http://www.rajajasti.com Musings on Technology, Media and Business Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:02:37 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Awesome post from Seth godin: When the platform changes, the leaders change. Wordperfect had a virtual monopoly on word processing in big firms that used DOS. Then Windows arrived and the folks at Wordperfect didn't feel the need to hurry in porting themselves to the new platform. They had achieved lock-in after ... http://www.rajajasti.com/2010/03/11/when-platforms-change-opportunities-beckon/ Is internet killing the print news business or is it merely exposing the problem with the newspaper business model? The newspaper subsidizes news with advertising from classifieds and special interest pages such as autos, real estate and enrertainment where it is much easier to sell advertisign. Now that the classifieds are moving to ... http://www.rajajasti.com/2010/03/11/economics-of-news/ Marc Benioff pioneered SaaS with salesforce.com. He says he started salesforce.com prompted by a simple question: 'why isn't all enterpsirse software like Amazon.com?'. He sees another evolution now prompted by the questio: 'why isn't all enterpsirse software like Facebook'?. He calls it the facebook imperative which inspired salesforce chatter. I quit my job ... http://www.rajajasti.com/2010/03/10/evolution-of-enterprise-software/ USA Today reports that Target is launching mobile coupons at its stores. Using your cellphone during checkout at Target could soon earn you discounts. Starting Wednesday, the giant retailer will allow customers to take advantage of special mobile-coupon offers on their handsets. The coupon is redeemed when the bar code on the phone ... http://www.rajajasti.com/2010/03/09/target-launches-mobile-coupons/ Building startups takes a lot of patience and preseverence. There may be times when a startup comes perilously close to death. But an entrepreneur's belief and fight can singlehandedly will the company to success (providing the company's vision has merit which is not always clear, but that's another story). Pandora, a online music ... http://www.rajajasti.com/2010/03/08/pandora-story/ SMS alerts can be very useful for schools to communicate with parents. Blackboard, an education software company, has acquired Safe-T-Net which develops an SMS alerts system for K12 schools for $33M. Blackboard, a company that designs an education software for school groups, has acquired mobile messaging provider Saf-T-Net for $33 million. Saf-T-Net develops ... http://www.rajajasti.com/2010/03/08/sms-alerts-for-schools/ This poem is written by my daughter and her friends. I really like it. Seasons of Life As time ticks by, the days progress So crisp and fresh, the autumn breeze Twirls around or sprints in gusts Through the shifting trees The leaves, the leaves, they once were lithe Now they flutter to the ground Brittle and stiff, ... http://www.rajajasti.com/2010/03/06/seasons-of-life-a-poem/ Social media is making all transactions, even financial ones, frictionless. A simple typo gave Michael Ivey the idea for his company. One day in the fall of 2008, Ivey’s wife, using her pink RAZR phone, sent him a note via Twitter. But instead of typing the letter d at the beginning ... http://www.rajajasti.com/2010/03/06/the-new-color-of-money/ Don Dodge talks about the massive platform shifts and the next big one - the mobile platform and why the leaders fail to make these shifts. Platform shifts happen every decade or so in computing. The leaders of the previous generation are rarely successful in dominating the next generation platform. IBM ... http://www.rajajasti.com/2010/03/04/tectonic-shift-to-mobile-platform/ Richard Wong of accel partners wrote a nice piece on this topic: Mobile data is on fire. Despite a few false starts, we are now in the midst of a transformative “Open Mobile 3rd Wave” (remember WAP, and J2ME?). We are just in the early swell of the wave; the iPhone ... http://www.rajajasti.com/2010/03/04/navigating-the-fragmented-mobile-ecosystem/