Technology, style, trends, analysis, questioning the normal, if you got it flaunt it, hep and X-Generation audience, drawing the best talent and creative minds to this blog to share with the rest.
Its been more than 100 days since i touched my blog. Swamped with work, fatigue and need for a break i couldnt find the time to update the blog at all fronts.
PROTO Delhi edition is going great and the registrations are open. For the startup companies the nominations are getting filled fast as ever and will close down anytime now. We had been busy setting up the ecosystem surrounding PROTO which would greatly help startups to create a platform for open dialogue and exchange of ideas / skillset / resources sharing. As for the organisers having the first out of home edition is proving a logistical challenge. Lately there seems to be a severe consolidation of the organising core team as many of them are too occupied on their work and careers. Every May results bring about attrition of the college crowd to different cities and thus resulting in the spreat of the word on TKF but on other hand we run severely short on resources to do the essentials. Thats very much on the PROTO front.
MoMo Chennai is gearing up for its next edition and as varun is not in town we have Asif taking up the organising part. A month back i had some interaction with Ms Lubna Dajani who is the founder of MoMo New york and we had shared an idea that we create a communication window between both the chapters to invigorate knowledge sharing across boundaries. Now that needs to be worked upon.
Now coming to one of the pet projects of TKF - BlogCamp 2008 is sill to gather momentum as there is a view that too much of blog camps happening across India and we dont end up doing a rehashed content of the same. Last month one of our friends had organised a blogcamp at Villupuram for all tamil bloggers and thats how things are today.
We should aim for something new and something thats tremendously short in the current business climate. And we look for newer enthusiasts to join us in creating the same.
The Underdog showcases wikicamp 2007 in this video as a part of the movie that revolves around Jimbo and Wikipaedia . This movie also covers some unseen footage about wikicamp. For the team at TKF take some time out to watch the clip as it brings out some fond memories of the past. Good day Folks !
Tags: tkf, wikicamp, underdog, chennai, syed, razik, tidel, park
Great Value : Implementation of SMART Cards across all stations, Touch screen kiosks to book tickets, 20,000 more counters across india, Mobile ticketing , This will be a great boost to the IT companies in India resulting in more that 2000 crore worth opportunity. Want to do away with the long queues for reservations. ATM ’s with ticket vending capability to be deployed across major stations and bus terminals.
Revenue Churner: Increase in freight carrying Capacity for trains. Current carrying capacity of 780 million tonnes will be increased to 790 million tonnes. with freight cut on fuel carrying loads.
Private companies can build terminals for freight in a given space.
Populist measures: 50 % concession to AIDS patients, Free season tickets to girl students until graduation, Cut in second class fares by 5% and A/C fares by 3 % and third a/c by 2 % the list is endless. Marking the end of ” Coolies ” hereafter they will be trained craftsman. Announcement of green toilets that are modular.
Lalu the management guru ? ! ” Desh ka bachha bachha bole Chak de Railways “
After a very long gap of more than 50 days I have taken to blogging as we were all tied up for the organising of the event PROTO. With this edition we have completed 3 editions of PROTO at Chennai and most of us have felt that its time that we let go this movement across to other cities in India to gather moss. Based on this the next edition is to be held at Delhi and is in the third week of July 2008. Venue is yet to be finalised. As for now here are the few companies that are the finalist of PROTO in the current edition
One Place was the first company to Present at this edition. One place was a realty transaction site for buying properties that is focussed on NRI’s . Interestingly this startup is a part of the long list of portals that service builders like Parsvnath Developers by enabling them with offline and online marketing tools.
The Viewspaper is a online product that will integrate the blogs and newspapers, online social networking tools and bullettins. This online Newspaper is focussed for the youth and will be set as a platform to reach at the pulse of the youth on topics like politics, new, technology so on.
Hover.in provides bloggers and publishers with in-text ads that will provide monetization opportunities like adbrite or Snap. The USP is that it combines Advertising + Content and highly targeted. Fully customizable. Any third party ad network can be used to generate ads. They are looking for partnerships with third party publishers.
Instablogs is a startup that integrates blog content from different resources thus creating a conversational platform. Its a family owned startup having pageviews of more than 2.5 million. 200+ freelances integrate to make this site happen.
