Subrato's Talk @ IIM B

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity! ; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep - so the family moved from place to place and, without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father. My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system which makes me what I am today and largely defines what success means to me today.As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government - he reiterated to us that it was not 'his jeep' but the government's jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep - we could sit in it only when it was stationary. That was our early childhood lesson in governance - a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father's office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix 'dada' whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed - I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, 'Raju Uncle' - very different from many of their friends who refer to their family drivers as 'my driver'. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe. To me, the lesson was significant - you treat small ! people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother's chulha - an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was no gas, nor electrical stoves. The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman's 'muffosil' edition - delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson. He used to say, "You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it". That lesson was a! bout showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios - we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios - alluding to his five sons. We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply, "We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses". His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant. Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I coll! ected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father's transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, "I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited". That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.My mother beg! an developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life, I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper - end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till da! te, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness.Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term "Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan" and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University's water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination. Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create th! at future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.Over the next few years, my mother's eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, "Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair". I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, "No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes ! closed". Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes. To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life's own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life's calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places - I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world. In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him - he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to to! e. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, "Why have you not gone home yet?" Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self. There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and the limit of inclusion you can create. My father died the next day.He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and ! his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts - the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of an ill-paid, unrecognized government servant's world.My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions. In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking. Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said, "Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world." Her river was nearing its journey, at t! he confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity - was telling me to go and kiss the world!Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and Godspeed. Go, kiss the world.

VC - Presentations
1) WHAT IS YOUR VISION?
- What is your big vision?
- What problem are you solving and for whom?
- Where do you want to be in the future?

2) WHAT IS YOUR MARKET OPPORTUNITY AND HOW BIG IS IT?
- How big is the market opportunity you are pursuing and how fast is it growing?
- How established (or nascent) is the market?
- Do you have a credible claim on being one of the top two or three players in the market?

3) DESCRIBE YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE
- What is your product/service?
- How does it solve your customer’s problem?
- What is unique about your product/service?

4) WHO IS YOUR CUSTOMER?
- Who are your existing customers?
- Who is your target customer?
- What defines an "ideal" customer prospect?
- Who actually writes you the check?
- Use specific customer examples where possible.

5) WHAT IS YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION?
- What is your value proposition to the customer?
- What kind of ROI can your customer expect by using buying your product/service?
- What pain are you eliminating?
- Are you selling vitamins, aspirin or antibiotics? (I.e. a luxury, a nice-to-have, or a need-to-have)

6) HOW ARE YOU SELLING?
- What does the sales process look like and how long is the sales cycle?
- How will you reach the target customer? What does it cost to "acquire" a customer?
- What is your sales, marketing and distribution strategy?
- What is the current sales pipeline?

7) HOW DO YOU ACQUIRE CUSTOMERS?
- What is your cost to acquire a customer?
- How will this acquisition cost change over time and why?
- What is the lifetime value of a customer?

8) WHO IS YOUR MANAGEMENT TEAM?
- Who is the management team?
- What is their experience?
- What pieces are missing and what is the plan for filling them?

9) WHAT IS YOUR REVENUE MODEL?
- How do you make money?
- What is your revenue model?
- What is required to become profitable?

10) WHAT STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT ARE YOU AT?
- What is your stage of development? Technology/product? Team? Financial metrics/revenue?
- What has been the progress to date (make reality and future clear)?
- What are your future milestones?

11) WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR FUND RAISING?
- What funds have already been raised?
- How much money are you raising and at what valuation?
- How will the money be spent?
- How long will it last and where will the company "be" on its milestones progress at that time?
- How much additional funding do you anticipate raising & when?

12) WHO IS YOUR COMPETITION?
- Who is your existing & likely competition?
- Who is adjacent to you (in the market) that could enter your market (and compete) or could be a co-opted partner?
- What are their strengths/weaknesses?
- Why are you different?

13) WHAT PARTNERSHIPS DO YOU HAVE?
- Who are your key distribution and technology partners (current & future)?
- How dependent are you on these partners?

14) HOW DO YOU FIT WITH THE PROSPECTIVE INVESTOR?
- How does this fit w/ the investor’s portfolio and expertise?
- What synergies, competition exist with the investor’s existing portfolio?

15) OTHER
- What assumptions are key to the success of the business?
- What "gotchas" could change the business overnight? New technologies, new market entrants, change in standards or regulations?
- What are your company’s weak links?

Evolution of Corporates
The trailblazing corporate superstar will become a thing of the past. And follow-the-leader is a game companies will no longer play. The path to success will be paved by teams

We are all angels with only one wing.
We can only fly while embracing each other.
-- Luciano de Crescenzo

The 20th century Italian poet's metaphor wasn't about the 21st century corporation, but it might as well have been. The coming century will be unfriendly to superhero ceos who try to wing their companies heavenward by sheer force of will. Success will belong to companies that are leaderless--or, to be more precise, companies whose leadership is so widely shared that they resemble beehives, ant colonies, or schools of fish.

Today, democratic decision-making in corporations is still confined largely to factory floors and new-product laboratories, far from the top of organizational pyramids. That is hardly surprising. In a nation that loves superheroes, people cling to the myth of what management guru Warren Bennis calls ''the triumphant individual.'' The media celebrate ceos as larger-than-life individuals who single-handedly communicate a vision and lead the way, earning millions for themselves in the process.

Cool the hero worship. In the 20th century, the Soviet Union collapsed because its command-and-control economy couldn't keep up with the West's free market. In the 21st century, the same fate will befall companies whose CEOs attempt to control everything. In a world that is becoming ever more chaotic and dependent on brainpower, teams at the top will make more sense than a single outrageously paid CEO who sits behind a ''buck stops here'' plaque.

To see why, look to nature. You might assume a leaderless group of creatures would be ineffectual. Not at all. While one bee is merely a nuisance, a swarm is deadly. ''You only have to look at biological systems to see that there are no big hierarchical stacks,'' says Peter Cochrane, head of research at BT Labs. ''Everything is low and flat, very adaptable and very cruel.''

The Internet allows companies to be more like beehives because information can be shared horizontally rather than funneled up to the CEO's office and back down again. ''The nature of the process that built the Internet will inform everything that touches it. There's nobody in charge,'' says John Jordan, director of electronic commerce at Ernst & Young's Center for Business Innovation.

The beauty of such leveling is that decisions can be made instantly by the people best equipped to make them. Might that produce corporate chaos? Sure. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Uniform thinking enforced from the top can cripple an organization. Silicon Valley knows that well: When programmers try to debug a piece of software, they intentionally isolate themselves from their neighbors so they won't duplicate each other's mistakes. Says E&Y's Jordan: ''When you debug, it's really good not to have the same assumptions and system as the guy next to you.''

