Amazing Ideas and Worst Mistakes

Sharepoint Wiki

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 03:57:00 +0000

I had the recent distasteful experiencing of using Sharepoint Wiki after having a good time with mediawiki installs for a long time. I must say Windows XP and the Wiki act together like "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" in Dr Suess's Cat in the Hat! After a few mistrials I found that the Sharepoint wiki only worked on IE, similar to Exchange's Online access. For example I couldn't get the WYSIWYG editor to work with Chrome - which is blazingly fast compared to IE. Even basic editing didnt work and introduced some confusing letter overwring issue when you went back into the textboxes. Meanwhile on every second day these days it seems XP downloads a "reboot required" update from Microsoft.

I must say when is this mess going to end and we put a lock on or tame the Microsoft craziness?

A review of Xobni

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:10:00 +0000

After having fully converted from Outlook to a Gmail user (where I started receiving corporate email as well) I had the misfortune of using MS Outlook again. To my surprise after 3 years, MS Outlook had not changed much - same old and still hard to use. The parts which appeared to have even become worse were searching through emails and typing in the email addresses in the To/Cc fields. After having used Gmail exclusively for 3 years I had been thoroughly pampered.

I figure when I use Outlook my time is probably split as follows: creating new mail (25%), reading mail (25%) and searching for something in the mails (50%). I was delighted to find that a new tool called Xobni was recently released and it made search blazingly fast and easy to use. It installs itself in the right hand side panel of Outlook and provides a whole bunch of features out of which I found searching through my emails to be the most useful.

A review of Flypaper

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 02:01:00 +0000

I recently tried out Flypaper, a service for doing interactive flash presentations. My goal was to get a web demo together and I was exploring all kinds of things: tools like Camtasia, Demobuilder to people providing the complete package including the creatives and graphics. The demo was supposed to be 4-5 minutes long and in this case it was not a software product or web based service. So I quickly discovered that while Camtasia and other flash building options could be part of the solution, they would not be enough. I needed something which could do the old and familiar powerpoint effects like blurring, animation, movement etc and have voice over it. Flypaper would have been ideal: it is designed to target exactly what I need. However, I found the service less than expected. This is probably due to the fact that it is still fairly new. I found that only a small number of powerpoint effects were captured. The software was based on .NET. The company needs to consider a technology like Adobe AIR now. The download was fairly lengthy: .NET 3.5 was around 35 MB or so and this was followed by the Flypaper software. Animation was also not up to par. Overall, I still need to figure out how to do my demo, but it seems that software to convert powerpoint to flash exists and there is a way to get my audio embedded in the slide transitions as well. In fact Camtasia does it I think. I would look at Flypaper again in next few months - there is some promise there, but it is all about what direction the product takes since its still fairly primitive.

Is India the next hot destination for Telecom?

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:29:00 +0000

If this was not already true, it is now inevitable. TRAI (equivalent of FCC in India) has now opened up how VoIP based products and services can be sold to the Indian consumers. We should see the emergence of an Indian version of Vonage, the need for VoIP related CALEA products, E911, SBCs and other security products already built and made popular in the U.S market. This is a boon for the telecom market which is out of breadth these days. Checkout the article here.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

fōneathon™ - Campaigns by communities

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:27:00 +0000

Getting campaigns off the ground could not be more easier. Checkout foneathon - an online subscription service which make campaign management and calling dirt cheap and simple. Community volunteers can log on from their homes (consider the hot weather and high gas prices as the incentive) and collaborate in a managed campaign to collect donations or get people out to vote. The foneathon service is powered by 3CLogic's TAG technology (note that I am involved with that company) and comes with full reporting and power/auto dialing features. TAGs are the new way to do telephony and other real time apps without heavy duty and expensive server resources in the network. The same technology is also used to power the Obelyx solution targeted towards more traditional contact center solutions available on a subscription model.

Update: Full Press Release is online now.

