Interesting connections, since AdMob’s popularity(and significant impression numbers) comes from it’s iPhone partnership and Google’s Android is ofcourse an iPhone rival.

AdMob CEO sent the following letter -

Today we announced that AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for $750 million. We are extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our advertiser, developer and publisher partners.

AdMob’s people, products and tools will continue to work to deliver successful campaigns for you and to effectively monetize your mobile traffic – no interruptions. Our product and engineering teams will keep building great products for our customers. Our sales team will keep working with our thousands of advertisers to deliver successful campaigns. Our business development team will keep working to maximize ad revenue for the more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications that make up AdMob’s publisher network.

After our deal closes, AdMob will work with Google to accelerate the pace of innovation in mobile and do an even better job for you. We believe this deal will benefit our advertisers, developers and publishers by:

*Increasing our investment in building innovative and engaging ad units across platforms and to further improve targeting and tracking.

*Building even more powerful relevance and optimization capabilities, and more powerful technology and tools to monetize mobile traffic.

*Increasing the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile devices by leveraging Google sales team, infrastructure and relationships.

*Improving the already high level of service and support we deliver to our advertisers, developers and publishers.

Google has been fairly good at monetizing search ads, but not in-application ads and that’s where AdMob+Android juice will kick in.

This gives a big boost to InMobi, India based mobile ad network – since neither Google, nor AdMob are currently very active in the regions they operate in (i.e. South Africa and other emerging markets).

What’s your opinion?

Read: Mobile Ad Networks in India [Complete List]

If you are a startup who has specific queries/suggestions/tidbits to share, please get in touch asap (ashish at pluggd.in).

Also, RIM and Adobe have announced integration with Adobe’s platform, enabling developers to build rich content services and BlackBerry Widgets that leverage the latest runtime environments, APIs and network services through Adobe’s design and development tools. (details here)

Recommended Read: Mobile App’onomy – Mobile users aren’t Loyal to Cool Apps | Nine Rules to Improve Usage of your Mobile Application ['coz Downloads Don't Mean Much]

HCL Infosystems, Infosys and Wipro are among the companies to market and offer value-added services around the Microsoft Online Services (link).

MS”s online standard suite is a set of messaging and collaboration solutions hosted by Microsoft, and consists of Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Online.

This is a big boost to SaaS players in India and MS’s entry will surely heat up the space. As I have mentioned earlier, most of the incumbent players in enterprise space have failed in their online/SaaS venture – so MS’s entry is an interesting space to watch out for.

Also, service like these will hurt the enterprise business of few Internet companies like Rediff, which provides enterprise email service to small businesses and have chosen to remain in their archaic world.

Read our detailed coverage of online office.

Recommended Read: Microsoft teamed up with Nivio and Airtel for the Online PC | 100+ Indian colleges to Implement Google Apps

Apple India Catalogue Section Down Since..?

Well, we first reported it 15 days back and the site is still down (link).

Any clue?

• The number of people who click on display ads has dropped from 32% to 16% in the last 2 years.

• 8% of all Internet users account for 85% of all clicks

• 4% of all Internet users are considered "Heavy Clickers" – they make up 50% of all clicks.

           [Via a study conducted by Comscore/Starcom USA and Tacoda for US population]

This is an important finding for the simple reason that the notion of ‘clickthrough’ should be revisited and I couldn’t agree more with Comscore’s VP (Marketing) statement:

“marketers who attempt to optimize their advertising campaigns solely around the click are assigning no value to the 84% of Internet users who don’t click on an ad” – source

Bang on!

Time to go beyond the click? Well, yes! As web expands beyond the current form (for instance, International domain names), niche sites will emerge and measuring the audience (and content) based on clicks does not justifies the quality of the content (and that’s why we stopped accepting CPC ads).

Reminds me of a sign hanging at Einstein’s office that read:

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

What’s your take on the current state of online advertising industry?

To give you an idea, there are more than 600K villages in India and right from FMCG to Telecom players, everybody is eyeing the ‘next wave’ of growth.

The attempt behind this fortnight theme would be to bring in a sense of opportunities that lies in rural India – and how companies are harnessing that.

