Sixth Sense - Fantastic !

Check out this talk at TED. Enjoy !

Another bubble waiting to burst ?

Conversation today morning veered towards various aspects of social networking and started off with my (and a few others’) inability to understand and appreciate Twitter. What is the business model ? What is the practical use ? To those in the know, forgive this ignoramus but I just can’t figure out why do people want to Tweet at all !! Needless to say, I would appreciate a ‘Twitter for Dummies’ post and/or discussion.

So on we went to who funds these etc and the next pit-stop was if what we are seeing in the internet space and the high valuations is another bubble waiting to burst !! Are investors becoming a victim of the bandwagon effect and investing in businesses that have no solid business models ?

This led to a remark that we will inevitably see another shake-out in the dot.com space– few established players with proven revenue models and others fallen by the wayside.  Is this possible ? 

I think this is unlikely and more a wishful thought - largely due to the discomfort with this constant state of flux and the need for stability. We will continue to witness a constant proliferation of new ideas/models, the old being regenerated and the existing revamped. This constantly changing state is the hallmark of the internet and will continue to remain so. 

Local Community/Social Currency

The above currency is legal currency ! Salt Spring, a Canadian Island, is an example of a local community that has its own currency.  Particularly interesting is the Palmas Bank story, a successful Brazilian redevelopment project that also has its own 'local' currency. 

Now, I hadnt't heard of local currency but was intrigued enough to search a couple of more sites. From what I gather, local currency is legal currency that can be used within the boundaries of that locality and is backed by either the national currency or gold/silver or a combination of these.

There are FAQ’slisted on these sites and many Q are answered. But I still wonder, how important or useful this is to a local community’s development. There is more information on the Brazilian Palmas project here and here while a couple of other communities who have their own currency are listed here and here.

Tying in last-week's post on crowd-sourcing with the first link listed above, Changemakers is another example of crowd-sourcing. The difference is that they see themselves as 'Open Sourcing Social Solutions' - a fabulous initiative of the Ashoka foundation that provides solutions and resources to become a Changemaker. Read more here.

A few weekend thoughts

Having attended a few sessions of the recently concluded London Business School Technology Summit, I had a couple of take-aways.

1.

The morning keynote by the Mckinsey speaker had a few interesting points of which I'd like to mention one - 'crowd-sourcing' - this could be a Q in the final quiz :). Crowd-sourcing, as I understood, is the process by which an organisation (Lego, P &G) or movement (Open Source) harness the power of the larger community by inviting them to contribute. The basic idea being that one of the ways to stay ahead of competition is for an organisation to look outside its own boundaries for the next innovation or in current jargon, next 'game-changing deal'. 

P & G has a comprehensive website on this topic here. Similarly, Lego taps into its followers loyalty by allowing/encouraging them to design, share and buy their very own custom Lego model. Pretty cool uh, see here.

A question to others who attended: I remember a social observation the speaker mentioned - Was it that, even in a 'crowd-sourcing' set-up, people prefer a hierarchy in terms of 'org' structure (even though there is no 'org' truly speaking) ? 

2.

In the panel discussion on the mobile topic, I was keen to understand as to how can mobile operators address the disintermediation effect brought about by the success of smart phones and the spike in mobile internet use - the effect being that mobile internet access has eliminated possible revenue stream/s for mobile operators.

One point of view from a panel member was that, as mobile internet access grows, the creation, deployment and management of mobile apps will play an increasing big role (I believe the iPhone currently has more than 20,000 apps !! ). For a wider perspective on the disintermediation effect, read a Deloitte report here.

A quick aside here: there was another point of view from the same panel that people will ncreasingly rely on trusted contacts to provide them with relevant/useful information rather than using a search engine. To illustrate, assume you have an application that shows the people you trust, on your mobile (an 'always-on' version of Facebook). Now, if you are in Drummond Street and want to eat nice spicy Indian food and could access/connect via mobile with these people you trust, you'd rely more on their recommendations rather than what a search engine would suggest. So, Google may not be that ubiquitous after all - possible ? Or, will Android and/or the GPhone become equally popular ?

Visual CV Simple Idea - Great execution

Its the middle of Feb and with just over 5 months left on the programme, most LBS Sloan Fellows are likely to be busy with two main things: the individual project and the job search. 

Last night, I was researching possible project ideas but soon found myself aimlessly browsing - there is no 'Take a Break' feature on Chrome or Safari :>). 

But Lady Serendipity smiled and I chanced upon an interesting & useful site. VisualCV is essentially an online CV creation tool built on a simple idea - it effectively combines both the classic need for a cv as well as the more recent need for people to build their online presence.

You can register for free and create your own VisualCV at http://www.visualcv.com 

Its free to users and I reckon, the business model is very solid. There will always be the need for people, whether recession or not and if you can drive enough traffic to your site, I think the moolah will follow through corporate subscriptions, partnerships et al.  Any thoughts on this ??

Most of the big organisations are already present - one of the bigger endorsements being Heidrick and Struggles offering a direct link to VisualCV on their website!

Virtualization

This is in continuation of my first post on Cloud Computing which is listed here. This post is about 'Virtualisation'. Virtualisation is essentially a software technology that allows you to maximise the use of your computer hardware. Its built on the knowledge that most computing power is underutilised because the underlying hardware is designed to run only one operating system and one application.

How does it work: Virtualisation use a thin software layer that de-couples the underlying hardware from the operating systems, applications and data. This layer then manages the allocation of hardware resources to applications and data. For more on the intricacies, check this link.

Using Virtualisation, from a personal desktop perspective you can run Windows on a Mac or both Windows and Linux on a PC. From a business perspective, think of an organisation which has its own servers. In most cases, these existing servers are underutilised and its likely new servers are procured when new applications are implemented. Virtualisation allows you to create multiple virtual machines within a single machine allowing you to run multiple operating systems and applications simultaneously. This concept has now been extended to the mobile phone market as well and you can read more about that here.

If we link Cloud computing and this concept, it becomes clear that virtualisation is the technology makes cloud computing possible. Virtualisation allows vendors like Amazon to make available cloud computing and also helps individual organisations re-deploy their existing hardware and essentially, build an 'internal cloud'.

The term virtualisation has almost become synonymous with the market leader VMWare. They are an EMC company and boast 100 % of the Fortune 100 as clients. For more information on virtualisation, check out http://www.vmware.com/virtualization