Thought Garage

Wonderfully simple and easy to read book for all ages, " 20 Things I learned about Browsers and The web " from Google Chrome team. Must read for all that would love and enjoy web. Wonderful book for all ages by Google  You can read it online right from your browser or download the PDF version of the book. If you are curious to know more how a browser really works, you may check this wonderful cartoon book from none other than the Google Chrome team itself :  The Chrome, Comic Book .

The essence of Marketing is "how best you can translate your idea or product to your target customers".  The goal is to make every effort until your customer clearly understand "what your product can do for them". Web being the pervasive communications medium and the default Front Face of any organization, it is extremely important to design it to translate and adapt continually. "Designs Apart" is a profile of such wonderful and creative web and product designs. Magento Template Tips Many software products offer personalization through templates. For example, "WordPress",  one of the best blogging platforms (Thought Garage is also powered by WordPress) offers customization of your blog using Themes/templates. WordPress offers excellent documentation of how a blogger can customize the look and feel of a WordPress powered blog. Magento , an open source E-commerce software  goes the extra mile in its documentation of 'Customizat...

Drupal TechTalk at Google, if you are interested in learning more about Drupal.

IT Outsourcing, a couple of years back, literally meant  shifting Product Development, Software Implementation and most of  back office management to India (from US and major European countries). But when Nandan Nilekani of Infosys said 'The World is Flat', he did not mean moving work to Bangalore alone or India in general.  In fact he was hinting about  the future of Outsourcing, the out sourcing 2.0. "Any thing can be outsourced to anywhere in the world." (Following  the same tenets of outsourcing : price, time and knowledge) Facing serious problems of attrition and salary increases and increasing competition all over, Indian IT companies are fast expanding to rest of the cheaper and better world: Mexico, China and a few other third world countries. Time is fast approaching for Indian IT engineers to start discussing about  loosing their jobs to their cheaper counterparts in the rest of the world.  While expansion to Mexico, China an...

The Sun Startup Essentials program was launched the U.S. on November 2, 2006 on an experimental basis, and was launched in India on  August 8, 2007.  Sun Startup Essentials offers startup companies groundbreaking Sun technologies and software at breathtaking prices or free. For more program specifics, take a look at the Sun Startup Essentials Datasheet . Free Software  : Get popular open source software, such as Apache, MySQL, Perl, etc. -- all optimized for the Solaris operating system, free for the asking. Discounted Systems  : Get rock-bottom prices on industry-leading Sun systems and run the OS of your choice. Discounted Partner Hosting  : Get top-notch web hosting from Sun partners at great discounts. Startups Ask Sun  : Our professional engineers will talk with you through emails and will try to answer your questions.

After going all Google do I need to give another reason why I love Google so much? Well, if you are still wondering, here is a special announcement from Google, a little treat to Indians on 60th of birthday of India after independence. Keeping up with the spirit and celebrations of India's 60th year of Independence, we present to you a new platform that showcases our favourite ideas for Indian users: Google India Labs . Though 60 years young, India has a history dating back to the dawn of civilization. The incredible diversity of this great nation is the kind of challenge Google loves. And in line with our mission of making information universally accessible, we're now offering an easier way to search in 14 Indian and South Asian languages. You don't need a special keyboard or software; all you need is a web browser, a mouse, and a Unicode font for your language. So whether you speak ??????? ( Assamese ), ????? ( Bengali ), ??????? ( Gujarati ), ????? ( Hindi ), ????...

Dental Tourism, just another form of outsourcing. Who says 'price' is not a factor when it comes to healthcare? At least 2,544,000 people around the world will search the internet for dental treatment abroad this year, according to Reva Health Network. In June alone, 636,155 dental tourism-related searches were carried out globally by 212,051 unique users on Google, Yahoo! and MSN search engines. ( | Via RSS Feed | Link to Article | )

Creating Passionate Users is one of my favorite blogs and very happy to see this post after a long time (since those blog threats).  I love to see this blog with those vivid pictures that convey the pragmatism and real wisdom that could otherwise takes 1000s of words and yet unclear.  The revolutionary way of  teaching  concepts(HeadFirst Series) is beyond any comparison to any other book I have ever read. I love to see her back on the blog and with new books. It is very difficult to say any visualization as my favorite, as I love almost all her graphs and pictures. Just linked two of them, that are quite relevant to a discussion that I am bringing up in my next post. While it is tough to beat an argument on table that a team of people bring a lot to the table and consensus always brings better results, in reality it is quite the opposite in almost all ocassions.  Consensus is something everybody is comfortable with, not necessa...