If you would like to share your perspective, please drop us a mail (ashish at pluggd.in)

• Desperation Level – Do you Measure Business Partners on that?
• Engineering with a Noble Cause – Chewang Norphel, Ladakh [Inspiration]
• Sesame Street, Wallace and Gromit – One Google, Multiple Doodles [Seasonality Matters]
• Startups – Do you empower your employees to take $ decision?
• SMS Interconnect Charges – A blow to A2P Service Providers

Startups/Entrepreneurship Related

• NRN’s Catamaran Fund – Sudha Murthy Sells stocks worth $92mn
• Shell Foundation Invests in Husk Power Systems (converts Rice to Electricity)
• Reachwide- Newspaper Classifieds Booking Service[Review]
• Desperation Level – Do you Measure Business Partners on that?
• Startups – Do you empower your employees to take $ decision?

Technology

• Farmville Success – An evaluation
• Wordpress Hack – How to Share Adsense Revenue with Multiple Authors?
• Google Unveils Privacy Dashboard to Control User Data
• Sachin Tendulkar Pitches Sixes on Twitter Trends!!
• Nokia’s N97 Does a Savior with Firmware Upgrade
• Amended Indian IT Act Comes Into Action..
• Hola! The Google Gola [Friday Fun]

India Business

• Rediff – Adless homepage adds up to the loss [Quarterly Report]
• SMS Interconnect Charges – A blow to A2P Service Providers
• Telecom Subscription in India Crosses 500 Million Mark!
• Online Exams – Can they Survive the Load?
• Mobile Roundup: Google Search by Voice on Nokia S60, Opera Mobile for Nokia Smartphones
• News Roundup – Rural Broadband Kiosk, Reliance: Moko, Net Telephony

Follow these simple steps

wordpress weekend

Step 1: Create an adsense channel for each author.

Step 2: Create ads (in adsense) and assign them under the specific author channel. Note the slot id for each ads.

Step 2: Add this code in your wordpress theme’s functions.php file (replace author1/author2 with author names, and slot id with author’s slot id)

function adsense_code($author) {
if($author == 'author1')
return '<slot id_author1>';
elseif ($author == 'author2')
return '<slot id_author1>';
else // default author
return '<slot id_admin>';
}
Step 3: Depending on where you want to showcase the ads, insert your adsense code (ensure that all the ad formats are same)

google_ad_client = "pub-id";
google_ad_slot = "< ?php echo adsense_code(get_the_author()); ?>";

Explanation/How this works?

What you have done is that

• For each ad format, you assigned an ad slot to each of your authors.
• Based on author’s slot id (which is picked up by the function), author’s ads will be shown on the site and earnings can easily be reported on the corresponding channel.
• Note that author name in the function adsense_code is same as author’s display name (if you want, you can use author id as well).

Simple? Got questions? Leave them in the comment section.

wordpress weekend

While we have tinkered a lot with wordpress and do use the hooks/plugins effectively, we are starting a series of articles to
share some of our experience with wordpress – be it about customizing themes to a few useful plugins to hacking some piece of code.

These articles will be published only during weekend.

If you a wordpress enthusiast/hacker and do wanna share your hacks, do get in touch with us [ashish at pluggd.in]

She has sold shares worth Rs 430 crore or $92 million to back her husband’s plan to launch a venture capital fund. NRN, earlier  sold stocks worth $37mn, so that takes the fund corpus to $129mn.

The fund, as we mentioned earlier will invest in healthcare, retail, technology and Catamaran will start the investment in a year or two (NRN will also mentor startups in crystallizing ideas).

Note to other Infy millionaires – learn from your super boss. Many of you have invested in stock/real estate market, but how about investing in Indian entrepreneurs?

And if you are a startup looking for angel investment, do get in touch with us.