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3CLogic Powers KCG Call Centers with Predictive Dialing

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:31:00 +0000

This press release went out today regarding the Obelyx service which is powered by 3CLogic's TAG technology. KCG was able to go live using the Obelyx on demand service for several of its campaigns without an infrastructural changes. Obelyx comes bundled with standard expected features like leads management, analytics etc, but delivered in a more Web 2.0 model. For example, all reports are built using Adobe Flex real time charts. All agent nodes are configurable in real time from a management account which can be operated from anywhere by signing on to an online account. Call dialing performs much better since it minimizes unnecessary call transfers, clicks and call holds which irritate customers.

Here is the press release

The fate of RIAs

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 05:30:00 +0000

RIA or Rich Internet Apps is another name for Web based applications delivered over the browser or stand alone applications which are cross platform much like today's browsers are. The technology wars are beginning to rage now in this area with big giants like Adobe, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft each coming out with their products and packages to solve this problem. First of all I think in this war users are the ones to benefit at all times. Chances are more than one technology will emerge as winner here as it frequently happens over the web. Interperability is less of a concern here since it involves mostly front end technologies which do not have too much of a back end integration and almost all use web services (XML/SOAP) on the back. Lets take a look at what the players are here and then look at the main differences in the approaches and current capabilities:

1) Adobe Flash/AIR
2) Google Gears
3) Yahoo! BrowserPlus
4) Microsoft Silverlight
5) SproutCore

There are a couple of comparison points to use: the technology they use, penetration potential, multimedia capabilities. Lets start with the big points first: SproutCore - a relatively unknown framework is now backed by Apple who want to use it on the iPhone . It is an open source framework which uses javascript. There are few other javascript frameworks used to deliver web 2.0 apps which are quite popular as well (like prototype, Scriptaculous etc) but SproutCore is the only one on par with RIAs it seems. From a support standpoint, any Javascript framework is already highly penetrated since it is supported by today's browsers and could possibly enjoy the same success as Flash if they deliver on features. Note that SproutCore competes more with Flash than Google Gears which is also open source and based on javascript. The main difference is that Gears installs SQLite (which allows it to work offline). This makes its application space similar to Adobe AIR instead of Adobe Flash. AIR is a separate runtime which uses SQLite as well. Microsoft Silverlight is a plugin on the other hand, competing more with Flash than with AIR or Gears. However it is proprietary, requires a download and possibly will have huge penetration issues. It also doesn't compete well with Flash when it comes to features. For example, Flash 9 supports H.264 and Flash 10 supports speex (open source voice codec) which I believe will enormously increase the number of applications built with Flash. A company called Ribbit builds a cool Flash based phone which integrates with their back end infrastructure as well. Real time voice is not possible with any of the other Flash alternatives to this day. Another great example is recording your video from the PCs embedded camera directly from the browser - that's possible only with Flash today I believe (requires MX server). All this is bound to change this year. I think Flash will face stiff competition from SproutCore, especially on the iPhone. Silverlight and Yahoo! Browser plus technologies may fade away or evolve into AIR competitors but they need to move fast.

Comparing Video Monetization startups

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 05:21:00 +0000

In the past 1-2 years, quite a few companies have started in the valley targeting monetization of Internet Videos. I am not talking about destination sites like YouTube here, but companies which are building technology or services for other destination sites having video content which they wish to monetize. Few examples I looked at (there are many more including Maven which was acquired by Yahoo in the beginning part of the year): Brightcove, Ooyala, Delve and Move. It is worthwhile to investigate how these companies are each solving the problem with a different solution twist.

First, lets see what is important to the customers (Content sites). A content site wants to see its users become repeat users and it wants to be able to monetize the visits. Everything else is simply an unnecessary detail in this equation. For users to become repeat visitors, it is all about experience and the quality of the content. Assuming the latter is not in question, there is still a lot to be figured out in giving the best possible experience to the end user. This experience depends on the media player and the network over which media delivered to the user (which determines buffering, bandwidth, resolution etc). Move Networks has taken an interesting approach here by building their own player and possibly choosing a player platform different from what the majority of web uses (Flash). Brightcove, the one which is the most advanced of these four appears to hasve reinvented itself a few times it seems but they have a feature rich platform. Both Brightcove and Move have taken huge investments as well (about 100M each). Ooyala and Delve on the other hand are more nimble and flexible (with less money gone in as well < 10M). Ooyala intends to revolutionize how and what kinds of ads are shown to the users while Delve's focus is to try look inside the video's audio part for rich information which can be matched to the ads. Both models try to get the user engaged before showing a relevant ad - something which Move and Brightcove don't do it seems.

