Yup, I am still alive

It has been almost ten days I have blogged and this is the longest period I haven’t blogged in my short blogging stint.

You can attribute this to some very high pressure tasks at work ( Btw, I still don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel). There have been some interesting developments in my professional career which I shall post once it becomes official. Needless to say, I am going to be tied down a bit in the next couple of months.

I still try to keep track of some of the major events ( Microsoft’s big PR exercise on Unified Communication with little substance) ,Vonage’s recent patent woes, Aswath’s EnThinnai ( which I believe is the best application as of today that has the potential to leverage presence to the fullest) and Mobivox’s rise. I did try their free service but was not too convinced. It did not work for me 😦 One of my regular reader has sent me an email about some interesting thoughts on them. If he does mail and if it ain’t too confidential, I might let the world know about it.

I do miss the joy of blogging on a daily basis and I really hope that things get better for me to do that. One wise friend of mine used to say “If you can’t blog, atleast change the appearance so that people think that you are doing somwthing.” Good piece of advice, but I am going to wait a little longer to try that trick.

StoreGrid gets it 400th partner

Just got news that Storegrid has signed up its 400th partner. Quite an achievement and our wishes and congratulations to the team there who made this possible. Check out the press release here

Easy Way to Make money

You know what’s is the most easiest way to make money. Write a Haiku. Considering Google’s obsessions with “ku”s, there is a good chance that they will buy your Haiku as well 🙂

Google has bought out Jaiku and this comes after they bought out Zingku a few days ago. On a serious note though, I am curious why they went after Jaiku and not Twitter which is not only slicker but has a bigger subscriber base as well.

P.S : I know my title was misleading. And btw if you didn’t know already, there is no easy way to make money 🙂

How do I want to be known?

There is a humorous ad ( by IDEA Telecom) going around recently which in essence says that all communal fights and other racial discrimination can be averted by giving phone numbers as names to everybody and everybody would be known by their numbers.

Pretty hilarious, but at the same time got me thinking. If I wanted to be known other than by my name, which of my modes of communication best represents me?  I have to say it is still yahoo/gmail id. Yes, there is spam; yes there is trouble sorting through the entire list but I still feel the best way to reach me is email. Not any of the IMs, not any of the social networking ids, not the Skypes/Gtalks of the world.

I still get most of my meaningful communications done through mail. So the best way to know me is through my email id. What is yours?

Innovation from Infosys

Somehow the general feeling around the world is that the Indian software giants like Infosys, Wipro, HCL are cheap labour camps and not a whole lot of innovation can be seen in these companies.

Infosys has broken that image by winning the the Telephony Mashup Challenge which was sponsored by Sylantro Systems and The Thomas Howe Company. Their CallPal application seems quite interesting and no wonder seemed to be the toast at the Global Summit in Las Vegas. For people who long for innovation from Indian companies, this is quite a refreshing piece of news and hopefully we can see more of this in the days to come.

Is Telecom for everybody?

News is that, lot of companies with different backgorunds have expressed their interest now that the DoT ( Department of Telecommunications in India) has decided to open up some frequencies for private players.

These companies are from domains like real-estate, retail even cement industry. Which begs me to ask the question. Can anybody with money become a Telecom provider. Now that companies like Airtel have shown the way by outsourcing the entire technical aspects of the business to professionals like IBM, is that the way we are going to see every other Telecom provider take? Throw in loads of money, have System Integrators like IBM do managed services and you just take your percentages.

You don’t require to be in the Telecom business for years/decades like it used to be. The entry barrier is just about money now. Which leads to another interesting question. Will all businesses become that way? All you need is cash and you just let the IBMs of the world run the show for you. Are we going to see the day when there are no more specialized companies but just SIs? Questions to ponder over.

So much for no internet

I had earlier hoped that I would be internet-free for two days when I was on personal vacation. But my wife had Reliance’s data card and I couldn’t resist a peak or two at my emails during the weekend.

Safe to say my dryness was a total failure 🙂