Used Mac Market

Any good thing would not be disposed but used.

Nobody said that. Well Mac's are more useful than PC's in that Mac's are refurbished and sold in market even after being used for some time as they are known to age a tad slower than PC's.

So a cool 100- 200 $'s off and you get a better configuration compared to original Mac's.

Apple itself sells refurbished Mac's on their web sites.

You get one year warantee with the product, what else do one need?

So if you are a Mac aspirant constrained by the cost why not try and go for a refurbished Model.

Google launches Legal Downloads in China

To complement its search engine functionality in China where Baidu is the market leader with 60% market share, Google will introduce downloading of Legal Music, Google has tied up with Major Music labels like Sony, EMI, Warner, Universal on license based Music distribution.

3.5 lakh songs will be on offer in Chinese and Other languages which would be increased to 1.1 million later.

I think it is the very right strategy from Google as it will increase the allure of offering as well as increase revenue for both Music labels and Google, the users stand to gain with better quality music.

I think the same model should be replicated in India too as piracy in India is of the similar level to that in China.

Good news for US companies Maharastra an Indian state is trying to be pioneer in banning the use of pirated DVD's by making selling as well as buying pirated DVD's. Now that will image Indian image in the west.

In Private Browsing

Did you download IE 8

It has a record of previous browsing sessions which you can restore, that is the usual banal feature now a days, but it has this powerful feature of in private browsing. No records, history et al would be cached in this mode.

So makes for some adventurous browsing habits, with out leaving any trace of it on the computer, also would be helpful if you want to do e-transactions online in that no cookies etc would be saved on your PC and hence stealing through a Trozan horse would become more difficult for the Hacker.

Also browsing is much faster in IE 8 comparable to Firefox 3.06, did not try downloading yet.

YouTube Blocked in China

Over a clip of video depicting China in bad light. China blocked all of youtube in China. Viewership dropped to zero,

Now that must be real bad for YouTube as China is close to 25% of world market.

Sure hit the giant under the belt, what would you say.

How Video games are more accepted in Recent Times

Google has tied up with 9 major game Studio's and will offer game based Wallpapers in its iGoogle customization option.

This shows how people are emotionally connected to video games, the same video games which were previously despised by people because of Media depicting video games as inflicting violent behavior in Children and players.

Now this shows how Media plays a great role in establishing billion dollar industries worldwide and why it is important to have good PR with Media people.

Now games are known to increase environment awareness and is used for training pilots using simulations.

Games can also be used to train Disaster Management personnel with simulations of various crisis situation and developing their synapses about how to make right decisions and save millions of lives from new age disasters like bio -terrorism or terrorist attacks.

At Last Reprieve For Satyam

Satyam finally gets some reprieve as it is one of the orgs selected to give infotech support to European Airbus. Despite the tough times being faced by Satyam Airbus has shown confidence due to past rapport with the company and the management.
Indian and Chinese Air Travel is likely to see about 11 % growth in next 4-5 years where western travel business is likely to grow slower.
Hence Airbus is likely to invest in India about 1 billion dollars.
Infosys, Satyam, Tata and Wipro are the companies selected to partner with Airbus in this regard.

Sweeping My PC

As a employee for some years I would see Janitors come in the morning and do the first thing in the office and that was to sweep it.

I did not know that one day I would have to do the same with my Internet connected PC. Every day as I download using firefox 100's of MB's of temporary files are created.

With 80 GB hard disk and 20 GB C partition it becomes difficult to keep the mandatory 400-600 MB free for system stability.

Hence it becomes imperative to sweep the desktop and other C folders using CCleaner. I also run registry cleaner at least once in two days, which results in better system performance and registry integrity.

So man what are you people up to, no comments eh?

Internet Explorer Fading : New Chrome Version

I had previously shared my blag data with you showing firefox leading the assault on Microsoft IE's dominance. Similar figures have been released by the industry.

According to data

IE ; 67.4%

Firefox : 22 %

Safari : 8%

Chrome : 1.2 %

Market share of the browsers.

So it looks difficult for Chrome to capture more market share even with its new Beta version under test for upt0 20-25% speed gains and more stability.

People seem to be clung to Internet explorer by sheer sticky habit. So it shows how sticky customers could save the day even fora lousy product.

Firefox with 22% market share could gain more by using innovative marketing and hooking more and more people to try out fire fox who would surely convert?

So , what's your browser?

Hosting Your Web Site

This is a vital lesson that I am sharing with you after missing my business opportunity. I started a website by the name cat-mat-percentile.co.in . I bought the web hosting plan in Rs 2500/- only per annum. ie roughly 50 $ pa.

It was a disaster from the first day. The proprietor was worker manager. There are business barriers in India, and I had wanted to start a open source venture in education which was Google ad supported.

he would not honor his commitments and slowly he manipulated the AW stats reports, they would not display even my test web page views.

So the lesson is that if you buy cheap web hosting space you die a poor man. So if you are going for creating a dot com business have a big heart and buy only from the reputed web hosting companies or die being stalked by the buyable cheap chap.

BYOC Citrix

Citrix has adopted the system of Bring Your Own Computer to workplace. Capital cost can be reduced by using this concept.

cost savings of up to 40-45% has been achieved by Citrix by using this method. Employees are offered $2100 to own a laptop , and hence employees would take care of the maintainence and upkeep of the system which saves cost to the organization.

