Wireless Utopia

Scribie

2011-03-29T12:57:00.000-07:00

We have relaunched CallGraph.Biz as Scribie.com. Scribie is an audio transcription outsourcing service which lets you easily outsource your audio transcription work to freelancers. You just have to upload your files and pay $0.80 per minute of audio in advance. After 1 business day you'll get back a high quality transcript of your audio file. Check it out!

OT: On Working Alone

2008-12-22T05:09:00.000-08:00

One of the most frequently asked questions, in all the startup and entrepreneurship forums, is can you do it alone? Is it good? Lately a lot of attention is being paid to single person run ventures, eg Balsamiq and Twitpic. Its the new happening thing in town. Here's what I have to say about it.

I've been working out of my living room for the past 8 months. We closed down our office this March and Call Graph is a result of the security deposit that was left over. And it hasnt been that much of a bad experience at all. In fact, I'm loving it. Anna Sambar (rice and curry, the staple food of all the autowallas in Bangalore) has grown on me. For 12 bucks, its a great deal. I hated giving up Ultra Milds. But Gold Flake small is more nicotine at lesser price. And Old Monk! Need I say anything about it? Its been my favorite for a long time. Sadly this years budget meant that a quarter was two bucks dearer at Rs 40. Add to that the bills for rent and internet connection and it pretty much covers the essentials. Monthly cost comes to around 20 K. Not bad for Bangalore I would say.

On top of that, I've cut down on traveling. No MoMo's, no TiE's, no nothing. Not even the weekend late nighters with friends, much to their annoyance. Obviously I dont have a girlfriend and that helps too. If I ever have to head out, I take the bus. In Bangalore its a time sink. You never know how long its going to take. So I try to avoid going out as much as possible. Which of course means that my face to face interactions, the human touch quotient, has gone down drastically. Not a bad thing again, since I'm a born loner. I can live and work alone for extended periods of time.

The best thing about working alone though is the independence. You are pretty much free to do whatever you like. Nobody to convince, nobody breathing down your neck, no wasting of time. Thought of a kick ass feature? Get to work on it instantly. Works great if you happen to be the kind of person who's right most of the time. I happen to think I am. But you never know :). Yeah, I have messed up things once in a while. Big time in few cases.

So is it tough? You bet it is. There are highs and lows. Both the times you wish had someone to share it with. Plus software, by its nature, is a team game. You just cannot write great software alone. Or develop a technology alone. I hope that one day I can assemble a team around CG. The technology involved, spoken audio search, is really complex. And it will need a great team to pull off. That will take its own sweet time I guess.

The only question is, why keep doing it? We'll for starters, I have few paid customers and it kind of covers my costs. I'm not losing any money, if not making some. No harm in doing it I guess. Plus I am definitely having the best time of my life. No question about that. I've never loved my work so much. Never ever in those 8 years in the industry. That means something I guess. Also I have high hopes for the technology since its an unsolved problem out there. The best part however is, its not over yet. There's a lot of work left on CG. Remains to be seen whether I can make it or not. But for the time being, I'm enjoying every bit of it.

So there you have it. Startups are tough. Micro ISV's are the toughest. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Get a team. Its much better and healthier. It should always be the last option, the nuke option, if an option at all.

MoMo Monsoon

2008-08-21T04:46:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to point that MoMo Monsoon event is coming up. This time instead of our usual event, we have organized a full day event which is full of interesting panel disucssions. Check out our brand new website for more.

http://momobangalore.org

So if you are in town and are interested to catch up with the happenings in the industry, do join us. As usual the event is free to attend.

Roti, Kapda, Makan and Social Networking

2008-07-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

Social Networking is a bad word in entrepreneur circles these days. There are so many of them and apart from the FB's, Orkut's of the world, the rest are not really going anywhere. Still we see more and of these coming up. So everyone asks the question, how many social networks do we need? Isn't one FB or Orkut enough for the whole world?

I think no. Its definitely not. And that is for a very simple reason. Fundamentally all these social networking sites connect people. They solve one of the biggest human needs, the need to connect with each other, socialize. A need surpassed only by maybe our need for food, clothing and housing.

There are hundreds of Social Networking sites. But you can still see people who are lonely, looking for a life partner, or a date or just a friend. If Orkut and FB are doing it right then why hasn't this problem been completely eradicated yet? Obviously there's still a lot to be done. And if one of the new sites are trying to attack this, there's nothing wrong with it. Maybe they have just created a better mousetrap.

