Sauron's Eye on Internet

HTML5, the future of the web.

2011-11-19T11:51:00.000-08:00

More and more game companies are turning to the HTML5 web format to create cross-platform games. The latest is Pangalore, a social and mobile game startup based in Seoul.

Pangalore was founded in May to create games that can run on multiple platforms by using HTML5 as their technical foundation. Pangalore built from scratch a game engine that can work within the limits of HTML5, said Doyon Kim, chief product officer and co-founder of the company who runs the office in San Jose, Calif., in an interview.

Pangalore is announcing two new Facebook and mobile games today: Artfit and Wild West Solitaire. Both are slow-moving, cartoon-like titles that accommodate the main weakness of HTML5 now: slow speed. Pangalore is also working on two more titles, Pop the Candy and Bubble Prince, for release later. Kim says the company will release titles every couple of months.

“The benefit of HTML5 games is that you can start them on one platform and then finish them on another,” Kim said. “We designed our games from the start to be multiplatform games.”

While young, the company has a big staff. It has 25 employees and funding from NHN, the largest online game portal in Korea. The good thing about HTML5 games is they can run on just about any platform, from Facebook to Android phones and tablets. It runs on browsers on mobile devices, PCs, and Macs. Pangalore is also making native format games for the Apple iPhone.

Kim said that deeper strategy and role-playing games are in the works as well, using the Unity 3D game engine. Those games, including a simulation title, will be coming in early 2012. Among the team are some experienced game creators including those who created Ragnarok Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game with 3 million players in North America.

The games are free-to-play and are accessible from a single Facebook account that works across all devices. Kim co-founded the firm with Brian Kang, former chief executive of Gravity and a former venture capitalist. Kim previously founded Dialpad Communications, Opinity and Spotplex. Rivals included other HTML5 game makers such as Moblyng and Zynga.

The Wild West Solitaire game sets players on a card-playing journey along the historic Oregon Trail, where you race against the clock or friends to play solitaire challenges. Artfit is a falling blocks game where players must place the pieces into forms to score points and advance through increasingly complex levels. Over time, HTML5 is expected to show better performance so that a wider variety of games will be playable on it. Pangalore hopes to be ready when that happens.

6th Grader, iPhone Application Developer

2011-11-17T10:15:00.000-08:00

This is a must watch video.
Thomas Suarez is a 6th grade student at a middle school in the South Bay of Los Angeles. When Apple released the Software Development Kit (SDK), he began to create and sell his own applications. "My parents, my friends and even the people at the Apple store all supported me," he says, "and Steve Jobs inspired me".

Pitch It! - An opportunity for Startups to get funded by Top Investors of India

2011-11-15T10:25:00.000-08:00

The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Bombay presents Pitch it! for the startups who are looking for funding.

With it's unique format of express funding, the participants of Pitch it! get an opportunity to pitch before panel of investors. The best 10 entries will be selected from all over India for the finals at E-Summit 2012, where they will get exposure to funding opportunities from top Angel Investors viz.Mumbai Angels, Indian Angel Network(IAN) and many more. Some of previous year's investors are Blue Run Ventures, Seedfund, Canaan Partners, Telnet Ventures etc.

Pitch it! is a three phase event:

1. The first phase is online submission of the questionnaire by the start-ups. 10 entries will be shortlisted by a panel of investors for the final closed-room pitching.

2. The second phase comprises of mentoring, where these top 10 teams will be mentored on “pitching tactics” for funding from experts.

3. The third and final phase would be held at E-Summit on 29th January, 2012, IIT Bombay wherein the start-ups will be required to present their final pitch in their quest for funding by the Angel Investors/Venture Capitalists.

Don't miss out on this opportunity. Registration for Phase 1 closes on 5th december, 2011.

For more details and registering visit http://www.ecell.in/pitchit

Go Skydiving or Trekking to 13000 feet this Diwali by Tushky.com

2011-10-10T20:20:00.000-07:00

Tushky.com, a state-of-the-art ecommerce web portal providing unique travel and event experiences, is coming up with a big experience for all ardent adventure lovers.

True to its vision of providing never before experiences, Tushky.com has announced its extravagant diwali vacation, in line with promoting green diwali- authentic skydiving camp in India followed by a trek to the 13000 ft high beas kund in Himachal. When the festival of lights is around the corner, celebrating a Green Diwali near to the Mother Nature without crackers is a unique idea.

After the super success of its first commercial skydiving camp in picturesque locales of Sagar in MP and setting a record of the youngest tandem skydiving, Tushky.com proudly presents second skydiving camp in UP and trekking unfolding the magical experience at Himalayan Valley. Trekking alongside the beas river and stunning landscape with soaring mountain, one will finally reach the breath taking destination Beas Kund.

Mr.Talvinder Singh, founder of Tushky.com shares “What differentiates us from other large companies is our ability to reach and appeal to small and independent tour guides and individual who will share their beautiful world with the travelers.” He adds “This adventure aims to go beyond the limits of your fear and spend a gala time living a life amidst of nature. Go back to mother nature, there is no better way to celebrate green diwali.”

Tushky.com's diwali celebration begins with the sky diving camp, starting from 22nd October to 25th October 2011 at Uttar Pradesh. The three day camp ensures, to provide a life time experience of skydiving from 10000 feet. The event is partnered with seasoned and celebrated skydivers having a collective experience of almost 50 years and over 8000 jumps with highest rated USPA (United States Parachute Association) certification. The celebration continues with a 7 day all inclusive trek, taking you through a route rarely explored while also allowing you the leisure to explore the pristine tourist hot spot from its starting station-Manali. During the trek you will luxuriate in vast area of green carpet with colorful flowers which goes through Solang Valley’s lush-green fields and orchards.

Tushky, a young and passionate start up by IIT Alumini, believes in taking home a memory and cherishing them life long. It’s a one stop solution providing experiences like Adventure and outdoor; art and culture; leisure and entertainment; wining and dining; mind and body rejuvenation and many more at spectacular places across India.

To be a part of this unique experience and celebrating Diwali with Nature, log on to www.tushky.com

Study from Yahoo shows that 50 percent of all tweets come from just 20,000 users

2011-10-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

This is a shocking result. 50 percent of all tweets come from just 20,000 users. Via: TheNextWeb.com's Article. View Full Article:

In a recent study by Yahoo Research, 50 percent of all tweets consumed are reportedly generated from just 20,000 elite users. Media presents the bulk of the information, where celebrities are the most followed.

These supposed 20K elite users only represent 0.05% of the actual Twitter population, though dominate the information that most of us on Twitter regurgitate to others on the platform.

“It’s really dominated by this media-celebrity-blogger elite,” says Duncan Watts, one of the researchers. “It’s a small number of users who are hyperconnected, and then there’s everybody else just paying attention to those people.”

Of the 50 million Twitter users who actively log in every day, not all of them are tweeting. In fact, we already know that most of these users are simply digesting tweets and consuming content. The study also confirms what I’ve previously mentioned: Bloggers rebroadcast the most information, with other bloggers tending to follow blogging accounts, celebrities following celebrities, and so on.

From personal experience, I definitely tend to rebroadcast or tweet content from accounts that have more credibility — I like knowing that my own followers can rely on me for sourcing accurate or credible news. However, it’s true that the Twitter experience would not be what it is without the mixing pot of content streaming in from friends and family.

If Twitter content was restricted solely to tweets from the 20,000 elite accounts, I just wouldn’t enjoy the platform as much. Half the fun on Twitter for me or any other active user, I’m sure, is the back-and-forth feedback coming in from both those we follow as well as our own following.

Knowing the above, however, I’m curious: Do you think you’re following one of the 20,000 elite users, keeping in mind that these accounts mainly consist of celebrities, bloggers and media broadcasters? And do you tend to rebroadcast content from these accounts, or more typically from your friends and family? Weigh in below.

DreamAge Entertainment: from the World of Media and Entertainment

2011-10-02T10:48:00.000-07:00

DreamAge Entertainment is one of India’s leading production house also the most contemporary one. DreamAge Entertainment is a fully integrated media firm, based in Mumbai. We represent a company that includes Innovation because DreamAge use the latest cutting edge equipment, the best and brightest media and production professionals in the industry. The best methods and the newest techniques to produce content that gets stunning results.

We execute any project in well organized and effective manner because we have sharp strategic planning and also in-depth knowledge of local resources. We understand that every project has a unique set of objectives and specific requirements. Therefore, we take great precaution in accessing the specific creative and production needs & other parameters like the deadlines and the budget always keeping in mind. We specialize in affordable contemporary Content Video Production and Ad Film Production.

Established in February 2011 by the joint efforts of Gaurav Agarwal, Vir Singh, Rupesh Kumar and Shweta Sudhakar Gautam, We provide a full service video production that specializes in sectors like content creation, corporate films, tutorial videos and Ad Film making. DreamAge will have some unique qualities in their products which differ us from others. We think and truly believe in creativity, experience and work intelligently and always matter to produce our dream project. We are the architects of our concept and Together, we create our vision, and hammer out the key elements that are important to an industry. By understanding the essence of concept, we lay a plan that produces great results.

This is a guest post by DreamAge Entertainment. You can contact DreamAge Entertainment at deepak@dreamageent.com

Get A Job at Startup Using DreamStarts.in

2011-10-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

Do you ever wonder how people get involved with the up and coming startup companies? Are you hungry to find meaningful work with a company who has the potential to really make it big? Do you love to work on ideas those are just written on tissue paper? Do you have such passion to climb with new entrepreneurs to reach from 10 $ to Billion $ organization? If you have such interest then here is the DreamStarts.in to connect you with the world of startups.

DreamStarts.in is a Job Portal/Job Board where Startups post job vacancies and potential employees (Talents) apply to the jobs, which is absolutely free. Startups can explore their ideas, thoughts, services, achievements and vision to the emerging market.

What makes DreamStarts different than other job sites in India?

Talents can find jobs offered by emerging Startups.
We do not ask users to create login/profile.
Talents can apply online and post resume to the employers directly.
We do not collect resumes. We provide a platform where talents can directly contact to Startups.
We do not display company’s contact information without prior permission.
Startups can find talents without any involvement of third-party recruiting agency.
Company profile page for the startups.
This service is absolutely free for both Startups and Talents.

What’s in it for the Talent?

The jobs on DreamStarts offered by startups are not just your everyday office job. These jobs will test your skills and creativity, lead to all sorts of opportunities and often come with a decent sized pay.

There are all types of jobs on board FULL TIME JOBS, PART TIME JOBS, FREELANCE JOBS and INTERNAHIP, further these types of jobs are arranged in different categories

WEB/UI/Graphics - contains all jobs related web designing and graphics,
JAVA/C/C++ - Contains software development jobs,
PHP/PYTHON/RUBY -contains scripting language jobs,
APPS - Contains all mobile apps/iOS apps and android apps design jobs,
Content/Journalism - content developer and SEO jobs
Sales/marketing jobs – Sales, marketing and management jobs .

Working at any startup is entirely different from working at big companies. So Mr. Talent, before applying for a startup job from the list of opportunities we publish on board, you will need to ask yourself and answer first before applying for startup jobs.

The first decision you must make is to conclude on what stage of the startup ladder you are comfortable slotting into.
Are you fine being the third/fourth employee and sharing a table with the two co-founders in a shared co-working space?
Are you more comfortable joining the team after they’ve raised a seed or series A round?

You can be kept in the loop via Facebook or Twitter.

What’s in it for the Startups?

Startups are not like other companies, so why hire people the way other companies do? Why do startups need to pay big bucks to recruiting firms? With DreamStarts.in, you can post your jobs for free and talents can reach to you directly. Startups can post any number of job advertisements and receive applications from skilled, experienced and best suitable talents. Startup can sort the profiles through the applications on the basis of experience, skills and qualifications.

Startups can also mail their job requirements to DreamStarts @ info@dreamstarts.in which will be published on board.

DreamStarts also features Startups in Indian-Satartups section and provide them unique URL according to their name. e.g. http://dreamstarts.in/company-name in simple English it’s “The Dream Starts in ‘company-name’”.

Indian Startups are going through a golden age and this startup world is hiring fast. If you want to work in an enthusiastic, frenetic, “anything’s possible” environment or if you want to publish your job ads I highly recommend checking out DreamStarts.in.

Follow DreamStarts on FaceBook and Twitter.

We really appreciate feedback!!! E-mail us at info@dreamstarts.in and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

I'm attending "Startup Saturday" Bangalore chapter on Oct 8th.