More later.

A Microsoft without Gates

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:51:00 +0000

I think Bill Gate's departure from Microsoft into the world of Philanthropy has become a much talked about topic today. Some very smart decisions made by Gates at the forming stages of the company gave shape to how Microsoft has evolved in the last ten years or so. Unfortunately (or fortunately) Gates proved to be too slow for the "internet bulldozer" which continues to make more inroads and forays into Microsoft's plush green lawns.

My prediction is that Gate's is just taking a break. Microsoft is going to continue to stumble and give it five or at most ten years, Gates will be back at its helm and this time he will open source windows ;)

Blogged with the Flock Browser

SeeqPod - one of the best media search engines

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:40:00 +0000

If you haven't understood the power of media search engines, try out SeeqPod and you will understand. I think with the explosion of content on the internet, it is no longer the case that a search engine like Google which mixes textual search results with media works. If I am searching for an audio or video, I want something specialized like SeeqPod. With the widespread penetration of Broadband, multimedia phones and Flash technology, video is now the new king of the internet.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

OpenTable

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:44:00 +0000

If you are a frequent visitor to restaurants taking reservations, OpenTable might be of interest to you. Techcrunch recently reported on this briefly - the site seems to have taken 70M reservations on 8000 restaurants which is pretty impressive. I visited the site and briefly browsed through it. It seemed to me that what it needs is a widget instead of being a sole destination site. The widget would allow OpenTable to offer reservation services on popular review sites like Washingtonion or Restaurants.com. The problem of course is that not all restaurants support the OpenTable integration, but that should be easy to check in software and collect data on rather than skip as a service. Overall, I think this can grow very fast in metro areas and depending on ease of use this can even rake in new users who traditionally are not used to making reservations before they go and restaurants who traditionally have shunned the idea of allowing reservations. To prevent users from misusing or abusing the service, the restaurants should be able to give some kind of rating back to the user which can help in raising the comfort level of restaurants who are not part of the OpenTable system.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Search Revolution

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:46:00 +0000

The search engine revolution continues with visual search being the killing application. I previously blogged about the Pogo Browser from AT&T which was a "Visual Browser". TechCrunch reported today about SearchMe - a starup which gives the search results in a visual fashion.

The question becomes whether visualization will become part of the operating system (like Mac) and the browser (which is like an internet operating system) or if every application on the internet is going to have to implement the visual appearance? For example, SearchMe is having to re-index the entire web and improve the ordering of their results etc. Now how much time does that take to get better than Google? Isn't visualization simply a tool which should be part of the OS/Browser?

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Some ideas keep getting born with different twists

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:32:00 +0000

A while ago I blogged about P2P lending (Kiva). Kiva deals with microfinance. Recently I noticed two new websites (which probably have existed for a while) dealing with college financing for students. Both Greennote and Fynanz are websites which allow students to contact family and friends network to finance their education. The business model of the sites is simple - fees and cuts. There are lots of differences though Greennote's loans are unsecured. In other words, the lender must somehow believe in the borrower. If the borrower defaults, Greennote claims they will let loose their collections services on him/her and report to the credit bureau. Fynanz on the other hand provides some guarantees on the loans and also uses the student GPA in determining this guarantee as well. I think this method by default allows the borrower and loaner to be distant relatives compared to closer ones on Greennote.