I will be writing some more soon but more now more important work beckons me at the venue and then there is networking ! Good day folks !
We at the knowledge foundation have been working towards creating a base platform for all startups and product companies that thrive on social capital in other words Web 2.0 models, to come together in a common platform to discuss synergy , strength and also possibilities of supplementary growth. On an initiative to harness the patronage of all such companies to converge , TKF members have started discussing possibilities of a Web 2.0 Conference in the first quarter of 2008. There have been separate google groups that are active and members discussing the actual logistics behind making this conference work. For those who are interested and would like to coordinate with this conference pls mail to the admin here
This morning a company called HAL2000 is hoarding a high resolution image that support 16 billion pixels (1600 times better than a normal hi res picture from a SLR Camera) of the “Last Supper ” by Da Vinci. My first impression on this particular painting goes back to my school days at my hometown. At school before every test all of us un to the chapel to pray and also during the short periods of singing classes one gets to gaze at this awesome image with intrigue. It was Dan brown book ” The Da Vinci Code “ that really provided more information to non Christians like me about the background and the inner details of this painting. The book has been a best seller in maximum number of countries than any of the contemporary work. For those who have not read this book, there are more betters reviews of the same online .
Then for the more curious people there is another book by Dan Burstein “Secrets of the code” that provides a non fictional code of the secrets of the infamous painting and the history behind it. More updates of the author can be found in this blog.
Also i would like to recommend a BBC video called “Breaking the code” that is worth a watch. There has been so much of controversy related to this painting and also debates on the validity. Latest among those is a theory that Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper might hide within it a depiction of Christ blessing the bread and wine with his disciples for the first Eucharist.
The conference has started with the speech of Prabuddha S Raychaudhuri from SEO-guru.com we look forward to two days of learning on SEO and SEM . Will be providing an hourly update on the proceedings too.This was followed by a customer perspective provided by George Tai from Taiwan.
There was an excellent session on the Road map of SEO and SEM market in India and it was covered by Pinstorm CEO, Mahesh Murthy. There seems to be a rising momentum of Shift from PPC or pay for commission to Pay for Performance (P4P). Commission models are running pretty old. There is also going to be a diminished growth in consultancies. CPA - Cost per Acquisitions talks more and similar to Cost per Impact. There is going to be rise of agencies will be on the long tail. For starters and Dummies, a cross engine approach will be the future. There is a more emphasis on common delivery center in one place similar to a hubs and spokes model, rather than staffing all your branches. More details on the 10 point approach to the future is provided here
More updates on the event in the afternoon
A very interesting panel discussion is about to start at Searchcamp.in ” Search Engine Marketing : Should it be done inhouse or outsourced ?” Participants were Vickram, Efficient Frontier, Milind Mody, Ceo Ebrandz, Mahesh Murthy, Pinstorm, Venkatesh from Dotcom Infoway. A more detailed video on the debate will be uploaded into youtube abd embedded here shortly
One of the main points of proposition of the SEO panel is Pls leverage on our expertise and learning rather than try to reinvent the wheel. As someone rightly put SEO is about putting a good signage on your shop, ensure the decorum is pleasing so on whereas SEM is about driving customers to visit the shop itself totally.
Day 2 had some excellent sessions by some SEO experts . Few of the sessions that really kept you engrossed were Seotips for blogs by Mani , Contextual Advertising, the future by Vivek Bhargava and Single pack SEO by Prashanth. SOme of the disappointments were the SEM - Expectations Vs Deliverables - Panel Discussion that was more of sort of sales pitch for all these SEO firms who were basically ganging up on the companies that were nurturing inhouse SEO and SEM teams. This panel was attended by Satya Prabhakar, CEO - Sulekha.com, Murugavel Janakiraman, CEO - Bharatmatrimony.com, Vivek Bhargava, CEO - Communicate2 and Rajesh Sule, Director - Position2
All the sessions have been recorded and will be shortly hosted by the Knowledge Foundation on optimised viewing bandwidth online . A copy of the DVD will also be made available if contacted here
Overall the event was a great success as it was the first time a common ground was created for SEO and SEM experts from all over India to gather in a single pitch . We forecast that an event first of this kind will definitely spawn growth of associations and formation of groups in that field. As for us members of the Knowledge Foundation we had learnt some SEO gyaan and networking over the two days. Kudos to the Searchcamp organisers for cool content and the knowledge foundation for breaking new grounds and making another first one here .
