Cingular can learn some lessons from the East

Cingular announced that it will introduce Ringtones from MySpace for its customers. Cingular must try to catch up with its European and Asian peers by introducing Caller Tunes, little or unknown in the American market. In India, Hutch and Airtel lets you customize caller tunes so that your friends or business partners waiting to talk to you can listen to the song of their choice. All of these features are available on Cell as well as regular land phones.

Google dumped Open Office ?

Om first broke the story that Google has bought Writely. So was Google just trying to distract Microsoft that they will develop Open Office ? MS executives also made comments such as OO is 10 years behind MS-office. Hmmm! Smart Strategy Googlers. Writely welcome to NEC

Search engine market share – Q4-2005

At the end of 2005, Google had gained significantly over Yahoo & Microsoft. Google had a 48.8%(+5.7%) of search market followed by Yaahoo at 21.4% (-0.3%) and Microsoft’s MSN search had 10.9% (-3.1%). Unfortunately this is not NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” show to be the winner

Tropos routers a FONero ? A Win-Win for all.

I am not quite certain why Google is so aggressively pursuing network infrastructure, so I will believe in what John Battelle is saying,

Yes, but what if you need that distribution(internet) to run those high margin services over? More as the Superbowl buzz wears off.

I was thinking on how FONero movement can succeed. Tropos immediately struck to my mind. Oho! Ya Tropos’ WMR was an original & unique idea I had presented in my Network Appliance Design class 5 years ago. Lets analyze how Tropos can help FON and Google.

Tropos’ mesh network is a wi-max clone(not exactly) and is successfuly deployed in several places. Tropos’ 5210 routers form the private mesh network with only few of them acting as Internet gateways. Consumers use Tropos’ 3210 routers to connect to 5210 private network and thus to the WWW. Now for instance lets imagine all the 5210s and 3210s were to act as Fonero, then someone like me who needs to connect to the WWW can opt for either of those connections, depending on cost/speed. I can also use a VoIP based phone(a Google Talk enabled phone ?) just like a cell phone within the network. FON & its partners should consider talking to Tropos(and similar companies if any) to act as FONeros.

GOOG-Dell and Pack an Insider’s View

The deal is not as straight forward as it is reported in the press. Here are some of my thoughts. I don’t expect it to be the same pack for enterprise customers of Dell. NEC members are likely to offer more through GOOG-Dell channel. GOOG has several partners(currently known) in the PACK – Lavasoft, Symantec and Real which give a trial licenses. Once user converts trial into perpetual license, GOOG gets a cut out of it(Greater than 50% as of the time of release of GOOG pack, not sure what it is now). The story doesn’t end here. A dozen engineers(not dropouts) are working on optimizing Star/Open Office which will go into GOOG PACK this year. If this DELL-GOOG pack succeeds, then expect some more partners to queue in front of GooglePlex.
This deal may hurt GOOG’s immediate bottomline which it might compensate from other sources. What GOOG does is always right except Larry and Sergey selling their own stock

C.K.Prahalad on $20 entrepreneurs from India

Prahalad is known for his out of the box corporate management and strategy lessons. BusinessWeek covers Prahalad’s radical views on how the East Asian economies will have a far reaching impact in the western corporate boardrooms. As he quotes while taking a cab drive through the streets of Mumbai,

With the world’s cheapest telecom rates, all you need here is a phone and a $20 card to start a business. He notices a busy closet-sized shop charging a few pennies per page to send faxes. “That guy probably started with a single phone and then added a fax and printer. Now he has a self-contained communications center offering extremely low prices.”

Prahlad stops his cab and visits a small shop and asks the owner to let him behind the counter to observe closely on his trade. He notices global brands such as Head & Shoulders, Colgate, Pears Lifebuoy and Lux.

Prahlad further adds,

Low wages alone can’t account for such price gaps with the West, Prahalad contends. The real secret is ingenious cost-cutting practices, such as extreme reliance on outsourcing, novel use of technology, and making the most of capital investment. “These are radical innovations,”

In the context of this statement, I feel Prahlad is so right about his predictions. The first thing that stuck to my mind is this company, website.in which sells Web related products and has resellers and customers worldwide. It probably started in a garage and is the cheapest domain reseller in the world today. Anybody who wants to venture into web hosting related business can start with a mere capital of $90 with no hidden fees and excellent customer service. In 2001 Godaddy.com came into limelight because it was the cheapest domain reseller directly poaching customers from Networksolutions. But today website.in is a bigger threat to Godaddy due to the formers low and efficient cost of working with high quality customer service. After low cost manufacturing, I feel that online businesses will feel the pinch sooner.

After Google, Yahoo enters, WA @ Factoria

My insiders tell me that Yahoo! is opening a Development Center @ Factoria,WA. Well, I am wondering if the web-services action is shifting from Valley to the Northwest. Oho! well this will send someone sleepless in Seattle

Microsoft adLabs Mantra-Shop Live, Don’t Search!

Microsoft quietly announced the progress it has made in search and digital advertising fields by announcing its adCenter. I am still skeptical about Microsoft narrowing the gap significantly with Google in search technology. However, from June-2006, Microsoft’s contract with Yahoo/Overture for advertising on MSN network will expire and MSN will part ways with Yahoo. Also note Microsoft’s fiscal year ends in June.

If Multimedia(Audio, Video, Gaming, et. al) applications are set to rule the web, then looking at today’s announcement from an insider’s perspective, I see terrific potential for the passionate . Microsoft is sitting on a stack of Multimedia Streaming and Advertising patents. NO NO! They don’t mention the patents are for advertising but they do mention embeding URIs in Multimedia. Check out their patent list here.

I am crazy about Tennis and right from my teens have always changed the racket when Andre Agassi did. With Microsoft’s adLabs technology, I don’t have to go on searching which racket is Agassi using now. While watching US Open live, I can shop for it with few clicks. Check out this exclusive presentation. With one click you will enable the embedded URI’s in the image and on second click you are ready to add to cart You can shop for your just about anything that you watch. Shop Live, Don’t ”SEARCH” . Can you imagine the potential market ?

InternetOutsider, Henry in his blog claims that Microsoft has lost the web war, but do you really think it has ? MSFT might have lost the war on two fronts, Search & Tools. But while Google Talks and settles it’s VoIP patent lawsuit, and then tries to mature it’s flaky Google Video Player, Microsoft with it’s best player would have delivered.