World's cheapest laptop in India

I know its my blog and not a place to put a news article, but could not hold the temptation!!!
 
World's cheapest laptop in India at $35!!!

Casa del Libro - Which technological platform??

Casadellibro.com is an online venture launched in 2001 by the largest editorial group in Spanish, Planeta. "Casa del Libro is the second bookseller in Spain with the objective to consolidate the firm as the international reference in books published in Spanish. Casa del Libro’s database was the most complete and up-to-date database in the industry, even better than the one edited by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. Casadellibro.com was an initiative to achieve world leadership in the Spanish books market. The group teamed up with AOL, and tried to match the launch of casadellibro.com with the beginning of operations of AOL in the ISP market in Spain, in September 2001."

Previously, casa del libro was working with IBM AS/400 platform, which involved a lot of manual processing. So the group decided to start the new virtual company from scratch and acquired the best and most expensive equipment and software available in the market that guaranteed high performance. In Sep 2001, design issues were identified in the new system and AOL did not achieve the desired results in the slowing down Spanish ISP market. Also with the internet bubble exploding and the terrorist attacks, it became necessary to cut down costs.

At this point, should Casa del libro keep the old platform and redesign it or should it invest in a new system?
-The old platform has a complex architecture with redundant design for high availability with the system considered bestinbreed at that time.
-The new proposed platform used Microsoft technology with much lower maintenance costs and lower development cost.
For some compelling reasons, I think the company should go ahead and invest in the new platform based on Microsoft technology.

Reasons:

•  In 2001, the expectations were high with hyper-growth sales. But after the events in September 2001, the expectations from the market were much lower. In this scenario, it would be better for them to build the new platform that can sustain the current demand. My assumption: The company has done good market research and is correctly anticipating the future growth.
• The new platform has much lower maintenance costs and will cost less for development when compared to design changes in the old platform. It is always said that it is better to build a new system rather than correct the design changes in the old system. At this point in time, investing huge resources (time and money) on the old system in a crisis situation is not justifiable when the demand can be achieved with a new platform at a lower cost.
• One can argue that when the growth increases, the new system could be beneficial in the long term. But this is not true. Technological advances are very fast in this information age. If we invest in the old platform (which takes more time and money), even before the growth of the company increases,  a new technology would be available at a much lower cost providing better performance. Innovation in IT is fast growing and companies have to keep up with new technologies for their competitive advantage. So investing in design changes in the old system is not beneficial in the long term.
• There is also the risk associated with the performance of the UNIX platform after the design changes. Design changes are not difficult to implement and can have a butterfly effect resulting in usage of more resources (time and money) than anticipated. What if the design changes do not resolve the issues after considerable amount of investment. And also, the old one being a sophisticated platform, it may not be easily customizable in the long term. This flexibility of a platform is critical to future success.

So my decision would be to invest in the new platform which can serve the demand in the short term at lower costs and then invest later on new upcoming technologies which would provide not only high performance but also lower costs.

In today's times, the company could take advantage of the new technologies and use cloud computing, just paying for the services it needs.

Tesco - Any IT competitive Advantage?

Tesco opened as a grocery stall in 1919 by Sir Jack Cohen with the motto "Pile it high, sell it cheap". The idea was that customers wanted inexpensive products at convenient locations and that volume would drive profitability. By 1960's, their self-service model offered the possibility to lower prices by offering a wider variety and larger volume of stock with fewer employees establishing Tesco's reputation as a value-for-money retailer of groceries. By the late 1970s, Tesco decided to concentrate on the larger out-of-town superstore format, offering a wider range of goods in a more spacious and lighted environment with emphasis on customer service. Tesco slowly computerized its checkout systems and in future years used IT to gain a huge competitive advantage.