2011-09-28T12:46:00.000-07:00

The next session of Startup Saturday Bangalore will be held on 8th Oct. I am attending this session, are you?

The main topic of this session will be "Term Sheets", a often neglected but important topic. Term sheets are an essential element of the fundraising process and they contain a lot of details which if not properly understood could cost an entrepreneur lots of value and cause problems downstream. This talk will walk through pre-money, post-money, capitalization tables, exclusivity, options pool carve outs, liquidation preferences, founder vesting, anti-dilution protection and many other terms.

Event Date : 8th October 2011
Event Venue : Room No. 301,Central Block,Christ College, Bangalore
Register for the Event at : http://startupsaturday.headstart.in/event.php?eid=161

If you are planning to attend this "Startup Saturday" in bangalore then let me know. Leave your message as comment to this post or mail me, my id is ranjeet@geekonnet.com. Lets meet up. It would be great to discuss ideas and blogging experiences over a cup of coffee. :)

Facebook Now Has Over 800 Million Active Users

2011-09-22T14:04:00.001-07:00

It has been announced that the world’s most popular social networking service has reached over 800 million active users.

The 800 million figure isn’t just the total number of signups, these are 800 million active users: users who have logged in to Facebook at least once during the past 30 days. Now that’s a big, big achievement for FaceBook!

InMobi Raises $200 Million

2011-09-16T14:26:00.000-07:00

Bangalore based mobile ad network company inMobi has raised $200 million in funding from Japan’s Softbank which would come in two Tranches one of $100 millon in September 2011 and the other $100 million in April of 2012. Including this huge money, InMobi has raised $215 million till date.

InMobi was founded in India in 2007 where it become the dominate ad network across the Asia Pacific Region. The company launched in the U.S. and Europe in early 2010. InMobi helps advertisers and developers serve up mobile ads, a fast-growing industry that has been fueled by the rise of consumer cellphones and multimedia-rich smartphones like Apple’s iPhone, android’s phones.

Everyone is just talking about this huge funding (probably this is the largest venture funding of year-11) but there is no news about the valuation or the current revenue of InMobi. How InMobi raised such a large funding? On What basis they got it? There would be only 2 possibilities behind InMobi’s $200 million funding.

InMobi would have shown a valuation of at least $ 2 billion in front of investors. Mobile ad marketing is growing but still it is a small market. According to a eMarketer “Mobile advertising is still a fairly small market. The total spend for such advertising is projected to hit $1.1 billion in the U.S. this year. That spend will hit $2.5 billion in 2014, the researcher estimates.” We should note that InMobi has big competitors like Google and Apple and these 2 companies hold the control on majority of smart phones (Andriod phones and IPhone). Would not this $2 billion valuation fairly big figure for InMobi.
So the 2nd thing that would have possible is, InMobi must be generating at least $20 million revenue so it got funding of 10 times of it's current revenue. This can be possible, because InMobi has good market capture in Asia Pecific and they are growing rapidly in latin American and in European market.

It really doesn’t matter how they pitched inmobi’s future in front of investors or how much of revenue they are generating currently. The thing that does matter, this company is doing extremely very well, growing rapidly and giving a good competition to the players like Google, Apple in the field of Mobile Ad networks. This funding will definitely help InMobi in its expansion. It might possible that they make their head count double or tipple. This means, InMobi will be opening many jobs for we Indian.

Indian Startups are going through a golden time currently. They are doing extremely well (FilpKart, Myntra, YeBhi, RedBus, SnapDeal, inkfruit, HomeShop18, SMSGupShup, JustDial and many more) and giving a good fight to American’s giants. Flipkart, InMobi, Redbus, SMSGupshup and JustDial are already in the list of 20 Hot International Startups You Need To Watch by Business Insider.

GeekOnNet congrats InMobi for its funding.

Company: InMobi

Head Quarter : Bangalore, India

Founder and CEO : Naveen Tewari

Funding: $215 million

1st Commercial skydiving in India by Tushky.com

2011-09-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

Tushky.com, Mumbai’s No. 1 site for unique activities, tours and getaways; brings to you all, a once in a lifetime opportunity to experience the 1st commercial Skydiving camp in India!

Watch the video to know the people behind this piece of history.

Led by a team of celebrated and seasoned Skydivers in Asia who are registered USPA (United States Parachute Association) coaches!

Feel the rush as emotions like excitement, nervousness, fear and freedom collide, when you are about to do a free fall from the edge of a plane at a height of 4500 ft. Fly like a bird, float like a cloud and hear the wind whistle as you descend towards the ground at a speed of 200km/hr. The Ariel view of the landscape below, guarantees an amazing yet a surreal experience.

Be a part of this exciting, enthralling, once-in-a-lifetime experience on the 24 September, in the beautiful state of Madhya Pradesh.

Only 30 Seats! Book now!

Tushky.com

SMS GupShup Raised $10 Million in series E funding

2011-09-04T03:45:00.000-07:00

Mumbai-based social networking site, based around SMS and bulk messaging, SMS GupShup, has raised $10 million from Tenaya Capital. Including this, SMS GupShup has raised $47 million till date. Money is raised at the valuation of 1,000 crore though company is targeting a revenue of 100 crore by the end of FY-12, ie. valuation is more than 10 times of its current revenue. Majority of revenue comes from GupShup’s bulk messaging system.

SMS GupShup, owned by Webaroo (an offline search engine company), was incorporated in 2007 by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and incubated at IIT Bombay’s SINE(Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship). GupShup connects 50 miilion users, 5 million user generated communities and 25,000 small businesses via Mobile and SMS.

Company: SMS GupShup
Website: http://www.smsgupshup.com
Location: Mumbai (IIT-Bombay)
Started in : 2007
Funding till date: $47 Million
CEO: Beerud Sheth
Ref: http://blog.dreamstarts.in/sms-gupshup-raised-10-million-in-series-e-funding/

Tushky : For Exciting Experiences in Travel and activities.

2011-07-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

Are you a travel freak? Do you love traveling but never have the time to plan and arrange your trip? Or you are not able to find out interesting places to go, interesting things to do.

GeekOnNet is showcasing another hot Indian startup (Tushky.com) that will take care of planning and arrangement of your trip to make it memorable and adventures. Tushky, an online marketplace to buy, sell or promote exciting travel experiences or experience related activities, in Mumbai and nationally, to provide an alternative to the impersonal approach of large tour companies and legacy travel agents.

Tushky is founded by a team of IIT Bombay, alumni:

Tushky is a hub for any experience-seeker to connect with local experience-provider and vice-versa. Tushky is for travelers who will love to live through the experience instead of just looking at it. The "been there, done that" era of fleeting visits to famous sites is well and truly over - travel virgins excepted. The modern traveler wants to take home a memory, not a memento.”

Tushky works only with a pick of providers, who can offer the best experience in their domain. Each experience is authenticated before putting them online; hence the buyer is sure of the quality of the experience.

“We added activities in our bouquet of products since, travelers are active 14 hours a day, but typically spend only six hours with the primary lure or attraction (the primary reason for visiting). That leaves an additional 8 hours for secondary activities or diversions. What is there to do after 5:00 pm? Downtowns can fill this role: providing entertainment, events, shopping, dining, etc. in a pedestrian-friendly setting.” Mr. CEO adds.

By providing a user-friendly platform, with a built-in community to promote the experiences across Facebook, twitter and Gmail, the team believes that, they will be able to claim a substantial stake of the $26.7 billion activity and experience market, which this year has become the fastest growing segment of the leisure travel market (with revenues surpassing those of cruises and car rentals combined). Tushky’s goal is to become the largest destination for travel experiences and activities worldwide, with an initial focus on Mumbai, where they plan to grow organically as local experts add their tours and experiences and from there, branch out nationally and internationally.

“Travel has seen tremendous innovation in flight and accommodation booking, especially with sites like Hipmunk and Airbnb disrupting the industry,”

“But once these reservations are booked, travelers still rely on old-school (and costly) guidebooks, travel agents, and large tours to plan their itineraries. It’s the blind spot of the travel industry.”

Tushky makes money by taking a percentage fee from those offering experiences (“local experts”). It anticipates additional revenue streams coming from affiliate partnerships with companies offering flight and accommodations, which would also provide their users with a fun and easy way to plan a trip they feel good about in just a few clicks.

Tushky is entering a market dominated by Makemytrip, cleartrip, Travelocity and other online travel agencies that have added activities to their offerings, as well as popular travel guide, The Lonely Planet, which has been expanding its online presence and recently added activity booking to their site through the large tour aggregator, Viator.

Mr. CEO says “What will differentiate us from these larger companies is our ability to reach and appeal to small, independent tour guides and individuals who want to share their world and expertise with travelers while making extra cash, as well as to travelers who have lost trust in existing industry platforms and crave more authenticity in their travel experiences. Further, we are bullish about the promotion feature on our site. We are very tightly integrated with social networking sites, because we believe that people love to share and brag about their experiences and expeditions”.

“The large OTA’s are not concerned about providing the unique, backdoor experiences that many travelers want,” says Mr. CEO. “That’s the market we’re trying to address first.”

Tushky.com
11/43, Yeshwant Nagar, S.V. Road, Goregaon(w) - 62
Phone– 022 28714472/3
Info@tushky.com

contrich.com : Outsource your Website Content

2011-07-02T03:46:00.000-07:00

It’s always a pleasure to write about the Indian Startup who is solving the problems of other startups/ businesses and helping them to grow. Good optimized content with very strong SEO is the heart and soul of any web based startup/business. Content outsourcing is a necessity for businesses who want to build a strong online presence with quality content but do not have a dedicated content team. Not only does content outsourcing save time and resources, it allows you to dedicate your time to more pressing things such as promoting your business and developing new product ideas.

Contrich.com (a web product by ByteClip Technologies ) helps you to outsource your web content to content writer/freelancer online. Contrich aims to redefine the process of developing and tracking your website content in a collaborative manner. Contrich bridges the gap between issue tracking systems and content management systems to improve content quality on web pages. It provides clean and innovative interface to capture content issues on a web page.

Company: BytClip Technologies.
Product: contrich.com
Founder(s): Vinay Kumar Singh (B.Tech.+M.Tech. IIT-Bombay), Jayant Upadhyay (B.Tech.+M.Tech. IIT-Delhi), Amit Chandel (B.Tech. IIT-Bombay, MS - University of Toronto) and Manish Pal (B.Tech.+M.Tech. IIT-Delhi)

Before jumping into the outsourcing business you should have some answers ready on your table :

How do I decide the best fit provider for this job? Will a work sample from the provider help me with this?
How can I clearly specify my content requirements?
How can I monitor the work progress?
How can I review the written content and provide feedback in a timely manner?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) : How can I effectively specify my SEO requirements and check that the content written by the provider is meeting those requirements?

Since long, the answer to all of these questions has been communication with provider via email and word documents. These are the two most common and widespread used approaches, but it’s time we really thought about the fact that they do not provide the complete answer to any of the questions posed above. It’s time we decide whether these old ways are enough for us. These modes of communication are simple and effective for articles and blogs, but when it comes to writing content on web pages - they have some serious drawbacks. Lets list a few of them out here:

The provider sends you his sample writings but the content belongs to some other domain and you are not able to judge whether the provider has the required domain expertise.
You receive the sample work in an email or in a word document attached in the email, but you are not able to visualize your web page with this content written on it.
The Content send by the provider does not fit in the particular section of your web page. You may need more content or truncate some of the received content.
You may want to review the content while it is in the development phase(rather than after completion) so that you can bring up issues and provide early feedback.
The provider can write the content and test its SEO effectiveness using a multitude of tools available on the internet. However, true SEO effectiveness can only be calculated when the content has been integrated into the page as search engines also consider the html tags when calculating your website’s ranking. The delivered content might not meet your SEO expectations and your integration effort may be wasted.

All these and many more of such problems deteriorate productivity due to increased number of development/review/verification cycles, and may lead to poor content quality under pressed timelines. Contrich tries to solve these issues with its collaborative nature and a very simple workflow.

How Contrich works:

The following sections will demonstrate this fact with the homepage of a sample clothes website and some workflow screenshots.

HomePage of a Sample Clothes Website

Requirement Specification

You can start by creating a ticket for your web page and mark the sections where you need content. You can edit the marked sections and specify the nature of your content requirements in each of them(Refer the screenshot below). Here, the sections marked in brown are where you want content to be written.

