So it seems Google is focusing a lot on variety of mobile applications, many of which would become the standards of the future the way MS office became standards of desktop computing environment for last couple of decades.
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HP Looks to Gain Greater Stake in IT Automation Market : Otherthan reporting improved results in last quarter (very short-term trend, right), I also understand from my colleagues in industry that HP is getting into solutions from being known as a product-company (hardware) so long.
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How a little laptop is changing an industry: I covered OLPC earlier in few articles in best of the web, no doubt the pricing strip-tease continues here here as well, only getting accelerated due to Prof. Negroponte. Need to explore the Classmate partners, and whether both have unique set of partners or are there common ones as well.
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Here I begin with few articles to highlight few of these developments (before that a simple glance at the choices and specializations that niit@MIT offers can be helpful!). Even Lahore University management Science has certain sub-continental views. Indian leader IIM Ahmedabad has content (for 2004-05) here, however here also I am surprised to see a course like Introduction to Computers. On 2nd thoughts, it does make sense for full time students from Indian demography as many rural students may not have worked hands on on computers, however the course is redundant to working executives. Here also one needs to be cautious as there's been discussions that CAT (the admission test for IIMs) may move online in GMAT format, which again assumes students to have acquaintance with computers.:

Report: Google preps online storage service : We have grown used to free reliable storage...and personally I don't have large multimedia files. Hope people like me can enjoy the free ride; and is not adversely affected by these developments.
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(and I always start with a note of ethics - Duke Probe Shows Failure of Post-Enron Ethics Classes , and with Key Management Theories (of more than 115 years, some books have a better version - Stone or so I believe). And this article again from the FT (Learn to speak the language of business)
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Verizon opening door to mobile future: The 'walled garden' concept, thankfully is breaking down. Thanks to Google again...and thye new-found opportunities. '"Over time, expect to see those walled gardens come down some as we think we can continue to provide the most reliable wireless experience to our customers," McAdam said. Om Malik at first compared this morning's announcement to former President Ronald Reagan's exhortation for Mikhail Gorbechev to "tear down that wall," but his enthusiasm was tempered after giving it a bit more thought..."A competitive market responds to market forces and customer needs," he (McAdam) said, appearing to make the point that forced regulation of these matters is unnecessary...It could also hasten the end of the subsidy model, and make buying a phone more like buying a computer. As Apple showed us this summer, people are ready to buy phones from a retailer or direct from phone makers like Nokia, Motorola, or Samsung. You'd get your support from them, and all Verizon would do is hook you up to the world. This might make for more expensive phones up front, but it could also give phone makers the opportunity to come up with more innovative devices without having to get approval from Verizon for every last piece of software...Mobile software development grows more sophisticated by the day, and as we all start to realize what we can do with a fast Internet connection available at all times, we're going to want to do more than whatever a certain company's executives decide is appropriate for us to do.' Talked about existing limitations to CDMA...in India, the tower-business that GSM players are hiving off is an interesting development. I am yet to research on similar developments elsewhere in the world.
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Microsoft’s Ozzie declares end to PC era

2. Mastering the three worlds of Information Technology - by Andrew McAfee (HBR Online, no longer freely available)

3. With Android plan, Google bids to shake up the cell phone world

4. Many of these are in my existing blogs...but again with lot of other stuff whose objective can't be teaching.

'The case before the ITC focuses on CDMA technology, which stands for code division multiple access. The Qualcomm patents in the case relate to ways of controlling signal power so calls aren't dropped. Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland, argued that the Qualcomm patents don't cover original inventions... Qualcomm, the world's second-biggest maker of chips that run mobile phones, said it developed the technology that Nokia is using. The patents date back to 1991, before the phone industry adopted CDMA...Qualcomm ranked behind Texas Instruments Inc. in sales of mobile-phone chips last year. The case is in the Matter of Mobile Telephone Handsets, Wireless Communication Devices and components thereof, 337-578, U.S. International Trade Commission. To review the disputed patents through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Web site, search for patent numbers 5,655,220; 5,590,408; and 5,452,473 at http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm . '
That's left for some researcher, or another day if I get interest in the matter.




(c) Copyrisht Ranjit Goswami...