Agreed that most of these startups are not doing anything innovative, its the same run of the mill stuff. But me too sites are a reality on the internet. For every successful site, there are 100 clones of it. The guys with the best product win in the end. That's fair.

Lemme go on and cite some some examples of niche's of social networking. I am drawing from my own experiences here, so please bear with me. A typical case is of dating. In Bangalore you have guys who come out of top notch Engineering colleges where the sex ratio is something like 80:20 (mine's was even worse). These are hot shot software dev's who wanna date and dont mind spending for it. In Bangalore you also have a huge call center crowd, a significant part of whom are single girls on the lookout.

Right now what these guys do is register on Shaadi.com and try and find a date. The have no intentions of marrying, but they do not have a choice. Orkut and FB dont solve their problem. How come Shaadi, which was never meant to solve this problem in the first place, ends up eating up this pie? Its a great market segment to target; young, mobile, with disposable income. And the addressable market is huge since the same case can be applied to any metro city in India!

Maybe this sounds lame. But think about it. These are segments that you can target. The hard part is finding a business model around them. It cant be that plain old model of premium plans. Something different, something innovative, something whacky! But I'm sure if you can get these folks hooked on to your site, you will make money somehow. Because these guys are not squeamish about spending on the net. Maybe you can even do a Beacon on them!

The most perplexing thing about the Indian Soc. Net scene is that the old models are still there; pay and contact the girl. Nobody has managed to challenge them. Maybe I am biased because I need to actually get on these sites soon to find a girl for myself, but it still sucks. I dont wanna pay! I am sure there are hundreds of people like me. If someone comes up with a matrimonial/dating site which does not have this business model, people would flock to it.

So there's my defense of Social Networking. There's still a huge unaddressed market. And I am sure that we'll see more of these social networking sites. That is a good thing in my view.

New Blog @ Call Graph

2008-07-08T22:36:00.000-07:00

Since nobody is writing about us, we thought that we'll start writing about ourselves. So we started our own product blog at Call Graph. Pls. check it out here. We plan to regularly update is as we go along. Request you to add the feed to your RSS readers.

Call Graph Web Service Launched

2008-06-29T00:54:00.000-07:00

Blogging has been very light lately. The reason being a) Twitter has completely taken over my urge to put my thoughts online and b) I have been busy with the Call Graph Web Service. Its called CRIMS: Call Record Indexing and Managemnt Service and its done. We have opened it up for everyone now. :)

The purpose is simple. It give you storage, sharing, search and transcription services for your Skype Calls. Here's how it works. You first sign up for the service, then download our Skype call recording client, associate the client with the your account on CRIMS and magically all your Skype calls will start appearing on the site. You can do various things with it after that, the most useful being search and generate transcripts.

The search is done through our keyword mining technology. We process the call record and generate a list of keywords for the call. The call is then indexed with these keywords. So if you used the word "Wireless Utopia" several times during a call then both wireless and utopia would become a keywords for it. Few months down the line if you want to locate this particular call, you just search for wireless and you'll get it back.

The transcripts are a bit more tricky thing though. The first pass is through a Automatic Speech Recognition engine. It processes the call and generates an output. Then we manually proof read the transcripts and correct all the errors. Right now the manual effort required is very high but we are hoping that as we improve the system we will be able to gradually reduce this manual effort.

Its important to note that we do try and protect the confidentiality of the call records. Even though its being heard by a person, we ensure that a single person does not go through the whole call. We use various methods to ensure that. Also, till you order the transcripts the call record is machine processed. So you have a control on which call records can be heard and which one's cannot be.

Apart from these, you can also choose to just archive your call records and keep them with you. Or share them with one click if you want to. We provide these services for free for the time being. Read up on our FAQ to know more.

I'd urge you to try out the service and let us know what you think of it. A lot of effort has gone into this and a lot more needs to be done. With your feedback and help we can surely improve it.

Tags: Call Graph, Recording, Audio Search, Transcripts

MoMo Bangalore April Event

2008-04-21T23:05:00.000-07:00

Like me, are you having a BCB hangover? Dont worry, help is at hand. We have announced the MoMo Bangalore April event. Its about innovation in future mobile services and the speaker is Ashish Thomas of SingTel. The demo is from our own MyDuniya team. This looks to be a promising event. So please sign up for it now.

Tags: momobangalore, momo, mobile, india

The Un-Conference

2008-04-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

Warning: This is a very passionate post.

