Tag: orkut

Happy $100 Billion to Mark Zuckerberg Productions !

Heres to an expected $100 billion market valuation to the latest Silicon Valley Legend, Facebook- A Mark Zuckerberg Production.

Some milestones that made FB what it is-

1) Beating up MySpace, Ibibo, Google Orkut combined

2) Smart timely acquisitions from Friend feed , to Instagram

3) Superb infrastructure for 900 million accounts, fast interface rollouts, and a policy of never deleting data. Some of this involved creating new technology like Cassandra. There have been no anti-trust complaints against FB’s behavior particularly as it simply stuck to being the cleanest interface offering a social network

4) Much envied and copied features like Newsfeed, App development on the FB platform, Social Gaming as revenue streams

5) Replacing Google as the hot techie employer, just like Google did to Microsoft.

6) An uncanny focus, including walking away from a billion dollars from Yahoo,resisting Google, Apple’s Ping, imposing design changes unilaterally, implementing data sharing only with flexible partners  and strategic investors (like Bing)

FB has made more money for more people than any other company in the past ten years. Here’s wishing it an even more interesting next ten years! With 900 million users if they could integrate a PayPal like system, or create an alternative to Adsense for content creators, they could create an all new internet economy – one which is more open than the Google dominated internet ; 0

 

The Best of Google Plus Week 3- Top 1/0

 

While the funny GIFs continue in week 3, I find more and more people using this to paste their blog articles- so another channel to create and spread content.

I am waiting for certain features-

  1. Importing my Orkut data seamlessly into Google Plus
  2. The Gaming Channel using Zynga- Open Social Games
  3. Hangout to have screen sharing as well as screen recording (or export to Youtube features)
  4. Better integration of Sparks based activity.
  5. Also if existing Youtube comments/fan communities can utilize G+ accounts too
Anyways, after all that violence and double talk- the best content in Week 3 as per my Google + stream.
Special Mention-

Google Product Launches

So dear G launched a whole new set of Products. Some thoughts-

1) Join up the Social Invite List here – it is called Google Plus. We hope it doesnt end up like Buzz http://www.google.com/buzz or Orkut https://groups.google.com/group/opensocial-api/?pli=1 or Plus One http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/ or Wave (email killer) http://googlewave.blogspot.com/

When the biggest cloud computing company in the world announces a phased rollout to a product- we wonder if they are really sure on launching the product rollout or just were in a hurry again.

Machine learning wont work with social , chaps. Well not everything in social. And the Google Social Blog forgot to write about it http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/

Well anyways, even Google Finance’s automated announcements feed failed to pick many of their own  product launches (or it does in an automated manner depending on which time period you choose – yes still no social buttons up http://www.google.com/finance?q=google

BACK TO GOOGLE PLUS

https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googleplus/

Google+

Thanks for stopping by.We’re still ironing out a few kinks in Google+, so it’s not quite ready for everyone to climb aboard. But, if you want, we’ll let you know the minute the doors are open for real. Cool? Cool.

  • First Name *
  • Email *

Google+ Privacy Policy

2) Google Web Fonts- Great product, how and hey http://googlewebfonts.blogspot.com/ when do you plan to monetize uhm  web fonts. Not that would be awesome. Not even a single ad on those pages- not even for philanthropy. or poor poets. or even Google Book Authors who self publish . Sound of silence….

http://www.google.com/webfonts/v2

 

3) Google Analytics gets some groove back. I really want to see much better integration of Google Apps and Google Analytics and Google Desktop search. Ditto for the interface. Enterprise software uses different fonts than retail software, dude. More fries, http://analytics.blogspot.com/ ?

Feature 1- Custom Reports for metrics I can slice and dice on my own

Feature 2 Awesome analytics for In-Page Analytics (beta feature) Beta is boring if overused. Try Theta maybe?

Feature 3 Daily Automated Alerts for Unusual Server /Traffic Activity

Feature 4 event Tracking is cool esp for understanding social media impact

 

It is still too early for mobile (in terms of traffic) as well as tablet analytics (?)

4) Angry Birds is still the best feature in Chrome  (but there are lots others at http://chrome.blogspot.com/) and esp http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/06/working-with-chromes-file-browser.html

Try http://chrome.angrybirds.com/

There are ways to make software that are not evil. Very very disappointed at total lack of monetization of this chrome app. Not even a T Shirt for me to buy ad . sighs

Funny thing- the product manager forgot to take off Facebook like button or even add the +1 button or even the Tweet this button.

Quo Vadis ?

 

5) What do you love?

http://www.wdyl.com/#

LibreOffice News and Google Musings

Tux, the Linux penguin
Image via Wikipedia

Official Bloggers on LibreOffice- http://planet.documentfoundation.org/

Note- for some strange reason I continue to be on top ranked LibreOffice blogs- maybe because I write more on the software itself than on Oracle politics or coffee spillovers.

LibreOffice Beta 2  is ready and I just installed it on Windows 7 – works nice- and I somehow think open Office and Google needs an  example to stop being so scary on cautioning—— hey,hey it’s a  beta – (do you see Oracle saying this release is a beta or Windows saying hey this Windows Vista is a beta for Windows 7- No right?)-

see screenshot of solver in  LibreOffice spreadsheet -works just fine.

