Last weekend I installed Fring on my Ipod Touch.  I use Localphone to make International (India) calls. Honestly, I installed Fring after reading that I can use VOIP calls using Localphone and Fring.

This weekend while sitting in a local cafe in Barcelona, I noticed it has free wi-fi. After checking my mails I suddenly remembered of Fring and Localphone. And then without waiting a minute, I was talking to all my people. All I was paying was the normal Localphone charge.

So all you Localphone users, why don’t you take advantage of Fring, while you are travelling?

I remember in my school there was a painting which had two horses running through the woods and had a caption “Each must find it’s own way”. However, this blog post differs in someway and here’s how.

Last week I was in Venice and explored the city a lot by walking. Apart from hundreds of eager tourists, several museums/ churches I also found abundant businesses and as a tourist sometimes you have good experience dealing with them, while sometimes leaves a sour taste in your mouth (in my previous trip to Florence I ran into a horrible restaurant ripping off 48 euro for some for some trashy food). While spending good 3 days here, I thought a day would come when every tourist would do something mentioned below.

There would be “tracker” sitting on the phones of every tourist (yes and I am hoping that international data plan would be very very cheap or may be free ). Now this service would anonymously track the path of the traveler.  This application would do a lot of data mining on Best places to see in the given time constraint, restaurants to eat, mashup events, and not to mention hotels to stay and bars to hop into. The traveler can certainly attach experiences and put reviews for the activities/ businesses they dealt with. Services like Foursquare, Twitter, Yelp, Flickr can be integrated.  It would also help the local authorities to plan and increase the infrastructure to serve the tourists in a better fashion. The possibilities are endless.

Social networking is not the main purpose of this application. What people “generally” do, is what it will tell.

However, the success of this depends on two important things (out of several other roadblocks)

- The willingness of the tourist to let the real time information published (even though it can be completely anonymous)

- Free international data roaming plan

May be someone is already working on making it work for making the life of tourists an easy experience.

Well this is every man’s story, or atleast I feel it is. The other day while assisting my better half on her SPRING shopping spree, I was observing couples, where men were “brought” to comment (and trust me those comments do not count). I mean common, I know even if I say you are looking great, you are not gonna like it, unless you convinced about price, look, trendiness, how it gets on you, texture, feel, yada yada yada. (I hope you still love me, after reading this!)

So there is no point giving out a strong opinion, one thing I learned sometime back.

Coming to the point. While I was waiting outside the trial room, I thought I could form a club, or a meetup — “Husbands brought for not so welcomed input”. Anyhoo, this led me to another thought that there should be a social network where you can “hire” (may be not for money alone) people to guide/ comment/ watch your trials so that you can pick up something. You can also share what all stores to visit. What’s ON in these stores, and when is the right time to hit these places. May be you can exchange snaps before the shopping begins of your favorite outfits which you think go well on you so that the other person gets an idea of your taste.

Wouldn’t that just be great? Mark, are you listening?

I am doing some research for a service around Twitter, and stumbled across Kingfisher Airlines twitter account. What I saw was instead of Kingfisher saying “What they were doing?”, they are solely using Twitter as a CRM tool. Saying thanks for customer who have left them thank you note, or in some cases asking sorry to the angry customer who were not satisfied with some service.

Well, it’s all fair to use such social networking tool — but the downfall is, you are wasting time or may be turning off those customers who want to follow you to understand your promotions, flight announcements, last minute schedule changes, some critical security updates. Personally I feel, using Twitter for Saying Thank you, visit us again will flatter “that one” passenger, however will turn away several potential passengers who want to follow the business/ enterprise and gain more out of their tweets.

It indeed is an art how to distribute your tweets between tackling customer complains, building rapport by saying thank you on their good experience, sending our promos, delighting travelers with useful announcements etc. Well I feel the sooner an enterprise learns this art, the more useful such social tools will be — after all it is all about ROI.

Using Internet and Social Media to help win elections is not a new story. Marc Andreessen, a founder of Netscape and a board member of Facebook did it for Barrack Obama very neatly.

What makes me write this post is the recent tweet by Sashi Tharoor that Oct 2nd, should be a working day instead of a holidy in India.  He said on Twitter,

Gandhiji said — Work is Workship — and we enjoy holiday on his birthday. He would have wanted us to work harder today.