Recommended Read: NRN turns Superman (Amar Chitra Katha’s comic book hero)

img credit

Key numbers for quarter ending September 30th, 2009:

• Total Revenues – 4.19mn (India: 3.08, US: 1.11).
• Gross Margin: 66% (as opposed to 75% in Sep’08 qtr)
• Net Loss (before Income tax): 2.6mn (0.42mn in Sep’08 qtr) – details

Rediff Redesign Impact - Average Page view per Visitor

We earlier covered how the non-intrusive experience, combined with a ‘white’ experience has actually resulted in overall increase in pageviews (surprise! surprise!) as well as total visits to the site – signs that show long term value(?).

Rediff’s big bet has been the enablement of social activity on the site – i.e sharing with friends, usage of ‘MyPage’ and ofcourse, the  overall improvement in user experience.

But beyond that, the content/product strategy doesn’t’ seem to have any significant direction. What’s your take? Do you sense a ‘solid’ strategy behind Rediff’s new avatar?

Check out Geeky Jokes

SMS are sent either from a person’s mobile phone (P2P) or through an Application (A2P). While SMS sent by a person costs 1 Rupee, SMS sent by an application costs way less. Once you get access to these SMS gateways (which is not trivial), you can send out the sms’es at virtually 0 paise. Huge upfront charges though introduces a barrier to smaller players. But that opens up gates for resellers, who buy SMS credits in bulk from these providers and sell it to more smaller players. Thus evolved an ecosystem of advertisers reaching out to people at low cost, political parties running their campaign on sms, A2P providers, resellers and even smart applications around sms’es.

This was possible because the cost of transferring a SMS from an application to end user was close to 0 paise. There was no interconnect charges between telecos to handle sms originating from one teleco and terminating on another one. Recently though Airtel signed a deal with Tata Teleservices and other telecos wherin telecos will pay 15 paise per sms terminating on Airtel’s network. Today Tata Teleservices is market leader in providing bulk smses and Airtel is well leader in number of mobile connections (more that 30%). This virtually means that the 0 paise/sms which was possible till now has suddenly become 15p.

Yes, this move by Airtel (and soon to be followed by other telcos) is going to affect the A2P service market quite adversely. Interconnect charges are required so that the terminating teleco also make some money in handling the sms. This is the same reason why interconnect charges were introduced in voice calls when GSM service providers stopped handling calls from CDMA networks. Moreover it provides a cost barrier for players to enter this field. ‘Free SMS to India‘ will no longer be possible now.

But Ideally TRAI should have regularized this charge after carefully studying the volumes in this market and evaluating the effect of such a charge on end consumer. This move by Airtel is clearly aimed at increasing its revenue in short term and getting back its lost share of A2P market in the longer term. Only Airtel will not be able to provide sms delivery to Airtel mobile phone at close to 0 paise. Airtel being a leader in number of connections will soon attract A2P players from other telecos.

Consumers also will be affected by this move albeit indirectly. Banks, airlines and other institutions are already crying foul on this move. They were able to send real time free alerts to its vast user base because the charges were quite low. But now with the interconnect charges it is going to severely increase their expenses. Other companies such as mobee.in and m3m.in which provide email delivery to your mobile phone over sms are also going to be hit badly.

I hope TRAI realizes the gravity of this situation and intervenes immediately before it affects this whole industry in general.

What’s your opinion?

[Guest article by Mayank Sharma. Article reproduced from his blog]

Services such as Street view, in past, drew ire over Google from certain quarters around the world. Trying to gain trust from its users, Google lists all its products that are associated with your account in Dashboard.

“Over the past 11 years, Google has focused on building innovative products for our users. Today, with hundreds of millions of people using those products around the world, we are very aware of the trust that you have placed in us, and our responsibility to protect your privacy and data. Transparency, choice and control have become a key part of Google’s philosophy, and today, we’re happy to announce that we’re doing even more.” – official blog

The Dashboard allows user to control settings of your various Google accounts and to monitor information that has shown to public through multiple Google services. Take for Example: Gmail. Here a quick link is displayed on the left side of Dashboard that redirects to Inbox, All mail, Sent mail, Saved drafts, Chat history, Spam and Trash. On right side, a direct link is given to manage chat history, HTTPS settings and all Gmail settings.

