03-Feb-2010

Up until now, I have only been linking to other interesting posts on the web in my blog. From today, I have started posting my comments about other blog posts that I see on the web right here so there is a single place where you can read all my comments for better clarity and personality visualization through the written word.

It is easier for others reference and for my own reference later also, to see what ideas and opinion I had about different opinions expressed by different blog authors, in a single place.

Comment about ReadWriteWeb article “4 Tech Trends you must undersand to be an effective marketer” – here it is.

“Perfect product placement” is all the more important than all the other mentioned factors in this article, in order to understand and do effective marketing. I believe this can be achieved only through more personally intrusive, personality-nabbing, personal interests profiling and usage of personal privacy-engorging techniques so as to tailor the most effective personalized/customized marketing message possible that is able to convert viewers into buyers. Marketing firms and agencies will find themselves wanting to build 360 degree social profiles of customers in order to perform the most effective and personalized result-oriented marketing possible.

And I dont agree with the Google product manager who has supposedly said ‘we can make the mobile web better than the PC web’. Mobile web can never become better in functionality, support and usage experience factor when compared to PC web. Mobile web will always be limited in functionality and usage due to the form factor of the devices on which it is used/viewed.

We will have more devices like the iSlate, iPad, iTablet etc. whose form factor and screen resolutions, height, width, weight, etc. are more conducive towards using the PC web itself, in an instant anytime anywhere usage model by carrying the device in our person. Browsing through a device with a form factor similar to an iPhone will be limited to popular websites only. People will long to get their hands on a real keyboard with a real wide desktop-like screen when it comes to browsing the PC web. So we have to make devices (with the form factor of iPad etc) for matching the usage factor of the PC web, rather than inventing mobile web as a different paradigm/strategy platform for which we need devices other than a mobile phone with the existing form factor of an iPhone. More and more new devices on the market with the form factor of iPhone, like Nexus One, Nokia, HTC etc, will only lead to fragmentation of the handheld device segment with different manufacturers supporting different standards, operating systems and protocols and interoperability and portability of applications will be a nightmare. For example, if you buy iPhone app, it will only run in your iPhone. It wont be able to run in Android or handheld Chromium operating system, or Nokia Symbian or Windows Mbile operating system.

We need to remember that it is due to the popularity of Windows, that you were able to buy or download any software made by anyone (without control or big-brother censorship ones like Apple iTunes store or Google’s upcoming App store where you have to get permission from the respected companies before listing your app for sale in their stores) that the internet usage.adoption rate increased in the first place. Then people today are switching to Macs Linux etc after using Windows and claiming them to be more stable and secure (than Windows). But by buying Apple products you are getting locked into everything Apple – hardware made by Apple, software has to be approved by Apple before allowed to be running on Apple devices (think iPhone App store). Just few years down the line, people will feel Windows was more interoperable and flexible in allowing any and all third party development to happen without restriction and you could be confident that such programs written would be able to run in Windows, without needing approval from Microsoft.

Comment about “Why Closed Works: Moving Past Steampunk Thinking About The Future Of Computing” – here

The primary unit of information management in a computing system was and is and will continue to be, a file. It is universally understood even by computing beginners. Anytime someone changes this ‘base’ of a ‘file’ metaphor is going to be a difficult time to understand the concept/paradigm. File is the physical and logical unit of storage in a file-system. It is the file concept that is common among Web and desktop OS’s. Apps can live in the cloud and eventually apps paradigm may be redefined by service paradigms, but the files concept will live on the cloud somewhere happily in a file system.

Comment on “Email is far from dead” – here

Email will always be around for a long time. Even with the advent of real time communication software tools like Google Wave, Social media sites, Instant Messageing etc. people need a ‘buffer’ or ‘cushion’ so they can say ‘Send it to my email’ so they can look at it later as time permits and be comforted that everything is saved sequentially/chronologically until they are able to get to it. But that kind of ‘everything is saved until I am able to get to it and I will be able to get to it easyily’ feeling is not available with scrolling fast real time social media displays like Twitter, etc. People can safely turn off their computer and ‘return to emails later’ when they get time, people cant spend all the time they have in front of computer looking at fast scrolling twitter displays and friend status updates from facebook. Email provides more sophisticated way of communication that operates in near real time ifboth the sender and receiver are online at the same time. It is also a faceless means of communication providing a protected feeling. So for these reasons, and advantages of email, which are that email can be saved, exported, and shown as evidence later, referred to , archived. etc. email will be around for long time, if not forever. Until we start making info archives for personal and professional use that are easily available at the making of a query from anywhere anytime, like Microsofts SenseCam. All records of interest can then be stored in the cloud, recent entries and bookmarked/favorited entries can be stored in a handheld, something like iPad, iPhone, Nexus instrument, Google Tablet, etc. Then the usage factor of email will start coming down, and email may eventually die to lack of patronage.

