Way2Top

I realized that Linkedin.com, a leading professional networking platform and Orkut.com, leading social networking site are working towards exposing their respective data through APIs. This is great news to “People Search Engines” like Pipl.com and Spock.com. Till now these engines have been crawling all public urls of Social networking sites, name databases and blogs (technorati does host the details of people behind the registered blogs). Even with the limited information extraction, the quality of search has been good. With the exposure of the data from the social networking sites, the quality of search would improve highly because of rich and structured information available.

Try a search against your name in Pipl.com or Spock.com.

Killerstartups.com, a user-driven internet start-up community, profiles a whopping 249 search-related products! There are various flavours of Search engines originating from different parts of the globe.

Wikipedia, the Free encyclopedia, lists down around 100 odd search engines. It’s interesting to see the way they have classified these search engines in to 29 categories.

Off late, I am fascinated by the concept of human-powered search engines like www.Mahalo.com & www.chacha.com. They focus on serving high-quality relevant results using the human intelligence. This is accomplished through the people-centric approach, whereby experts hand-pick best sites and difficult-to-find sites under each category and add them to the search engine. This approach clearly overcomes the problem that the mega search engines like Google, Yahoo et al poses. For example, the PageRank algorithm of Google prevents new, niche, less SEO’ed sites and not-so-often-quoted sites to figure on top results. Many a times, such sites turn out to be the most relevant ones.

Until the “artificial intelligence”, “machine-learning”, “natural-language processing”, “neural-networks” and other esoteric concepts gather some traction and shape, the human-powered approach is a dependable way of solving the problem. But there will be questions raised like “How to do you scale it up?”, “How many years, people you need to accomplish this?”, “How will you eliminate the subjectivity and bias of the experts?”. This is where I think Mahalo and Chacha are doing a good job. They invite users/volunteers to hand-pick the results. They also have a good reputation system which enforces sanctity and validity on the user-contributions. The focus is on top search terms and to add the long-tail terms as and when a demand is seen. The approach eliminates spam-sites, copy-paste sites, SEO-oriented blogs et al., The game of “online advertising and marketing” has clearly spoilt the quality of search results on major search engine. It is refreshing to see search engines that are powered by humans and that are clean from advertising gamers.

Mahalo.com: Mahalo is the world’s first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides.

Chacha.com: The first search engine that uses the brainpower of really smart people to find anything you want on the Internet.

DWAAR.com is available for public view now, but under “Labs”.

I am handling the “cities” vertical and to an extent “Restaurants” vertical also. Both of these verticals have similar requirement as far as product features and data are concerned. Both of these verticals face common problems too! There are two key aspects of this product that should come out very strongly, but doesn’t: The Search quality (Ability to pull up relevant results intelligently based upon query keywords. The efficiency lies in avoiding both false positives and false negatives!) and the Data Quality.

Though the Search quality is at manageable levels and can be solved in the short-term at technology level, the Data quality still remains an unsolved mystery. Following are some of the major problems that we face with the Data:

1. In-accurate Data. Wrong phone numbers, wrong addresses, wrong names etc.,
2. Mis-classification of Data. Business records being classified in to wrong categories.
3. Lack of Depth: The records does not have enriched information. example: What products are services the businesses offer? What are the special features? etc.,
4. Lack of coverage: There aren’t sufficient records for some categories and cities.
5. In-complete Data. The necessary fields are found missing.
6. Duplication of Data.

Our immediate goal is to rectify the above problems and we are doing it earnestly through various approaches.

The problems that are mentioned above are industry-wide, especially in India. That doesn’t justify the problems that we have in the product, but atleast it gives us a chance to be a differentiated product in this space (with high focus of data quality).

I am so desperate to increase the high-quality data corpus for “local” that I am digitizing the visiting cards of mine and my friends during my free time. Now-a-days, when I go shopping, I don’t forget to collect the visiting card. The businesses/vendors/service providers that I come across will definitely be available in DWAAR in few weeks time Once this data gets in to Production, I don’t even have to worry about missed visiting cards. I just go to DWAAR and search for the information :)…I definitely take care not to digitize personal visiting cards (of working professionals)! If any of you would like to add good businesses/vendors to the database, please ping me (@ bharani at gmail.com)…I will be very grateful to talk with you and for your help.