This post is a direct response to Vijay "PROTO.IN" Anand's post. Its a "howto" on Barcamps. In one sentence "impose some rules". Which begs the question: why?

I have been an avid barcamper. Starting from BCB1 to BCB6. I skipped BCB5 since I got thrashed by the un-organizers on when I suggested that collectives dont work. It pissed me off big time. But BCB6 went back to its original roots. The good old paper wiki and a better second day crowd. And damn.. i loved it. There was this session conducted by our own Prof. Suresh, on Startup Pains. He asked for a show of hand on how many people wanted to startoff on their own. Allmost all the hands in the room went up. And mind you, people were standing and sitting on the stairs. The energy there was incredible.

I loved the in feeling there. So you are a CEO. So what? So you are a hot chick. So what? So you are a avid barcamper. So fucking what? You do not deserve a t-shirt or a mug if you have attended all the rest of them. You are just as good as others.

Who makes rules in barcamps? Who has the right to do it? If you are an organizer, or as my good friend Werner says it, "organ-raiser", can you impose rules? I dont think so. Barcamp is like the linux kernel. To borrow Greg Korah Hartman's words, its not intelligent design: its evolution.

So beware. Stay away from those Barcamps which impose rules on you. You are the barcamper. You decide whats going to happen. Not some moron who's intent is to make the world more friendlier.

Tags: barcamp, barcampbangalore, barcampbangalore6, bcb6

VoIP In India

2008-04-21T03:58:00.000-07:00

I conducted a session on VoIP in India at BCB6. The focus was the legality of VoIP in India and what can be done about it. VoIP is regulated in India and interconnections between a VoIP network and lanline/mobile network is not allowed. The primary reason is to protect the monopoly on International termination fees/rates. The security issue is more of an excuse than a real reason.

The end result is that we as consumers lose out. We are not allowed the benifits of VoIP: lower tarrif, more services etc. And cannot create businesses around it. Any VoIP startup in India ultimately runs into the wall of legality in India. And VoIP is one of the hottest technologies out there today. It is disrupting the Telco business model and we cannot participate in it.

India is still in the stone age as far as VoIP is concerned. Our economy is growing fast and we are supposed to overtake US by 2050. If we do not sit up and take notice, then the status quo will remain. Join our discussion group and tell everyone that you know about it.

Toktumi: The Skype killer?

2008-03-26T02:03:00.000-07:00

There's a new VoIP kid on the block: Toktumi. I have been using it since it came out of private beta few weeks back. To put it in easy terms, its Skype + a free SkypeIn number + free voicemail. There's something similar to SkypeOut as well but the pricing is more like a monthly rental + call charges. The call charges are not laid out (5cents to most phones) so a side by side comparison cannot be done. But it should be competitive, given the state of VoIP minutes market. Whats more, it provides a USB adapter to which you can connect your normal phone to.

Their system is differs significantly from Skype though. The website claims that its P2P PBX which sounds like a bunch of Asterisk servers which are peered together on the internet for load balancing. Looks like that the PC is not invovled in routing other's traffic through your system. Contrast that to Skype where any PC can become a super node if its in a good bandwidth environment. The other thing about this approach is that QoS can be monitored closely. Which eventually improves the call quality. The approach certainly has mertis on its own. But can it be cost effective is the question.

The soft client is breeze to install and use. The interface is more traditional compared to Skype which is more IM'ish. After using it for a few weeks, it found some annoyances about it though. For example, it does not startup minimized: you have to close it and then click ok on the message box which pops up. Another feature lacking is that there's no way to set the ringer to your PC's speaker. So if you are using a headset and a call come's in, you are in a bit of trouble if you are not on your PC.

So can it really take on Skype? Skype is superstar of VoIP services today. It has been going through a bad patch recently, with troubles at the top. But a little competition in this market would not do any harm. As the founder of Toktumi, Peter Sission says on his blog, entrepreneurs can still challenge Skype. It remains to be seen whether Toktumi can be as viral a hit as Skype was. But I would still recommend this service. Especially if you are small buiness owner or working out of home. Or if you are looking for a free US number as me. :)

Tags: Toktumi, Skype, VoIP, Asterisk.

Howto Record Skype Calls

2008-03-14T05:53:00.000-07:00

A video tutorial on howto record Skype calls using Call Graph.

You can download the application from here.

http://www.callgraph.in

Its completely free and without any restrictions. Happy recording!

Tags: CallGraph, Skype, Beta Software, Howto, Tutorial.