In political circles this might have created a controversy but the work-is-workship believers indeed cheered up Tharoor’s tweet. What amazes me is the speed at which social media is connecting the politicians and the people. A politician who wants to connect cannot give loose excuses and visit only once in 5 years. And the young India is liking its leaders speaking their mind on such platforms. As long as this constructive effort is underway on Youtube, Twitter, Facobook and other social media giants, the next generation would hopefully find itself close to it’s leaders.

Recently I came across this study published by Kauffman Foundation. I was surprised to see  some of their findings as I believed/ heard/ trusted a different mantra on entrepreneurship. Here’s my top 10 favorite.

Myth 1 : A successful entrepreneur starts at an early age.

Finding : The average and median age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40.

Myth 2 : An entrepreneur should have a family which has business experience.

Finding : Entrepreneurs don’t always come from families of entrepreneurs; slightly more than half of the sample were the first in their families to launch businesses.

Myth 3 : After marriage or after having kids, launching a company is almost impossible.

Finding : Entrepreneurs are significantly more likely to be married and have children when they launch their first businesses

Myth 4 : Work experience eats up your time, fire, and the zeal to start a new business.

Finding: Entrepreneurs are far more likely to have worked for an employer for more than six years than to have quickly launched their own businesses.

Myth 5 : You should be very rich, to own a company.

Finding: Entrepreneurs are more likely to come from a middle-class or upperlower-class background, and very few come from backgrounds of extreme wealth or extreme poverty.

Myth 6 :  The entrepreneurs are *Super Stars* in their school/ colleges in the academics.

Finding: They performed well in high school and in college, with the vast majority ranking average or above in their respective institutions.

Myth 7 : The entrepreneur launches a company so that he has passion for new ideas, wants to generate employment, yada yada yada.

Finding : Their primary motivations for launching a business are to build wealth.

Myth 8 : An entrepreneur always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Finding: Roughly half of the entrepreneurs said they did not think about it.

Myth 9 : I became an entrepreneur because I did not get a job using traditional methods.

Finding :  Only 4.5 percent of respondents stated that inability to find traditional employment was an important motivator in starting their own businesses. In fact, 80.3 said that this was not at all a factor.

Myth 10 : You need a co-founder, or a friend’s or family support to launch a business.

Finding: Only 27% of the entrepreneurs felt that, so it means if you want to do it, do it.

You might have a long list, which you can add in the comments section. But this is what I have.

I feel what Twitter should do (and guess youtube did it very well) is opening up dedicated streams for current events. Youtube captured presidential elections, live symphonies and what not very well claiming it’s leadership in the video space.

I recently moved to London from New York and naturally I had to pick a bank where I can open an account. After looking at various options, I thought HSBC will be a good fit. So here I go to the bank with my HR letter, passport, visa details, address proof (basically all the documents saying I am who I am)

The customer service guy tells me big things about HSBC etc and how good it is. Okay. Also they will be charging me 6£ per month (did not pay anything like this in US, neither in India). They opened the account but guess what?

After 7 days I go to them and tell them that I have not received my debit card. After checking through their systems this is the conversation I have.

HSBC guy:  Sir we have sent that card to your U.S address

Me: What? Why? How?

HSBC guy: Yeah, that is the address we have on file for communication with you.

Me: But I am here, and I need a card here so that I can use it. Why would you open an account of a person living here, but send the card his other country address.

HSBC guy: Yeah, I understand but that is how we do it!

(And you call yourself world’s local bank. With such stupid business processes)

Me: So should I go to US to collect that card? Will HSBC be paying for it?

HSBC guy: Well, you can order one by calling the customer representative and ask them to block the previous card. Thank you for patience!

(BULL SHIT)

I had to call their helpline, and explain him the situation. He said you can pick up the card from the branch itself in next 5 days. I go to the branch again after 5 days and here we go.

Me: Hi, I am here to collect my card.

HSBC guy: Sure, here is your card.

Me: Okay, give me the PIN also. Without the PIN I cannot use my card anyways.

HSBC guy: Well, that is a good point. The pin would have gone to you address, and which is (after looking into computer),  your New Jersey address.

Me: !@#$!@#$@$#%@#$%@$%@#!@!@!!!!!%^&^&*%*^

It happened that I had to order the pin several times and till date I am waiting for my PIN and not able to use the card. Meanwhile they ordered me a withdrawal slip book, so that I can walk in a bank and stand in a line, go through all verification procedures and get some cash (as I cannot use an ATM because I dont have a PIN)

They could send me the slip book, but not the PIN.

