Technology – Page 4 – Pakora Korner

Technology Irritants

Technology has become a part and parcel of our lives – email, blogs, software applications, cell phones, blackberries, sms etc. etc. This also means there are no shortage of irritants, courtesy of what has become everyday technology. Here are a few of my technology irritants:

Safari on Windows XP: I was required to install the Safari browser to test something but eventually gave up on it. The Safari browser for Windows looks cool but doesn’t work well on Windows XP. After a couple of installations I managed to get it to work, but soon found that it does not let you accept an https site unless the site has a valid certificate. Most browsers give you the choice to “continue” and access the site anyway. Also, I noticed that if you select Firefox as your default browser in Safari (settings), it will promptly fill your desktop with a bunch of shortcuts to Firefox which you can’t remove until you quit Safari.
Spam in Gmail: Gmail sends email to its Spam folder even when its not spam. Even after repeatedly marking them as “Not spam” it continues to do this. Having to go through the spam folder is a pain!
Support from Google: Can you find a way to send support email to Google from any of their free services? It is virtually impossible to find a support link on their site. I guess Google expects you to search and find your answers and not bug them with support email 🙂
Search in Yahoo IM: Yahoo has a nice feature of saving your chat transcripts, but there seems to be no way (at least that I could find) to search the transcripts!
Firefox Crash: Firefox browser crashes sometimes with no message whatsoever. It just vanishes from the screen! (happens to me on the Rediff site)

If anyone out there knows anything about any of these, I would love to hear from you!

Google Gears: Early Fuss As Usual

Anything Google announces is big news, and understandably so. Google’s recent street view extension to maps, etc. and the most recent Google Gears are all really cool and opens up tremendous possibilities for the future of software and technology in general. (Here is a brutally honest investor focused perspective).

As the author points out, Google is fundamentally a search and advertising company. Most other products or services from Google have been variations of existing services such as photos, gmail, groups. etc. and have produced little or no revenue. But for all the hype and hoopla over Google Gears, it is still going to be a while before Google can really threaten Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop.

Microsoft ‘s Yahoo Acquisition Still Possible

With a $6B acquisition, Microsoft is significantly beefing up its online ad strategy. Although the rumors of the Yahoo acquisition having died down, the aQuantive acquisition just confirms the fact that Microsoft is looking very actively at various strategies to counter Google’s huge lead in the advertising space, before its too late. With Yahoo’s acquisition of Right Media and Google’s acquisition of Double Click, the online ad space is prime for some serious competition among the big 3 and the fast fading AOL.

The Yahoo acquisition is still very much a possibility for many reasons. (Not to mention, Yahoo now has a new CFO with deep ties in the banking industry).Yahoo is still the #2 player in the search space. With Panama, Yahoo has managed to ape Google’s Adwords to a great extent. Further, Yahoo still has a huge market of advertisers, second only to Google. If you disregard the overlap between Microsoft and Yahoo services, and look at only the search and advertising market, a Yahoo Microsoft marriage still seems a distinct possibility with plenty of synergy despite the aQuantive acquisition.

MS To Acquire Yahoo: Two “Search” Losers Make a Winner?

Google is growing from strength to strength. A lucrative advertising industry is at stake. Yahoo’s Panama might have been an improvement over what Yahoo had before, but its in no way strong enough to pose a challenge to Google. Besides with the recent management exodus, the peanut butter memo-gate, the none to impressive quarterly results, and a shaky top management, Yahoo has hordes of challenges at hand.

As for Microsoft, their search and advertising strategy is simply way behind. It is struggling to get a foothold in this space and with each passing day, Google is expanding its presence and reach, thanks to its growing dominance of the search market. For an advertiser, the default choice is to advertise with the network that has the greatest audience. Moreover, once you start using Google Adwords and get familiar with it, you need something more compelling to change. It is almost like Microsoft’s hold over the desktop but certainly not there yet. But unless, the Yahoo-MS move fast, Google is going to be even harder to dislodge from a potentially huge advertising market.

So do two losers in the search and advertising market make a winner? Probably not. But at least it will pose a bigger challenge to Google, provided they can get over the integration issues that are likely to come with so much product/service overlap.

Check out stories on this news in the WSJ and the NY Times.

Google Needs An “i”?

