Three mistakes of my Life - Chetan Bhagat

One, two, three I started counting and thinking aloud, when my mobile rang, my friend Ravi called me… I started, Ravi, if this book is made into a movie will definitely fetch some good bollywood awards, I was counting best movie, best supporting role, etc.

I liked the writing style, three mistake of my life by Chetan Bhagt is really a good book. Except for the foul language (which I think goes with the flow) book really makes an impact.

What’s that I liked in the book?
-The book takes through the struggle of a three friends lead by a poor guy Govind
On all the important things of the key factors of success, Passion towards something makes all the difference
- Proper mixer of friendship, passion, religion, cricket, conflict, riots, love, sex and everything woven to real events, make this really fun to read
- Reading was just like watching a bollywood movie, sandalwood movie ( I wonder why our kannada movie guys remake hindi and other language movies instead read this book and make a good movie.. )

Overall a good book..

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Music for a Cause in Bangalore- Pancham Da hits

Here is an opportunity to contribute to the social cause. Zansam music band based in Bangalore is performing Pancham Da hits on Sat, Sep 20th 08. The objective of the show is to contribute towards SOCARE IND. For more information visit http://www.zansam.in/

Society’s Care for Indigent (SOCARE IND) was formed in 1999, by Subramaniam Mani and houses over 100 such underprivileged children today. These children receiving support are afflicted with social backwardness and economic deprivation. Either parents are prisoners of crimes. Very often it is the father who has murdered the mother in a rage of drunken stupor or the mother who killed an unfaithful, abusive husband. With the kids as a blood splattered witness to the crime. http://www.socare.org/beta/

You can book the tickets online, at http://www.indianstage.in/

Guys, lets make the difference...

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Landmark Education - Transforming the world

Landmark Education - Transforming the world

Recently, I enrolled my self to be part of the landmark education forum. First thing, that comes to my mind when I recall all that happened at the forum is AMAZING EXPERIENCE “how to get access and get breakthrough and transformation”.

Such a simple concept, but really powerful, knowingly or unknowingly we end up lurking our powers (don’t think it as Force) with so many interpretations. This great exercise enables one to open up and “get access” to numerous possibilities. Now, you might be thinking, what’s great in this, everyone know that they have inner power and IF required they can use it as and when required. Knowing things, experiencing them and getting breakthrough followed by transformation are truly amazing.

Instead of looking at Change which is = More, Better, Different, look at the transformation, which enables one to look beyond interpretation and breaking the barriers imposed by little voice. Just now, you might have asked a question, what is little voice? And the answer, the one which asked this question and also judged it right in your head before you could complete it is the little voice.

Mr.Will Steel (Landmark Faculty) lead the 3 day session, his energy and they way he coached us was mesmerizing.

http://www.landmarkeducation.com/display_images.jsp?top=21&mid=166&siteObjectID=330
I will write more about it, please visit again.
I appreciate your time!

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Places near Bangalore on a Collaborative Tool– Dabbel DB

I got an excel file which had a list of tourist places near Bangalore, I really don't remember who sent it to me or created it. I have made few changes to the excel sheet and uploaded to an online collaboration tool called DabbleDB.

Dabble offers a free Commons plan as well as four monthly payment plans to suit people and organizations with different needs. I have taken Common plan under a Creative Commons license. So what is Common plan? It’s a way to build free Dabble databases under a Creative Commons license. Functionally, it’s the same as paid service except that data we keep in a free application is publicly accessible.

Please feel free to get in touch with me for any suggestion to make this a user friendly application. If you have recently seen a new tourist Place near Bangalore let’s update it on the Dabble DB. Dabble DB allows 15 users to be part of the application. This is a great experience to be in Web 2.0.

Click on the Widget on the left side menu or Click on link below http://santhguru.dabbledb.com/publish/locationlocator/07dd229a-0ad7-4184-a87d-d65797e0196b/list.html

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Collaboration made easy with online database applications

Gone are the days, when you used spreadsheets for reporting data. Online collaborative tools have been changing the way we work with different teams spread across geographical areas. The scope of this analysis is limited to online collaborative tools and does not include “Groupware”. I have put together a table which compares diffierent tools on various parameters.

I have been using this online tool called “Intuit QuickBase” for couple of years now and I think, this is really a great tool. For those who are new to this, Quickbase Customizable online workgroup application for distributed teams. My experience with Quickbase has been great, it allowed me to easily create application and start tracking it immediately. Now, I don’t want to start explaining all the features and this article end up becoming Quickbase blog help. But, I would definitely like to list key learning from Quickbase usage.

1. Design Table and/or application
a. Easy for anyone to create applications ( you can enjoy lacking database design experience)
2. Customization
a. You can customize applications tables and roles easily
3. Administration
a. Manage users and start inviting them to use the application,
b. Every users who logs-in and make changes to the application becomes the record owner
4. User Interface
a. Right click options enable quick change of look and feel as well as data representation
b. Grid Edit: on top left corner “List All” report. Enables spreadsheet functionality on
HTML page. I loved this functionality
5. Reporting
a. Amazingly simplified version with private and public mode
6. Data handling
a. Easy Import and export to various formats
7. Online Help, support center and discussion forums enable you to learn on your own

Some of the apprehension I encountered with QB are
1. Stopping duplicate record entry
2. Little expensive then other tools

Exhaustive list about online database/collaborative tools can be found at
http://thinkofit.com/webconf/workspaces.htm
http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/Knowledge-Exchange/collaborative-tools.php

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Reap what you MMO: India and MMOG

The argument on the PC penetration Vs Broadband availability in India will continue.
If you have played a online game called Second Life, you will notice that each computer running Second Life will need an average of 80 kbps downstream, spiking at about 400 kbps on initial connect and during teleports. Upstream is much lower, requiring 30 kbps on average.