If all this was not enough, Lending Club offers yet another venue for P2P lending. The rates are higher compared to student loans on the other two sites and normal people can get a loan there. Lending Club also offers a loan portfolio against lending to specific lenders which tends to reduce the risk taken on by the borrower and does not offer any guarantees otherwise.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

The Pogo Browser

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:09:00 +0000

Recently I tried out the new Pogo Browser from AT&T. Frankly, the browser seems great. It seems inspired a lot from user interfaces on mobile phones. However, at this point, it just doesn't seem to have enough of a delta over standard browsers like Firefox or IE. Though the Help button doesn't indicate Pogo is based on Mozilla, I think the software is based on Mozilla and the standard Firefox plug ins will work with Pogo as well.

It is quite possible Pogo's feature set will get absorbed by one of these big players. As a side note, I noticed it is as slow to work with as IE and seems to freeze my PC a few times.

At this point, my vote for a new browser goes to Flock. I will be re-evaluate Pogo again at a later date...

Pogo can be downloaded from here.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Do not waste time with this "Smart Remote"!

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:03:00 +0000

We recently got this smart remote made by Logitech. Its called "Harmony One" and apparently its the best of a series of similar remotes made by the same company. First, before starting the bashing, I must say that I have liked previous products from Logitech (esp webcams) and when I read about this remote and how it could simplify my life and get rid of all the nasty keyboards I have (around 4 right now) in my family room - I though it was a great idea. So I went ahead and got it. I configured it using my PC and everything was very impressive. The most notable feature was "Activities". The remote organized everything into groups of actions. For example, if I wanted to watch Cable, my TV had to be on a certain Output setting (e.g Video 5) and the Stereo needed to be on and the Cable box needed to be on. If instead I wanted to watch a DVD, then my TV had to be on a separate output setting and the volume was controlled in a different way etc. It all looked very promising. When I gave it the model numbers as I hooked it up to the PC, it recognized all of them and downloaded some device configurations for them. It looked very smart. However in a week's of use, I have found it very frustrating. In fact I have realized that it does not replace my four remotes, but instead complements them. So I now have five! So what was the problem?

The problem was that all these devices it was controlling have no reverse communication back with the remote. This broke a lot of things. For example, I would put a DVD into my DVD player and tell the remote "Watching DVD" is the activity. It would then switch on everything, put my TV, Stereo in the right setting, but it turned my DVD player off (since the remote only knows how to toggle the power and does not know if the DVD player is actually on). This meant that if the remote didnt know the set of activities I was doing before I start using it, then it would be perpetually confused. Unless I totally switch to doing everything with this remote - so to put a DVD in, I first have to ask the remote to watch DVD and then eject it and put a new one in - nothing would work properly. Also if the remote was not pointing at all devices directly and it missed out a single device (maybe something came in the middle - like my son's toy would be sitting in front of the DVD player), then also the remote would get confused. It was also impossible to control individual devices conveniently from the remote the same way the earlier remotes worked.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Flock to Flock! - A Smart Browser

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:49:00 +0000

I have diteched IE since IE6 came out and have managed to use Firefox 100% of the time w/o facing any issues on the internet. To add to Firefox's praise (before I trash it a bit :) the browser has continued to improve leaps and bounds with faster start up and operation and it simply feels a lot more smoother to use than IE in daily operation. However, recently it started misbehaving on my personal laptop: I think it was something related to Gmail and Google Gears which causes the browser to malfunction: links would stop working. For exampe, if I click on a link in an open page, it simply won't take me to the new page 5 out of 10 times. It was just odd. Restarting wouldn't help as well. Killing a tab or an open firefox window here and there would be my short term solutions, but eventually I would narrow down to just one window or tab. Even IE would stop working at that point. I noticed a few times that if I didn't open Gmail at all in the browser or did not use Google desktop, it did appear to stop the problems or delay them for a long time.

So I have been on the lookout for some alternative to Firefox (though only on this PC) and when I heard about Flock, I was enthused with new energy! I have downloaded it now and the one thing I must say about my initial experience is that Flock is a "Smart Browser". Its a smart window to the smart world out there. It leaves IE and Firefox way behind (though that may be temporary). My advice: Try it. Its based on Mozilla so it is only better than Firefox I would assume and it makes accessing websites with APIs (almost all of the popular sites today have APIs now) a lot easy and convenient with its single button operations of doing things within the browser itself (For example, I am making this post from Flock itself w/o going on to the blogger site).

