TechNayak(mirror)

Note : I blog on my personal space at riteshnayak.com/blog . This is a mirror of the content.

Everybody’s writing about the new social organizer phenomenon, So I thought I could add my two cents to it.

What if you want to hire someone to build an online community? Somebody to create and maintain a virtual world in which all the players in an industry feel like they need to be part of it? It would help if that person understood technology, at least well enough to know what it could do. They would need to be able to write. But they also have to be able to seduce stragglers into joining the group in the first place, so they have to be able to understand a marketplace, do outbound selling and non-electronic communications.

Seth Godin writes about the Online Community Organizer as the job of the future.

Continue reading Online Community Organizer - a job for the future…

Note : I blog on my personal space at riteshnayak.com/blog . This is a mirror of the content.

The recent opening up of the facebook platform has created a rage in the industry. Facebook themselves , after opening up to public signups, have had an increase of 80% in their monthly uniques. The facebook platform is just another icing in the cake.

There are innumerable number of apps that are being created on the facebook platform. Existing applications like wordpress are taking heed and porting their apps into the platform. Some of the initial apps have been taken over and VC’s are announcing seed fund for apps built on the facebook platform. Its like everyone wants a part of the 26 Million uniques visiting the site and want to cash in on the phenomenon. So what did facebook do right ?

Continue reading Community as a Service - implications of the facebook platform…

Note : I blog on my personal space at riteshnayak.com/blog . This is a mirror of the content.
Collaborative apps have been around for quite sometime now, but they have been lurking very close the corporate apps which can be used primarily in a business scenario. A simple example of the same could be the productivity 2.0 apps like Zoho or Google Docs. The only other breed of collaborative app has been games, which is a again a huge draw. Its true that this genre of applications is still finding its foothold on the web and as time progresses you will find killer new applications that will explore new possibilities with colloborative apps.

I had written about Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and how it used the power of collaboration combined with automated project management to get arduous work done from people. Taking and extending on the same paradigm are newer applications that try and achieve some good from these collaborative applications. Its like the Seti project which uses your computational resource when idle, these applications use the power of human intelligence to contribute to a greater cause.

Continue reading Collaborative apps and Collective human intelligence…

The 10 mistakes that put projects at risk of failure include:

* Never committing to project success.
* Freezing the schedule and budget before a project is sufficiently understood.
* Overscoping a solution.
* Circumventing the application development organization altogether.
* Underestimating the complexity of a problem.
* Being stingy with subject-matter experts, in which their participation is not sufficient.
* Choosing the wrong project leadership.
* Distrusting managers who have had tasks delegated to them.
* Jumping into development without enough research.
* Suppressing bad news, in which dialogue is insufficient.

Courtesy : InfoWorld TechWatch

Note : I blog on my personal space at riteshnayak.com/blog . This is a mirror of the content.

Google Gears was released recently as an effort to promote offline web. I have written time and again about this genre of web applications and have spoken about the advancements like the Dojo Offline Toolkit, AIR and the new Silverlight that try to blemish the line between web and desktop applications.

Google Gears is designed ingeniously. Gears is an activex plugin on IE and an XPI on firefox(installables) . Gears then works in your browser for any applications designed to use the gears technology. The foremost application that uses gears is Google Reader, which can store and retrieve almost 2000 articles. The transition between online and offline web is supposed to be seamless, as in one taking over when the connectivity is out and the other when its back. In reader, you have to explicitly make the shift from online to offline, something like the work offline option in IE. Continue reading Getting Familiar with Google Gears…

Note : I blog on my personal space at riteshnayak.com/blog . This is a mirror of the content.

I read this post by Joshua Porter about the value of social networks and the opaque value problem and it got me thinking. Why and for what do we actually use web based services.

The fact that we don’t understand what value others get from social web apps is part of the paradigm of social software. The key is that each person has their own social lives, their own social circle, and thus their own social values. What is important to their social life will almost certainly be unimportant to us because we have our own to worry about.

Think of it this way. Each person has their own social network. Chances are that social network overlaps very little with yours. If, say, that person wanted recommendations for watching a movie, they might turn to their social network, which is made up of their family, friends, and colleagues. They would ask these people, the people they know and trust, what movies they recommend.

Now, would you turn to the same social network for movie recommendations? Of course not. You trust the people you know…your social network, and so any of the chatter from their social network has no value for you. It’s meaningless chatter. Just like most people’s Tweets on Twitter. In a larger sense, this opaque value problem affects most social software. Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, most social software is built around providing personalized, socially-focused conversation. It’s person-centered and as a result is difficult for anybody but that person to really appreciate: the value becomes opaque in this way. Designing social software is going to be very difficult. The designers won’t be able to put themselves into a position of someone who wants to keep up to date with their social network, which is something that all of these sites are doing.

