Yahoo to MSFT - what do you think we are? W….
Posted on April 7, 2008
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A guy eyed a beautiful blonde. He walked up to her and asked “Will you sleep with me for a Million Dollars?” She excitedly replied back “Yes”! So he replied “How about $100?” She immediately retorted “What do you think I am? A whore?” The guy replied coolly “That I have already established, Ma’am, now I am establishing your price!”
The Yahoo episode is similar. Microsoft came up with the price of $44 billion for Yahoo and there was big hue and cry from Yahoo. It was like - if we sell, MSFT will kill our products… its not worth it.. However, now as the deadline looms near, Yahoo is changing the tune. “Microsoft is undervaluing us”. Means - raise your price.. we are in the market for negotiation.. “What do you think we are? W…?”
So, the Microhoo is a certainty.. its just a matter of time. And given the lack of basic intelligence in MSFT’s decision-making it may be pretty disastrous for the Yahoo customers and employees.
Unique Twitter uses
Posted on April 1, 2008
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Here are some interesting Twitter-related sites:
- a real time search engine for twitter posts: tweet scan
- TwitterLinkr is a collection of links in posts. They collect the tweets from english speaking users, parse to find the links, and if there are any tinyurls- they reverse it to get the original URL and post them.
- Twitter Answers - enables users to ask questions and get real time answers from other twitter users. Remember the village question box I featured here, you can say this is a “question box” for a person on the road.
- Tweets from the US Presidential race from all three existing candidates.
Which other interesting use of Twitter have you seen?
Indian company takes over Jaguar and Land Rover brands
Posted on March 26, 2008
Filed Under Globalization | 1 Comment
Jaguar and Land Rover - the British marques and quintessential car brands are now Indian. Tata Motors has sealed this deal at USD 2-2.5 billion. This is another major high profile acquisition from Tatas. It first got Corus and now this.
Looking at this deal in purely financial terms is a little tough as it is one thing for Ford to own them and mess up stuff, but another for the Tatas to own it and use them as an entry point for its other autos into the European and US markets. What the Koreans had to build from ground up, (Kia/Hyundai etc); Tata may be able to do with this purchase at a fraction of a cost and time.
Also, Tata has built up some enviable track record in taking projects to completion and fruition in a very efficient and effective manner. If Tata could do a Mittal on these brands (just as Mittal has built his Steel empire buying losing Steel Plants in Eastern Europe and using Indian talent to turn them around), then it could be a great recovery for the, now, struggling brands.
In any case, Tata Motors is one of the stocks from India that is a buy for many other reasons.. Air car being one of them.
The future of branding in a web-made world
Posted on March 20, 2008
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I am currently reading a very interesting book (The Open Brand: When Push Comes to Pull in a Web-Made World by Kelly Mooney and Nita Rollins, Ph.D.) which has a different take on the world of internet brand building. Here is an article from the authors.
If you’re still clinging to the comforts of the brand-made world, maybe you didn’t get the memo (or the IM…or the text message) about the web-made world. The web-made world has turned the brand-made world on its ear. It’s less controllable by brands and more creatable by consumers. Consumers own this space; brands are only visiting. That is, unless they engage richly, deeply and meaningfully with the new online consumers who are now running the show…
The open source software movement was the first indication that our consumerist society would not be conducting business as usual online. New behaviors—creating, sharing, influencing—are becoming widespread enough to blur forever the roles of producers and consumers, everyday and elite icitizens, traditional authority figures and the new truth tellers and taste makers.
Consumers are no longer satisfied simply to shop online but desire the multifaceted relationships with brands that they have with each other. Faced with wholly new patterns of social influence, the growing ineffectiveness of traditional advertising—not to mention reconciling the social aspect of the web with e-commerce—marketers are in need of fresh strategic direction.
Get O.P.E.N.
In a web-made world, “open for business” doesn’t mean what it once did. In fact, it now means “never closed.” But we think today’s brands need to go beyond the traditional hours-of-operation and instead hang out a sign that proclaims them to be truly O.P.E.N.
