Friday, July 23, 2010

$35 PC



This is simply put awesome. This excites me like the Chrome OS got me excited when I first heard about it. Looks to me like my IC vision is coming to fruition with me simply keeping up with the news. Between the Chrome OS, the $35 PC and the spectrum bids in India, there is only one missing piece to the puzzle: how do you bring the costs of internet access down drastically by serving ads? How about bringing it down to zero? Maybe that will be a Chrome browser innovation.

Indian Railways
How To Date An Indian: Andrea Miller
India Broadband Spectrum Bids
Dropio's Indian Cofounder Darshan

This $35 price goes down to $10 when you mass produce it, and it goes down to zero if you splash ads on the back of the computer. I think plenty of companies will pay $10 to be permanently placed on the back of your computer.

The iPad Is No Laptop Killer
The iPad
iPad

Finally a tablet I am excited about.
India's $35 PC is the Future of Computing PC World will replace the bloated desktop and laptop hardware architectures in use today. .... runs on a variation of Linux. It has no internal storage ..... a Web browser... can also run on solar power.....far exceeding the $100 laptop developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ..... makes the $500 iPad seem significantly over-priced. ..... economy of scale will allow it to push the price down to $10 ......the iPad has also been embraced by corporations and is widely used as a portable computing platform for business professionals. .... What businesses need is a simple, cheap device that uses a secure cloud connection to keep data where it belongs and keep workers up and working without the down time of expensive, failure-prone hardware.
$35 computer taps India's huge low-income market Christian Science Monitor targets a vast, untapped market of 1.2 billion people. ..... ncludes an Internet browser, a multimedia player, a PDF reader, and video conferencing ability. .... its biggest attraction is the price: $35. ..... a thrilling prospect for the future of global education ...... how technology and ultra-cheap innovations are bringing new options to India’s 1.2 billion people, whose per capita income is $1,030. ..... by 2020 rural markets in India will grow to $500 to $600 billion from the current $487 million. ..... the nearly 742 million people across rural India are pushing retail demand faster than urban areas and accounting for more than 60 percent of the national demand ..... In 2008, Tata launched the world’s cheapest car – the bubble-shaped Nano – priced at $2,500. Its low-cost engineering fulfilled the aspiration of millions of moped-riding Indians for whom a four-wheel drive was far out of reach. The same company last year launched the Swach water purifier – its two models priced at 749 rupees ($16) and 999 rupees ($21) – with the promise of providing clean drinking water to millions of India’s poor. ..... The price of the new computer is expected to fall to $10 in the coming years
India unveils world's cheapest tablet computer at $35; may drop to $10 New York Daily News From the country that brought you the $2,000 open-heart surgery and $2,127 car comes the latest bargain – a supercheap, touch-screen computer..... The Linux-based tablet appears to do most things an $499 iPad can do - but at a fraction of the cost: Internet browsing, word processing, video conferencing and more..... Research teams at India's leading technical institutes - the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science -developed the tablet to compete with a $100 computer developed at MIT ..... part of India's initiative to modernize its schools
India's $35 tablet - vaporware or the real deal? ZDNet (blog) potential ODM interest in Taiwan to manufacture these devices at scale.
India unveils prototype of $35 tablet computer The Associated Press looks like an iPad, only it's 1/14th the cost .... India, which is home to the 100,000 rupee ($2,127) compact Nano car, the 749 rupees ($16) water purifier and the $2,000 open-heart surgery. ... $100 laptop .... India rejected that as too expensive and embarked on a multiyear effort to develop a cheaper option of its own. ...... Sibal turned to students and professors at India's elite technical universities to develop the $35 tablet after receiving a "lukewarm" response from private sector players. He hopes to get the cost down to $10 eventually. ..... The tablet doesn't have a hard disk, but instead uses a memory card, much like a mobile phone. The tablet design cuts hardware costs, and the use of open-source software also adds to savings .... several global manufacturers, including at least one from Taiwan, have shown interest in making the low-cost device ..... India plans to subsidize the cost of the tablet for its students, bringing the purchase price down to around $20. .... government subsidies or dual marketing — where higher-priced sales in the developed world are used to subside low-cost sales in markets like India — ..... the device could send a shiver of cost-consciousness through the industry. .... an ambitious education technology initiative by the Indian government, which also aims to bring broadband connectivity to India's 25,000 colleges and 504 universities and make study materials available online.
India's Rs.1500 laptop a godsend for students Sify a built-in key board, a 2 GB RAM memory, Wi-Fi connectivity, USB ports and is powered by a 2-watt system for use in power deficit areas. ..... will support functions like video web conferencing facility, and multimedia content viewing. .... hopes to bring down the price to $10 after the device is mass produced. .... the ministry is reported to be in discussions with entrepreneurs, private firms and industries. .... One motherboard was reportedly designed by a student of Vellore Institute of Technology under his B.Tech project
India unveils Rs 1500 computing device Hindustan Times writing and storing text, browsing the internet and viewing videos
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Thursday, July 22, 2010