LOSING GROUND. In the 20th century, succeeding was like climbing the Rocky Mountains. It wasn't easy, but the path was obvious. Success was a matter of executing on a well-established business plan: Every step up brought you closer to the top. ''Now, it turns out that the Rocky Mountains are fluid and moving,'' says BT's Cochrane. ''One minute you're at the top, next you're in a valley.''

Team leadership is ideally suited for this new reality. When the landscape is changing daily, it's crucial to react fast--something bureaucratic, top-down organizations don't do well. ''Most urgent projects require the coordinated contributions of many talented people working together. Whether the task is building a global business or discovering the mysteries of the human brain, it does not happen at the top,'' says Bennis, a University of Southern California professor and co-author of Organizing Genius.

Already, many companies are adopting work groups with no designated leader. In 1987, 28% of the largest 1,000 public companies boasted at least some self-directed groups. By 1996, 78% had some, according to research by Edward E. Lawlor III, head of USC's Center for Effective Organizations. The trend will only intensify as a generation of team-oriented managers climbs higher. Says Lawlor: ''I can see future generations of people getting to the top with more team experience--and being more willing to use it once they get there.''

Some companies have already gotten a jump on the process. Even General Electric Co.'s take-charge CEO Jack Welch makes many decisions collegially with a team of top executives. ''I couldn't do this job if I didn't have them,'' admits Welch. Says John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems Inc.: ''I learned a long time ago that a team will always defeat an individual. And if you have a team of superstars, then you have a chance to create a dynasty.'' That's one reason Chambers has two to three times as many people reporting to him as does the average executive in his company: It forces him to empower those directly under him with greater autonomy, because he can't possibly keep up with every detail of their work.

In the 21st century, the all-powerful CEO may not be powerful at all. Companies that thrive will be ''led'' by people who understand that in business, as in nature, no one person can ever really be in control.

I am writing the regular life in Berhampur .This is the year 1989 -
I was in my third standard. From 8 PM onwards, the preparations for dinner used to take place. We[Mama & Raju , Sivaram, Inna atta, Bujji & Jagannath Babai & I] used to watch the regular DD serials like Buniad, Hum Log, MungeriLal Ki Haseen Sapney and very important are the Quiz shows.

Before dinner, Inna atta assisted by some of us used to spread the mattresses and prepare the bedroom ["Kotta Gadi"] for a pleasant sleep. We used to sleep in the order of I,mama, jagannath babai, Bujji Babai and Inna atta. Tata, Raju Babai used to sleep in the drawing room [savidi]. The doors were locked @ 8 in the night to play safe with Ravi Babai[He is no more ! But his toughts will live with each of us for a life time!].

Tata used to come @ around 10 in the night and by that time I used to sleep. Morning I used to get up @ around 6.30 -7 AM . By 7.15 if we dont get up, My grandpa used to come and wake us up. The huge place around well used to be a place for all of us to Brush our teeth n get fresh. Mama used to put hot water, It was the second year of the house Construction which did last for 9 long years. I did grow up during those significant 9 years observing the work and growing along with the metamorhing house.

The timber from the house construction was used in the fire place and Mama used to put hot water . Tata used to give all of us the hot water.
[Now the time is 8 AM]
Tata used to get ready with his shaving kit and I used to fear that scene a lot as it was my routine time for telling him the english phrases and mathmatical tables and other fundamental formulae he used to teach me.From 8- 8.30 It used to be a regular scene.At 8.20 either Ravi babai or Raju Babai or Mama would tune the radio to Some of the radio stations[madras or vizag] for the carnatic music and all of us used to get ready during that time. All of us used to get ready one after another in a short time.

Akka, my grand father's akka used to get up early in the morning. She had her idiosyncratic life of living. She used to cook our food early in the morning. Those days I used to have the breakfast and then either Bujji Babai or Sivaram Babai would drop me to My Aga street school.

Those days used to be great.Wish I could now go back to those times. The power of now is phenomenal. Every moment then Njoyed is still very fresh in me.. I love those moments..
Waiting eagerly for all of us to re-gather again. My marriage will be a great stage for all of us to get together and discuss all those fine moments of life so that all are rejuvented and get back to each other with those longing memories

Another Week End ! Some Achievements ! I am realizing that more I believe and step out of my comfort zone, I am doing better. To Do better ? I ask the question myself and No Way, I can loose the time.. I need to be more focused and get the best out of me..
Wow ! Goose pimples accomplished ! Was @ the top of the world when I was sitting next to James H Morris, the Co-Discoverer of Knuth-Morris-Prat string searching algorithm. Pras ! Did u ever think that you would be sitting next to Morris ? This is the beginning.. You have lots ahead !

Well,
Jus one more week gone by ! So many changes and life is jus going on .. To dream big and to plan big is on the agenda.. But I am fighting a battle to win my will,mind and at times laziness.

I was sitting next to James H Morris the co-discoverer of KMP String searching algorithm. Wow ! I am so previleged and blessed to meet these esteemed people. I need to do my BIG things. Life is getting better everyday ! I started winning.. No Doubt abt it.
I love it !

Pras @ the MindLabs

M-e-Mail...
with GMail's spread,the holy war of eMail began on the grounds of Information Superhighway. Yahoo!'s 100Mb enhancement is the first surprise to the users. Remember there is no place for the second rankers. Its all about users honey !
Well! On the long wait @ Castro for the Line 51 that takes me to Carnegie, I was analyzing some pattern of eMail and its uses. Ofcourse I started analyzing my use..
I use eMail for tacit knowledge and for storage...I was thinking of a PKMS with efficient searching. Now GMail is all about searching your mails with in a few second.
Does that mean Mails need no more be organized ? I was happy @ the first glare of this thought. I realized that human brains have unique patterns of organizing information so the challenge is to make the best use of "Information around us".
The law of diminshing returns holds good for the Information also and in the series of articles that will follow, I have made up my mind to write about the information & eMail..

I am jus thinking of a community website for the my place.. want to come out with a whole new concept of communicating.. like ppl buying and selling to each other and shld be a virtual community outthere.. I need to do some thing serious abt it .. thinking.. Its been a long time since I blogged but..U bet.. Blogging is a healthy investment of time.. I know I have loads of work to take care of.. but Gee ! help me balance the loads.... getting back to the Project "Big" -

P ............ R............A.................S..........A..............N....N.....A

'Nerd Values' Help Propel Tiny Craigslist Into Classifieds Threat From [http://ojr.org/ojr/business/1086222946.php]

Following is the article on Craigslist.org[The entier bay community virtually lives here]

Craig Newmark started the community site as a hobby, but it soon became a San Francisco area institution for selling cars, getting jobs and finding sex. But just how much has it eaten into newspapers' traditional classifieds business, and can they win that back?