Before the internet, consumers had little say in, or influence on, product development, merchandising or marketing—they had almost no way to interact with companies. Today, consumers have the web as both amplifier and audience, and are eagerly sharing their thoughts about products and brands through a wide range of user generated content tools, from ratings and reviews to blogs. Marketing money still talks, but now so do your consumers—to you, to each other, to the whole web-made world.
O…is for On-demand.
Today’s consumers want—and often get—whatever they’re seeking “right now.” The timeline of desire to decision to purchase to acquisition is now condensed to a fraction of the old standard, fostering an immediate, intimate connection between brands and consumers. This is particularly true for e-commerce brands if they want to capture the hearts and wallets of today’s quicksilver consumers.
P…is for Personal.
Not all old-school brand learnings should be tossed aside: In fact, now, more than ever, brands need to make a personal connection with consumers.
Just as it was before the web proved itself a serious channel for brand-building and sales, the online landscape remains the province of the people, not companies. People online leave behind traces of their unique personalities, preferences and behaviors, both through passive clicking and surfing, and active partici-pation and sharing. These vast realms of identifiable, unique individuals negate the old idea of target markets broadly bucketed by age, gender, income or education level. That’s why, to be open, a brand must get personal—not with one market of many but with many markets of one—building relationships through constant consumer dialogue and effective cross-channel profile management that bring the brand closer to each consumer’s real-time needs, wants and expectations.
E…is for Engaging.
Brands once competed for consumers’ mindshare by pushing out mass market messaging they thought would appeal to their audience. Now, that audience has taken the stage, and brands must share the spotlight with creative consumers whose long tail of personal narrative, niche expertise, and mixed media productions can make a standard TV spot look static and self-absorbed. Marketers must develop content that is immersive, participatory and relevant in order to earn a place in the social web and consumer conversations. The old days of pushing pre-made marketing and advertising out to a broad demographic are gone. The new game in town provides fun and easy tools for online users to pull, and then produce, the experiences they’re seeking.
Interactivity is key to deepening consumers’ emotional connection with a brand, so open brands must provide meaningful and engrossing experiences that foster consumer relationships online—and off.
N…is for Networked.
A single consumer has exponential brand potential when she goes online. She has a potential lifetime value, as she always has, but she also has viral value as she engages with her various online communities. Open brands become part of social networks by marketing to the niche of communal consumers who interact with other, like-minded consumers online. Though niche marketing is hardly new, the exponential network effect of online world of mouth marketing is. So the more the brand works the network, the more the network works for the brand.
Why O.P.E.N.?
The future of branding is open. Brands that ignore this reality do so at their own peril. It is an unstoppable movement acknowledged by no less than A.G. Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble, the largest mass marketer of our times. Lafley challenges: “Consumers are beginning in a very real sense to own our brands and participate in their creation. We need to learn to begin to let go.”
The open brand is first and foremost an advocate of consumer participation—leveraging the power of communities and networks and inviting the consumer to influence the brand and co-create its future. It seeks often chaotic progress over carefully controlled perfection and makes room for consumers in the decision circle.
While some of today’s top brands may continue to succeed by staying their current marketing course, it’s only a question of time before the chinks develop into full-blown fissures. The closed brand will be overwhelmed by the passionate, powerful consumer who wants her brands open or not at all.
Are you dangerously closed?
Some features of a great brand will never change. These include sharp, distinctive design. Carefully packaged messaging and carefully messaged packaging. Innovative products that meet the needs of a changing audience and brand experiences that have lasting emotional resonance with consumers—a sense of belonging, where ownership is membership.
But for today’s consumers, community-by-brand-association is not enough. Now, before, during and after a product purchase, consumers are engaging directly with each other through blogs, ratings, reviews and other interactive forums. They’re sharing opinions, riffing off of each other’s creativity, and seizing control of the messages that brands once generated and propagated. The internet is fast replacing brands as the portal to membership in coveted communities; as a result, products are at risk of becoming mere accessories of, rather than the keys to, belonging.
For brands to survive this relationship shift, they need to engage with this new breed of tribal, online consumers on their own turf by creating, supporting, supplying, inspiring and fostering those communities that have the closest affinity to their brand experiences. In other words, get open.
Is the world of search technology quietly changing?
