India Speaks 3G for the First Time

Author: Business Beyond Reality

New Delhi: State-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd became the first mobile company in India to launch 3G mobile services.

Speaking to Business Line, R.S.P. Sinha, Chairman and Managing Director, MTNL, said, “MTNL has been the pioneer in introducing the latest technologies on its network. We were the first to launch broadband service, IPTV and Voice over Internet Protocol. Now, we are all set to become the first to launch 3G services in the country.”

The service was launched by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh. Click on the link to view the video of the launch: http://broadband.indiatimes.com/showvideo/3825537.cms

3G services have already become popular in Japan, UK, Hong Kong, Australia, Sweden and Denmark. NTT DoCoMo has a subscriber base of more than 3.5m in Japan. Swedish mobile service provider ‘3’ has a subscriber base of 350,000 in Sweden and Denmark, adding around 150,000 customers since mid-August. In UK, Hutchison is the 3G service provider. India will soon join the elite club of countries that have 3G mobile services with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) setting up India’s first 3G network in Delhi and Mumbai. The network will have a capacity of 4m lines and will be operational next year. The total investment in the project will be to the tune of Rs 4,000 crore.

Government has also decided to allow up to 10 players in the 3G space, including eligible foreign players. The 3G spectrum will be auctioned in 450 mhz band, 800 mhz and 1,900 mhz and the guidelines exempt operators from paying any annual fee in the first year of operations. Operators, however, shall be liable to pay an annual spectrum charge of one per cent of AGR after a period of one year. All those who hold a Unified Access Service Licence or those who are otherwise eligible for obtaining UASL as per DoT guidelines of December 14, 2005 would be eligible to apply for 3G radio waves.

Indian mobile telephone operators signed up a record number of over 10 million users in October. At this rate of growth, the total telecom subscriber base is expected to reach 700 million by the year 2012 (covering nearly 70 percent of the country’s population), with about 650 million mobile users and 50 million landlines.

“We expect to see 10 to 15 million 3G subscribers in India by the end of 2009,” said Madhusudan Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner. “By 2012, we expect only 20 per cent of subscribers to be using 3G. And, unlike the trend in other 3G markets, where the data services used by subscribers make up as much as 30 per cent of the average revenue per user, in India it will be up to 20 per cent.”

Good going India…

How well would “Facebook Connect” Connect?

Author: Business Beyond Reality

November 30, 2008: The day Facebook made their big press push for their Facebook Connect service, which was first announced on May 30th, 2008.

Source: http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&year=2008&month=5

After the first version of the Facebook API in August 2006, enabling users to share their information with the third party websites and applications they choose and Facebook Platform in May 2007, which allowed third party developers to build rich social applications within Facebook, Facebook Connect, the next iteration of Facebook Platform that allows users to “connect” their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site was announced on May 2008. Facebook Connect will now enable third party websites to implement and offer even more features of Facebook Platform off of Facebook – similar to features available to third party applications today on Facebook. Similair to OpenId (which was adopted by MySpace) third party developers can allow website visitors to login to their website using their Facebook ID. This “Passport” system (much like what Microsoft tried to do) will let members leave comments on third party sites –as well as identify their friends on these sites.

Source: http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=108

Many Facebook Connect implementations have launched over the past several weeks. Some of the launch partners include CBS’ TheInsider.com, CNN’s the Forum, and Red Bull. Additionally, many sites have submitted their implementations, and have been approved for launch, including GlobalGrind, GovIt, and IndieGoGo.

Source: http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=163

What ‘Facebook Connect’ Means for Corporate Websites

“Facebook Connect will allow corporate websites to allow users to authenticate, interact, and share with their Facebook network –all without leaving the corporate website”, says Jeremiah Owyang, Sr Analyst at Forrester Research: Social Computing who attended SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Facebook f8 Conference, July 23, 2008.

Brands that are already trying to reach the Facebook audience (white collar workers and college students) should plan on experimenting with Facebook Connect as it can bring additional social functionality to corporate websites.

Source: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/07/23/what-facebook-connect-means-for-corporations/

What the third party sites get out of these services

What the third party sites get out of these services: easy sign in for users, particularly new users. They can also use the profile data to help users create accounts at their site with little data input. The activity stream information published on the social networks includes links back to their sites. And one of the most interesting features, for Facebook Connect partners: sites can request friend lists from Facebook to help them make more connections on their own services.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113002453.html

Battle for partners:

The battle for partners is intense. MySpace announced Twitter as a launch partner, but rumor is that Twitter is actually integrating with Facebook first . MySpace also announced Yahoo and eBay as launch partners. To date, though, they’ve only launched with Flixster and Eventful.

