And Yahoo's gonna kick everyone's arse! Maybe.
Labels: technology Author: Sushant SreeramLooks like Yahoo's finally getting one up on the Googles and the Microsofts.
In a move that could have far-reaching consequences not just for Yahoo and its competition but for the online space as we know it, Yahoo is opening up its Web platforms to third party application developers. And also, putting together all its offerings under a single umbrella.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,145062-c,businesscenter/article.html
What does "opening up its web platforms for third party applications" mean? Well, think Flickr. Now, what if you could share your images with your friends as they share theirs, what if you could tag people in your photographs, and what if these photographs could be a part of your personal profile and also a part of Yahoo Personals? Think again.
"The idea is to let the hundreds of millions of people who use its Web mail, instant messaging, calendar, photo management and other online services replicate the social experience that social networks like MySpace and Facebook have made so popular."
There are two main activities a majority of users indulge in online - e-mail/messages and social networking. Till now, each of these services has been handled by different owners (Yahoo, MSN, etc for e-mail and NewsCorp, Facebook, etc for SN). Even in cases where the same owner (Read: Google) provides both services (Gmail and Orkut), they have not been integrated to allow a user to interact with both simultaneously (think reading your mail as you check scraps on your profile).
Why hasn't this happened yet? For a couple of reasons. First, it raises privacy hackles. For many of us, the level of personal details involved in our e-mail/messages is more than we let our on our social networks. And to put them together would mean revealing more than we would probably like to. Second, there are security issues involved with combining a platform that is meant to be very secure(e-mail) with something that shouldn't be (social networking). And thirdly, there is the technology issue with integrating different programming environments (though this can be dealt with).
And now Yahoo has come along to try and do what none have done yet. Remember, this is not akin to a Facebook or a MySpace service. What Yahoo is talking about is bringing together all the services that one indulges in online - email, notes, photos, social networking, blogging, and more!
Well thought Yahoo! Now let’s see if you are game enough to walk to talk.
Nonsense is fun, ain't it?
Labels: Miscellaneous Author: Sushant SreeramOk, got tagged into doing this....so here goes!
Rules:
1. Put the MP3 player on shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get the answer.
3. Must write the name of the song no matter what. No cheating!
IF SOMEONE SAYS “IS THIS OKAY?” YOU SAY?
Swades - OST!!
Not idea what sense that makes!
WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Savatage-Can You Hear Me Now
Hmm.. :P
WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Pink Floyd - The Narrow Way
Ho!Ho!Ho! This is getting weird. Kids, stop reading!
HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
Green Day - Wake Me Up When September Ends
Yeah absolutely!
WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
Neil Young - Cinnamon Girl
Oh yeah! :-D
WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Storm In A Teacup
That I'am!
WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Pink Floyd-Several Species of Small Furry Animals
What! Who thinks that about me! C'mon , you and me outside, right now! :-)
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
Cat Power - The Greatest
Hmm...yes!
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
CCR - Proud Mary
Err...ok, maybe, also, sure.
WHAT IS 2+2?
Neil Young - Natural Beauty
Hi!Hi! Spoke like a true mathematician (Which I am not, incidentally!)
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Eric Carmen - Hungry Eyes
Ho!Ho! Dunno whose eyes but yes
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Don Henly - Taking You Home
I swear I am not doctoring this!
WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
James Blunt - Goodbye My Lover
Not really true. And yea, I listen to James Blunt. Bite me!
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Eric Claptop - Laila
Err..ahem...I am a confused soul already. Don't tempt me!
WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Savatage - Believe
Hmm...Deep
WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
The Elvis Medley
Hehe! :-)
WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Eagles -Tequila Sunrise
Sure!
WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Metallica - Hero of the Day
Oh yeah! Here I come again! :-)
WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Hot Chocolate - You Sexy Thing
Huh! Who?
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Sting - Englishman in NY
Huh.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Kailash Kher - Allah ke Bande
Hehe!
WHAT SHOULD YOU POST THIS AS?