Chrome OS: Round The Corner?

Google Chrome IconImage via Wikipedia
I am excited about the Chrome OS netbooks the way I never was able to get about the iPad. I hope they show up sooner rather than later. I have been saying for years now, the browser is all you should need.

I guess I am a Google fanboy the way some people are Apple fanboys.

TechCrunch: Forget All These Android Tablets, Let Me At That Chrome OS
e a tolerable replacement for a netbook or laptop ..... Chrome OS is a browser OS, and that will always be the focus. ..... Google will want this to be the simplest and cleanest browser experience out there. ..... Less need for storage and storage control, plus less demand on the CPU and other components means that the entire thing can be thinner and run cooler. .......a lightweight OS will always do more with fewer resources ...... Really instant on. All that really needs to be loaded into active memory is display, a blank browser page, and the wireless/IP stack. ..... a single-service device, crossed with the versatility of that single service ...... Chrome OS will offer a browser that you hold in your hand. ..... It’s a window into the web, and that’s all. ..... Viewing this rich, wonderful Internet of ours on a screen less than 7″ seems like self-flagellation to me. ...... the elegance and simplicity of the window into the web I hope Chrome OS will be.
Google's Nexus One Exit Has Chrome OS Implications OStatic (blog) Google has announced that it has received its final shipment of Nexus One phones and will be exiting its Nexus One phone business altogether ... the Nexus One sold in the neighborhood of 150,000 units .... In a matter of weeks, Google will be introducing Chrome OS to the world. Like Android, it's an open source OS, but is aimed at netbooks.
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Tuesday, July 20, 2010

iGuide.travel

Description unavailableImage by Ching Lau via Flickr
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

Alex is a self taught developer who has built an inspiring travel information site - iGuide.travel - that makes him low six figures in annual income. The money has tripled every year since launch. More than half of his money comes from travel booking, about half from Google AdSense.

“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes

We talked at length yesterday over dinner at Mitali, and then through a long walk over to Union Square and on over to the Hudson. We have been friends since December 2009 when we met at a NY Tech MeetUp after party. He was buying drinks for everyone around him. I don't even know you, he said, and bought me a drink anyway.

“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck

iGuide.travel is an interactive map and travel guide. He started out by wanting to inspire people to go explore the world. That mission has stayed, but he also added on a new mission along the way: innovation. Innovation as a techie, as an entrepreneur. How can he better understand the needs of those who visit his site? 30% of his traffic is from North America, 30% Europe, 30% Asia.

iGuide.travel is "the world's premier travel mashup." It relies on user generated content from a few different sources. It has "lots of photos, lots of maps."

"Who are your competitors?"

"No competitors. It is the best and the only one."

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

"People just need to get out of their country, that's all," says Alex whose father is a geography professor in Philadelphia, his elder brother - "my genius brother" - a software entrepreneur focused on aviation training with four Masters from Yale, Cambridge and Oxford. Alex was in Japan for four years as a kid where his parents were teaching.

"Tokyo is New York City out 20 years. If the aliens were to land, they would land in Tokyo."

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

He launched the site in April 2007. A year later he felt the first spurt of traffic. He started getting 1,000 page visits a day. Then it died down. A few months later in November 2008 he was doing 3,000 visits a day, or 100,000 visits a month. Today the site does 425,000 visits a month. He makes more than some CTOs of some top tech companies in town.

Putting the site together has been "a long learning process."

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

iGuide.travel has 20,000 destinations, 7,000,000 places on the map, and 100,000 travel guide pages. The site has 6.5 million inbound links according to Google Webmaster Central.

