Gartner Hype Cycle 2009

I first came across the Hype Cycle in 2008, immediately, I posted about it here. Back then, the Web 2.0 and SOA was considered to be a market failure. Everyone who was anyone in the web development arena was claiming to create “Web 2-point-oh” applications, without knowing what that term meant. I know about an entrepreneur who pitched the idea of a Web 2.0-based e-commerce portal to a VC. In return, the VC asked one simple question - “Do you know what Web 2.0 means?”

Hype cycles are just that, they indicate the evolution of the system and its mainstream adoption with the amount of hype it is creating among the society. They also are an indication to future market leaders – companies which are poised to take off due to the right adoption of technology.

So, what do you think you should invest into now? Do you think you will buy “the Kindle"”? How about that power saving infrastructure? What to do with KM?

Kudos to Gartner for coming up with this framework.

Social Search: The new frontier

One of my colleagues in a presentation remarked – that the problem these days is not about lack of information, it is about visibility of that information! These days the sheer volumes of information has reached such an extent that one cannot make out the differences between relevant and irrelevant. How many times have you clicked “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google in the past month? The answer is zero for me.

The way Google has chosen to solve that problem is idiotic at best – they let you indicate the relevance of the search result for that particular term (you have to be logged in to your Google Account and search for checking this feature out). The problem with this solution is that I still have to search for the solution which is most relevant to me. Visibility of the most relevant solution is an issue. What would have been great, if Google could have taken the relevance out of my social circle (read Google Contacts) and shown my contact’s relevance to me as well!! So my social circle is defining the context of the search and they are doing the search for me; not Google.

Social search, is what I am talking about. The new paradigm now is not to show all the possible searches – nobody has time to go through 567,198 results, show me what is relevant to me. Know thy customer. Take an application like Twitter and Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck lets me set search through the Twitter community, that way, the relevance and context comes out through the users. That is the way of the future – we used to talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but now it should be Social Media Visibility (SMV).

We need more of these

We need the more enlightened spirits among us to come forth and guide the masses

crazzy engineers @ Yahoo! Video

Dropbox

If you already know about this, don’t bother to read any further, but if you don’t then hey, have I got a nifty utility for you!!

Do you remember GDrive? It had come up some time back, where users could use their GMail accounts like a virtual storage drive. I am not sure as to why it disappeared, possibly due to Google Docs and copyright issues, but it was great to have a online storage for your crucial documents. If I am going home and I want to take some files with me, why bother carrying them in a pen-drive when you can always have it online and access them anytime you want as long as you have internet.

Well, Dropbox does exactly that! You get a 2GB free account, from which you can version and collaborate documents. A good collaborative tool as any. There are a lot of such tools, but I really like the ease with which a newbie can start using this tool. Will try it as a tool within the office and post on this further.

Addendum

This is my application of the Dropbox idea. I have backed up my entire workspace (documents, mail, setups I need, etc) in one dropbox. And wherever I go I have my workspace online! No need for machines, laptops, pen drives whatever. Give me a new machine and all I have to do is install this nifty little application and voila! All my workspace documents will be synced with me in no time.

VPN Gaming

Tired of playing the same game again and again? Are you sick of taking down those computer simulated players (bots) again and again? Are you missing your hostel LANs … or are you wishing that on your network there would be more people willing to play Counter Strike or AOE. Its true – there can be no substitute for the human mind.

Now a new cadre of gaming is here: VPN Gaming. A Virtual Private Network (VPN), is basically a virtual LAN over the internet; usually by the means of a software medium – a VPN client. The de facto standard for this is usually a free client-based VPN like Hamachi; which is free for individual users but limits the VPN connections to 8, the paid version can get you around 128 users.

If you are not technologically inclined, worry naught, these clients are pretty easy to install and use. So once, it is installed and you are online, all you need is to create a virtual network, give it a password (since you want to control who accesses your network) and ask your friends to join in. Voila!! Now you and your friends are on the same LAN despite being in different geographies. Its downhill from there on, just fire up your favorite game and ask people to join your multi-player game. Here’s a simple installation and use guide -

The installation is pretty much a click through process. The following are a few screenshots that can act as a guide for newbies. Remember, for the more security buffs, there is an option of disabling the more vulnerable services of Windows over this connection.