Neil Young - Dreamin' Man
I guess.
This was more fun than I thought. :-)
Quote for the day: "Freedom, money and love - you only notice them when they are gone."
Orkut finally wakes up. But is it too little too late?
Labels: Future, technology Author: Sushant SreeramOne thing (probably the most important thing) that makes Facebook so addictive is the various third-party applications developed on the API (Application Programming Interface) platform that create content for connecting with friends in a network. Think about the time you added the 'Compare People' app and compared your friends inadvertently sending them an update on it. This gets them to check their rankings and compare their friends and so on. Brilliant strategy from the point of view of building user loyalty and growing average time spent.
Facebook's been a pioneer in the third-party apps within social-networking space. This moves ahead of Web 2.0 defined as "The stage of Internet evolution that allowed users to create information, disseminate it and collaborate with other users". What this basically translates to is blogs, social profiles, etc where users themselves create the content and network with others within the community creating a whole universe of user-generation.
While Web 2.0 has created icons such as Orkut, Blogger, Wiki, etc., the inherent constraint in this model has been that the provider of the platform for user-interaction has to develop all the widgets, applications, and other functionalities that users might want. This requires the platform provider to a) foresee what functionalities might be userful, and b) constantly keep working on developing them.
Then there is Web 3.0 being described as "creation of high-quality content through trusted individuals/sources using the Web 2.0 platform". Example: Consider Wikipedia, a Web 1.5/2.0 construct. Users upload information onto the platform provided and this information is referenced by others. But what happens when incorrect/misleading information is put up? Yeah, they get flagged on Wikipedia currently but that's a round-about way of creating quality content. Instead of first allowing all information and then ranking them on authenticity, etc; why not do the latter first? How would this work on Wikipedia? Trusted users/sources would first authenticate information and then its published in its final form. But isn't this going back to Web 1.0 with the 'information police' coming in? No. These 'trusted users/sources' will be members of the community themselves.
Another example: Semantic search. Think about this. For us humans, the combination of the keywords 'cat' and 'dog' could, amongst other things, imply household pets. For us humans, it's a natural (more conditioned actually) categorization but can Google make this distinction? Currently not. Another example: Consider these two sentences -"Kill him, not stop" and "Kill him not, stop". Can you make the distinction. Of course. Can Google do it? No. Semantic search is a huge area being opened up as we talk. involving developing search engine platforms that understand human communication and interpret what we are trying to say and serve up the more relevant information from the database. While Semantic Search includes a lot of XML, NLP (Natural Language Processing), RDF (language to express relationships such as between 'cat' and 'dog'), etc; Web 3.0 is going to form a substantial component of a successful Semantic Search platform.
Web 1.0 - Community with police provided by the government.
Web 2.0 - Community with no police (assuming that people will reach a state of peaceful equilibrium)
Web 3.0 - Community with respected members of the society managing the affairs of the society (kinda like a 'sarpanch')
Now, coming back to Facebook, it is what I would like to call Web 2.5. This is because while Web 2.0 allowed creation and dissemination of information within a construct provided (which was more often than not inflexible), Facebook has gone ahead and made the construct of interaction itself Web 2.0. It has given away its authority (to a large extent) on how the construct should be, what components it should contain etc, to members themselves. Brilliant! Don't you think?
And now to the subject of the post, Orkut has finally decided to bring in apps to its members. I noticed it only a couple of days ago and a couple of things hit me right away:
a. All the apps provided (and there are not that many, around 30 compared with the hundreds on Facebook) are direct rip-offs from Blogger.
b. As a result of 'point a.', most of these apps are more the 'pimping my blog' kinda apps where you can display an emoticon of how you are feeling or add a daily horoscope to your page etc. They do not allow users to interact with each other through these apps (except some like iRead, iPoke, etc.
c. And finally, it is no comparison to the way Facebook operates simply because Orkut hasn't opened up its platform for third-party apps to be integrated within. And all long as that doesn't happen, Orkut Buyukkokten will be spending a lot of his time staring at the ceiling thinking of new apps or developing them.