Is India ready for MMOG type games? with mere PC penetration of 5 million (majority of this is contributed by EGovernance initiative) with less than 121 million active internet users 80% of application being email, text-chat and other educational information access. Looks like India will take some more time to catch up the broadband bandwagon.

Other part of the story: If you go to Cyber Café’s you will realize that young guys are mastering skills in FPS, strategy type online and RPG games for the sake of entertainment. In next couple of years they will start realizing that, they can make money by playing games online. The bandwidth issue may restrain our MMO developers making money (subscription) by releasing games in India. But I believe India will overcome the bandwidth problem soon. Before that happens, is there any opportunities for the Indian ITES companies in MMO. Before looking into the business models, let’s look at what MNCs are doing in SL.

Many Companies are building virtual headquarters for interaction among employees. IBM has created a separate team called “digital convergence” this team looks for customer in digital world apart from real world. IBM has now acquired 24 Second Life "islands." Other companies who have presence in SL are General Motors, (GM) Toyota Motor, Dell, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems and Reuters Group.

"In Second Life you are limited only by your imagination” companies are using online world to advertise, test products and market ideas. They also might make some sales, mostly by linking Second Life visitors to their real-world e-commerce Web sites. Companies like Alchemic Dream Inc provide to MMOG management, support and localization services to above listed requirements.

This is definitely good news for innovative companies who want to capture this market, and provide services such as back office support, writing scripts, creating 3-D designs, customer support, application development and maintenance services. As far as back office is considered we need guys who have blend of online gaming + good communication skills + gaming as carrier. Not that easy to find.

As discussed in one of the NASSCOM’s conferences “Animation and Gaming Industry in India 2007” Hyderabad, it was made clear that over a period of time gaming will be a serious business in India. Here is the summary
1. There are more than 400 companies participated in this event
2. The conference had more than 10 panel discussion on Gaming industry on various topics such as Market Size, Challenges, Government polices, trends, resource shortage, new technologies, Training issues and discussion on mobile vs console vs PC vs online games
3. The online Gaming was not the key discussion in the conference (hope to be a separate event in 2008), from the different types of companies that have come, it looks like very few companies know about MMOG as a market and a potential
a. There are reasons/facts quoted as to why the online gaming growth will be at a slower pace compared to mobile gaming. This is purely based on the subscriber base of (200 million mobile users to 40 million broadband users in India) and growing VAS Market
b. Also, Broadband in India refers to connectivity starting from 250 kbps, which is not true in other developed countries.
c. Currently active Internet users in India are 21 million (8.4% of the total urban population in India 250 million)

I would like to say one thing to the guys playing games in the Café, you will reap what you MMOg now.

A comprehensive NASSCOM report on NASSCOM Study on Animation and Gaming Industry in India is available at http://www.nasscom.in/Nasscom/templates/NormalPage.aspx?id=50768'

Reference links

Canada’s Alchemic Dream In JV With Bangalore’s Comat For Back-office Support To Online Gaming Cos

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Value Added Services – A Blessing in Disguise to Mobile Industry? (VAS Vs Voice)

By-products are playing a vital role in today’s economy; sugar cane’s by-product molasses generate decent profits then main product sugar. But sugar will never let the Sugar industry into trouble unlike telecom industry, wherein voice based services are being taken over by VAS. India’s leapfrog effect gave fancy mobiles in the hands of more then 121 million people (12 Cr) and currently 6 million mobile users are added every month (March 2007). As per Cellular Operator Association of India (COAI) the total subscriber base in India today is 121 million mobile users, three times more than the traditional landlines subscribers

After the dawn of VoIP technology, it has been predicted that the voice calls (core services provided by Telecom companies) will be free of cost. Apart from being charged for connecting to Public switched telephone network, the VoIP to VoIP voice calls are literally free as of now.

Now, the question is, telecom’s core services (Voice) seems to be in the back seat and new services such as VAS will take the driver seat? Answer to this question is reflected in numbers given below.

Potential of VAS Market, very difficult to find the exact number, my quick web research resulted into these figures


“Revenue from Telecom services to touch $ 33 Billion 2010 and 10% of this will come from VAS
- Size of the VAS Industry
Rs. 2000 Cr (as per Lehman Brothers)
Rs. 2850 Cr “


Another report says, the Total revenue of 6 telecom companies (top six Indian telecom players, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, BSNL, Hutchison Essar, MTNL and Idea Cellular) expected to reach $50 billion from $22 billion (2006-07). The VAS market will be 7 to 10% of the total market.

VAS market is predominately controlled by the Telecom operators, now there are many VAS Services providers who are making inroads into this market. Some of the early bird VAS Services provider include Onmobile, Mauj.com, Hungama Mobile, IMI Mobile, Mobile-2-win – Innovative Mobile Mktg.solutions, India Games, Smart trust, ACL Wireless and Mcheck.


Future: Imagine having complete financial freedom with respect to paying your credit card bills, rent, insurance, telephone bills using your mobile, your mobile will be your virtual wallet. Services provider will offer new things, controlling your home via home tracking/networking, vehicle tracking, TRP Rating Services, High resolution gaming, Localization etc all using Mobile Phones. The above pie diagram is definitely going to add many more slices which will change our day to day life. Recently, ET carried out a survey, and found that, People will not be able to live without mobile. I think over a period of time, it will be Roti, Kapada Aur Mobile.

Some of the good resource on VAS can be found at
brew.qualcomm.com/bnry_brew/pdf/brew_2005/b105_sethi_tatad.pdf
http://www.business%20standard.com/common/storypage.php?autono=283762&leftnm=1&subLeft=0&chkFlg
http://coai.in/
www.iamai.in/mobile.pdf

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