Requirement Specifications

Getting the Sample Work

Create a test account for the provider and assign the ticket to him. You can mark the sections where you want him to write sample content(Refer to the screenshot below). The provider will then write his sample content in these sections.

Getting the Sample Work

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The provider(and even you) can check the SEO Report for a web page which shows the most significant words and phrases on the web page. This helps him in doing iterative development where he is able to achieve your SEO expectations during the content development phase itself.

SEO Report

Content Review

You can review the content written in any of the sections and report problems on it. The problem sections of a page are marked in red and thus easily identifiable by the provider. The provider can view all the reported problems on a given section and modify the content accordingly.

Problem Reporting

View Reported Problems
Finishing the job

No more searching through your email attachments and word documents – the provider just has to update the ticket and assign it back to you. You have the final html page with the complete content written on it!! Now you can easily extract the page from Contrich and integrate it into your back-end system.

Try contrich.com and do share your experiences with us.
Source Contrich Blog.

WDYL.com by google – What Do You Love?

2011-06-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

www.wdyl.com is Google's new product based search engine that was launched quietly today. WDYL (What Do You Love?) lets you search across all the google products like 'Google Translate', 'Google Trends', 'Google Books', 'Sketchup', 'YouTube', 'Google Alerts' at one place.

As usual the user interface of WDYL is very simple and clean with single search box with a button image of white heart on blue background. Cute... The interesting part is that when you brows WDYL without www., you get a 404 (page not found) error.

Type in search box and click on heart, WDYL will display search result from different google’s products on single page neatly arranged in a grid format. There’s a slider on the left part of the page which you can move to quickly access bottom of the page. A big thing that is missing here is Google search result. I think Google search result was supposed to be the first one to be included in this. I have no idea why Google has excluded "Google Search Result" from WDYL?

The concept of WDYL reminds me of iGoogle, a service that lets you add simple apps/websites to your own personalized portal. Overall, it’s a cool idea. You will be able to browse more of the found content without leaving the page. I also found out a few Google products that I didn’t know existed. Cool Idea but I can’t see much use of it in long term. I am including WDYL in my Google’s failed products list. Just another failed product by Google.

WDYSAWDYL (What Do You Say About WDYL(What Do You Love?)?). Why don’t you try out WDYL with different search query and share your interesting discoveries and experiences with me through comment to this post below?

Google +1 Vs Facebook like button

2011-06-21T09:54:00.001-07:00

For past two-three months, google has been using google’s + 1 button on its websites and this is also available to the third party websites. Google +1 button wants to encourage user engagement and social interaction. This is an interesting idea, clearly influenced by the Facebook “Like” button.

With a single click, Google users can recommend a service, a website, an article, or a topic. Consequently, their friends, families, networks or even the rest of the world may easily see their recommendations. For example say you want to search best pub in Bangalore and you will be able to see recommended pub sites, your friend has pressed the +1 Button on. This is an interesting idea, clearly influenced by the Facebook “Like” button, but very much depends on people taking the time to press the +1 button. The Like button on Facebook allows users to publicly show they like a certain person, status, event etc. meaning it is far more a tool of self-expression than recommendation. Both Facebook’s like and Google’s +1 button aim to increase users’ exposure and awareness to an association of persons of the same trade, pursuits or mutual interests, and subsequently gather them through a social network.

Google and Facebook values what their users are sharing with their friends. They use this to know more about the users and to be able to place appropriate ads (targeted marketing) on web pages. Google will be able to personalize the user's search result and search ads. With the help of the +1 button, people with Google accounts who are signed in may see the recommendations from people in their Gmail or Google Talk chat list.

In my opinion, Google +1 will not be able to compete with Facebook in the social networking arena. Facebook has the edge in this area because its users spend a lot of time sharing their thoughts, links, and photos to their friends. This is a problem for Google because the Google doesn't have access to this information and it can’t be indexed as well.

My concern is, do we really need Google +1? We already have FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn and hundreds of social networking websites too. I think Google has arrived too late to make a big impact in the social networking world. Is google +1 another failed products by google?

I have added +1 button at the start and at the end of this post. Please do share it.

Google to scan 250,000 old British Library books

2011-06-20T11:36:00.001-07:00

Google Books has an ambitious mission statement: "Google Books is an effort to make all of the knowledge contained within the world's books searchable online."

That's a tall order, but the company will make a dent in it with a new agreement to scan 250,000 books from the British Library.

The books, pamphlets, and periodicals are all out of copyright and come from between 1700 and 1870. This is a nice companion project to the British Library's new 19th Century Books app that will eventually put thousands of old books on your iPad.

To put it in perspective, these books were generated during some famous events you may have heard of, including the French Revolution, the invention of rail travel, and the end of slavery. Google will foot the cost for this mammoth digitizing effort.

The digitized books will be available free online through Google Books and the British Library site. Readers will be able to view, copy, and share the text for non-commercial uses.

Thank you Google. I appreciate it.

OlaCabs : Book a Car/Cab online!

2011-04-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

We have already seen, how internet has revolutionized Train/Flight ticket booking. This technology can also be used to change our ground transportation system. GeekOnNet is featuring another hot startup from Mumbai "OlaCabs", started by 2 IIT-Bombay Alumnus.

OlaCabs offers car rental services for local use as well as outstation use. You can book cab/car online or over the phone.

Why do you want to book cab/car online? GeekOnNet is mentioning some benefits of online car/cab booking.

You pay the right price for your journey
The security of door to door service
Guaranteed journey
Ease of use
24 hour service
Airport and other journeys
Excellent for business use

In an exclusive interview to the GeekOnNet team, Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder of OlaCabs and a very good friend of mine speaks about his company, its targets and future plans.

Venture Name: Olacabs.com
Founder(s): Bhavish Aggarwal, Ankit Bhati

The Geeks: What inspired you to start olacabs? What are the services offered by OlaCabs? What is the specific problem that OlaCab is solving?

Olacabs: I had once rented a car for a weekend trip with friends to Bandipur from Bangalore. The driver turned out to be a cheat. He stopped the car in Mysore en route to Bandipur and asked to be paid more than what had been decided earlier. He was so rigid and ill mannered that we had to leave him there and continue our journey by bus. This led to the business idea of using technology to offer a better and more predictable experience to consumers and improve efficieny for the car owners/drivers.

We offer car rental services for local use as well as outstation use. You can book online or over the phone and be assured of a reliable, safe and quality experience.

The Geeks: What’s your Business & revenue model.

Olacabs: We work on a pay-for-performance model. We just charge a commission in whatever sales that we bring to car owners. Also, to get access to the technology platform, we charge them a small fee. Other than that, there are no other costs that operators have to bear.

The Geeks: How difficult/easy for you to convince cab owners about your services? What obstacles have you overcome?

Olacabs: We have tied up with many car operators in Mumbai. They are very receptive to our concept as we work on a pay-for-performance model. The harder part is sourcing car owners. Since it is a fragmented industry, getting to the owners is a time consuming process.

The Geeks: There are few big players in this market. So, how can you differentiate OlaCabs from them?

Olacabs: most cab booking portals are plain vanilla websites with price listings. Our strategy is to focus on the backend with car operators because that would ensure a certain level of quality and predictability with respect to the consumer experience. We intend to bring all car operators and all taxis on to a single technology platform to enable real time inventory distribution, nationally.

The Geeks: What prospects are you visualizing for your company 5 years down the line? Are you going to implement something new (e.g. Mobile phone booking, smart phone’s app for cab booking etc.) to your business?

Olacabs: The entire ground transportation industry in India is run in a very opaque, inefficient and ad-hoc manner. There is no service guarantee or price transparency for the consumer and operators are also troubled with no structured channel through which customers can be sourced. We believe that technology will help make this industry efficient and drastically improve the consumer experience in years to come. We are definitely considering developing mobile bookings and smart phone apps in the near future!

The Geeks: After working in the world’s leading S/W firm for more than 2 years, what led you to quit your job and start your own venture? What are the rewards of owing own business over a nine to five job?

Olacabs: I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur since my college days. After spending 2 years in my job at Microsoft, I started feeling bored and restless. So I got together with Ankit and we decided to start a company. I left my job and moved to Mumbai to start Olacabs.
Working on a startup means you are the guy responsible for everything. The buck stops with you. The thrill and challenge of designing a company bottom up is beyond comparison and something you just cannot get in a job!

The Geeks: Any suggestions for future entrepreneurs?

Olacabs: The biggest joy and the biggest challenge in entrepreneurship is finding a real and challenging problem to solve. Most of us first generation entrepreneurs have a tough time finding the right problem. But once that is figured out, the joy of solving real issues for real users and seeing people benefit from your innovation is beyond comparison! So just be persistent!

Olacabs provides the simplest way to book a Cab/Car. You enter your city and your need. Olacabs searches the available inventory of its partners and provide you with a list of results and prices of different available cars from different operators. You can see rating of that operator, what other customers said of them, and then book it on Olacabs.com. Or you can call Olacabs at (022) 322-65-652 and they'll help you through the process!

UniApply: One-Stop Solution for all Education needs

2011-04-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

Choosing your career is an important step because your future is at stake. It is generally observed that a large section of students are unaware of what they want to achieve in life or how they can achieve their goal. This amounts to a situation like boarding a train without knowing one's destination. Undoubtedly it may result in waste of precious time as well as money.

Team GeekOnNet comes again with one of the hottest startups "UniApply" (www.uniapply.in) of Bangalore (Bengaluru).
Three IIT Bombay alumni started UniApply (www.uniapply.in), an educational portal in July 2010 with a vision to eliminate information based discrimination among students. UniApply is a one-stop solution for all your education needs in terms of choosing the right institutes and most importantly applying to them. This trio furthers the goal of a successful transition of more students from high school to college and also help them in career advancements.
In an exclusive interview to the GeekOnNet team, Ranjan Banerjee, co-founder of UniApply (www.uniapply.in) speaks about his company, its targets and future plans.

Venture Name: UniApply (www.uniapply.in) Founder(s): Ranjan Banerjee, Kamlesh Laddad, Akshay Ukey.

The Geeks: How did you get the idea to start UniApply?

UniApply: Each and every one of us in our student life has surely been through the "All pain, No gain" application process and it was this realization that led to the need for automation in this sector. Today, almost all the students apply to multiple academic institutions before taking admissions in any vertical. However, there is a lack of connection resulting in a huge gap between various institutes and student/parent community. Hence, we aim to bridge the gap through our products and services by bringing all the stakeholders in education - students, parents, institutes, etc into a common platform.
UniApply aims to serve as a technological link between the educational institutions and students. While eliminating the prevailing information arbitrage, we aim to smoothen and strengthen automated education processes backed by a strong and updated technological base. UniApply team also develops innovative technology to enable students to successfully manage their educational and career plans. Its data-driven solution helps to bridge the transitions between high school, college, and career, by making certain that students take the necessary steps at the right time to reach their goals. Last but not the least; the collaboration platform will enable effective communication among the stakeholders in the educational ecosystem viz. institutes, faculty, students, alumni etc. Our basic objective is to help students to take informed decision about their academic and professional career and to help and guide them in preparation for competitive examinations. We also look forward to provide all sorts of information about admissions, different colleges, various career avenues, and entrance exams to students enabling them to make the right choice in selecting a career and institute option.
Our highly motivated team with its indelible technological background is determined to create a benchmark in the whole education process.

The Geeks: Give some details about the Team background and work experience.

UniApply: I (Ranjan) have completed my graduation / B.Tech from IIT Bombay. Post IIT, I worked at Zinnov Management Consulting, a business strategy consulting firm where I got an opportunity to work with Fortune 500 companies in projects related to market entry / expansion, go-to-market strategies, offshoring advisory etc. I have always been passionate about entrepreneurship and have been part of the core team at The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Bombay. There when I met my other two co-founders, Kamlesh Laddad and Akshay Ukey.
Kamlesh and Akshay, both have completed their post graduation in Computer Science from IIT Bombay. Kamlesh was Senior Consultant at webMethods (now Software AG) in technical consulting division. He traveled round the globe during his tenure at Software AG and worked very closely with Business analysts and Functional analysts of MNCs and has a great understanding of industry processes.
Akshay was software engineer at America Online (AOL) and worked on key AOL properties like AOL Portal, AOL Autos, AOL Real Estate, etc. He has contributed to several open source projects and features of the Apache SOLR and has a publication in IEEE journal.

The Geeks: What is your market and how has been the response?
UniApply: With our aim to be the ultimate technology connect between the Educational Institutions and the students/parents community, we plan to associate with the institutes and have a parallel increase in our reach in the student community through online as well as offline campaigns. Our concept is being widely accepted. However we all know every new venture does have initial ignition issues yet undoubtedly there is arms open welcome to the concept.

