Category: Internet

Buddypress for Analytical Buddies??

Let us assume there are top 100 analysts in the world mostly using WordPress or Typepad or Blogger to make posts

Managing them is quite a challenge.

What is marketing ROI of analyst relationships for a Business Intelligence vendor- Curt Monash is the Aerosmith of Business Intelligence Analysts so he can tell it better.

How about a magical community where you just use their mostly Feedburner of Feedblitz RSS feeds to create a self automated community.

Serach Engine Optimization can be tricked by keeping that community website free from Google or Search Engines ( yes it can be done).

Use numerical etc as in Linkedin to spur rivalry by shifting their page positions up and down, or by clicking repeatedly on some posts to manipulate their views on blog posts.

What would SAS pay to have all SAS analysts in one webpage. or SPSS to have all SPSS analysts in one webpage.

Six months later suddenly open the website for search engines, and the RSS feed has downloaded all the posts of all the top 50 analysts of the world. Google advertsing wont matter because hey we have a mega vendor sponsor- while individual bloggers / analysts have no collective strength now as the community is too big.

So much blah blah-

What software would you use.

you can choose between

Ning.com ( but it mostly non Blog feeds based)

or Wordframe.com ( which interface and name sounds suspiciously like WordPress software)

Or you can choose a customized WordPress Solution called Buddy Press.

Here is the software-

BuddyPress

BuddyPress will transform an installation of WordPress MU into a social network platform.

BuddyPress is a suite of WordPress plugins and themes, each adding a distinct new feature. BuddyPress contains all the features you’d expect from WordPress but aims to let members socially interact. Read More ?

Note this was just a generic case study for making a case for open source based community softwares. Resemblance to any thing is a matter of coincidence – except for Curt Monash of course.

Cost of Customized WordPress Software for communties is a big zero- it is free and open source and tjousands of plugins can be installed and maintained for it.

See an existing installation here

www.decisionstats.com/community

or at www.buddypress.org

Saving Sergei Sergeivich

One of the most brilliant mathematics students of all time was a person named Sergey Brin. Today at 36 years old, and more billions than he ever cares for- he should ponder his mother’s wish for him to see him complete his Phd is more important or is his own indispensability to Google. The Google share price having fallen by 50 % over the past one year, what more could it fall.

An year or two is all it takes, and with his genetic tendency to Alzheimer’s disease – time is running out for Sergey Brin to leave the board room for the classrooms he left one decade ago. If Google cannot take one year without him, then Google is not as stable as we think.

What if Einstein started opening startups, or Fermi decided joining Board room was important than theorems- Where would we all be ?

In any case, this is a Facebook cause –

http://apps.facebook.com/causes/281925/8347178

Sergey Brin Needs to Finish his Phd 

Bringing back the most brilliant math scientist  in our generation  for other causes

Positions

1. Non Abusive
2. Scientific Debate
3. Science versus Commerce
4. Should a brilliant scientist be seduced by money?
5. If all teachers become businessmen, what will happen to the children

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Category:
Public Advocacy – Philanthropy Volunteerism and Public Benefit
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Also see Mr Brin’s academic paper-

http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

Keeping them honest -2

I first wrote about an e-governance initiative by Reserve Bank of India here http://www.decisionstats.com/2008/08/keeping-them-honest/

for finance related customer complaints against banks. Another great example of this is

an American website by the American Internal Revenue Service here at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f211.pdf

This is true for even Americans having offshore accounts. You need to pay taxes. And if you notice someone who doesn’t you can complain and get a bounty.

Note you cannot just complain against your ex boss anonymously ( yet) , but you can also file a named complaint on offshore accounts. You can also

declare tax evasion if your company is doing creative accounting , not paying contractors overtime pay, health benefits etc using regulatory arbitrage especially if these relate to cross border transactions that make things which are illegal to do in US but legal to do in say  in Indian offshoring firms. And companies that get tax breaks or a business expense deduction for doing so. You not only help your country and conscience, you actually get rich for doing so in the form of a federal payout.( see below)

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And all at the click of a mouse and stroke of a keyboard.

Process for Evaluating Whistleblower’s Claim
  • A threshold requirement for any award under 7623 is that the information must lead to judicial or administrative action – an audit or investigation resulting in the collection of proceeds.
  • An analyst in the Whistleblower Office will consider the information provided by the whistleblower. The IRS has to decide that the case is worth pursuing.
  • In the case of a large corporate taxpayer whose returns are audited each year, an administrative action can mean the creation of a new issue under the Audit Plan or a change in the way information about an issue is collected or analyzed, which would not otherwise have occurred without the information provided by the whistleblower.

But if you are scared of doing so – but still want to clear your conscience without doing a Deep Throat – here is something the Obamas have put in place

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Advanced Services from WordPress

http://en.wordpress.com/advanced-services/

 

Advanced Services

We’ve got some things that might be of interest to our more advanced users:

Need help to choose a self hosted smaller blog.

http://en.wordpress.com/advanced-services/

WordPress Web Hosting

There are hundreds of thousands of web hosts out there, the vast majority of which meet the WordPress minimum requirements, and choosing one from the crowd can be a chore. Just like flowers need the right enviroment to grow, WordPress works best when it’s in a rich hosting environment.

