Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
GMail faces reality – drops ‘beta’
I know, I know, I’m a little late on this one. But the shedding of the ‘beta’ tag for GMail co-incides suspiciously with the announcement of the Chrome OS, don’t you think?
Also, it’s not just GMail, but a whole host of products that are being stripped of this rather pointless little tag. This was required if the big bosses at Google were serious about selling Gmail/Apps to corporates. No one spending hard-earned / stolen money would want to buy ‘beta’ products for their organizations.
Trying to integrate these things into one saleable package, maybe, Google people? Buy Chrome + Apps + Chrome browser + Calendar for next to nothing? It’s possible, I suppose – most of these are free, supported by Google Ads right now anyway.
Our times are about to get interesting.
Snooping on someone – the DishTV way
A simple list of tasks to get someone’s complete postal address:
1. Wish they have DishTV.
2. Use your OWN login to get into the DishTV portal. You can also create one from here: http://www.dishtv.in/subaccess/default.aspx
3. Enter victim’s cell phone number / VC number.
4. Ta-da! The next page displays their complete postal address!
Easy, no? How’s THAT for privacy?
Believing in advertising
Apple doesn’t want you to believe what it says, even though the company claims it’s not lying.
I know false advertising and all that, but isn’t this going a little overboard? I mean, do you really believe an ad that says, “Twice as fast”, and go measure the speed of the product to check if it really is exactly two times faster than whatever? Where do you draw the line, then? Just think what would happen in the following cases:
1. Unilever would be sued because Axe didn’t cause hot girls to cling to unattractive, young men.
2. Coke would be sued for every warm bottle.
3. Perfetti would be sued for not lighting a bulb in your head.
4. Airtel would be sued for not breaking barriers.
5. Adidas would be sued because impossible really was something.
6. Dish TV would be sued because wishing didn’t lead to dishing.
You get the picture…
The ‘Nano’ of IT
Why cannot we develop MS Windows in India, or a Google or a Yahoo? If an Indian can develop Hotmail and given that 30 per cent of Windows developers may well be Indians in any case, the task does not look all that difficult. What is required is a leap of faith, a paradigm shift.
Spot on, Mr Modi.
A caveat though: what he’s talking about is product-related innovation only. While I totally agree with him that we are not up there in terms of technology products (with or without a social angle), we did revolutionalize the way IT is done around the world, and business model-related innovation is as commendable as product-related innovation.
What say, lurkers? Time to comment!
Chris Anderson – FREE
What he’s essentially saying is that the market forces and technological advances that very-nearly ended some industries (like CD sales), are now forcing industries to use these very advances to come up with new models of business. Apart from that, there’s also a nice little history lesson about Gillette and some beautiful examples of Calypso and cocaine thrown it. Read it, it’s worth one look.
Anyway, I’m off to Pondicherry for the weekend. Cheers!
