July 01, 2008

My New Indian Express Column: Geotagging & A-GPS

Here's the column that got published in today's paper.



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Click here to see enlarged image

Phones that know where you are!

We all love taking photos on our digital cameras and camera mobiles. These are fond memories and would love to treasure. While we store them, what we don't usually do is add information about each photo. A few of us blog or take the effort to give titles to the photos, but the majority of us just do nothing. Let's face it. We're are plain lazy or just don't find it important enough to do it. Hence, the fond memories are consigned to the forgotten corners of our computer's hard disk.

Enter automatic Geotagging. This is the latest feature in some of the latest mobile phones like the Nokia N78 that automatically finds out the location you are in and adds this information to the photo. For example, let's say you shot a group photo in front of the Taj Mahal. The geotagging feature in the phone adds the tags, 'Agra; and 'Taj Mahal' to the photo. How does the phone know this? Because the phone has the A-GPS feature (The Assisted Global Positioning System) and hence knows the latitude, longitude, altitude of the position you are in from the Satellite data. Understandably, you must have subscribed for a GPRS connectivity from your mobile service provider. (This is the feature that lets you access Internet from your mobile)

So, when you shoot a photo from the phone and upload it to photo sites like Flickr, details like the name of city and place are automatically uploaded too. Knowing where your picture is taken acts as a great memory jogger. It also acts as an excellent community tool. If someone wanted to see pictures of The Taj Mahal, your picture will result in the searches because of the automatic geo tag.

There's more to just automatic geotagging in the latest phones. To explain this, let me walk you through an experience. Once, me and a bunch of friends did a cycling trip from Bangalore to Chennai. Being techies, we had a bunch of gadgets. One of us had an odometer fixed to the cycle's wheel to help us with data on kilometers covered and average speed. Another friend had got an expensive GPS device that looked like a walkie talkie that gave information on the altitude and showed us on a map the path covered. And then a laptop with an Internet data card to upload all this information to our website so that anyone can follow where we are.

The Nokia N78 is in essence all these three devices put together. Amazing how technology has advanced. The phone can give the speed of our travel, time taken to cover the distance, average speed, the altitude, the map and more importantly live publishing of all the date online. Not to mention automatically geotagging all our photos.

The next time we go on a cycling expedition, we're going to dump all those expensive paraphernalia and just pick up an A-GPS enabled phone.

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June 26, 2008

Waking Up to Blogging Again

This blog post by Jeremiah Owyang reopened my eyes to blogging. For a long time, I've left this blog unattended. I could put the blame on increased workload, twitter and family but really, there should be no excuse. Especially when this blog has brought me jobs, work, friends, speaking, teaching, writing opportunities and much more.

Here's what Jeremy says and I so totally agree with him.

"I pay myself first. What does that mean? It means before I get bogged down in email hell, and feedreader hell, I focus my priorities on the tools that will maximize my time. A blog is a broadcast tool that let's me communicate to many people at once. It's the most efficient use of my time, and it saves me time. For every email you write, you're likely to get more in in return, and that's not efficient. I look for efficient communication tools, and a blog is right for me"


It's the rap on my knuckle that I needed.

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June 03, 2008

I'm More Active on Twitter



I've been on a blog hiatus. I've made zero posts in the last 20 days. In the same period, I've published 87 tweets on Twitter.

Most of the tweets would have translated to good posts on my blog but twitter has clearly spoilt me. It's a lot easier to just convey my point in one sentence than sculpting an entire blog post.

Besides, I've started to write professionally for publications and that's clearly taken priority. (I currently author columns for Business Standard, The New Indian Express and IAMAI's official website). And not to mention an increased load on the work front.

All this means, this blog will continue to be sparsely updated. I'd advise you to check out my Twitter instead at http://www.twitter.com/kiruba . Lots more action there.

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My Google Card



This is what I call a 'Google card' . And it's my newest "visiting card". The front side of the card has just the search box with my name. My first set of 100 cards came from the printers today and I'm super impressed with how they turned out. So impressed was I that I placed an extra order for 400 cards.