This is just one more in a trend: OpenID now on MySpace, Google Friend Connect, LinkedIn’s ties with Businessweek and NYT are all examples of our social graphs (relationships) leaving the social network and spreading to third party sites.

Also, White label social network vendors (community platforms) should be thinking about how to integrate all of the above.

Why Second Life is less popular than Facebook/Orkut in India?

 

 Author: Business Beyond Reality

Please Click Here to Zoom In Image

Driving Business – Interpersonal Team Dynamics

Author: Business Beyond Reality

“No matter how good your project or the technology you have to work with, if your team doesn’t mesh – your project’s in trouble” , Says Stephen Howard-Sarin, Vice President, CNET’s business sites.

Team Dynamics are the unseen forces that operate in a team between different people or groups. Team Dynamics can strongly influence how a team reacts, behaves or performs, and the effects of team dynamics are often very complex.

Team Dynamics

A lot of issues personal and professional come up, when a Team is asked to collaborate between itself. They are:

1. Picking a Leader: Until and unless there is a Leader defined by the heirarchy of the organization, the team generally suffers the issue of lack of directionality. Once the leader is chosen by the team members, directionality is observed.
2. Unclear Team Objectives: Due to conflicting personal objectives, team goals are often randomly chosen and rarely tied up with overall objectives of the team. It is imperative for the leader to step in and define the team objectives clearly and objectively to avoid ambiguity.
3. Inadequate Communication: It is important for every teammate to be updated on whatever happens and to have a transparent reporting system to ensure that all misunderstandings are ironed out. It is also important to deal with contentious issues without delay.
4. Ironing Out Differences: Every inter-personal and intra-personal issue has to be addressed instantaneously for the team to function smoothly.

How Can Team Dynamics Be Managed Constructively?

1. One has to look for the team dynamics – the ‘natural forces’ at play.
2. One has to determine whether the natural forces are acting for good or bad.
3. One has to make interventions to make the effect of those dynamics more positive.

To access the level of team playership among people, LinkedIn is conducting a survey sponsored by Nokia. I had an opportunity of participating in the survey and the consolidated results as on November 20, 2008 are as follows:

 

Statistics - Level of Team Spirit

As the above graph shows, 97% people believe that working as a Team is a good way to work.

 

Responses By Seniority

The above graph indicates that senior associates believe more in team work than the others.

 

By Company Size

The above graph points out that more or less, all companies believe in the power of team work and collaboration.

 

Responses By Job Function

As expected, the product team works best as a team.

 

Responses By Gender

Women, known as having better inter-personal skills then men, are more in favour of working as a team.

 

Responses By Age

Older people, being more matured, realized the benefits of team work and are found to be in favour of team work more than their young counterparts.

 

It is rightly said…”The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” 

A Simple Business Meeting Room For A Second Life Newbie – Second Life (Post on Request)

Author: Business Beyond Reality

I’m writing this post on a special request from one of my acquaintances who wanted to know about the best meeting practices in Second Life and basic raw materials required to build an efficient meeting room in this graphic world.

The two images below show examples of simple yet effective meeting spaces in Second Life.

Simple Meeting Room

Simple Meeting Room: The above sample image consists of a centre table (Made from a single prim) and a couple of chairs (Seemingly 4-5 prims each). It also consists of a presentation board which again is made up of a single prim. The walls are of smoked glass and there’s a stoned floor with a grayish look. We’ll see ahead what it takes to build such a simple meeting room.

Enhanced Meeting Room

Enhanced Meeting Room: The above sample image consists of a slightly complicated centre table with designer chairs and a more sophisticated finish.

Some basic terms to be aware of:

1. Prim: These are Primitives which are simple shapes like cuboid, cylinder, pyramid etc, available in Second Life to construct a complicated object. The size, shape and rotation of these prims can be altered through a Graphical User Interface.

Prim Example

2. Texture: It is an image which can be pasted on the face of a prim. For example: The brown table that  is there in the Simple Meeting Room image has a brown texture on it.

Basic Facilities Needed for a Meeting:

1. Text Chat: Supported by Second Life.
2. Voice Chat: Supported by Second Life through VoIP.
3. Meeting Room: Can be easily built with the help of Prims.
4. Presentation: We’ll cover this in detail below.
5. White Board: We’ll cover this in detail below.
6. Video Streaming: Video is played on your land in SL using a URL (web address) which you set up in your About Land options. You can hook up to an existing stream on the web, or create your own if you have the resources.It’s very simple. A texture can be defined and a media file can be attached to it. Whichever object loads that texture can play the media.
   

