Cool Site: American Rhethoric

Just came across this site which is a store of the popular speeches of all time both fictional & non fictional , I love the idea, I am now going to get busy downloading & listening to them, You enjoy too.....American Rhethoric
Via Cyberlibris

Podcast, Speech, TimePass

Innovation - 1

Reading this article from Strategy + Business, Titled "Top-Down Disruption" By N Carr.

I for this interesting excerpt from the article, in this section the author quote Professo Christensen, the author of the book Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
, Discussed in this passage is the model of disruptive innovation.

Professor Christensen also offers a model for what a disruptive innovation looks like. He argues that, when initially introduced, a disruptive product or service gener-ally “underperform[s] established products in mainstream markets,” “almost always takes root in a very undemanding application,” and “sells for less money” than current offerings. It tends to be ignored by the majority of buyers, who view it as falling short of their needs, and shunned by traditional suppliers, who see little to gain by selling a cheap product to a niche market. Because of these characteristics, the innovation initially gains a foothold in the lower reaches of the market, among less discriminating cus-tomers. Then, as its performance steadily improves, it rises to redefine the entire market, displacing industry incumbents in the process.

Tags: Innovation, Disruptive Technologies.

I want to be a Productive blogger...Do you?

Just finished reading this interesting post on how to be more productive as a blogger. This post provides a basic list of ideas, some of these I have already been doing for sometime now others let me give it a shot. In fact I am going to take each of the ideas/suggestions and talk about how I go about implementing them.

1. Set aside time for writing
I do this everyday first thing in the morning. Yes that's right I do this before I get into my day.

2. Create (and stick to) a publishing schedule
Every Weekday, Weekend, I usually don't post unless....Well those creative juices are in play.

3. Keep an Idea Journal.
Two places, My Outlook Draft/Task & other is a notebook that I carry around with me. I am looking to get my self a tablet (not any time soon) to replace the book.

4. Take advantage of creative highs
This is when I write most of the posts, I realize that these creative highs for me are usually triggered by listening or reading great stuff, than I just cant stop talking/writing about this stuff.

5. Take some time off.
Weekends are usually my sanctuary

6. Read
1-2 hrs a day

Other ideas
7. Start with a title
8. Connect and motivate
9. Don’t fear failure
10. Don’t get too hung up on grammar (or pronunciation if you’re a podcaster).
11. Stay positive
12. Try something new - NEED TO.


Source : To-Done

via: Terry

Tags: Productivity, Blogger, Workflow

Networked Communications Predictions

No. 10: Home LANs will proliferate.
No. 9: Knowledge mining will transform the way we do business.
No. 8: Wireless and wired lines will converge -- accelerating virtualization.
No. 7: Broadband will be common -- leading to the death of locality.
No. 6: e-Collaboration will dominate the workplace -- promoting foster next-generation speech recognition.
No. 5: Sensor networks will be everywhere.
No. 4: Wireless Internet will be big -- driving mobility.
No. 3: Convergence of communications and applications will become a reality -- the network will be the computer.
No. 2: Security is critical.
No. 1: IP will eat up everything.

Source: CRN

Via: Emergic

Tags: Ideas, Predictions, Network, Communications

Entrepreneurs can leverage

A few major themes that entrepreneurs can leverage:

Time: No one has enough of time. Saving it and making the most of it are key drivers of consumer purchases today. Google and Blackberry save time. Portable music, DVD, and game players enable higher quality activities in limited time.

Full Duplex Automation: Most services on the web are automated on the provider side, but require lots of effort by the end user. What I want is services that are automated at BOTH ends: full duplex automation. My two favorite examples are MyYahoo and TiVO. You program them once and they work for you forever.

Universal authoring: It?s astonishing how many devices exist today that enable consumers to create content. The tools for managing that content are still pretty lame.

Here are a few of the innovations that I want to see . . .

Digital safekeeping: Now that family photos, music, and video are digital, protecting them is a real priority. What is the right model for personal back up and how do your make it automatic?

Full Duplex Search: Imagine a search engine that could watch the web for you. It could keep its eyes peeled for bargains, for specific news triggers, or whatever you want . . . and then send you an email?or execute a transaction?when it found what you want.

BitTorrent client for the rest of us: Video on the internet is way too hard to use. What I want is a product that provides TiVO-plus functionality for digital downloads over the internet . . . full duplex automation that doesn?t require a computer science degree. Done right, the client could find, download (and even pay for) digital files of any type.

