ideas ideas ideas

Circles in G+

2011-08-25T09:49:00.000-07:00

Radio buttons are for selecting one of the many available choices - yes, we all know this.

Circles in G+ can be made intuitive by publishing open-source code to enable this as a standard UI design.

Websites & developers can use it to

Add(or assign) people to tasks

Classify objects/people into groups

This way, the concept of circles and rectangles in G+ will become common like radio-button.

And this in turn will make G+ more intuitive

Bookmarking profiles in LinkedIn

2011-08-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

hey product folks at LinkedIn,

If you can build a feature, where I can bookmark certain profiles of my interest, that will be great.

I really don't want to add them as a connection, I may not know them enough.

It is similar to following a user (like following a company), but there is more interest than following.

User is explicitly checking on an update on certain profiles.

Thanks

Babu

An invention from my Second Grader

2008-05-07T09:52:00.001-07:00

My Son Vikram in Second Grade came up with a number that is bigger than all other numbers.
He said it is not countless, not google,
and similar to million and billion, it is Fillion.

Fillion is a number that we can keep filling up all of the available numbers.

It is an interesting thought, it is almost like a Black Hole which can absorb Infinite Mass.
Reason for adding this in the blog is to point out how this out-of-the-box thinking is.

Hats off to his teachers and school to
make him think Out of the Box!!

Analytics - Part 1

2008-04-15T17:06:00.001-07:00

It is all about the Numbers.

I want to buy a decent camera. Also, I definitely want it to be a reliable one.
I want to go to a movie. I definitely want it to be a good one.
All I do is see the rankings and trends in that category.

America is tuned to think in terms of numbers, statistics and trends.

With all this said, if you ever want to build a product or a service, make sure people will love it.

Show them snippets in the right context, make them touch and feel it, smell it.
Ask the right questions.
Record the answers and analyze it.

If you have a lot of prospective users liking it, there is a need for it.

In the next post, we will go over the "Analyze It".

How do we get the Best out of our Team

2008-04-09T09:35:00.000-07:00

Teams of smaller and larger sizes, with various dynamics between the team members - mostly move forward.

Question is, How much does the team use the Team Power to move forward? What makes some teams work and some not work? Is there a simple solution to all of this?

Yes. it is about Me Inc.

If the driver of the team looks at each individual's success, and aligns the team memeber's success to contribute towards the teams success - then all the team members have a benefit in coming together, and be a Team Player.

This will lead to an extremely successful team.

Team Leaders: Look at each team members' individual goals, Me Inc. Your team will be successful.

Do one thing, Do it well; Focus

2008-03-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

All of us are extremely good in somethings.
This is TRUE for Individuals, Small Companies, Large Companies.

All of us think - Some of us are extremely good at everything.
This is the root cause of problems for individuals, startups, and conglomerates.

A doctor trying to write code; and an writer trying to build a house;
are examples of "Some of us are extremely good at everything".

Coming back to startups, we can be an end-to-end solution provider
or be a value addition in an entire supply-chain of an industry/vertical.
Startups with FOCUS on a speciality beats the competition to death,
and comes out as a Success in Flying Colors.

Examples of Successful Startups include
Google - Focus on one speciality - Search - and then build a business around it
Intuit - Focus on one speciality - Small Business Accounting - and then build business around it

As an Individual or as a Company, if we find out our Strengths and Weaknesses,
and Focus on one speciality - we would all be so successful.

Wishing you All The BEST

Gadgets for ERP/CRM/Banks

2007-10-16T23:23:00.000-07:00

Ad gadgets displaying relevant content is becoming popular in the consumer world.
This is so useful for the business world too.

A sales person reading an intranet page is displayed a relevant contact
from his salesforce.com contacts.

A gadget from Citibank displaying info on number of checks cleared today
without further details; bill pay ebills pointers; will be a good use of a gadget.

EBay: where are my next 100M users?

2007-09-16T21:24:00.000-07:00

During search results, etc: Instead of displaying ads like "Buy guitar at EBay", EBay could as well display a listing that is ending in the next 10 minutes.

After all, EBay is big customer, and and any search engine will be ready to accomodate your request to serve hot URLs instead of pre-cooked URLs.

If EBay can display this during search results, target these results in social networking sites like facebook and myspace. Here are the next generation of citizens - Gen Y and Gen Z - ready to be hooked on to EBay.

Brag yourself, propagate your name - Yahoo

2007-09-09T14:15:00.000-07:00

Hotmail: A signature line saying Free emails by hotmail.com helped Hotmail spread its name.
This is a great idea from Hotmail/Sequoia, etc...

Who copied this very well: Google. Any time we see text ads in this blog, or in linked.com, we also see the text "Ads by Google"

Look at Yahoo's ads in National Geographic, there is no mention that the ads are from Yahoo.

consumer internet - the one distinguishing feature that saves the product?