Tesco and IT competitive advantage:

• The Tesco Clubcard was the UK's first supermarket loyalty program introduced in Feb 1995. This program cost Tesco £300 million over the first three years. These costs included an update to the point-of-sale (POS) technology and the supporting computer systems to handle the Clubcard information, and a call center in Dundee to handle the anticipated calls per week. Within six months of the Clubcard introduction, Tesco had increased its share of the retail grocery trade from 15% to 18%. By, 1996, Tesco had  over eight million Clubcard customers who were purchasing 200 million in-store purchases per day. This program coupled with IT provided excellent competitive advantage to Tesco and made it the number one retailer in the UK by 1996.
• The Clubcard gave Tesco a unique insight into the shopping habits of its customers. It could adapt itself and cater better to the different needs of its consumers by analyzing the customer's billing data when they shopped using their clubcard. This is possible only by the use of a sophisticated IT system.
• With the Clubcard, Tesco discovered that about "38% of their customers cared about price, based on 700 products where price was important". The analysis suggested that most of the benefits of the reduced prices were going to customers who only shopped at Tesco during the promotions. They used their own IT systems to conduct market research and to understand consumer buying patterns and invested heavily on price strategies.
• Tesco was able to refine the loyalty program further by knowing what customers were regularly buying. They used the information supplied by the Clubcard to concentrate marketing expenditures on its regular customers rather than on advertising spots on television. That was the range to which IT helped them target their consumers. With the additional information submitted to the Clubcard help line (e.g. diabetic dietary requirements and lifestyle choices), Tesco was able to create 5,000 customer "needs" segments, with each segment receiving personalized vouchers and 24 different varieties of the Tesco magazine providing specific offerings for Clubcard customers.
• By 1998, Tesco provided its 8 million consumers with personalized letters with points-based vouchers and a Clubcard magazine designed and produced to fit their stage in life with 80,000 variations. To better handle the volume of Clubcard information, Tesco invested in the NCR Teradata data warehouse to provide a 360º-view of its customers.
• In 1996, Tesco launched the Clubcard Plus telephone account which allowed members to make monthly direct debit payments to Tesco for groceries. A new joint venture company, TPF was started in alliance with Royal Bank of Scotland which provides savings accounts, motor insurance, life assurance, loans, pay-at-the-till travel insurance, credit card services, and tax free savings and investments. TPF has 2 million customers (400,000 savings accounts and 900,000 credit cards) who make 80% of their transactions through the stores.
• During 1996, Tesco made a modest investment in a few Dell servers and Microsoft BackOffice and brought retail shopping to the Web with its Tesco Direct service. Tesco provided different online services like price check,  and also included financial services, where customers could trade shares and interact with their Clubcard Plus account; a shopping service that remembers a customer's last shopping list; and many online features all supported by an extensive help facility that thoroughly answered all customers' questions. By 2001, Tesco.com had successfully proved its model and added the number one e-grocer on the Web title to its UK title.

By investing in IT from an early stage, Tesco gained huge competitive advantage. It became the number one retailer by 1996 and the number one e-grocer by 2001. I believe, these successes are a result of keeping pace with the IT development.

Should companies adapt to ERP's ?

What is enterprise resource planning (ERP) ???

ERP is a software architecture that "attempts to integrate all departments and functions across a company onto a single computer system that can serve all those different departments’ particular needs. Each of those departments typically had its own computer system optimized for the particular ways that the department does its work. But ERP combines them all together into a single, integrated software program that runs off a single database so that the various departments can more easily share information and communicate with each other." Source

Why ERP? 

"ERP systems are cross-functional and enterprise-wide. All functional departments that are involved in operations or production are integrated in one system. In addition to areas such as manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, and information technology, this typically includes accounting, human resources, marketing and strategic management." Source For example, if you call customer service to buy a computer, the customer service reps use their ERP system to see if inventory is available which was previously updated by people in the manufacturing units. Depending on the level of inventory, they can respond immediately thereby speeding up the process. By integrating these two different departments, the company can provide better and faster service to its consumers, thereby saving a lot of costs involved previously.
When used effectively, ERP can be very useful within a large company. Different departments share information on a regular basis. Without ERP, every department is standalone and lot of resources are wasted on storing the same redundant data in multiple servers. For example with ERP, the employee appraisal can be directly linked to payroll.