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux

Some of the pushes the site hopes to make down the line are to do with the Google Maps Street View, improving loading time, and creating a mobile version of the site. He also has Mapcarta.com in the works. It is an interactive atlas. He also has a You.travel in the works which is like iGuide.travel Lite. That is also more experimental. He hopes to have 6-10 languages on You.travel. He would like to move from making low six figures now to making low seven figures down the line. How exactly? He does not know yet.

“Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost

He is headed to the University College London ("where Gandhi went") for a Masters in Technology Entrepreneurship that should be a September 2010 to September 2011 stint.

"All I wanted was to be able to pay my bills doing this," he says. That was his starting point. 30K would be nice, he thought. But then you cross one hill, and you see another.

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

Life-work balance is something he thinks about a lot, and he feels like a lot more tech entrepreneurs should. You need to socialize enough to make up for all that screen time, he says.

While he was still working on his site, he took off to be in Rome from Fall 2007 to Spring 2008 for a few months of learning Italian. He was still working on the site while he was learning the language.

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu

A few weeks back he realized it had become painful for him to handle the mouse with his right hand, so he trained his left hand to do it. At first it was hard, like showing up to learn a new language. And then he did it. And now it feels so natural to do it.

"I think this has activated the right side of my brain."

“The journey not the arrival matters.” – T. S. Eliot

He is a first generation American. He was whiling away in San Diego for a while before his New York City move. In San Diego he met a college friend of mine from Kentucky, a Bengali guy now based out of Cincinnati where the NY Tech MeetUp emcee Nate Westheimer is from; Mitali means light in Bengali, but we did not figure that mutual friend part out for a few months of knowing each other.

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quiestest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” – Pat Conroy

His father was born in Austria, mother in France, both Ukrainian. His brother is based in England.

“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien

Alex feels like he has mellowed out since he hit his six figures income. I like not having to think about money all the time, he says. I am more relaxed. The money will keep coming while he will be at school in London.

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou

He says he is a huge fan of the "big screen web." And he is excited about 4G. Pages take too long to load now.

“Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.” – Elizabeth Drew
“I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.” – Lillian Smith
“To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” – Aldous Huxley
“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling
“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G. K. Chesterton

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News: July 20

Lotus EffectImage via Wikipedia
TechCrunch

Google Image Search: Over 10 Billion Images, 1 Billion Pageviews A Day
Offerpal Moves On, Gives Game Developers New Ways To Distribute Notifications
MOG Launches All-You-Can-Eat Music Service For iPhone And Android
SCVNGR Looks To Make ‘Checking In’ Less Antisocial, More Physical

Mashable

10 Tips for Corporate Blogging
Nokia Looking for a New CEO [REPORT]
China Satisfied with Google Search Tweaks: So What Has Changed?
.CO Domain Names Now Available
How Mark Zuckerberg Intends to Repair Facebook’s Battered Image
Google Launches Buzz Firehose
How Mobile Technology is a Game Changer for Developing Africa

CNet

Apple earnings should quell antenna debacle
The story behind $255 billion in gold
New bill renews Internet privacy fight
Chinese official: Google's search fix is law-abiding
BP crowdsources Gulf clean-up technologies
Handset world: Don't speak for us, Steve Jobs
Google Energy buys wind power in first deal

BusinessWeek

Bill Gates, Teachers' Pest
The Energy Industry Turns on BP
Rise of the Corporate Tweeters
Sarkozy's Campaign Finance Scandal
Goldman Profit Drops 82%
Solving the Social Security Squeeze
BP Well Stays Shut as U.S. Says Leaks Pose No Threat
Britain Delays Universal Broadband Goal
Avoid a Self-Inflicted Second Recession

Digits

Is India Ready to Offer the iPhone 4?
Users Rate Facebook Slightly Above the Tax Man
Netflix Execs Finally Find Their Passports
Mark Cuban: In the Future, Stores Will Recognize Your Face
Looking to Cellphones to Deliver Aid in Africa

Bits

The Recipe for Clouds Goes Open-Source
Fallout From the iPhone 4 Press Conference
Virtual Tiger Woods Takes A Tumble
Bits Pics: Twitter Traffic During the World Cup
A Field Trip to an Apple Lab
Google Buys Metaweb to Improve Search Results
What We’re Reading: Trailers
It’s Just a Phone
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Saturday, July 17, 2010

I Am Big In Canada


An image is worth a thousand words, so let me not elaborate too much. This map above is based on the traffic to this blog this past week. The major countries seem to be as follows.

