01/10/2008

Interesting strategic move by Network Solutions

Filed under: Strategy by mihir January 10, 2008 at 08:11 PM PST
I disagree with Michael Arrington about Network Solutions employing questionable sales tactics. I think its fair on Network Solutions to do this. Strategically of course I think this is a blunder on Network Solutions part.

Network Solutions is now apparantly registering the domains you search on their site which prevents users from registering the name on other sites.
Network Solutions was the only domain registrant till they lost their monopoly rights a while back. Apparantly now they are 3rd.

Arrington argues

The fact that Network Solution is using the grace period to stop users from going to competitors is well outside of the original reasons for the rule. Users are already screaming (we?re getting emails). Expect competitors to scream next, and of course to copy the behavior.

I disagree on the questionable nature of the tactics. This is not unfair. 2 reasons :
  1. They are not using any anticompetitive tactics. They are using consumer activities on their site and increasing the switching cost of the consumers. Fair.
  2. They don't get any unfair advantage over consumers in price other than their profit margins while registering the domain for a year. For 5 days they do get unfair advantage. But thats a nuisance rather than anything else.
As a consumer of course this move just moves me further away from Network Solutions. I typically register domain names on 1and1.com. Cheaper than godaddy as well. I think consumers are extremely price sensitive in this segment. I don't see Network Solutions providing any value add on top of the $6 I have to pay at 1and1. I host my own websites and I just need a registration .. simple. So why bother?

This move just convinces me more to not even go to their site.

So I don't think this is a questionable move in terms of fairness. I do think this is a questionable strategy and they will alienate their consumers more.


01/08/2008

Virtual Victory?! :-)

Filed under: Cricket by mihir January 08, 2008 at 01:47 PM PST
Was going through all the furore and news articles about the Bajji and Bucknor. (Cricket is the only thing unifies the country more than anything else. Not politics, not business, not day to day issues. I think we should use Cricket to somehow drive poverty and illeteracy from India! :) )

Found this photo on timesofindia website.



This is of course not a celebration of India winning or even drawing (didnt happen in the 1st 2 tests and doesn't happen very often against Australia!) .. No, this is a celebration of ICC removing Bucknor from remaining Ind-Aus series and Bajji being allowed to play in 3rd and 4th test matches.

Found this too funny! How does this go with Australia winning both tests of the series?! How shortlived are our memories? We celebrate the current small victories and forget the war being played!

If India loses the remaining 2 tests, I think these same folks will come to the streets with burning effigies of our cricket players.

Fickle game and fickle mindset indeed. :)


01/07/2008

Hilarious products - Remote monitoring for elders at home

Filed under: Humor by mihir January 07, 2008 at 03:56 PM PST
Haven't posted for a while. This post on techcrunch about a remote monitoring product for elders caught my eye and just couldn't resist posting!

The zest to make everything accessible online and reduce the inefficiencies in the current systems is definitely going overboard now! As Erik points out in the post, why would we not just call the elders to check their status instead of watching a webcam??

Probably its a culture thing, but I just don't see the real need behind the issue solved here or how this could add any value. How much of an invasion of privacy would you want to do to get this data? Would you be comfortable having every move of your elders recorded?

I see the value of this for really old people who are unable to move, but then wouldn't you have somebody to help them anyways? Also to be fair, trending and monitoring data might help, but for this level of privacy invasion I probably wouldn't want it.

But a company based on this..

10/30/2007

First big earthquake experience (5.6)

Filed under: Personal by mihir October 30, 2007 at 07:31 PM PST
Just experienced first decent size earthquake that hit 15 minutes back in Bay Area. The magnitude was 5.6 and hit near Alum Rock San Jose. 

Very unpleasant experience. Had experienced a 4.4 earthquake about 6 years back I think. That time we were on a 3rd floor and completely clueless as to what to do. This time we had enough time to run out of the house. This one lasted about 5-10 seconds. Lot of shaking and rattling noise inside the house. Luckily no damage.Now I have to explore what is the deductible on earthquake insurance! :-)

5.6 Earthquake in Bay area

09/30/2007

Are we in the matrix yet??

Filed under: Technology by mihir September 30, 2007 at 06:58 AM PDT

From the New York Times article below		Nick Bostrom, a philospher in Oxford University, says there is a probability that if we are able to build a intelligent computer some day, we could already be in the matrix of that computer today! We could be all simulations running on someone's desktop.