Some more advantages (Source):

• "Eliminates the problem of synchronizing changes between multiple systems - consolidation of finance, marketing and sales, human resource, and manufacturing applications.
• Permits control of business processes that cross functional boundaries.
• Provides top-down view of the enterprise (no "islands of information"), real time information is available to management anywhere, anytime to make proper decisions.
• Reduces the risk of loss of sensitive data by consolidating multiple permissions and security models into a single structure.
• Shorten production leadtime and delivery time
• Facilitating business learning, empowering, and building common visions.
• Some security features are included within an ERP system to protect against both outsider crime, such as industrial espionage, and insider crime, such as embezzlement. "

Some possible disadvantages:
But the grass is greener on the other side. Not everything is so great about ERP.

• Implementing ERP for a small company can take from 3-9 months, while for a large organization it can take years.  
• It could be very expensive and is limited in customization.
• Also, technology changes are so fast that while you keep updating, there is another new technology available in the market. 

Lets consider the previous example of calling the customer service to buy a computer. "With ERP, the customer service representatives are no longer just typists entering someone’s name into a computer and hitting the return key. The ERP screen makes them businesspeople. It flickers with the customer’s credit rating from the finance department and the product inventory levels from the warehouse. Will the customer pay on time? Will we be able to ship the order on time? These are decisions that customer service representatives have never had to make before, and the answers affect the customer and every other department in the company. But it’s not just the customer service representatives who have to wake up. People in the warehouse who used to keep inventory in their heads or on scraps of paper now need to put that information online. If they don’t, customer service reps will see low inventory levels on their screens and tell customers that their requested item is not in stock. Accountability, responsibility and communication have never been tested like this before. People don’t like to change, and ERP asks them to change how they do their jobs. If you simply install the software without changing the ways people do their jobs, you may not see any value at all—indeed, the new software could slow you down by simply replacing the old software that everyone knew with new software that no one does." Source


So should companies adapt to ERP?
This decision lies with the management of the company. If the usage of ERP is meaningful to the operations of that specific company, if its benefits can be reaped and employees can switch to it easily, then it should be implemented. It is powerful tool which can be used to the benefit of a few companies but it can also slow down a few businesses if its disadvantages outweigh its benefits.

DELL HELL!!! What should Dell have done differently???

What is Dell Hell?? This was a new phrase coined by the blogger, Jeff Jarvis when he bought a new Dell computer with a four-year in-home service and received bad customer service from Dell. He blogged in his site, buzzmachine about the poor quality and customer service of Dell and received huge momentum with many similar complaints from other users. In his own words,
"I just got a new Dell laptop and paid a fortune for the four-year, in-home service. The machine is a lemon and the service is a lie. I'm having all kinds of trouble with the hardware: overheats, network doesn't work, maxes out on CPU usage. It's a lemon."

Even after repeated complaints, Dell did not resolve the issue and Jeff Jarvis continued blogging about his experiences. The result was "With Jeff Jarvis' use of a catchy phrase "Dell Hell" in his blog, The Buzz Machine in June 2005, Dell's customer issues were publicized by The New York Times within two days of the blog post, and in discussed in the next issue of Business Week." Source


How could a single blogger get such momentum?? If Dell was providing good service, and this was a random accusation, it would not have received such popularity. The main reason was that Dell was providing poor customer service long before this blog. Many customers were pissed off but did not have a proper channel to talk about it.

" Dwight Silverman, tech guru of the Houston Chronicle, writes about the saga here: For at least the last three years, I've heard a growing number of complaints from consumers about Dell's customer service. The gripes run from the basic -- confusing phone menus, ridiculous hold times, clueless tech support relying too much on scripts, outsourced call centers with poor English-language skills -- to the more complex, including accusations of not honoring the specifics of premium warranties and using loopholes to avoid fixing or replacing defective parts." Source (This was in July 2005)

I think Dell did not think that a single blogger could destroy their reputation so badly that their stock prices would plummet. In the beginning, they should have thought that by ignoring the whole issue, it would settle down on its own. But this was a serious wrong move by them. (Look at the stock price of Dell between Jun 10, 2005 and Jul 21, 2006).

What should Dell have done?