Posted on March 12, 2008
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Google made money from the most innocuous of technical area - the search. Their search technology though not the greatest possible was still the best and scaled for the worldwide web. They have expanded their domain to beyond search and into several different areas of internet technology, although their backbone still is search technology in terms of revenues.
Is Google and its crawl based search mechanism the final word in search? Apparently not.
A new startup Skygrid is using a new search mechanism to help the financial managers. I am amazed when a technical breakthrough can be so well adapted and fashioned for specific and pursuit of solving business problems of high value.
In words of Carleen Hawk, this is what Skygrid does:
(It shows) whether the balance of the news on a public company is good or bad, and how the “mood” is changing. Naturally, hedge fund managers are eating it up.
It not only provides the news as an aggregator, Skygrid does the ultimate - it even analyses it in real time. For a busy professional who cannot go through the entire mesh of news in his/her RSS feeder, such a thing is god sent! And so, though it may seem to be a bloomberg lookalike, it is anything but.
SkyGrid has color-coded the headlines for you. Positive stories on Apple are identified by a green icon; negative news stories are red; neutral news stories show white.
The visual cues mean that it takes just a second to comprehend the tone of more than 50 stories all at once, without reading a single word. For the really lazy, SkyGrid offers the good, bad and neutral “news sentiment” in percentages, at top left.
Google, Yahoo and Bloomberg are all fine aggregators of content but, “you’d have to read the 8,000 headlines in your [search] results to figure out what people are thinking [about Apple], ” says Pomplun. “We accelerate the ‘wisdom of crowds.’” News from traditional papers and wire services like The Wall Street Journal or CNET appear in SkyGrid’s left column. Content from blogs (including this one) appears in the middle.
Burham has an interesting discussion on the traditional (yes, Google is a traditionalist by now!) “crawl based” search architecture vs the new “flow-based” architecture.
Here is what the new flow-based architecture entails:
1. Flow-based: SkyGrid treats the web as a giant pub-sub system or at least it does to the extent that the rapidly growing RSS/Ping server infrastructure does. It does not crawl the web, but rather the web “flows” to it.
2. Persistent: SkyGrid persists queries over time so that incremental results are delivered with no additional action by the user. One can easily see how this would be valuable in the case of something like, oh say, a stock, which persists from day to day.
3. Real-time: Rather than using batch-based indexing, SkyGrid uses a real-time stream-like query system that queries (and analyzes) new content as it flows into the system. This is particularly useful in situations, such as investing, where a few minutes or seconds, can make a huge economic difference.
4. Filtered: Rather than presenting results as a data-dump, SkyGrid uses advanced analytics in the form of entity extraction, meta-data analytics, and rules based AI, to quickly analyze and append additional meta-data to incoming information. This enables users to easily filter data according to number of criteria which greatly lessens the chance of “data overload” and greatly improves the chance of “data discovery”.
5. Analytical: By applying highly advanced artificial intelligence, such as natural language procession, entity extraction, etc. SkyGrid is able to actually analyze and assess the actual content of a URL, thus enabling it to make determinations such as the sentiment (positive/negative) of information, its “velocity” and its “authority”. This goes a step beyond simple meta-data filtering to creating real insights into the content.
6. Predictive: SkyGrid’s flow based architecture and advanced analytics enable it to view the web as a living breathing, changing entity. By observing the propagation of information over time and across downstream nodes, SkyGrid is in a position to not only assess the “authority” and “influence” of individual nodes, but it should ultimately be able to make reasonable predictions about which information will flow where on the web. By correlating this observed “flow” over time with observed movements in things such as, oh say, stock markets, company sales, etc. it can not only assess the historical sensitivity of changes on the web creating changes in the real world, but it should ultimately be able to theoretically predict, with reasonable accuracy, many of those changes. Yes, I said it: SkyGrid and its new search architecture may ultimately predict the future.
Focused and the resourceful grab the jobs they want!
Posted on February 14, 2008
Filed Under Career | 1 Comment
Getting a job when you do not have the right experience or credentials is tough. But if one is smart, he/she can easily off-set that by sheer enthusiasm. It requires focus and targeting the interviewer/company that you are interviewing for.