To try flock, go here

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Cisco - the arms dealer?

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:24:00 +0000

In my earlier post which had a brief mention of how Cisco helped the Chinese erect the Great Firewall or China, I got to know first hand myself how a simple business deal can have far fetched human rights issues - frankly a lot of inconvenience caused to the Chinese people since I am sure they have found their way around this firewall aready ;) However, it seems there is more to that. Cisco, Google and Yahoo! were recently at a Senate hearing for answering questions regarding how U.S companies are helping the Chinese government continue to improve and build this firewall even further. Even if Cisco is involved, what if it stops - I think the need will be fulfilled by Huawei.

What we need to do is instead of focusing on the companies selling equipment and services to the Chinese givernment, focus on the companies, products and services which help the Chinese people get better access to information outside this firewall and make these easily accessible in a way that the government cannot stop them. Some form of secure P2P technology would help.

Google Health is here

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Wed, 21 May 2008 03:12:00 +0000

It seems Google health was launched today and if you haven't checked it out yet, be sure to check out the FAQ and About areas. The service is completely free to users as well as providers which is great. Question is whether users will trust it and use it as they use other Google services. My take it that Google is going to find it a hard ride unless they change a few things around:

1) The service is completely free. Google claims there will be no ads on the service as well. Now that sounds scary. The information they deal with is precious and no one pays? I think this raises a lot of concerns. Google should explain how the infrastructure is funded and the business model clearly (however indirect it is). I think this gives confidence to users that the information they give to Google is precious to Google as well. After all I don't want to hand off my records to someone who claims they will send it free to my doctor and store it. I want to make sure this someone is incentivized to properly handle my records.

2) Ideally my medical records should not be linked to any personal information I have , even my emails. I think having all this online with a single provider is itself a very scary idea. Consider Google offers some DNA record storing service as well as part of this data. Identity thieves will have a party!

I think overall Google Health is very worthwhile for Google to invest time and money in. I think it is going to be challenging to entice users to simply open up their medical records to Google. I feel something more is required here to make us all feel safe and secure - surely Google is coming out with that in the next few months!

Powerful Utilities on the Web

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:03:00 +0000

I was quite impressed with this demo on utility computing and Grids applied to web services now. Take a look at this demo for AppLogic from 3Tera. Similar services are offered by ServePath as well. These applications show how websites can be built and scaled over a cluster of computers. This is very powerful if you know how this is done today: Sites get started as single servers with standalone storage and a database. In all these cases, the architecture of the system is typically mapped to a physical setup. Here is how the story develops: after a large number of users or transactions, the scalability of the site and its architecture could become issues. Operation of the site, location of data centers, distribution of data all become expensive day to day issues.

Grids help you focus on application scalability and architecture as long as you can stick to a standard web server architecture template. Grids also use general purpose machines and hardware and really get you the best of worlds when it comes to virtualizaton and large deployments. Virtual web space has traditionally been the tool of small organizations or companies which don't want to have IT expertise in house for managing the website. Larger organizations have traditionally preferred to get dedicated machines. Grids change that - they allow large organizations to get the benefits of virtualization and outsourcing of physical hardware to the Grid provider.

Yet another social network, this time with Video

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:41:00 +0000

Today I logged into a beta of Seesmic. A site which claims to do voice conversations. I think this kind of an application makes more sense either on Facebook/MySpace as an add-on app or work based on OpenIDs. I think the days are over of building friends networks over and over again unless something unique is carved from the network itself (cultural, language, tastes etc). The site uses Flash to record the video itself which really limits the size of the market. Consider the following: Till about 18 months back Dell Inspirons didn't have a mic and here we need all that and an embedded camera (I doubt people are going to hook up an external camera for recording videos for Seesmic or even if they do how long that kind of a user is sustainable for the site). Another problem is going to be scaling. Unlike YouTube, the videos in a social network setting are going to be one on one or targeted to smaller groups. Is there enough bang for buck for building a CDN for these videos? How long are people going to be on this site (since number of public videos is a relatively small percentage of what goes on at YouTube).