• They should have addressed the issue immediately once they observed the momentum building. By immediate response to Jeff Jarvis' problem, they would maybe have received appreciation from him which would have worked in Dell's favor.
• They being one of the biggest producers of computers should have realized the importance of customer service and PR. Once they resolved this issue with Jeff Jarvis, they should have set up a taskforce which monitors the online image of Dell. Any new customer, buying a new computer would always look online for reviews and recommendations. Having a bad online image is never healthy for any computers selling company. This taskforce could then resolve the new PR issues that propped up. (Read blogs :))
• They should have addressed the issue directly and should have paved way for an open dialogue. They should have addressed any criticism head-on, instead of ignoring it.
• Though every blog need not be taken seriously, some relevant issues are to be dealt with. "Size doesn't matter—relevance does. Just as one journalist can trigger a newscycle, one blogger can do the same."
• They should have improved their customer service platform where all dissatisfied people could complain and Dell could resolve their issues, instead of all their dissatisfied customers blogging and complaining in multiple other sites. Also, an open apology should have worked. Companies should learn to apologize when mistaken which works in their favor. An excerpt from buzzmachine "One of the great lessons of the cluetrain era is that your customers are your best customer support agents and marketers if only you allow them ... and respect them enough to listen to them. Dell does't. As we reported the other day, Dell shut its general customer forums... which should be the place for customers to help each other. Dwight Silverman found Dell's company line:
  

  As for the Customer Care board, many of the non-technical issues posted there can only be addressed by authorized Dell representatives with access to customer information - not by peers as the Forum is designed to facilitate. That said, these questions are best handled through other secure online tools.

  Or, clueless Dell, your customers can just blog their questions and answers without you. Or should I say, former customers."

Facebook - near future

For the last few months, I have become very interested in the topic of online advertising. This has been the main topic in most of my previous blogs. But why???
I always thought that online ads were misplaced and that no users or businesses would actually be interested in them. Its still true that people do not want to be disturbed by online ads, but what if they are tailor made and targeted specifically for the user.
From the user's point of view, I have always been targeted by irrelevant ads and now when I see an online ad, I just ignore it. This has just become a habit. But if online ads were always tailor made to my interests and were specifically targeted at me, maybe I wouldn't have ignored them as irrelevant. This is the point that Google, Facebook or Foursquare want to leverage to generate huge profits in the future.

I had previously discussed how Foursquare and Google wish to generate income from online advertising. Now lets see how Facebook is doing the same. The arena of online advertising does not yet have any big players. We are in a phase, where most companies are still experimenting on how to improve their online advertising. Once we cross the experimenting stage, some players could have exponential growth as in any other market. This gives players like Facebook, a big chance to become the market leaders thereby making huge profits. Why does Facebook have a big chance???

"Facebook has more than 400 million active users where 50% of the active users log on to Facebook in any given day. People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook. Also, there are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. " Source: Facebook statistics. Facebook not only has access to this huge database, but also knows about the activities, interests, passions, hobbies, demographic and geographic details of many of its users. This will allow facebook to target its users with customized online ads. As of today, one can run an online ad on facebook by targetting their customers by location, age, likes and interests, education and also connections.

In fact, it is very interesting to look at the following success story.
"Over 12 months, CM Photographics generated nearly $40,000 in revenue directly from a $600 advertising investment on Facebook. Of the Facebook users who were directed to CM Photographics' website from the ads, 60% became qualified leads and actively expressed interest in more information." Source: Facebook case studies

This success story reveals that more and more companies will become interested in online advertising through Facebook. There was a time when I said, "Today, online advertising is a joke". But maybe, in a few years, it would become meaningful with more companies concentrating on targeted online advertising. In my opinion, in the next two or three years, Facebook will concentrate more and more on increasing its market share in online advertising.