The Geeks: Who are your competitors? How do you differentiate your products/services from that of others?
UniApply: All the portals providing education/career related information are our competitors. However, the domain of UniApply is yet unexplored, as very few startups are offering services related to admission application process. There is certainly a huge demand from the institutes’ side for automation of the pre-admission process and helping them enhance their reach in the student community. We are different from other education portals as we provide a platform for applications and admissions into an institute the student wants to join rather than just information on the institute. We aim to revolutionize the admission application process enabled by Information Technology and to remove information based discrimination among students. Our services are aimed not only at the application stage but also at the admission stage of an educational institute. Our focus is to automate and combine the areas of admission processes and thereby provide a single window for the students to apply to various institutions.

The Geeks: What are the rewards of running a business over a nine-to-five job? What are the challenges you have faced?
UniApply: There is always a joy of creating something new. Every day brings a new challenge, together with an opportunity to learn, create and innovate. Moreover, driving a business in itself is pretty exciting as you can mould the pre-existing concepts into an advanced level ideas and figure out the best possible ways to enhance your business and most importantly we are into a business that aims at making a student’s life simpler which is a huge impetus for us to keep going. However, since we are in start-up phase, we face challenges like recruiting the right person, funding etc.

The Geeks: What are the UniApply growth plans?
UniApply: Education industry is witnessing a fast paced growth so this sector has a promising growth going forward. There is significant increase in the number of institutes and students every year. Moreover, with the entire world getting tech-savvy and internet friendly, UniApply and all other education portals would achieve greater heights. Especially with regards to UniApply we intend to transform the application procedure and we are sure we would. We are looking for expanding horizontally and aim to broaden our reach both in terms of institutes as well as number of students. Apart from this, we are also looking forward at launching few more products/services targeted at helping students in their exam preparation.

It was a very interactive and informative talk with the team of UniApply. If you have any queries or suggestions please write to me (ranjeet@geekonnet.com) or info@uniapply.in

QPrize: $750,000 Seed Fnding Competition

2010-12-09T11:31:00.000-08:00

Qualcomm ventures has launched "QPrize" a business plan competition to support international entrepreneurship. This is the second edition of "QPrize" ie. QPrize-2010. QPrize is an initiative by qualcomm ventures to identify, strengthen and promote your business ideas (based on wireless technology only) while in the concept stage.

QPrize competition is open to entrepreneurs in India, North America, Europe, Israel, south korea and China and will provide $750,000 in total seed funding to help entrepreneurs transform their business plan in reality.

India regional winner will get a prize money money of 100,000$ and will also get chance to compete with other regional winners.

Timelines :

December 14th,2010 - Deadline for submitting completed business plans
January 15th, 2011 - Event to pick India region winner
March 1st and 2nd, 2011 - Grand Finals in California

The India regional winner for QPrize - 2009 was "Capillary Technologies", an IIT Kharagpur incubated company from Bangalore, Capillary technologies provides mobile based loyalty programs for retailers. Their first product, "In Touch", is an SMS based loyalty program with analytics for retailers, with analytics on the web, as well as campaign management and messaging tools. They also provide SMS based event management for Events, College Festivals and Conferences, with registration, games, quizzes, schedule and event information.

Qualcomm Ventures (QCV) was formed and began funding in 2000, with a $500-million fund commitment to make strategic investments in early-stage high-technology ventures. Since then, QCV has funded numerous companies in the wireless sector, and set up several exclusive regional funds to spur development in key strategic markets, including a $60-million fund in Korea, a $30-million fund in Japan, a $100-million fund in China and euro 100-million fund in Europe.

In India, Qualcomm Ventures has invested in 5 companies –
Kirusa - Product: voice SMS,

MapmyIndia - navigation & mapping
Apalya - Products : TV on mobile
Capillary - Products: customer loyalty and relationship management over mobile
Tessolve - A high-end semiconductor service company

Here is your biggest chance to take you venture to the next stage and increase your visibity among the largest entrepreneurial community. The biggest thing is, this competition is for seed funding so there is no question of any negotiation with any VCs. Grab this opportunity and convert your "on paper ideas" into a reality.

Team GeekOnNet will be providing you all latest buzz of QPrize. For more information visit http://www.qprize.com/

Epic Browser 1.2 : India’s first-ever Web-Browser

2010-11-28T03:56:00.000-08:00

We had received an e-mail announcing the release of Epic Browser 1.2. For those who doesn't know about Epic browser, Epic browser is India's first-ever web browser developed by a Bangalore based Internet company "Hidden Reflex". Epic has already cleared more than 500,000 downloads in 178 countries.

Epic has support for more than 12 Indian languages
It includes more than 1500 apps such as gmail, twitter, facebook, orkut, travel, job, yahoo messenger, gtalk, cricket and games
This is the first browser which has antivirus and antispyware integrated with it
It has more than 1500 wallpapers and themes
you can directly access My Computer

In newer version of epic, Hidden reflex mainly focused on Epic's speed and Security. These are the two things users always look for in web browser.

Epic 1.2 is faster, leaner and more powerful.

Here are the primary changes done in Epic 1.2.

Faster Load Times: Nearly 20% faster start-up times and faster rendering.

One-Click Super-AntiVirus Scan for file Downloads: When you download a file in Epic, you'll have an option to scan the file first via VirusTotal, our partner. They'll check if the link is considered malicious and scan the linked-to file with 40 different anti-virus engines including Symantic/Norton, McAfee, Kaspersky, K7, AVG, Avira, Panda and 33 other a-v products! They have removed antivirus scanner which was causing instability.

Facebook, twitter with Popup Alerts: Complete facebook, twitter sidebar.

Hide-able sidebar: You can hide the sidebar for more browsing space.

Easy Access to Auto-Saved Text Fields: If your computer crashes while you were typing a long e-mail, Epic saves your text and nothing is lost!

I have been using it from last 3 months and let me tell you this is awesome. Speed is still a concern but I am sure it will improve in every version. Epic is "all in one" browser.

You can download Epic from it's official site http://www.epicbrowser.com/index.html. I have only one request to my readers, use it, give feedback and promote this Indian browser.

Internet Explorer 9 : First look

2010-10-31T02:51:00.000-07:00

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is upcoming new browser by Microsoft. Microsoft has released its Beta version 3 days back on 28^th October. Internet Explorer 9 is Hardware-accelerated HTML5. Internet Explorer 9 moves rendering of text and graphics from the processor, to the graphics card. That means, your website’s contents/images will be clearer and video will play smoother on Internet explorer – 9. When I first came to know about IE9, I had few questions in my mind.

is it fast enough?
is it compatible with different versions of windows?
What are the new security features in this new browser?
is it good/cool enough to win back former IE users who have migrated to Firefox, chrome and other browser?

Geek’s review:

The first thing which disappointed me a lot, was the system requirements. IE9 is not supported in windows XP & is only for windows 7 and Vista (32 and 64 bits). Thus answering to my 2nd question of compatibility. Sadly Microsoft has ignored its best OS the Windows XP. How hard is it for Microsoft to make a version compatible to windows XP? I still do not understand why Microsoft is wasting money and time on Vista & why Microsoft wants to kill windows XP?

Any way you can download its beta version from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/download/ie-9/worldwide, the size of the installer is around 19 MB and installation is very slow, frustrating and forces you to restart your system after installation. But in the end I was able to install it on my laptop.

First look of IE9:

Ya, it's impressive. It is clean, simple and very minimalist. The address bar box works both as address bar and the search box. Browser options like home, file, history, bookmarks and tools are shifted to top right of the browser and represented by 3 icons only.

Pin website: IE9 has this very impressive feature to pin your favorite website in task bar as apps. You will just need to drag the favicon from the IE9 box down to your taskbar so that whenever you want to open this website just click on the icon in taskbar.

But how much is the use of this functionality is still to be seen? I really do not want to fill my task bar with different websites. Or my task bar space will not be enough for it. As a developer I would like to develop an app or add-ons which will show me the option to choose the website from pined websites when I do a right click on my task bar. Actually this will be very useful for the user if we integrate this option with “pin the website” feature. Regarding to website apps pining functionality I would say it’s new, refreshing but not much useful.

HTML-5 Test (How well does your website support HTML-5?) : Microsoft says that IE9 supports HTML-5 and CSS-3. But when I did html-5 test on http://www.html5test.com/ IE9 scored only 96/300 when firefox 3.6 scored around 130 and chrome scores 231 out of 300. IE9 is lacking behind in HTML-5 support by a huge margin in comparison to chrome and firefox. But ya, there is definitely an improvement from IE8 to IE9. IE 8 scores only 26 in HTML-5 test.

Speed/Security/other features: I can clearly see IE9 is faster than firefox 3.6 but slower than chrome. IE9 has no default ad blocker integrated with it. IE9 uses SmartScreen filter that warns you if the website that you are visiting contains threats.

Finally, Microsoft has realized where search box should be open when we press Ctrl-f. In IE9 it gets opened in the top of the browser just below URL bar, not like IE 8 which opens search bar in the middle of page.

Well, IE9 is cool, cleaner, simpler, fast and secure. Now all 3 browser giants are at equal level. Browser war is on now. This is a very good move by Microsoft to get back it's browser market share. It will be very interesting to watch how browser users will reply to IE9. For me, all three are equals now. I have more option now. But still my priority will be chrome-> Firefox -> IE9.

Write your IE9 experience or your questions about IE9 as comment to this post. Remember IE9 is still in Beta version. Use it on your own risk.

GOOGLE INSTANT : Search Before You Type

2010-09-10T15:18:00.000-07:00

8th September, The day when Google officially announced and added another milestone to make search easier, faster and efficient. Google Instant gives result as you type. you will get your search result faster than your typing speed.

I have been using it since the last 2 days and I have only one sentence to describe this i.e. “It’s mind blowing.” Here is some more insight to Google Instant and my first impression of it.

Features of Google Instant:

There are mainly 3 features of Google Instant:

Instant search result: you get your search results before you can type. As soon as you start typing, Google Instant automatically shows results for a popular search that begins with those letters . You get your results before you finish typing your query and hitting enter.

Predicted result: Google instant predicts what you are going to type next and gives predicted search query in search textbox in gray text. This predicted search query remains until you type next character.

Scroll to search: Using up and down arrow keys you can scroll to suggestions and you get a updated search result page as you move on the suggestions. No need to click on “google search” button, no need to hit "enter" anymore.

Google says that Google Instant saves 2-5 seconds per search query and I can clearly see that it is saving our search time.

Also, Google has integrated safe search in Google Instant. If you want to search any uncensored adult things, Google Instant doesn’t suggest anything. You will need to hit enter in order to get search result.

Is it really effective? Generally, when we search anything, we have search query or phrases in our mind and we search or type accordingly. Here in Google Instant for every character, the search result page is being loaded or refreshed. The screen is flickering with results while typing query. I think this is very distracting to user.
Also I can not see any improvement in the quality of search results. It is fast and instant but search results are same as what we get in normal google search.

I think Google Instant is targeted at mobile phone users who are going to be the major revenue sources for google in the upcoming years. Predictive search result is similar to predictive text options which are used in smart phones and designed specifically to expedite the speed of typing on tiny keyboards.

Overall, I really like the instant results and seeing how the results change with just the addition of one letter. It will be interesting to see how the public take to it and adapt themselves to new search techniques.

Please let us know your views and experiences of Google Instant.

Gaming Industry Part-2

2010-08-13T13:19:00.000-07:00

We are back with the second chapter of the Gaming Industry. This is the story of a Japanese company who jumped into the gaming market and is still playing strong.

Kyoto, the Japanese based Nintendo began as a playing-card manufacturing company. It entered the home video game market in Japan in 1983 after it started its entry into electronics in 1970s with its Famicom system.

Nintendo focused on producing fewer, but higher quality games. The Famicom could display 52 colours at a resolution of 256 *240 pixels, superior to the competition of the day. Famicom cost 50% less than the closest competitor. A security chip was installed into every console to ensure that only Nintendo approved games could be played on the system.

Atari filed a number of lawsuits against Nintendo complaining of monopolistic practices.
But by 1990, Nintendo had captured 90% of the US home console market. It had big hit titles like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. In the meanwhile it faced competition from another Japanese console maker – Sega who had also successfully entered US market. The marketing and relatively softer licensee policies of Sega paved the way for an extremely competitive market.