Read a thought provoking post on Seth's Blog about the tacit honor system in our society,  the notion of 99% of people are good and only 1% of the people are actually bad. So if you treat everybody as if they belong to that 1%, you might loose the 99%. Just about everything in civilization works on the honor system. No armed guards at the local grocery store, no pat down as you leave the library. Most people cross the street without fear of crazed hit and run assassins. Great marketers are able to deliver customer service because they're willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. They tend to take your word for it. Of course there are bad actors. One out of a thousand people will cheat on that test or rip off that store. When LL Bean or Patagonia offers a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee, some jerks decide to buy an outfit, go on a trip and then return it all. If you spend all your time worrying about these folks, you end up underserving the other 99% of the ...

Seth Godin on 'How to make a million' says tyring to make a penny from hundred million almost never works. Instead try to make a dollar from million people. One popular method is to make a dollar in profit from each of a million people. Or a penny from a hundred million. This is the China strategy. It almost never works. It almost never works because the challenge of reaching that many people is just too great. It's too risky and too expensive. Doesn't matter that you're only hoping for a dollar or a penny. The price isn't the challenge, it's the difficulty in spreading your idea. Far easier to make a thousand dollars from each of a thousand people, or even $10,000 from a hundred organizations. You can focus on a small hive of people, a group that talks to itself. You can push through a smaller dip and reach a level of recommendation and dominance that makes incremental sales far easier. And you can learn much earlier in the process if you've gotten it r...

Another book on the block that is vehemently complaining about internet and its ill effects on Culture.   The Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture    I remember an earlier discussion about Wikipedia, complaining about its amateurish mob made content compared to so called validated and trusted expert content from famous encyclopedias. Whether there is any truth in that matter or not, first website I and most of my friends and collegues refer to when in doubt is undoubtedly wikipedia. On subjects we knew in depth, we compared the quality of content and found no truth in those allegations.    Coming to key arguments made in this book, here are few exceprts (taken from 37Signals post, linked at the bottom of the page, highlights by me) Mr. Keen argues that “ what the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather tha...

Frustrated with multiple web silo services (about 20 different websites I regularly use and ofcourse I hate to manage 20 different logins and bookmarks), I have started moving to 'All Google' services. With a single sign-on, I can access most services and the most interesting benefit is an excellent integration between different services. And, I really did not know until today that Google has acquired Feedburner. That makes my moving to 'Everything Google' camp little closer than I thought.   Google has acquired FeedBurner  More » We are happy to announce that Google has acquired FeedBurner. For more information related to the acquisition, read our FAQ .   Source: FeedBurner With feedburner moving to Google camp, all web services I use(except wordpress and central desktop)  are now Google services.  Search Engine: I rarely used any other search engine so far. (except for proving my point ocassionally) Google Reader : This is the secon...

A recent report by  Kauffman Foundation infers that there is a strong correlation between educational attainment and entrepreneurship. A report released by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation that tracked the educational backgrounds of immigrant entrepreneurs who were key founders of technology and engineering companies from 1995 to 2005 shows a strong correlation between educational attainment (particularly in science, technology, engineering and math) and entrepreneurship. Click image, above, to read Education, Entrepreneurship and Immigration: America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Part II . Click image, above, to read America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs (part 1 of the study). But before jumping to 'any' conclusions about  role of Educational Attainment to Entrepreneurship, (which I believe is construed and a misquoted wisdom), consider the following points from the report itself: The report  studied only Technology and Engineering companies....

How are many of the Web2.0 companies (hoping of) making  money out of their products? Quick and honest answer is : 'Nobody knows for sure, including the companies'. And predominantly there is only one business model: a free service and place ads on the pages. Here is nice study on current Web2.0 business models, from  VTT - Technical Research Centre of Finland : PDF File Social media is becoming more and more attractive to Web users. However, the majority of social media services do not have a clear business model. Typically an innovative idea gives birth to a service, which people can use free of charge. The most common way to create revenue is via advertisements: Google ads appear in many services. In the long run, however, social media has to adopt alternative means for making money. Why most web2.0 services are free? I think, despite the hype in the media, many web2.0 companies (excluding a few) are NOT looked as providing any VALUE to its users....