Right now Alerts ,Blogger, Calendar, Contacts, Custom search engines, Docs, Finance, Friend Connect, Gmail, Health, iGoogle,Mobile Sync, Latitude, Orkut, Picasa, Profile, Reader, Shopping List, Talk, Tasks, Voice ,Web history and YouTube are included in Dashboard. Users can expect the inclusion of remaining Google products in Dashboard in couple of weeks.

Do give Google Dashboard a try and see for yourself what information have you shared

About the author: Lohith Amruthappa is a Search Engine Marketing specialist and blogger, currently managing inhouse SEO and PPC projects. You can visit for more information on SEO, PPC and Google analytics at http://www.lohithamruthappa.com

What is more relevant at this point of time however, is to point out to Mr. Sachin Tendulkar about the “untapped” fan-base of his on Twitter. With whom he or his PR firm could engage with. Although there is an account name @sachintendulkar which has about 11k followers, but since the account is not verified we are not sure about the genuineness of the person behind. Besides 11k is a very small number of followers for Sachin Tendulkar.

We believe that Twitter is a must have direct-interaction-platform for Sachin Tendulkar(genuine one) to connect directly with his fan-base. Making it to Twitter Trends shows the potential already. A verified account though would do him, perhaps stop some fanboys taking away the steam of the name. Congratulations to Sachin for today’s performance.

Meet Chaweng Norphel – better known as the Glacier Man of India, who has developed a simple technique to harvest water into an “Artificial Glacier” using simplest of locally found materials and pipes.

In Ladakh, the annual average rainfall is 50 mm. The only source of water are glaciers, which melt in summer. This water reaches the villages late in the season. The locals manage this water carefully and store it for the year.

norphel

74 year old, Norphel proposes that artificial glaciers be built as a substitute for dams. He believes that dams are an enormous financial burden and they bring about environmental and social hazards.

Artificial Glaciers or Government Funded Dam(n)?

Artificial glaciers are easy to build. First, Norphel channelises glacier water into a depression lying in the shadow area of a mountain, hidden from sunlight. He places half-inch-wide iron pipes at the edge of the depression.In 1996, a year after retirement, Norphel joined the Leh Nutrition Project, a non-governmental organisation, as project manager for watershed development.

“I realised that all the problems in the region were related to water. In most areas, it was scarce. In others, it was being wasted,” he says. “The best way to deal with this is the construction of clean, efficient channels.” The channels he makes bring water from distant areas with minimal losses. I noticed in Leh that water did not freeze in the channels but did so in the thin iron pipes. As the pipes are made of metal and are very thin, they lose heat quite rapidly,”

As the water keeps collecting in the pipes, it freezes. As more water seeps in, it pushes out the frozen blocks, and in turn, itself gets frozen. This keeps happening in a continuos cycle, and these frozen blocks create a clean, artificial glacier. (source: 1, 2)

Norphel has made seven such glaciers. One artificial glacier costs just $7,000, compared to $34,000 for a cement water reservoir!

Inspirational? One’s attempt to solve a personal itch that challenges norms!

The Act was passed by both the Houses of Parliament in December last year and was notified in February this year.Besides monitoring and interception, the amended Act also deals with the appointment of Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, which deals with computer security and situations arising from cyber attacks.

Under Section 69A of the amended IT Act, Government can block any website, if found violating the following:

• Interest of sovereignty or integrity of India
• Defence of India
• Security of the State
• Friendly relations with foreign States
• Public order
• For preventing incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence relating to above

These orders will be carried out by government-appointed officers, not below the rank of a joint secretary (details here).

The missing link in the entire process is provision for one to contest the decision. Designated officers have all the right to block what they feel violates the rule and given how archaic and illiterate the entire system is, expect some learnings along the way.

Also see: IT Act Amendment Bill – Publishing Obscene Material Punishable

And finally, Indian Govt. Bans SavitaBhabhi, the Porn Cartoon Site?