Mark Glaser
Posted: 2004-06-03
In San Francisco's bustling Inner Sunset neighborhood, you might find a coffee shop, a restaurant, a pharmacy or the offices of Craigslist.org. It's no wonder that the infamous community site is nestled in so well with the shops and hubbub along Ninth Avenue, because it has learned how to fit in and help the community more than any other media Web site in San Francisco.

Started nearly 10 years ago by soft-spoken software engineer Craig Newmark, Craigslist went from a small e-mail list of local events and parties to become a national and international phenomenon providing local residents with a cheap, simple way to sell junk, find a new job, or find a mate quickly. And as it has grown to encompass 45 cities -- with more to come -- Craigslist has resisted buyout offers and paid advertising while becoming a powerful alternative to daily newspaper and alternative-weekly classifieds -- especially in its hometown.

I stopped by the funky whitewashed basement and Victorian flat offices of Craigslist recently, and chatted with Newmark, whose eyes flitted to his computer screen from time to time to monitor activity and complaints that come streaming into his inbox. Though the staff has grown to 14, including a recent customer service manager, Newmark still spends 40 hours per week helping to deal with scams, community problems and other customer service details.

"I'm an engineer basically, my background is software engineering," Newmark said. "Our mindset is if we see something that needs to be done, we just do it. That's really it right there. People have said, 'How do you feel being a baby sitter?' and sometimes I have to fulfill that role."

The only income the site gets is from for-profit companies that run job listings in the San Francisco Bay Area, though Newmark said he is considering charging for similar job listings in New York City and Los Angeles. Though many people assume that the site is a nonprofit because of the dot-org in its name, it is a private, for-profit site that does not share its financial information with the public.

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster told me via e-mail why they set it up as a corporation instead of nonprofit. "Since we have never solicited or accepted charitable donations, and since our primary activity does not qualify for tax-exempt status, it doesn't make a lot of sense for Craigslist to operate as a nonprofit. Also, nonprofit vs. 'for profit' status has nothing whatsoever to do with whether an organization is profitable."

Newmark considers Craigslist to be a "noncommercial" site, and says he has rejected many buyout or investment offers from venture capitalists and others. Plus, in 1997 Microsoft Sidewalk approached him about putting banner ads on the site -- something that would have supported the entire enterprise. But Newmark kept the site independent and has supported local charities or put money back into the site, he says.

Newmark's goal is just to live comfortably and not become a dot-com multimillionaire, which he may well have become if he had taken up one of those offers. Newmark calls his philosophy "nerd values," which he explains as making "enough for a comfortable living, at which point you do something fun like changing the world." Newmark laughs at the notion of being a celebrity or mayor of the virtual town (see more quotes from him below).

Howard Rheingold, futurist and author of "The Virtual Community" and "Smart Mobs," says that Craigslist is a great example of a dot-com that succeeded because it didn't take venture capital. "They grew organically," he said. "The fact that Craig is the real thing and is part of the culture. It started as an e-mail list. It wasn't some big company suddenly sponsors this service, it was word of mouth. It's the people themselves that populate it. Why should it change? As far as I'm concerned, it works."

Rheingold also noted that the site has revolutionized sex, both amateur and professional services, with its Casual Encounters and Erotic Services sections. Both offer simple ways to find discreet or indiscreet sexual rendezvous.

"Man, that's a big deal, I think," Rheingold said. "People in their 20s I know who have tried it have indicated to me that there's a whole culture around it. This isn't what drove Craigslist. What really drove Craigslist was finding a place to sell your couch. But it's certainly become a part of it."

The edgy, free-for-all nature of ads placed on Craigslist has led to a documentary movie called "24 Hours on Craigslist," which follows the trail of various people who have posted on the San Francisco site. Plus, the "Best of Craigslist" section includes a quirky collection of community rants, from "The Truth About Blind Dates" to "The Further Adventures of Scrooge the Cat." (Yes, it's a guilty pleasure of mine.)

How big a threat?

There's something so simple and pure about writing up a quick ad when you want free stuff for your young baby -- and then getting it. Or searching through ads for apartments or cars or whatever. But both Newmark and some newspaper chains downplay just how much of an effect Craigslist is having on their traditional classifieds business.

Newmark told me that many of the ads on Craigslist wouldn't be placed in newspapers at all, and come from a hipper online audience. Liddy Manson, vice president and general manager of jobs, cars and real estate for Washingtonpost.com, says that sites like Craigslist and eBay focus on consumer-to-consumer transactions, while the Post's bread and butter is business-to-consumer ads from car dealers, real estate brokers and recruiters.

"As far as I can tell, Craigslist has really taken over the classifieds business in San Francisco, and it's not there in (Washington) D.C.," Manson told me in a phone interview. "That doesn't mean it's not going to mature and grow and become more than it is today. It's only been in D.C. for 14 months. There's no doubt that Craigslist is making us think about our business differently, and making us think about what the hot buttons are for this community -- both in terms of what people are buying and selling, but also in terms of what makes a community come together around certain types of activities."

Manson thinks that the Post has a good head start on Craigslist in job ads, with somewhere between 16,000 and 21,000 ads on its site vs. Craigslist in D.C. having about 2,000 ads. The edge for the Post is with its detailed searches and strong presence in the market, according to Manson, though she admits that there are certain part-time and nanny jobs that work better on Craigslist.

"If you put a listing for a nanny on The Washington Post, you might not be prepared to get 200 calls in a week," she said. "The response can be overwhelming. There are certain types of recruiting where Craigslist or a much smaller community newspaper is an effective alternative."

Peter Krasilovsky, vice president and senior partner at Borrell Associates, helped write a white paper on online recruiting ads, and guesstimated that Craigslist brought in $6.7 million last year in job ads in the San Francisco Bay Area. That's a hefty chunk of the $40.7 million in all online revenues that Borrell estimates came in for the three big classified areas of real estate, automotive and jobs in San Francisco.

Buckmaster disputed the $6.7 million figure, saying that the estimate probably didn't take into account volume discounting, free nonprofit postings or collection failures. But he also said that overall Craigslist postings (other than forums) have hit 2.5 million per month, up 100 percent over last year, while the site has reached 5 million unique users per month.

Krasilovsky says that some newspaper execs have reason to worry about Craigslist, while others are using it as an excuse. "The Bay Area papers, especially the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News, probably feel like they've had their lunch money taken away by Craigslist," he told me via e-mail. "Given the recently depressed job market, there have been a lot of questions in the newspaper industry (as to) why they are not getting the recruitment dollars. Craigslist is a real convenient excuse, but is obviously just a part of the problem."