But the big war was just about to begin. By the mid 1990s Sega was the least of Nintendo’s worry as Sony the Big Electronics player entered the video Game market with a bang- Playstation.

~Naineet

Gaming Industry

2010-07-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

The Video Gaming Industry has experienced significant changes in its 30 years old industry. The industry has seen big changes right from the days when Atari was providing household games at US. We have tried to provide you with an overview of the history of Video Games through our present article. The first of the articles in the series talks about first Gaming Company- Atari

Atari: It was the first in the gaming industry. It introduced a home version of the ball and paddle game of Pong in the year 1975. Atari sold 150,000 copies of Pong in the first year itself.

Its competitor Fairchild Channel F produced the first gaming console. Atari followed suit with its 2600 VCS (Video Computer System). Each of its cartridges was retailed for $25-$30. By 1979, many other gaming and toy companies entered the home console market – Mattel, Coleco, RCA and Philips Electronics. Atari represented two - thirds of the home console market in the United States. The home versions of arcade games such as Space invaders and Asteroids were a hit. It had turned into a $3billion business by 1982.

The industry started collapsing by 1983. The market was full of multiple consoles and poor quality software. Atari developed E.T a game based on Steven Spielberg’s hit movie by the same name. It was the last nail in the coffin. Atari posted a $536 million loss and the company was sold at a substantial discount in 1984 to Jack Tramiel (who named his company Atari Corporation).

The market was all silent for several years after the collapse until Nintendo came. Just be patient for the next article which would tell the story of how Nintendo took the US market by storm………….

~Naineet

Oracle’s strategic acquisitions

2010-07-25T02:14:00.000-07:00

This is a guest article by a very good friend of mine and author of www.mindcron.com.

Mergers, Takeovers, Buying businesses and Strategic acquisitions are the best management activity to become the no. 1 and expanding the business throughout the globe. Most of the corporate icons have eagle eyes for the strategic acquisitions in current corporate scenario.

Why not? There are lots of successful examples in front of us. Mittal Steel Company is sitting on the top of the steel world, Bharti Airtel has got 5th ranking in telecom industries after acquiring Zain and there are lots of lot stories.

IT industries are more aggressive in acquisitions and mergers. Microsoft has more than 200, IBM has more than 90, HP has around 100, CISCO has more than 140 and TCS has around 12 acquisitions and mergers to show global presence.

ORACLE is not lagging behind of anybody and has a remarkable record of corporate strategic acquisitions in the world of information technologies.

DATABASE
e-Test (March 2008)
Innobase (October 2005)
Moniforce (December 2007)
mValent (February 2009)
Secerno (May 2010) (pending)
Sleepycat (February 2006)
TimesTen (June 2005)
TripleHop (June 2005)
APPLICATIONS
AppForge (April 2007)
Haley (October 2008)
Interlace Systems (October 2007)
LogicalApps (October 2007)
Market2Lead (May 2010)
Silver Creek Systems (January 2010)
TempoSoft (December 2005)
PRODUCT LINES
Agile (May 2007)
Hyperion (March 2007)
PeopleSoft (January 2005)
Primavera (October 2008)
Siebel (January 2006)
Telephony@Work (June 2006)

IMPLEMENTATION
AND INTEGRATION TOOLS

Global Knowledge Software (GKS) (July 2008)

SERVER AND STORAGE
SYSTEMS

Sun (April 2009)

Virtual Iron (May 2009)

INDUSTRY SOLUTIONS

Communications and Media

Convergin (February 2010)

eServGlobal's Universal Service Platform
(USP) (May 2010) (pending)
HotSip (February 2006)
MetaSolv Software (October 2006) Net4Call (April 2006)
Netsure Telecom Limited (September2007)
Portal Software (April 2006)
Sophoi (October 2009)
INSURANCE
AdminServer (May 2008)
Skywire Software (June 2008)

MIDDLEWARE
AmberPoint (February 2010)
BEA (January 2008)
Bharosa (July 2007)
Bridgestream (September 2007)
Captovation (January 2008)
ClearApp (September 2008)
Context Media (July 2005)
HyperRoll (September 2009)
GoldenGate (July 2009)
Java (April 2009)
Oblix (March 2005)
OctetString (November 2005)
Sigma Dynamics (August 2006)
Stellent (November 2006)
Sunopsis (October 2006)
Tacit Software (November 2008)
Tangosol (March 2007)
Thor Technologies (November 2005)

ENGINEERING AND
CONSTRUCTION

Primavera (October 2008)

FINANCIAL SERVICES

i-flex (August 2005)

HEALTH SCIENCES

Phase Forward (April 2010) (pending)
Relsys (March 2009)

INDUSTRIAL MANUFACTURING

Agile (May 2007)
Conformia Software (June 2009)
Demantra (June 2006)
G-Log (September 2005)

RETAIL
360Commerce (January 2006)
Advanced Visual Technology (AVT) (October
2008)
ProfitLogic (July 2005)
Retek (April 2005)
UTILITIES
LODESTAR (April 2007)
SPL WorldGroup (November 2006)

Position associated with oracle after acquisitions:

11 of the top 11 global aerospace and defence companies run Oracle's mission-critical back-office applications and technology
9 of the top 10 global aerospace and defence companies run Oracle's Siebel customer-facing applications
8 of the top 10 European Union member Ministries of Defence run Oracle applications
20 of the top 20 global automotive OEMs and suppliers depend on Oracle applications to accelerate innovation and time to market.

15 of the top 15 North American automotive OEMs rely on Oracle applications to optimize their demand-driven supply chains.

15 of the top 15 Fortune 500 automotive manufacturers run Oracle software and hardware

5 of the top 10 global chemical companies run Oracle applications

8 of the top 12 high performance chemical companies run Oracle applications

2,700 chemical companies run Oracle technology

780 chemical companies run Oracle applications

98 of the top 100 telcos run Oracle Applications

97 of the top 100 telcos run Oracle Fusion Middleware

100 of the top 100 telcos run Oracle Database

10 of the top 10 network equipment providers rely on Oracle's Sun hardware

43 of the largest U.S. school districts run Oracle applications

10 of the top 10 academic universities worldwide run Oracle applications

10 of the top 10 research universities run Oracle applications

15 of the top academic institutions in Europe run Oracle applications

8 of the 11 Big 10 university conferences in the U.S. run Oracle applications

Oracle is #1 in Financial Services customer relationship management

Oracle is #1 in Financial Services human capital management

20 of the 20 top banks run Oracle

9 of the top 10 securities firms use Oracle applications

4 of the top 5 mutual fund companies use Oracle applications

4 of the top 5 world stock exchanges use Oracle applications

40 of the top 40 high technology companies run Oracle

30 of the top 30 Electronic OEMs run Oracle applications and technology

8 of the top 10 Semiconductor companies run Oracle applications

14 of the top 25 High Technology Distributors run Oracle applications

10 of the top 10 Fabless Semiconductor companies run Oracle applications

8 of the top 10 Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) companies run Oracle applications

9 of the top 10 Software companies run Oracle applications

9 of the top 10 global manufacturing giants run Oracle applications

9 of the top 10 Fortune's Most Admired Firms run Oracle applications

10 of the top 15 office equipment manufacturers run Oracle applications

20 of the top 20 insurance companies run Oracle applications

20 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies run Oracle applications

10 of the top 10 contract research organizations (CRO) run Oracle Applications

20 of the top 20 medical device companies run Oracle applications

All of the entertainment companies in the Global 500 run Oracle Applications

12 of the top 15 U.S. media companies run Oracle applications

6 of the top 15 publishing houses run Oracle applications

6 of the top 12 U.S. newspapers run Oracle applications

3 of the 4 major U.S. television networks run Oracle applications

3 of the top 4 global advertising organizations run Oracle applications

More than 160 upstream companies run Oracle applications

9 of the top 10 oilfield service companies from Reuters Online run Oracle applications

More than 100 downstream companies run Oracle applications

9 of the top 10 integrated oil companies from the PFC Energy 50 run Oracle applications for their downstream businesses.

9 of the top 10 Global IT Services firms run Oracle applications

8 of the top 10 "Best Firms to Work for" in Consulting Magazine run Oracle applications

27 of the top 35 companies on InformationWeek's list of most innovative consulting and business services firms run Oracle applications

10 of the top 10 leading outsourcing service providers run Oracle

20 of the top 20 global retailers run Oracle

10 of the top 10 global fashion retailers run Oracle

20 of the top 20 global grocers run Oracle

10 of the top 10 European retailers run Oracle

10 of the top 10 North American retailers run Oracle

10 of the 10 top hotels get better results with Oracle

4 of the 5 top ports get better results with Oracle

Let’s go for another!!!

Google's Failed Products

2010-07-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

"GOOGLE", whenever we hear this word there is only one thing which comes to our mind i.e "INNOVATION". Yes, Google is a synonym of "SUCCESS" and "INNOVATION" and my readers might have observed that till now we (Team GeekOnNet) have written only about it’s successful projects/product or successful innovation. But this time we are going to change the trend and we are going to write about Google’s failed product/project

My readers must be wondering, but it's true. Like other biggies (Microsoft, Apple etc.) Google too has a list of failed products/projects . Let's discuss some of its biggest flop products one by one.

1) Google Video: It was a clone of Youtube and other video sharing sites, But unfortunately it wasn’t able to generate traffic or revenue. This product became useless after the acquisition of youtube. I have no idea why is google video still alive.

2) Google Lively: Lively was a Three-Dimensional universe where user could create different 3-d a avtar and could interact with other avtars. Google launched Lively on July 8, 2008 as an experiment in providing people with more ways to express themselves on the Web. Again, people didn’t like it and google had to close down this project on 31 dec 2008.

3) Google Buzz: Yes, I am considering this Twitter look-a-like product as failed product. I have already predicted that this product is not going to be as useful as other Google products are.

4) Orkut: issshh... Is it a failed product? I think it is a semi failed product. As you can see in my "war of online social networks" post, orkut has least number of active users compared to 2 other biggies like Facebook and MySpace. Orkut is popular in south Asian countries like India, Pakistan and South American countries like Brazil, Argentina etc.

5) Friend Connect: Friend Connect allows users on the internet to connect with their friends on different websites. I see only few websites and blogs are using this service.

6) Wave: I have no idea what is happening with this over hyped product.

7) Google Page Creator: Google Page Creator was a website creation and hosting service by Google. The service had been shut down in 2009, while existing published pages migrated to Google Sites.

8) Google latitude: I have not heard a too much about this product. This product allows a mobile phone user to allow certain people to track their location.

There are few other products like Knol, Google Health which never met their target audience and became useless. Sometimes it happens that our expectations and predictions go wrong. I think the above list is not too big for a company like Google.

I am sure we will keep loving Google even after seeing the above list. Google is something which has changed everyone's life and continues to make life more comfortable.

If you have any other Google’s failed product in your mind please write as comment to this post. I will add that to my list.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would like to thank Mr. Sanjit for his valuable information. I am enhancing the above list.
iGoogle, Google click-to-call, Google NoteBook, Google SideWiki, GOOG-411, Google Answers
Thanks again!!!

Decorate Your Google Search Home Page.

2010-06-11T19:54:00.000-07:00

Google is always upto something new. But this time it enters the already trodden path of Microsoft's Bing. Like Bing it would give you an option of personalizing your search background. Bing had this feature right since its launch.

How does one configure it? Its very simple, go to the Google search home page, you can see a link "Change background image" on the bottom left of the page. Click on the link and you get a popup where you can upload your favorite image from your PC, from your picasa album or from google's public album.
Upload the image and you are done. Your favorite search engine page is now customized and personalized for you.

If you really like the old black & white classy background, click on link "Remove background image" and revert your changes.

What is Google trying to prove with this feature? Is Google trying to say that it's main competitor is Bing? I have almost forgotten Bing, but thanks to Google, I am reminded of Bing again. Is Google forcing us to use Bing?

Please write your ideas and views as comments to this post.

Mnemonic Dictionary (www.mnemonicdictionary.com)

2010-05-23T08:50:00.000-07:00

Short of words for GRE, GMAT or even CAT? You feel you are wasting your time and energy remembering all the difficult words? We present to you a solution -The Mnemonic Dictionary (www.mnemonicdictionary.com), which is going to help you in memorizing all these scary words.

Mnemon ic Dictionary(MD) helps people retain and recall new words. MD provides memory aids (called mnemonics) for each word. Mnemonics is a connect to-be-remembered meaning of words with a systematic and organized set of images or words that are already firmly established in long-term memory and can therefore serve as reminder cues.