Nice thought .. aint it! :-)

This is from the New York Times Article in Science section. Didn't know NYT also had a sci-fi section. :) Our Lives, Controlled from some guy's couch

Even though it sounds so preposterous and unreal, it is a nice read.

08/11/2007

India Poised ... Are you the dog or the leash?

Filed under: India by mihir August 11, 2007 at 09:26 AM PDT
Just saw this video about India Poised. Just 9 months late .. better late than never I guess :)
Loved it!



India is really shining now and is a huge market and everyone sees it.
Entrepreneruship is still very tough in India though. Lots of bureaucratic challenges to overcome while starting any venture in India. Also big brand name is still valued more in India. Startup generation is still new and the awareness of the innovation it brings in is yet to penetrate the masses. For example recently launched social networking site BigAdda by Reliance is becoming more popular quickly compared to all the startup social networking sites. As a startup you have to realize its a different market and figure out a way to penetrate it.

Which is why I am impressed with events like Proto. These events showcase the new generation of entrepreneurs like the Demo events in US. The blogosphere is of course always on the cutting edge and covers these events in much more details compared to the standard media. Check out the various blog coverages of the event.

Impressed yet? Theres opportunity and then theres the unknown turn on the road. Which one are you looking at?


08/03/2007

Real Estate boom in Pune

Filed under: Pune/Marathi by mihir August 03, 2007 at 10:52 AM PDT
I know the housing and real estate boom in Pune been a reality for the past 3-4 years now. I know first hand that land prices had doubled or tripled in some areas like Baner/Balewadi, etc. within the last couple of years.

But this time around, I really felt the impact of this boom when I visited Baner area in Pune. Of course there are almost no empty plots available now in Pune. And you see so many online/offline news reports or newspaper ads. But I felt the real impact when I saw the big banner ads showing off the 'lifestyle' homes while roaming around everywhere in Pune, especially outskirts. Pune was never a big banner city. And now look at the banners I see there below. Thats when I really realized the extent of the real estate boom.

I tried to capture samples of the banners I saw there. Within an hour or so, I had captured more than 50/60 banners! Here are a few samples

India Trip 520

India Trip 460

India Trip 476

India Trip 470

Impressive .. ain't it? Its a lifestyle they are advertising .. not just homes.

Here's the photoset:

Here's a link to the entire photoset I captured .

How long do you think this boom will last? Is it here to stay?

(I will soon be uploading photos of the actual constructions that are happening and have happened in Pune that I captured. Watch this space.)

07/24/2007

The eBay Way

Filed under: Technology by mihir July 24, 2007 at 06:27 PM PDT
Typically I don't blog about my work place eBay. But this article from our VP of Systems and Architecture- James Barrese - gives a good insight into what I typically do at work, so I wanted to share it.

eBay hasn't been historically known to be a technology company in the industry. But in the last couple of years that has changed significantly. A lot of the things we do, as James alludes to, are very innovative and technologically complex. The challenge we typically face is that given eBay's scale, the issues we face are quite unique and haven't been solved in public domain. Of course internet giants like Google, Yahoo, Amazon etc. might have dealt with these same issues internally, but never in public domain, and so that technology is a key enabler to the company's success. So all the companies are reinventing similar technologies to support the massive scale and keep ahead of the curve.

So yes, eBay is a technology company now.


07/15/2007

Feel bad that the VCs didn't invest in your company??

Filed under: Humor by mihir July 15, 2007 at 10:50 AM PDT
You are in good company! :-)
Bessemer Venture has created a webpage listing the ventures it didn't invest in when they were approached by these companies. They call this the 'Anti-portfolio'.

And the list is stellar - Apple, eBay, Intel, Google, Paypal, Stratacom, Intuit  .... !!!

And of course Bessemer's David Cowan is a top 10 VC in the Forbes Midas List. His portfolio includes Verisign, Hotjobs, Keynote, Postini, Ciena, etc.

So don't be disappointed that these VCs rejected your idea. It still has merit! ;-)


07/03/2007

Shi'f't happens!

Filed under: General by mihir July 03, 2007 at 04:48 PM PDT
"We live in an exponential world"! So true.... Here's a thought provoking video I found, of the rate of progress we are doing today. (Not sure of all the facts in the video .. but an intriguing one for sure)


Enjoy!
  

06/21/2007

The online video and p2p revolution being halted/slowed down by carriers?

Filed under: Technology by mihir June 21, 2007 at 11:34 AM PDT
There have been so many online TV and Video sites coming up these days, that its hard to keep track of. Few of the more well known names are and ,  and    and of course and and the multitude of the P2P networks.