The Germans Called Me Robin Hood

Canada
United States
United Kingdom
India
Brazil
Mexico
Australia
Germany
Japan
South Africa

Sergey Brin's Is The Right Stand

I got Brazil and India but not Russia and China.

A 4 AM Traffic Peak, Mostly From Canada
Traffic: Canada Top Country, 2 AM Peak
What Just Happened? 3,000 Page Hits

The page hits for yesterday stand at 2,000 and for today so far stand at 1,000. So I guess that 3,000 hits a few days back not an aberration. That 3,000 could be my new daily floor.

Weekends tend to be slow for bloggers in general. People read blogs when they are at work! So 1,000 for a Saturday is good, it is like getting 2,000 hits on a week day.

My Secret Sauce

If you want to know how to do this, this is my attempt at a formula.

Blog Traffic = (Number Of Total Posts)*(Number Of Inbound Links)*(Frequency Of New Posts)
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Go Outside: Cults



We All Want Someone To Shout For: Best Songs Of 2010 So Far
(Via Fred Wilson)

Beach House – 10 Mile Stereo
Young Empires – Rain Of Gold
Delorean – Grow
Broken Bells – The High Road
Big Boi – Shine Blockas (Feat. Gucci Mane)
Caribou – Odessa
Glass Vaults – Forget Me Not
The Soft Pack – Mexico
Aloe Blacc – I Need A Dollar
Cults – Go Outside

Special shout outs to: 1,2,3,6,7,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,27,28,29,30,31,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50.

Skipped after sampling: 4,5,8,26,32.



Slow Motion: Panda Bear
Rome - Phoenix W/ Devendra Banhart


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News: July 17 (2)

Image representing New York Times as depicted ...Image via CrunchBase
New York Times

One Bride for 2 Brothers: A Custom Fades in India
Draft Law Revives Practice of Soviets
Energy Secretary Emerges to Take a Commanding Role in Effort to Corral Well
Voices From the Spill | Dia D’ingianni, Retiree: A Dream of a New Life Is Painted Black by Oil
Officials Call Results of Well Test Encouraging
Paterson’s Legal Bills Are Adding Up
Harlem Journal: For People on the Margins, a Ministry Steps Outdoors
Animal Autopsies in Gulf Yield a Mystery
Four Recommended Apps for Losing Weight
At School in Harlem, Resentment Over Girl’s Drowning on a Field Trip
Teacher Fired Over Field-Trip Drowning of Girl, 12
Bangladesh, With Low Pay, Moves In on China
After Goldman’s Concession, Regulators May Be Satisfied
Apple Goes on the Offensive
Bits Pics: Twitter Usage During the World Cup
Europe Without Hotels
This Land: From a Gulf Oyster, a Domino Effect
Habitats | Bushwick, Brooklyn: A Bushwick Mansion Where Music Fills the Halls
State Secret: Chelsea Clinton’s Wedding Plans
Wheelspin: In Michigan, Homage to the Auto’s Heritage
Editorial: Haiti at Six Months
Op-Ed Columnist: Tweet Less, Kiss More
Movie Review | 'Inception': This Time the Dream’s on Me
Theater Review | 'Wanderlust: A History of Walking': A History of How We Got From Here to There
Love Among the Ruined
Man as an Island
Time to Wake Up, Sleeper Spy
Digital Diplomacy
When Funny Goes Viral
Quote Unquote | Fashion Phobia
What Business Can Learn From Chess
Laugh Lines, R.I.P.
Aging Gracefully, the French Way
David Brooks: The Gospel of Mel Gibson
Wealthy Reduce Buying in a Blow to the Recovery
Iran’s President Renews Pressure on Conservatives
Charles M. Blow: Dog Days of Obama

Time

Schwarzenegger's Minimum Wage Rejected
Palin Earned $75K to Speak at University
Smoking Gun Sought in BP-Lockerbie Link
CNN: BP's Progress Bittersweet for Some
The Child Tobacco Farmers of Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan Comes On Strong
Why Venezuela's Chavez Dug Up Bolívar's Bones