Though Krasilovsky makes a living giving business advice to newspaper sites, he still has a lot of admiration for the simplicity of Craigslist. "One thing about Craigslist -- it is real thin," he said. "That makes it easy and fun to read, easy to maintain. While newspapers have been adding feature after feature to keep up with (job site) Monster.com's own feature creep, there is Craig with these little text postings, and they do the trick. As a consultant, we are always advising newspapers to add features and diversify their classified revenue beyond listings. But Craigslist suggests maybe that isn't always the right answer."

The Tribe.net alternative

Another answer might be for newspapers to take a more experimental tack via social networking sites, where a visitor might buy something because it's sold by someone they know through someone else. That was the thinking when The Washington Post Co. and Knight Ridder invested money as part of a $6.3 million round of venture capital in startup Tribe.net, which has started to include Craigslist-like listings on its site.

Ross Settles, vice president of new business for Knight Ridder Digital, told me that he sees Craigslist as aggregating a lot of nontraditional listings that are usually under the radar. "It's a different quality of listing, but it's very targeted in nature," he said. "Their users are younger. Those listings are important and attractive to us because they tell us how the market is going, about activity that we haven't penetrated yet."

Settles said that everything was still on the table as far as future steps with Tribe.net, whether that might mean cross-promotion or cross-listing. He says that the Tribe.net investment was basically a way for Knight Ridder to look at "doing some of the same stuff that Craigslist is doing. We're pretty excited about it, but how do we capitalize and leverage that for our market? We should have some answers in the not too distant future."

So far, though, the social networking arena has been long on hype and short on revenues. Plus, the one thing that makes Craigslist so appealing is its noncommercial nature. "Last I looked, none of these (social networking) sites were making money," Newmark said. "Clearly there's a paradox there. Let's say you're a site about people connecting. If you're very obviously there to make some people a lot of money, that might send the opposite message."

But Newmark does want to bring in extra money to stave off a frivolous lawsuit. While he does want to expand Craigslist internationally -- and has considered more features for the site -- he understands that those moves would require translators or more customer service.

New media consultant Barry Parr, who pens the MediaSavvy Weblog, is an unabashed fan of Craigslist, having bought and sold thousands of dollars of goods there. He thinks newspapers have an opportunity to get back some of their lost classifieds business online, but it would mean destroying their print classifieds in the process.

"God, I love (Craigslist's) simple interface and the way their software works," Parr told me via e-mail. "Everyone I've met through Craigslist has been someone I liked doing business with. It's so freaking wonderful. Newspapers' Web sites are unspeakably awful by comparison. They have too many masters to serve and virtually all of them don't understand how to make a Web site work."

# # #

Craig Newmark Quotables

On his personal finances:

"I spent roughly three or four years doing software contracting, which was, in that period, very lucrative. It was '95 to '99. I live relatively simply. I kept my last car 10 years. Despite the occasional gadget, I was saving a lot. Fortunately, I didn't invest a lot (before the crash)."

On his constant vigilance against spammers and scammers:

"We need to do a better job dealing with offshore scammers because the Feds don't have the resources right now because they have bigger priorities. I've had these discussions with cops on all levels and we do take care of a lot of petty crap without involving them. Usually I can reason with someone and almost always that works. There are times when it doesn't."

On his favorite newscaster:

"Jon Stewart (on "The Daily Show") is my favorite source of news now. Only in fake news can you find truth ... Right now Kerry's best advisor is Jon Stewart. Stewart is making fun of Kerry's speaking style and Kerry needs to hear that because 30 years ago he was a good speaker, but he's been too long in the Beltway as a senator."

On journalism and his news consumption:

"Journalism is at the beginning of great changes through blogs and camera phones, especially when you can get live video camera phones. And advertising is changing -- not only classifieds but everything else. They have to learn fast to adapt to those. We're having an effect, but probably not that big of a deal. Google ads are probably a much bigger deal."

On his "open source" way of doing classifieds:

"Let's say the philosophy is the same (as open source). Doing things because they feel right and you know you've got to make a living, but you don't have to go overboard."

On being viewed as the community leader or virtual mayor:

"Maybe so, but I'm not going to believe my own press. That would be bad."

Note: Glaser Online will not run next week because its author will be on a much-needed summer vacation and business trip. The column will return to this space the following week on June 15 with a refreshed outlook on life.

Ten types of Innovation @
http://www.doblin.com/pov/TenTypesOverview.html

Finance 1
Business model How you make money Dell revolutionized the personal computer business model by collecting money before the consumer's PC was even assembled and shipped (resulting in net positive working capital of seven to eight days).

2
Networks
and
alliances How you join forces with other companies for mutual benefit Consumer goods company Sara Lee realized that its core competencies were in consumer insight, brand management, marketing and distribution. Thus it divested itself of a majority of its mfg. operations and formed alliances with mfg. and supply chain partners.

Process 3
Enabling process How you support the company's core processes and workers Starbucks can deliver its profitable store/coffee experience to customers because it offers better-than-market compensation and employment benefits to its store workers--usually part time, educated, professional, and responsive people.

4
Core processes
How you create and add value to your offerings Wal-Mart continues to grow profitably through core process innovations such as real-time inventory management systems, aggressive volume/ pricing/delivery contracts with merchandise providers, and systems that give store managers the ability to identify changing buyer behaviors in and respond quickly with new pricing and merchandising configurations.

Offerings 5
Product performance How you design your core offerings The VW Beetle (in both its original and its newest form) took the market by storm, combining multiple dimensions of product performance.

6
Product system How you link and/or provide a platform for multiple products. Microsoft Office "bundles a variety of specific products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) into a system designed to deliver productivity in the workplace.
7
Service How you provide value to customers and consumers beyond and around your products An international flight on any airlines will get you to your intended designation. A flight on Singapore Airlines, however, nearly makes you forget that you are flying at all, with the most attentive, respectful, and pampering pre-flight, in-flight and post-services you can imagine.

Delivery
8
Channel How you get your offerings to market Legal problems aside, Martha Stewart has developed such a deep understanding of her customers that she knows just where to be (stores, TV shows, magazines, online, etc.) to drive huge sales volumes from a relatively small set of "home living" educational and product offerings.

9
Brand


How you communicate your offerings
Absolut conquered the vodka category on the strength of a brilliant "theme and variations" advertising concept, strong bottle and packaging design, and a whiff of Nordic authenticity.


10
Customer experience
How your customers feel when they interact with your company and its offerings Harley Davidson has created a worldwide community of millions of customers, many of whom would describe "being a Harley Davidson owner" as a part of how they fundamentally see, think, and feel about themselves.

PKMS -The Personal Knowledge Management System is on the top of my mind. I have been downloading and sorting loads of information(Data?) and processing them thru the cerebral channels and getting the best out of it. But Every Human being has his/her own unique way of retrieving the data/information. So I was thinking of how good it would be to have some thing like a Desktop Google -Where I define my keywords for a document/webpage I download from internet. So @ the time of need, I just type the keyword and the PKMS shows the related docs.

