Entrepreneur

These posts are off the blog by the owner of mavericks well, that is what he is now read the articles listed below to get an idea of how he got here,

Success and Motivation, Part 1
Success and Motivation, almost Part 2
Success and Motivation, Part 2
Success and Motivation, Part 3
Success and Motivation P4

There are few authors who write good pieces for aspiring entrepreneurs:

http://bnoopy.typepad.com/bnoopy/
http://www.feld.com/blog/

Airtel - BlackBerry - GPRS

Today while reading the economic times i noticed this article about the announcement by AIRTEL, one of the leading Cellar Service Providers in India, that it was launching the blackberry service, well like all gadget freaks i wanted one immdly.

So i called the Care Touch center of Airtel, I am a previliged customer so i dont need to listen to the machine first before i talk to the person, i get the person straight, i appreciate this service a lot. And like the part where the send me an sms after the call and check if i enjoyed the experience, they close the feedback loop also immdly, which is pretty impressive.

Sorry for digressing, back to the black berry, i asked the operator about the Blackberry Service they are offering and was expecting an answer that they didnt know and would check and get back to me but to my surprise they had the information ready....surprise!!!!...oops back the berry - I would love to buy the black berry, but the problem is the "cost" both onetime and ongoing.

In the case of the berry the costs are HIGH! not only do i have to shell out some 35000rs for thier top end device, i also need to pay them a minimum/without voice call costs included monthly charge of almost 2000rs, Yes there will be a lot of people with that sort of disposable income who will pick it up , but i am thinking what if they reduced the charges and made it more avialable for the masses and then they would have a lot more users, they can atleast reduce the ongoing charges.

This problem is common to their GPRS service as well, it costs a good 600rs per month flat retal fee, it is not based on usage. This is expensive, now! get the charges down and imagine the number of people that will start using the service, imagine the number of applications that would become available,i am sure there will be a lot of teenagers willing to play online games on thier mobile phone if only it was affordable. I have a nokia ngage, it was touted as the mobile gameboy...there is now the ngage QD which has comeout , and there are a lot of people with GPRS enabled phones. So i think its time the CSP (AIrtel) in this case got its act together and started seeing value in the bottom of the pyramid(Prahalad CK)

Bottom of Pyramid:
Quick Overview: I had once had the pleasure of visiting a presentaion at the CLRI center in chennai, this is where he spoke about he pyramid principle, Where he was asking organisations to look at the masses, where there is less disposable income but more numbers rather than focusing on the top of the pyramid which had more money but were fewer in number.

There is a book on this concept read about it at

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
by C.K. Prahalad
Wharton School Publishing, Pearson Publications, 2004
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/book-review.jhtml?id=4433&t=nonprofit&nl=y
Is your company missing a market of four billion people?

Link Blog

Update: Blogging has been scarce as i have been reading up on a lot of things and reviewing a lot of interesting stuff, updates on the blogsphere are available on the Link Blog:
http://www.bloglines.com/blog/prashanth

I WANT to Live IT

One of colleagues, has picked up this interesting habit every day he sends some of us in the organization an interesting passage, i am sure he picks it up from some where ...refuses to divulge the source. i enjoy reading them. Infact i have been putting them in a folder to blog them/about them one of these days. But today's note really forced me to write about it immdly.

Live it

If you have something to say, say it! If you see that something must be done, do it. If you have an idea, pursue it. If you see a possibility, explore it. If you have a dream, live it!

Why do you think these things come to you? For you to ignore them? No, of course not. The reason you can see what must be done is because you're the one who can do it. The reason you have a dream is because you're the person who can live it.

Would you buy a loaf of bread and never eat it? Would you build a house and never live in it? Life comes to you in abundance every moment of every day, and it speeds away from you just as fast. Use it while you have it. That means right now!

Speak your mind. Make a difference. Live life as you envision it. Your possibilities are nothing short of astounding, and you know it. What a waste it would be to hold back even for a minute. Stand up, go forward. Fill each of your days with joy and meaning.

Question: Do any of us really live it?
Question: Is it that only the people who really live it succeed.

Life...the message

Picked up this blog entry directly from Tom Peters Blog and believe what is being said is profound.

If you go to his blog he has mentioned a quote "My Life is my message" which was by ghandi.

Around that he goes on to write the below blog entry.

Make This Day Matter.

If ... "My life is my message" ...
Then ... what will you/I do today to clarify and amplify your/my message?

Choose wisely. (WHAT IS YOUR MESSAGE?)
Review (and report ... to yourself) at the end of the day.

Repeat.
Daily.
Forever

Personally i think it is a brilliant piece like many others by tom peters.

We all get engulfed in the routine/mundane activities of life each day, that we completely forget the important things...our message...which is our life.

Next Big thing. Semantic Web - 1

Well off late atleast in the blogsphere there is a little noise, about "Semantic Web" being the next big thing.

Recently MIT Technology Reivew ran an article on the inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee of the original WWW, now also the creator of the Semantic Web.

Before commenting on the potential or the lack of it of the Semantic Web, i have decided that i will first take the time and understand the concept in totallity.

What is the Semantic Web?
The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries. It is a collaborative effort led by W3C with participation from a large number of researchers and industrial partners. It is based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF), which integrates a variety of applications using XML for syntax and URIs for naming.