Wow!! Another cool feature from Google. Now, You can personalize your Google page with a theme that changes with you, precisely your time and climate. Another simple concept that defines what personalization could mean and why you can't ignore Google.     >> iGoogle It is raining in Dallas and here is what my theme looks like. I will update this post tomorrow in the morning, so you will see the difference. See you tomorrow then. And a Big Thank You to Google ! Here is how the theme looks today morning. Funny that I missed my cute girl in red in the second one. I love it. The theme always looks fresh and quite refreshing. Here is another theme. This is wonderful in bright colors. Did you observe the Bagles and Coffee in the picture? Ofcourse, it is breakfast time. Technorati tags: igoogle , google , inspions , personalization , themes

Wonderful talk by David Pogue, NYT Technology Columnist. New York Times technology columnist David Pogue opens his talk with a rousing musical number about the trials of customer support, then launches into some sharp commentary on "The Software Upgrade Paradox" ("Improve a piece of software enough times, you eventually ruin it"). Next he takes on the worst interface design offenders, the causes of "Software Rage." After a couple of trips back to the piano, Pogue moves to the success stories, offering examples of products that celebrate the power of simplicity. Link to TED Talks Page

I would be glad and little suprised if you could decipher the following tracking information provided by USPS and tell me where is my package. I recently ordered an item at Amazon.com on 28th Feb, 2007.  Though, the Amazon.com page said the item is available and will be shipped immediately, the item seems to have been shipped 5 days later on 5th of March through USPS. Amazon.com sent me a tracking number to track the shipment. I looked up the information with that tracking number at USPS,  I am totally confused at the following tracking message. It says, the package was processed and left the Dallas TX 75398 facility on 7th March, 2007. I am expecting to receive the package in Dallas, TX itself. And when I looked up today, it still says the same message except that now it says 10th March, 2007. I don't have a clue where Amazon.com is shipping this particular product from. And I don't have a clue where it is currently either.  I clicked on the 'Additional d...

What Indians are searching for: After learning a few concepts about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I went on to find out what are the top 10 things Indians are searching for. First place to look for that information is obviously Google. And here are the top queries in January 2007 from India. (via Google ) India - Popular Queries for January 2007 indian railways cricket wikipedia sania mirza flowers air deccan aishwarya rai indian airlines cricinfo airtel ndtv salman khan katrina kaif nokia mallika sherawat What the world is searching for in/about or around India: If that is what Indians are searching for, let us see what the whole world is searching for in or about India (via Yahoo ): Searches done in January 2007 about India: Total:  451995  69791: india times  56280: india yahoo  51911: india railway  37447: india travel  35734: india map  34057: india sex  32657: arie india  28534: air ind...

Whenever we think of collaboration and community built documentation, I believe there is no other form best suitable than wikis. Along with religious patronage by Open source communities and new web2.0 entrepreneurs, many Small businesses started adapting Wikis as an integral part of collaboration platforms. Applications like Jotspot (acquired by Google) makes it lot easier for anybody to get started. I heard that a few corporates are giving it a try too. I love the concept of Wikis and its underlying power of simple and yet powerful collaboration for any kind of enterprise small or big. Wikis are particularly important for virtual teams, where team members are physically distributed throughout the world and there is a need for a precise and lots of coordination required. But it looks like its a long way to go before wikis are accepted. Still many corporate managers are very reluctant to accept wiki, some even to give it a try. The management at my workplace has decided...

Panel discussion moderated by Guy Kawasaki with founders of web startups.  At the CommunityNext conference I moderated this panel with the founders of six very successful web properties: Akash Garg of hi5 Sean Suhl of Suicide Girls Max Levchin of Slide James Hong of HotorNot Markus Frind of PlentyofFish Drew Curtis of Fark Source: How to Change the World: Panel of Web Community Founders: Utter Defiance of the "Venture Capital" Model