I implemented the base version of PKMS which is all about killing the Redundant files that I store. I did observe that when I save the files, the redundant factor is a significant concern and thus I implemented a small logger tool that logs all the Knowledge File titles & if a same resource is being saved, then the logger logs the file title in the redundant list and the user gets to know the redundant files and he/she can do the necessary action depending on the requirement and situation at hand.

My PKMS is being developed according to my patterns of the mind. Because there will not be another me and I should make the best of me. I observed that the time we(atleast I) take in ordering n retrieving my info takes away significant chunk of like. If we have an easy tool that apes "Our" unique way of retrieving/fishing out the info...the personal world would be jus great... Days of greatness are aprroaching soon..

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PrasDevilz is in the bed.... n hitting the bed soon to wake up Soon.. :)
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PKM_Fundas
Gross profit margin (GPM) measures the percent of revenue remaining after paying all direct production costs. This indicator is not available for banks and insurance companies.

Margin percentage change compares a company's quarterly gross profit margin for each of the last two quarters to the previous quarter.

Example:

((Q2-Q1)/Q1) * 100

The indicators are:


Gross Profit Margin measures GPM for the last calendar year.

Gross Profit Margin Last Quarter measures GPM for the last quarter.

Gross Profit Margin 12 Months measures GPM for the trailing twelve months.

Margin % Change Last Quarter compares last quarter's GPM with the previous quarter.

Margin % Change 2 Quarters Ago compares GPM two quarters ago with the previous quarter.

Relative Mode

Use GPM criteria in high relative mode to find companies that have high GPM.

Use GPM % change criteria in high relative mode to find companies whose GPM is increasing; a very positive factor.

Use GPM criteria in low relative mode to find companies that have low GPM.

Use GPM % change criteria in low relative mode to find companies whose GPM is decreasing; a negative factor.

The availability of information online- is the goal, I told myself. My family info has to be Up n Running and when I was seriously thinking about the content management and the future evolution of the site, I thought how the websites in the past have evolved.Jus a look into the past..and we find that..

Over the past decade Web design has gone through many iterations, driven by the ever-changing environment. Web browser vendors have contributed a lot of new features and functionality. The HTML specification has grown from a rigid structurally-based markup language, to an extensible HTML-XML hybrid. And CSS is now widely used to keep structure separate from presentation.

The changing landscape has led corporate Web sites to evolve from textual to multimedia, brochureware to interactive, static to transactional, chaotic to standardized, rigid to extensible, broadcasting to read-write. Web sites are no longer virtual places, they’re more like virtual agents. Today, corporate Web sites exist to serve their users and so their design must be personalized and loosely-coupled.

Web sites will continue to evolve and be products of their environment. Browser and operating system innovation (or lack of) will affect what the Web looks like in another 10 years. XML Web technologies that so far haven’t impinged much on corporate Web sites, like RSS and RDF, will force new ways of designing onto us.

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Pras in Bed..Reflection of Cerebrum...

The enterprise software business has been built on a simple business model - build a new software product and sell it to companies that will pay you for the increased efficiency that the software creates for them.

But its harder and harder to get companies to pay for software today. They’ve got a lot it in place already and they are paying more and more every year to maintain it. Plus they’ve been burned by relying on small companies to deliver for them.

I don’t believe that we have come anywhere close to addressing every problem that software and information technology can solve for businesses. But I am beginning to feel that we may be reaching a saturation point in terms of what enterprises can pay for software and information technology.

What might be the best Business model ???

The Five elements of Life that define everything for me are..
1.Happiness
2.Achievement
3.Significance
4.Legacy
5.Spirit of Non-Chalance.

Happiness - When We know what we want, We should define it clearly. Flowing in the postive energy of happiness ignites creative thoughts. Being happy in the worst times is an art and not every one can learn it easliy.
Achievement - If you think you are defining standards of maximization for achieving success, you are mistaken. Comparing single self with a celebrity's success might make one feel stupid.

Significance - Significance of life is...the mankind has re-defining the upper bounds for the elastic limits of cerebral signifance. More often than not, we feel either we pray to the supreme power or volunarily accept limits.

Legacy- The richest source of data to be mined to identify the patterns. Blogs are a classic example.of Legacy information

Spirit of Non-Chalance- External changes should not bring in a significant change in an individual. Practising the non-chalance would add the Xtra dimension of thought n Xtra perspective.

False Negatives [Source HBR ]

The history of innovation is full of examples where the eventual best use of a new product or technology was far different from the initial intended purpose of the idea. It is time that companies anticipate the need to manage false negatives in their innovation processes and respond accordingly. False Negatives???
yes . False or Pseudo Negatives...Here we go..

In the late 1980s, scientists for New York City-based drug-maker Pfizer began testing what was then known as compound UK-92,480 for the treatment of angina. Although UK-92,480 seemed promising in the lab and in animal tests, the compound showed little benefit in clinical trials in humans.

Having discovered these negative results, some firms might have thrown in the towel and moved on to other projects. But Pfizer's scientists picked up on—and decided to pursue—what they thought might be an interesting side effect. That side effect led the process of innovation in an entirely new direction—one that eventually resulted in a historic windfall for the drug maker soon after it began marketing UK-92,480 under the brand name Viagra.

Pfizer was able to develop and launch a wildly successful and profitable new drug because it effectively managed the false negatives (ultimately incorrect indications of failure) of the innovation process. Firm scientists were able to see beyond the drug's initial lack of success in treating hypertension, and, in doing so, they rescued UK-92,480 from the scrap heap of failed innovation and put it on the road to becoming one of the biggest drug introductions in history.

Most firms act as if false negatives don't exist because they don't have processes for managing them.
In their own industries, many companies might have missed similar opportunities. Although smart organizations have traditionally taken care to minimize the false positives of innovation, they have much more rarely considered the false negatives. This is because the damage created by false positives is much easier to recognize, and to quantify.

It can be both expensive and embarrassing when a project goes through the entire R&D process and turns out to be a dud, so companies commit often substantial resources to vetting new technologies through processes that aim to affirm their viability and marketability (or lack thereof). In doing so, firms reduce the chance that new products will falter in the marketplace because of false positives in the innovation process.

But the management of false negatives is much more complex. False negatives are not only often difficult to recognize, but there is also no single, sure-fire way to deal with them. Meanwhile, the downside to ignoring them is virtually impossible to predict. Nevertheless, history has shown it can be a costly mistake to miss a false negative, and there are indeed steps that companies can take to mitigate the likelihood of their development.

Spotting them, managing them
By their very nature, false negatives are tricky to spot in advance. Xerox created a number of false negatives out of its Palo Alto Research Center lab. When it didn't see the results it sought, Xerox terminated further funding for projects that we know today as Ethernet (by 3Com) and PostScript (by Adobe).