The best thing was the menu and the user interface on Seesmic. It was simply awesome. However I found the colors were too dark. Also it crashed Firefox which was not that great since almost all my work happens on Firefox these days in about 20-30 tabs!

I recommend everyone to try out Seesmic. I think it has a great and interesting future!

Stretching the utilities of DNA Matching

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Mon, 19 May 2008 21:23:00 +0000

Don't get me wrong. I for one am all for utilizing whatever little benefits science and technology provide. However, this one is fishy: using DNA Matching to figure out a date... I think if people dated with the sole purpose of making babies then this makes perfect sense... Take a look at ScientificMatch.com. The site lists six benefits of using their service and only the last two seem relevant: fertility and healthier children.

Here is why I think the idea is fishy: I think DNA matching is too deep. It eliminates uncertainty from the matching process. If your partner has similar interests as you have what is the probability of both of you discovering new ones? How much of your partner's traits should be common and how much complimentary according to DNA Matching? To what extent can you take this philosophy - would you extend this to your friends as well? Maybe business partners? After all don't you want to stay away from people who mock you or are jealous of you or intend harm? What if your business partner lies to you? I don't think DNA Match is the answer to all these...

I would love to see some empirical data or research which proves that all the couples which have had long term relationships do have a good DNA match according to the sites criteria. For the benefit of their own children, we all can force the site owner to do that - can't we?

Robert H. Smith and others close their China Operations

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:25:00 +0000

It is becoming a long list of B-Schools now which have figured out that the China B-education market is not that big. On top of that government red-tape is high which prevents students from easily coming on board and its hard to take money out of China. Ah... The realities kick in. While the Chinese can be shrewd, it is hard to replicate education industry the same way hardware and software industries have been replicated in China. Long term, this can be a huge setback for China. It takes longer for the Chinese to come out, get educated in a Western school and go back to China. Maybe, it is easier if the government has a concerted and coordinated effort to do this in some planned fashion. To read more, click here.

If you have seen this error, you must have been to China!

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Wed, 14 May 2008 14:04:00 +0000

Chinese internet security policy is very interesting and this article gets into all what the authorities employ to keep access blocked or inconvenient and keep the fear level up inside the country when it comes to internet access. There are some key points to note in this article. Its possible to get around the Chinese internet firewalls by using encryption and VPNs which happen to be common. But the side affect of this whole firewalling and tracking down miscreants is that people are wary of reaching out of their own country. This has led to rapid internal market development, something which did not happen in countries like India. Its almost like giving a child steroids to grow and become smarter. There are always side affects as most critics will complain, but I am not sure if they cannot be rectified by simply lifting these barriers in 10 years!

Another point to note was that the U.S company Cisco actually helped the Chinese erect this modern firewall of mirrors (lawful inspection of packets) - an example of technology affecting lots of human lives and going unnoticed...

If you haven't taken a look at WiMax, you will now...

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:21:00 +0000

TV has been always an area of innovation. People want more and better all the time! While this used to include viewing experience and content in most cases, now its getting diversified. Its also about getting TV into places where it has not gone before! Take a look at this post on wired and the company USTelematics, which I think is the most innovative out of all mentioned in the article. Apart from the technology, their marketing and introduction model appears to be more disruptive than the others which are quite impressive as well. Frankly, to me IPTV has appeared to be just a technology change and its quite boring compared to what mobile TV has to offer - something truly unique and worthwhile to the consumers.

The thin line between Social and Unsocial

medhavib@gmail.com (Medhavi Bhatia (DC Metro)) — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:10:00 +0000

A recent article in NY Times piqued my interest and it talks about a thing or two I have wondered about as well: There are many different social networking sites and at each site something unique is offered to the users. The question is what makes a social networking site succeed? What do people really need when it comes to filling this aspect of their 24 hour day?

To read more, visit this NY Times site.