Google Sidewiki - Contribute and Share

Google sidewiki is new way to tell all internet users visiting any site page that they are important and there vision is appreciated. A browser sidebar that enalbles users to contribute and read helpful information alongside any web page they are visiting. Google sidewiki is with us since 22nd of September 2009 but I am not sure how many of us are really making the most out of it.

Google has always valued its users with tools and information that is most relevant and usefult for the user. That is what has made google the search engine king.

The very step to enable users to contribute for the any site page gives confidence to user not to only have the information what the site owners wants to tell rather its like giving all page ownership to the users also who can come and add or contribute information and things that will help others and making the page more informative and as its a public opinion so its well social too.

Google has given it to contribute and share. Hats off to the great brains working with sheer brilliance. Out of the box thinking and giving all powers to its users. You can share it on facebook, tweet it email it or just share the link.

Happy sidewiking people… the powers is in your hands…

And we wander why startups are lacking funds or Infra..!

If you ever think that why Google, Yahoo, Microsoft or even Twitter is not from India despite the fact that most of these big brands are backed by mind,mentors or tech-forces of India only than the answers is - '?'...yes its the big question mark on all of us living in India as workforce, employees,Techpreneurs or even the CEO of any company that why the best minds in India always chose to go away and create the master piece out of India rather than in India (being Indian). Some frustrated techie-Indian answered me that - "Its better to be Brain-Drain than to be a Brain in Drain".

Recently Sarah Lacy a blogger from famous TechCrunch interviewed N.R. Narayana Murthy the first person we can comfortably honor him bringing in tech revolution in India and able to list the company in NASDAQ as first from India. Murthy commented on Infrastructure in India as bad and rather deceptive than being effective. He added that - "In China, they chose to emphasize giving people economic freedom first and political freedom second and India chosen the opposite path."

China currently has over 200 million entrepreneurs and it houses 200 venture capital firms comparing to some handful in India. The country accounts for 24.6% of the total entrepreneurship activities across the world, far ahead of Indian at 13.9% and the US at 14%, according to a survey by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.

Recent hype in India that we all know and some of you might even fond of is - IPL Cricket backed by our own politicians, MPs, some businessmen and even actors poured in river of money for just a "Game" of Cricket (that sarcastically beating the 'Game of Life' ..). The IPL is listed as World's Hottest League by Forbes and get bids of nice 711.47 million US Dollars (Rs.3,235 crore) just for two new teams and 627.46 Million US Dollars (Rs.2,853 crore) already been bid out for rest of the teams. IPL do have a full support of very nice people whom I don't know personally but believe me they are very nice - Sharad Pawar, India's Minister of Agriculture and Rajeev Shukla TV-anchor turned Minister of Parliament.

It feels too good when it comes to cricket that India is not that inferior in infrastructure and funds, so much money pouring in and out this season, BCCI as richest board in the world and all that.

One more unfortunate incident - India's state Uttar Pradesh's Honorable Chief Minister Sushri Shrimati Mayawati had come into attack from her enemies when she presented a rally which was reportedly cost mere 38.4 US million dollar (Rs 175 crore) of public money and a clean, beautiful garland of 5.4 million US Dollars (Rs 25 core) made of 1,000-rupee notes India currency.

That's ridiculous allegation because she was so fair lady doing so much for her state and an entrepreneur must learn from her how to bring in money for your own good no matter how you do it because what matters at the end of the day is - damn important funds. (Think Positive, you know.)

There's is so much money in India not if we see this time around but always atleast that much that we can comfortably cover our heads being the one of the most populated country. The efforts has to be made on which direction is money is going, how much productive and how can it multiple our economic freedom not just for tech-startup or entrepreneur perspective but in every means.

Widget Mania

Widgets are amongst the few new phenomenon hitting the web making its presence loud and clear. Widgets are having viral effect which comes from its plug and play feature. They are emerging as an excellent  promotional tool let it be on personal or business domains. Many software professionals are providing cool tools to create own widgets and for their customization as per the business needs. Performance boosters in online and offline business is the potential.

Widgets are making space for themselves in your site pages. They are easy to create and customize small web tools providing informations on stock news, weather reports, top products price, financial and travel information ,mapping and many more. You just need to know what you need to display in the special section of your blogs, sites, articles and they are there. There are many social community, business widgets, personal interest widgets present on the web.

Widgets just are not informative rather they bring business to your sites too. The most famous revenue generating widgets are ads links tools like google adsense, textLinks, amazon widgets and many more are present. The big players have already been hitting money with widgets potential.

Airtel App Store recorded 2.5 Million Downloads in a Month

Airtel App store which is India’s first mobile application store launched in February 2010  better known as 'Airtel App Central' having total of 1500 apps available for download has recorded 2.5 million downloads in 30 days and making it to have more than 1 app download per second in last 30 days.

