Rocketboom's Ad Model

The world of online advertising is truly changing. I talked about Rocketboom's service a few days back. These guys have come up with a new model for advertising - they will control the content/ad creation. If the sponsor does not like the ad, then the deal is off. Basically, it will require the winning bidder (bids are on eBay) to relinquish creative control and allow Andrew Baron and Amanda Congdon to create the ads. I like the model - don't let you viewers get annoyed by stupid/irrelevant ads and at the same time make the sponsors happy. There is a certain demographis that Rocketboom caters to and I think they are in the best position to create ad content that will appeal to this demographic. Here is the link to the bids on eBay.

Billmonk

You are at a restaurant with your friends and the time comes to pay the bill. Some have cash while others want to use a credit card. You volunteer and say that you will pay the whole bill and collect later. And this doesn't happen and it leaves a bad taste. You feel cheated and it is quite awkward to ask people money. Only thing you can do is hope that it will even out eventually. We all have been in situations like this. Its very awkward. Isn't it? Don't worry. Help is on the way. There is a new service called Billmonk. Check it out. I have registered myself and am going to recommend this to all my friends. It is a simple solution for an age old problem. Ain't web a nice thing!!

Internet Explorer vs. Firefox

Check out a random survey on this topic on Rocketboom, a three minute daily videoblog based in New York City. Interesting points:
1. Firefox seems to be extremely popular with the "hip" crowd
2. Youger people prefer Firefox
3. The folks who prefer IE do so because they don't know of the options (be careful Microsoft)
4. Firefox is perceived to be more secure
5. The key differentiating feature - Tabbed browsing

The last point is really interesting. How did Microsoft with all those smart MBA's didn't figure out the user's preference for tabbed browsing? They had the money to conduct as many focus groups and surveys as they wanted? Anyway, I will leave the topic of "killer feature" for another post.

I am sitting at a Starbucks in San Jose and I asked the same question to the customers here. The result was very similiar. Just one person (out of 10 people I talked to) said he prefers IE and the reason - I am used to it.

Enjoy Rocketboom. Its cool. Check it out.

Sharing - Is it overrated?

How much do I really want to share with rest of the world? We are getting access to new tools everyday that enable us to share our knowledge, interests, browsing behavior with our friends and anyone else who is interested. Do we really have this much appetite for sharing. I am not so sure. Today I checked out RawSugar. Its a competitor to del.icio.us (now part of Yahoo!) RawSugar seems interesting because it gives me the ability to organize my tags in a directory structure. I can integrate the service with my blog i.e. I can embed a tag box and search. I am going to try this service but I am a little skeptical. I will post my thoughts soon.

Biometric Payment

I hear that retailers like Wal-mart and Target are thinking about introducing biometric payment systems to reduce transaction costs. I think this is great news and would accelerate the process of adoption of biometric technology. One of my friends runs a dry cleaning business and is disgusted with the $1,000 he pays to credit card companies. That's a lot of money for a small business owner. 5% of total revenues is substantial. Greater adoption of biometric payment system will drive down the cost of biometric readers and thus making it more affordable to small business owners. We really need alternate payment systems. This "perpetual toll" to credit card companies has to stop. What would be really cool is availability of these biometric readers on personal computers. Imagine what such a thing would do to online retailing. Wal-mart and Target have taken the lead in the "offline" world. It would be great to see Amazon, Google, Dell and others get together for this initiative.

Web 2.0 and impact on enterprise software

Like I mentioned in my last post, talks about Web 2.0 can be heard everywhere in the silicon valley. I have been thinking about what it really means (to me of course.) Fundamentally not a whole lot has changed but we can definitely see a shift in the mindset of people and their expectations from software applications. I type one word and my research process is jump started. I hate filling up forms and registering myself to get access to information and now this is possible. I just walk away from sites that "force" a specific behavior. The web has enabled the computer to behave the way I want it to. It lets me go where my mind wants to go - absolutely free flowing. Now I am spoilt and just imagine if I am asked to use an ERP/CRM system that provides a pathetic user experience. Oh yeah, they are pathetic. I have seen it before. Can you recollect how many times you are forced to do things that are not very intuitive (conveniently called workarounds in the IT world.) Do you see where I am going with this? Yes, enterprise IT systems will have to change (and they will....soon) because it would be foolhardy to expect users to "forget" their great experience with Yahoo!, Google and Flickr when they come to the office on Monday morning. Next generation consumer apps (aka Web 2.0) will force the enterprise software providers to revisit their product roadmaps!

Web - A social interaction platform

It has been a while since I blogged. A lot is happening in the online world and one word that everyone talks about nowadays is Web 2.0. Yes, its buzzword, but quite appropriate. Web is truly becoming a social interaction platform and is transforming the way we keep in touch with each other. Some products that are driving things for now (yes, "for now") are social networking tools like LinkedIn, MySpace, Blogger, and Flickr. We can go on and on. This list will keep growing in the next few months. And I think I will try to evaluate each of these in the coming months - just for kicks.

I have been wanting to try Flickr for some time now. Finally I got to it. I have to say that Flickr is awesome. I think I will get hooked to this "movement" soon.

Here are some pictures for you from my home in Kerala, India. For people who don't know about Kerela, it is called "God's own country". Its a "must see" if you plan to visit India. Its beautiful and I absolutely love spending time there. These are my dogs - Rocky and Rani. They are spoilt but great :-) Really miss them.














Couple of shots of my home in Kerala. Rural India is absolutely fantastic.
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