We’ve dealt with more hosts than you can imagine; in our opinion, the hosts below represent some of the best and brightest of the hosting world. If you do decide to go with one of the hosts below and click through from this page, some will donate a portion of your fee back—so you can have a great host and support WordPress at the same time.

If you don’t need the flexibility of a full web host, you may consider getting a free blog on WordPress.com.

Blue Host Blue Host

“WordPress Auto-Install — new WordPress updates are made available within 24 hours! Unlimited disk storage, Unlimited monthly data transfer, host unlimited domains on 1 account, 1 free domain name for as long as you host with BlueHost, 2500 POP / WebMail addresses, 50 MySQL databases, free control panel, free Fantastico, free SimpleScripts, 24/7 network monitoring, 99% uptime guarantee, mirrored storage backups, no hidden fees, voted best support in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008!”

DreamHost DreamHost

“WordPress auto-install and upgrade, 1 TB disk storage, 10 TB bandwidth, free domain, unlimited databases, 3000 email accounts, unlimited domain forwarding, Jabber support.”

MediaTemple MediaTemple

“Hosting that’s ready for traffic spikes. Start your new blog on a clustered hosting platform that’s ready for you to hit the big time. Whether you reach the front page of Digg or get an unexpected shout-out on Oprah, your blog will always be available. Get started right-away with our WordPress one-click installer and enough high-speed storage and bandwidth to run a blogging empire.”

Go Daddy GoDaddy.com

“Take advantage of hosting plans featuring up to unlimited disk space, unlimited transfer, unlimited MySQL databases, unlimited websites, and 1,000 email accounts all from the world’s largest Web host GoDaddy.com. Enjoy free set-up, no annual commitment, and free auto-install of over 50 applications, including WordPress. Best of all, 99.9% network uptime and Go Daddy’s world-class data centers keep you up and running, and plans start at just $4.25/mo! Virtual Dedicated and Dedicated Servers also available. Save 20% on one year or more of web site hosting! Use code WORDPRESS2 at checkout.”

JustHost JustHost

“Just Host offers the perfect solution for your WordPress blog. With unlimited disk space, bandwidth and MySQL databases, usage restrictions are a thing of the past. Just Host has offices in the US, UK and Australia and is serviceable in 195 countries worldwide. No matter where you live though, Just Host offers first class support 24/7 support via phone, email and live chat support.”

Laughing Squid Laughing Squid

“Laughing Squid Web Hosting is an independently owned and operated web host, based out of San Francisco, that provides friendly, dependable and secure web hosting services to artists, individuals, bloggers, non-profits, and small businesses. We are open source geeks who are here to help you get your content online and rescue you from the endless void of impersonal and unreliable web hosting.”

Requirements: PHP 4.3 or higher, MySQL 4.0 or higher, Apache or Litespeed recommended.

Host Feedback

We’re committed to helping create a wholesome and hassle-free WordPress hosting environment. If you feel there are issues with one of the hosts listed here, please send a note to hosting-2009@wordpress.org. If the situation warrants we’ll work with you and your host on a solution. We also realize that we can’t highlight every good host, but if you have a favorite host you think we should feature here, let us know.

Note before contacting us: Please don’t send us legal takedown orders or threats, we don’t actually host every WordPress blog in the world. If you don’t understand that, you probably shouldn’t be sending legal notices anyway.

  • SugarCRM : The Cloud is Open

    http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/products/editions.html

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    Pour some sugar on the cloud, and wish you could ask aloud-

    can I be small, cut my costs and still have a CRM – The Answer is Ahem-

    SUGARCRM

     

    Coming up (Technical Review)

    A Company called Zynga

    Here is one of the coolest companies making a buzz right now- it is called Zynga http://www.zynga.com/

    They have built some of the top games on Facebook (including a game called Mafia Wars which is sadly so addictive it should be made……).

    Gaming communities and discussion boards including at www.travian.com are one of the hottest forums , with steady revenue generation models and quite a lot of nice math and statistics behind the wheels.

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    (Psst- if you are present on Facebook please send me a Facebook invite at ajayohri@yahoo.com and we can play Mafia Wars too)

    Saving the New York Times from itself

    The iconic newspaper New York Times, flagpole for progressive, liberal and communist thinkers (depending on where you stand) is under attack again.

    It is under attack from the stupidity of its old school old fashioned presses, who believe cutting thousands of trees every year to make loss making newspapers is better than just putting the News on a Kindle, on an iPhone, on an RSS feed. Apparently online advertising is a difficult topic for the Pulitzer prize winning newspaper to master which has Nobel writers in its hallowed mustachioed and sometimes dowdy columnists.

     

    If the NYT just shut down its paper division and shift to a paperless world, it would save lots of money, and earn lot more money from the online world. They can ask their own technology columnists and strategists if this is possible- and ask Google for help. Google with it’s Al Gore links, environmental standing and hunger for more and better online advertising can definitely team up (but for those anti trust worries alas)

    So here is a Facebook cause- Save the NYTimes.  You can join up here –

    http://apps.facebook.com/causes/170855/8347178

    It has 37 members already and I created it some time back in December 2008. If you love newspapers and want the NYT to shape up, then join up.

     

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