In an exclusive interview to the GeekOnNet team, Amit Aggarwal founder of MnemonicDictionary.com speaks about his company, its goals and future plans.

Founder: Amit Aggarwal
Founder's Background: B.Tech. Chemical Engineering, IIT-Bombay.
http://in.linkedin.com/in/amitaggarval

The Geeks: What inspired you to start MnemonicDictionary?
Amit: The idea for mnemonic dictionary came when I was still in college and was preparing for GRE. This exam primarily lays a lot of emphasis on vocabulary and I would struggle for hours to memorize new words. This technique worked wonders for me and I wanted to reach out to all those students and professionals with similar concerns and to save them from the usual grind. Mnemonic Dictionary was launched after spending several hours on building quality content for the website.

The Geeks: How long have your website been functional? Can you please explain your "Business and Revenue Model"?
Amit: Beta version of Mnemonic Dictionary was launched in May 2007. We are exploring other revenue models but currently our website is making money only from online ad inventory.

The Geeks: Your website contains a lot of information. What technology do you use to maintain such huge database of words?
Amit: Mnemonic Dictionary uses SQL format of Princeton University data bank, Wordnet which consists of not less than 150,000 words.’ Mnemonics’ on the website are mainly contributed by the active members and users.

The Geeks: Name some of your competitors in the market. How do you differentiate your website from them?
Amit: Answers.com and Dictionary.com offer similar services but none of them provide mnemonics aid. Mnemonic Dictionary is the only place which provides memory aids along with meaning and usage for each word.

The Geeks: What was the biggest hurdle you faced and how did you overcome it?
Amit: Biggest hurdle was getting traffic on our website as we started with a very low budget of approx 80,000 INR and did not have any money to invest on the professional marketing of the website. We capitalized majorly on Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing. Currently, we are getting more than 1000 visitors daily only from search engines.

The Geeks: What are your future plans of expansion?
Amit: We are planning to publish our mnemonics data (for words in Barron) in the form of a book, so that users with constraints like poor net connectivity or inaccessibility to internet are not deprived of this wonderful technique of building vocabulary.

The Geeks: How do you publicize your website? Any big publicity campaigns coming up? What is your USP?
Amit: Word- of- mouth publicity has gone a long way in making us popular. Many GRE/GMAT/LSAT/CAT aspirants keep recommending the website to their peers’ .Also, our sound knowledge of SEO and SEM has helped us. The USP of our website is its powerful use of “mnemonics” to help in easy retention of words.

The Geeks: What background skill, knowledge and experiences help you in your business?
Amit: Experience and passion for web development and online marketing via SEO and SEM has made this journey rewarding for me.

The Geeks: My readers look at you entrepreneurs with a lot of respect and inspiration. We would like you to just give us some insight on your "mantra of success"?
Amit: I would like to quote famous lines of Shiv Khera
“Winners don’t do different things, they do things differently”
You just think how you can solve everyday problems differently and the rest would automatically fall in place.

We are very fortunate to have so many budding entrepreneurs in our country. We as GeekOnNet team is here to encourage their hard-work and talent. Our aim is to bring in more visibility and awareness for such startups. We hope all our avid followers help and support us in our novel initiative.

EveningFlavors : for, your every evening is special

2010-05-04T11:22:00.000-07:00

Looking to go out for a romantic dinner or a date with a special someone? Family in town, and you want to take them to a popular restaurant? EveningFlavors.com has just what you’re looking for. Team GeekOnNet comes again with one of the hottest startups of Bangalore (Bengaluru).

EveningFlavors.com is an online media & Services Company started by a team consisting of IIT and Industry professionals who has substantial knowledge in their respective fields and executed the idea in a cost efficient manner. Their aim is to make every evening of yours special. They started executing this idea from August, 2008 onwards EveningFlavors.com is the India's leading restaurant reservation, review and search site. EveningFlavors provides you with amazing offers and great events taking place in Bangalore.

You can now plan a party or book a table at your choice of place, rate and cuisine with a click on the mouse or a call to 080 - 40894999.

In an exclusive interview to the GeekOnNet team Akash Shrivastava, co-founder of EveningFlavors.com speaks about his company, its targets and future plans.

Venture Name: EveningFlavors.com
Founder(s): Akash Shrivastava, Ravi Shrias, Vinod C, Abhishek Kumar

The Geeks: What inspired you to start eveningflavors.com?
Akash: 90% of business ideas come from the problems we face in our daily life. We(team eveningflavors) being foodies always use to face issue to explore different restaurants and lounges on weekends and finally we had to be adventurous enough to risk our evening to explore new restaurant or rely on friends to get information about the new restaurants. We never found a dedicated service or web portal which would be reliable one stop solution for all dining and partying needs. Looking at the scope we quit our jobs in Aug. 2008 and started working on our baby idea which turned out to be huge content rich dedicated portal to F&B industry, table reservation and party assistance service called as EveningFlavors.com.

The Geeks: How long have your website been functional? Can you please explain your "Business and revenue Model"?
Akash: It’s been one and half year we are in business. We are lead based model where we work with our partnering restaurants to generate leads.
We already have around 300 active tie-up and another 200 indirect tie-up with restaurants in Bangalore. Average of around 10000 diners in Bangalore dine through us. Now with the sort of niche audience we have, new avenues of revenue have already started emerging in form of subscription and advertising.

The Geeks: Your website contains a lot of information, how do you basically keep yourself updated with all those new restaurants opening up every day? What is the secret of such a strong network?
Akash: We have put in strong initial effort to maintain the content on our website. Since, internet is still not in reach with the common people we had tough time in convincing restaurant owners for our portal. Slowly we picked up our pace and now are able to maintain the updated content by dedicating a team especially for the content management. Apart from this we are having user generated content too. Once we have got a brand value even the restaurants and beverages companies are putting their info in our website.

The Geeks: Name some of your competitors in the market. How do you differentiate your website from them?
Akash: Since, the market is crowded there are actually few big players like JustDial, and Asklaila, Burrp who falls into the basket of our competitors. But we are far different in term of our uniqueness for the content,offering and services which we impart.

The Geeks: What was the biggest hurdle you faced & how did you overcome it?
Akash: With so many TV channels, magazines and internet websites various marketing medium are saturated to its brink and initial stages of our business we used to have a pretty difficult time to get an appointment from restaurant owners leave aside explaining them the concept of Evening flavors. Whenever we tried to meet a restaurant owner we found tens of people already in the queue for meeting with them for promotions and marketing and they usually use to stereotype us as just one more good for nothing website!!!
Having put in lot of thought and efforts we have now established ourselves as strong brand in Bangalore market.

The Geeks: What are your future plans of expansion? How do you want your customers to look at eveningflavors.com 3 years down the line?
Akash: Our futuristic plan includes expansion to 15 top cities of India.And we work with the vision that 3 years down the line if your planning your dining and partying the next thing which should come in your mind is Evening Flavors.

The Geeks: How do you publicize your website? Any big publicity campaigns coming up?
Akash: We are having strong hold in the market segment for our publicity. Right from the online publicity we are hitting the offline market for our publicity. We are having marketing partnership with pubs, lounges, restaurant, newspapers and magazines for our offline publicity. Having tied up with CallEasy, CommonFloor and mofirst we are looking at even the bigger picture of our market hold.
Above all of this we are into SEO, SEM and viral marketing using social networking websites like facebook, twitter. Today EveningFlvors's facebook fanclub is having more than 4500 people.
Please wait and watch for the big publicity campaign coming up, they are there and will be implemented very soon.

The Geeks: What background skills, knowledge and experiences help you in your business?
Akash: Me, Ravi and Abhishek having few years of experience in corporate was something which led us frame the idea of EveningFlavors though with vinod having 17 yrs of experience in various fields was a asset and we got a good support from our family and friend which helped us dealing with issues very professionally.

The Geeks: My readers look at you entrepreneurs with a lot of respect and inspiration. We would like you to just give us some insight on your "mantra of success"?
Akash: Ha ha ha :)(Laughs) We have not tasted the big success yet though successful in achieving smaller landmarks. Would like to say it’s long tough journey, believe in your dreams, keep your eyes and ears open and keep learning from your mistakes .

If you think that I am missing something if you wanted to know about the venture mail me/comment your questions. My email id is ranjeet@geekonnet.com. I will try to include those questions in the forth coming interviews.

AdSense : Now serving multiple ad networks

2010-03-21T05:02:00.000-07:00

I received this e-mail (mentioned below) from Google AdSense Team last week, announcing new feature of AdSense. Now AdSense will be serving third party ad networks along with it's own Adwords.

Hi,

We have launched a new capability in AdSense allowing Google-certified ad networks compete directly within AdSense, which means that advertisers from these third-party networks will be able to compete with AdWords advertisers to show on the Google Content Network.

These new capabilities will automatically be enabled for your account, and you'll see a new section in your Ad Review Center where you can allow or block specific ad networks or all networks except AdWords. Please note that we'll gradually be adding new ad networks to AdSense accounts over the next few months, so you won't see any immediate impact on your ads or your earnings.

To ensure the quality of the ads that appear on AdSense publisher websites, Google will certify all participating ad networks for adherence to our standards for user privacy, ad quality, and speed. Some participating ad networks use targeting methods similar to Google's interest-based advertising to show more relevant ads to users on the sites they visit. These ad networks won't be permitted to collect data from your site for the purpose of subsequent interest-based advertising, but we'll allow networks that comply with user privacy guidelines to show ads using these tools. Publishers can opt out of user interest targeting from these ad networks, and Google has changed our requirements for third-party ad serving to reflect this.

We are currently only accepting ads from Google-certified ad networks in North America and Europe, but we will make this feature available to ad networks in additional parts of the world in the future.

Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

This feature didn't impress me at all but has raised some questions in my mind.
Why AdSense is going to serve third party network?
Is Google AdSense running out of advertisements and advertisers?
Does Google want to prove that It's ad network is the best by providing a common platform for every other network?

I think this new feature will be a killer for many ad networks. As stated in this e-mail, Google still approves the Ad networks for quality, privacy, speed etc. So, there is a chance that some high profitable ad networks may not clear Google Test. Well, I hope that from this new feature, publishers will have access to higher paying ad networks which will increase their ad revenues.

Your views and comments are welcome.

FireFox 3.6

2010-03-16T01:45:00.000-07:00

You often see a pop up window in order to upgrade your older version of firefox. More than 1 million users have downloaded and installed firefox 3.6 since its launch in mid January.

I have observed that since last week or two this pop up is appearing rather frequently. Does this mean that Mozilla is aggressively forcing us to upgrade our firefox?

This popup window appears after 60 seconds of keyboard activities and comes with 3 options "Ask Later", "No Thanks" and "Get the New Version". If you opt for "Ask Later" the popup window will come after 24 hours. If you chose - "No Thanks" and decide later to upgrade firefox, you will just need to run "Check for Updates" from help menu.

Performance: According to Mozilla, Firefox 3.6 is some three times faster than Firefox 3.0, and about 20% faster than 3.5. The most noticeable new feature in the new Mozilla browser is Personas, which allows users to personalize the look of Firefox. Other new features are, a "plug-in updater" that will detect out-of-date plug-ins, "form complete", and open video and audio via HTML 5 for full-screen display and poster frames.

Firefox 3.6 is not a major release so please do not expect any revolutionary changes in web browser technology.

Should we dump IE (Internet Explorer)? Tell me your answer as comment to this post.

Social Wars!!

2010-03-07T03:08:00.000-08:00

"When everyone is playing social games with friends, then why play akele?" This is the main tagline of an Indian social networking website for its recently launched social games. Being a Internet freak I feel that these games are just a newer version of the old stand-alone games. With better internet speeds and lots of social networking, the games have spread their wings from just being played on standalone PCs to now being played directly in the cloud. We can name this family of games as Game 2.0.

Game 2.0 is simply an integration of simple games made on some server side scripts, action scripts like JS or ajax, Flash and implemented on Web 2.0 (aka social networking).

For the newbies, let me tell you that social games are web based games which you can play with friends, mostly on social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, Myspace etc. In this post I will give a brief about the biggest players in development of social games, and compare them in terms of market share, funding, revenue and business model.