I remember when I first came to US with an Indian company to be trained in an ERP package. The other folks in the team were all experienced in the in-house ERP package that my company sold back home. It wasn’t the best ERP but it had most of the features. And out of 20 in our team, 18 had worked on it for years. So quite obviously they had stronger credentials than I had. But I was determined to grab the project. And coincidentally only one was on offer. I did not know which area it was in or which client of this Big 6 would it be for. However, this is how I went about the process:
1. I looked for the weaknesses of the home-grown ERP that my colleagues had worked on. And the strengths of the new product that we were trained on.
2. Then I looked for my strengths. It was finance and cost accounting.
3. My gap analysis in #1 suggested that the home-grown ERP did not have a cost accounting module which this new product had and was strong at. This, I knew instinctively, was my chance!
4. I sat down to tailor my resume (not fudge). I remembered and listed all the things I had done in accounting and cost accounting in particular from the fact that I was a Cost Accountant to the fact that one of my internship projects had indeed helped that organization save money (Rs I million). I mentioned all that upfront. Along with the other stuff on accounting of course.
The interviews happened and I did not over promise on my understanding of technology but stuck to my process side knowledge. Ultimately, out of the 20, I was the only one to get the project, because luckily for me the project that came up was miraculously in cost accounting. Bingo!
This shows that focus and serious work can meet with success and luck. Here is another example of a lady who was not the most experienced in marketing in the line-up of candidates but won on sheer resourcefulness. This is what she did to prepare for the job interview:
1. I broke down their job posting line by line and wrote down projects I’d worked on or skills I possessed that directly related to their description.
2. I researched their website extensively, read media articles about the company, and looked up the management teams’ backgrounds so that I could speak knowledgeably about the company and why I was a good fit.
3. I prepared a spiel about my somewhat eclectic resume, which can look unfocused if not set in the proper context.
4. I called an expert on start-ups, finance, bargaining and a half-dozen other things to get some outside counsel. Ramit gave me some key advice, including “tell them you want to get your hands dirty,” and “suggest three things you would do to improve/enhance their marketing efforts”. Yes, he does talk just like he writes on his blog.
5. I actually took Ramit’s advice, which is where a lot of my work came in. I dreamed up three proposals for generating greater interest at tradeshows, better responses to direct marketing campaigns, and increased name recognition in the general population.”
It must have been perfect with so much of effort, right? Wrong! She couldn’t get to talk of all her ideas. So, did she abandon them? No!
“I never actually found a good opportunity to mention my ideas (this despite a four-hour interview). I emailed the proposals to my potential boss instead, using them as a way to continue self-advocating even though I was no longer in her office. I then individually emailed every person I spoke to that day to thank them for their time. Might have been overkill, but then again, my email flurry may have been the tipping point for my hiring.
My references later told me that the VP had been impressed with my energy and intelligence, and had decided she would rather train someone with potential than hire a more experienced, and perhaps less flexible, individual.
Pretty inspiring huh?
Skewed Priorities of the Indian ERP vendors
Posted on February 5, 2008
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I remember when I first to US and was getting immersed in SAP, the guys who had started their careers in India (had done a project there) were outstanding in their indepth knowledge of SAP modules. The reason probably was that they got a wider latitude to experiment while implementing. The US companies followed a consistent methodology and people were more concerned about the documentation than actual experimentation!
Over the years, I have seen the level and quality of SAP consultants coming out of India being drastically lowered. At first, I could not understand this drastic difference. Lately, I have finally been able to fathom the issue.
The Indian IT majors acting like the Burra Sahibs made an almost conscious decision perhaps not to engage much in the Indian market. While their precursors - and much smaller now - Birla Software and Siemens Information Systems Ltd (SISL) started implementing SAP in India… and IMPLEMENTING is an important word here - the IT majors were happy doing support for US or European companies in SAP and other software. The result being that the talent pool hardly had any implementation experience now. Only support knowledge. Since these IT majors were the training grounds for most IT talent in India, they spawned a retrograde culture of low quality ERP talent in the country. Here is prime example:
A company in India implements end-to-end SAP solution. Who do you think is the solution integrator (or the main consulting company project managing it)? KPMG (I am guessing its Bearing Point and the journalist couldn’t care less)! Who do you think is the support partner? TCS!