   Adding Media

    

7. Audio Streaming: The same steps as in Video Streaming are to be followed to sream an audio.
8. Web Streaming: The same steps as in Video Streaming are to be followed to sream an audio. It is important to point out that the web page is loaded as a texture on the prim and can’t be clicked to navigate ahead.

Presentation: Second Life doesn’t support uploading office documents like doc,ppt,xls,txt etc. Any document that has to be presented to the audience is to be converted into images and uploaded into Second Life. This can be easily done in PowerPoint by doing SaveAs in JPG format. These images can be added to the texture list of the prim (A cuboid to look like a presentation board. Can be made from a cuboid prim by keeping the height and width high and the depth as less.) and a simple LSL Scripting can be done to change the image (Which actually is a texture) on clicking the object with the mouse. A lot of such scripts are available on the net for free which can be downloaded and used in the meeting room.

White Board/Message Board: An interesting technique to build a White Board/Message Board is to make a prim look like a presentation board and attach a listener to it. The user enters text on a prescribed channel which is shown on the White Board.

The conclusion is that creating real life scenario is pretty simple. It just needs some effort, a bit of creativity and a little bit of exploration !

 

 

India Talking “Virtual Worlds” – Consolidated Report

Author: Business Beyond Reality

Are Indians talking to ‘Second Life’, the popular online virtual world?

Apparently so…

Of the 50,000 registered Second Life users in India, Siddharth Banerjee (Founder Indusgeeks Solutions Pvt. Ltd) estimates an active base of 1,500-2,000. 

(Source: http://www.livemint.com/2008/09/29214006/Creating-a-real-life-learning.html)

The Economic Times ferreted out some Indian’s also living a virtual life, including a group called VR1 which intends to explore Second Life’s business propositions. Rahul Dutta, one of the founders of VR1, said that they are planning an educational network hub, solutions for MNCs, assistance with island acquisition, world modelling, scripting, animation and graphic design services for Second Life.

Child Rights and You (CRY) opened a virtual action centre in Second Life. Indusgeeks partnered with CRY to conceptualise, design and create this presence as a part of an overall initiative to raise awareness about CRY online. This made CRY the first Indian NGO to open a space in Second Life. The CRY office consists of an auditorium to display movies and hold events etc, a CRY shop (Expressions of Childhood), outdoor café, gallery showcasing child rights posters and materials. It has donation boxes which direct users to the website or pay in Lindens.

CRY - Second Life

Wipro launched its offshore development centre in SecondLife a year back and now they have launched a SOA solutions lab – which gives customers an opportunity to explore the impact of SOA in transforming their organizations to be more agile and enable business transformation.

Wipro Office - Second Life

Amul (An Indian Dairy), which established its presence in Second Life by setting up its virtual parlour, is now working to expand its presence in the virtual world. Trimensions, a Gurgaon based company, is helping Amul to develop its existence on Second Life. Rahul Dutta, chairman and managing director, Trimensions, says, “Amul is planning to buy eight-10 islands, equal to 160 acres of virtual land, in Second Life to set up a simulation of its production and distribution facility. The objective behind launching a virtual setup is to demonstrate its functioning to the consumers, and experiment with any change in the production or distribution system virtually before executing it in the real world.”

Amul Dairy - Second Life

Software major IBM announced that it was expanding its business centre for India in ‘Second Life’, by adding sales representatives based in the country. The business centre in Second Life would allow customers to visit IBM virtually and see products and solutions in 3D. it also offers a platform for IBM sales people, clients and partners to meet, learn, collaborate and conduct business together virtually without the time and cost of travel.

Zensar Technologies, a leading software services and business process outsourcing organisation has announced its second life. Kiran Karnik, former President of NASSCOM at his recent visit to Zensar launched the virtual estate of Zensar on SecondLife and said, “I really enjoyed my visit to Zensar on SecondLife and will keep my Avatar alive there and will visit the Zensar facilities from time to time. It has been a great effort by the team.”

Text 100 opened its Second Life office in August, 2006. To introduce SL to employees in the company’s 30 global offices, Text100 held a worldwide meeting to celebrate the company’s 25th anniversary. The meeting included a presentation by our CEO, accompanied by a slideshow, a video featuring an interview with the company founders and a Q&A for employees with the CEO.

