Dream Ahead

Managing Virtual Teams

2010-07-04T10:22:00.000-07:00

Offshoring or outsourcing started with significant cost benefits. With time it transformed into a formidable way to address talent deficiency in the united states. Countries like India led the IT out-sourcing industry be setting a quality bar and adopting quality standards like CMM and ISO. However, outsourcing is not the only reason for virtual teams. As organizations and their products become global, virtual teams are becoming a norm rather than an exception. Often, the burn and challenges of managing virtual teams are ignored in these scenarios. I have some experience in this area. At Stryker, I managed large offshore teams in India and France, and also played a role in setting up Stryker India. I have enough friends who manage teams in India and I see they work hours which transcend personal life. There are also several other issues like communication, motivation, team morale, intellectual property, etc. which face new challenges when managing virtual teams. So what are some ways to effectively manage virtual teams? I am going suggest a few, so please feel free to add more of yours :-

1. Use Rich Media, such as live video streams or virtual meetings, to make virtual interactions feel more realistic. Cisco Telepresence is great example of that on the high-end. On the other end consider technologies like Apple Facetime. The key is face-to-face, eye-to-eye, and voice-to-voice.

2. Frequent contacts, keep connections alive and fresh. Using a company blog or Wiki, have people update status and share documents. Consider using an enterprise Twitter like product. Where different members can effortlessly follow each other. The key is to ensure frequent communication, so that everyone feels involved.

3. Face to face meet-ups: Ensuring regular face to face meet-ups and rolling that into your budget. If budget is a bigger constraint then try creative solutions such as local meet-ups and conferencing.

4. Phone calls: this is a tough one, we need tools that can look at persons calender and decode how overloaded they are. One suggestion is to discover time slots which are a bit sane to both parties and then reserve them exclusively for meetings. The other principal to follow is put a hard time limit to these meetings and ensure that one does not run over. Often running over would mean late nights for one party. To prevent running over, ensure that agenda is crisp and participants are prepared apriori. Use blogs and wiki's for brainstorming ideas. This one is a combination of tools and discipline.

5. Project Management: use Scrum and Agile Project Management, first to keep meetings short and next to ensure regular and frequent sync-ups.

6. Motivation: pay particular emphasis to motivating employees. Ensure that product and project success is attributed. Ensure frequent celebrations. Bring in Rewards and set clear criteria for success. Keep in mind the culture of the location when defining these processes. For e.g. in India, family plays a big role in ones life, so have that in mind.

Please feel free to add and share more suggestions to make managing virtual teams more effective.

Business Models on the Internet

2010-06-30T23:25:00.000-07:00

Making money online is not easy. It is much harder than it may seem. Especially, with the increasing number of free products and services. The common trend is to first get users and later find out a way to make money. With resources such as Amazon Web Services and Google Aps, the cost of starting a web business is reducing. The days of shrink wrap software are shrinking. It is the mobile and on the web where most software development is moving towards. So it becomes even more important to understand what are the different ways money can be made online. I am sharing some of my research here. This are some categories of online business models.

* Brokerage Model

Marketplace Exchange ( e.g. Orbitz, ChemConnect )
Take orders to buy and sell product/services (e.g. CarsDirect, Respond.com)
'name your price' model (e.g. Priceline)
Auction broker (e.g. eBay)
Transaction broker (e.g. PayPal)
Virtual mall/marketplace (e.g. Amazon)
Search Agent ( no big player yet )
Distributor connecting manufacturers to retail buyers (no big player yet)

* Advertising Model (note this model is like broadcast and requires high viewer volumes)

Portal (e.g. Yahoo, Kosmix)
Classified (e.g. Monster, Craiglist)
User Registration (e.g. NYTimes)
Intent Based Ads (e.g. Google)
Contextual/Content Advertising (e.g. Google AdSense, Kontera, Vibrant, Browser Plug-ins)
Informericals, ads at the entry of content (e.g. CBSMarketWatch)

* Infomediary Model (providing information that facilitates a purchase or helps understand a market)

Audience Measurement Services
Incentive Marketing, point programs to buy stuff from one merchant
Metamediary e.g. EdMunds.com

* Merchant

Amazon.com, Barnes and Nobles, Apple iTunes, Downloads.com

* Manufacturer (Direct)

Dell.com,

* Affiliate

Pay per click, revenue share

Feel free to add using the comment section business models which I might have missed. This is ongoing and I will be updating this post as my research advances.