The idea originated from Japanese ads. For more, go ahead and read my Business Standard column that I reproduce below. Here's link to the story that appeared in print.



Search box replaces URLs in ads.

A recent visit to the Japanese consulate helped me in designing my latest business card. It has nothing but just the google logo and my name in the search box.

Let me walk you through my experience.

While waiting at the reception of the Japan consulate, I picked up a few magazines lying on the table . My knowledge of the Japanese language begins and ends with the word 'sayonara' and that too if its written in English!

While flipping through the magazine whose language was greek to me, I noticed something familiar about the advertisements. Some of the ads had the Google search box while few others had the Yahoo! search boxes as part of their advertisements.

That's when it stuck me. What a wonderful strategy. Instead of putting in the website URL you encourage the person to just search for your company or brand. Its much more easier to remember the keyword as against the URL.

Whoever came up with this concept has actually been paying attention to the way people use the web browser. Most people use the web search to easily get to a website.

That's the same idea I used for my business card too. I love the idea for various reasons. First, its unique. Second, googling for my name not only throws up my website it also shows my Flickr page, my twitter account, my YouTube page, links to my podcast and my writings on the NASSCOM blog. That's like hitting six mangoes with one stone.

I noticed that this idea of putting in Search Boxes is also an excellent mobile strategy. Typing in the full URL in a mobile phone can be quite painful and it becomes easy to just search for a company's name. No wonder most advertisements inside Japanese trains have the search box embedded in them.

Pontiac does this in their TV ads. Instead of the generic URL, they have Google 'pontiac' to find out more." When doing so, you must also realize that you are at risk of losing out the mileage to a quick thinking competitor. At times when Search Engine Optimization is a billion dollar business, there are specialist agencies that work solely on bringing a particular website on top of a web search. So, you don't want your competitor reaping the benefits of your advertisements.

Pontiac made exact that mistake. While they made sure their site came up top, they did not pay attention to the sponsored links section. When one searches for 'Pontiac' in Google, you get its competitor, Honda's ad on the top. Big mistake. Just to play doubly safe, companies are encouraged to buy the top Google 'sponsored adword' so that their link is guaranteed to be on top of the search page.

The UK Government has also used this technique effectively. They recently started a campaign called 'Act on CO2' to encourage people to cut down on the carbon emissions. On their TV advertisements, rather than saying "Visit double-yoo double-yoo double-yoo dot dee eff tee dot gov dot yoo-kay forward-slash act on see-oh-too", they just say "Search for 'act on co2'". The same concept can be effectively used in Radio advertisements.

Its just a matter of time before we see this practice happening in Indian advertisements too.

-----------------End of article ---------------------------

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April 04, 2008

A Year on Twitter



It's exactly one year since I've been on Twitter.

First, i was skeptical about Twitter itself. My first initial reaction? It's a micro-navel gazing tool and worse, watching others gaze their navels too.

Really, why would you want to know what folks are doing every errr.. hour? Are we all *that* unemployed?

I stayed away from it laughing at its stupidity. Then I saw more and more people, typically folks I have high regard for, jumping into it. I had this, 'Damn! if I'm not in it, I'm not cool enough' feeling. Signed up to see what really it is.

Now, a year later, I find myself enjoying it. Especially catching up with people's activities, who otherwise, I really wouldn't have had a chance to. And Yes, it still continues to be a navel gazing tool.

Another reason why I like Twitter because its a place where I can write down things that I think are too frivolous for a blog post. "Crap! The crow just shat on me!".

Sometimes, it can be a place for me to type my thoughts down and then pick one to expand into a blog post. It feeds my blog.

But mostly, it eats into blogging. I've noticed that my blogging frequency has fallen down ever since I've taken up twittering. The beauty of twitter may lie in its simplicity.