"The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation." -- Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, Ora Lassila, The Semantic Web, Scientific American, May 2001

Via W3C

Since RDF is an important/key component is the concept of the semantic web, lets try and understand what that is all about.

What is RDF?
The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a language for representing information about resources in the World Wide Web.

RDF is intended for situations in which this information needs to be processed by applications, rather than being only displayed to people. RDF provides a common framework for expressing this information so it can be exchanged between applications without loss of meaning. Since it is a common framework, application designers can leverage the availability of common RDF parsers and processing tools.

Via W3C

Welcome to the Blogsphere

Yesterday, I got two people interested in my blog, with just one post, and a post which I thought wouldn’t appeal to too many people other than me. But this post seems to have struck a chord with both my Dad and another uncle; they seemed to have really liked the post.

But yesterday I was getting dad set up with bloglines to help him read and follow some blogs, during which I realised there a lot of people out there who still need to understand what blogs are and how they are helpful/painful.

This spawned off this post, I will start with the information of "what a blog is" and how people can go about setting up one and reading many.

Lot of bloggers have written what blogs are? Including why they blog and the tools and technologies that they use, This post will be an attempt to aggregate these posts being a single point of information for all the readers.

What are blogs?
"I think of my blog as an über home page. It's the web page that opens when I open my browser and it's the focal point for all my computing. What makes it different from a traditional home page is that in addition to containing links to places that I regularly visit, it:

 is a publishing environment that makes it very easy to add or edit items.
 is a living document that watches other parts of the Net and displays contents from or information about those parts (for example, when the last update was).
 feeds information about itself to anything that wants to listen. These other places can point to, publish, or run programs on the parts of my blog that they are interested in.
 enables different views of the items, for example:
o by date
o by category
o by popularity
o by rating
 Traditionally blog items are sorted by reverse date (newest first).
 allows people to post and read comments about a blog item. Comments can be either local or remote (e.g., in someone else's blog).
 makes it easy for others (both people and programs) to directly link to and/or criticize a blog item or blog property. "

"Blog is an instant publishing tool. Blog is freedom of expression. Blogs are fresh and and somewhat categorized as beginner's journalism. Blog is by real life people who face the real problems and in turn express their anger, joy, sorrow, light moments etc, and not experts in journalism. Blogs can be used as:-

 Universities for students
 Companies for knowledge management
 News source other then regular media
 Business blogs to communicate with clients and display new products
 A form of resume
 Chit chat
 Personal blogs
 Single theme blogs by experts and enthusiasts"

My View
"Blogs are great place to write/articulate things that you have in mind for your benefit later and others benefit today" In economy or world where knowledge is wealth/power. There is a huge need for people to have access to information/knowledge, before we could only get information from the web today, they are able to access knowledge, as bloggers don’t only state facts they put a context to it along with their opinion and critical analysis.

Knowledge is wealth/power the more we have access to the better we off we are. Blogs open whole new worlds to people, both on the professional side as well as personal side, I still haven’t heard of anybody meeting thru blogs and getting hitched, but for sure have heard of somebody getting a job/offer based on the blog.

The two anti's of blogging are

information overload
attention diversion to the not so important things,
loss in productivity

I can completely comprehend these points and agree with them to a large extent, it is very easy to get sucked into the blog world and get consumed by it, and we need to be careful that it not affect our work/personal lives.

Then not only would you hear about people meeting and getting married via blogs, you will hear of divorces because of blogs.

Now that you know what a blog is there are two important things you will need to know

1. How to read the blogs
2. How to Create your own blog

For both these there is already an excellent peice available at heather(microsoftie) blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/heatherleigh/archive/2004/09/24/233979.aspx

Quote - Change

In times of great change, some things get harder, some things get easier. Concentrate on the former, because that's where the money is.

This is a quote I picked up from one of the blogs that I read, I think it is very interesting and very true.

I also started analysing, if reading this quote has made an impact on me, or for that matter an approach or direction lets say we read it at a time that it is relevant in our lives than it makes sense, but when we read it if its not relevant but is relevant at a later time do we/ do I implement these pearls of wisdom. Do these things get settled in my sub cons and work automatically when the situation in upon me, I don't know!!! - Does anybody else?

So I made a change to this quote which I thought was more applicable to me:

In times of great change, some things get harder, some things get easier, step back and analyze the situation then Concentrate on the former things, because that's where the money is.

Reel Life Impacts Real Life

I am a movie buff, doesnt come up too many times in my blogs but is a fact, I really enjoy movies. Recently I watched "TROY" for probably the nth time. There is one place in the movie just before they set out to troy, when Achilles(spelling is off) mother tells him that he has two choices.

One to stay in Thesely and here he would find a wife and live a happy life and then he would have children and he would be remembered by them but history/society will not know him or will forget him in a very short time. Or he could go to the WAR and then he would be remembered always, thru the times but will never come back home/ never lead a peacefully life.

I think this is a great statement and will last the test of time, always men/women have a choice, weather to go the full distance or make the choice to lead a more simple & content life. There is no right and wrong way, it is just that we decide what is it for us.

What is your choice going to be?