Indusgeeks has built a platform on Second Life that enables students in distance-learning programmes to plug into a simulated environment replicating and enhancing real life learning processes. By assuming an avatar (a virtual identity), each student can attend classes, go on field trips (to say, ancient Rome) and perform experiments in labs, all in the virtual domain created by Indusgeeks. Indusgeeks has also started Bollywood Masala, a forum on Indian films and music on Second Life.

Filmmaker use Second Life for making films for first life thus saving on a lot of effort, time and cost especially in special effect and background rendering. Here is one short film, a Mash up of Second Life and Real Actors:

http://www.filmaka.in/watchvideo.asp?id=63974562-8C76-4715-A35A-2B1EEA501FFC

Mumbai may be India’s financial capital but it is New Delhi which rules virtual reality finance. “More than 90 per cent of the active users, mostly from the National Capital Region, are also investing in the currency exchange,” revealed Daniel Dias, director, Research Lab, IBM India, one of the companies with a massive presence on the system.

“We have been informed that the ratio of active residents to registered users is one of the highest in India and China,” said Joe Miller, vice-president, platform and technology, Linden Labs. 

Miles to go India…

Weblogs Stats in Indian Context – I munch the findings!

Author: Business Beyond Reality

In a recent survey to determine blogging trends in India, MSN polled 1000 visitors on its portal and came up with some statistics. Here I am, munching, biting, swallowing some and vomiting the other findings!

 

• In India, the most popular blogs are authored by Business Leaders. A good news for marketing divisions of organizations! Social Media is going to go places!

• Blogging in India continues to be dominated by men. Men constitute 75% of the blogosphere. A possible reason for fewer female bloggers is that in India, a majority of females still avoid expressing themselves through public channels. Features like password protection of the post may motivate females to beat their counterparts. Long way to go girls!

• Blogs are as much a source of reliable information as Media Outlets and TV Channels are. I agree completely. While buying anything expensive, I trust the reviews on blogs.

• 14% of internet users actively blog. That’s still a small share.

• 39% are aware of weblogs. The awareness amongst people is quite low. The companies offering blogging accounts should market it better. Long way to go!

• 85% of the bloggers are less than 35 years of age. Well that’s a little wierd. As the first point mentions that the majority prefers the blogs authored by business leaders, are most of the business leaders below 35 years of age??? Strange isn’t it???

• 49% read blogs for the reason that they find them interesting. I don’t have much to comment on this point.

• 58% blog to express themselves while 40% blog to entertain others. Okay… Interesting…

• 50% blogs recieve around 40 visitors a month. Well… That’s not too high a number. If 58% of the bloggers blog to express themselves, don’t they have a social circle who’ll be interested to know what’s happening in their friend’s life??? I mean much more people would read the status updates on facebook profile. Probably there’s some flaw in the model of blogs which people use to share their expressions. I still need to figure out what!!!

• 90% of all bloggers spend up to 5 hours a week on blogosphere. I think that’s a decent figure!

The conclusion is that Social Media has a long way to go in India…

PagalGuy.Com Marketing Strategy – Missing Links

Author: Business Beyond Reality

 

If I had a free hand in the Marketing Department of PagalGuy.Com, following would be my unique contribution to the way Pagalguy.com markets itself:

1.      Ability to import the calendar available in Pagalguy.com in Google/Yahoo/MSN Calendar. This kind of personalization should have a good penetration. Along with the calendar entries, there would be a line advertisement of Pagalguy.com.

 2.      SMS Alerts of important notices and dates and regular reminders (80 Characters) followed by a single line advertisement (80 Characters).

 3.      A downloadable J2ME application for the JAVA/Symbian Mobile Handsets. The user should be able to read content of Pagalguy.com through a GPRS enabled mobile handset through that application. The application can also contain features like-a new word a day, a quant question a day etc. Every time a user opens the application, a relevant advertisement would be presented to the user.  

 4.      Seminars for MBA Aspirants. Free for last year high performers in CAT and a marginal entrée fee for the others. Having a free seminar would attract the high performers, and if advertised well, the presence of high performers would attract the weak students and newbies to spend money and add up to Pagalguy’s revenue.

 5.      Invited Video Seminar of last year’s MBA top performers, web-casted on Pagalguy.com website.

 6.      Representatives outside banks like Axis Bank or UTI Bank during the period they sell the coveted institute admission forms. These representatives would advertise Pagalguy.com to people coming to buy forms.