Ability to buy anything on eBay with a credit card: This isn?t a start-up opportunity, but it?s something eBay should be doing.

Source: Roger Macnamee

via: Emergic

Tags: Entreprenuer

Recruiting based on 5 Cs

There are 5Cs in hiring/recruiting. Each have equal weight in the equation.

Competence. Most companies hire with about 100% weight on competence. But for Alan, it's important, but only part of the equation. If someone is just right for a company, but doesn't have the competence for the particular job, they can be trained. But some of the other Cs can't be as easily taught.

Capability. This represents how much potential an employee has to grow in their job and be promoted in the future.

Compatibility. For Alan, this has become one of the most important criteria lately. A person has to fit with the team.

Character. Values, ethics, etc.

Commitment. This means that a person will be loyal and dedicated.

Source: Paul Allen

via: Emergic

Tags: Hiring, Management, Team

Quotes

"When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you." African Proverb

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." Albert Einstein

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from." T.S. Eliot

via Dina Mehta

220$ Service .....Car Free

220$ Service .....Car Free, Quite an unusual title... I know , but the concept has got me thinking a lot of about revenue models/ business models in general. First let me explain the concept, I was listening to Jonathan Schwartz's (COO/President SUN) speech at the OSBC 2005 via IT Conversations. This was a very insightful presentation/talk, I learnt quite a few things and got a wealth of new ideas / concepts. One of his slides was titled the "Value is in the Service" and he goes on to explain the OnStar program of GM. Today they offer a service at 18$ basic service and 80$ premium service, Jonathan asked the team at what price of the service would they be able to offer the car of free and the team is supposed to have shot back 220$, so as it noticed they have done the analysis, and may be sometime in the near future this might be a reality. Yes this is the same model as used by cellular service providers and mobile handsets. I believe i did no justice to explaining the concept, I suggest...no...Recommend that you listen to this yourself.

Given this back ground may be its time to rethink your/our business model see if there are any innovation that can be introduced there, more importantly look at where in your industry the value is in now and will be in , in the near future, Value keeps moving around in the stack, the organization ability to move to the VALUE ZONE is critical.

Quote

"[Other] admirals more frightened of losing than anxious to win." - Major Nelson
via Tom Peters.

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
via Tom Peters

Tag in Blogs

With the greater incidence of tag based aggregators like FeedTager, it makes sense to start using TAGs in blogs so this is my first one.

Blog

Community Blog

In the adsense ads in my blog i saw this ad Singapores Blogger Community , i beleive the idea is a good one and that there a whole realm of social networking that can start with such community site, this particular site has some interesting ideas, but i think they can go a long way in improving the UI of the site, check it out, May be its time to set up one here in chennai.

A typical Web2.0 application

Google Maps, there are some really cool applications that are built over Google Maps, the functionality delivered is cool and within a very short time. Wired has this article "Hey Google, Map this" that i got from the tpwire (tom peters companies new service - check it out).

One of these application is housingmaps, it is app that combines real estate listing from craigslist and google city maps, It lets users pinpoint locations, along with one-click access to photos and descriptions, of dozens of available apartments in more than 20 North American cities.

HousingMaps is an eye-opener, offering a simple and easy-to-navigate interface that lets home and rental shoppers take in a neighborhood of offerings at a glance, complete with locations, prices and, in some cases, pictures. Even with the extra data, maps rendered smoothly when we tried them on Thursday.

Hackers have also meshed Google Maps with sites like the photo-sharing service Flickr , Yahoo's traffic notifications, city transit maps and others.

Mischa Levin, a law student at Chicago's De Paul university, used Gregory Sadestsky's hack, which mashed up Google Maps and traffic information, first from Yahoo and now from Traffic.com. It has been a daily timesaver. "I check it every single morning before I leave," said Levin. "If I'm driving and if there's traffic conditions that are really bad, I'll take public transit. It shows traffic advisories, so if there's a Cubs game, I know the streets will be full of assholes, so I don't have to go there."

GMAIL - Features

Google ponders Blogger, Gmail integration , this is the title of the post in Infoworld, At first cut i really like the idea, i believe that it will be of use to me , Now i need to open multiple windows, one has gmail on it and that open right through the day , that is my primary email ID for most acitvities other than my office mail account, Now everytime i need to blog, i use the web interface of blogger to get it done, yes i could probably install blogjet etc to make the whoe process easier but since i blog both from my home & office and office policy doesnt let us install software other than the standard on our machines, i find it easier to stay with the web interface.

