:: Sense – The Way I Sense ::

Contrast has never defined itself with such a high contrast ratio !

The High

&

The Low

Aah, Din’t take long for youtube to be snapped up for a staggering $1.6 Billion. Sometimes, am wondering if Google’s buying out companies to justify it sitting on huge piles of cash. But a look at the finer details reveals its an all-stock transaction. Well, yeah, it’s a free world and sometimes insanity comes with such fat tags attached

Considering the funny markets I track at work (electronic markets, in case ya missed it), I have been watching the development of the Sem India project with more than a bit of interest and excitement. With the Govt’s much awaited Semiconductor policy yet to take any shape whatsover, and the Govt having successfully scared other potential fab-starters what with their overbearing bias to the Sem India project, it remains to be seen if it is going to be one of those areas that India needs to sit back and watch how the Indian consumer becomes one of the biggest markets for imported chips ! Of course, for the record an assembly and testing facility is in the works at the fab city, again driving the image that labor costs are what drives companies to set up shop here . Came across this case study from Thunderbird on site selection for Fab companies, with Intel as the case in point. You can check it out here (PDF). In the meanwhile, if ya know anyone who’s hiring at Sem India, do let me in on that

Sometimes it really takes just a single site to prove that insanity has come to rule the online roost again. Take a look at a site called Weblo that was launched a few days back. This site allows one to buy, yes-for real $$$, any and every piece of real estate that they wanted to buy in the real world, but couldn’t afford it ! Essentially, you could buy cities, states, countries, the whole monty ! Same goes with domains and believe it or not, with celebrities ! You could have ads on each of your properties, and make money off them, and when you believe market is ripe, even go sell them or auction ‘em off, true ebay style ! Now, I am a big enough fan of board games and the like, but to take the whole concept of a board game, extrapolate it globally and throwing in real cash…Hmm…More than a bit disconcerting…To me, more than anything else, it brings up the legal issues that are likely to come up ! Say, I own Harry Potter (the character) and google.com, and make money out of both these, why should they sit idle? But having said that, this has the potential to go insanely viral and build up volumes quite fast ! And which is what I believe the site owners are targetting at. Make a critical user-base, monetise the site from day-one, and hope to be bought out before they are sued left-right-center. And all of a sudden, Mark Cuban’s comments on Youtube seem to be applicable to a whole host of sites

Went to the Google Wordmasters 2006 challenge today. While I am no creative nut, it sure was interesting to participate in writing of a different nature. Writing (yes, good old fashioned pen-on-paper types) 200 words using 20 keywords that are supplied and being creative, hmm, can be a challenge…In case you are interested in the exact set of words, check this post by another participant….While I did enjoy the 45 odd minutes of writing, what was more intriguing to me was the kind of participation that I saw at the venue. Google had originally taken a print ad stating that the contest was open to only the first 300 registrants. To my utter surprise, a good 25-30% of the entire junta there were pretty…umm…senior, the above 40-club. And quite a few above 50 too. While English as a medium of communication is quite popular out here in Chennai, however, the fact that these older people too exhibited a keen sense of purpose in reading the ad and registering online immediately suggests quite a few things. A quick chat with a few of such people revealed that a few of their friends regretted on missing out since they were late in registering, not because they did not know how to browse ! The form for registration was, in itself, quite basic. Just thinking of these….Are we under-estimating the internet-savviness of the older generation (I, for one, was!)? Or is it that a simplistic procedure attracts such people? Hmm..Interesting questions in these days of online marketing.

As for the contest itself, the best prize is a visit to the Hyderabad office of Google, which, imnsho, isn’t really something to look upto for..Yea, a visit to the googleplex would have been just the thing that the doc ordered for

They’ve had their ups and lows, but they’ve never failed to entertain! Each in their own way, have left their mark on sport in ways very few sportsmen have.

 I might not be a big fan/follower of sports, but there are days when you really feel sports will be less interesting in future.

Yep, PaGaLGuY.com turns four this Saturday. It has been a journey like no other. Starting as just another site, having fun, racking up numbers (@last count, over 78000!), facing misguided mainstream media’s attention, and all the while, being the great community that it is ! Having been around for the better part of these four years, sure feels mighty good to look at where the insanity is headed. Here’s hoping it touches a lot more lives

And yes, just in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a host of amazing contests up to celebrate the event. Get to win travel trips, Tees, Books, and lots more only at the hotbed of insanity !