Wireless In Goa

2008-03-12T07:50:00.000-07:00

I recently took off to Goa for a break. I was visiting after a gap of two years and was alone this time around. Here're some notes I made during the trip.

Twitter is definitely a great tool for lonely travelers. Here's my archive. I used it throughout the trip to post updates. The only thing it lacked was a easy way to upload your photos directly from the phone. Would have been great! Still I could not figure out why its the hottest thing right now in the valley. Maybe because its one way traffic for me. With more friends following and more interaction, I can see the point.

The GPRS service worked flawlessly through out. I used Airtel Mobile Office. The last time I was in Goa, Airtel did not have its own network. It used Idea's network there. And the SMS's I sent to activate the service would not reach Airtel since I was roaming. This time it just worked. It was slow and painful, but it worked. Even in the beach shacks. And into the sea. I was missing my Nokia Tablet. Would have been perfect for the trip.

The surprising thing was that GPRS never broke down on the road! I took a bus (KSRTC Volvo) and I was checking my mails from some obscure places deep in South India. Gives you a kick when you can do that. And speaks volumes on how the mobile operators are moving aggressively into the rural areas in India. Good job Airtel!

Another interesting this was the availability of Cell Id everywhere. It kind of gave me an sense of where I was on the road. And I had an eureka moment. How about a mashup between Google Maps and an mobile app which records the Cell Id as you go along. I would be able to trace the route of the journey which I'd really like to because the bus made the trip in 14 hours flat (fastest ever in all my 5 trips till date) and I want to know the route. It would also be able to tell me how far I am from the destination next time around. And it would also record which places I had been to during my trip which again would be a nice thing to show off to my friends. Better still have a Facebook app for it, spam your friends with it and get back at them for ditching me. :) Would be a nice weekend hacking project. Anyone up for it?

I am really glad that I have integrated all my mail id's (around 5 in total) into Gmail with mail fetcher. It was a lifesaver. The J2ME app for GMail worked flawlessly I was able to check all my accounts at one place. Thank you Google.

Goa is still a very cheap deal. For a comparison a KF pint is for 40 bucks. So is Old Monk quarter. The food in the shacks is just great, especially the sea food. Reasonably priced. The Condolim, Calangute, Baga stretch must have over 200 beach shacks. So lots of choice.

Surprisingly I saw very few iPod's or iPhones in Goa. Most of the tourists in Goa were European. But still no iPods at all. Forget about laptops. Did not sight a single one. Maybe because of complete lack of WiFi hotspots. But this time I did find a place which offers WiFi. Its called The Indian Kitchen (98221 49615), off Calangute Baga Road. Five minutes walk from the beach and not very expensive. They had a broadband connection and charges were Rs. 100 per day for WiFi. So thats where I'm gonna stay the next time. :)

Finally, the KSRTC Volvo bus service rocks! I recommend it highly.

The only thing I did in there was drink, eat and sleep. In that order. And man, it was soooo good. Its the best place to unwind and relax.

Tags: Goa, Wireless, Travel

Call Graph

2008-02-14T05:23:00.000-08:00

A shameless plug to promote our product Call Graph :)

We have just released Call Graph. It is a simple call recorder for Skype. It records your calls into an mp3 file and indexes them for search. The best part: its completely free. You can record for any amount of time, SkypeIn calls, SkypeOut calls. But its beta right now, so expect a few problems. But if you like it please recommend it to your friends and fellow Skypers! Its pretty simplistic right now but w are going to add a lot more features to it soon. So download it now.

On the personal side, this scores a couple of firsts for me. My app which I have distributed, my first website (although simple html + css + php, i still like it!) and obviously the first product to be released as part of Sedna Wireless (though not our primary product). Something to show at last :).

So give it a spin and let us know what you think of it!

Update: Here's the code for the badge if you want to put it up on your site.

Tags: CallGraph, Skype, Call Recording.

The WOW Factor

2008-01-11T08:03:00.000-08:00

Is there a startup in India which is doing something which simply blows you away? We once asked ourselves this question but unfortunately we came up with nothing. But if you just broaden the horizon and look at established enterprises, the you do see some amazing stuff being done. Obviously the Tata's One Lakh Car is one such project. The coverage it has been getting in MSM is amazing: Digg, Slashdot, IHT, BBC, CNN, you name it.

One which caught my eye was this one. To quote the article.

Overnight, my canteen manager Sitaram-ji, my driver's elderly father who is a retired army man, my grocery supplier Mr Arora, and all such nice people with decent but limited income can start dreaming.
That's wow! Really!