Tags: searchcamp, searchcamp2007, searchcamp.inseo, semPowered byQumana
Recently the Manthan Awards was announced last week and one of our Friends Ms. Saloni was awarded in one of the Categories. Congratulations to Saloni and her team on this achievement. Manthan Award is focussed more on e-content generated from rural india. Their Chairman Mr. Osama Manzar, a good friend and one of the key pillars of the Manthan Award activities is very proactive in the area of bridging the digital divide between /rural india and the its Urban.
Once back in 2006 I had a podcasting session with Osama and the occasion was Blog Camp 2006, Post event we were in touch and doing some rural initiatives alongwith IIT Tenet at Myladuthurai, During one such field trip we happened to meet Saloni who now is the driving force behind DesiCrew. Desi Crew rides its services on the Tenet backbone for its bandwidth and internet needs and capitalises on the untapped potential of the rural india and its unemployment.
Once a team from the kenowledge foundation comprised of me, Vicky, suku, raga1, and ravi went on a field evaluation of this model. The work that Tenet was embarked on was pioneering and great. However there were glitches and couple of roadblocks on the project that needed ironing out this was one of factors that stopped us from pursuing an association with desi crew. Foreign Clients are very concerned about Quality, security and short leadtimes on the data that needs to be processed.
Last evening me and Osama caught up some conversation on the developments happening on our either corners. Best of luck to his continued efforts and our wishes to Saloni. All this association emerged out of The Knowledge Foundation and its events. Who said we (TKF) have not made a differnce in the society ? .
Cricket is a relegion in the subcontinent and this quicker form of the game T20 has taken the devotees by storm on a teacup. What more can we ask for than a fitting finale between the two countries, India and Pakistan. To reach this final was a himalayan task for both the teams . They started as underdogs and with every game there seems to be new energy infused into the team. The greatest find for india in this world cup would be the form of Yuvaraj Singh, the captaincy of dhoni and the streaks of talent from Uthappa and joginder singh
One visual treat that will always be in our memory will the thrashing of 6 Sixes by yuvaraj against England
My favourite to win will be obviously India after the form that they have been displaying lately. hope it all clicks tonight. Best of luck to our team and Chak de India !
PS: Finally India has Chak diya ! Great moment for team spirit and the nations morale ! Excellent Excuse to celebrate !
< youtube video = http://www.youtube.com/v/TdZw5N-yoNc >
There have been days when i have slept through hours and hours but here while watching this video you realise that you can slow freeze time and watch each of those moments. Amazing but sad !
I have been following TechCrunch40 Conference as one of the pillars behind PROTO we are constantly on lookout for ways to fine tune our product for the Indian ecosystem. Some amazing products got showcased in TC40 . Some of the products like RazorFish and Mint i have been familiar with and using . Razorfish got showcased at BCB4 at Bangalore and Mint is an accounting product i have been invited to test and recommend changes.(Since we run an accounting back office for US and Canadian Clients) . Mint has really been in a niche sector of personal accounting and i had the privilege of testing the product on Beta. Point to mention is that Mint was awarded $ 50,000 for interesting product of TC40. There were also some interesting products like Zivity , Flock , Faroo, App2you, Mego, Clickable and Orgoo . Each looks interesting in its sphere and the sessions were peppered by forum discussions in between. Looks like the TC40 has really taken off well. Looking back for intersting aspects from the event there is not much i could say about the format . I think we are very happy with the current format of PROTO such that its focussed characteristically and gives the participant companies an option to attend tech sessions too.
On the personal front FileCrunch has crossed 100,000 users and was something to celebrate about. Soon the product is getting launched in Tamil and subsequent Indian languages. The Beta (on invite only) will be launched for Indian market somewhere in October end. Those of you who need access pls mail me so that i can send you the invites. On a parallel note FashionIQ got a mention at the International Herald Tribune here.