2007-08-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

Yahoo was a great portal, comparing it with excite and lycos.
Yahoo is still a very good one, but there is a new (: not new anymore) kid in the block, Google.

As long as individual users interact one-on-one with the portals, and don't care about other users, sonner or later, the portals are going ot be lost to a new kid in the block.

Who will survive for a much longer time - EBay, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn
What makes them unique
Each of them have one class of users.
These users come to the portal because of other users, rather than just for the portal.
It is an exchange - where succesful transactions happen.

If your company makes software for consumers, you can make the consumers stick by having a provision to make consumers interact with each other. Then, you are in the game !!

Disruptive HP, the software way

2007-08-10T13:35:00.000-07:00

If everybody wants to hold their data in the cloud, and with 2.0, there is room for a lot of cloud. This includes Google cloud, Amazon S3, Akamai, and a number of content delivery networks + hosting companies.

HP, to be the king in this field, acquire the best of the breed

Akamai for CDN
Hurricane Electric/Rackspace for hosting

and be a one-stop-shop :)

Enlist a couple of companies in video-on-demand and business applications,
then this will be a great new line of business

Yahoo - Content is King, size matters, but what next?

2007-08-08T17:18:00.000-07:00

Content is King

Yahoo has been a forerunner in being one of the best companies for content quality and quantity.

In the Videos avenue,
Amazon is catching up with its Tivo tieup service.
YouTube is a killer product for Google, bringing in lots of users.

Yahoo needs to integrate NetFlix for its users
Integrate the movie download service for Yahoo users worldwide
If possible, take a stake at NetFlix, or even buy it.

Yahoo can easily enthuse 100 million users in the next 6 months
supplying 2 movies per user per month, in return for in movie ads,
and make more money than the $5/- or $10/- netflix subscription fees.

Disruptive and explosive growth for PayPal

2007-08-07T22:10:00.000-07:00

Online classfieds are a small percentage when compared to newspaper classfieds.
Similary, online payments are a small percentage when compared to offline payments.
How to disrupt this system?

Summary
Create a credit card equivalent using the cell phone and the current paypal system

For A Consumer
Paypal issues a card similar to a grocery club/warehouse club card containing the consumer's cell number.
Consumer swipes the card or just gives the telephone number to the shopkeeper
Shopkeeper handles this card/transaction similar to a credit card
Paypal sends request for authorization to the consumer's cell phone
Consumer accepts the transaction
Shopkeeper transaction is authorized
WOW level of security - nobody can use a stolen card

For the Shopkeeper
Swipe a paypal card similar to visa/mastercard/amex/discover card
Enter the details into a verifone processor Nutri 8* type system, amount to charge, and wait for authorization
Complete the transaction

Advantages
All - New level of security
Shopkeeper - Transaction costs are much cheaper than a credit card; Provide faster transfer of money to the store than a credit card
Consumer - No need to carry a card, all you need is your cell phone, and a paypal account.
Paypal - Mega source of revenue

A Breakout Strategy for PayPal
Buy 10% Stake at MasterCard - Integrate the two

Disruptive ideas for Handset Makers

2007-08-07T06:04:00.000-07:00

Handset makers, improve the phone's interface

iPhone touch screen is good;
vPhone, the voice driven phone, is great.
Combination of iPhone touch + vPhone voice is best.

The next killer interface would be a speech driven interface.
A VXML based user interface will make it more intuitive,folks can customize their phone to understand their languages.

Voice based locking and unlocking adds a level of security.

How will the phone distinguish between user requests and conversations?
Simple - name your phone. Everyhting between the phone name and a pause is a request to the phone.
Rabbit, browse the web ==> Brings up web browser
Browse the web ==> does nothing
Rabbit, call Mary ==> calls Mary
Call Mary ==> does nothing

Simple, intuitive, useful - go for a vPhone

A disruptive model for NetFlix and BlockBuster

2007-08-05T09:49:00.000-07:00

Videos are mailed to millions of customers, who specifically have asked for a specific video.

The mailer knows the demographics and interest of the customer.

NetFlix, for example, can enclose a disney video with a 20 second introduction and 20 second conclusion.

This could thank the customer for choosing netflix, and in parallel show an ad.
This can generate enough revenue to make the model so disruptive that customers can be mailed DVDs for free for life :)

Next big disruptive deal from Google

2007-08-03T00:33:00.000-07:00

Free device for everybody.

This will be presented to everybody in the world for free - as a cell phone.

Ads ofcourse will take care of paying for the cell phone.

There will be no ad during the call.

A grammar recognition keyword identifying software in the cell phone would send a summary of keywords from the conversations, the location, the times, and this will help deliver the ultimate customized ad.

Don't worry, Google will never store these to get into any controversies,
and you can always go to google.com to customize how/when/type of messages
to some extent.