 

During the installation, Hamachi lets you choose which version of its services will you be availing. If you are just trying out the client or do not want to fork out money for the licensed version, then I suggest you select the non-commercial license. Once the software has installed, it will give you a small run though of the application, believe me its one of the shortest demos I have seen, and one of the most informative ones!!

This is how the application looks once it is fired up. Hamachi gives you a different ip address (it also creates a logically separate network connection on your machine). I have created one network and joined another network. Both of these are shown on my screen, any peers which are online and using Hamachi are also listed (in the screenshot none of them are online currently). The moment any of them is online, you can ping them as if they were online over a global ip.

Say hello to LAN gaming again :-)

Network Bridge

This is as a personal note to myself and to all you amateur gamers :)

Yesterday, I was at my sasural for some pani puuri and general chit chat. My wife’s cousin had also come-over. They have one desktop and one laptop over there, I had also taken my laptop over there. Enough for a mini-lan party :). So we were three gamers, with three machines and many multi-player games to play. The problem – how do we connect to each other and create a network? There are no switches available.

Fortunately, Ameya (that’s my saala) had a cross-cable through which we connected my laptop and his desktop. Then we took the other laptop and created an ad-hoc wireless connection on it, and connected that laptop to my laptop. So, my laptop was connected to both the machines on two different network interfaces viz., one lan card and the other wireless card. After this, I selected both the connections (in Network Connections) and clicked on Bridge connections. Thus a network bridge between the two connections was created allowing network traffic to pass between the two networks through my laptop. Voila!! The other laptop could now ping the desktop and vice-versa.

Convergence

I think I have already written a blog post by this title, this could be a continuation of the same. When I was working with TechMahindra as a part of their leadership cadre, some of us were asked to meet up with British Telecom’s (BT) Vice President, Warren Buckley. He launched into how telecom, ISPs, content providers, etc are soon converging into one maelstrom of user enabled content. That was the first time I heard of the term Web 2.0. Back then one of BT’s top concerns was that Google will eat up the entire market. That was 3 years ago. This is now.

I am currently working with I2itelesource Pvt Ltd as a Delivery Manager. The organization is into deploying cutting edge solutions for telecom service providers and mobile network operators. They do a lot of business in the Asian subcontinent, and a lot of business comes from Middle East. The kind of demands and promises our sales team does is stupendous, stupefying and sometimes plainly stupid.

Coming back to convergence, back then it was very difficult to plan and put together a service platform for content providers. Now, they can be built by taking ready-made blocks and clubbing them together. Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services in full flow. Makes my mouth water J. Imagine streaming content in real time off a media/streaming server, encoding it so that the user can watch it only once, creating the charge records and charging the customer’s account and delivering the content to an IP-based device (TV/Computer/Projector, et al) for a seamless on-demand service. Can this be done? Yes.

There would be a time when telecom, internet, television and other new age media would converge in one seamless integration. Imaging checking your email on your TV while you are watching a cricket match. This can be done. Playing hookey at work seems so much easier, yes?

A decade ago I was non-existent!

Came up with the oldest search index of Google, tried ego searching, and came up with squatch. I am most humbled :-|, give it a whirl folks!! Notice the lack of "I'm feeling lucky" button. On a related note, check out Google Pirate. Harr! Harr Matey!!

No more IE readers

Following up from my last post. I have decided to take my hate for IE to the next level. Readers will not be able to read my blog in IE. I have used the browser specific HTML to identify the browser, and dish out customized content to the reader. If you are a Firefox user, you should see the blog as it is without any changes. IE users, beware, you will see that nice grey banner across this content asking you to use Firefox :).

I checked the site statistics, turns out a hefty 35% of my readers use Internet Explorer. Call it creating a niche, or call it active evangelism.

Stay Safe. Get Firefox.