We are also on the design boards on a stealth mode on a product code name CIRAKA. More about it as we progress ! Search Camp is due in a few weeks and things are getting hot on the Knowledge Foundation. Good day !
PS: There has been some great news from the PROTO camp . One of the companies that participated in PROTO SE has recently clinched funding . Rarefind the company behind Mocodile is the one i am mentioning about . Mocodile’s business plan has been selected for TiE Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program! EAP entitles them to receive seed capital of $150,000 + mentoring + publicity on TiE network!
The recently discovered bridge currently named as Adam’s Bridge made of chain of shoals, is 18 miles (30 km) long, in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka, reveals a mystery behind it. The bridge’s unique curvature and composition by age reveals that it is man made. The legends as well as Archeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to the a primitive age, about 17,50,000 years ago and the bridge’s age is also almost equivalent. This information is a crucial aspect for an insight into the mysterious legend called Ramayana, which was supposed to have taken place in tredha yuga (more than 17,00,000 years ago). In this epic, there is a mentioning about a bridge, which was built between Rameshwaram (India) and Srilankan coast under the supervision of a dynamic and invincible figure called Rama who is supposed to be the incarnation of the supreme. This information may not be of much importance to the archeologist s who are interested in exploring the origins of man, but it is sure to open the spiritual gates of the people of the world to have come to know an ancient history linked to the Indian mythology. Now the point of contention on Faith is did Rama actually build this bridge to go fetch Sita from the kingdom of Ravana ? A lot of political parties are tapping on the relegious sentiments of the masses using the Ram Sethu controversy.
PS: The Mysorean is suggesting an amazing idea on how to have the cake and eat it too. This post lauds the efforts of Chandrababu naidu and how he had workaroud on a similar nature.
Here is an interesting video on youtube that has mention of Adams bridge at the mysterious places of the earth.It follows he epic of Ramayana and mentions that as aman made structure.
Online Storage has been one of the greatest domains that has been growing exponentially. Filecrunch has been one of the products that Fuente has been associated with for quite sometime and now we are exploring on what additional features and offers would a user look for in such a service provider. File Crunch has been around since 2005 and a sort of a sleeping giant since. With Fuente’s association with Filecrunch we plan to infuse greatedr features into the site to make it a more vibrant destination for users.
This post is an analysis of what is available and what the user expectations are as such. Each service provider has pampered the user with greater online space one above the other and the net result has been that the user has been able to capitalise on all these offers with better benefits than ever. Storage has been a value proposition as that happens to be one of the resons for the success of a very later entrant like Gmail.
Storage combined with other factors like regional language support will be a awesome advantage to users. Apart from multilingual support users are also looking for storage providers that are image friendly and also provide for multi location support servers and something different on Premium services. Filecrunch is also looking to support regional indian languages and also to support for its services for Blogs. Users can store their file at this site and reference in their posts for quicker retrieval.
There have been sites like Foldera and Gdrive or Omnidrive but none that has been specific to the indian environment. Thats one place where we want Filecrunch to address india users effectively. FileCrunch doesnt boast that its the best there is in town for users . But given the kind of regional environment it is planning to address in India i think it will be the best bet available to the user in the months to come. The New version of the site is due to be released in the month of Oct 2007 with bigger space and better features ! Good Day !
Hi i all , I am back to blogging after a long absence of 2 months from writing anything online. I was busy with pile of work at Office and then some personal projects that needs dedicated attention. Now most of these are nearing completion and i have some breathing space to indulge in this . On a parallel note i have been involved in some exciting new products like FileCrunch and Ciraka that might be released at the subsequent months. It been really exciting and tiresome to spread across efforts in both fronts with same level of energy. Apart from all this Fuente has turned a new leaf (new look and feel) with August 2007. Post PROTO has been very busy that i was not able to event attend the elections for office bearers of The Knowledge Foundation that was held at the Boat Club on 19 August . Looks like TKF is heading for some interesting times ahead with Unconference book taking shape fast , Search Camp happpening in October, Barcamp Chennai in September and Web 2.0 Conference Scheduled for November 2007. Will write more about the individual events in detail later. BTW there are some excellent Google groups and Facebook for The Knowledge foundation where you can catch up good tid bits of conversation on whats happening at TKF. Good day Folks !
PS: The 