This is the wow factor. A giant leap rather than an incremental improvement. Something which touches the life of the "common man". Solves a problem, elicits a "wow" from them. That is the market we have. The "common man" market. And its here. Its ready.

We entrepreneurs have lot to learn and a long way to go.

Tags: Entrepreneurship, Startups, Tata, Nano.

Get a HeadStart

2007-12-27T01:12:00.000-08:00

So you are a startup in India looking to launch your product, generate a buzz for it and get some visibility. Then look no further than Headstart, a new event in Bangalore hopes to do all that for you. It is an attempt to showcase the best of products to the industry. You might find partners or early adopters for your product along with a good exposure to the investor community. The idea is to bring the innovators and the consumers on a single platform and create opportunities for both.

Proto was the first such event to come up in India to a very positive response. The unfortunate part is that both these events are on the same dates this time around. So companies are forced to choose between these two events. Thats the tough part. But more and more such events cropping up is a good sign for product entrepreneurship in India. Things have never been better.

Tags: Headstart, DEMO, Proto, Bangalore.

OLPC Changes Track

2007-12-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

I have been a huge fan of OLPC. It's one of those revolutionary things which promises to change the lives of millions. I have blogged about it previously here, here, here and here. The criticisms kind of reminds you of Thomas J Watson's statement that there is a market of 5 PC's worldwide! New technologies always create controversy. OLPC just happens to be one of those ideas. After pooh phooing the concept both Intel and MS are trying their best to outmarket them now. That in itself validates this concept.

But as this story by BBC points out, the politicians are the last ones to approach if you are working on something which changes the status quo. Change is risk. And risk is the last thing they want to court. So it seems that they are changing their approach as per this report. Instead of talking the governments they are approaching HWNI's and other charities. They recently launched the buy one give one free program and it has generated orders for around 90.000 laptops. Which is a very good number in itself.

I for one would love to get my hands on it. It seems that the India team is doing a good job of it as well. The smiles tell the whole story dont they. I am actively seeking their contact. Would love to invite them to MoMo and hear about their experiences. So if you happen to know them, pls. contact drop in a line.

OT: Harsha Bhogle

2007-11-03T13:16:00.000-07:00

Harsha Bhogle's podcast.

If you love cricket and care about it, dont miss this. I am amazed at what this guy has achieved. Truly inspirational.

Few quotes.

When you are earning a lot, when you had too many possibilities in front of you, then you got more to loose. And actually you start to take fewer risks. Because what you have is very comfortable.

- On the young guns.

And you can never let the viewer down. Because the viewer is doing you a favor by switching it on. You're not doing the the favor by saying listen, you must be hallow because I'm in thy presence.

- On viewers.

I know the answer but I am getting it from a quality resource.

- On Geoff Boycott

The Australian cricket board is about cricket. The Indian Cricket board is about finance.

- On BCCI

Tendulkar comes once in a lifetime.

- On Sachin Tendulkar.

I dont go to watch cricket matches in India. I feel the shame. I think its a disgrace to our cricket lovers who fund the game, that we put them up in such sub human conditions, its a disgrace.
...
Its an absolute disgrace the way we treat our spectators. And the reason is we dont care for them, absolute disgrace. Money itself is not a disgrace, but obsession with money is a disgrace.

- On stadium facilities in India.

I think he just buried his ego and played for his side. When he was a part of four bowlers his job was to run into the wind. And because he ran into the wind the others could bowl into the wind behind him.

- On Courtney Walsh.

Nobody, nobody has the right to come and throw stones at you because lost a cricket match. You didn't leak military secrets of your country, you didn't go and kill your countrymen, you played a cricket match that you lost. That is it. You talk about playing for India as a matter of life and death. I'll let you hear a stupidier statement than that. This is not about life and death. You are making fun of people whose job is life and death. Are you telling a jawan in Siachen that Yuvraj is playing for life and death. I mean its a joke. Our lives can never be compared to theirs. There's this guy in Siachen, there's this guy in the western border. He's been really looking at death in the face. We need to look at his life and say that all we are doing is playing a cricket match. You win a cricket match you go home. You lose a cricket match you still go home. You lose a war you don't go home. And I think we need to put cricket in perspective in this country. I think cricket gets way to much importance, far far too much importance. A lot of things said about cricket is stupid, because we have lost our sense of perspective about cricket. Cricket is a game, cricket is a sport, and that is it. At the end everybody goes home. And I think we need to understand that.