I just don’t get it! If a company like Bearing Point can get a contract for end to end SAP implementation in India and TCS gets just the support - then its a statement on the entire approach and dynamics of the market as well as on the priorities of the Indian IT majors!
What can be a better ground to prepare SAP talent - which is runinng so lean in all the IT companies in India - than to put them on Indian implementations.. even though they do not give as high margins as the lowly support work in the US? It is about priorities.
Funny thing is that the implementation has costed USD 15 million in just the last one year. So its not even the scale that one should be worried about. Any of the Big 4 will run for such an opportunity!
GMR Infrastructure Ltd has announced that the GMR Group has successfully implemented SAP across all its businesses and locations, with the last of its three SAP instances going live on February 04, 2008 at its Head Quarters, Bangalore. Earlier, GMR’s airport projects at Delhi and Hyderabad had successfully implemented SAP. SAP will enhance productivity, scale up the operations and businesses seamlessly, provide reinforcement to its operations through best practices and robust security structures and fostering cohesive unity in expanding diversity. GMR implemented all the modules of SAP, relevant to its businesses.
SAP India is the implementation partner for the SAP instance implemented in Bangalore, covering all its businesses, except airports vertical. The hardware for the project has been sourced from IBM. While KPMG are Project Management Consultants, TCS will provide post go live support. GMR has commissioned and implemented all the three SAP instances during the last one year with an investment of about Rs 60 crore.
Business Mish-Mash
Posted on February 5, 2008
Filed Under News | 1 Comment
1. Microsoft delayed Google’s acquisition of Double-click and Google has promised to throw the spanners in the works for MSFT’s acquisition of Yahoo. The battle lines have been drawn. Mr. Kettle meet Mr. Pot. Mr. Pot here is Mr. Kettle. Enjoy!
2. The future of technology is here. Check it out.
3. USD 2.5 trillion in assets is invested by the sovereign funds around the world - mostly in the US though. It could rise to USD 17.5 Trillion in 10 years. The reason - US needs cash to fund the hunger for consumption that the Government thinks is the only way to wade through the economic recession!
Meanwhile, Bush gave another boost to those sovereign funds by unveiling a USD 3.1 trillion spending plan.
4. The Technical Indicator loving folks in the stock markets are like charlatans. They can even look for patterns in the birds and start to predict stocks! Here is a guy who uses hits on blogs to predict the stock market! He has got his mojo all screwed up!
Valuation of Professional Services Firms in IT and the market discrepancies!
Posted on February 4, 2008
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One subject that has fascinated me is the valuation of the Professional Services Firms and their valuation. How do you value a services company? There are PSF’s (professional services firms) from just plain staff augmentation to high end strategy companies.
This issue is also significant in how you evaluate the Intrinsic Value of a PSF’s stock on the market?
Over the years of talking to various folks who have sold their IT companies - mostly the staff augmentation oriented - the selling price of such companies were roughly 60% of their annual revenue along with the provision that the owners would stay roughly around 2 years as well as do a non compete.
On the other end are the high end strategy companies. They would ideally go for more as their per capita revenue generation is higher. That for the staff augmentation companies, the revenue earned on average is around USD 100,000. That is almost 10% of the large/high end consulting companies.
This wisdom however did not work in case of Indian IT companies vs the Big four consulting companies on the Wall Street. For long now, the Indian IT companies have enjoyed a Price/Sales ratio of >10 actually sometimes as high as 16 or 17. While the Big 4 had a Price/Sales of 1! That is a BIG difference and surprising when none of the Indian IT majors had any consulting or strategy offering worth much. The Big 4, by contrast were doing higher value work. I believe this discrepancy was due to the higher profit margins enjoyed by the Indian IT majors.
The question naturally arises: What happens when these margins are eroded by competition from IBM and Accenture opening equivalent operations in India and competing on price for the outsourcing and technology business? I am afraid the answer is to raise the Per Capita Revenue per employee. Is that how the Indian majors are thinking?