While Orkut definitely had the first-mover advantage in India and did pretty well getting almost everybody in the 18-30 segment signed up (Orkut became a sort of a background-check source during recruitments, impending marriages, new dates, the works!), Facebook has proved that great innovation can always take away the first-mover advantage (the last time I checked the number of users in the 'India' network on facebook, it was 632,875. At the time of writing this, it stands at 638,224. That's about 5000 users in 3 days => 50,000 users a month. And almost all these new users would be members of Orkut. So basically, Facebook is heavily cannibalizing Orkut's India traffic and it won't be long before these 50,00 new users discover the apps on Facebook and 'come over to the dark side'!
Indian Premier League gets underway!
Labels: Sports Author: Sushant SreeramAlritey! After all the showbiz, drama and news (not that I mind when Preity Zinta is in it :-), we finally get down to some cricket starting today!
Planning to attend at least a couple of matches here in Mumbai.
The event schedule is as follows: Time Match Venue Friday 18 April 8:00 PM Bangalore vs Kolkata Bangalore Saturday 19 April 5:00 PM Punjab vs Chennai Mohali 8:30 PM Delhi vs Rajasthan Delhi Sunday 20 April 4:00 PM Kolkata vs Deccan Kolkata 8:00 PM Mumbai vs Bangalore Mumbai Monday 21 April 8:00 PM Rajasthan vs Punjab Jaipur Tuesday 22 April 8:00 PM Deccan vs Delhi Hyderabad Wednesday 23 April 8:00 PM Chennai vs Mumbai Chennai Thursday 24 April 8:00 PM Deccan vs Rajasthan Hyderabad Friday 25 April 8:00 PM Punjab vs Mumbai Mohali Saturday 26 April 4:00 PM Chennai vs Kolkata Chennai 8:00 PM Bangalore vs Rajasthan Bangalore Sunday 27 April 4:00 PM Punjab vs Delhi Mohali 8:00 PM Mumbai vs Deccan Mumbai Monday 28 April 8:00 PM Bangalore vs Chennai Bangalore Tuesday 29 April 8:00 PM Kolkata vs Mumbai Kolkata Wednesday April 8:00 PM Delhi vs Bangalore Delhi Thursday 1 May 4:00 PM Rajasthan vs Kolkata Jaipur 8:00 PM Deccan vs Punjab Hyderabad Friday 2 May 8:00 PM Chennai vs Delhi Chennai Saturday 3 May 4:00 PM Bangalore vs Deccan Bangalore 8:00 PM Punjab vs Kolkata Mohali Sunday 4 May 4:00 PM Mumbai vs Delhi Mumbai 8:00 PM Rajasthan vs Chennai Jaipur Monday 5 May 8:00 PM Bangalore vs Punjab Bangalore Tuesday 6 May 8:00 PM Chennai vs Deccan Chennai Wednesday 7 May 8:00 PM Mumbai vs Rajasthan Mumbai Thursday 8 May 4:00 PM Delhi vs Chennai Delhi 8:00 PM Kolkata vs Bangalore Kolkata Friday 9 May 8:00 PM Rajasthan vs Deccan Jaipur Saturday 10 May 8:00 PM Chennai vs Punjab Chennai Sunday 11 May 4:00 PM Deccan vs Kolkata Hyderabad 8:00 PM Rajasthan vs Delhi Jaipur Monday 12 May 8:00 PM Punjab vs Bangalore Mohali Tuesday 13 May 8:00 PM Kolkata vs Delhi Kolkata Wednesday 14 May 8:00 PM Mumbai vs Chennai Mumbai Thursday 15 May 8:00 PM Delhi vs Deccan Delhi Friday 16 May 8:00 PM Mumbai vs Kolkata Mumbai Saturday 17 May 4:00 PM Rajasthan vs Bangalore Jaipur 8:00 PM Delhi vs Punjab Delhi Sunday 18 May 4:00 PM Kolkata vs Chennai Kolkata 8:00 PM Deccan vs Mumbai Hyderabad Monday 19 May 8:00 PM Bangalore vs Delhi Bangalore Tuesday 20 May 8:00 PM Kolkata vs Rajasthan Kolkata Wednesday 21 May 4:00 PM Mumbai vs Punjab Mumbai 8:00 PM Chennai vs Bangalore Chennai Thursday 22 May 8:00 PM Delhi vs Kolkata Delhi Friday 23 May 8:00 PM Punjab vs Deccan Mohali Saturday 24 May 4:00 PM Chennai vs Rajasthan Chennai 8:00 PM Delhi vs Mumbai Delhi Sunday 25 May 4:00 PM Deccan vs Bangalore Hyderabad 8:00 PM Kolkata vs Punjab Kolkata Monday 26 May 8:00 PM Rajasthan vs Mumbai Jaipur Tuesday 27 May 8:00 PM Deccan vs Chennai Hyderabad Wednesday 28 May 4:00 PM Bangalore vs Mumbai Bangalore 8:00 PM Punjab vs Rajasthan Mohali Friday 30 May 8:00 PM 1st Semi-final Mumbai Saturday 31 May 8:00 PM 2nd Semi-final Mumbai Sunday 1 June 8:00 PM Final Mumbai