Social Design  by Joshua Porter  

What the excerpt from the original blog clearly states is that a person using a social software has his/her own reasons to do so. The fact that the others don’t know what value the other person sees in a social network is the entire basis behind social software. I may log into myspace to chat with my peer group, but I dont know what my friend X does in her network, so what do I do ? I snoop around their profiles and walls to get a glimpse of their world coz her value from the network is opaque to me .

The goal of social software is evolve from this paradigm to a more productive one. Efforts are on to make social software enter the productivity space and that too with good success. Based on all of these observations, how do you design for a social concept. How do we actually add value to the users ? Its not easy to please everyone, but at least if the majority is kept happy, you can be sure of winning product.

Note : I blog on my personal space at riteshnayak.com/blog . This is a mirror of the content.

I am a wannabe webmaster, I ever so often get involved in discussions with webmasters and build engineers about hosting, reliability and optimization tricks and so on. I am also a big fan of analytics and web site metrics. My experience spans with my first tool webstat, webalizer , awstats and then graduated to Google Analytics. I am interested in the dynamics of a website, what gets your visitors there, what keeps them there, what are their turn offs and so on. My own blog has been an experiment with analytics, I keep track of my stats and compare them to my site’s design and usability and yes they all culminate to one wierd mass of analytics mess that needs a lot of time and patience to comprehend.

Of some of the metrics that I found interesting apart from interestingness , entry points, exits , pageviews , timespent etc I liked the bounce rate very much. Yes bounce rate is the most amazing metric when it comes to the web.

In a nutshell bounce rate measures the percentage of people who come to your website and leave “instantly”. - Avinash Kaushik

Sites with good content have very low bounce rates, that coz users stay on the site for longer than just their immediate need. This metric is extremely important to consider as it could lead to some startling discoveries. Bounce rates directly translate to your site’s usability and design. A complicated design often confuses a user and he or she tends to leave a site if the site seems too cluttered ( which is why I hate GoDaddy’s design ). A blank design with no navigational links is also bad. Once the user finishes reading what he/she came to read, you need to coax them to stay longer. Either by giving them sneak peaks of other related articles or any abstract writeup, tags, internal links and so on. For bloggers, please do read this article to make a list of things to lookout for when picking your blogs design.

Note : I blog on my personal space at riteshnayak.com/blog . This is a mirror of the content.

I suggest : Use the internet to make your international calls with VoIP calling service. You can download free VoIP software or get a VoIP phone to get started. You can even become a VoIP reseller selling VoIP service.

How do you define evolution on the internet ? When experts predict how the internet will evolve and what the future trends will be , what are the factors that are taken into account. 10 years back, no one could have predicted Social Networks and blogs , but look where we stand today. Evolution can mean a lot of things we could evolve with respect to …..
Technology. The core technologies can change. From HTML to web services to Flash , the technologies that make the foundation of the internet can change. The methods in which we access the internet can change , course, its the technological aspect. We have wireless internet, we have BPL - bandwidth through power lines. The means in which we access the internet can change. We access internet from PCs, laptops, mobile phones, handhelds, kiosks. Widgets were probably never even though of 10 years back.

How about usability ? the way people use the internet has changed dramatically. Tons of data being uploaded everyday. Almost all of information of a person can be found on the internet. Thats why any criminal is always looked up in myspace or other social networks. Also how people interact with internet applications is also a factor to consider. Today we have IM, telephony, music players, media libraries, wikis, photo sharing services, blogs, and many other ways to interact with the internet. Who knows? probably in three years time you can transfer money from one account to another by just sending an IM through your favorite client.

Its not just we who perceive the internet. The way the internet perceives users has also changed. Its not just X searching on google, its X who lives here, likes this, hates that, has searched for Y before and is more probable to buy Z. The future could hold machines that can identify with you, relate to you and even deliver specially tailored content to you. The web has also become extremely customizable with every site offering you the concept of skins and templates.
What bout user behavior and usage? ten years back double clicking on the browser wasn’t even a concept. Autofilling textboxes and combo boxes were a fantasy. and Drag Drop, well it wasn’t available for some the best desktop apps, forget the web. Today people use them like they have been around for ages.
what about user evolution ? I have gone on from becoming a mail checker -> sleeze surfer -> information hunter -> programmer -> webmaster -> blogger and I have missed out probably tens of roles. How do we account for user evolution and experience.
Its pretty fuzzy for me. How do you define evolution on the internet ?