The press release by Bharti Airtel also emphasize that the India's mobile apps model is pretty much different from the global model especially US, European counterparts as here in this case the app downloads are leaded by feature phones and NOT smart phones, a similar consumer behaviour pattern has been noticed for Bolt - a Mobile browser which have largest user base from India and downloads lead by non-smart phones.

In Airtel app store 25% of the apps are free to download and rest are subscription based, however, unlike to the beliefs the Indian mobile consumers are willing to pay for mobile apps as top 5 mobile apps downloaded are subscription based and not free, moreover top 5 cities that lead the download location are small cities ather than metros, these are - Surat, Pune, Udaipur, Mangalore and Thiruvanathapuram.The most popular apps downloaded are falling in social networking and utility categories.

Airtel is leading mobile service provider in India with ustomer base of over 118 million and Airtel app store have 1500 apps available for download among which 25% of the apps are free to download and app available for across 550+ devices.

Google Apps crossed 25 million Users, Giving Free Laptop Stickers

Google Apps since its launch in 2006 has managed to acquire 25 million users including companies, organizations, government organizations and big brands across the globe. The customers of Google apps includes Jaguar Land Rover, National Geographic, Motorola Mobile Devices, Huffington Post to government bodies such as District of Columbia Government, Los Angeles etc.

Google is also giving personalized Laptop Stickers free for a limited time if you are already using Google Apps or even if you are planning to join.

If you are already a Google App user you may put yourself or your organization over the Google map here

Also, more interesting part is that Google has also announced Google Apps migration tool that helps people or organization who are using Microsoft Exchange to migrate to Google Apps in easy steps. Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange is a new server-side tool that migrates your company's email, calendar and contact data from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. The similar migration is also available for Lotus notes users.

One can see use this small Google Apps calculator utility tool so as to see how much you can save for a given number of employees while using Google Apps premier edition in place of Microsoft Exchange 2007, you might see a huge difference.

Internet Explorer 9 revealed, supports CSS3/HTML5, faster than Firefox

Microsoft has revealed the preview-only/test version of its all new Internet Explorer 9 far better than any of its earlier versions and especially because the standards IE used to follow are way back than any modern browser.  At MIX 10, a interactive gathering event of Microsoft and  innovative web professionals, Dean Hachamovitch presented the insight depth of "early look" phase of IE9.

This preview of IE9 is more targeted towards web developers/ designers to let them know and take advantage of new things they can do while developing web apps or websites.  Developers can have early look at IE 9 development here.

The prominent development and new things of Internet Explorer 9 are :

• A new JavaScript engine for IE9 which is designed to make Internet Explorer faster (faster than Firefox 3.6).


• Support for HTML5.


• IE9 now extensively support DOM, CSS3, SVG standards and XHTML.
  Able to render box-shadow, text-shadow and border-radius like CSS3 properties


• IE9 is the first browser designed to hardware accelerated graphics

Interestingly, the new JavaScript engine of IE9 is said to be faster than shipping version of Firefox today as per Webkit.org’s SunSpider benchmark test.

However, the available Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview is not be used as regular browse and it doesn’t even have a "back" button. But it released to run along with regular browser and is simply a preview and more specifically for developers/ designers so as to help them developing their web apps.

Gmail brings Contextual Gadget for Intelligent Links Preview

At recent Google's own event Campfire Gmail has announced Gmail contextual gadget are available, currently in labs for Gmail users and also announced to soon open Gmail contextual gadgets as a new extension point for developers. These gadgets will smartly fetch information from the web and based on the content of an email message users can perform relevant actions  without leaving the Gmail inbox.

Currently, one can see it in action by enabling the Gmail Contextual gadget in labs tabs under setting of all gmail accounts, theafter if anyone send you a youtube link or picassa album link you can see the preview of it right in gmail inbox unlike to earlier situation when one has to open new tab or new window to see videos or photos via those links in their email messages.

Gmail Contextual Gadget targets to some common problem of saving time when one has to open new tab/window while chatting and delayed replies to the person you are chatting because you are watching it in another window. Gmail thus brings contextual gadgets at present youtube videos, photos links and rating so you can see a preview of all these in your chat window or inbox's email message.

However, the Gmail contextual gadgets are not limited to just these above examples the idea is to fetch information relevant to what in email messages. Appirio PSConnect (see demo) is one such experimental app that enables services professionals to run their business from their email inbox by connecting Google Apps and Salesforce CRM.

Google even invites for a good idea for this type of gadget and one can fill out this form for same.

Watch:Google Campfire One: Gmail Contextual Gadget