GMAIL , should evaluate the option of becoming a blogging tool, that is not only for blogger, but using the other webservices , people should be allowed to blog in MT/UserLand others from blogger, this way that becomes my one stop interface.

GMAIL team go for it.

30 Second Pitch

Business week has an interesting article titled "Mastering the 30 second pitch", Well i have always felt the need for this, i beleive strongly that you have the that right pitch which you can deliver in a short while which would help you get your foot in, which will keep the customers interest flowing. Well this article by an ex CNN correspondent , turned presentation guru tries to help iron out this.

He suggests as suggested in NEVER EAT ALONE that research is the only way to get the pitch right, He says the pitch has to answer the following questions?

• What is my service, product, company, or cause?


• What problem do I solve (or what demand do I meet)?


• How am I different?


• Why should you care?

Read the article & also Never Eat Alone

Continuing - " World is Flat "

In an earlier post i had discussed the book "World is Flat", Recently tom peters put it up as a must read book, Also he has put up some slides on the book, check them out.

Blogs & Career

Blogs and how they help careers, Well i found this interesting article at fastcompany , titled "Blogging Up"

Excerpts:

How are blogs being used in the hunt for talent?
Having a blog is almost like building a brand for yourself, so it's largely meant for that tacit process of having people scout you. If you have a medium readership of 1,000 or so people who read your blog daily, those are 1,000 more people who might think of you when a job opens up.

So should we all run home and start our own blogs?
If your ultimate aim is simply to get a new job somewhere, that's probably not the best reason to start a blog. What's most important is to attract other people in the same profession. Think, "How do I make myself part of this community?" You want to start by putting the time into having fresh, interesting, original material. Then the key is reading other people's blogs and commenting on them. When you comment, you have a link back to your own blog, and if they think what you've said is interesting, they'll keep coming back.

via Micro Persuasion

Another post that was on the same theme in the recent past was one by Steve Shu,titled "To What Extent Does Blogging Affect Job Prospects?" Excerpts:

For myself, I’ve had a variety of opportunities pop up because of my blog. Blogging is not my trade though, and it is something that happened somewhat accidentally for me. It has taken some time to generate opportunities (3-6 months plus ongoing experimentation). One opportunity included a book deal on corporate blogging that came out of the blue (which fell through at a later point, but the point is getting opportunities to step up to the plate and swing at the ball). Other opportunities include meeting people around the world (e.g., Germany, UK, France). I obtained a consulting opportunity with the blogging software provider 21Publish as a result of blogging. I also obtained an author relationship with Creative Weblogging as a result of blogging. Clients have told me that they read my blog and that it serves as an additional thing to talk about on the job (some have told that they have purchased books I recommended). There are also some new opportunities cropping up for me as related to my blog and other efforts - I may soon have multiple employers in addition to me being a freelance consultant. I don’t expect all opportunities to pan out or to be a good fit, but the fact that blogging opens doors, well this is a good thing.

Lovemarks

LM-logo
Originally uploaded by prai79.

Guess what i am readin, yes i finally got my hands on "LOVEMARKS". Since i was not able to find the book here, i had asked a friend of mine who was travelling to the US to get me a copy , and he DID. - thanks sri

Here is an interview with the Author Kevin Roberts, by Tom Peters. I got wind of this books first from tom peters blog and than from his slides.

Also Tom Peters & Kevin Roberts did a Live Meeting together, its a definite must see - LINK. Here are Toms slides & Kevin Roberts slides for the seminar.
Here is some commentary about the same.

Get a taste the book (Get 16 Pages from the book)

More about the book in posts to come.

LoveMarks
Originally uploaded by Prashanth.Rai.

LOVE

CIO Weblog

Some of you might not be aware that i Guest blog at the CIO Weblog , i have put up quite a few interesting post there about the technology space, Check them out out. Below i have just summarised some the posts with links.

Topic: Open Source
Posts:

Understand Open Source License
Government Guide to Open Source
Open Source Business Model...Not a Paradox - 1
Open View of the Database
Novell Open Source
Open Source Leader - Sugar CRM
Open Source Tsunami

Topic: General
Posts:

Are you on Skype 1
Are you on Skype 2
Do you want to Outsource
CIO Spending IT Survey
To Flip or To Last
Oracle in Talks with Siebel