• Total Telephone subscriber base has reached 509 Million (Wireless subscription reaches 471.7 Million, Wireline subscription declines to 37.3 Million)
• 14.98 Million new additions in Wireless segment
• Wireline subscription declines by 0.02 Million.
• Overall Tele-density reaches 43.50
• Broadband subscription is 7.21 million

The number of telephone subscribers in India increased to 509.03 Million at the end of September-09 from 494.07 Million in August-2009, thereby registering a
growth rate of 3.03%. With this, the overall Tele-density in India reaches 43.50. The set target of 500 million telephones by the end of 2010 has been achieved by September 2009.

Please note: Note that telecom operators do inflate numbers and expect a correction when DoT unveils the real story. Moreover, these are not unique subscription numbers.

Google has 2 doodles running across the globe – Google UK is celebrating 20th birthday of animated characters, Wallace and Gromit; and everywhere else  Goog is sporting the all time awesome Sesame street doodles.

What’s interesting is that sesame street has been customized to Indian version for Google India (chamki & boombah)

Seasonality.

I have said this probably a good number of times earlier (Why Seasonality Matters? Few Lessons from Google, Of party season and the lazy startups in India) on how such simple customizations help brands connect to consumers.

How many of us knew that today marks the 40th anniversary of Sesame street? Well, Google just brings that fresh piece of knowledge while others like Yahoo/Bing just remain as static as they shouldn’t be.

Does all this ‘Doodling’ matter?

You don’t have a human touch, unless you actually make an attempt to relate to your user’s emotions.

As a consumer/user of your service, people do tend to relate to ‘service which they like and trust. Liking and Trust from how closely they related to your service/what do they ‘think’ of your service – all in their subconscious mind.

Ask your friend, what do they think of Google? Chances are that they’ll say it’s an innovative company – while most of Google’s recent ‘innovation’ haven’t done well so far (too early to say the impact wave will have).

So what makes them believe that Google is an innovative company? Infact, have you ever wondered why a simple tweak/feature release from Google gets far more buzz than other companies?

What stops Yahoo/Microsoft/AOL to not tweak their logos and celebrate ‘history? Maybe it’s not in their DNA (even small change in Google is noticed, thanks to their minimalistic principle), but what’s really important for companies is to see how can they relate more to users?

What’s your opinion?

Meanwhile, watch this fun video of Gali Gali Sim Sim (the Indian version of Sesame Street)

I go to this small tea shop in southern part of Bangalore which serves two different types of tea – regular one (costs Rs. 4/) and the premium one (Rs. 7/). The owner, right from day one served me the premium version (without even asking/giving me a choice). When he isn’t around, his employees usually ask and I end up consuming Rs. 4/ tea.

Frankly, it just doesn’t matter – neither the cost, nor the quantity (or premiumness).

The tea shop employees, in true essence of the word ‘job’ are simply doing their job, while Owner is trying to build relationships with clients (and get them to consume more).

But somewhere, the same passion/zeal/’CRM’ skills aren’t passed onto the employees. And the result is loss of sales (i.e. less consumption).

Coming back to the topic of this article, how many startups actually empower their employees to take $ decision or make certain assumptions during the sales cycle?

When I had to renew my bullet insurance, the ‘employee’ literally asked his boss to forego Re. 1/ that I didn’t give him (he didn’t have the change).

While these are true of big corporate where you need dickheads to work ‘as per the script’, how many startups actually give freedom to their sales force to take quick decision and close the deal?
Especially when time is money and one can’t afford to carry on a long-and-haggling discussion with one customer (and lose out on others) – does your sales force have the power to take quick decisions?

On this topic, I spoke to a startup/mid-size company founder who candidly said ‘I do want to keep the control and ensure that each and every penny is taken care of. ’

The bigger question to ask is – are you losing out few pennies because you are taking extra care of the pennies you are getting?

Is there an opportunity cost of ‘long and perfect sale cycle’?

What’s your opinion?

IGNOU tried the online entrance exam and the entire online infrastructure collapsed within few minutes of the exam (Yahoo! was the infrastructure provider and IGNOU has asked Yahoo for a detailed report/explanation on the collapse).

The IGNOU exam had only 9,350 students (CAT is expected to have 2.42 Lakh students) and while it questions the entire infrastructure/capacity planning, it does throws some perspective/expected challenges to CAT authority (CAT will be held in two sessions each day for 10 days, between November 28 and December 7).