At company they log on to the internet using a special technology which keeps security into consideration.

Company uses server virtualization to further save on the cost of operation.

So thats as far as beating the blues of recession is concerned.

No End To Satyam's Woes

1.Satyam is likely to face lawsuits in US of 400-800 million, this is likely to cut down its valuation by bidders like the spice group which are pursuing taking over the beleaguered computer giant.

2. Google will enter internet telephony. It is in direct competition with Skype which is owned by E-Bay and has a installed user base of 400 million users. There is going to be a change in the dynamics of Telecom Industry with this google initiative.

The Google service is likely to be cheaper than the Skype , but would have a miss on video conferencing capability.

Privacy Issue and Facebook

Facebook recently faced the wrath of their community members for a policy decision to retain and use personnel info of their members. The adverse policy decision was subsequently revised after representations of members.

Communities have to make money for survival, and for they depend on the advt. revenue, additionally they could charge a premium membership fee, with improved facilities and snob appeal.

Any attempt to sell member info is likely to be vehemently opposed by the privacy lobbyists.

Google to Challenge Microsoft OS Dominance

95% PC's of the world runs on Vista and XP still. Google is developing Andriod as a OS to compete with Microsoft's windows. More so Google is making a Linux based OS which will have many advantages over Windows like modularity ( Windows is monolithic OS), more secure ( As it is Linux based).

So will Microsoft loose its dominance in a few years or a year. Only time can tell us.
Meanwhile its good to see an open source attempt at OS. I am sure Google has a good brand equity and any product that Google creates will surely be up to the mark and best in the market.

Mimi Switch

A headphone which can remote control your I-Pod or electronics m/c's at home like the washing m/c's or PC etc.

A headphone with infra red sensors which can measure changes to ear depending on facial expressions and in turn remote control your electronic devices.

A Japanese endeavor the Mimi Switch can detect facial expressions like your Smile, wink et al and create a electronic response to it.

So how do you lie a new hands free control.

Software Life Cycle and Lawsuits

Do you think that trust suits can have any effect on the development of Software . Yes it does have on Microsoft OS at least . The latest upcoming OS Windows 7 from Microsoft will have this in the doing.

Windows 7 will feature a control panel to disable Internet Explorer and Media Player. This in response to legal suits in EU about the monopolization of Browser by Microsoft by bundling IE with the OS.

Mozilla and Opera have filed charges against Microsoft and they have got a ruling in favor with them. So you will now have a choice to turn off default software's with Windows OS. But the crucial choice is with so much Brand Equity and user choice would the user really want to turn off IE.

Certainly if you are using internet you will be in the know that certain sites give problems with certain browsers at certain times. I have four Browsers on my PC but I use Firefox most of the time.

Internet and Terrorism

According to a report by Economic Times Terrorists in South East Asia are using internet to spread message of terror and recruit youth in Jihad against Humanity.

Now what a brazen act of outrage against the civil society this is. Blogs and social networks plus forums are being used to spread message of terror, communication and education and training for terrorists.

All this because there is no world body to look at the problem of Internet Administration. No amount of effort has been spent in generating an international agreement of blocking such sites and accounts.

I mean what is US and Un doing are they sleeping over the problem just like they did over global warming? All that while innocent civilians are being killed all over the world? Its time some action is taken against this misuse of internet.

Netbook Vs. Laptop

Well netbook certainly has the cost and portablility benefit, but recently a new problem has been reported by the actual users of netbook, and this problem is that of Security. Netbook is generally a lesser capable atom processor and lesser memory compared to a laptop configuration.
Hence the problem of memory Resident internet security products is likely to be encountered in the Netbooks segment. Modern Anti Virus tools are memory and resource hungryy and even slow down a Desktop so what is a netbook in front of Intenet Threat.
If you dont use a security package you are likely to falter in protecting your device from online threats.

m-CRM and Sales Automation

Are you ready for it yet?

So what is m-CRM . m-CRM is CRM software on your PDa or smart phone. They are for the marketing and sales staff. It can be used to provide live data to client and to keep the organisational MIS data live from the field.

It is used to automate the processes of CRM, like customer alerts et al can be generated automatically and a lot of Customer proceses from the marketing end can be automated leading to smooth transactions and enhanced customer satisfaction and service.

There is impdiments to automating all sales force like cost and internet accessibility impediments which are to be kept in mind while deplying a m-CRM module.

Vareity of m-CRM modules can be deployed even in low end SMS based systems with teh help of GPRS connectivity. With 3G coming to India ( BSNL rolling out the service in 11 cities ) it is likely to get more speed of info updates.

So be ready for that sales Conversion through m-CRM.

The Evolving Role of CIO

CIO may take all the decisions regarding purchase and installation of hardware and software. Or he may take them in consultation with he CEO. It all depends on the size of organization and the sophistication of top management in regard to technological matters.

But increasingly CIO has to be educated about the business domain knowledge and has to take appropriate decisions by self.

Also the Role of the CIO is to buy management support for Tech. implementations, in addition to get the organisation ready for accepting the technology and the associated change management plan.