We cant wait for Chromium OS and LibreOffice integration (or Google Docs-LibreOffice integration)  so Google starts thinking on those lines (of course

Google also needs to ramp up Google Storage and Google Predict API– but dude are you sure you wanna take on Amazon, Oracle and MS and Yahoo and Apple at the same time. Dear Herr Schmidt- Last German Guy who did that ,  ended up in a bunker in Berlin. (Ever since I had to pay 50 euros as Airline Transit fee -yes Indian passport holders have to do that in Germany- I am kind of non objective on that issue)

Google Management is busy nowadays thinking of trying to beat Facebook -hint -hint-

-buy out the biggest app makers of Facebook apps and create an api for Facebook info download and upload into Orkut –maybe invest like an angel in that startup called Diaspora http://www.joindiaspora.com/) see-

Back to the topic (and there are enough people blogging on Google should or shouldnt do)

-LibreOffice aesthetically rocks! It has a cool feel.

More news- The Wiki is up and awaits you at http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation

And there is a general pow-wow scheduled at http://www.oookwv.de/ for the Open Office Congress (Kongress)

As you can see I used the Chrome Extension for Google Translate for an instant translation from German into English (though it still needs some work,  Herr Translator)

Back to actually working on LibreOffice- if Word and Powerpoint is all you do- save some money for Christmas and download it today from
Related Articles

Downloading your Facebook Photos

 

This UML diagram describes the domain of Faceb...
Image via Wikipedia

 

Here is a three step process for Downloading your entire Facebook Info-

1) Go to top right hand corner- Account.

2) Under Account- click on Account Settings

3)Under Account Settings -Click on Download Information

Facebook creates a ZIP file for downloading your information- and sends you an email when the info is ready.

Why should you download your Facebook Info-

1) As a local backup of your profile

2) To move to Orkut – or better to share Photos on Picassa or Flickr to your non Facebook friends. Note FB does have a unique URL under each Photo that you can copy and paste and share, but its not really convenient besides being huge and not a small URL at all.

3) In case you want to delete your Facebook account but dont want to lose your memories and friends.

Nice step from FB- they are taking user privacy and empowerment more seriously and at 500 Million users can afford to be a bit more generous.

Related Articles

Advertising Feed back Loop: Facebook and Adwords

In Systems design a feedback loop is something that measures the difference between expected and actual output and adds it back to the system to enhance it’s performance

For a better more accurate definition see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback

Here is how Facebook measures the satisfaction whether I got for an ad on my page- note fraudelent or systematic cheaters would be eliminated by the law of averages.

It places a very small thumbs up or thumbs down on an ad on right hand corner.
‘
When I place a thumbs down on an ad ( note it shows only graphical ads)-it asks me why i didnt like the ad

Was it

1) Misleading
2) Offensive
3) Uninteresting
4) Irrelevant
5) Repetitive
6) Other- allows text mining of free form allowing subjective feedback.

However if I type say Business Intelligence on Google – I get the following

http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=business+intelligence&meta=&aq=0&oq=business+intell

Open Source Ad on Pentaho at prime spot just above the results. Makes me wonder how much open source will spend.

Search Results-
Wikepedia entry usually at the top ( but no ads there*)

Search Optimization means SAS Business Intelligence is now fifth from top- which is the first mention of a BI vendor there ( Note cost to SAS is zero as you can see below). In the remaining top 4, two are similar http://www.businessintelligence.com and http://www.businessintelligence.co.uk as the title page tag remains more important than sheer consumer behaviour to Pagerank.

Right Column Sponsored Links ( These guys spend more money than SAS to be on the sponsored links and still end up in a less favourable ad page than in top vendor on search results page)-

1 http://www.brgglobal.com
2 SAP.com/India
3 IBM.com/cognos
4 http://www.BusinessObjects-India.com
5 http://www.softsmith.com
6 http://www.syncfusion.com/BizIntell
7 http://www.intelligententerprise.com/

(Note from Ajay*- A senior IIM Alumnus CK Prahlad (the first batch in fact) – first expounded the concept of core competence-

Now-what is Google’s core competence.
I believe that Google should simply donate all its information on wikipedia, and offer Google Knol to it- rather than just wallow in sunk cost theory or expect an immediate return from this transaction. It will get lots of goodwill- and maybe the Google Wikipedia Knol will take off.

Similarly sell Orkut to Facebook and just take the advertising and search functions to be combined in a seperate spin off called Google Search before Microsoft forces the Europeans and Justice department to do so.

Or continue to moon the giant.)

I didnt like the Adwords ads or the order they were in. But there is no way in Adwords for me to give feedback to it. Facebook listens. Will Adwords listen.

Orkut and the Quiet Open Social Revolution

Orkut has worked very hard with

1) avoiding clutter unlike the FB (apps go in the left)

2) customized page themes

3) integration with the gtalk

4) scraps/ wall posts updates

5) some better games than FB. yes i especially liked Space invader

almost like a flash game

which hasnot

been seen in some time. And most FB games were there !!

This is one Google product they are keeping much quiet about- wonder if they are

changing their high profile ways with the justice department sniffing on the yahoo deal.

Heres a preview – Go and revive that old Orkut account of yours

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