China bans Chinese Food for Googleplex

This is a direct result of Google ‘s stand on principles (see below). No Google for China means no Chinese food for Googlers. But seriously.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

Best Internet Site of 2009

Here is the best internet site of 2009.
It basically shows how many jobs have been created per dollar spent.
Funded by the debt of American Treasuries………

Here is the best internet site of 2009.
It basically shows how many jobs have been created per dollar spent.
Funded by the debt of American Treasuries
sold to Chinese.

Remember the Chinese Opium Wars.
Well the Chinese are hooked to American Treasuries and they probably need a Warship with Admiral to open their markets and currency. Oui!

Well anyway the website is called http://Recovery.gov

The declining market for Telecommunication Churn Models

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Users of Predictive Analytics within telecom sector can look into an interesting side effect of the iPhone – AT &T agreement. With Google also jumping into the market with it’s Droid – the new norms in Telecom agreements is lockedin contracts for consumers. While this is permitted by the telecom regulators as fair to competition- this also means that there is very little churn within these locked in contracts. This leads to further savings for the telecom provider allowing them to have higher profits and even share the profits by price decreases-

and thus the traditional bug bear of telecom analytics churn modeling is slowly losing importance to plain vanilla reporting or better data mining dashboard like solutions. Lower Churn , means also lower costs on analytics softwares to predict churn.

As competition within the 3G Mobile market ramps up due to Google’s entry and licensing with partners exclusively- the trend will likely increase for reduced churn due to locked in customers.Even existing mobile providers can offer discounts to lock in customers for not switching ( especially in Mobile Markets like India- where I have personally interacted with large players like Bharti) and China which has even bigger mobile market.

Ergo Lower need to buy softwares that predict churn-

See Below Image from TeraData’s Churn Model.

The Great Game- How social media changes the Intelligence Industry

Since time immemorial, countries and corporations have used spies to displace existing equilibriums in balance of power or market share dynamics. An integral part of that was technology. From the pox infested rugs given to natives, to the plague rats, to the smuggling of the secret of silk and gunpowder from China to the West to the latest research in cloud seeding by China and Glaciars melting by India- technology espionage has been an integral part in keeping up with each other.

For the first time in history, technology has evolved to the point where tools for communicating securely , storing data has become cheap to the point of just having a small iPhone 3GS with applications for secure transmission. From an analytical purpose the need for analyzing signal from noise and the criticality in mapping chatter with events (like Major Hasan’s online activities)  has also created an opportunity for social media as well as an headache for the people involved. With Citizen Journalism, foreign relations office, and ambassadors with their bully pulpits have been brought down to defending news leaked by Twitter ( Iran) You Tube ( Thailand/Burma/Tibet) and Blogs ( Russia/Georgia). The rise of bot nets, dark clouds to create disruptions as well as hack into accounts for enhancing favourable noise and reducing unfavourable signals has only increased. Blogs have potential to influence customer behavior as they are seen more credible than public relations which is mostly public and rarely on relations.

Techniques like sentiment analysis , social network analysis, text mining and co relation of keywords to triggers remain active research points.

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The United States remains a leader as you can only think creatively out of a box if you are permitted to behave accordingly out of the box. The remaining countries are torn between a  mix of admiration , envy and plain old copy cat techniques. The rising importance of communities that act more tribal than hitherto loyal technology user lists is the reason almost all major corporates actively seek to cultivate social media communities. The market for blogs and twitter in China or Iran or Russia will have impacts on those government’s efforts to manage their growth as per their national strategic interests. Just like the title of an old and quaint novel- “The Brave New World” of social media and it’s convergence with increasing amounts of text data generated on customers, or citizens is evolving into creating new boundaries and space for itself.A fascinating Great Game in itself.

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