Note : I blog on my personal space at riteshnayak.com/blog . This is a mirror of the content.

The Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston has inspired me to write about it. So whats this enterprise 2.0 all about ? Its about mainstream enterprise applications going the 2.0 way. Everyday applications like ERP’s, CRM’s etc going soft and going web. Office automation taking a whole new meaning and likes of Chat, Social Networking , Wikis etc playing mainstream roles in Enterprises. Its an eventual evolution of all things enterprise into a more social, productive and user friendly environment.

Ten years back you couldn’t imagine IM in enterprise software;today most of the enterprise vendors supply their own chat service for support and maintenance. The recent acquisition of Tribe.net by Cisco and the more recent IBM including a social network in the recently revamped Lotus suite are just indicators of how big this phenomenon is. The general know how is somehow concocted to a statement “regular productivity apps like email will be ditched“, is not all there is to enterprise 2.0.

Enterprise 2.0 will see penetration of tools like blogs, RSS, wikis , Instant messaging and collaboration, which can be defined as the aorta of web2.0 enter enterprise space. The benefits are tremendous in terms of productivity. A social network as a base for all applications makes the software more friendly , collaborative and builds better communication capabilities. Instant messaging can replace those single sentence emails, wikis can replace knowledge bases. Community portals can represent newletters and bulletin boards. Discussion forums can help solve and analyse problems better. Mindmaps makes brainstorming more productive. RSS and its enterprise filtering can make information management and overload a little less cumbersome to deal with ( see newsgator and Knownow ).

Take Basecamp for example, it encompasses a true project management tool with 2.0 capabilities. Updates through RSS. Blog like memos, easy to use resource and task management interface all this with a very social feel to it. If you look at Zoho and their productivity 2.0 suite, its got everything that any business needs. Online Office automation, wiki tools, mail and chat , their newly released meetings and project all are excellent examples of how 2.0 can be introduced into everyday enterprise applications and not compromise on quality.

The race is on and more and more enterprises will compete to cover as many 2.0 technologies as possible. Not all of them will prove useful but they will be an asset anyway , if not that at least for the sake of competition, the 2.0 radar will be covered. If you are an enterprise customer and is jittery about trying 2.0 , don’t fret, it may be too late when you do. You wouldn’t something as unimportant as new technology let your competitor get the better of you .

Note : I blog on my personal space at riteshnayak.com/blog . This is a mirror of the content.

There comes a time for every company when things just don’t seem to move. The stock begins to slip, strategies get mixed up, the organization gets entangled in its own lack of good planning or foresight and just generally struggles to gain more ground. When you translate this to IT companies most of the symptoms remain the same, but add to it lack of innovation, exodus of top execs and bad press. One such company hails from Sunnyvale and yes all’s not well in Sunnyvale.

I am no genius in the mechanics of running an organization, but I know technology and I do stay in touch with the blogosphere. This company has been one of my all time favorites, in fact I wouldn’t mind joining it even though I know they going through a rough patch. Its not just this company that is struggling, I can list at least half a dozen companies , not necessarily web, struggling to move ahead of their current position.

You will undoubtedly blame the strategists of the company and crib about them not doing their job. But its not just strategists that must be worried , the management is also equally to blame. Any company that doesn’t include innovation and research in its portfolio is going down. The fad nowadays has been of making hay while sunshines and trying to do too many things at one time. The case isn’t any different for service companies in India. These publicly owned companies have to satisfy their shareholders, clients and employees and do all this keeping in mind the future and their vision. Its a tough call, seriously but not one that cannot be achieved. The dynamics of the IT industry change faster than fastest changing fads. Its essential to keep your head above water to see what lies ahead of you, not just keep swimming as fast as you can. The result can be disastrous for companies that don’t consider adding Innovation to one of their to do lists.

Innovation is not easily achieved, there have to be strides made to achieve them. Google’s famous 20% personal time is one such great initiative that encourages an employee to innovate and also reap the benefits of doing so. Fostering and more importantly nurturing innovation is very important, you never know, you may have just passed the next million dollar idea. How do you innovate ? With all your company activities intact, give employees the freedom to express themselves. Have code jams and hack days, encourage fresh new ideas and initiatives. Setting up an innovation department in your company and helping talented employees understand their complete potential could be a good start. Have regular workshops on latest technologies and keep yourself abreast of the current trends. Channelize ideas into a fruitful outcomes and promote such people. Innovation knows no bounds, so if you think you have come across an idea that is too far fetched, hold on it. You never know, 20 years from now you may be a forerunner in something. Document and categorize ideas, invest in a knowledge management system.

phew !!