We are already familiar with the popularity of the first generation social networking startups like Facebook, Myspace, Orkut etc. Now a new generation of application developers have taken center stage, who are based mostly on these gen1 social networking sites, and are making big money. The top 3 in my list are:

Company: Zynga (www.zynga.com)
Funding: $219M
Major Apps: Farmville- 61M Players, Mafia Wars- 25.8M , Yoville- 19.8M, Texas Hold Em’ Poker- 18.3M
Revenue: Estimated $200M
Zynga is a srong candidate for 2010 IPO.
Company: Playfish (www.playfish.com)
Acquired: by Electronic Arts (EA Sports) for $400M
Major Apps: Pet Society- 20.5M, Restaurant City-17.3M, Country Story- 8M
Revenue: Estimated $135M
Company: Playdom (www.playdom.com)
Funding: $47M
Major Apps: Mobsters -14M, Bumper Stickers-11.7M, Own Your Friends-10.1M, Sorority Life-7.1M, Mobsters 2-3.5M, Poker Palace- 1.5M
Revenue: Estimated $60M

Let me just remind you that these companies are startups and have existed for not more than three years. So, how are they making this much of BIG money? All of them have two revenue models, and these two models are like the necessary practices for companies in this domain.

The first model is very simple and straight forward. It begins when you start playing any of these games. Initially everything is free in the game. But as you move ahead in the game you will need a lot of virtual stuff - like seeds for your farm or guns for your gang - which you would have to buy from an online store using a credit card, PayPal etc. The idea is very simple here - get addicted to the free version, then start spending real money for virtual stuff. Playdom has gone a step ahead and even opened offline stores for virtual goods.
The second model is the traditional online revenue model using ad clicks, lead generation and toolbar installation, but in an entirely new fashion. If you do not have a credit card or a PayPal account, then you sign up on some other website to get virtual money, which you can use to buy some virtual stuff. The cache here is that when you sign up for that website you are actually generating leads for them. When you signed up on the other website, the gaming company gets real money for the lead generation. You can call this SGL (Social Game Lead), and this lead to companies is a guaranteed lead, as the user needs the virtual stuff, which means he is willing to pay if you can sell him the virtual stuff, i.e. if you can do some SGM (Social Game Marketing).
Toolbar installation revenue model is more interesting. When you install a toolbar, it will make Ask.com (say) the default search engine on your browser. Ask.com makes money from search ads and pays money to gaming company or the toolbar developer for every installation of the toolbar. Ask.com pays about $1-$2 for every installation. Just imagine how the money is flowing back to the game developer. Ask --> Toolbar developer -->Zynga --> Facebook (for ads) --> Zynga. This is an endless circle. Hats off to this revenue model.

In the beginning of this post I had quoted a tagline - ...why play akele (i.e. why play alone)? This tagline is being used by an upcoming Indian social gaming website - Ibibo.com. The tagline suggests how new players are trying to capture the potentially large Indian market. The reason I wrote 'potentially' large market was that though the Indian market is very large, but the revenue models might not work out here that easily. You will find less than 5% of the Indian gamers buying online stuff. So, your game might be a very big hit here, but you might not be making any money out of it.

If you were not able to make money out of this market, then this potentially big market could turn out into a potential risky market. Another reason why I say so is that these game developers are not paying any attention to localization, rather Indian-ization, of the games. The big developers have simply imported their international versions to India, and the local developers are merely copying the international games. They have not even cared to give Indian names. For instance, Ibibo has a game called Teen Patti, which is a card game. They have explained the rules using names like Aces and Jacks, which most of the Indian audience would not understand. Had they cared to mentioned that Ace means 'Ekka' and Jack means 'Gulaam' the public out here would have simply loved it.

Zynga and Playdom have opened up their Indian development centers in Bangalore, and they are planning to develop games purely for the Indian audience. I hope they keep their promise, and also hope that the Indian developers like Ibibo give some genuine thought rather than simply copying ideas. The competition is going to become more fierce as biggies like EA are soon going to join the race.

We still have a few unanswered questions to ponder over - will the potentially big Indian market grow into a real market for the developers, and what new things can be integrated with social networks to make more money out of this seemingly big market?

Your views and comments are welcome.

Web 3.0 : The Next Generation Web

2010-01-16T07:21:00.000-08:00

A warm happy new year to all my audience. 2010 brings with it a lot of predictions and hopes.

what would be the top 10 most wanted gadgets of 2010
Will google's nexus-1 beat I-Phone
Will twitter start making profit etc

So why not we (geekonnet team) predict the future. Being internet freaks, Many people came to us asking about the future of web2.0 or in a way web 3.0 "The next generation web".

Web 1.0: Lets go back back to 1991 when the first WWW was released to the public. The period of 1991 to 2001 (before the bursting of dotcom bubble), Web 1.0 was mainly concerned with the static html pages, guest book, forms etc. HTML extensions like " blink" and "marque " tag was introduced during the browser wars in this period of time. The biggest achievements of web1.0 were GeoCities and hotmail. GeoCities was purchased by Yahoo! for $3.57 billion in January 1999. Yahoo! closed GeoCities on October 26, 2009. There were atleast 38 million user-built pages on GeoCities before it was shut down. The GeoCities Japan version of the service is still available. Everyone knows the hotmail story, founded by the wonder boy Sabeer Bhatia. Hotmail was sold to Microsoft for 400 million dollars in 1997. At that time it had around 9 million users. Thus roughly the total number users of web 1.0 were around 45-50 million.

Web2.0: This is the current web which we are using. The bursting of dotcom bubble in 2001 was the main turning point for the internet. New technologies also played a big role in the transformation of internet from web1.0 to web2.0. Google revolutionized the search on the web. The concept of user generated content came and changed the entire web. This generation of web is mainly about the sharing of knowledge and content. Web like facebook, google have changed the entire business model of an online business. The total number of users of web2.0 are more than a billion.

Now these are the predictions for the new web form that is coming up:

Web3.0: Web3.0 will be based on the "intelligent" web applications. The main things which will be used are "Natural Language Processing (NLP)", "Machine Learning languages". Our information and datas will be linked to each other and will be organized in order to make our web intelligent. Our next generation search engine will be based on the semantic and not only on just the keywords. We will not have to surf again and again. The browser will do this for us. One can visualize the web3.0 as a global database which has every data and information. Web3.0 will be more personalized, Intelligent and mobile (anytime anywhere).

Social Media Analysis

2009-12-11T10:29:00.000-08:00

Standing by the side of Mahalaxmi Garbage transfer station , I felt happy that how even garbage contributes to a better tomorrow. Being an internet freak my mind dashed straight to the big pile of data collected daily by Social media websites. What we will get if we crawl and analyze the microbloging tools such as Twitter, Wikis, Social networking websites and millions of blog available on internet?
Social media analysis tends to separate out content analysis and structure analysis. In the age of web2.0, we have loads of data and information available on internet generated by millions of internet users. Here, arises another basic but very important question “Why”. Why academic institutions and companies are spending lots of money on analysis of this data? Why do we need to analyze this data.

Why?
From Industrial point of view, followings are the most probable reasons:

Relationship between consumers and the product
Identify Industrial Influence
Identify competitors in the market.
Identify competitor’s visibility
Product review
Identify presence of client
Identify Client demand

Aspects which may gain Industrial usage in very near future are as follows

Sentiment analysis
Keyword analysis
Social network analysis

Sources: The Next question is what data can we analyze? What sources we can include in it?

Blog posts / Comments: It doesn’t includes only blog posts but it includes comments also. By analyzing comment we get the sentiments of the reader and review of the author.
Microblog: Twitter is still growing rapidly and generating huge amounts of data every day which makes microblog a very important source for social media analysis.
Discussion Forums
Product Reviews on e-commerce websites viz, e-bay, amazon
Social networks like Facebook, orkut and myspace etc.
Photo / video sharing websites: flickr/youtube
Social news: Digg, ReadIt, stumble

It's very interesting to know how the day to day blabbers and spattering of a common man is about to gain an industrial value. You writing on facebook about how you feel today or you commenting on a particular product on e-bay can become a basis for an upcoming product launched by a multimillion firm. So whenever you tweet or whenever you comment on FB/Orkut and whenever you share a picture on flickr just remember you are making a contribution to a better tomorrow, which will be gifted to future mankind.

SIXTH SENSE

2009-11-09T03:04:00.000-08:00

We are sorry for not updating you all with some of the current changes that has been going around. We are finally again back to business telling you all about a product that has been doing the rounds-Sixth Sense.

How does one perceive and see things around? To begin with, it is a silly question. We have our five sense organs for it, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were a sixth sense too? Today seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling are not the only information required to decide the credibility of an object. Why else would ‘Google’ be so popular! But you cannot always ‘log on’ when you need information and knowledge about the object in front of you. That’s where Sixth Sense comes in.

Sixth Sense- it connects the digital world to the physical one. The device (which can be worn around the neck) consist a projector, a mirror, a camera connected to the cell-phone and colored caps (like rings) which are put on the tips of thumb and the forefinger. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus SixthSense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction. It is just like watching search results only without a required screen!

The Sixth Sense device caters to a variety of needs, like map navigation. The fingers would allow zooming in an out of the map layout and help search the exact location. If you buy some stuff, it will pop up all the information available about it, so you get the best deal. The drawing tool helps draw on any surface using the fingers. It recognizes free hand gestures too. Using hands ‘framing’ gestures, will click pictures and then later you can flip through those pictures. SixthSense also lets the user draw icons or symbols in the air using the movement of the index finger and recognizes those symbols as interaction instructions. For example, drawing a magnifying glass symbol takes the user to the map application or drawing and ‘@’ symbol lets the user check his mail. The SixthSense system also augments physical objects the user is interacting with by projecting more information about these objects projected on them. For example, a newspaper can show live video news or dynamic information can be provided on a regular piece of paper. The gesture of drawing a circle on the user’s wrist projects an analog watch.

The mind behind this intriguing device is Pranav Mistry, an Indian Student pursuing PhD in the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT’s media lab. His work in detail can be viewed at www.pranavmistry.com

~Naineet

About us

2009-11-07T04:33:00.000-08:00

Free time tends to maximize your thinking abilities and leads you to something that may sometimes be very exciting. GeekOnNet.com has been such an experience for us. It’s an online portal where we write mainly about new online inventions, business events, innovative websites and web solutions.

We had a group known as the ‘Open Source’ during my IIT days, a group of students who used to share all the new ideas and solutions to solving assignments. Most of us were into blogging and used to put in our ideas into our own individual blogs. We used to meet up every time there was a barrage of assignments. Once during such a week, there came up an idea of having our own website and putting in all our technical discussions and analysis into that.

Me and two of my classmates Ranjeet Kumar Vimal and Deepak Mishra took of the initiative. Ranjeet posted the first article on June 9, 2008. He wrote about a 17 year girl earning $70K from internet. The response he got from the readers was very good. With time me and Deepak also joined in. We also bought the domain name “GeekOnNet.com” from US.

Our articles ranged from analysis and comparisons of online webportals to writing about budding entrepreneurs. We focused mainly on the online startups and portals. Also me and Ranjeet being from Computer Science department helped us, we could give a common man analysis of social networking websites- Orkut, Myspace, Facebook. When Crome and Bing was launched, people were looking out for comparisons and ours was the first to give a comprehensive analysis of both of them. The article on Mozilla and Internet Explorer received the maximum number of hits our portal ever received. Deepak had a different kind of a contribution to make. He comes from the Mechanical Engineering Department and belongs to a Theatre group in Mumbai. He had very good networking skills and had lots of contacts of Ex-IITians who were into entrepreneurship. We added a different section to our portal- the place where we wrote about the startups. GeekOnNet.com had finally become a startup for startups.

Some of our achievements:-

4th most popular blogging website of Mumbai by the bloggers community of Mumbai (http://www.mumbaibloggers.net/2009/03 /the-results)
Ranked in top 10 most popular weblogs in the survey conducted by orkutheroes.com
Achieved Google page rank of 4 within six months of its inception
Invited & covered National Level business events for Economic Times-The power of ideas, Microsoft- Connect Bloggers Brief.
Reported more than 15,000 page views and 10,000 unique hits per month

It’s an year now that GeekOnNet started. It had been a very good learning experience for all the three of us. Ranjeet plans to work for an IT company in a few days and Deepak to continue with his theatre in Mumbai. I have joined SIBM,Pune for my Masters in Business Administration. I hope the distance doesn’t create a hindrance in continuing our website.

MeraCareerGuide.com

2009-08-31T08:47:00.000-07:00

It’s been long since I last updated GeekOnNet. I apologize to my avid readers for this delay. I was very busy with my final Masters Thesis. Finally am a post graduate (BTech. + MTech.) now in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT-Bombay :) .