Days hurtling on real fast. Was just going thro’ this nice li’l article on TV News in India. It directed me to one of my best reads in recent times, a blog on The War for News in India. Racy, Unsubstantiated, but definitely unnerving if you are on the other side of the News channels. Do give it a dekko. And yea, people seem to have learnt after the Mediaah debacle. Its all anon posting there

And lest you missed it, 59 year olds with a tube of hand cream are harbingers of paranoia now

Well, you read that right. Isn’t that like, an oxymoron? Well, If you still think so, then I guess its time to take a hard look at it. The web 2.0 community scene has been in the throes of a significant debate on the decision by Jason Calacanis, he of weblogs fame, to reward top posters at Netscape ! This is part of his efforts as a General Manager at AOL handling the netscape.com transition to a user-driven content generated site, much like the popular Digg & Reddit. Just in case you were not aware, sites like these have a transparent (?) voting mechanism where the links most voted are shifted to the home page and others get buried deep under. Both these sites enjoy a very strong community, more so with the nouveau tech savvy people to whom sites like slashdot are relics of the past ! Jason’s decision has indeed sparked a strong debate on if, and how, top contributors in a community are to be recognized. Is monetary compensation a just solution, considering all such sites make money off the back of these users that bring in traffic. Or would attaching a $ tag to top posters defeat the very purpose of the community? Jason spars with Digg’s co-founder Kevin Rose and the story is currently the hot point of discussion.

While Kevin of Digg goes on to say that they will have some sort of recognition system for top posters, however, he makes it point blank clear that $$$ won’t be involved. And this line of argument has clearly helped Jason in showing how Kevin isn’t sharing the $$$ that he is making off the adverts ! Mediashift has a very good coverage of the entire issue; worth more than a read !

 Having been associated with a community that, I like to believe, is a strong one, this debate holds a lot of meaning and direction. In fact, for everyone that is involved in creating and nurturing online communities, this indeed is an excellent point that has been raised. Why are top posters at community driven sites, top? Did they always have money as a motivating factor at the back of their mind. Or are they any less motivated to contribute once they realize the community also makes $$$ for someone. Can, and do, top posters draw motivation that monies raised by site promoters are almost always used (ofcourse, in part) to develop the community even more? Or do top posters keep site-hopping in the face of blatant commercialization of communities? Would the offer of money push away not just top posters, but the larger audience? Lotta questions. Sure would be mighty interesting to see where this all leads. Any takers? No, I wont pay for a discussion

And before I even realized, its been a coupla years since I started blogging ! Not bad, I should say, for I did not really think I would last thus far But yes, in the true sense of the word, mine might not be a blog at all. I don’t really talk much on personal life or work life, although I have been intending to do for quite a while. To me, it’s more an indication of what I was doing at a particular point in life…Sometimes more, sometimes less, But at the end of it all, something to sit back and read later and smile….Hopefully, it shall go on ….

Just in case you’ve missed, M$ has finally taken the wraps off their digital music platform, Zune. And this has in turn created a flutter in the market. Analysts predict that this is likely to antagonize M$’s partners such as Creative, iRiver and many others and many in the blogosphere have already made it sound like a project gone horribly wrong. If you look at media/blog/analyst coverage on all things M$ and google, its kinda interesting. When google says it is building a toothpick, people predict the next renaissance in the toothpick markets, otoh, when M$ makes an announcement, one only finds dooms day predictions for its product, and not the market. Definitely, while google may still be struggling to reduce spread of revenues from search ads, it has made sure the buzz factor is at resonance ! Personally, I think Zune definitely has enough potential to shake up Apple’s stranglehold on the market, and more importantly, it gives M$ a toehold into a consumer’s digital media landscape.

Closer home, you simply cannot miss this amazing & exclusive interview with the God of Marketing, Dr.Philip Kotler, published right here on PaGaLGuY ! I had an opportunity to go to his seminar here at Chennai, Courtesy Great Lakes, and its not tough to see why he is named one of the world’s top management gurus ! The interview was done by Allwin, who has now headed to Wharton. All da best pal !

So some wise souls sitting up there thought a few websites were spreading anti-national sentiments. And in typical babudom style, bring up a circular/note banning a dozen odd websites. And it so happens a few happen to be blogs hosted on blogger. And our dear ISPs in their over zealousness to play pally with the regulator go overboard and block the entire blogspot and geocities domains. And then, all hell breaks loose ! They hyper-inward looking blogging community starts the censorship bandwagon, and very soon mainstream media picks its up and its all mayhem. Right from /. to BBC, everyone compares India with China and rues about how democracy has failed us as a country repeatedly !

As I see it, its a case of a foot-in-mouth on part of the ISPs, and if I could, a very large foot ! was the extreme reaction from blogosphere really justified? Is bungling up considered censorship ? I know many might not agree with my understanding of the situation, but what the heck. I still consider India a democracy