One of the other important concern for many users of Facebook is privacy. Most of my friends have spoken a lot about this issue. But yet, I would like to share some facts that reflect the concerns of many from the Latin American countries.
"Facebook's privacy settings, combined with the sheer volume of personal information individuals put on their profiles, have also led to claims that Facebook could encourage cyberstalking. One particular aspect of cyberstalking that is of concern to insurance companies is the use of Facebook as a research tool for burglars. A report published in 2009 by Legal and General called "The Digital Criminal" revealed that 38% of social network users post status updates with details of their holiday plans, which can be an "open invitation to burglars" as many users also posted their home address on their profile. In August 2009, a burglar in Hove accessed his victim's Facebook profile to taunt her over the theft of her laptop by posting comments on her profile. A spokesperson for Sussex Police said: "Being burgled is traumatic enough for any family but for the culprit to apparently use their stolen possessions to publicly gloat over the crime is a sinister twist."" Source: Criticism

This incident is one of the many issues faced by Facebook. Look here for more info. If Facebook wants to increase or retain its users, it is important for them to work on these relevant criticisms they are facing. So, in my opinion, Facebook will concentrate in the next two or three years, on working around its privacy issues to increase its user database.

Google's Saga....

I was thinking what I should write for this blog about Google and the first thing I did was, I opened my laptop and my firefox browser with the homepage, google.com. It felt weird to search for google in the Google searchbar :) The first thing that comes to mind when you think about searching something online is Google!!!

Google provides the most widely used online search tool. Experian Hitwise reported that Google's market share in the US passed the 72% mark in Dec 2010. It has much higher market share's in many other countries. Google runs over one million servers in data centers around the world, and processes over one billion search requests. Though the search engine was the company's core product, it came up with multiple internet based products and services like (maps, docs, chrome, adwords, gmail etc etc....)  which has made it a world leader in the technology industry. But how was it possible for Google to have this exponential growth?

Innovation culture:
One of the main reasons behind this success is because of  the innovation culture at Google. At Google, engineers are allowed to work on the projects of their choice for 20% of their time. "The resulting '20 percent projects' will most often have nothing to do with Google's current core business.The innovation culture at Google is all about coming up with an idea, getting it out there for people to use as quick as possible, and having it evolve quickly through iterative process. The cultural response to a new idea is brainstorming. Why an idea can't be done and inner office politics is rarely an issue. Their culture is one that reduces friction between idea and implementation" as correctly identified by Eric Schnell. This is one of the main reasons for the success of Google. In fact, Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors. Google stays at the top because it comes up with products that customers want. If I need a service online, the first thing I do is check if Google provides a tool I need. The same is true for millions of common people. This is the image that Google has created in the minds of everyone by its innovation culture.

Dependency:
Google makes money by advertising using Adwords and Adsense. It not only advertises on the google results page, but also allows users to place ads on their pages by using Adsense. By effectively placing ads across the Internet, it's making many billions in profit. "But there is a downside."
More and more companies are depending extensively on the products provided by Google. "A growing number of companies, especially smaller ones, are dependent for a stunning proportion of their sales - sometimes more than half - on referrals they get from Google ads. These companies could not effectively function without the promotional help they're getting from Google. That means on the one hand that Google is doing a great thing greasing the wheels of capitalism. But it also means that its responsibilities are becoming more burdensome." Advertisers are worried by the growth of Google and look at it as the next monopoly. If Google dominates the online market as now, many are worried that it would be able to control the prices of online advertising and rise it whenever it wants, wiping away profits for the advertisers. "There is already grumbling that Google's prices are rising too fast."
http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/12/magazines/fortune/fastforward_google.fortune/index.htm

So "Google may be too good for its own good." :) It needs competitors who can copy its successes.

Future:
Google is a company founded by geeks and run by geeks. "These are people who think they are creating something that's the best in the world," says Peter Norvig, a Google engineering director. "And that product is changing people's lives." It is interesting to know that most googlers are driven by "impossible perfection" and strive constantly to deliver what the customer wants.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/69/google.html
It is company that has been successfully competing in several different sectors. Google will have to work on some of its potential problems, like dealing with internet censorship laws in China, dealing with tough competition in social media from Facebook and also, they should continue innovating to be on the top. But, "Google understands that its two most important assets are the attention and trust of its users." It tries to constantly improve itself and it also understands the capacity of the Web to leverage expertise. I believe Google's commitment to keep delivering and its innovation culture will keep it ahead of its competitors.

Microsoft - Whats happening!!!