Ok, now back to the point. In the past two months there has been a backlog (pardon us for using the IIT jargon) of more than 15 Indian startups with us. The first in the list being meracareerguide.com.

It is a one stop destination for Education & Career related information, aims to address problems of students who are confused and have numerous questions about their particular field of interests. The website is designed to provide a platform to students from 15-24 age group, at the same time it will enable educational institutes to reach out to their target students.Using Internet as its platform, meracareerguide.com reaches out to students in every city and town of India. meracareerguide.com informs, connects and guides these students to a variety of educational programs. MeraCareerGuide.com provides the following set of services to users.

Information about career that can be pursued after +2 and after graduation.
Career Tests: scientifically designed assessments.
Expert chat for career counseling.
Forums for queries to be answered by community & Experts.
Course planner that gives information about various courses and colleges across India.
Interview queries.
Resume preparation.
Education related articles.

GeekOnNet team had detailed email interview with Surabhi Dewra (Founder) to get an insight of her entrepreneurial journey.

The Geeks: How did you get the idea to start meracareerguide.com?
Ans: We, ourselves, have been at the crossroads and so we understand the kind of guidance students require in their intermediate stage of education; though I happened to be lucky one to get to BITS-Pilani and then had constant access to great mentors.
During my college days, I took up activity of counseling in schools of Hyderabad and Bihar; and there realized students had many questions about their career and future prospects. Consequently, In 2007 founded MITR – a scholastic students' guide - in Hyderabad and later decided to have a pan India approach. As the web today has become the best medium, we decided to use the power of internet to solve many of educational issues and that’s how www.meracareerguide.com came into existence.

The Geeks: Whats your "Business Model" & "Revenue Model"?
Ans: The website is designed to provide a platform to students from age group 15-24 to use it for their educational queries; at the same time it enables educational institutes to reach out to their target students. So the revenue inflow is from educational institutes whereas the service is entirely free for students.

The Geeks: Who are your nearest competitors? How do you differentiate your service or product from that of others?
Ans: Studyplaces.com, I would say, is providing similar services but execution wise it’s totally different.
We provide a personalized approach. This approach helps students to easily understand how to use information they receive. Counseling and career requirements are very specific to each individual, which is ensured on www.meracareerguide.com through live chat feature where in students are allowed to have live interaction about their educational queries with our experts. We have given maximum attention to ensure that content is easily scannable and in chunk format making it is easily comprehensible and not overwhelming.

The Geeks: How many students or career advise seekers get benefited from meracareerguide.com?
Ans: We have students from various age groups who come to us for finding answers to their concerns regarding Why, How, When, Where and What about their career. In its two months of official launch, www.meracareerguide.com has 50,000 users hitting the portal and using the services.

The Geeks: What background skills, knowledge and experiences help you in your business?
Ans: Like I wrote earlier, I have experiences in counseling at schools of Hyderabad and Bihar. Those experiences have helped me have an insight into the students requirements. Also, my association with educational NGOs like Nachiketa Tapovan(Hyd) and Damini( Har.,Raj., Bihar,Jhrakhand & UP) has helped me understand the way an educational medium needs to be shaped. Where as, the usage of relevant technology to convert the idea into a website came from other founders of the site.

The Geeks: Where do you want to see meracareerguide.com 3 years down the line? Or whats your future plan?
Ans: We are planning to have network of 5000 schools and colleges and where in we can have career workshops. Apart from this, we would be launching a few career centric features on the portal which will help students in taking right decisions.

The Geeks: Advise for future entrepreneur ?
Ans: I have few lines from Rudyard Kipling’ poem ‘IF’, which I came across in my standard 8th while preparing for a poetry recitation competition and since then these lines have been my strength. I would like to quote a few of my favorite lines:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

How to Choose a Good Domain Name?

2009-06-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

In Ranjeet's 100 Blog Tips I Learnt in 2008, Part 1 his number 3 and 4 are buying your own domain name and also getting a domain name that will be the main subject of discussion. Ranjeet asked me over at Web Hosting Search to discuss why domain names are important and why you as a potential new blog creator or an experienced pro should care.
You blog, you Twitter, you Friendfeed, you Facebook, you do all those social media things to bring awareness to your blog. Have you thought about your blog name itself? Is it a good name? Is it a catchy name that people will remember?

There are some Do's and Dont's of having a domain name. For some of you still on the lookout for an available domain name for a new blog, this is THE post for you. Honestly, forget the social media aspect at this moment, if you have a bad domain name, you will have a hard life ahead in the virtual world.

DOs:
Get a name that means something. If your blog is about you and your experiences, get it in your name. If your blog is about a particular subject, get a matching name, like Geek on Net.
Get an easy to understand name. If a name is long and hard to remember or spell, chances are, people will have a hard time typing in your blog URL and telling others. Word of mouth in the real world is still invaluable; get something that will easily stick in a person's mind.
Have a domain name that is difficult to remember? That's okay, buy a more user-friendly name and redirect that to your current blog. I don't recommend to do this all the time but if you notice people have trouble with your site name, then considering getting another one.

DON'Ts:
Do not host your blog on subdomain like .WordPress.com (that's .com), .typepad.com, or anything else where you do not have a domain name of your own. This is especially true if you are brand. Serious websites deserve serious names. Go with ilovechocolate.wordpress.com as a chocolate seller, chances are people will not take you seriously. Neither will Google for that matter. Subdomained sites like this take more time to build up credibility in the search engines.
Do not spell your name in an incomprehensible way. Geekonnet.com already taken? Buy Geeekonnet.com. That extra “E” can cause you a lot trouble as geeek is not a real word. Unconventional spelling will require more elbow grease on your side to get the name out.
Do not pick a domain that is a play on an already known brand. Ilovelouisvuitton.com is not a valid domain name because you are infringing on copyright laws. If you are a blogger that writes about a celebrity or famous brand (like LV), choose your domain name wisely; you could end up with a lawsuit otherwise.

Take a step back and look at your domain name. You may be the most awesome Twitterer, but at the end of the day, a good domain is as important. As bloggers, we all want people to remember us and stop by our site. Make your site name tasty and easy and even more people will visit.

Author: Eva Vesper
Website: http://webhostingsearch.com

MindCron - Cron your mind: ORACLE after Strategic Acquisitions

2009-06-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

MindCron - Cron your mind: ORACLE after Strategic Acquisitions

Bing VS Google : Head-to-Head

2009-06-03T23:54:00.000-07:00

Promises are like crying babies in a theater, they should be carried out once. So I am back to keeping one of my promises; as I promised in my last post to come up with the " comparison of search results of Google & Bing".

Hats off to SEO specialist Paul Savage who has made this very basic web service, which lists all the results for your search queries on Google and Bing side by side, so you can compare which one produces the better results for the keywords you enter, on a single page. I played around with it , and this is what I felt:

The comparison:

Main Page Size: Both have almost equal page size, 14KB with 4 http request and 15KB with 1 http request for Google and Bing respectively. Page loading times are almost equal for both the search engines.

UI: I liked the concept of the front cover photo changing every day. When you float over it, you find the hidden "Easter eggs" that lead you on some interesting and unexpected links. So, full marks to Microsoft's Bing.

Web Search Results:
Web search results are almost the same for a simple search query. When I searched "geekonnet" the initial results on both search engines are almost the same.

Image Search: This is a place where bing needs a lot of improvement. When I did an image search on myself, google gave me results from linkedin, Twitter, Facebook ..etc. Bing didn't give me any relevant image search result. Well, bing's mouse over features are good. But the image search is really bad.

Video Search: Almost same, mainly from youtube and other video streaming sites.

Well, Bing reached at 2nd place in the search engine war, after google, ahead of yahoo search and ask.com. I predict that the market share of google will remain unchanged but bing will take away yahoo's and ask's market share. I am definitely not shifting to bing, from google; what about you? Here is a poll on the right side of this post. So, "Are you moving to BING?" "Yes","No" or " I don't care".

Bing : A Google Killer???

2009-05-30T07:56:00.000-07:00

Recently, I wrote about Wolfram Alpha, a computational search engine. I also wrote about Cuil last year. Definitely they are not google killer. But they have killed themselves by the hype created before launching.

So now we have another new search engine to unveil, this time from Microsoft. But doesn’t Microsoft already have a search engine called Live Search? Yes they do, but they’ll be killing that off in the next few days.

Bing: which type of name is it? I asked the same question to one of my friend who works for Live Search. He replied “Dude I have no idea what does it mean and why they are shutting down live search”. Well, what's in a name? All we want a good search engine.

The most significant change is that Bing now organizes search results into categories. it’s a “decision engine” that will help consumer to make decisions about travel, health, and shopping. Microsoft also launched a new site, Discover Bing, that goes into all the details of how Bing works and the decision process behind the creation of it.

As we can see the snapshots given below, there are mainly 3 columns on its main page. Left most is “Explore”, basically categories like images, videos, shopping, news, maps and travel , The middle one is for searched result and the last one is for “similar links”. I am not sure whether this last column is for sponsored link or not. It also has suggestions (not a new thing for today’s search engines). The software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing while Google spent $25 million on all its advertising last year.

To know more about Bing watch this 2.47 minutes video.

Bing is going to be launched on 3rd June worldwide. I am eagerly waiting for that day. Currently I can’t say anything about its search results but I am highly impressed by it’s categorized search. This is something new for search engines or you can say an improvement to the search engines.

I never used Live Search. I don’t see myself giving up Google, especially given the default Firefox browser integration. But after seeing Bing’s features , definitely I would like to use it and also would like to compare it’s results with google’s results.

Wolfram Alpha (The Good, The Bad or The Ugly ? )

2009-05-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

A few days ago another internet search engine named Wolfram Alpha was officially launched. It was the hottest topic in my friends circle and amongst my batch mates . People were spamming and filling each others mail box. Their main queries were, will this search engine survive in front of a giant like Google? or will this search engine produce better results than Google? Did they implement semantic search? Etc.

I used it for a few hours and found some good and some bad results. I also compared it’s search results with Google. I will explain all of this and more in the latter part of this post. But the thing that interests me the most is Wolfram's profile.

Stephen Wolfram, a British prodigy who earned his PhD in Physics at the tender age of 20 . He published an article on particle physics at the age of 16 and entered Oxford University at the age of 17. He wrote a widely-cited paper on heavy quark production at the age of 17. This same person made a calculation and graphing software package called Mathematica, the only fully integrated technical computing software. No doubt he is a genius but we are here to explore Wolfram Alpha.

Is Wolfram Alpha a search engine?
Search engine is a tool which enables one to find what he is looking for on the Web. For example if you search "geekonnet" on google or on other search engines, it gives all the websites where "geekonnet" is present. If we search the same query on Wolfram Alpha it gives information about geekonnet like daily page views, domain information etc. The site's best trick is its ability to make calculations for certain types of queries. It tries to dissect a question into its components and then performs calculations using its own source materials to compute an answer. The results are presented as a sleek collage of tables, charts and graphics.

It would be unfair if we call wolfram alpha a search engine. Wolfram Alpha is a "computational knowledge engine." In simple word a " question answering system". It is interesting to know that whatever result you get on Wolfram Alpha you can also get the same result on google within 3 to 4 searched result links.

Some facts about Wolfarm Alpha:

Wofram Alpha's page is 18 times havier than google's home page: I compared the size and dowloading times of wolfram alpha and google on www.websiteoptimization.com . I found that the homepage Wolfram Alpha is 18 times heavier than Google's home page. The size of Google's home page is 14.449 KB with only 4 HTTP requests. But I found that the homepage of Wolfram Alpha is struggling with a size of 257.411 KB along with 37 HTTP requests. Google page takes only 3.75 seconds to load on a 56Kbps modem. whereas Wolfram Alpha takes 59.93 seconds to load on the same 56Kbps modem.
No doubt wolfram Alpha needs a huge website optimization.
Wolfram Alpha is built using Mathmetica: Wolfram Alpha is built primarily using Mathematica; it contains 5 million lines of symbolic Mathematica code.

In short Wolfram alpha acts like a nerdy accountant who is equipped with the latest set of calculators and endless stacks of books and encyclopedias. Wolfram Alpha is completely useless for me. I don't think I will ever use it. But I am not entirely happy with Google. Google still uses the same old search algorithm based on page rank and key words. If any Google guy is reading this post, here is a question for you : When will you implement semantic search in Google?

PS: Dear readers please write your views and experiences about Wolfram Alpha as comments to this post.