I ran across this article... It is surprising that how little we know about this here.
This report is primarily driven by Private industry. This self same industry is calling for Canada's inclusion on this list of worst offenders...
A Foreign office rep told the Canadian House of Commons "In regard to the watch list, Canada does not recognize the 301 watch list process. It basically lacks reliable and objective analysis. It's driven entirely by U.S. industry."
The industry body that drives this report is IIPA.
We would be well advised to also recall a statement by William Patry, a copyright expert and Google's copyright attorney.
"the sheer arrogance and affront to the sovereignty of foreign governments by the IIPA's annual reports and effort to penalize those governments that do not toe the IIPA's line is breathtaking."
It is best to ignore such ramblings and if push comes to shove, throw the ball back by linking demands for more access to the American market for Indian services companies, removal of restrictions on outsourcing, more H1 visas et. al.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Canon Rocks
I had bought a Canon S1 IS
This is customer service, not the usual bit of thievery, most companies in India Indulge in.
I was out to lunch this sunday, so I took it out the camera to take some pics...
Bougainvillea at the Defence Colony Market. This was in the Macro mode. I feel that the focus is a bit soft. I need to get the hang of the camera.
A sign at the entrance of the garden
A forlorn looking Fountain
I plan to run the much famed CHDK custom firmware for DIGIC II & III processors... The stuff you can add to the cameras functionality is mindboggling...
Also Canon seems to have standardised accesories around this series, so I might pick up a Canon TC DC58B Tele-Converter
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Imagine! videos for Pangea Day
This is awesome... I ran across this today at PressTalk. Very nice... Sends a tingle down your spine...
This is part of the Imagine! series of videos for Pangea Day on May 10...
The others:
Japan sings for Turkey!
France Sings for USA
Australia sings for Lebanon
Read more here...
See Pangea's YouTube channel here
This is part of the Imagine! series of videos for Pangea Day on May 10...
The others:
Japan sings for Turkey!
France Sings for USA
Australia sings for Lebanon
Read more here...
See Pangea's YouTube channel here
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Domains, Domains and more Domains...
I just bought (rented?) another domain.
marlinspike.in
This adds to the 3 I already own...
patnaiks.in
patnaik.in
chiragpatnaik.com
Another cost head... these four domains cost me around 3000 bucks a year... No end to spending money...
itimes.com
So... it finally launches...
Nearly, a year after I quit Indiatimes, the social networking (the specs of which was one of the things (along with Indiatimes Mail) on my plate) platform has finally gone live. It took a year of work on the PeopleAggregator platform to finally reach an acceptable state of launch, and as is fashionable these days, it is in Beta.
Is it too little too late?
In a world dominated by Facebook, Myspace and Orkut (dominating different geographies), this is the most obvious question... After all sites like Rediff Iland did not gain much traction either, and lets not forget numerous sites like yaari.com, which have fallen by the wayside... Another catch all Social Network, hohum.
The answer. Depends. Depends on whether, the product will remain a social network in the mould of Facebook or will evolve to something more. The potential exists to do much more, ofcourse... The direction it will take totally depends on the team handling the product. No one from the original team is now (or will not be in the next few weeks) on the project, so I don't know, if the initial objectives and thought processes are even captured anywhere.
A Bit about the Domain...
The domain itimes.com was held by a company in the States. No amount of searching the web, gives me a hint as to what was it before... Though there is a mention of this domain on the University of California Irvine's Anthropology course...
The domain acquisition saga is a content for another post altogether. The internal contradictions and desires that were the initial motivation for makingthe purchase were completely different from what it was used for eventually.
Read this story on NYMag. We (atleast I) had quite a laugh... (Though we pocketed the domain a little after this story came out)
Will Apple co-opt itimes, like they did the iphone, they seem to claim everything i... Only time will tell.
And the cost...
It would suffice to say, it was expensive...
Commentary on itimes.com
Monday, April 07, 2008
Social Networking for Grown-Ups...
So much is said about social networks and how catch all social
networks are all the rage right now. But look back a few years and you
see all a landscape littered with yesterday's stars.
Friendster
Hi5
and to some extent
Orkut (Some may argue that Orkut is alive and kicking in India, but I beg to differ. Orkut isn't hip any mre, which means that over time it will slide into nothingness. After all which woman, wants 100 friend requests from absolute strangers)
And not to mention that the hundreds of new social networks that pop up every other day. Clearly a gold rush is on. The acquisition of Desimartini by HT 's Firefly eVenture is a symptom of this gold rush.
With the reported difficulties of Google & MS to monetise their respective ad properties of MySpace and Facebook, it is clear that we have seen all the hypergrowth we had to see, It will grow, there are after all several billion people on this planet but not necessarily to the point, where it will justify billions in valuations in the near future.Maybe Facebook will grow into something else. A Personal newspaper (or perhaps twitter will have that honour).
Other stories of fatigue (which are related to the relative difficulty in moetising) would be worrying people in this and affiliated industries
All social networks suffer from the what can only be termed as the nightclub effect. i.e. like in a nightclub, when the place is new and the hip people move in, it is the happening place in town, when they move on, the venue collapses. By, all means, it may still be around. But like the fashion trends, easy come, easy go... and like in fashion, there will be a few timeless classics...
