Technical fit between "Technologies"

I use Google chrome because it is light weight & an open source browser! I use Face book since it is the best socializing network site I have come across! Is it possible to get the best of these two and fit it together? Off course it is possible, and that is exactly what RockMelt is all about.

If you think in these lines, then what would happen if we bring about the best of each technology and fit them with each other! Wow, the sky is the limit for such innovations! We have just taken our first baby step towards innovation within technologies rather than adapting/ re engineering them.

However, for me Chrome still has some bugs that are not so user friendly. For example:
1. When I need to upload pictures into Picasa, the chrome browser just allows 5 pictures at a time!!
2. A few tabs in the HDFC net banking website is invisible in chrome browser.

On the other hand, FB still has the privacy issues that needs to be handled without much account setting complications it currently offers.

Therefore, it is not only important to come up with hybrid technologies, but emphasis must also be on how to make these technologies user friendly, defect free and compatible for future growth and development of IT world. In other words creating "AVATAR" !

Taking Globalization to the next level.

By Globalization we mean that now the whole universe has into a one single connected entity. Thanks to the latest technology and boom in the e-world. People have no limitations of physical barriers for most of their professional, personal and business activities. But, when it comes to traveling to different places many people feel they are digital crippled. This could be because of:

1. Hardware compatibility issues
2. Different vendors offering different roaming traffics for cell phones
3. Different electricity supplies

Spain & Portugal are making an attempt to ease this issue , by exempting the roaming charge for cell phones in their countries. This is looked upon as a advantage for the vendor and the customer. The vendor can make up for the loss by the increased usage of the service at the same time, the customer need not worry about roaming traffics. Hence based on the business activities between 2 countries if we try to make them more digitally compatible it could become a catalyst for further business growth and development.

Privacy Privacy Privacy!

In the current digital world, people leave behind their digital identity knowingly or unknowingly and over a period of time a digital dossier of an individual is created which would be sufficient for someone to misuse!

We have had many anti-virus, anti-malwares which help minimize this risk for the end users. A new addition to this family is Lookout for smart phones. The basic services provided by them are

1. Anti-Virus Protection
2. Data backup
3. Privacy Dashboards

Apart from the numerous extra features for power users. A minimum rental of $2.99/month or $29.99/year is charged for this service. Though close to 3 million users have downloaded the freeware version of this, the users who want to pay the premium service is unknown.

But if you come to think of it, we spend close to $60+ monthly for smart phones and the various application which are add-on to it. When we can spend so much for communication purpose will we not spend another $3 to protect us and people connected to us from becoming victims of digital crimes!

Multitaking with Technology

We have all seen the evolution of phone from been a land-line connection to mobile-phone! Along this process the cost of the service also has reduced at the same time various other tasks i such as SMS, Internet, radio to name a few were introduced in due course of time.

When one starts wondering, that we have hit the brim of exploring the usage of cellphones for multitasking, we see one more task that can be accomplished with cellphones. This is what AT&T has done this time.

Our Cellphone numbers are becoming our Identity and used as a surety for online shopping. They are becoming the digital dossiers not only for our personal life but also for our business life. So, where ever you shop, you just need to link your bills to the cell phone number and the amount is reflected in your phone account.

This idea can be extended so that it is similar to what Microsoft's Card Space. A single identity for all purposes whether it be for ID verification, shopping, paying utility bills. Hence user can use their cell phones alone for all personal & transaction purposes. This would be a great example of taking technology to a whole new . Though the pros of this are very lucrative, we must analyze the cons before jumping into conclusions and implementing them.

"IT"s Impact !

Its been close to 2+ years since the world turned into global recession. The worst effected was US, which indirectly effected countries like India and China, who had bulk revenues coming from the US.

These countries were seen more as revenue generators than revenue creators in the IT fraternity. However, a lot has changed in the recent times, with a stable GDP each year recorded by China & India they are looked upon as the next destination for investments by all. We have every other country, government and political leaders lobbying for making their mark in these economies. To support my argument I am giving the example of IBM Net Income Rises 12 Percent buoyed by strong performance in Brazil, Russia, India and China as well as solid sales of analytics software and services.

IT has always been an everygreen field for investment right from its inception. It might have faced a few hiccups once in a while, but has always comes back to business with a bigger boom. This is turing power and economoy into the hands of the 3 world countires. This only exmplifies the magnitde of impact IT has!!! Hence organizations who are not IT-friendly must start looking at it more seriously and be up-to date with the current technology.

Tweets becoming more Feeble!

It was about 8-9 months ago when I, 1st started using twitter. What intrigued me to use it was a political drama that happened around that time. "Tweets" of Twitter was the one that ignited it. The hype for Twitter was so much that , it was becoming more popular than blogging amongst many users.

Now after having been a faithful user of Twitter for a couple of months, I have released the Twitter is fading away.

Of the 10 people I follow, hardly 1-2 tweet once in fortnight. The tweets are so short and less informative that, it never really calls for a conversation/ re tweeting. I have been tweeting regular, but the response to my tweets have declined drastically over the months. The Tweets are almost same as status update feature provided by Orkut/ Facebook. So why bother to log in to Twitter Application and do it? While there is no response or active users who follow you. This is the exact conclusion drawn by the social media analytics company Sysomos posed in a survey.

I wonder if Twitter is an example of Bleeding Edge Technology. For all the hype it had created during its infancy, it should by now have out performed other socializing and communication based competitors such as FaceBook, Blogs, Orkut.

Eager to see what steps the Twitter takes to get back to business. Would it go for a process re-engineering or a process-improvement approach?

OAuth A win-win situation !!

Every web page we browse now a days invariably has a Face Book / Twitter connect and now a days even others such as RSS Feed and Blogs. A Live example would me our FLORES MBA homepage

Till now all these application were using their own set of API's for allowing them to authenticate and sign in the user. But now a new trend is emerging with a standardized token called the OAuth being used. Recently Twitter made this mandatory [though previously OAuth was one of the possible options]. Also, Face book had its own customized API, but now even are moving to the OAuth token. And we can see Google is also catching up in this race : Google Adds OAuth Support to Google Apps

The possible conclusion we can draw is; Since connecting using Socialization/ networking Website apps is growing, the top players want to be accessible and available. Hence, many of them are moving to a standard for connecting to thier apps!!! So this would be an ideal example of Supply Push where customers are buying the OAuth!!!

On the other hand, previous version of the OAuth token had many data and security issues. Such as the data of a logged in user was passed from one page to another page in the URL!!! Now we see due to the pressure of maintaining high security of users data OAuth Tokens have been modified to meet the customer requirements. This would be an ideal example of Demand Pull where the supplier changes as per the customer requirements.

Hence, by establishing a harmony between the supply push and demand pull we can attain a state of win-win situation the supplier and the customers!!