Happy New Year

Wishing all of you a very Happy & Prosperous new year. Have a great 2006.

Good post on resolutions by Tom Peters.

I may write more, even a lot more, about New Year's Resolutions. Or not. But when I sat down, quietly, to think about my stance toward 2006, a quote of Eleanor Roosevelt's drifted before my mind's eye: "Do one thing every day that scares you."

Merry Cristmas

Wishing you a very Happy & Merry Christmas - Have a Great Time.

Books

I finished the lance armstrong book and now have started with "The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari", Couple of interesting bits.

"Begin to live out of the glory of your imagination, not of your memoy"

Things are always created twice: first in the workshop of your mind and then, and only then, in reality. - Blueprinting.

India Ecommerce

IAMAI estimates the size of the Indian e?commerce market will touch Rs 2,300 crore (around 10 per cent of the organised Indian retail market) by 2006-2007 ? a 95 per cent rise over last year?s figures of Rs 1,180 crore and an over-300 per cent rise over the figures of 2004-05.

Ajit Balakrishnan, chairman and CEO of Rediff.com, says, ?There are several factors that will influence the growth trajectory of e-commerce. Such as, the growth of the overall Internet user base, quality of Internet access through the use of the Net arising from offices and homes versus colleges and cybercafes, quality of access enabled by broadband penetration and the extent of credit card (stands at 5 million) and debit card use on the Internet.?

Ecommerce

Interesting Series at Emergic - Best of 2005

etc Category
Entrepreneurship and Management
Chindia
The Power of Us
Software
Mobility (Part 2)
Mobility
Google
Ajax & Web2.0
Year-End Reflections

Money in the LongTail

Interesting piece at the venture blog on the longtail and where the money is in the long tail.

"Six months ago there was barely a pitch I heard that didn't include a slide entitled "Long Tail" or "The Long Tail of [fill in the vertical]," with the obligatory long tail curve. Impressively, it has taken less than a year of entrepreneurs explicitly referencing and explaining the Long Tail before it has become so well recognized and understood that it need only be implicated in passing without the same sort of fanfare as it used to receive. This is by no means an indication of the diminishing relevance of the Long Tail. Quite to the contrary. It is a recognition that the Long Tail is so obviously relevant and important as to no longer require explanation. Saying "Long Tail" is like saying "viral" or "search engine optimization" -- the concept is part of the standard parlance for VCs and entrepreneurs alike. "

Source: 1

Currently Reading....

Lance Armstrong - Its Not about the Bike - Really good stuff.

Height of Outsourcing...

December 9, 2005: "Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese" (New York Times, page 1—news section). The "factory" is in Fuzhou, China. The workers are youngsters logging 12-hour shifts. Their clientele? Fellow youngsters from "Seoul to San Francisco," as the Times put it. The "work"? The Chinese youngsters are playing the early levels of video games for their affluent "clients," who want to avoid the pain and time associated with those annoying first few levels.

Source: Tompeters

Essential to surviving/thriving with excellence - Tom Peters

Excellence1982: The Bedrock "Eight Basics"

• A Bias for Action
• Close to the Customer
• Autonomy and Entrepreneurship
• Productivity Through People
• Hands On, Value-Driven
• Stick to the Knitting
• Simple Form, Lean Staff
• Simultaneous Loose-Tight Properties

Excellence2005: The Bedrock Baker's Dozen

• A Bias For Action Is Job One! (Construct a discipline/Culture of EXECUTION!)
  
• DECENTRALIZATION! ACCOUNTABILITY! (Tom's "Top Two," 1965-2005.)
  
• Fail. Forward. Fast. ("Reward Excellent Failures, Punish Mediocre Successes.")
  
• "Metabolic Management" Matters! (Hustle! Adapt! EAT CHANGE! Win the "O.O.D.A. Loop" War—Confuse Your Competitors!)
  
• INNOVATE or Die. ("Game-changers" or Bust! Lead the Customer! Just Shout "No" to Imitation!)
  
• A Damn Good Product. (Pursue "Dramatic Difference.")
  
• A Damn Cool Product. (Design Rules!)
  
• Ride the Value Added Curve to the Sky! Sell "GamechangerSolutions"; Provide "Scintillating Experiences"; Become a "Dream Merchant"; Strive to Be a "Lovemark.")
  
• Relentlessly Pursue the "Big Two" Markets. (WOMEN Buy Everything. Boomers & Geezers Have All the Money!)
  
• Best "Talent"/Roster Wins! (HR Rules! Everyone a Leader! Women Lead Best! "Weird" Matters Most! A Workplace to Brag About! Educate for Creativity!)
  
• Wanted/Demanded: Radical Technology Strategies! ("Incrementalism" Is for Wimps!)
  
• Hard Is Soft! Soft Is Hard! (People! Passion! Enthusiasm! Wow! INTEGRITY! TRUST! Good Citizen.)
  
• Accept No Less Than EXCELLENCE! (Excellence, Pursuit thereof, Is the Only Thing That Vaults Everyone Out of Bed in the Morning.)
  

Delicious Acquired

Yahoo Acquires Delicious

Views from

1. Acquired
2. Acquirer
3. VC

All in just a couple of mins.....

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Update: Today i read this post from Feld, though i figure he hasnt read my post, the key is that there is a small people eco system that gets built around each blog, so the information might be unique for them, Yes for the big readers (opml > 200) there is definitely bound to be repetition.

Also on another post feld thought that when blogger said a facility or functionality was good / bad thier posts where very superficial.

Than i read this post by slacker manager which i beleive is relevant on all above 3 counts.

The Several Habits of Wildly Successful del.icio.us Users :

Habit One: Make many marks Bookmark everything you find interesting.
Habit Two: Sir Tag-A-Lot Tag it. Tag it good.
Habit Three: Use the inbox The inbox is a mystery for many folks, but it's a powerful tool.
Habit Four: Mix 'n match Now that you know how to use the inbox, don't feel constrained to individual tags. Mix 'em up.
Habit Five: Stalk other users After tracking a few things for a while, you'll start to wonder where a particular user gets all their interesting bookmarks.
Habit Six: Get it to go Now that you've got a full inbox, you probably don't want to go troll through it every day, trying to figure out what you've already seen.
Habit Seven: Move it around No need for your bookmarks to remain trapped in del.icio.us. If you have a blog, you can export your links a number of ways.

Interesting info ...About Microsoft

For the fiscal year that ended June 30th 2005 Microsoft had revenues of about $40B broken down as follows;
Client Software (Windows desktop OS) - $12.2B
Information Worker (MS Office) - $11.0B
Servers & Tools (Windows Server, SQL Server, .Net development tools) - $9.9B
Home & Entertainment (xBox) - $3.3B
MSN (MSN sites, Search) - $2.3B
Business Solutions (Great Plains, SMB business) - $0.8B
Mobile/Embedded (Windows Mobile) - $0.3B

Microsoft has grown revenues by $4B every year for the past 3 years and is likely to grow by another $4B for the fiscal year that ends June 2006. Microsoft has grown a Google every year

Yahoo is at about $4.8B total revenue and has a market cap of $58B. Ebay has annualized revenues of about $4.2B and a market cap of $63B. Microsoft has grown a Yahoo or an eBay every year too, yet has added virtually nothing to its market cap. You could also add a Siebel ($1.4B), an Adobe ($1.9B) and a Salesforce.com ($237M) combined total revenues and still not equal the growth at Microsoft.

The real key to Microsoft's growth, and value, over the next several years will be the MSN, Home &Entertainment, Business Solutions, and Mobile Embedded businesses. All great businesses with great growth prospects. Now it is all about execution.

Source: Don Dodge