As far as CAT is concerned, Prometric which won the contract (close to $40mn deal) has partnered with NIIT for the operational support.

But as far as the online infrastructure is concerned, it’s a different ballgame. If Yahoo servers couldn’t handle 9,000 candidates – do you see a need for fallback (OMR?) option during the CAT exams?

Are exam authorities jumping the gun by going online too soon?

Husk Power systems, started by University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business students converts rice husks into energy and has created proprietary technology that cost-effectively converts rice husks into electricity.

Rice husks (the casing on the outside of rice grains) have traditionally been discarded. However, upon heating, rice husk releases gas and which HPS uses to  run modified diesel engines to generate electricity. The waste product of the process is high in silica and can be sold to concrete manufacturers.

HPS owns and operates 35-100 kW “mini power-plants” that deliver electricity as a pay-for-use service to villages of 2,000 to 4,000 inhabitants in the Indian Rice Belt. Each plant becomes operationally profitable in the first six months of operations. HPS has successfully implemented projects in 50 villages in Bihar and will expand its footprint to 100 villages in 2009, 400 in 2010, and 2000 in 2012. 

Shell Foundation has been a partner to Husk Power Systems since November 2008, providing ongoing business development assistance and technical support. The funding will be used to deliver more power plants, increase the operational and technical capacity of the company and develop the Husk Power Systems brand in India and the US.

s

For location aware results, simply turn on the My Location feature to give you the most relevant results nearby (blog).

Watch the demo

GIGO, i.e. Garbage in, Garbage out. Nokia is shutting down it’s gaming service, N-Gage (by Sep, 2010) and is pushing users to OVI store for newer games (blog)

Opera 10 Beta for Nokia Smartphones

Opera has launched Opera Mobile 10 Beta for Nokia Smartphones – the new release is super fast (claims 50% faster than the earlier version) and has new features like speed dial, tabbed browsing and of course, adaptive zoom, web address auto completion. Download the new version here

Be it about partnership or be it about hiring an employee, do you evaluate one’s desperation for success, before inking the partnership?

In the last few months, I have met a good number of people – either for a professional partnership or just a general chit chat and have got mixed feelings about choosing a partner.

To cite an example, few B-school students (from premiere college) approached me for a specific project and while we worked on the details, I couldn’t see any significant passion in them to carry off the project (they actually backed off later citing study pressure etc), while I met these young chaps who were from Tier-III B-school and were really ‘desperate’ to be known to the outside world.

These ‘Tier-III’chaps, even convinced the college faculty to start off an e-cell, in order to get students more exposed to the industry (good start, if not the most ideal). I instantly connected them to couple of startups who were looking for ‘cheap’ (read: free) interns and now, one of them has even got a PPO, i.e. pre placement offer (nothing great to work for an unknown firm, but maybe this unknown startup makes it so damn big that their Tier-I counterparts will end up working for them).

Big B - Desperate for Success (maybe that's why he is still around)?

‘D’ for Desperation

This is insanely true for finding one’s business partners as well – including advisors/mentors. You might have all the big brand names, while in reality they do not have ‘anything to prove’ to the world – so they will just hang around (and eat your equity).

Coming back to the question – if you are part of a big brand or have built a big brand, is your desperation level the same when you move on to the new new thing? On the contrary, if you aren’t part of any big brand and have an intrinsic motivation to succeed, don’t you go out and get things done? With certain level of desperation?

Do you judge partners/potential cofounders/employees on their ‘desperation’ level also?

For finding employees for startups, isn’t this a valid use case? I see many startups struggling with hiring rock stars, especially when the definition of ‘rock star’ is based on one’s paper credentials (and past success). While, if you hire somebody from Tier-II college, their probability of joining you is quite high (they even stick longer, maybe till they really find their self-worth!). [read: Zoho’s hiring strategy]

There are enough arguments on both sides of the table – but does an early success impacts one’s entrepreneurial streak (in some cases, it does bring a sense of ‘I know it all’ attitude)  ? Or rather, isn’t it one’s intrinsic desperation/motivation level that makes one tick in this competitive world?