I envision that “DWAAR” would be the place to go for finding any business and associated contact details for Indians.

The product that we have been working on for past few months, was finally demonstrated to the South African Top management. We call this “Internal Launch”. The reception to the demo was very positive and the team was excited and upbeat.

There are still issues to be sorted out. There are still changes/features to be implemented. But, the product is shaping up well. We will be launching the product shortly as Public Beta. The marketing plans are being charted out. Since this is my first involvement with a commercial internet product, I am excited and looking forward for all the actions.

Commercial-grade Internet Products appear simpler and easier-to-manage from outside. But the amount of Technology involvement is huge! Especially on the Hardware, network, Data centers etc., Excellent Technology Operations team is key to the success of Internet product. Not just that, there are umpteen other issues to be taken care of. Devil is definitely in Details!

Scalability [Ability to accommodate more traffic, more users, more features, more data], Performance [Ability to load pages faster, do transactions faster], Ease of use [Ability to complete the intent with minimal effort and with little learning from end-users], Tolerance to Failure [Fault-tolerance, graceful degradation, Business continuity etc.,] and Discoverability [Ability to be identified by Search Engines (SEO)] are some of the things that should be thought about obligatorily!

The aspect of Business Development in our Product merits scrutiny in-depth. I will dedicate a post for this later.

Apple iPhones vs Nokia N-series

One a trendsetter in music. The other a trendsetter in mobile phones. As soon as the magic word of convergence caught up with the industry, Nokia decided to integrate high-quality music capability to mobile sets. Nokia n-series is a fantastic testament to the sound quality that Nokia can conjure up. ‘Arguably’, the sound quality is as good as that of Apple iPod.

Reacting to the industry trend, Apple decided to add mobile capability to iPod and promptly kicked off ‘iPod cell phone initiative’. It is addressed as Apple iPhone. In fact, there are messages floating around in the net about the two versions of iPhone about to be released.

However, I am wondering about the core capabilities here. Will Apple measure up to Nokia’s mobile capabilities as much as Nokia measured up to Apple’s audio capabilities? My gut feeling says ‘No’….Will watch it over anyway!

Since one of my job roles entails evaluating Open Source technologies, I was wondering if there are any good career options in “Open Source Consulting”. There are some firms doing exactly this.

Organizations world-wide are slowly embracing Open-source solutions as the choice for the enterprise-level IT needs. The challenge, as I already mentioned in one of the posts, lies in evaluating the suitable solutions and Recommending an executable-strategy based on the fit analysis. There should be a deep understanding of each and every open-source offerings across all solution space. Every possible advantage and disadvantage should be captured. The inter-dependencies/synergies/incompatibilites between different open-source technologies should be documented. Best practices in deploying open-source technologies should be arrived at…

Different set of Solutions should be formulated by mixing and matching different technologies. The possibilities are endless, just like in the business of consulting.

As more and more Tech start-ups are cropping up in India, as more and more web 2.0 based companies are coming up everyday, I believe there is good business opportunity for Open-source consulting in India. My thoughts…

Google Search: Open Source Consulting

“Rob Peter and Pay Paul” is probably the right adage to describe the music piracy caused by some online music websites and file-sharing networks. But, a new set of people called “advertisers” have come forward and saying to these online music websites that “Listen, Here’s the deal. Get Paul to visit me. I will give you the currencies that you need. Keep some for you and share the rest with Peter. Don’t rob Peter…He will not produce music if you keep robbing him“.

So what happens now?
Paul gets free music and gives his time to visit Adveritser.
Advertisers get Paul’s attention and gives money.
Peter gets money & peace of mind and gives music.

Music websites coordinates the transaction, get to make profits and gives an online service!

That essentially sums up the intention behind the new venture called “SpiralFrog” and “QTrax”.

SpiralFrog is a new online music destination, offering ad-supported legal downloads of audio and video content licensed from the catalogs of the world’s major and independent record labels.

SpiralFrog will be a secure environment where music lovers can satisfy their unyielding passion and thirst for music, entertainment, and information. Our site will be as multifaceted, smart, and current as the audience we hope to attract. An audience that we believe is the driving force behind the way music is created, discovered, and consumed today.