A few days ago, it was deja vu for me when I sat down to write about the 'Business Uses of Twitter'. My initial feeling? Twitter is as useful for businesses as Orkut is. I was skeptical until I saw more and more businesses jumping in. Fastrack, JetBlue, SouthWest Airlines,Wrox. Then I woke up and peered in closer. The result of which you can read in this article for my Business Standard Column.

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January 07, 2008

Indian Express Column: The Wikia Search Review

Posting my tech column that appeared in today's New Indian Express edition. I had a lot more to say but had to stay within the 350 word limit.

Wikia Search: The Human Powered Google Competitor?

The news that is catching everyone's attention in the tech world is the new Wikia search. It's a new search engine that has close relationship with its better known cousin, Wikipedia. Infact, they share the same founder, Jimmy Wales.

Wikia Search is an idea that fundamentally uses people to refine and better its search results, pretty much the same way Wikipedia uses people to bring out a better encyclopedia.

Jimmy Wales has been very pro-transparency and at many times I have heard him speak his discomfort about one company controlling a lot of our info and search habits. And we know that the "one company" is Google. From my take, I don't think he is against Google because of its monopoly but because it isn't as open and transparent with the data as it should be. And that's exactly what Wales and his team are trying to do with Wikia.

Wikia will publish the full code of the search tool in the spirit of open source.

He says, "I believe that search is a fundamental part of the infrastructure of the Internet, and that it can and should therefore be done in an open, objective, accountable way. This site, which we have been working on for a long time now, represents the first draft of the future of search."

Unlike Wikipedia, Wikia Search is a for-profit initiative and hence will eventually carry ads alongside the search results, much like Google. In fact, I won't be surprised if its Google Adwords that is used.

The new search engine launched yesterday to some critical reviews. The most influential reviewers have trashed the product and I can see why. It's pretty bare-bones and half-baked. Combine that with the high expectations from people's comparision with Wikipedia and the let-down feeling is understandable. For example, I ego-searched my name 'Kiruba', and received only 43 results as compared with over 82,500 in Google.

Jimmy Wales defends saying that Wikipedia on day 1 was pretty bad as well but eventually grew to be the world's biggest encyclopedia. The idea is to launch early and launch often. It'll be interesting to see how this project shapes up.

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November 13, 2007

Authoring a Technology Column in New Indian Express



I've been invited by the editor of The New Indian Express to author a tech column. It'll be a weekly column where I talk about interesting tech developments in an easily digestible language. The first of the series appeared today.

Haven't decided on the name of the column though. Apparently the paper fixes the column names. But I'm sure they'd be open to ideas. I'd love to hear from you of interesting ideas.

My run with authoring columns has seen its fair share of ups and downs. Back in 1997, I authored a column for DQ Week (Data Quest Week) called Net @ttitude and wrote about interesting stuff online. It still remains my favorite till date. Had a decent response. Must've lasted close to an year.

I moved this column later to ChennaiOnline.com and it stayed there for close to six months.

I later wrote a column called 'Net Results' for the now-defunct IndiaInfoline.com. Internet information relating to the financial market. Didn't last for more than 3 months. A failure.

Then followed a fairly high paying gig at ITspace.com during the IT boom. They even flew me to Bangalore to sign the contract and put me up in a 5 star hotel. Splurged. Not surprisingly, they over burned and shut shot after 5 months. This must be around 2001.

What followed next will be the biggest opportunity missed. I got an invite from The Hindu to write a column for the Sunday Magazine. I started off with a couple of pieces and for some reason I slowed down on my writing and eventually the opportunity bypassed me. I still kick myself when I think about what I had missed.

A brief stint with Economic Times followed where I wrote about half a dozen pieces for Madras Plus. My bad luck caught up with me when the Editor who chose me quit her job and the new Editor brought on changes. Damn! Just when I was beginning to think this might last...

So, as you can see, I don't have the best of runs for Column. Yet, almost with amazing consistency, I keep getting offers to author column. The New Indian Express is the latest and I'm really hoping that I make this work longer than any before. Wish me luck, fellas!

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