These projects were evaluated within Xerox and judged not to warrant further internal spending because the company didn't see a market for the technology. (Xerox thought of itself as The Document Company, not a software company.) Xerox lacked the necessary practices for recognizing and coping with false negatives. Of the rejected projects that started inside Xerox's labs, eleven of thirty-five were spun out to the external environment with no Xerox involvement and eventually became very valuable. In fact, their combined market capitalization is more than twice that of Xerox itself!

Many organizations today are in the same situation as Xerox. Effectively, most firms act as if false negatives do not exist because they don't have processes for managing them. A more valuable approach would be to acknowledge the risk of measurement errors in evaluating early-stage projects, and then develop practices for addressing those errors.

So, what processes might cope with false negatives?

Review all canceled projects. An effective starting point is to review all canceled projects a second time, perhaps six to twelve months after they have been terminated. Has anything changed, either within the project itself or within the larger environment, that might cause reconsideration of the earlier choice? This is only a starting point, and by itself is unlikely to be sufficient because this process does nothing to advance learning within the project in the interim.

Other processes seek to create new information after the initial negative decision, which might enable a fuller examination of the latent value within a project.

Expose projects to outsiders. If a project isn't moving ahead inside the company, maybe someone outside the company can think of something to do with it. IBM took an approach along these lines with a particular software project that had been kicking around in its labs for some time but did not seem to have any further potential. Once the project was sidelined, IBM decided to publish it on its AlphaWorks Web site, where outsiders could examine and download various IBM software. Soon thereafter, IBM managers noticed that this particular piece of software code was being downloaded at a rate ten times that of other code posted at the site. To IBM's credit, this surprising level of external interest triggered an internal reconsideration of the software code. We know it today as the XML (Extensible Markup Language) parser, and it is a core feature in IBM's next-generation WebSphere software to manage Internet services.

Seek external licenses. Through external licensing, projects that aren't being used internally might unlock additional revenues on the outside. Procter & Gamble follows this path as part of its “Connect and Develop” strategy. According to P&G policy, any technology that is not being used by one of its businesses within three years of its patent date is automatically made available for license to others—including competitors. This may have an additional side benefit: P&G businesses now know that if they don't use a technology, they might lose it to a competitor instead. This likely forces a more careful consideration of new P&G technologies when they become available.

Spin technologies off. Lucent created its New Ventures Group (NVG) with the mandate to launch new ventures that would commercialize technologies judged not to be valuable internally within Bell Labs. The NVG team looked for promising technologies that weren't getting to market through Lucent's own businesses. When they identified a promising technology, that technology was first offered back to Lucent's businesses. Only those projects that were turned down by the businesses were then pursued as new ventures. As with P&G, Lucent's businesses had to make their decisions more carefully, because if they didn't choose to use a technology, they might lose it to a new venture instead.

NVG initiated thirty-five ventures out of Bell Labs from 1996 through 2001. Many of these went out of business; a few became valuable; and three of them were later reacquired by Lucent, just two or three years after the Lucent business had chosen not to use the technology internally.

How did Lucent businesses miss the value of these technologies? It was not an error in judgment by the businesses, in my view. Instead, it was a measurement error, resulting from the inevitable uncertainties of assessing early-stage technologies.

Nevertheless, having three out of thirty-five projects turn out to be “positives” is not a bad track record for Lucent's businesses. If Lucent had not had NVG as part of its process, though, the information created by these ventures once they got started would never have emerged. These projects might have remained buried within Bell Labs indefinitely.


Seek external VC partners. Venture capitalists offer another interesting option for ideas that have been rejected internally. VCs are adept at crafting business models for emerging technologies, and they can experiment with nascent technologies in emerging markets far more effectively than can most large organizations. This approach also offers several options for the company where the idea originated: It can participate as an investor, as a customer, as a supplier, or simply as an interested bystander. If and when some real value has been created, then the company can potentially step in by licensing the technology or acquiring the new venture company.

If you can't predict, learn how to react
When commercializing a new technology requires the resolution of both technical and market uncertainty, one cannot expect to be able to anticipate the best path forward from the very beginning. You simply don't know all the possibilities in advance. Not only is it unknown, it is unknowable.

No amount of planning and research can reveal the facts because they simply don't exist yet. And measurement errors are inescapable in such situations. Rather than ignoring them, companies should initiate processes to cope with these errors. This increases their chances of finding a highly valued use for the technology.

The history of innovation is full of examples where the eventual best use of a new product or technology was far different from the initial intended purpose of the idea. It is time that companies anticipate the need to manage false negatives in their innovation processes and respond accordingly

Business Oppurtunities
India's mobile-using population is now @ 31.4 million (with the new population of 1.43 Millions of new users joining the bandwagon in Feb-2004).The mobile usage ranges across the hierarchies of the Social Pyramid. The base of the pyramid is exponentially adding the mobile users. The base is formed by the poor people of India. Intrestingly the tech revolution is being embraced by the populi( a newly coined word for kinds of population) of the pyramid's base. In Kerala, the women are using the PCs for the Fish Shoal information (Accessing the Satelite images and reports) and are directing their husbands where to fish. The husbands are using the real-time information and after getting the big-catch, are using the mobile phones to get the best price markets and heading towards them to make good money.

With Globalization,shrinking the world from Size-small to Size-tiny, the tech-revolution is razing like a wild fire. The business oppurtunities of Mobiile markets are good bet to invest in. I strongly feel, the fortune lies at the bottom of the Pyramid.There is a massive growth in the density at the bottom of the pyramid .Investing in business for this Strata would have a strong return on Investment.

e-Business and SoA

I started writing a Paper on Service Oriented Architecture and Realities of it. Being an e-Business domain professional, no matter which architecture or technology I talk about, my li'l brain always visualises the applications from the e-Domains.My Paper is not proceeding any further as I am being haunted by the question that Most of the B2B applications are Event Driven rather than Service Oriented. So there is a power shift in my zooming ahead and as usual I am reflecting my thoughts on my blog jus to make sure I dont miss my piece of cerebrum.

Recognizing that most B2B interactions are more event-driven than service-oriented because they have traditionally been — and will continue to be — one-way interactions between applications with separate Logical Units of Work. Event-driven architecture and service-oriented architecture have many similarities. Both support distributed applications that go beyond conventional architectures, both use a modular design based on reusable business components, and both may be enabled through Web services. Architects and developers must understand the business requirements and process models to determine whether SOA, EDA or some combination of them is right for each aspect of each new business process. This is where I am right now....Thinking n thinking...........