I am a sincere Microsoft OS user for the past 10 years. But not because I am biased. Because it was the most readily available OS for me. Apple has definitely made an excellent effort in increasing their market share in this field, but yet like many other users, I have never tried using a Mac. Maybe, because I'm lazy or just so used to the Microsoft OS or maybe since it works pretty well for me, I have never tried to use any other operating systems. Customers who are not that tech-savvy, may be a little adverse to change, but nowadays there are a lot of new developments in the industry around. (Ex: Mobile computing, Online services)

Lets see from which products Microsoft makes most of its money...

Though the graph talks about 2008 revenues, it still gives us good picture of how Microsoft makes money. Most of its revenues come from the client operating systems and Microsoft office products. Microsoft did not make money (all these years during its growth period) just by selling those products, but by selling different versions of those products. Whenever, a new operating system version was introduced, everyone had to upgrade to the new OS to get support services from Microsoft. The same rule was followed for Microsoft Office. The result was, users had to buy new software regularly and Microsoft made huge profits by selling the same products with a few improvements. Also apart from end user customers, Microsoft continued its dominance by partnering with the hardware firms who were one of its major customers. (Few new operating systems were not compatible with the old hardware, and end-users had to buy new computers.)

In Oct 2009, Microsoft Windows had approximately 91% market share for the client operating systems. Can Microsoft continue its market share? Microsoft grew exponentially till now, but I believe it has reached a position where exponential growth is not easier anymore. With tough competition from Apple, the time has come when Microsoft can compete and keep its market share only by innovating. Otherwise, though Microsoft will enjoy a higher market share in the next few years, it may steadily lose customers to Apple.

Also, we can see from the graph that Microsoft is not very strong in its online services. Though, Microsoft recently introduced many products to compete with the online giant Google, its services are still not very popular.  Also, with mobile computing becoming more and more popular, the number of client OS customers can reduce leading to the decline of Microsoft revenue.

In conclusion, Microsoft is not in an immediate danger in the next few years but it has to innovate in order to maintain its dominance.

Foursquare - Can it make money???

What is Foursquare?

"Foursquare is a location based social network that incorporates gaming elements. Users share their location with friends by “checking in” via a smartphone app or by text message. Points are awarded for checking in at various venues. Users can connect their Foursquare accounts to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, which can update when a check in is registered. By checking in a certain number of times, or in different locations, users can collect virtual badges. In addition, users who have checked in the most times at a certain venue will be crowned “Mayor” until someone surpasses their number. Various venues have embraced Foursquare, and offer special deals to users who are “mayors”.
Foursquare has applications for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile".

Why would anyone want to use foursquare?
Well for a few reasons:

• It is like a game and you can uncover as many badges as possible by checking in wherever you go. Look here for a list of more than 150 Foursquare badges.
• You can check in at your favorite establishments more than anyone else to earn Mayor titles for those particular places - and possibly "Mayor Specials" from those businesses.
• You can earn points for every check-in to see if you can outscore your "friends" and all other Foursquare users in the area.
• You can know where your friends hang out often. For example, instead of getting the online reviews for the best Sushi restaurant in your place, you can just go to the restaurant your friend visits often. If he/she is a frequent visitor of the place and checks in saying ‘Best Sushi ‘, there are more chances that you would like the food at this restaurant.  One could argue that ‘I can just ask my friend which place to go to and why should I use foursquare?’ But, you know definitely that one of your friends loves sushi, but you don’t know who. You could send a mail to all your friends, but how many of them would have time in their busy life to respond to you whenever you ask. Instead, whenever they go to their favorite restaurant, they check in to foursquare and you’ll know without ever asking them.
• If you know that a group of friends are hanging out in a bar very close to your location, you would want to go and join them.
• Or you could use foursquare as an online place where you maintain a log of all places you visit.

How does Foursquare plan to make money?
Well, if they are putting their energy and time to create and maintain such an application, they will want to make money. But where is the money???
Well, there are a lot of people who consider foursquare just as a game and a waste of time. (I felt the same too :)) But I realized that if a lot of my friends start using it, it could be useful. I, like many other people have a hunch that foursquare has the potential to change the face of online advertising. In today’s online world, advertising is a joke. Online advertising is not reaching the potential customers. Let’s see if foursquare can revolutionize this area.

