Thought Garage

There is an interesting comparison on NYTimes comparing Google with Yahoo, "In the Race With Google, It’s Consistency vs. ‘Wow’".  "Wow" factor might get immediate attention in the media, but consistence and providing the features that make everyday life easy for users makes it a much better click. And on the article at NYTimes, there is an interesting graphic comapring Mail and News traffic on various sites. Google is far below in eMail and Google news sections.

Google maps is certainly a great tool for navigational aspects and for mixing the satelite images on the map. But the major short coming of google maps is that it won’t allow users to store their addresses. Every time you visit google maps,  you have to type both the addresses manually, definitely not a ‘wow’ but ‘ouch’. Yahoo maps allows users to store addresses so that next time you take directions from your house to a musical in your city, you don’t have to type your home address again. Another nice feature that I use the most with Yahoo maps is the ability to take a turn-by-turn map. If I am going to a new area, turn by turn maps allows to see the exact turn points on the print out. Google does not offer this either.

Alan Eustace, a senior vice president for engineering and research at Google, said in an interview last week that the company had made a conscious choice to play down copycat features: “We are trying to come up with something that is new and different, that makes people say ‘Wow.’ ”

and

When asked about the lack of an address book in Google Maps in an interview last fall, Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president for search products and user experience, said it was a gap in the product. She said it was much easier to get the company’s engineers to spend time developing pioneering new technology than a much more prosaic address storage system

Thats quite a cover up. If Google really don’t want to provide copy cat features and some thing new, they should not have provided email service itself in the first place. Thier news mashup ‘Google News’ is quite a clone of Yahoo news, just in different look. If all they assume the differentiating factor is just the interface not the content, yeah, their lack of understanding shows up in the traffic reports in content (see the graphic on NYTimes article).

Google maps ‘wow’ factor is good to navigate and see the actual destination and route in general on the map and in satelite images, but when it comes to taking driving directions, Yahoo offers the ‘convenience’ and ‘needed’ factors.

Tags: google, yahoo, NYTimes

The founders of 37 Signals, that set a new trend for web2.0 applications ( BaseCamp, Tadalist, backpack and Whiteboard) that are extremely simple and easy to use, have been long denying funding from Venture Capitalists. They have been looking for some thing special in a Venture capitalist, just like they have been some thing special in the world of vanilla web applications.

Since we launched Basecamp we’ve been contacted by nearly 30 different VC firms. We’ve never been interested in the typical traditional VC deal. With a few exceptions, all the VCs could offer us was cash and connections. We’re fine on both of those fronts. We don’t need their money to run the business and our little black book is full. We’re looking for something else.

What we’ve been looking for is the wisdom of a very special entrepreneur who’s been through what we’re going through. Someone who sees things a little differently and makes us feel right at home. Someone with a long term outlook, not a build-to-flip mentality. We found a perfect match in Jeff. Jeff is our kinda guy.

So here Jeff Bezos, of Amazon fame, is investing in 37 Signals through his private investment company Bezos Expeditions. While Jeff Bezos and founders of 37 Signals seem to have created and followed different philosophies in running their fame businesses, at the core of entrepreneurship, they are really some thing special. And it is great to see some great minds come together.

Tags: 37signals, amazon, jeff bezos, basecamp, tadalist, whiteboard, backpack, inspions

Amanda Lenhart and Susannah Fox of Pew/Internet &American Life Project released the survey report "Bloggers – A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers", revealing some interesting statistics about Bloggers (in USA).

A telephone survey of a nationally-representative sample of bloggers has found that blogging is inspiring a new group of writers and creators to share their voices with the world.

Here are a few interesting stats about the Internet’s new Story Tellers:

• 8% (12Million) of total internet users (147Million) have a blog.
• 39% (57Million) of Internet users read blogs.
• 54% of the bloggers are under the age of 30
• 84% of bloggers, blogging is a hobby, not an activity that consumes their lives.
• 52% of bloggers say they blog mostly for themselves, not for an audience. About one-third of bloggers (32%) say they blog mostly for their audience.
• 57% of bloggers include links to original sources either “sometimes” or “often.”
• Only 18% of bloggers offer an RSS feed of their blog’s content.
• Three in four bloggers (77%) told us that expressing themselves creatively was a reason that they blog.

Tags: blog, blogger, pew, stats, rss, inspions

INDIA uniquely offers price advantage along with highly competent Product Innovation talent pool. Any organization can reap the benefits of the flat world if the off shoring activity is carried with a definitive strategy and understanding. Need more proof? Here are two news items from today, that explains both facets of India and its unique advantage.

Bloomberg reports IBM’s Profit Gains 11% as India Expansion Trims Costs :

"International Business Machines Corp., the world’s biggest computer-services provider, said second-quarter profit rose 11 percent after the company reduced expenses by shifting work to India."

Another report confirms India design firms as product innovators

"ATI is just one example of how Indian design organizations are moving beyond simple labor cost arbitrage to becoming true contributors to product innovation. In fact, this year a number of marquee brands have invested in new design operations in India or significantly expanded existing facilities. These companies include Agilent, Via, Dell, Rambus, Windriver, Wolfson, Austria Microsystems, Tensilica and Sandisk.

About 200 semiconductor companies currently operate a facility in India, and about 120 of those are into chip design (the remainder do software development).  Frost & Sullivan estimates the total design market in India is $3.25 billion, with embedded software comprising 78 percent of that figure. The research company predicts that Indian design industry services will grow to $43 billion by 2015."

If your firm’s offshore efforts to India did not succeed to your expectations, consider reading an excellent and objective analysis by Martin Folwer on "Using an Agile Software process with offshore Development".

"For the last four years ThoughtWorks has operated a lab in Bangalore India to support our software development projects in North America and Europe. Traditional approaches to offshore development are based on plan-driven methodologies, but we are very firmly in the agile camp. Here I discuss our experiences and lessons learned in doing offshore agile development. So far we’ve discovered that we can make it work, although the benefits are still open to debate."

Tags: india, offshore, software, design, inspions, martin folwer, Agile

Excellent debate on Net Neutrality at Center for American Progress, that covers a lot of background on the issue and how legislation could have helped the cause of open Internet.

The Great Debate: Net Neutrality

In navigating the complex issue of “net neutrality,” the government should protect consumers’ rights amid a rapidly changing and dynamic Internet. Two experts agreed on that much Monday during a panel discussion hosted by the Center for American Progress, but they disagreed on how to do that without stifling innovation.

Bringing together two of the Internet’s founding figures, the Center welcomed Vint Cerf, Vice-President of Google; and Dave Farber, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Carl Malamud, the Center’s Chief Technology Officer, moderated.

Listen to audio of the event (mp3)

Tags: net neutrality, Vint Cerf, Google, Dave Farber