- On the cricket crazy Indians.

The passion comes out so clearly!

Tags: Harsha Bhogle, Cricket, BCCI, Cricket Stadiums, Cricket Crazy India.

The Decline of BCB

2007-11-01T02:41:00.000-07:00

Its fascinating to see how Bangalore Barcamp is evolving. I have attended all the four events till now. My main motivation being a) network with like minded people and b) attend the interesting talks. To get an idea of how it has changed, here's a comparison of the format, the focus of the event and the position of the topics and participants page on the website.

The first one was a one day event with the classic paper wiki. The theme was Web 2.0 and the participants and talks was on the first page itself. It featured talks from Tara Hunt, Pete Demmer of Yahoo and even Chirs Messina. Its was relatively a small event, with around 100 or so people turned up. It was definitely a good start.

The second one happened six months later at the wonderful Thought Works office. This time it was a two day event and and the theme was entrepreneurship. The website seems to be empty, but if I remember right, the participants and topic page was one click away from the main page. True to its character, the best discussions happened in the vast main hall. One memorable moment was when Sandeep Singhal asked the audience how many wanted to start off on their own and almost all the hands shot up!

The third one happened around four months later at IIM Bangalore. The format was modified a bit to have rooms dedicated to each topic. The theme was more or less centered around Technology. The participants and topics were on different pages, one click away from the main page. The best of talks were in the Mobile track. That room was always full! I loved the session by Savita Kini about services vs. products.

The fourth one happened four months down the line and was a two day event. This time the format was changed to group topics into collectives and were given a shorter time in each room. The official theme was Technology and Social Implications. The topics page was three pages away from the main page depending upon which collective you were interested in. The organization left a lot to be desired and it chaotic at times.

The fifth one has just been announced. The theme and the participants/topics page is not up yet, but I expect it to be similar to BCB4. But reading this gives me a distinct feeling that it is moving away from its unconference roots.

To my mind, BCB3 was the peak and the decline has started. One of the most attractive aspects of Barcamp was its simplicity. It was easy to find who was attending and who was talking about what. With each Barcamp it got progressively difficult to do so. With BCB4 it was impossible to get a quick snapshot and I dont expect BCB5 to be any different.

To think of it, the significance of Barcamp has also diminished over the past year with more events and unconferences cropping up. Barcamp itself has played an important role in germinating these events. These spinoffs have taken over the role of bringing together people around a narrower common interest. And as such Barcamp in its bloated form does not really interest me any more.

But still its hard not to feel nostalgic about BCB. It was fun while it lasted.

Edit: Check out Jace's response here. Have a look at the comments as well.

~~Eidt 2: If you are one of the organizers and want to suggest that I should do something instead of whining, pls. stop here. Read this, read the post once more and spare yourself the trouble.~~

Edit 3: OK. If I look back at this thread with a cooler mind, it does seem very harsh. Its embarrassing in fact. Sorry for getting carried away.

Tags: BCB, Barcamp Bangalore, Entrepreneurship, Startups, India

The Intangible Value

2007-10-24T22:53:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week, Cisco acquired Navini Networks for $330 Million. Navini is a WiMAX base station maker and an early pioneer of Beam Forming Antenna Technology. It is primarily a hardware company which sells its gear to Operators. The value of the company is tied to its assets, customers and its Intellectual Property. It was pretty much an open secret and I had blogged about it before here.

Today, Microsoft invested $240 Million in Facebook for a 1.6 % stake of the company. That gives Facebook a valuation of $15 Billion. Facebook is a social network. Its value is intangible. It derives its value from the personal networks between friends. It has no IP of its own and its assets are negligible. Last year Yahoo was willing to buy Facebook for $1 Billion. Today its fifteen times that value.

The contrast between these two deals cannot be more striking. A $15 billion valuation for a social networking company sounds nonsensical to us in this part of the world. We place much more value in real world relations than the virtual ones. But for those who do give value to the virtual communities, this deal would make a lot more sense. In those economies, the value proposition has moved away from manufacturing and IP to virtual goods.

This is the emergence of Facebook as the Google killer. Google has been steamrolling all competition in recent days and its good to see someone standing up to it. Maybe this also means the gradual transformation of Microsoft into a Internet Services company. Maybe Mark Zuckerburg is the next Bill Gates.

As for Google, they will have to compete with Facebook on their own turf. There have been news of Google opening up the API of Orkut. Orkut is a big ticket in Brazil and India. It still has to play catch up.

