Quotes worth recording – Helen Keller

By Rajesh Setty on Sun 05 Jun 2005, 11:28 PM - Leave Comment

Flatlining is a big no-no. See what Helen Keller has to say:

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Social Networking under fire now??

By Rajesh Setty on Sat 04 Jun 2005, 8:50 AM - Leave Comment

Robert Scoble talks about the problem with social networking and also provides a link to the CNET.com article Five reasons social networking doesn’t work.

There was so much of buzz and hype about Social Networking in the last couple of years. My take on this issue.

Social networking is a really cool concept and it works great if used
right. In a nutshell, Social networking is the technology
implementation of “six degrees of separation.” You can reach anyone
else in the world in six hops. While this may be true, trying to
exactly replicate it and think that it will work may be asking for too
much. Let me explain. Take a look below

                         
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6

Let’s say #2 wants to reach #6 and the introduction request reaches #4.
It’s a tricky situation for #4 as neither he knows #2 directly nor he
knows #6 directly. But the request came from someone he knows very
well. My take in this scenario – most of the times, the request will
stall and won’t move. It will also put a strain on the relationship
between #3 and #4.

One simple way to overcome this is to create a rule that you will only
connect people who are directly connected to you. For instance, if #3
wants to connect with #5 and the request comes along to #4, it should
be a “no brainer”

I think the jury is still out on this. More on this a few days later.

Posted under Business Models, Main Page.

Quotes worth recording – Dee Hock

By Rajesh Setty on Fri 03 Jun 2005, 6:27 AM - Leave Comment

One of the great visionaries of our times Dee Hock talks about the difficulty of “letting go” what is familiar to us

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Microsoft opening up office – Way to go!!

By Rajesh Setty on Thu 02 Jun 2005, 12:01 AM - Leave Comment

What a pleasant surprise from Microsoft. Our company CIGNEX is heavily focused on Open Source so it’s hard to complement Microsoft (philosophically) but today’s announcement
(link takes you to blog entry of Brian Jones, program manager for Word
at Microsoft) about opening up Office in the next version is definitely
a bold and commendable move.

Basically, the new version of Office (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) will
store data in an XML format. This opens a whole bunch of possibilities
for developers to build solutions based on office applications. Besides
portability enhancements, the ability to manipulate content at the
server level is huge.

Many ISVs will love the fact that integrating their software with office will become a breeze moving forward.

It’s an innovative approach. Hats off to Microsoft!

Posted under Innovation, Main Page.

Compellling Offer #05 – Get paid to search

By Rajesh Setty on Wed 01 Jun 2005, 11:39 PM - 2 Comments

Amazon announced their search engine A9 a few months ago. Now, they are offering a discount of (1.57%) for regular users of A9 search engine.

In order to continue to be eligible for discounts at Amazon, users need
to at least use A9 once per week (eligibility criteria might change)
and you need to sign in before using the search engine (otherwise how
will they know that you were using the search engine)

No other search engine that I know of requires a login before
searching. No other big-name search engine pays their users either. By
offering a powerful incentive (money!) Amazon is getting users to
reveal what they are looking for using the search engine and I am sure
ultimately this information will be used to present the right set of
products while they are browsing at Amazon. Neat!!

There is an innovation war going on between Google and Amazon and hats
off to both companies for setting higher standards for each other and
every other company in that space.

Posted under Business Models, Compelling Offers, Innovation, Main Page.

Quotes worth recording – Calvin Coolidge

By Rajesh Setty on Wed 01 Jun 2005, 6:37 AM - Leave Comment

The following quote reminds us of the importance of persistance in our journey towards our goals

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