Music 2.0

Lindsay chats with Fred Davis, founding partner at Davis Shapiro Lewit & Hayes, LLP, to discuss Music 2.0.

Introducing my new virtual pet 'tutu'.

Back in primary school, I had one turtle. His/her name was "tutu"!
With all those 6 year old's curiosity, I used to feed him and there was some special reason to invite all my friends home. ( first social networking platform?)

Anyways, now, thanks to bunnyhero labs - You can feed him snacks by clicking on the snack bag. Or play ball with him by click on more.

adopt your own virtual pet!

Social Networking 2.0

we’ve been hearing about a new Yahoo social network initiative called Mosh, which is at mosh.yahoo.com but can only be accessed from inside the Yahoo offices. If you happen to be using the guest wifi at Yahoo, you should be able to access the site, although this may be shut down soon.

It’s likely this would replace Yahoo’s 360 social network service, which has never really gotten traction. The existence of Yahoo Mosh also most likely puts a bullet in any further speculation that they are in acquisition talks with Bebo, a somewhat unsubstantiated rumor from May. Last year Yahoo made a serious effort at acquiring Facebook but the deal was never closed.

Google Socialstream

Socialstream is the result of a Google-sponsored capstone project in the Master's program at Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. This project was guided by three goals that built upon each other:

Initial Task: Rethink and reinvent online social networking

Refined Focus: Discover the user needs related to social networking and explore how a unified social network service can enhance their experience.

Prototype Goal: Create a system for users to seamlessly share, view, and respond to many types of social content across multiple networks.

Directed to help improve the online community orkut, the project's scope was not to simply redesign the interface. Our team considered how online social networking could bring greater value to users, especially for ages above twenty. After initial brainstorming and research, we chose to focus on the effects of a new model for online social networking: a unified social network that, as a service, provides social data to many other applications. Our user research examined needs related to online as well as offline social networking and considered how they related to a unified social network service model. Through this user research we identified a set of archetypes that represent common behavior patterns that existed across multiple study participants and also formulated a summarized list of their high level needs.

The project goal is to “create a system for users to seamlessly share, view, and respond to many types of social content across multiple networks.” more information here

This video gives a good overview of the interface and features:

To explore the final prototype, visit the solution section.

Scoopt

Scoopt, the self-styled “citizen journalism picture agency”, will now allow Flickr members to tag their images with the keyword ’scoopt’, enabling Scoopt to push tagged images to their media outlet buyers. Scoopt will also encourage buyers to use Flickr as a commercial image resource.

Scoopt founder Kyle MacRae said the new feature makes sense as “there’s no easy way to connect Flick members to buyers” and “Flickr members are not allowed to advertise their content commercially”. The Scoopt move is unofficial and does not have a formal relationship with Flickr.

Sales revenue is split 50/50% between Scoopt and the photographer. The photographer always keeps full copyright. It’s free to join Scoopt.

Scoopt has 12,000 members and is based in Scotland.

The Green Wiki

Here come the niche Wiki launches. Following on from JobberWiki, the career information resource site that anyone can edit, comes Tiptheplanet.com (quoting):

Tiptheplanet is a project to create a green wiki website that encourages discussion and the generation of tips that benefit you and the planet - From tips for individuals about staying happy and healthy to tips for multi-national companies to limit their carbon footprints, with accompanying explanations.

The site is coming out of the UK and has a nicely random feel to it, as in: “Switch to green energy; Find out about distributive power”.

The site has been launched by Tom Savage, who also run Blueventures.org, a not-for-profit organisation which facilitates projects in global marine conservation and research.

'O' Word Sour on Riya ?

"Some in Silicon Valley begin to sour on India" - Wallstreet Journal homepage loaded with a little bit of surprise.

Read the full article (subscription required) or I quote

Silicon Valley has helped power India's outsourcing boom by shifting technology jobs to that country. Three months ago, Munjal Shah reversed a bit of that shift.

Munjal Shah, who leads a California start-up called Riya Inc., had opened an office in India's technology capital of Bangalore in 2005, hiring about 20 skilled software developers. The lure was the wage level: just a quarter of what experienced Silicon Valley computer engineers make.

Then Indian salaries soared. Last year, Mr. Shah paid his engineers in India about half of Silicon Valley levels. By early this year, it was 75%. "Taking into account the time difference with India," he says, "we weren't saving any money by being there anymore." In April, Mr. Shah shut down the Bangalore office and offered half of its engineers a chance to move to San Mateo, Calif., with work visas."

The story lists a bunch of other companies making similar moves, including Kana Software, of Menlo Park, Calif., Teneros, of Mountain View, Calif., Apple, of Cupertino, Calif.

I think there's something unusual about Shah/Riya’s case; there is no way on earth engineers in India get paid about 75% of what their US counterparts make. I dare say the 25% figure is still the norm for almost every development hot-spot in India apart from maybe Bangalore where it might be higher.

The reason was - not enough value for the money he had to pay. Add some more and he would be able to get someone in his US team.

Value is obtained by learning how to hire efficiently and how to manage that team efficiently. Strategy and management makes all the difference between failure and success of an offshore team. Big vague words as they may seem, there are a few things for these that can be done quickly that can get this fixed 80%.

Munjal hypes up things. One cannot generalise about the whole market from the data gathered from a startup that cannot attract/manage employees at the right cost. Though this may be true for high-end engineers (PHds from Stanford/MIT) who may have returned to India, it is definitely not true that a normal programmer/software engineer is 75% of the US cost.

Well there's a war in WSJ and other media quoted this story. Anyways here’s the full article if you forgot to renew your WSJ subscription.

Social Media kicks Ass!

Kickass study by ComScore/Piper Jaffray indicating the rapid increase in time spent online interacting with social media experiences. The growth is astounding and suggests that our inflection point may be right around the corner.