Tickets and more information online at:
Matches in Bangalore, Jaipur, Kolkata & Mohali - http://www.ticketpro.in/ipl/buy_tickets.html
Matches in Mumbai & Delhi - http://www.kyazoonga.com/
Matches in Hyderabad - http://s1.deccanchargers.com/
Matches in Chennai - http://www.chennaisuperkings.com/ticket/SeasonIndex.aspx
If anyone of you reading this wants to catch any of the matches here in Mumbai, drop in at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=14908748097 and RSVP and we could catch up at the venue.
Cheers! Any may the best team win! (but of course Mumbai ;-)
So how different are we anyways?-The Climax!
Labels: Dating, Facebook, Relationships, Statistics Author: Sushant Sreeram
Not much to look into here except the 'None Listed' tab. This can be explained by a couple of reasons: a) the person is neither of them, b) he is a stalker (its almost always a 'he'!, c) its a 'she' and she doesn't want 'b)' on her tail, d) the person forgot to update this detail in the profile page, or d) the person created a Facebook profile solely on someone's suggestion and really doesn't use it that often.
Note: There is a percentage of those listed as 'Female' who are, in all probability, those with waay too much facial hair for a girl. I am discounting them from this analysis (it's my blog alrite!)
Whatever the reasons, for the purpose of analysis, I shall assume that 66% of those without their sex listed in the India and Pakistan networks are girls and 34% boys. While for the NY network, I would assume a 50-50 split (simply because I think girls in India are a little more scared 'cause we desis are pretty good at stalking!).
Taking these ratios into account, the Male/Female split comes up as follows.
Well, no surprises there. Slightly higher percentage of males vs. females in India and Pakistan and an almost equal split in NY. Good to know that there are more women on these social networks than one is led to believe.
And finally, to the most interesting part! Ok, 'None Listed' - this is an interesting scenario. Either a guy who is in a relationship (and doesn't want to be in it!) wants others to think he is single (and he obviously cannot do that in an obvious sorta manner 'cause then he will get none for a long time) so that he can get some on the side :-P Or he is single and wants someone to think he is in a relationship (either he is trying to make his ex feel jealous or maybe because he hasn't told his girlfriend that he has broken up with her!). And this works both for guy and girl.
Now look the stats once again. Man! almost half of them are one of the above! Sic! So basically 85% (None Listed+Single) of those in the India network are either a) Single, or b) In a relationship but want to be single (yeah, girls are like glue!), or c) In a relationship and are aiming for polygamy! 85%! That's huge! Btw, this figure is only 73% for NY -> Inference: There is more love in NY than Mumbai :-( Either that or we guys in India are really what women think we are - pigs! ;-)
Aside: I am worried for the 1% who are in an open-relationship in Pakistan!