Comments

2009-02-27T22:44:00.000-08:00

Comments are a great way to interact with visitors of your website. This can be particularly valuable for companies promoting products and services, to hear what users have to say. Commenting systems often require a database, especially if you plan to have across several pages. However, small businesses host their websites without having database access and neither do they have the technical expertise to devote to creating such commenting systems. That is when third party commenting system prove to be very useful. Here is a list that I found so far, please comment and add some of your own:

Website: DISQU

Disqus offers a javascript embed or blog plug-in (Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad, MovableType) that enhances a blog’s comments and integrates it with a fully moderated community forum, hosted at exampleforum.disqus.com. Disqus’s service adds threads, comment/user ratings, spam control, and user identities for each commenter. The system can either...

IntenseDebate comments enhance and encourage conversation on your blog or website.

Facebook Comments

http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=198

Kosmix in BBC World News!!

2009-01-07T09:40:00.000-08:00

Recently BBC crew was in office. BBC in UK covered us in November but this coverage went live on television across the world. People in India confirmed that they saw it as well. On a personal note: I (rather my back) was streamed as well. Here are my favorite frames from the video. Click the image to see the video online.

How to get ActiveScaffold to work on Windows

2008-12-25T00:51:00.000-08:00

ActiveScaffold is a great development and quite popular.. However, when you follow the exact instructions as listed on the getting started guide the plug in simply does not work. Trust me follow this link and you will get the these errors:

C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.2.2/lib/active_support/core_ext/module/aliasing.rb:33:in `alias_method': undefined method `find_full_template_path' for class `ActionView::Base' (NameError) from C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.2.2/lib/active_support/core_ext/module/aliasing.rb:33:in `alias_method_chain' from D:/Work/Project/test/test/vendor/plugins/active_scaffold/lib/extensions/generic_view_paths.rb:33 from C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require' from C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require' from C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.2.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:153:in `require' from C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.2.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:521:in `new_constants_in' from C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.2.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:153:in `require' from D:/Work/Project/test/test/vendor/plugins/active_scaffold/environment.rb:63 ... 31 levels... from C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.2.2/lib/commands/server.rb:49 from C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require' from C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require' from script/server:3

I wasted many hours trying to find a way to fix this error. It is amazing that the main site has no mention of this! However, let me come to the main point i.e. the solution. Follow these steps to make it work on Windows:

Install Cygwin. Please make sure you install GIT as part of the setup options. Its under devlp.
Run the Cygwin bat file and on the command prompt enter
git clone git:://github.com/activescaffold/active_scaffold.git
All the files should be downloaded to /home/user/active_scaffold/
Copy the files from there to c:\ruby\yourapp\vendors\plugin\active_scaffold. If there is an existing directory by the same name then DELETE it first.

You are done!

Step 1 and 2 are Windows specific, however you dont need them if the OS you have already has git installed.

Hope all this helps.

Kosmix.com Beta Live and $20 million more in the bank

2008-12-08T23:17:00.000-08:00

Kosmix.com launched today with great fanfare from the press. The company also raised $20 million more from Time Warner which brings the total funding to $55 million. See below my list of media publications I have been tracking.

Kosmix: Your Guide to the Web from Kosmix on Vimeo.

Besides having passionately worked on the product I am also an avid user. So here I want to share why I feel Kosmix is truly adding value.

I think it all comes down to the second click. Here is an interesting article on "The Fight for the second click". I feel Kosmix helps make a more informed second click and thus helps in reducing them. How?

Let's go to the homepage. I see a hot topic "Eric Shinseki" that I have no clue about, but curious to know more. At this point I would urge the user to open two windows : one a google result and the other a kosmix topic page. So clearly Google provides some good links but they are not organized and each requires a second click. However with the "At a glance" module at Kosmix I quickly get a summary of the topic. Images even remind me that I have seen him in the news on CNN and that is precisely what is organized below. As I scan down I see blogs, opinions and discussions and just reading through the headlines I get a sense of why he is a hot topic. Scanning this page helps me make a more informed second click. In this case I clicked on a video to watch him talk. On Google I would have to click the image tab, video tab, etc. to see what other relevant information existed on this topic. So a value Kosmix brings to me is that it better understands my search term, organizes the web with a 360 topic view which helps me make an informed second click.

A second core value Kosmix brings is that it helps me explore and expand. So I can discover aspects of the topic which I would not have imagined looking for. It can also help me navigate to topics related to what I am reading. Check these topics out to see what I mean

2008 olympics (i would have never found the olympics medal tally elsewhere, and remember even if it showed up on Google it would a click away, while at Kosmix its right there)
xbox 360 (Here i expanded my second click because in the realted in Kosmos I see list of games for xbox 360 and I can quickly navigate to Halo 3 to check out some hot games before buying this unit)

I would really encourage the reader to try and experience this for himself.