What a mess! And if you complain, they make you look stupid as if they are doing it the right way and the customer is annoyed without any reason.

I recently moved to London from New York and within the first 10 minutes I was under a big culture shock and trying to understanding this new place, accent, what is called what, and entire time comparing things with that of US.

For example: Rest room is referred as toilet, GPS is Sat Nav and so on.

I was wondering if there would have been an application which would create a mapping between the following:

Language: As mentioned above, tell me that GPS is in US, and Sat Nav in UK

Area: Wall Street in New York is same as Canary Wharf in London

Cost of living: 1 Starbucks coffee in NY is xxx$ and the same is yyy pounds in London and the same is xxxx Rs in Mumbai

Services: Cell phone for 1 year in US costs this many dollars while the mobile service will be so many pounds in UK

Shopping/ Brands: Circuit City in US while here they have Curry. I already have mapped several more stores/ brands/ services.

Well, I can put so many different things here. I mean there can be a visual mapping also on google maps in terms of geography. Anyways, I am not just restricting this to New York and London. Something like this should be available for entire globe. What do you guys think?

I rent out cars a lot. For apparant reason, that I don’t own one. Now as any other customer of these “Rent-A-Car” services (Enterprise.com, Avis.com, Hertz.com) I go to their website and look for the cheapest deal. The place where I live I have to pay $60 per day (without taxes) for the basic version of the car.

What made me think was, to pickup the car at cheaper rate, I (the customer) have to travel for almost 1.5 hours in a public transportation. I go to this location because it is connected by public transportation (which I came to know from a different site – njtrasit.com)

Now all I want these guys to do is when they present me the Search page, can they not have a search criteria which says “Show location accessible by public transport?” There are tons of APIs available which can be used in their website to present the information and filter out the data.

Am I asking for too much, or should I start paying whopping 60$ per day rent for a small size car?

Yesterday I was at Open Everything NYC held at UNICEF Headquarters, United Nations Plaza in New York.

John Britton (the organizer and the host) was right when he said that weather was responsible for people who registered and did not show up. I think we were around 50-60 people, but it seems actually more than 250 of them said they would come. I had some interesting conversations on how Openess and sharing would make a difference in the fields of music, journalism, education, enterprises.

We also had some wonderful speaker like LESLIE HAWTHORN, Schuyler Erle (btw, I just liked the way he presented RapidSMS, very innovation idea.)

I was impressed with the spirit of openness and the urge to spread it in so many different sectors. Being a techie, I always thought does open source makes sense in other areas. Well it totally does or else Youtube Symphony wouldn’t make sense or take place.

We had several sessions on topics posted by the attendees themselves. I had put a topic “How and Why Enterprise can become more Open?”. All the participants chipped in their views and opinions and had a great time networking. (I shall write a different post on this particular topic)

I am still waiting their Wiki to get updated with the photographs and the videos.

I would definitely recommend others to attend this event next time.

GM, Ford, Chrysler — this is what you need.

Few weeks ago we were celebrating Basoda – a special festival amongst certain communities in India, where for 1 entire day we do not use any form of energy. COLD is the word associated with this day. The entire day is spent in this manner.

- Wake up early, and take a cold water bath. Though it would be terrible in US (east coast)

- Go to a temple, pray!

- Then begins the eating spree, all food cooked previous day.

- Entire day no tea, coffee (you can have cold), no using gas. In earlier days I have heard that people never used electricity. They use to light oil lamps and go to bed early.

- So the idea is not to use any form of energy, heat.

This year while doing this, I realized that inspite of calling it a religious festival, it is more of environmental festival. Our forefathers might have thought that if everybody spends one day without energy, it would be just great. There is no other way to explain it otherwise. I mean apart from the fact that there are religious stories, which tell the significance of eating cold etc etc. I mean it’s a religious way of helping nature. 

I am sure other sects might be having similar ways to help the earth. If not, I find such events to be very effective. Well we did observe EARTH HOUR, isn’t it? How effective was it? But had people observed it “religiously” (pun intended) it would be so helpful. Now think about observing an “EARTH DAY” (23 more hours) with this religious twist. It’s gonna rock. Atleast in India (and mind you we are 1,147,995,904 people) as we tend to do anything and everything for religion. (now letz not go there)

Forgot to mention one thing: this thing is also called as “Mata ka Thanda” or “Sheetala Mata ka Thanda”.