Tags: Facebook, Microsoft, Intangible Goods, Cisco, WiMAX

Gutsy Upgrade Problems

2007-10-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

On a day when everyone was decking up their cars and bikes with flowers and whatnot I decided to upgrade up my laptop with the shiny new Gutsy Gibbon. After spending a few hours at it, its finally done. So here's how it went.

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron E4105 also known as 640m. A standard configuration with Intel 945 GM graphics driver and Broadcom 43xx wireless card. I have been running Ubuntu on it since the last year, first Dapper Drake and then Fiesty Fawn. The upgrade to Fiesty was smooth. I only had to reinstall ndiswrapper on it to get the wireless working.

This time it was much more involved. The first thing which happened post install was that kernel 2.6.22 refused to boot with the error

dm-linear : Device lookup failed

After some Googling it turned out to be this bug. To fix it I had to remove the evms package.

sudo apt-get --purge remove evms

The next problem was the Broadcom 43xx driver. The restricted driver manager pointed out that a driver was available and after a warning that it is not free, allowed me to install the firmware. Had to reboot the laptop to get it working.

The third problem was very slow scrolling on Firefox and other apps. A bit of searching on Ubuntuforums led me to this. Removing xserver-xgl solved it for me.

apt-get remove xserver-xgl

I dont use Compiz usually. So this solution works for me.

The next issue was slow internet browsing speeds. The DNS lookup used to take ages. There seems to be no resolution to this problem yet although a lot of people are facing the issue. I tried disabling IPV6 in firefox and using Open DNS servers and now the speeds seem to be better. Had to manually edit the /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf file and add the Open DNS name servers to it. These two lines specifically before the request statement.

prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.220.220
prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222

The last was a minor issue with fonts. Firefox fonts had changed as soon as I had upgraded. The issue was with msttcorefonts which I had installed for Fiesty. Had to remove the package before things started looking better. Its still is not as good as before though. But I can live with it. This didnt solve the font problem with console which had changed as well. Finally selected the Courier 10 pitch font after trying out all the 100 fonts on my system. Not many among them are usable though.

All this took up the entire day for me. If you are looking to upgrade to Gutsy, then keep a day aside for it. Right now its not all that stable enough. Or just wait for a few weeks more before the initial hiccups are sorted out.

Wishing everybody a very happy Dassera and the festival season. Enjoy!

Update:

To solve the fonts problem, I used this trick.

I discovered weird sound issues when it used to stop playing sometimes and speaker and headphone used to work together. To fix this, I had to update Alsa. Used the commands mentioned in the this thread.

Tags: Ubuntu, Gutsy Gibbon, Upgrade, Troubleshooting

MoMo Oct

2007-10-18T01:47:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post for MoMo Bangalore. The October event is on next Monday, 22nd. The talk is on Software Defined Radios (SDR). SDR is one of the most promising technologies today and is heavily used in Military applications already. It hasnt yet come to our Mobile devices but Vanu is working on that! I already have my set of questions ready for this talk.

The demo is even more interesting. A lot of focus is on local languages and local content these days. Tachyon is one of the companies at the forefront of developing new technologies for Indian Language. Their product QuillPad is one of the best transliteration tools out there. The demo of QuillMobile will definitely be interesting.

So sign up for it now.

Tags: MoMo, SDR, Transliteration, Bangalore, India

TringMe

2007-10-15T02:38:00.000-07:00

VoIP services these days are all about low cost calling services. But once in a while you do see an innovative application. TringMe is one such service. I guess a disclaimer is due here: I happen to know the founder for some time and relate to his passion about VoIP. So this might be a biased view. But here is what TC had to say about it. Here is a VoIP Guide article. The key differentiator is that there is no software to download, nor a phone required to make a call. It can be initiated from the web browser itself.

Here is how it works. It provides you with a embeddable widget (much like Jaxtr) which can be put up on your blog or your profile page. Anyone who clicks there can talk to you on your phone or GTalk or send a voice mail (currently the only option supported). So all you need is a browser and a headset (maybe). Right now phones to US, UK and Canada are supported. The cool part of the application is really integration with GTalk. It works flawlessly. I think that would be a killer application. Wish they could add Skype support as well.

There are obvious issues with Spam but not very hard to solve it. And questions about business models. But its not very hard to imagine it would be very useful to replace those 1 800 support numbers you see on websites. Much better than publishing the phone numbers. It would also be useful to bloggers who want to be reachable. Or maybe it can even evolve into a voice based comments system. There are just so many possibilities.