I deleted iexplore.exe

Funny, I had not talked about Google Chrome uptil now. I still won't rave about it, since I prefer Firefox over Chrome. Tried it, uninstalled it. End of story. But with the recent launch of this browser, people are now forced to relook at their choice of browser. I hope this helps informed users take a decision and switch to Opera or Firefox, which are way better browsers than the rest available in the market. The last one of which is the market leader, Internet Explorer. Phycuk!! Just talking about it makes me want to spit, and clean my tongue. I hate it. Not because it is a Microsoft product, but because it actually is a pretty crappy browser. The fact that you cannot take it out of your Windows Operating System just goes to show how smart the MS IE Product management team is, full marks to them!!

So, I took it upon myself to remove this insult to a browser once and for all from my WinXP machine. I went to Add/Remove programs, and removed it. The icon on my desktop went away ... yaay!! Then when I went to Start -> Run and typed iexplore.exe, back again it rears its ugly head. Grrr!! You can't remove it, that's that. So finally I did what I should have done when I installed WinXp, delete the folder Internet Explorer in my Program Files. And life was good.

I forgot one teensy weensy thing, I work in a web retailing firm, which has a propensity of churning out portals. These portals need to be tested. Since my marketing guys feel that a major portion of their customer base would be on IE, they expect me to make the portal IE-Compatible (read compatible javascripts, reduced effects, workaround on ajax), nothing that we can't do, of course not. Just I ask my readers, why?

Why bother to make things compatible with IE? Why not force those ignoramuses to switch to a better browser. You are not only doing yourself a favour but improving the world. Impacting your customers positively. Being the change not just trying to make it. Yes, "customer-centric" people would say that you need to sell what your customer wants, I say, tell that to an artist and see his reaction. So if you agree with me, go delete your iexplore.exe and make the world a better place.

apt-get so many files!

Yes. I am going to bitch about Linux for a change. Throw your brickbats at me, I dont mind, but for this one time, I will rant. The problem with having an open OS is that there are a lot of updates ... a LOT!! Also considering the fact that I have taken my time to view all the UIs viz., KDE3, KDE4, Gnome, Ice et al, that means a lot of updates as well.

Everytime I do an apt-get-update and an apt-get-upgrade, half a GB of data is downloaded, the system is re-initialized, and there are more updates to download. Whoa! Thats a lot of packages.

What is one to do? I just finished downloading 600 megs, I start Gnome ... no big change :-)

Yes, now I will tout the stability of linux ;-)

Facebook or Orkut?

I was mulling over Alexa this weekend, when I decided to compare the web traffics of the three networking sites; facebook, myspace and orkut. The annual traffic graph revealed an interesting picture I must say. The myspace traffic is more or less constant with its brief set of fluctuations, Fox Interactive Media should be a happy puppy. Their market share has remained solid,whew!!

But look at orkut and facebook, facebook (in red) has been steadily growing from milestone to milestone, and recently was crowned as the top social network site on the blue nothing (that's the internet). The sudden spurt you see in all the curves, I think its the announcement of Facebook, when they announced their predator safegaurds. Remember that time in May, when a youth in India was kidnapped by some strangers through orkut? Well, could that explain the sudden dip in orkut traffic?

Strangely, during that time, orkut went the facebook way by having a few orkut apps, could this culture shift have thrown more traffic towards facebook?

I know a lot of people have not put too much thought into social communities, et al, but community management and monetization of the same is the only revenue models for both orkut and facebook. I wonder whether the orkut product manager is breaking a sweat on this? Incidentally, the orkut development and engineering team has shifted entirely to Brazil, where it is the no. 1 social networking site.

Addendum

I don't know how he came across this blog, but Gaurav Dua gave a very logical explanation for the sudden dip in the traffic. If you see the Orkut url, then for Indian users it is nowadays orkut.co.in, same for Brazil, hence the traffic figures have dropped to 33% (approx.). I feel like such a dunderhead :-)

Technology Hype Cycle

For the uninitiated, please read more dope on the Hype Cycle.

Just came across this diagram, I thought that I might share this with you :)

What I would like to highlight here is that, Web 2.0 is going to go for mainstream adoption within the next 2 years (assuming that Gartner has done their homework), and it is about to hit the Trough of Disillusionment.

Are we to see another dotcom bust?

PS - Advice for freshers about to choose their careers, go towards ERP, EAI, BI side ... or towards storage and hardware side.