I saw this news item (thanks to Gautam’s blog) on how Satyam bought an HR strategy company - Bridge Strategy Group - for USD 36 million in Cash. The company has only 35 employees! Their revenues are USD 17 million.
That is a Per Capita Revenue of roughly $1 million a year and a valuation of Price/Sales = 2. Interesting insight.
This brings one to a question - Wipro at the current prices has a Price/Sales = 3.9 (USD 4.72 Bn - Revenues and USD 18.4 bn as Market Cap); while Infosys has a Price/Sales = 6.24 (USD 3.9 Bn - Revenues and USD 24.37 Bn - Market Cap). The Per Capita Revenue by Employee (Revenue/Employee) is Wipro = USD 94000 and Infosys = USD 44,000.
Where is the rub?
Business World Mish-Mash
Posted on February 2, 2008
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1. It is not just the business in IT or in outsourcing that is growing in India, so are the investments in financial instruments and commodities. India’s commodities exchange could be a USD 1.8 trillion market by 2010 at the rate by which it is growing.
2. Disturbed about the housing meltdown in the US and the resultant chaos? Well, you aint seen anything yet! Experts say the market could fall by additional 25%!
3. An extraordinary financial system requires extraordinary frauds! Described as a “brilliant” student by one of his former university teachers, he shocked executives with the complexity and scale of his trades. Bouton called the fraud “extraordinarily sophisticated.”
4. Hubdub uses collective wisdom on predicting and forecasting the news. Its members predict on how stories will turn out to be.
5. You want to meet the 25 most powerful people?
6. Walmart cannot get over its fixation with the Nazis. It is still selling its Nazi T-shirts!
7. The prices of food are rising all over the world. With inflation in the US being a real scenario, is outsourcing (or more outsourcing) an answer? Is THAT a National Security Threat?
6 Imperatives of Running Successful Companies
Posted on February 2, 2008
Filed Under Strategy | 1 Comment
In the past few years that I have been involved in consulting and advising clients and at times the executive level folks, I have found somethings that seen important and I wanted to share these with you all.
1. You cannot have a leopard’s speed and a tortoise’s longevity!
You can either be the greatest upstart on the block at a time or be the longest living corporate around. Cant be the same. It requires a completely different DNA for both. When you start you are an upstart. So be the best. But then, keep investing in becoming a longevity oriented company. THAT transition decides the fate of everyone. Its one thing to be a Google, quite another to be an IBM and change from the world’s biggest hardware company to world’s biggest services company!
At best you can be an elephant who knows how to dance. 
2. Know what Business you are in?
It is very important to have a definition of your business. For example, if the phone companies like AT&T had defined their business properly (instead of managing telecom services or some such restrictive definition) they would not have been caught flat footed by the many VoIP startups like Vonage who completely changed their world! Microsoft has had that issue. Now it does not know what business it really is in!
Apple on the other hand continues to redefine itself and create one great product after another!
3. It is all about Shareholder Value finally
It is NOT about the profits you earn but how much you increase your shareholder’s value that really matters. You can have a great profit earnings but if the shareholder value is not improving (measured by Free Cash FLow), then you are in a bad company. And it has been shown by enough studies that managing shareholder value vs defining the amorphous “stakeholders’ values” is more powerful!
Make sure that your company takes every decision in accordance with that one goal in mind.
4. Quite often taking decisions is MORE important than waiting to take the correct decision
This has been the single most important thing I would advise any executive! I have seen enough number of executives quibble of unnecessary details that they keep missing the big picture - the opportunities lost from not taking a prompt decision sometimes are stupdendous!! Ask Yahoo!
5. Your work should define your image NOT the other way around!
Please don’t become your own caricature! Seriously. Keep the eye on the ball. Do not let anything come in that way. Least of all your image as to how you should be behaving given your image! Business is about being honest and most tuned to your shareholders keep at it!
6. Strategy is important, but nothing rocks like Streamlined IT
Now, there have been different camps on how important is IT to a company’s overall performance.
I believe it does matter. If you have your systems all over the place the basic ingredient to make decisions is NOT there. Before you make your decision, you need a consistent definition of the problem. THAT is where the information comes in! To have pieces of information all strewn around the place and not having a way to paint a consistent picture - while one exec defines Sales in one way and another defines in another - the ability to make decisions and move forward in life is very restricted!
And honestly, if you are not making useful and consistent decisions, Strategy is the LAST thing you should be worried about!
I have usually gauged a company’s decision making DNA from how it manages simple projects. The same traits show across the company. And my take is simple “If you cannot manage a small project worth a few thousand dollars, chances are pretty dim that you could manage decisions worth billions!”
What would you say?
Microsoft + Yahoo = Microhoo or MicroWho?
Posted on February 2, 2008
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Today, Microsoft announced a bid for Yahoo of ~ USD 45 billion. These are indeed bad days for Yahoo as it is laying off 1000 employees and its stock is falling down. Well, the record of blunders by Microsoft in the Internet world has been so terrible that it is difficult to see how this acquisition will benefit anyone.
Google continues to be strong (despite a little setback) and Microsoft just cannot get anything right! The best course for MSFT after buying Yahoo would be to stop its own services and put everyone behind Yahoo. That may be one way to benefit.
Unfortunately, Yahoo was also one of the stocks which I was Dollar Cost Averaging! And my philosophy of DCA has been that 
to choose a stock which will be in existence for 10 years. Well, there were two - YHOO and XOM. XOM became the company with the highest profit ever by any American company!
Well, on the bright side, at least the stock price of Yahoo will rise. I plan to sell it off and invest in some other stock. I think the days of Yahoo and MSFT will not last very long.
One of the best Viral Animations
Posted on January 10, 2008
Filed Under Marketing | 2 Comments
This is by far one of the best animations that I have seen in a long time. Really, this is awesome!
Signs of a Dying Industry!
Posted on January 3, 2008
Filed Under Strategy | Leave a Comment
Raj send yet another story suggestion - what are the signs of a dying industry? And what makes a successful business climate in any industry?
As I’ve said before, a good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value. If it starts to pursue paying customers — which doesn’t seem that outlandish at this point — then I guess we’ll all know the extent of the desperation. Investor, beware.
The article refers to this case where the music companies went after him for sharing the songs from the CD he had bought. Worse they tried to implicate him for the songs he had ripped off the CDs he had bought legally .. on to his OWN computer for HIS use!!
I joked at the time that maybe they’ll come after us for singing tunes in the shower, but at this point, maybe that thought isn’t funny so much as scary. says the author.. he may well be right!!
The limits to which the archaic minds of the telecom companies - controlling the stakes in the cables that run the internet - or the music companies can stoop to are amazing! There are a couple of innovations about to happen .. right around the corner. And these two bunch of crazy folks will be left holding their sticks.. to beat the bushes around them!
Business is about innovation. You either grow and move with the market or perish. Halting the market to keep step with you is a bad.. a REALLY VERY BAD IDEA! It doesn’t work!
1 Terabyte Laptop coming to a Store near you..
Posted on January 3, 2008
Filed Under IT | Leave a Comment
The world of computing and storage is moving at an unprecendented pace! Now, very soon a laptop with 1 Terabyte of storage will be coming to a store near you! Soon the old laptops and their capacities will look puny! Maybe.. maybe ONLY then.. would Vista start to run without its hiccups?!! Why cant the MSFT guys send their engineers to the same school as Apple’s and get a Diploma if not a PhD? It would save all of us a bunch of headaches!
Asus, the Taiwanese computer maker, will come out with a notebook that sports two 500GB hard drives from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. Combined, this will give a fully configured Asus M70 notebook a terabyte of storage.
Put another way, the notebook will be capable of storing 1,000 hours of video, or more than 350 feature length movies, or 250,000 four-minute songs. That will probably tide you over for even the worst airport layovers. A terabyte also holds about the same amount of data that could be stored on the paper from 50,000 trees.
Asus will also release notebooks with a single 500GB drive.
Hitachi’s Travelstar 5K500 drive, coming in February, is the highest-capacity 2.5-inch drive to date, according to Hitachi. The drive, like most cutting-edge hard drives being made these days, features perpendicular recording, which allows more data per square inch than conventional drives.