With Flash 9 with H.264 and VoIP support on the way, things are going to get better and more competitive. Lookout for more such services in the near future. It would be pretty frustrating for Ribbit I guess. They have been working on such a system for quite some time. Makes you wonder about the wisdom of the "release early, release frequent" paradigm!

Drop me a line if you need invites.

OLPC in India

2007-10-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

Via Alootechie. Reliance Communications is going to bring OLPC to India priced at $180. I never knew that OLPC is available for commercial use as well. Till now their focus was to strike deals with governments and distribute through them. Nevertheless this is great news. Given that Reliance is expanding into the rural areas, this becomes important.

Over the time I have been a big supporter of the OLPC project even though it got bashed in the Indian Blogosphere. Its an amazing project. And I firmly believe that technologies derived from OLPC will make a significant impact. Not only the inbuilt mesh.

India and other emerging economies are a ripe market for OLPC like devices. I guess after this others are going to follow as well!

Tags: OLPC, India, Reliance.

MoMo Sept: Rural Kiosks, Mobitop Launch

2007-10-13T03:27:00.000-07:00

This has been a long pending post. MoMo Sept event happened on 24th last month as usual. Unfortunately it clashed with the Twenty20 final between India and Pakistan and the attendance was pretty thin. But we all managed to catch the last moments, thanks to a TV in the OnMobile cafeteria. Here's a short summary of the event.

Our speaker was Ashim Roy of Comat Technologies. Comat is a Social Enterprise based out of Bangalore which provides e-Governance solutions targeting the BoP segment. Interest in rural consumer is increasing in India. Several big names are expanding their footprint in rural areas and coming up with services and products which can be marketed to them. ITC's E-Choupal is one such example. Reliance is another big name in this sector.

Comat is one such company which has set up kiosks in rural areas which provide consumers access to information technology products and services. The talk was about how these kiosks can be used by other entrepreneurs for offering their services. They are looking for concepts and solutions which can be rolled out as additional services. It is one of the biggest challenge as well as opportunity in India today. If you have read the Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid you'll agree. So if you have a bright idea, get in touch with Ashim. Find the presentation here (pdf).

The demo was from one of the regulars of the Mobile Startup scene in Bangalore, Mobisy. Lalit presented their flagship product called Mobitop. Mobitop is an application development platform for Smartphones. The language is HTML and Javascript and the platform provides device access. It supports S60 currently and over a period of time they plan to support all major Smartphone OS's. They also take care of signing and certification process. It attempts to solve one of the biggest pain point for mobile application developer: the diverse OS platforms. Usually an application needs to be ported for each one of them separately. With Mobitop you dont have to worry about porting.

Another interesting part of Mobitop is that it enables rapid development of Mashups for mobile devices. Since its Javascript, any web based API can be accessed from the phone over GPRS or a WiFi connection. An example, which they cited, is product search using the mobile phone camera and the Like API. It also opens up the possibility of using Ads. to generate revenues for mobile application. Right now the only ways you can earn through a mobile application is to either deploy it using an operator and signing a revenue sharing deal with them or selling it directly to the customer. Both of these have severe issues. With Mobitop you can have an ad based business model! So if you are thinking of a mobile application, Mobitop is worth a shot! Slides can be found here.

Another nice MoMo event. Even though everybody's mind was on the score, we participated actively. In fact, Ashim stopped in between the talk and asked for the score as well :).

Rajan covered it for Livemint. Read it here. And if you are in town on 22nd Oct, do drop in. The announcement will be up by Monday on our blog.

Vodafone's Music Service

2007-09-12T06:49:00.000-07:00

Finally an operator has decided to step into the music downloading business and challenge Apple's monopoly. Operators had completely ignored this particular market paving the way for iPods. Wonder what took them so long to figure it out. With the impending European launch of iPhone, this becomes more significant. Maybe the N95, with Vodafone's music store can be a competitor to the iPhone.

And IMHO it is a huge opportunity in India as well. Music phones are very popular in India and as is Bollywood music. Ringtones based on Bollywood music is already the biggest VAS segment in India. It would be the natural evolution to a music downloading service on the mobile phone. Plus the Indian Music Industry is much better than the likes of RIAA and MPAA. It is a vast untapped market. And to counter the low popularity of GPRS, you can always do sideloading.

It is amazing why there is no such service in India.

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