Comment on”The value of design to startups-BusinessWeek” – here

Marketing cant sell a defective product or a product that falls  short of user expectations and fails to fulfill what is expected of it. Then competitors will quickly move in and close the gap left by lack of functionality in the product. I would still say, ‘make a good product, and they will come, users will find it if it addresses their problems, /if/ they look upon it as a solution to their problems’. A Good product automatically drives value addition and adoption rate for products and probably wouldnt need much investment in marketing efforts. The product will sell itself because happy users are likely to tell other users about the product.service they are using (thus influencing their purchases).

Comment on “Using the hReview Microformat for your review pages” – here

I am slightly disoriented with this whole microformats thing. Instead of developing a semantic ontology-based description language that defines structure and content rather than presentation, microformats are like a complement, an addition or an addendum to what is essentially a presentation markup language (HTML). Just thinking about it, they only have microformats description language for hReview, hCard, hProduct etc. The hProduct format is severely lacking in describing products via appropriate product description attributes, as at the moment. The microformats keywords sound like they have been taken from someone who invented the vocabulary of LDAP. (I am talking about microformats attributes being named ‘fn’ etc.) They need more polishing to sound more like web 3.0 (like ‘firstName’).

Comment on “Harvard Business Review – how Apple tells us what we should love” – here

I dont subscribe to this theory that big companies like Apple tell us what we should love and buy what they have available for us, just because they tell us to and everyone else has it. Unless I see specific value in a product, I wouldnt buy it. I research a product (and its available competitors and their feature sets) well before I buy a product. If I find value in a product, I would buy it anyway, even if their marketing is non-existent (I.e., even if it didnt ‘tell me to’). Even Apple has to have had a brainstorm about what peoples’ needs are, what an existing need or problem is, being faced by prospective customers, and create a solutions addressing problems.or.needs. There are very few, if any instances, where solutions go looking for problems and have been successful. Problems and needs are already existent, they just have to be bought out or publicized. Then somebody comes up with a solution.

Take iPad for example – Apple didnt do anything ‘innovative’ about it. The need was already existing, there were other similar players before the iPad (like a Tablet PC which does multitasking and has USB). Apple didnt create a solution for a new problem that nobody has addressed before, if you see iPad as an ebook reading device, the Kindle was ahead of that, if you see iPad as a tablet computer, the Microsoft Courier tablet device was announced before it. iPad only locks down your device into using all-Apple software and hardware (for example Safari internet browser).

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Tweets I liked from my own tweets. Best of my tweets – my own tweet digest.

From my own experience-having a blog of your own, improves information filtering, classification, categorization and paraphrasing skills- Twitter status message 8581361265.

How to sound like a guru – always use innocuous, pompous, sophisticated words like paradigm, strategy, synergy, etc. that mean little. – Twitter status message 8582144117.

Only these software.webware will survive, in the ‘knowledge worker’ generation ->those that can s(h)ave  effort in one form or the other-effort involved in remembering something, doing something, etc. Such efforts can be quantized in the form of mouse moves, clicks, page transitions, tab switches, keystrokes, etc. The lesser and faster, the better. – Twitter status message 8582278314.

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My own forum posts (judged interesting by myself)

Posted in “Are you faster than your computer?” thread

writers have already started drawing parallels between the brain and electronic memory/storage circuits. Just the other day I came across a lifehacker article that linked to an article about how to ‘defrag’ your brains. So there, we are going to treat our brains more like hard disks with infinite storage capacity the only differnnce is that our brain cells operate with dual functionality – both storage as well as processing. (OR easily Brain cell Neuron = CPU + Hard disk). The time may come when we are able to purchase additional bio-storage devices that somehow compliment our brain’s rememberance and recall functions – think of it, we dont need to remember anything, heck we only need to know some keywords to search for and the machine will give us the result by searching (an ‘electronic drudgework slave’). Makes me recall someone once said, ‘it doesnt matter whether you know, it matters if you know how to find it when and if it becomes necessary’). The lifehacker article is here
Defrag Your Mind in Five Steps – Defragment – Lifehacker

Also read this - How Nanotechnology gives computers a human-like brain- researchers have already read transistors that can mimic the functions of brain cells or synapses. So eventually the day may come when we are able to make artificial brains. When we die, we will simply insert the artificial brain replacing the physical brain and possibly continue to live forever as the brain regulates all the physiological and neurological processes in the body. We will simply upgrade our “Brain OS” that controls bodily functions to new versions as and when new fields of knowledge are discovered. So we never will need to learn or memorize anything. Anything knowledge-based will be available just by searching, and eventually we should be able to think and search, rather than using our hands to operate keyboards and mouses. We should be able to get search results of knowledge documents directly transferred into our brain or through a bionic eye system that whose inside viewing screen lies just to the front of our natural eyes.

Link for bionic eyes research progresses – Bionic vision and optoelectronics on a contact lens.

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My submitted bug reports for various software

Submitted bug report to Cintanotes Forum – Tag Sidebar starts appearing even when turned off