Business Opportunities

India's mobile-using population is now @ 31.4 million (with the new population of 1.43 Millions of new users joining the bandwagon in Feb-2004).The mobile usage ranges across the hierarchies of the Social Pyramid. The base of the pyramid is exponentially adding the mobile users. The base is formed by the poor people of India. Intrestingly the tech revolution is being embraced by the populi( a newly coined word for kinds of population) of the pyramid's base. In Kerala, the women are using the PCs for the Fish Shoal information (Accessing the Satelite images and reports) and are directing their husbands where to fish. The husbands are using the real-time information and after getting the big-catch, are using the mobile phones to get the best price markets and heading towards them to make good money.

With Globalization,shrinking the world from Size-small to Size-tiny, the tech-revolution is razing like a wild fire. The business oppurtunities of Mobiile markets are good bet to invest in. I strongly feel, the fortune lies at the bottom of the Pyramid.There is a massive growth in the density at the bottom of the pyramid .Investing in business for this Strata would have a strong return on Investment.

I was having a talk about the new domains Google(My extension of Memory) is spreading into with a frnd of mine. It was exciting to know the new ventures google is getting into....With MS in the race, we need to wait n watch who mooves the cheese ...I am trying to be more disciplined as a software engineer(the most commonly abused/misused word). Going through the PPP work shop,following the Personal software Process, Lemme jot what ever the grey matter(My hair started turning grey (Launchpad(My Alterego says Ah! Nothing new buddy, Same old wine of class 6th))) says the following stuff on Google

Will Google's new free e-mail system, Gmail, be just the first of many things we'll see in a new Google Desktop? If so, Microsoft could have a lot more to worry about than just Web search.

Today, plenty of people download mail to desktop-based e-mail programs. But Google might convince some of them to take up its e-mail storage offer.

After all, even if you do have a great way to search through desktop-based e-mail, you might like the idea that all your mail is backed up, stored offsite, and easily searchable from anywhere.

Now, take things a step further. Imagine next year Google provides users with 5, 10, or more gigabytes storage space for personal files.

Got a ton of text documents, spreadsheets, and other material? Push it to us, Google would say. We'll store it, index it, and make it easy to retrieve what you want. Google already indexes this type of material across the Web and has done so for ages.

As broadband expands, such an idea becomes increasingly more feasible. With it, the notion that Microsoft might trump Google with desktop lock-in becomes less of an issue.


Again my regulatr pattern of analyzing the business oppurtunity in the fore said stuff..
There is an interesting opportunity for Indian broadband companies - think like Google on the platform side, and combine with thin clients (akin to handsets) for users to build an end-to-end alternate computing platform the the mass market (today's non-users) in India. There are 40 million home users waiting and growing...
Time to tap my thinking into practical implementation plans !!
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The Devil's workshop back at the PPP assignment and will jot the crazy thoughts next time it strikes a chord..

The Childhood!

The nostalgic feelings are getting stronger....I have made up my mind to write about my childhood stories and the incidents( I love recalling them when ever I find time, the first thing I do is to recall all the moments and fills me with lot of happiness..So,the blog would be the best place to write my nostalgic extensions... and longings......When I look back through time, it has been a wonderful journey all thru...very very interesting starting from a telugu-medium primary school(what they call the "Dumpala badi") in the Aga Street of Berhampur,Orissa state of India. My Parents used to live in Visakhapatnam (Dad was then) a reader in College of Law Andhra University (this was in 1986).

In 1986.....

I was a lad of 6 years and went to my Grandparents place for my summer holdiays, they paralled with my mom's delivery. Both of my Grandparents used to stay in Berhampur...(there was an Interruption...My Frnd n fellow scholar n colleague Murthy as always was confused with some stuff, though he has good subject ( i can say he has good java n Data structures knowledge more than me... the only thing that screws up his total persona is.. the agressive mode that switches off many co-workers, I did tell him many times but change in persona is something not so obvious takes time...infact I was a One man army at one time...time taught me to be a team player and life taught me the challenges on the road ahead..) well getting back to the my kid days...
My Paternal grandfather is an ophthalmologist and grand mom is a music maestro she was n is a regular speaker at sukti mukta vali of AIR in India. My maternal granddad is a LMP(Licensed medical practioner) and grand mom is the most pure and innocent women I have ever met( in these 23 years of life).... Both the families are very affectionate, fun and frolic all the way for me at my native place (B'pur). I used to long so much as my babai's (Dad's younger brothers) were more less of my age and I used to play with them hours n hours together...(Fighting too ! ) Oh ... those were the best days of fun ever defined....I used to break hell whenever I used to leave for Vizag...Back in Vizag, I used to wait for holidays as my uncles used to come n we used to play hours n hours together.. what is the good word,Dumbsharades and Anthakshari( we used to have power cuts in the summer n Gosh ! they used to stretch for 2 hours in the evening. We used to play these fun games at our new colony rented-house in vizag.

Raja,Suman and Naveen used to join us from Hyderabad. I remember, we used to be a big-gang in vizag.Me,Bujji babai,Inna atta, Jaganath babai,Deepu,Sundeep,Raja,Suman,Naveen and Chowchi,Indira and my crazy friend Siva(he used to live in the middle portion of the 3 portions of our roman three emulating house)...this was the late '86. I now had a cool sibling....so chubby....so cute...(nah ! I am not biased..he was a real cute n chubby kid...he is a pretty smart ass now almost at everything in life but for so much at education, I am sure he will pull up !)...My life took a drastic change... I got shifted to a telugu medium school. I saw the school, it was such a dumb school with crowded kids sitting on the floor... but I hardly cared for them( I had a rich company of uncles who used to play with me.. thats what I counted on). My Sivaram Babai came with me to join me at Aga Street School, I was put into 2nd standard. Being very honest ...another strong reason for shifting me to Bam was... though I scored 90s in all subjects, I did awfully worse in the Sanskrit oration at Balabanu Vidyalaya and they had no other go but to fail me in my first standard...Yes ! I did fail in the very first standard of life... thats when I started succeeding in life...I was put into 2nd standard and My granddad started taking care of me n my dad sighed relief....

I used to go to school at 9 and used to come back home at 4pm. On the way my maternal grandmom used to give me some food n I used to rule them. At my paternal grandpa's place oh ! it was a strict place n for the kind of persona my granddad is, he used to command a lot of discipline. I used to feel that I am fettered at my place when my grand dad was around the corner. TV,Games and even people talking to each other(the mundane "batakani" stuff) was not acceptable to him. my grandmom used to n even now loves me a lot(my granddad also loves me a lot but that time it was so latent). My granddad made it a routine for me to read the selected articles from the news paper( those were the days when I was so young n I remember so well that for the first time in my life when I was reading the word "hardware" I read it as "Hari" "Dwar" :) and My granddad made me read it again n again n he got it right the 10th time when I tried my luck in a different way..)At school I was the best at english ( atleast I had my first standard in english medium so best of the rest). I was pretty new to telugu and I used to attend a tuition for learning telugu at Shanti akka's place. I made friends with Venkatesh,Baba and others they are from a different school. Oh ya ! Sujatha,Jyothi,Geeta were my favourite friends and I used to eat their boxes so often that their parents used to send me Xtra stuff !). Sujatha's mom was so loving that she used to invite me to her place n feed me sumptuously . She was so loving towards all the kids.

