Raja Jasti’s Blog - Renaissance Thinking

February 24, 2010

Sachin Tendulkar Makes History

Filed under: Personal — Raja @ 9:53 am

Today history was made in Cricket. Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendular became the world’s fisrt cricketer to score 200 hundred runs in a one day international when he made exactly 200 (not out) against South Africa at Gwalior in a 50 over match.

Sachin Tendulkar

Tendulkar underlined his sensational class with a double century in Gwalior

This is is his 46th century (100 runs) in ODIs to go with his 47 centuries in test cricket. That is 93 in total. He has scored 10 of those 93 centuires in the last 12 months in just 34 innings! He scored a century in each of his last 4 test matches. Will he reach 100 centuries this year itself? May be not, but it is mind boggling to me that he seems to be playing his best in his 20th year of playing international cricket.

We all can learn a lot from him about dedication and single minded focus over a long period of time.

Cricketers around the world poured in with praise on this feat.

February 22, 2010

Power Plant in a Box

Filed under: Business, Technology — Raja @ 9:34 am

A company called Bloom Energy sounds amazing. A former NASA engineer KR Sridhar is working on a new type of fuell cell that can put a powerplant in a box. It is like a super computer in a  cell phone. This was John Doerr’s (the famous Kleiner Perkin’s VC) first investmentment. It has Colin Powell on its board. It was on 60 minutes. I love when someone is working on changing the world like KR is doing. Whether Bloom Energy succeeds or not as a business doesn’t matter to me. If his efforts can inspire and enable other efforts that can move the needle on alternative energies, it’s all that matters. Bloom is unveling to the public this wednesday in San Jose.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

February 20, 2010

Ice Dancing to Bollywood Music

Filed under: Entertainment — Raja @ 11:06 pm

American ice dancering champions perform to bollywood music. I quite enjoyed it.

February 18, 2010

Social networking bigger on mobile than desktop

Filed under: Mobile, Technology, Trends — Raja @ 4:54 pm

From Readwriteweb:

A recent study from Ruder Finn revealed that Americans are spending nearly three hours per day on their mobile phones. And what are they doing there? Educating themselves, conducting business, managing finances, instant messaging, emailing? All of the above, as it turns out, and then some. But perhaps the most interesting finding from the new data is the fact that more people are using the mobile web to socialize (91%) compared to the 79% of desktop users who do the same. It appears that the mobile phone is actually a better platform for social networking than the PC.

As I say soon mobule web will just be web. Mobile will be bigger than desktops for many web services.

February 17, 2010

Eric Schmidt reveals Google’s mobile first strategy

Filed under: Internet, Technology, Trends — Raja @ 12:24 pm

Eric Schmidt’s speech at MWC reveals google’s mobile first strategy:

He  read off a flurry of statistics highlighting the growth of the mobile industry, pointing out within three years sales of smartphones will surpass sales of PCs. He noted that in developing countries such as India, Google searches were more likely to be made on a mobile phone than on a desktop computer; he highlighted the rescue stories from the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake and called the mobile technology that enabled some of them fundamental to the human existence. “This is all part of the same view that information is fundamental, and the joint view that mobile communication is ‘it,’” he said.

In Schmidt’s view, he explained, the current mobile ecosystem and its future incarnation are the result of three intertwining factors: computing power, connectivity and cloud computing. “The Internet is humongous. The notion of publishing and microblogging is an explosion that will drive networks further into everything we do,” he said. “Today’s generation doesn’t call it a mobile phone; they call it a phone. That’s a win for everybody sitting here.”

The mobile phone is the meeting point of these three trends, he said, and furthermore, any device that is not connecting in this way is considered not interesting, but lonely. As the mobile phone is the high-volume end point of these trends, it becomes the defining product in that space, he said. “It’s like magic,” he said. “All of a sudden there are things you can do you never even believed were possible.”

This led to his belief in the “mobile first” doctrine, as Google programmers are doing work on mobile applications and technology first, because “mobile apps are better apps” and that’s what top programmers want to develop. “It’s more specific, more human, more location-aware, more satisfying to them,” Schmidt said.

Eric Schmidt’s vision of the power of combination of internet and mobile is something we also share at our company.

February 16, 2010

China’s advantage in rare earth elements

Filed under: Technology — Raja @ 3:29 pm

Many of the latest technologies such as hybrid cars and tv displays use rare earth elements such as europium and tantalum. Guess who currently controls the majority of these supplies? Advantage China.

Periodic Table of Elements (Getty Images) 

Silicon may represent one of Earth’s more common elements, but it transformed Silicon Valley into a high-tech corridor and helped usher the world into the Information Age.

 Now rare earth elements with exotic names such as europium and tantalum hold the key to hybrid cars, wind turbines and crystal-clear TV displays - that is, if a looming supply shortage doesn’t stop innovation in its tracks.

 Rare earth elements, called “rare earths” by those who use and study them, often prove irreplaceable in green technologies and high-tech consumer products. Yet the world’s production of rare minerals relies mainly upon China, and the Chinese government warned last year that its own rising demand will soon force it to stop exporting the precious elements.

 ”Countries and companies that have or plan to develop industries that need rare earth minerals to make products are concerned about China’s growing consumption, which they fear will eliminate China’s exports of rare earths,” said W. David Menzie, chief of the international minerals section at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

 China has also encouraged companies that use rare earths to locate their manufacturing facilities in China, Menzie told TechNewsDaily. But some companies fear moving because of concerns about intellectual property protection, he added.

 Deposits of rare earth elements exist in the United States, Canada and other countries. But only China’s government supports the mining and refining industries capable of processing the resources from start to finish.