I know its a hard to switch search habits but with Kosmix the transition is not painful because Kosmix does not replace search, it rather consumes it. So if Kosmix.com does not understand your query well it will show Google search results so that the user experience is not compromised.

Here is a list of coverage that I have been tracking:

CNet

BusinessWeek

PaidContent

Guardian

TechCrunch

TechMeme

AltSearchEngines

GigaOm

VentureBeat:

PE Hub:

Disclosure: I work at Kosmix, however the views expressed here are purely mine.

Need for Speed

2008-05-10T01:03:00.000-07:00

I have always wondered how Google decided on 10 for the number of results they show on the first page. Contrary to intuition, it was not driven by paradox of choice but speed instead. 10 results were half a second faster than 30. Speed (a.k.a. Latency) is the time between an action and its response. It has been an important contributer to Google's success. It also helped put Google Maps on the map. Powered by Ajax, Google Maps, provided instant gratification, unheard of in web applications. Speed has also been the secret sauce behind many innovate user interfaces (PicLens, SearchMe, etc.). I love it, when some sites have started giving instant feedback, when creating a new login, if the user-id is already taken or the password is weak. The flip side is also true. Users are sensitive to slow applications. Glue, a recent search innovation by Yahoo, got some media coverage, and already got some user comments pick up on its speed. Simply tells how sensitive users have gotten to speed. But then there are applications to which we are more tolerant. Content sites belong to that group. We are still alright if they take longer to load but we want applications such as search and maps to be instantaneous. Why is that so? I would suggest our need for speed is a function of the frequency of interaction and usage. Wikipedia articles are mainly consumed not interacted with but search is an iterative process.

So what does speed mean to sites that thrive on user-generated content? I think there is something deep here. Instant feedback boosts learning. Instant feedback can motivate users to contribute more and improve quality. Won't you love if you got a response to your question in no time? Won't you want to post to such a forum more often? Surprisingly, no Q&A site I know, measures the average time between a question and its answer and then advertises this information to end-users. Measuring for speed is the first step towards optimizing it. Its only then you will search creative ways to increase speed. If the size of each transaction is reduced the number of transactions can go up. Not only will you increase more contributions from the same user but increase the number of users who contribute. Did micro-blogging succeed because its easily available or by reducing the size of the posts they were able to increase the frequency and the number of posts? Instant feedback also is a driver of quality. If my blog had many readers, I would be more driven towards high-quality posts. Instant feedback can take many forms, a simple vote counter, nevertheless, finding creative ways to increase speed in user-generated content applications can be very rewarding.

Less is more ...

2008-04-28T20:49:00.000-07:00

A recent post on HubPages described 7 things they did to beat their competitor Squidoo and make a case for “less is more”. The 7 things were all targeted to improving quality of articles published at HubPages which resulted in less content and thus initially caused a dip in their traffic but thereafter caused a sustainable rise. The results are not very surprising, high-quality product have for generations produced market leaders and established brands e.g. wikipedia, google, Indian software industry, and the likes. Noteworthy is the application of this principle to user-generated content. Sites try so hard to get users to contribute content that quite often quality takes a back seat. A good lesson to learn from this case study is, track both quality and quantity of content and encourage quality submissions from users, in the process you will not only add value but also build a brand.

In my opinion, three important questions follow:

a) How to measure quality of content.
b) How to encourage quality submissions
c) How to fix poor quality content

Some obvious ways to do the above:

Measuring Quality: by having users rate content; by text scoring algorithms (similar to techniques used by search engines); by measuring user behavior (such as click through rates, page views, etc.); and by factoring in search engine rankings.

Encouraging Quality: by displaying the quality score along with the number of people who liked or disliked the content; by ensuring quality and relevance both determine the content available for consumption; and by rewarding high-quality submissions.

Fixing Quality: by identifying content areas poor in quality and then using algorithms and humans to fix them.

In conclusion, the ways are not as important as the questions. If you are a site that thrives on user generated content, never stop asking the above three questions in addition to the one you always ask; how much content was contributed and how many users contributed it.

Fears ...

2008-04-23T00:45:00.000-07:00

I wrote this poem a year back, I have written more which I will post when I get time...

I may seem like the stone, but I shiver when the wind blows by.
I may show light to everyone, but I fear the dark when I close my eye
I do not fear loosing life, but I fear of losing hope
I may not fear of not falling in love, but I fear of love from my life to elope
I may not fear living up to others expectations, but I fear the expectations of my own
I may not fear working late but I fear returning home alone.
I may not fear the thorns with the rose, but I fear of becoming the thorn for my rose
I may not fear not owning a private jet, but I fear of not getting what she chose.

-by Abhishek Gattani

CAPTCHA: insights into making humans and algos work together

2008-04-22T22:51:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaI did some work on CAPTCHA during my work at RPI. I recently revisited this topic and I am excited to see some interesting developments. CAPTCHAs are very popular but they do slow people down. The people hours spent world-wide in entering CAPTCHAs have grown to a sizable number. The increased use of CAPTCHAs as a way to prevent computer-bot access, led to desperate ways to get around it. Some porn sites did something quite creative. They require users to solve a CAPTCHA before they can see the next image. The entered CAPTCHA is then used to create free email accounts, profiles, etc.

Luis von Ahn, CAPTCHA inventor, and now a professor at CMU, developed reCAPTCHA. reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly. The interesting insight here is that human cycles being spent in solving CAPTCHAs can now be used to help computers solve a difficult problem and also serve a philanthropic purpose i.e. digitizing books.

Luis developed the ESP game, bought by Google, which is helping label the images of the web. He turned the labeling process to a game where a user describes an image with labels. If a label matches with an existing label from another user for the image, the label is reserved and the user needs to enter another label. The first few labels get easily entered but after that, some interesting labels emerge. For instance, some labeled George Bush with 'dumb' which to a computer may not be very obvious if no context words in documents suggest that. Luis claims with 5000 people playing this game simultaneously, all the images in Google can be labeled in 2 months! The interesting insight here is that humans were used to solve a problem that computers are yet to solve effectively.

So there are two ideas here:

1) Identify tasks that humans do on a mundane basis and then find a way to use those cycles spent to solve hard computer problems.

2) Identify hard computer problems and figure out creative collaborative ways in which humans can be used to solve these problems.

In both examples, Luis replaced computers with humans to solve the problem (of-course used the computer GUI to facilitate the replacement). I believe if one could connect humans and computers at a deeper level more fruit can bear. Following two examples will explain my point:

Computer Assisted Visual Pattern Recognition: machines do object segmentation, classification and communicate with humans by drawing a visual model around the segmented object as a medium for feedback. When the human is not satisfied with the results, the human modifies the visual model and the classifier takes the inputs and runs again. My MS thesis was on this idea applied to flower and skin recognition and my advisor George Nagy also advocates this.

Content Creation: as humans write an article, the computer suggests spelling corrections. As I actually write this blog post I have a Zemanta plug-in that suggests images and links I can use. I did not have to search for the images in this post, they were suggested to me by the machine.

The insight here is that computers were not replaced by humans but collaborated at a deeper level to solve a hard problem. They still attempted to solve the problem but were augmented with a communication medium (e.g. the visual model) where they sought help from the human if the they failed at their attempt to solve the problem.

Are there more applications? I would bet there are many, all one needs is thinking out of the box, some brilliant ideas, and one has the next big application.

Here is a very nice talk by Luis on Human Computation at Google:

Widgets and Desktop Applications

2008-03-29T23:13:00.000-07:00

What are widgets, gadgets, and web-services? Are they web 3.0 or simply a different wrapping over services we have been using for years? One way to look at the widget world is that they are software applications that run on the Internet OS. Quite like Notepad runs on Windows XP. By that analogy, sites like iGoogle and Netvibes can be viewed as spaces to download and install these applications. They almost provide one a user account in the Internet OS. So while Downloads.com holds a collection of softwares that run on desktops; Google Gadgets, Widgetbox, and the likes hold a collection of software that run on the Internet OS. Having said that, there are however some key differences:

One difference is of scale. Almost every site has the potential to become a widget. Which means there will be far more widgets than there are desktop applications. With scale comes the problem of discovering the right applications at the right time. Microsoft Windows organizes all software using application groups beneath the start button. But some of us already have realized how this approach crumbles when the number of software applications installed grow to a large number. With widgets this is only going to happen too soon. So are Netvibes, iGoogle, and the likes even thinking about this? It does not seem like they are. They are taking the Windows approach and arranging all your widgets into tabs, which will make it very hard for users to get what they want. Rather taking this further, won't it be cool if given what you are looking, the right widget could be suggested to you? Maybe go a step further, and provide you the answer to your question. For instance 10+2 is what you need, and not only were you shown a calculator but answer 12. Isn't that powerful? Kosmix is one startup I know trying to do this.

In summary, I feel widgets although resemble software applications, give a whole new meaning to them because of the following reasons all attributed to the internet OS

(1) widgets unlike software applications can talk to each other
(2) widgets live in a world were multiple users can collaborate through them, unlike software applications which are typically single user based
(3) the number of widgets will scale to a number much larger than software applications
(4) they are inherently platform independent.

Having said that, the widget space is still in its infancy, and there is a long way ahead.