CNN

Tolerance for Ground Zero mosque
Back on TV, same old Fidel
Poll: Reid moves ahead of Angle
GOP blasts Obama on economy
Poll: Palin hot with GOP
Techies moving to 'Silicon Prairie'
Afghan 'Oprah' helps country heal

Foreign Affairs

The G-20’s Dead Ideas
Castrocare in Crisis
Coping With China's Financial Power
Khomeini's Long Shadow
Veiled Truths
Defining Success in Afghanistan
Renewing American Leadership
Honolulu, Harvard, and Hyde Park
The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy
Obama and the Americas
Fear and Loathing in Nairobi
Mugabe Ãœber Alles
Prisoners of the Caucasus
Empire Without End
The New Cocaine Cowboys
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Stopping Proliferation Before It Starts
Ukrainian Blues

The Economist

Egypt: After three slow decades, change is in the air
Greece: A controversial consolidation
Where has America's greatness gone?
Tibet and Xinjiang: Marking time at the fringes
Europe's future: Can anything perk up Europe?
The future of Europe: Staring into the abyss
Protests in Indian Kashmir: Stony ground
Lexington: Where has all the greatness gone?
Arab autocracy: Thank you and goodbye
China and Sri Lanka: The Colombo consensus
Hong Kong's economy: End of an experiment
Charlemagne: Calling time on progress
Ranking care for the dying: Quality of death
Leader: America's bank reform is hardly a panacea, though it fixes some important things
The banks' supposedly miraculous contribution to economic growth has been more of a mirage
When kings and princes grow old
Your Party. At last, an up-and-coming force in Japanese politics
Somalia comes to Uganda
Bombs in Uganda are probably the work of the Shabab
When the rivers run dry

India Today

RSS sorry for damage at Headlines office
K'taka political crisis reaches Delhi
'Muslims won't forgive Mulayam
TV studio attack: Sena MLA held
'Pak army chief derailed talks'
CPI-ML seeks arrest of Nitish
Normalcy returns to Kashmir
Bihar court summons Sonia
Film review: Tere Bin Laden
Film review: Udaan
Film reviews: Lamhaa
Lamhaa banned in Gulf
China wants to bid for 2026 FIFA WC
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News: July 17

Image representing ReadWriteWeb as depicted in...Image via CrunchBase
ReadWriteWeb

The New Digg: What It Means For Power Users & Publishers
10 Inspiring TED Talks for Startups
Ben & Jerry's: How a Big Brand Explores Augmented Reality
Google Launches App to Let Users Share Open Parking Spots
Twitter Launching Analytics Product Soon
The Future of Tech According to Kids: Immersive, Intuitive and Surprisingly Down-to-Earth
Augmented Reality Becoming More Like the Read/Write Web
How Steve Ballmer Ruined the Cloud and the World Cup
RFID Helps Indian Company Trap Ghost Workers
Google Makes Major Semantic Web Play, Acquires Freebase Operators Metaweb
3 Deadly Mistakes made by SaaS Providers
Apple: Free Cases for All

AllThingsD

Facebook Will Announce 500 Million Users Next Week With “Facebook Stories”
Gizmodo to Cooperate With Probe Into Lost iPhone Prototype
Justin Bieber’s “Baby” the Most-Watched YouTube Video Ever, So Far
Jobs Feels Like He’s Been Through a Tear-Down
Jobs: Nobody’s Perfect (But We’re Very Close)
AMD: After Hours Gains Gone; Focus Turns To Processor Delay
Shhh! Google Buys Metaweb to Boost Search Results
Apple’s iPhone 4 Solution: Free Cases For Everyone!
Hey! Did You Know a Lot of People Used Twitter During the World Cup?
The Only Problem With Droid X Reception? Too Darn Warm.
Apple’s “Just Encase” Answer to iPhone 4 Complaints
Japanese Author Skirts Publishers With iPad Novel
The Facebook Movie Is a Money Maker for Twitter
Venture Capitalist’s New Frontier: Where Cellphones Meet Retailing
AMD Posts Sharply Higher Sales
Paul Allen, Microsoft Co-Founder, Pledges Fortune to Philanthropy