Would you partner with a failed entrepreneur than the one who has made it big? For one who has failed earlier (assuming he has an intrinsic motivation to make it big in life), a lot of things are at stake – reputation, life, peer pressure (though none of this guarantees success!).

Most importantly, do you/your partners have the same ‘desperation’ parameters? You could be looking for money, while your partner wants more fame! – so think about it.

What’s your opinion? Do you measure your partners (i.e. employees/advisors/cofounder) on their ‘desperation’ level (and parameter)?  If yes, how?

Reachwide has tie-up with all major print media groups like ToI, Express, HT, Hindu etc. but does not cater to regional newspapers as yet. From the user experience point of view Reachwide has done very well. At all times you are informed of what you are doing and every information that you ever want to know is there on the screen. They also provide circulation details of every edition so that you make the most informed decisions. Though, they did fall short on suggesting the editions for my ad. I was thrown at all possible papers and packages which became just too confusing to decide.

On business sense i would go with Releasemyad as they have more tie-ups and better support but in ease of use Reachwide definitely gets my vote.

If you are a user interface designer you should definitely look at ReachWide. Very few sites in India have mananged to keep it clean and easy.

Do you agree/disagree? Do you think English newspaper readers scroll the classifieds section or do a quick Google?

BSNL plans to setup 30,000 kiosks by 2011 (on a franchisee basis). These kiosks would extend broadband connectivity to those who have no alternative access to the facility, and to those who have little to spend on such services. The rural people will pay a small fee to access the services.

The company is currently in the process of setting up broadband access equipment in all rural exchanges from where the wireline connectivity will be extended.

Net Telephony

ISPs have filed a petition with the Competition Commission of India against DoT, as the latter hasn’t allowed ISPs to enter the net telephony space.

The ISPs have been demanding permission to offer the service for over two years, but the DoT has been blocking it on the ground that it wanted to bring parity between unified access licence holders that pay between 6 and 10 per cent of their income as licence fee and ISPs that pay 6 per cent. The DoT reckons that if unrestricted Net telephony is allowed, then it could be complementary service to the existing mobile and fixed line telephone services, in which case telecom firms could be at a disadvantage compared to an ISP. [source]

RCom ties up with Moko.mobi

RCom has partnered with Moko.mobi to offer instant chat (one-to-many or one-to-one with real-time integration across both mobile and computers); profile management tools, including user-name, description, image and video galleries, messaging inbox, friends list, tags, editing tools, and privacy settings; and will enable user to upload content via MMS or the Web. It will also offer editorial content to cultivate a positive community. Moko.mobi would run competitions and spark conversation. (source)

Per-second Billing

Now that Airtel has joined the bandwagon, Reliance too is launching is mulling to join per-second billing plan

(also see: MTNL to offer 3G connections for Rs 109 in Mumbai)

The good news is that Nokia has not yet given up on N97 (especially after N900) and has released the firmware upgrade 2.0 that brings back one’s faith in Nokia (and their credibility to stand against apple/google competition).

N97 - The Ultimate Touchscreen Phone from Nokia

One of the big pain points (apart from performance issues) of N97 was the ‘dancing’ screen, an overdose of touch/flip that would prevent you from answering any call (yes! I mean this!). The 134MB 2.0 firmware, which is currently available only via the software updater needs a mention for the simple reason that there is a significant improvement in touch screen usability, screen scrolling (kinetic scrolling).

Other updates include

• Nokia Email, Ovi Contacts and Ovi Store are all integrated in the core system image.
• Increased memory and battery performance
• Improved image and video stability
• Ovi Maps, Ovi Maps 3.1 which boasts 3 dimensional maps

Overall, Nokia brings back the punch with major (mentioned above) as well as minor updates (for instance, there are few text changes which makes the feature usage more intuitive)

All in all, N97 seems to bring back the Nokia promise. If you are a N97 user, do upgrade to 2.0 firmware (before you give up on the phone and the company).

Note: If you are on Windows7, you should run the Nokia software updater in compatibility mode.