Jet Airways runs Linux!

On my way back to Hyderabad this morning, as I was taking my seat bleary-eyed, I glanced at the Jet Screen. That's the tiny entertainment TV for the passenger's viewing pleasure. Could not help but notice that those monitors were running on a centralized system, and that system was booting. The techie inside me wanted to probe further, so I kept my eyes glued to the screen ... and voila ... it runs Linux!! All the peripherals attached to it were also being detected ... credit card reader installed ... awesome. Sadly, I could not determine which distro of linux, I think embedded linux though, because it was using RedBoot. The reason why I am so thrilled is because that just goes to show the trust in the operating system.

Innovation and Dilbert

 

Was going through the Dilbert archives when I came across this two strips. Real example of what happens when management makes uninformed decisions about technology where they are clueless. Seems familiar to you too?

MP3 Hunts

I am an mp3 whore. A song hoarder, and here's a tip on how to do it.

Fact1: If you have been in the web hosting business, you should know that most web servers have directory listings, and most n00b users forget to switch them off. If the web server happens to be just a file server, then its highly likely that the directory listing is on.

Fact2: The listing is cached in Google's index by the title of the page, which normally is Index of /blah blah blah.

Google for the keywords - "Index of /" + mp3 + <keywords of your song>

Eg- "Index of /" + mp3 + beatles + strawberry fields will lead you to at least one directory listing.

A word of caution though, there are advertisers and spammers out there who know this as well, so 80% of the links turn out to be dead ends, but perseverance and determination gets you there.

Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V

w.bloggar

I am testing the w.bloggar windows application to publish to my blog directly. At first, I am not able to understand how the Title of the post can change. Lets see if this works.

Sadly enough, it doesnt work as I desired. I guess its back to the blogger platform only. Earlier, I had tried ScribeFire, which did not fire at all!!

On Biggie's suggestion, I tried out Windows Live Writer ... its pretty cool, just the thing I was looking for. Infact I might just get addicted to it!! Surprising that google has not come out with anything like this :-)

Power of Language

I never realized how powerful a medium could be, until today ... this realization may be incomplete as well, but just a small wow was enough for me to dash of a quick post.

I talk to my soon-to-be fiance a lot ... telephone is the only sahara to breach the long distance between Hyderabad and Mumbai. Believe me, a lot. Reliance ki jai ho jai ho jai ho.

Although my cabin sees a lot of people throughout the day, I do not mind talking to her on phone since very few people understand our common language. Marathi. Matrubhasha rocks!! So, one fine day, after talking I kept the phone down ... only to realize that one of the employees in our retail department was smiling at me. I smiled back. Today, I recieve a mail from him regarding some work ... I see his name, Deepraj Bhise. Great!! Gone is the awesome privacy that language can offer you in a foreign land.

A straight forward application of this we see in our daily lives .... encryption.

Direct from Dell (to Hell)

No its not a complete, "I hate Dell" post.

I was the student representative for IIM Indore, in handling all the IT problems. I loved it, and liked fixing the varied problems that my classmates, juniors and seniors had. Back then, we had a tie up with Dell for laptops. Roughly at any point of time, at least 70 laptops were there from Dell. The warranty on them had lapsed in a years' time, so ... as Murphy would have it, the problems started cropping up only after then. Thus started the telephone calls over Warranty issues, and the constant bartering ... over warranty given on paper ... then comes the line, read the fine print. I was glad to hand over the ITCom Secretary post to my able junior .. whew!!

Now I do not own a Dell laptop anymore, but two of my colleagues do. Both have malfunctioning laptop batteries and chargers to boot, so the machine refuses to run without AC power and a functioning battery. Ok ... easy solution ... go to support dot dell dot com and raise a request. One month wait for customer care to respond. Fine, lets raise a sales enquiry of purchasing a new battery and a charger ... one month wait for sales to respond. Is the site working anymore?

If you have a website and are making case studies of it in so many b-schools, then can you make sure it works properly; and if it is working properly, then why not respond to the customer, establishing their expectations. No response is a no-no. That has not only resulted in lost sales, but more importantly lost customers. An easier approach would be to sell extended warranty support to them and retain them as customers.