In a newsletter from WebGuild, I saw a story about how Google CEO Eric Schmidt asked the ailing newspaper industry to create a new web format for themselves. After reading the summary over WebGuild, I clicked the link to “more” which redirected me to WSJ site.

And BAM, as soon as I land on WSJ, they ask me to register. Duh?

Isn’t think story about newspapers themselves — which means you WSJ?

If you want to know, which you should, whether Eric’s thoughts makes sense or not let this story be public — your readers will post their thoughts (collective intelligence) which you can use to come up with the next 2.0 for Newspapers!

I was reading Guy Kawasaki’s blog when I came across the link to Posterous – brilliant and simple are the two adjectives I would use.

I immediately sent a forward which I had in my gmail to post@posterous.com and that how it registers you. Tada!

Frankly, since quite sometime I was thinking of a service where everyone can post their forwards. I feel that we all get forwards and we all send forwards, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be great if we manage our forwards through some social media site. I know, not one more is what you are thinking. But imagine no more email overhead. All this service does is manage all the forwards. 

Anyhoo, I created by account at Posterous – Check it out - http://taurusismysign.posterous.com/

For interested folks, here is a nice blog on Posterous from Techcrunch.

Now tell me who isn’t attracted and glued to Twitter. Celebrities, Politicians, Millions of internet users, Doctors. Welcome the cartoonist. Found these cartoons on Slideshare and thought of sharing it with you. Enjoy!

I don’t know if its just me or all you guys feel the same way about emails. On an average I receive around 50-70 emails.

Here is mockup thread (and believe me entire world is copied on this email)

Due to blah blah blah, the XML message mentioned below did not go through successfully. We want your sign off to send this message again the downstream system.

(the story goes on and on)

To this someone replies

Yeah, I think this is very critical etc etc etc, and would appreciate if we can get this data into the system as business is getting affected blah blah blah ..

(yeah, we know business gets affected even if IT people sneeze a lot and waste time)

This is just a beginning of this thread. Then people start saying, we are doing release now. Business gives their sign off. Another communication on the release is completed. Reply is  a big thank you. To which another reply is Thanks for your patience … gawd, Microsoft Exchange is getting killed, please stop!

I am not saying here that Emails should be replaced by Twitter. My point of view is Twitter is making us believe that 140 is beautiful, sufficient and crisp. If you cannot do in that, that means you should take effective writing courses.

Anyhoo, some tool like twitter which will sell and work in Enterprises should be built and adopted.

Truely a work of genius, as Pattie Maes mentions. Hats off to Pranav Mistry.

Now isn’t this just brilliant? I had a traditional water pump right front of my house back home. Some like this would be so cool. Brilliance at it’s best!

Whenever any great invention happens, the inventor along with the pros of the product might also think about the problems his/her investion might bring upon the society. There are so many such examples. Well, great that nuclear energy got invented, but it gave us Hiroshima & Nagasaki. There are cars, but now we are fighting with the pollution and all the damages is it doing to our planet. The list is so very long. And now we realize and think about how we should put a check on all kinds of pollution from such origins to save the planet.

Similarly, and it might not be right away, we will face similar issues originating from these social networks/ information getting generated from the web. I mean look at the time we spend online — it’s increasing day by day. Sure the idiot box (Television) was considered harmful few years ago, because it made you couch potato, but Internet and it’s friends are just taking it to the next level. All work/ browsing/ socializing/ reading and NO PLAY!

Here are some trends by Online Publishers Association (OPA) 

Look at Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and hundreds of other social networks/ junk data generators. What good are they doing to us? Do we really need this much information in real time? I am not sure!

Well what triggered this blog, is the new service started by Google — Tip Jar . Is Google feeling insecured about people adopting Twitter? I don’t get it. And well, I know they want to organize world’s information, but look at the data coming up there. Here is one .. 

“Take advantage of free entertainment in your community – parks, museums, exhibits, etc. Go to free park concerts and other community activities”

Who doesn’t? Whoever posted this, didn’t he/ she come to the Central Park during free concerts and see the number of people hanging out there? Here’s another one

“Quit smoking. You will save tons of dollars and my favorite: you will save tons of years”

Ya right! You said it and now whoever reads it will quit smoking. 

My point is simple! I think there will be time when so much information will be floating around that we will find it tough to get to what we are actually looking for in the given amount of time. Noise is just spreading all over. Just noise!

And I don’t think building faster machines, better search algorithms or intitive user interfaces will do the trick. Look at the planet and think again, as to what we really need to do.