Mobile Commerce to grow to $120B by 2015

Filed under: Mobile — Raja @ 11:16 am

From ABI research:

In 2015,  shoppers around the world are expected to spend about $119 billion on goods and services purchased via  mobile phones. That number represents about 8% of the total e-commerce market.

 

“Mobile online shopping is reaching critical mass,” says senior analyst Mark Beccue. “In the United States, mobile online shopping rose from $396 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2009. While definitions of ‘mass market adoption’ vary, a more than fivefold increase in one year indicates significant consumer interest.”

 

Noteworthy is that even that $1+ billion turnover in the US is dwarfed by the size of the mobile online shopping market in Japan, which exceeded $10 billion in 2009 alone.

 

This market is growing solidly in Europe too, and is expected to outpace the US by the end of 2010.

 

“The driver for mobile online shopping in the US has been the recent sharp spike in smartphone adoption and the corresponding enthusiasm for mobile Internet. Also, many more retailers have been launching  mobile commerce websites,” adds Beccue. A longer-term driver in global terms is the fact that in many less-industrialized regions, mobile is virtually the only way to access the Internet.

 

Not only does mobile online shopping allow shoppers to manage their time better, but in the fourth quarter of 2009, an interesting trend emerged: consumers were checking out products in bricks-and-mortar retail stores and using their phones for comparison shopping.

 

A subset of mobile commerce is the trade in virtual goods, generally associated with online gaming. This too has seen rapid uptake, as mobile payments are the best option for online purchases under about $20, and this way of shopping is especially suitable for those – often young gamers – without credit cards.

The magic of viral growth

Filed under: Entrepreneurship — Raja @ 10:36 am

Hot mail discovered it. Paypal has it. Facebook has it. Twitter has it. It is the magic of viral growth. You all know what it means. Your customers are your best marketers. If your product usage invloves users bringing in more new users, it can give you exponential growth (if each user brings in 2 or more users).

Seth godin says viral growth trumps lots of faux followers. This is a great insight if understood properly can improve the effectivenss of your marketing.

Viralgrowth Many brands and idea promoters are in a hurry to rack up as many Facebook fans and Twitter followers as they possibly can. Hundreds of thousands if possible.

A lot of these fans and followers are faux. Sunny day friends. In one experiment I did, 200,000 followers led to 25 clickthroughs. Ouch.

Check out the graph on the left. The curves represent different ideas and different starting points. If you start with 10,000 fans and have an idea that on average nets .8 new people per generation, that means that 10,000 people will pass it on to 8000 people, and then 6400 people, etc. That’s yellow on the graph. Pretty soon, it dies out.

On the other hand, if you start with 100 people (99% less!) and the idea is twice as good (1.5 net passalong) it doesn’t take long before you overtake the other plan.  (the green). That’s not even including the compounding of new people getting you people.

But wait! If your idea is just a little more viral, a 1.7 passalong, wow, huge results. Infinity, here we come. That’s the purple (of course.)

A slightly better idea defeats a much bigger but disconnected user base every time.

The lesson: spend your time coming up with better ideas, not with more (faux) followers.

February 15, 2010

Vodafone launches “cheapest cell phone”

Filed under: Mobile — Raja @ 11:53 am

From BBC News:

M-PESA

Mobile banking services have helped drive uptake of phones

The Vodafone 150, unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, will sell for “below $15″ (£10) and is aimed at the developing world.

It will initially be launched in India, Turkey and eight African countries including Lesotho, Kenya and Ghana.

The UN predicts that mobile ownership will reach 5bn in 2010, with most growth in the developing world.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) said that demand was being driven by people using their phones to access banking and mobile health services, the ITU said.

“Even the simplest, low-end mobile phone can do so much to improve healthcare in the developing world,” said ITU secretary general Dr Hamadoun Toure.

For example, he said, SMS can be used to “deliver instructions on when and how to take complex medication such as anti-retrovirals or vaccines”.

“It’s such a simple thing to do, and yet it saves millions of dollars,” he said.

In India people already can buy inexpensive phones that have pretty good feature set. So I am not sure how this new phone plays out.

But I agree about the potential of mobile healthcare. Our company MDava provides exactly the solution mentioned above. We have a platform for providing personalized medcine instructions to large scale population.

Mobile phone operators unite against iphone apps

Filed under: Mobile, Technology — Raja @ 10:11 am

A group of mobile carriers are teaming up against iphone apps to create an open platform for mobile apps.

Woman relaxing browsing apps on her iPhone

A DOZEN of the world’s leading mobile-phone operators will this week band together to strike back at Apple’s dominance of mobile applications.

Orange, Telefonica, AT&T and nine others are forging an alliance to build an open technology platform designed to deliver applications to all mobile-phone users.

Together, the alliance has more than two billion customers. Handset makers Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG are also believed to be supportive. The announcement will be made tomorrow at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The operators hope making it simpler for software developers to create apps will help them compete with Apple.

The applications market is fragmented, meaning that developers must pick and choose who they work with, or else reformat their programs numerous times.

Apple hijacked a lucrative revenue stream when it set up its App Store, which has seen more than three billion apps downloaded to iPhones in little over 18 months. Rival app stores from BlackBerry and Google have also sprung up.

As the industry’s focus shifts from hardware to software, Gartner, the research firm, predicts that spending on handset apps — including games, maps and office tools — will hit $6.2 billion (£4 billion) this year as the volume of downloads rises to 4.5 billion from 2.5 billion last year.

The market will grow further as phones blur with personal computers and e-readers. For example, most of Apple’s 140,000 apps will also be compatible with its new iPad, the tablet computer.

This is a very good development for mobile innovation. Kudos to apple and google to force these carriers to provide a unified app platform. If not for iphone and android this would have never happened. The carriers woud have been happy to keep their mobile platofrm closed and proprietary.

Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress