Last week, I was holidaying in my home place – Mumbai and we went out shopping for my marriage which is due on 23rd November, 2009. We were shopping at Bandra which is considered as a very posh place & there we can across a small chat [???] outlet. With the scare of swine flu, customers normally avoid from going to such places and this is where it becomes important for the shop owners to win back the customers confidence.

But what if, we use a household name to brand our small product. This is what MIGHT make the customer to purchase & use the product. And the chat outlet did exactly the same. The brand which was used was none other than Google and the product – Gola [????] was named Gogola, some interesting pictures below:

Considering that Internet explorer is the most widely used browser in India, using it effectively would be considered as “Another feather in their cap”. Just like the glass, the menu card was also shown in a very geeky manner in an IE window [picture below]:

I had a chat with the shop owner and he told that “They came out with this strategy mainly to get customer’s confidence” and as Google & Microsoft are household names[no matter you use them or not, but you definitely know them] using them ignites a spark in the customer’s mind. This trust indirectly builds the Gogola brand.

This is a lesson from a small time shop owner on “How a product can become a brand, sometimes by smartly re-modeling an existing brand“.

After Google announced the arrival of it’s open source Chrome OS, things are looking quite bright for the open source community. Though Chrome OS would be an excellent competitor not only for existing Linux distributions but also for the upcoming Windows 7, there are many reasons why Microsoft may not worry about the Chrome OS

However, it seems Microsoft is also trying to extend more support to the open source community. Recently, Microsoft released 20,000 lines of Linux code [LOC] to the Kernel community.Below are some of the highlights of the Microsoft release[received via an email from Microsoft's PR group]

• Microsoft has released 20,000 lines of Linux code to the Linux kernel community. The code, which includes three Linux device drivers will be available to the Linux Community and customers alike, and will enhance the performance of the Linux operating system when virtualized on Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008.
• In addition to this significant code contribution, Microsoft is also highlighting the ongoing investment the company is making to optimize PHP on Windows Server and the Microsoft SQL Server database system. For additional context regarding Microsoft’s ongoing work with PHP and the Microsoft SQL Server driver for PHP available to support more native features in Microsoft SQL Server 2008, please see the IDC white paper–Microsoft, PHP & Open Source, a Pragmatic Alliance for more information.
• These milestones and the motivation behind the work is simple – Microsoft is committed to ensuring interoperability between the Microsoft technology and open source technology to provide the choices our customers are asking for.

Though 20,000 LOC is not a very huge number [considering Microsoft's size], it is good to see Microsoft embracing the open source technology You can read more about it here

All of us know about Larry Page and Sergey Brin but what if , after ten years of incorporation of Google ; a guy comes out and claims to be the third co-founder A guy named Hubert Chang claims to be the third co-founder of Google. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki’s tweet for this information. Check out the shocking videos below where Chang explains how the Google journey began…

You can check out this article [which has an interesting tag:"If you liked this post please spread it"] for the shocking information.It would be interesting to keep a watch on Washington Post for updated information where they claim to have mailed Professor Rajeev Motwani of Stanford University for more details.

On the lighter side , this makes me wonder :
Q. What might be Google’s immediate move ???
A. Ban Hubert Chang from Google search , just like John Chow [check out here]

Last few days, I have been trying lot of things with the Chrome especially Blogging.For me, Firefox changes the entire blogging experience with it’s two addons – Web Developer Toolbar and Greasemonkey. Though Scribefire and other offline blogging tools namely Live Writer make life simpler but nothing matches the experience of blogging like the good old Firefox

As you might see , Smileys add a lot of visual effect to any article and hence, Greasemonkey was a must addon for Chrome !!! A Japanese company named Cybozu Labs has come up with version of Greasemonkey for Chome called Greasemetal. Though, still in it’s initial phase, Greasemetal still solves the purpose and since, I had some initial problems while setting up; hence thought it would be nice to list the steps here:

You can also find an alternate solution to setting up Greasemetal here .Hope you have a nice Blogging experience with Chrome [& in the meanwhile let's wait for some more Chrome addons ]

Reader’s Contribution:
Rob – Use GreaseMonkey scripts with Chrome

While browsing through some of the links on Google Chrome, I stumbled upon an interesting Adobe AIR application. The application is called GMDesk and is a must have for avid users of Google Apps namely Gmail, Docs, Maps, Picasa etc.

As mentioned on the GMDesk official website:

GMDesk is an application that lets you run Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Maps as a stand-alone application to do all your mail handling, calendar event reading etc with. No need to open it up in a web browser, or have it clutter your workspace.

The best part is being an App, the CPU is free to do the other important work[which is not the case with browsers] but on the downside since it is just an App[and being an AIR app, it is browserless], you may miss the Spell Check functionality of the browser while composing important emails I am quite addicted to this App and am using it to the fullest !!!

To use this App, you need to download the latest version of Adobe AIR from here and you can download GMDesk from here.The creator of GMDesk, Robert Nyman has an interesting article on his Blog as to what made him develop GMDesk.

Though I am nowhere related to Adobe Flex , after checking this App; it seems to have entered my list of Must Learn technology

I have been thinking of writing this article since a long time and finally,it is on my blog.It is said that Innovators come from companies that promote Innovation.Most of know that Google allows it’s employees to spend 20% of the time to work on their own ideas No wonder,why Google gets so many innovators which help Google grow to newer heights.So let’s see why Google has an innovative ecosystem which is difficult for other organizations to build up?

As per my understanding,below could be some of the reasons why the other companies are not promoting this culture:

a. Too much work pressure and more focus is on deliverables(especially in product based companies where Time to Market is the deciding factor of the product)
b. Services based companies are based on billing/hour (of the employee ie.40 hours per week) hence their business model does not fit in Google’s category
c. Lack of research environment
d. Lack of market knowledge(by the employees)
e. People competency(Google has stringent interview session which enables Google to get the right and competent set of the people from the crowd)
f. Very attractive pay package offered by Google(which would also be a morale booster for its employees,but it is not primary for many people)

There could be multiple reasons which I might have missed out,but the bottom line is we require more companies like Google . In fact,Microsoft also tried its hands on innovation but is behind Google to promote innovation.SiliconValley Watcher has a nice article on Microsoft V/S Google(in the field of innovation) and definitely,Google has a clear edge over MSFT.

The article mentions :

Google is faster at innovation than any other organization of any size.And the innovation comes from the marriage of business models around useful, simple SEA/services. And just like a startup seeking a market, Google’s emerging business groups rely on market validation (usefulness to users) before continuing to the next stage.

Read the complete article here

Definitely,more the no of Google’s , more the expectation of innovation but where are the organizations that promote innovation?

Just few months back,video broadcasting giant YouTube had announced to share some part of its revenue with the site users and now it has come up with another good marketing strategy : YouTube has decided to award some of the best videos uploaded by the users on the site.And I had happened to catch a small glimpse of the YouTube awards on CNN-IBN

But before the announcement of the awards(3 days back) , there was a statement made by the geek blogger Robert Scoble in this blog post saying:

YouTube is late in honoring the best videos of 2006 and Vloggies is ahead of YouTube by six months with their announcement of the best videos of 2006

Anyways,sit back and enjoy the best videos of 2006 on YouTube(by clicking on the image below)

As per the reports:

Yahoo! (Charts) chairman and CEO Terry Semel is also getting paid an annual salary of just $1, as is Apple (Charts) CEO Steve Jobs.

The three Google executives, also did not receive an annual cash bonus for 2006, according to the company. But four other Google executives received substantial raises for 2007 and bonuses for 2006.

Robert Eustace, Google’s senior vice president for engineering and research; Omid Kordestani, senior vice president for global sales and business development; chief financial officer George Reyes; and Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president for product management will all receive an annual salary of $450,000 this year, up from $250,000 in 2006.

22nd February 2007,5:30 PM was a date(and time) to remember since, people in India could hear the “Father of Internet” live in Ambedkar Bhavan,Bangalore.Yes,I am referring to Sir Vint Cerf,the brain who co-invented the TCP/IP protocol and has been in this internet stage since the early days of ARPANET.He is also called as the “Father of Internet”.

Google has launched the Google Speaker Series and this is was the first and the most memorable one in the series.The talk by Sir Vint Cerf was about “The future of Internet” and what all innovations can be done using the internet.You can know more about Sir Vint Cerf here

Discussions at the Talk:
The talk started around 5 minutes late[which is acceptable as per Indian standards ] and Prasad Ram,CTO at Google India inaugurated the event and gave a warm welcome to Sir Cerf.Well, even though there was darkness in the auditorium, I was able to take down notes of some of the interesting points Sir Cerf mentioned about the internet.They are mentioned below:

1. Internet should make the world’s information accessible across all the platforms
2. There has been a huge growth in the internet usage across the world and there are total 400 million internet users in Asia of which 40 million(10%) are in India.Along with the internet,mobile has also been becoming more and more important in day to day life.
3. All of us know internet operates with the transmission of packets from the source to the destination.Well,but Sir Vint Cerf had a point “Do the internet packets have the intelligence to know what information is going across the internet(ie. whether it is audio,video etc)”?
4. Things which we cannot predict in this industry:

5. Security issues in the internet:

• OS security
• DNS and BGP authenticity
• Dual core chips and project MAC’s

6. Technology called as “Semantic Networking” can help make search better.”Auto Tagging” can be used to make this happen.For eg. If you want to search for “Tommy”, you might be referring to “Tommy Dog” or “Tommy Hilfigher” hence, a tag like “Dog” or “Hilfigher” against “Tommy” would help make search simple.
7. This is not Web 2.0 but it is the arrival of new phase of internet hence it cannot be tagged as 2.0.Technologies like Google Maps,Wikipedia and many more contribute to “Sharing of information which contributes to the power of internet”
8. Now this one is really called as “Out of the Box” thinking.There was a talk about “Refrigerator having intelligence to know what is there inside the fridge,what is the expiry date and this would be possible with RFID.Imagine,the Fridge sending an mail to the owner about the recipe that he can make with the vegetables kept inside the fridge.This is the power of RFID and the way Sir Cerf was speaking , it seemed that this age is not so far

Interesting inventions with the internet:
a. Project called “Interplanetary Internet”.The objective of the Interplanetary Internet project is to define the architecture and protocols necessary to permit inter operation of the Internet resident on Earth with other remotely located internet’s resident on other planets or spacecraft in transit.You can know more about “Interplanetary Internet” here. And yes important to know that is it not a Google Project

b. A guy thought that he cannot use the internet while he sliding and this led to the invention of the “Surf Board”.So now he can slide as well as surf the internet at the same time

The session had a Q&A session where most of the questions were targeted to the recruitment in Google and hence was not as per the expectation

End of the Talk:
The memorable 1.5 hours session ended at a very nice note.There was a comment from the audience:
“Now I know why browsing on the internet is called “CIRF(ing)”(Surfing).Thanks to the Sirf Vint Cerf, the Father of Internet. -From the Son of Internet.

Photo Gallery:
Thanks to Lakshman Srikanth for his photo courtesy.You can find photographs covering the entire event here.

Memories from the event:
My friend Abhay Kumar was able to get Sir Vint Cerf’s autograph in this PDA phone and that would be on my blog once I get his autograph

I just thought that so many events are happening in Bangalore and Chennai , so it would be difficult for many people to keep track of it.Specially,if the event pertains to my love “Google” it had to be on my blog

An interesting “Google Tech Talk” on 21st February,2007.The highlight would be on “Past,Present and Future of the Internet”.The details of the event can be found on My Upcoming Events.Seen below is a snapshot of the event details.