The one big challenge facing these companies is the adoption of the technology by the consumers. And a huge challenge they are facing there is the carriers. The carriers are either lowering the Quality of Service (QOS) for the video traffic or in some cases blocking the traffic completely. Networking companies like Cisco are getting huge contracts to build such technology and routers/filters for the carriers. And carriers are very reluctant in giving this bandwidth away for free. Thus the net neutrality debate.

The following article is an interesting read on the topic. http://www.last100.com/2007/05/28/will-isps-spoil-the-online-video-party

One interesting twist in the tale is that these video companies are backed and lead by bigwigs.

Joost is sponsored by Kazaa/Skype founders  Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Interestingly Cisco's SVP Mike Volpi who recently left Cisco is now heading Joost as their CEO. He knows the challenges Cisco offers to this mix.
Youtube is Google's
Skype is eBay's
AOL video backed by AOL
Veoh got a lot of funding and is backed by Time Warner.

So there is a real battle ensuing, and hotshots are in the game.

Will be interesting to see how this unfolds. I feel that carriers will eventually relent and let these companies use the bandwidth but in return will surely get a piece of the action, which is what they want.

06/21/2007

Google Street View : Can you spot yourself on Google Street View?

Filed under: Technology by mihir June 21, 2007 at 10:18 AM PDT
The debate will go on whether this is more invasion of privacy from Google after the satellite images, etc. or whether this will give a better GPS style mapping and directions view. I am not going in that debate here (although as an opinion, I think this will be better and I am ok with giving up the privacy bit for this feature). This is more on the technology that enabled Google to do this.

Google recently launched Street View. A very interesting feature which gives street level photographs of the area. They are interlaced with google maps. When you click on the street view, you grab the man in yellow and drop it to a street with a blue line indicating street view is enabled.

Interesting to read how Google has enabled this. They have licensed the technology from Immersive Media which has patented an 11 lens camera which takes videos and snapshots continuously. After this it is a brute force method. This camera is mounted on a top of a fleet of Volkswagen Beetles which drive around neighborhoods taking videos and photos. A software stiches these views together and gives a great street level view. You can also see a 360 degree view of the area as all the photos are stitched together.

The article detailing this came out on Business Week. Given the manual labor involved in getting these street level views, I doubt this will be done more than once for any street. Its just not scalable to do it more than once. So whatever images you see in this view will be pretty much be there for the near future. Unless Google makes it a social application, and users contribute the photos. Of course the camera will have to be made available to the consumers which is quite expensive today.  Social Immersive Media. :)

Following is a view of the street I live on
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Milpitas,+CA+95035&layer=c&ie=UTF8&ll=37.44161,-121.908932&spn=0.050088,0.080338&z=14&om=1&cbll=37.43029,-121.90894&cbp=1,355.103369548834,0.53263345270177,2


06/18/2007

Another Web 2.0 buzzword : Prosumer

Filed under: Web 2.0 by mihir June 18, 2007 at 05:16 PM PDT
Saw this video on Read Write web .
It promotes a concept of a Prosumer (Producer + Consumer). This is an amalgamation of the producer and consumer into a single entity. A merger of the professional and the amateurs ... e.g. bloggers who are a combination of professional editors and amateur news readers, flickr photo uploaders who are a combination of professional and amateur photographers but whose content is consumed by the the rest of the world. Its not just the professionals who are read anymore. Its these prosumers' content which is moving across the web making the web more viral. This is described in the 'Long Tail' as Democratization of the web. This is also one more way of defining the web 2.0 phenomenon of User Generated content.


This particular video goes into the future 2050 based on the prosumer concept and predicts who will be taking over the world. It features Google buying microsoft, amazon buying yahoo and SecondLife. I think given the disruptive nature of today's innovations, companies like Google and Amazon will be eclipsed by newer entities by 2050, just like Google eclipsed Yahoo. Interesting new world.

06/13/2007

For the pani puri lovers out there ...

Filed under: Humor by mihir June 13, 2007 at 03:55 PM PDT
For all the pani puri lovers out there ... here is a vindication of your love!

Pani puri is metamorphically Mother Earth! :-)
Check out the 'all pros .. no cons Pani Puri'!


04/30/2007

eBay ToGo .. Cool widgets on your site

Filed under: Technology by mihir April 30, 2007 at 09:32 PM PDT
eBay released the Togo widgets. There are 3 different types of widgets that you can put up. These are neat and cool looking widgets. Will be good to have these widgets tied to the affiliate program to get more participation.

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