- Would businesses want to pay some money to foursquare to get statistics of how the foursquare visitor patterns are?
If they know the statistics, they would know how to provide better services to their customers.  Once a steady stream of people start checking into a venue, the stats Foursquare provides could start to become a meaningful dashboard for local businesses.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/foursquare-business-friendly/

- Would businesses pay some amount, if Foursquare increases the loyalty of their customers?
For example, consider there are two cafes close to your school, both relatively good places. You visit either place every day to get a coffee in the morning. Now you start using foursquare and check in whenever you visit one of the cafés. But now, you want to be the mayor of a café, because you could get a free coffee once in a while, if you maintain your mayor title. What would you do? Since both of them are relatively good, you will stick to only one café everyday to maintain your title and to get a free coffee once in a while. So your loyalty to this café has automatically increased because of foursquare.

- Would businesses want to pay if their customers visit their place regularly to keep their mayor titles?
This idea may seem ridiculous that people would regularly visit a place only to compete in a game and to keep their titles. But on second thought, it’s not. Competition is something that is inherent in many people. By nature, we would want to compete in anything we put our leg into. How many people spend their time playing online games and competing with others? Do you know how many people play Farmville on Facebook? Well, you get continuous updates, so you will know :) But do you know how many actually buy game credits from Facebook? A lot of them.

- Would businesses want to pay some money to provide you with location specific advertisements and coupons?
For example, say I am at a restaurant for dinner with friends and I check in on to foursquare. Once foursquare knows where I am, a bar close to my location would love to advertise and so will send me a discount coupon. Well anyways, me and my friends were planning to get a drink after dinner, and now we have a discount coupon of a bar ten steps away. What would we do?
Lets look at a little different possibility. It is possible that me and my friends had no plans to go for drinks after dinner, but once we get the discount coupon, we may like the idea of going for drinks and will eventually end up in the bar. From the bar’s point of view, just by giving us a small discount, they are making us visit them and they have reached their potential customers effectively. Now, would the bar want to pay Foursquare for this service?
"From a broad strategy point of view, there's a huge potential with the ability to connect people to promotional experiences," said Bonin Bough, PepsiCo's global director of digital and social media. "We know where people are and can talk to them from a geo-located perspective -- that's a huge opportunity."
http://www.businessinsider.com/foursquare-plots-its-business-model-2010-2

- Would businesses want to pay foursquare, if its users become a medium for word of mouth campaigns?
When your foursquare account is linked to your facebook or twitter account, all your check-ins are published on to the respective sites. So whenever you visit a place, all your facebook friends will know. And it so happens that for most users, most of their friends live in the same city. So when you publish these details and say you liked a restaurant, you are automatically providing word of mouth advertising to that restaurant.

- What about the smart phone companies? If more and more people start buying smart phones so that they can use foursquare, would the smart phone companies want to help or pay foursquare?
It seems like a strange thought. But if it improves smart phones sales, who knows, maybe. It should be remembered that it took Foursquare just over a year to get to a million users.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/foursquare-one-million-users/


As said by Charlie O’ Donnell, “being able to connect web advertising, recommendations, and social media buzz to an actual person walking into your store has long been the holy grail of the advertising world.  We spent lots of money and effort online to drum up our brand, but does it actually drive food traffic?  Foursquare knows.”
http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/foursquare-shows-the-business-potential-of-location-based-services/

But foursquare may end up with same problems faced by twitter. Like, research firm Sysomos estimates that 5% of Twitter users generate 75% of activity. And also much will depend on whether it can maintain its cool. "The X-factor appeal of Foursquare is in its social currency," Mr. Berkowitz said.

Foursquare could be the next “thing” happening in the online world, but we’ll have to wait and see.

References:
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/foursquare
http://www.businessinsider.com/foursquare-plots-its-business-model-2010-2
http://www.businessinsider.com/foursquare-gets-its-local-ad-business-model-on-the-road-2010-4

Internet Tools and applications that are becoming necessities

I was thinking for a long time of what title would be apt to describe my thoughts about a few internet tools & applications and I suddenly realized that some of them have already become a part of our life without our realization. We use them as if they always existed. One such tool is the browser. It is probably one of the most extensively used tool which connects us to the world via internet.