Howmuchsoever I tried to resist this game by blocking all Farmville updates or ridiculing my friends who have been playing it during work hours, but ever since I went to this app with a thought to just have a casual glance on this thingy called Farmville, there has been no turning back.
This game is really addictive and I think after a long time I’ve become crazy for any game like this. Yes, when I had opened my Facebook account, I definitely enjoyed few apps but beyond those initial ones, rest I just visited more from a purpose of checking those out.

But Farmville is a different story all together, the devotion is so much so that every night when I come back from work the first thing which I do is check out on my crops and harvest the ready ones. And I think I am still not as compulsive user as some of my friends are, someone now dreams of gaining XPs whereas someone wakes up at midnight to harvest his crop, there is one who smsed me his Facebook password to harvest as he was stuck in a long meeting and one who called up and shared the password so that I can harvest his ready crops while he himself was travelling out.

Such is the user-involvement in this game!

No wonder Farmville has got 58+ million active users (as on 14^th Oct’09) and it has been topping the list of social games ever since its launch on 19^th June’2009.

Image Source: Gamasutra

Close to 60 million users in just 4 months??? That’s really some statistics in the history of social games! So, what could be the reason for this historical success of the game? Well, there are actually many but I think the key reasons which can be attributed towards the phenomenal success of this game are:

• Engaging/Stickiness: Oh, this game is really sticky to its core and this is one of the biggest reasons for so much of repeat visits to this app. You buy crops with Farmville coins, sow them in your farm and if you do not return to your farm on time, your crops wither and die. That’s a loss of money and negative impact on your balance! So, one has to return to this game again & again if you want to make more or do not want to lose your money there. A lovely way to keep the users engaged.
• Networking: With Farmville on Facebook, there is a possibility of networking within a networking site. You can ask your friends to be your neighbors in farm and there are different ways by which you can visit your neighbors and earn reward points in the game. So having neighbors is advantageous and within social networking arena of Facebook, it gives you another chance of farm networking by interacting and helping your friends. Now I do get actual messages like, “visit my farm as I’ve revamped it completely” or “check out the new tractor and decorations on my farm” .
• Viral: It spreads like crazy in your community and there are many interesting reasons for the same, be it free gifts which you send or receive from your friends and later can use those to make money, sharing the wealth of your success or helping stray animals, all have some rewards attached which motivates you to spread the word more and more. You automatically end up doing these making this game truly viral in every way.
• Communication: Zynga content guys definitely know the art of communication, each action has a prompt for communication and most of it is in either such an interesting language or are encouraging announcements of your advancements that you actually end up publishing your updates to your friends. And these updates act nothing less than a trigger to your friend to go and do some more farming in their farms.
• Design and innovation: I personally love the UI of this game, I mean the colors and graphics of those fully grown crops definitely give you joy of a different kind. To add to that, constant innovation by Zynga team in terms of new farm additions like those beautiful flowers, Indian flag etc. or themes like the Halloween ones are nice additions for the users.
• Monetization: Farmville is not just another free social game, it has got a well planned monetization strategy in place too. And by money I don’t mean Farmville coins or cash, I definitely mean hard cash in terms of real $. Thanks to the addiction of this game that once players are hooked on to it, they actually end up spending “real” money in buying “virtual” goods. On any given day 500,000 tractors (which are $20 “virtual” Farmville tractors) are sold on Farmville. No wonder, Zynga the company behind Farmville is making good money and has been profitable every month since September 2007 (though Mike Arrington has a good story on scams surrounding Zynga and other virtual goods services).

Last but not the least, I’m wondering if success of Farmville has some connection with users’ psychography too? The fact that quite many Farmville users are actually Indians, makes me think if it has something to do with roots of Indians being in farming and agriculture?

Also in other countries too, amidst all hectic life and work stress people are heading towards peaceful farms in reality, so is setting up a virtual farm somewhere helping them relive the same experiences online too?

Has Farmville got anything to do with user’s inclination towards pastoral lives and is it serving “this” intrinsic need in the virtual world?

What’s your opinion?