Google renamed its Google customizable home page, “iGoogle”. I use this service and I think its very useful, and not to mention free. Its ironical that the World’s number one brand chose to join the bandwagon of “i” products, and that too, this late! “My Yahoo” on the other hand, which is Yahoo’s equivalent is great choice of names and was new and innovative when it was announced eons ago. On the other hand, “iGoogle” sounds weird (unlike the hugely successful iPod or up and coming iPhone both of which have a nice ring to it).

Surely, the marketing folks at Google can do better?

Google Themes: Really Cool

If you use the Google customizable home page facility you will find this new feature really cool. Google now has a “Select Theme” feature with a palette of themes to chose from. The best part is that if you specify your zip code (Google knows you live and they can come after you! Just kidding)the theme will dynamically change to match your time of day, including local sunrise and sunset times.

Youtube-Viacom Battle

The Viacom-Youtube battle is nothing but an attempt to sort out in court what the two could not settle behind closed doors.

On the one hand, it just proves that Google made a huge mistake paying 1.5B for a company with $15M in annual revenues and a whole bunch of copyrighted content. On the other it shows that the old media folks like Viacom are clueless on how to deal with the emerging Internet. “When you can’t compete, sue”.

What would make the entire playing field more interesting (not just for the law firms involved) would be if the two didn’t settle this out of court but instead dragged this into a long court battle, and in the mean time devised a viable alternate strategy to counter Youtube, Joost or otherwise.

In the meantime, I am going miss Jon Stewart clips on Youtube. So much for my bottom-line impact.

And Oh, btw, I still think Bollywood must unite and take a serious look at its clips on Youtube. Like I have said before it might be worth a shot.

Airline Tickets Sites in India: Long Way to Go

Online booking of airline tickets in India have started to take off. Arzoo, Makemytrip, Travelguru, Air Deccan being a few of the competitors. Not to mention, Yahoo’s farechase is also in the game. The start-ups companies in this space have raised boatloads of Venture Capital. (wonder why, for a technology that is so common place in the US). These sites are very much in a state of infancy and there is plenty of scope for improvement.

Here are a few observations/tips in case you plan to use these services.

1. These sites are very much in a state of infancy. All the sites uniformly have very poorly designed interfaces. Combined with the slow connectivity (which is common place in India) the user experience is outrageously frustrating to say the least.

2. All the sites are equally buggy. One of the sites gave me an error when I tried to confirm my registration! Another gave me a blank screen after I submitted the registration form. Then, I tried to register again and I was told that that login was taken. Thinking that this was a sign that my registration actually went through I tried logging in. The login/passwd combination did not match. I tried to reset password but was unsuccessful. Argghhh!!!

2. Prices are similar, though I found Arzoo providing lower fare results on quite a few occasions. Farechase rates are in $ and completely out of whack. In other words, Farechase is not worth using for flight deals within India.

3. Performing a credit card transaction online is scary. Thankfully, most of the India based sites provide toll free support numbers. These work well. You are best off exploring the various options online, narrowing down on your choice, and then calling the support line to purchase your ticket. The e-ticket gets emailed out to you after the transaction has been processed.

4. Only Arzoo appears to be Firefox ready. All the other sites went crazy at some point with content on the screen shifting around in bizarre fashion.

5. The good news is that all these sites returned better rates than the travel agents.

GPS In Shoes: The New, New “SaaS”

Check out this news report about new shoes that are available with a GPS chip in the sole! Considering that it is new and innovative the high price tag is understandable ($325-$350 plus $19.95 monthly subscription for 24×7 monitoring service). “A plug-and-wear version that allows wearers to remove the electronics module from their old shoes and plug it into another pair” is in the works. Wonder when these shoes are going the cell phone route, sign up for 2 years of service and get a pair of shoes free!

Perhaps, this is the new Shoes As A Service (SaaS)? 🙂

Bollywood vs Youtube?

Youtube has been asked to remove Viacom video clips.

…According to Viacom, which owns more than 120 networks around the world, YouTube has shown clips of its television shows, music videos, movies and documentaries more than 1.2 billion times.

“We are asking to get paid,” said Mike Fricklas, Viacom’s general counsel, in an interview with the Mercury News. “Our content is very valuable and we think that has obviously contributed to YouTube’s growth and to Google.”

Viacom is not the only one who can claim to have contributed to Youtube’s growth. What about all the scores of Bollywood movie clips? Given the size of the audience for Bollywood clips, ts very likely that they have made a sizable contribution to Youtube rise and success.

A search on Shahrukh Khan on Youtube returned 3177 results while Jon Stewart returned 2087. Go figure!

Maybe its time the Bollywood production houses came together to battle Youtube?