So, what is the alternative?
Social networks that are targeted at niches, rather than at masses, The internet is a medium of niches. You go to amazon.com for books (amongst other things), expedia for airtickets etc.
Flixster seeks to be based around your interest in movies, but relies on the same base community of friends. Something around travel is eminently workable.
One such alternative look at social networks is geni.com. It is a social network for families. You seed it with yourself as the starting point and then build a tree. Son of, brother of etc. and repeat that with your parents, and your parents' parents. The good part is that the person invited has the ability to populate his own branch of the tree, which is relevant to him and only him.
It allows the usual smorgasboard of services like Birthday/ anniversary alerts, photo albums, newsfeeds et al. and auto generates calendars. So, it becomes pretty much a family bulletin board. This is one place, where I've seen my Parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews active on it. A first for any social network I've been on for the past five years.
The absolute best part, is that, if you don't belong to the family, you can't get in.
If MS or Google want to make an acquisition for the future, this is it. Imagine photo sharing apps, imagine family blogs, opportunity to refer gifts, air-tickets...
Anyhow, this is only one example. And perhaps more useful than most.
Another example is LinkedIn. Very effective. I get a lot done through linkedin. recommendations, contacts etc. I often accept random requests, thinking, they may be useful to me at some point in the future and therein lies the danger of it being rendered irrelevant, I may end up with a giant contact list which I neither care for nor use...
Google may have a better chance to refashion orkut into something more than what it is right now. Yahoo 360 is a nonstarter, otherwise they too had a good chance of making something of it... Imagine building a music recommendation engine basis your friend group rather than everyone in the list (which may include family and other people). I'm yet to see a social network that is slicing and dicing to that level of minutiae.
I'd love to see Amazon enter into this arena. Their recommendation engine is getting better and better over the years.
The bottom line, is that a catch all social network is unlikely to live on in the long term except as part of a larger bouquet of services. Till someone builds a social network for grown ups, well have to live with this madness.
Friendster
Hi5
and to some extent
Orkut (Some may argue that Orkut is alive and kicking in India, but I beg to differ. Orkut isn't hip any mre, which means that over time it will slide into nothingness. After all which woman, wants 100 friend requests from absolute strangers)
And not to mention that the hundreds of new social networks that pop up every other day. Clearly a gold rush is on. The acquisition of Desimartini by HT 's Firefly eVenture is a symptom of this gold rush.
With the reported difficulties of Google & MS to monetise their respective ad properties of MySpace and Facebook, it is clear that we have seen all the hypergrowth we had to see, It will grow, there are after all several billion people on this planet but not necessarily to the point, where it will justify billions in valuations in the near future.Maybe Facebook will grow into something else. A Personal newspaper (or perhaps twitter will have that honour).
Other stories of fatigue (which are related to the relative difficulty in moetising) would be worrying people in this and affiliated industries
All social networks suffer from the what can only be termed as the nightclub effect. i.e. like in a nightclub, when the place is new and the hip people move in, it is the happening place in town, when they move on, the venue collapses. By, all means, it may still be around. But like the fashion trends, easy come, easy go... and like in fashion, there will be a few timeless classics...
So, what is the alternative?
Social networks that are targeted at niches, rather than at masses, The internet is a medium of niches. You go to amazon.com for books (amongst other things), expedia for airtickets etc.
Flixster seeks to be based around your interest in movies, but relies on the same base community of friends. Something around travel is eminently workable.
One such alternative look at social networks is geni.com. It is a social network for families. You seed it with yourself as the starting point and then build a tree. Son of, brother of etc. and repeat that with your parents, and your parents' parents. The good part is that the person invited has the ability to populate his own branch of the tree, which is relevant to him and only him.
It allows the usual smorgasboard of services like Birthday/ anniversary alerts, photo albums, newsfeeds et al. and auto generates calendars. So, it becomes pretty much a family bulletin board. This is one place, where I've seen my Parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews active on it. A first for any social network I've been on for the past five years.
The absolute best part, is that, if you don't belong to the family, you can't get in.
If MS or Google want to make an acquisition for the future, this is it. Imagine photo sharing apps, imagine family blogs, opportunity to refer gifts, air-tickets...
Anyhow, this is only one example. And perhaps more useful than most.
Another example is LinkedIn. Very effective. I get a lot done through linkedin. recommendations, contacts etc. I often accept random requests, thinking, they may be useful to me at some point in the future and therein lies the danger of it being rendered irrelevant, I may end up with a giant contact list which I neither care for nor use...
Google may have a better chance to refashion orkut into something more than what it is right now. Yahoo 360 is a nonstarter, otherwise they too had a good chance of making something of it... Imagine building a music recommendation engine basis your friend group rather than everyone in the list (which may include family and other people). I'm yet to see a social network that is slicing and dicing to that level of minutiae.
I'd love to see Amazon enter into this arena. Their recommendation engine is getting better and better over the years.
The bottom line, is that a catch all social network is unlikely to live on in the long term except as part of a larger bouquet of services. Till someone builds a social network for grown ups, well have to live with this madness.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
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