My pals of 2nd standard need more attention... one was Venky...pulavarthi venkatesh...this guy was so close frnd of mine.. he had a huge family(theirs was a combined family) his family was full of kids and I used to be at his place mostg of the time when I was no where else. It was so obvious for my folks to trace me out(because my schedules were so predictable that either I used to be at Santhi akka's place,Venki's or at my place). Santhi akka's tuition needs a special mention. My tuition timings were from 5-6.30pm in the evening. Venki used to sleep dialy in the tuition and I used to bug him by putting the chalk pieces n threads in his nose n ear. It was so fun irritating him those days... He trashed me one day as I disturbed him...I used to be so jovial n when Venky was thrashing me badly ... I was just smiling ..I was bleeding from my nose even then I dint retort back as he was my coolest buddy n it was a regular phenomenon of he thrashing me ...n asking me to forgive him....those were really cool moments of my second standard.....Baba(his parents were n are real devotees of Sai baba of putaparthi) he was called "kaki" for his color and this guy was regular to tuition n irregular to his homework. I used to like him so much too we were cool pals... we used to fool venky many times.... those were the days when we used to get "Giant Robot" serial in DD and venky was so innocent that he was told that me n Baba control a giant robot ....:)) I did take a magnifying glass from Venky telling him a cool story of giant robot...those were so cool days... I used to have so much fun... I hardly recalled my parents...By the time I used to get back home tired n take bath and have food....the dinner at Berhampur used to be one more incident which deserves a spcl note....Our dining table had a mirror exactly opposite to one chair... either I or Bujji babai will sit there...and we used to look in the mirror for a long time in different angles n frown the face n do everything but for eating and my grand mom used to scold us stating that we should not spend long times at dinner. All of us used to sit together...and watch serials like "Humlog",Ye jo hai Jindagi...those moments used so fine.. now when I am writing these things.. I just want to go to that life again...The bedroom also needs a special description...My inna atta(her name is Radha ramani and she was the youngest sister of my dad. Sivaram babai used to call her inna instead of Chinna and it became her name) made the bedroom ready every night for all of us to go n sleep. I used to sleep in between my grand mom n wall. 10pm in the night was a high time for me and I used to be fast asleep laying my hands on my grand mom...those days used to be so great...This was the regular life during my second standard in berhampur . I will recall any special moments during 1986 of my life and will blog them in my next write-up.

Nostalgia is one thing which gives me immense pleasure and It has become a habit to blog when ever I am feeling bugged or stressed up. The return on this investment of time is so high. The satisfaction I get when I read n recall all these fine moments of life and all the special people of my life, the pleasure I derive is jus beyond words....I need to make this habit of blogging down nostalgia more regular. These are the gifts for the beloved ones which no money can buy. These are the moments that can be felt and experienced by all the people involved in those time frames with me.

Life in Real-Time
Got Started to write some thing on the Real-Time Enterprise. Crazy ! My Blog at the Blog-city was down for some "maintenance". I created the new accnt at Blogger in real-time... so this is flags a symbolic start for my real-time stuff !.... Times are getting really challenging...Ubiquitous Information Everywhere is the phenomenon, we are facing. Ever wondered which number is racing with the Human population of the world ?
Answer is the mobile community which is growing exponentially...RFIDs are competing with the mobile phones and would go way ahead of Mobile community number.

I was having Pepsi-Zero (my lingo for Diet Pepsi)...was wondering what is the "Best Before" date n had to gymnastics with the open can.Lets zoom in to future....It is year 2008 Feb, I am working on a Mission Critical Architecture Plan .... a fellow gets me the canned food n Coke.. Strange!! the Canned food contains only the Name of the food n nothing else... I press the RFID scan button on my watch n it reads the nutrition details,Best Before date, all other info including an advertisement of a "Try Similar Stuff". So the food is e-Tagged and this saves a phenomenal amout of cost to the manfacturing company. The company gets rid of the Label Printing costs and other details. The canned food can be read no matter whether they are in line of sight or not (Unlike the barcode).

On the way Back home, I realized that I need to pick up a gift for my Dad as his B'day was approaching... I
am at, Down town Mountain View, Books Inc. As I am walking around, My Watch beeps... and I see a list of
Books (Depending on my previous purchases). Alas ! I bought book only once @ Books inc during the last three years of stay. Then How did it know abt my preferences..I asked the same question to the Store Manager n He said they r InfoE("Info Everywhere") Accredited Center. Thats answered by question.

What is "Info Everywhere" ? Info Everywhere is a Service Oriented Business Concept that plugs the Ubiquitous Information into day-to-day life. All the Big Players of e-Commerce like eBay,Amazon,BestBuy,Staples are partnered with them. InfE tracks all the user purchaes online(InfoE is Federal Trading Comission's Information Privacy Complaint that assures the maximum privacy to the data for better user service). InfE maintains the User Data in a well classified structure (For every user they Maintain the Books,Electronics and further classifications) and using the Roll-Up n Drill down funda of Data mining and Information Engineering ( A patented concept of InfoE) they hit the bull's eye).

I see a future where all the things of our day to day life start talking. All the Equipment geared with RFID readers will have a UUID (Unique Universal ID) . The Users when registering at the e-Com giants have to sense their watches or RFID readres at the PC/Laptop/Pokcet Computer's RFID reader (which itself has a UUID). The UUID will be captured and would be set as a primary index for the user( No 2 RFID readers in the world will have the same UUID Similar Funda of MAC addresses of NIC). So when I am getting into InfoE Accredited center.The InfoE's patented device reads the UUID from the RFID reader and sends in it to the Server Silos for info retrieval(Depending on the Shop i.e if it is a Book Shop UUID+ Code for the Book category would go to the Server) this would enable in retrieving only the required info. The info will be broadcasted in the shop and the Books(RFID in them) depending on the match with my previous historical information will "talk to me" ( to my RFID reader) n when I am walking down the aisles of book shop, I will be stopped by the books of my interest,the electornic way. Similar would be the case with other shops too. This would enable an individual to save time and at the same time get the right thing at the right time. Rathern than doing things right ! It would enable us do the right things..

Back to 2004. I see this as a very potential concept that would save a lot of time in our day to day life.Waiting to talk the e-Way. Enhance this concept....

My Lil brain is back to it's crazy workshop......
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Prasanna can be reached at rvprasanna AT Yahoo DOT com. Prasanna is a budding Masters Student at the Carnegie Mellon University.