Who are willing to supply legal music to SpiralFrog?
Universal Music Group
EMI Music Publishing

Where does the Revenue come from?
Business Model is based on sharing the “income streams from advertising” with the content partners. Customers pay with their time.

Is it sustainable?
It all depends on making the customers to visit advertisers. It is the job of advertisers to monetize the footfalls. But it is a challenge for Spiralfrog to attract highly targeted audience and luring them to advertisers website. Not easy!

How different is it from some Joe poky’s website supplying MP3 but filled with Google adsense?
Well nothing in terms of delivery of service. But the music is legal! Moreover, It is not plain Google adsense, where the advertisers are not official partners with you.

Is it really free? Any catch?
Yeah…in a way it is really free. But users are required to visit SpiralFrog each month to validate the music. Otherwise the music expires. They are doing this through some DRM Technology. Well, I think soon there will be some hackers who would break that validation mechanism. A definite Watch-out-Factor!

Any other similar company?
Yes there is. QTrax [You play the music, We pay the artists!] . QTrax has a slightly different delivery mechanism. It allows free download but in proprietary format called “MPQ”. These tracks can be played only in QTrax player. Moreover the music expires after being played for specified number of times. Unlimited music playback can be obtained for a premium fee.

SpiralFrog has plans to extend this ad-supported business to Video [MP4s?] in 2007. I think it is just a matter of time for this to extend to e-books and all content that could be delivered over the web.

Come December, we will know the answer from SpiralFrog! For now, it looks all bright and colourful on paper…

What say?

For past few months, I have been witnessing some form of amnesia with crucial informations. The number of UserIds, Passwords and PINs that I have to maintain has gotten big that I have begun to forget a few. Actually, I am quite ok with remembering details. So this crucial-moment-amnesia is surprising me and at times bothering me! I am too skeptical to write it down in paper. I am too scared to have single password for everything (diversification of risk?). So, I have to remember the passwords by-heart.

Office applications, emails, blogs, mobile phones, online bank accounts, ATMs, online subscriptions…huh!

Can someone bring on the Biometrics everywhere soon…?

I do hope that I am not alone…!

PS: I did a very sentimental thing today. I created an userid/password for my brother to update my blog. In case I cannot update the blog, he will do it on behalf of me!

I landed up on the following website while I was doing a Market Analysis for Enterprise Search Solution.

Jahia

Jahia offers a product suite with solutions for Enterprise Content Management, Corporate Portal, Document Management, Search Engine, Powerful Indexer, Caching, Colloboration Tools and Business Process Management Tools.

They are offering almost all the features that we are trying to develop but in a slightly different approach. Anyway, I liked Jahia not just for what they offer…but more for their effort to promote a Sustainable Business Model blending the benefits of Open source software and proprietary software. They have instituted a Sustainable Software Initiative (SSI), a non-profit organisation dedicated to promote this business model.

The basic idea behind this initiative is to provide the source code for free and to allow anyone to freely modify the code. But the model charges a licence fee based on the intent and the extent-of-the-intent of use! (commercial or professional reasons). The developers who contribute to the development of the project will be fairly rewarded through stock-options or shares or discounting the licence fee! Jahia is essentially trying to curb out free-riders in the software community: The passive people who use the free software for commercial purpose without contributing anything back! Jahia calls them as “Technology free-riders”.

Bottomline:

“So, you want to enjoy the benefits of high-quality open-source? then give back something useful to the community. Don’t be just passive consumers…You can earn your right to be passive for a specified Fee..”

The movement seems to focus mainly on eliminating the Technology-Free riders. I was just reflecting this principle on what we currently do. I have been wanting my team to contribute back to the community…Time to take some concrete steps towards that…

http://Sramanamitra.com

This is another Business-Technology-Entrepreneurship blog that I found today. The blog is maintained by Sramana Mitra, an Entrepreneur and Strategy consultant since 1994. She blends her rich experience with happening tech trends and offers solid content for readers.

She has been writing for 20 years! The lady seems to have great photographic skills too….And yeah, she is a good friend of Om Malik, the person behind the blog Gigaom…

Yet another entry to my Technology Blogroll…