There are many browsers that are available for free download. Let us explore which browser is the best among the most popular ones used. Lets compare the traditional Internet Explorer(IE8), the open source Firefox and the easy to use Chrome.





Interface and Look:
Depending on the look and ease of operation, a browser can become very popular. Chrome provides the best look/interface among these browsers. I have seen a lot of my friends and observed that if you start using Chrome, you will not want to use another browser. Firefox also provides an impressive function based look/interface, but Chrome is the best.

Features and Characteristics:
All the popular browsers (IE included :)) provide many interesting features. But Firefox because of its extensions (add-ons) is the best in this category. Firefox being an open source software, it is tested and also strengthened by numerous programmers. Also, Firefox is extensively used for macs. Chrome is available for macs but I do not know how good it is. I expect some of my friends using macs to shed some light on this issue.

Speed:
Firefox and Chrome were significantly faster than old IE versions, but after the introduction of IE8, all of them have more or less the same speed. The initial start-up time for Firefox is a little high then the others, but it has the best navigation time. But yet, I think Chrome provides the best speed. (You may think I'm a Google fan, maybe, I don't know yet :) Read upcoming posts to decide...)

Security:
Firefox and Chrome both provide good security when compared to IE8. But it has to be remembered that Firefox being an open source software will have fixes to threats very quickly. Also, IE is the most attacked browser as hackers know that most users using IE have no anti-virus or protection on their computers. Firefox is probably the best in Security.

However, in summary, if I want to take advantage of the various extensions and features available, I would use Firefox. But if I want a browser which is easy and appealing to use, I would use Chrome. 

Recent developments: All browsers are jumping on to HTML5, an emerging set of web standards that could transform how the web works, and make internet pages more like desktop applications, in a few years.

Let us now look at some other applications which are slowly gaining popularity. In a few years, these would potentially become the most regularly used applications.

RSS Readers:

RSS reader or a feed reader collects web content from multiple sites we are interested in (like news, blogs, podcasts etc) and puts all that content in a single location for easy viewing.

 For example, say I like to read 4 different newspapers & check 4 different websites on a regular basis to be up-to-date with news. Instead of checking different websites and sometimes missing a few news articles that I'm interested in, I can simply use an RSS reader and subscribe to all these websites. Whenever a new article is posted, the RSS reader pulls the data from the respective sites and puts them in one location for my easy viewing. This way I would never again miss an article posted on my favorite websites.
Free RSS readers: Google reader, My Yahoo!
I started using the Google reader a few days ago and right now I'm enjoying its features. For example, I am following all the blogs of my classmates and a few news websites using my Google reader. Its so convenient to have all my classmates blogs in one place than me visiting different web pages.


Blogs:
Well, you are reading my blog, so I expect you to know all about blogs :)

But yet, I want to put in a few words about blogs. Blog or a weblog is a website where an individual or a group of individuals maintain regular entries of commentary, description of events, or actually anything they want to write about. It could be used a self marketing tool or just as a place from where you can connect to the world or a place where you maintain online diaries. Some sites, such as Twitter, allow bloggers to share thoughts and feelings instantaneously and are much faster than emailing. Blogs are also used for business purposes where a company uses them to enhance communication and culture within the company or for marketing, branding or public relations.
So start your blog before your name is already taken by someone else :)
Ex: Blogger, Wordpress etc.


Social Bookmarking:
Social bookmarking is an application by which we can store and manage our bookmarks online instead of storing them on our computers. We can store, organize, manage and also share them with other users.

One site, becoming popular for social bookmarking is delicious.
On delicious, we can also see popular bookmarks in different categories that were added by other users. We can manage our bookmarks by means of tagging them with relevant data instead of the traditional folders in our computers. We can give multiple tags to a bookmark and use them from any computer with internet.


These applications will soon become as popular as the social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut. So lets all keep up with technology and embrace the new tech world. Please add value to this blog with your comments.