 7.      Start a 24 hours pre-recorded internet radio channel.

 8.      Advertising through SIFYs chain of cyber cafes. They advertise websites at the time of users logging in for a nominal charge.

Advantages of Internet Marketing over Conventional Media

Author: Business Beyond Reality

 

I would here like to highlight some of the benefits of Internet Marketing over Marketing through Conventional Media.

1. Online Marketing is more customizable to suit the interests of the targeted users. Example: When creating an email address, one is asked to select newsletters of interest. Or the customized advertisements in Gmail, which are related by semantics or a defined ontology with the content of the email. Online marketing if done with meticulous planning is likely to attract more attention from the targeted users . Permission Marketing has even more impact.

2. Online Marketing targets all those people who spend significant time on the internet. The internet has become a part of our life in different dimensions. Emails and Search Engines for professionals, Social Networking Websites for College goers, Matrimonial Websites for the older people, Internet today has a huge penetration.

3. Marketing through a website based on the Web 2.0 technology (And the Web 3.0 which according to Gartner would have a presence amongst 80% of the internet users worldwide by 2011), web is not anymore a means to broadcast information but also a platform for the content providers and the readers to interact.

4. Online Marketing has a global penetration. It is not restricted to a local zone or a country. An advertisement on Radio Mirchi or Times of India Newspaper (Hardcopy) would not be able to reach the audience in the US. This is a downside because through conventional media, we lose audience like the Non Residents who have a high probability to be interested in the products/services being offered in their home country. Banks in India have now the facility for NRIs to send money through moneyorders to their people in India, the request of which is taken from e-banking. This is supporting example showing the involvement of Non Residents with their home country.

5. RSS proves to be a good technique to pass information to the target audience.

6. Listing costs are extremely cheap and it is a great way to reach thousands of people in a short amount of time.

A Simulation of “Physical Ability” for the Physically Disabled (Crippled) using Virtual Reality

Author: Business Beyond Reality

 

Virtual Reality as a field has been around for several decades. Even though it began as an initiative in the entertainment industry, today it has found an application in fields such as military, automotive industry, social networking, businesses and medicine. Of late VR applications to aid physically challenged have been gaining ground.

More and more NGOs and sponsors are coming forward to help the Physically Challenged people and are taking care of not just their physiological needs but are also training them for jobs, guaranteeing them economic stability and a good living.

What perhaps is left unnoticed is the “Psychological Feel Good Factor” of these disabled people. These people have to accept that their life would never ever be normal and they would never be able to move again. This is where Virtual Reality can be used to bridge the gap between “disability” and “ability”. Virtual Reality can act as a platform to simulate a life of “physical ability” for the physically disabled. Besides social networking, it would also let them do acts like walking, running etc which otherwise they can’t do in their real life because of their disabilities. Imagine a physically disabled person scheduling a walk with his physically able friend on the Miami Beach on a weekend.

Proposed Approach for this endeavor:

1.To identify an NGO (Or home for disabled), that provides accommodation to the disabled people. It should have considerable funds to be able to provide the minimum hardware required for the installation.
2. A Virtual Environment to be created which has the same look and feel as the place where the disabled are living. This would help them feel more closely attached to the simulated environment.
3. Creating additional spaces like Café, Garden, and Beaches etc which might be of interest to them.
4. Deployment of server at their location and connecting clients though a Local Area Network.
5. Creating log-in accounts for the people.
6. A workshop to train the people with the features of this environment.
7. Their feedback in terms of an Objective/Subjective Questionnaire.

I conducted a survey of about 50 people, of different age groups and from different educational background to know their opinion on how they perceive the Virtual Worlds for an application like this.

The exact statistics and graphs can be viewed at:http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/9/26/2116444/VRDisabled.pdf

Conclusion:

Approximately 90% of the participants found the concept of using Virtual Worlds for the people suffering from Physical Disabilities to be appealing while the rest were not convinced with this concept. As much as 80% of the participants said that they would advice Virtual Worlds for people suffering with physical disabilities. They believed that imparting a few moments of happiness to the physically challenged giving them a feeling of being a normal human being, like all others in this world, to make their life lively, is where the technology should be used. Approximately 16% of the participants thought that such an imaginary environment sounded nice but in the long run, would expose them to a virtual self, make them do things otherwise impossible to do which might affect them psychologically.

Supervised exposure to the Virtual Environment could prove to be beneficial for the physically challenged and if that happens, would be an apt use of the technology.

Please click on the link: http://xrl.us/virtual to view a presentation followed by a short objective Questionnaire.