Engadget

iPhone 4 proximity sensor fix in the works
RIM co-CEOs pull no punches responding to Apple's antenna statements
Jobs: 'no one's going to buy' a big phone
iPhone 4 coming to Canada and 16 other countries July 30th
Apple: iPhone 4 drops 'less than one additional call per 100 than the 3GS'
iPhone 4 proximity sensor fix in the works
iPhone 4 sales: 3 million and counting, 1.7 percent returned
Apple affirms: no software fix for iPhone 4 antenna issue
Xbox 360 sales increase 88 percent in June, give it US console crown for the month
Google halting Nexus One official store sales after current inventory depleted
Nokia: 'we prioritize antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict'
2011 Subaru Outback gains in-car WiFi option, strange Maine birds not included
Toyota and Tesla plan to bring electric RAV4 to market in 2012
Sony Alpha A390 and A290 DSLRs hands-on
Boxee's first production Box gets shown off to the world (video)

ArsTechnica

iPhone 4 antenna: unanswered questions, unearned trust
Mercury flyby maps new territory
4G data caps: not here yet, but likely to come
Ocean bacteria may create as much methane as they destroy
What happens when we run out of oil and coal?
Grades don't drop for college Facebook fiends
Funding overhaul aims at fast broadband for rural healthcare
Electric vehicle, battery makers get charge out of stimulus
Droid X first impressions: nice hardware, Motorola
iOS 4.0.1 tweaks bar display, doesn't fix signal drop
Clear Channel: Internet means we get to buy more radio stations
Users of location services worried about robberies, stalking

VentureBeat

Boxee shows off final version of its video streaming Boxee Box (video)
Facebook co-founder Moskovitz says movie has more sex, booze
Nokia kicks Apple while it’s down, says it prioritizes antenna performance over looks
Apple does have a sense of humor with “antennagate” (video)
Even during iPhone 4 damage control, Steve Jobs is a skillful onstage presenter (video)
Intel snags former Palm and Apple VP Mike Bell for smartphone plans
Google acquires MetaWeb, says Freebase will become “more open”
New report: VC investing bouncing back in Q2
Samsung strategist Omar Khan talks superphones (video)
Roundup: Firefox comes to the iPhone, MySpace gets a makeover and more
SGN launches Skies of Glory as the first cross-platform Android-iPhone game
Apple won’t recall iPhone 4 despite reception problems, WSJ says
California sues Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for blocking green energy initiative

GigaOm

Is the Difference Between MySpace and Facebook Black and White?
Four Business Tips From Apple's Steve Jobs
Why Google Launched App Inventor
The State of Open Source for the Smart Grid
Hulu Plus on the PS3: Less Content Than on the Web
Google Gets Semantic: Buys Metaweb
Surprise: World Cup Final Fails to Set Another Peak Tweeting Record
The Email Signature: From Efficient to Overkill
Google’s App Inventor: Escalating the Mobile Ad War?
Google Bows to Criticism, Changes Google News Design
When it Comes to Broadband, UK Still A Laggard
Seed-Stage Investments Jump Sharply in Q2 2010
Video: Chris Sacca Helps Founders Cash Out Shares Early
Esquire Misses the Point on Twitter and the World Cup
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Friday, July 16, 2010

Reclaiming My Twitter Account

Twitter logo initialImage via Wikipedia
I have decided to reclaim my Twitter account. What I mean by that is I am no longer going to be feeding TechCrunch, Mashable, CNet, BusinessWeek and Time into my Twitter stream like I have been doing for over a year now. They have had their free rides. Now I have a blog that intends to compete with them. I am going to link plenty to them on a near daily basis. But now the feeds into my Twitter stream are going to be only from my blogs. Most of the fed tweets will be from this blog itself because this is the most active of my blogs.

I did that feed thing because when I was desperately trying to accumulate followers on Twitter, I figured I could not fail in my attempt to create a great Twitter stream if I fed from some of my favorite blogs, news sites to visit, my favorite magazines. 

That worked for a while. It no longer works for me now that I am toying with the idea of pro blogging in a serious way. 

A spike in blog traffic can boost your self esteem. It has boosted mine. Now TechCrunch, Mashable, CNet, BusinessWeek, and Time come across as crutches, possibly even competitors. Why am I giving them all that free traffic again? 

TwitterFeed tells me the newest feed from CNet into my Twitter stream has 700 clicks. Those clicks could be mine. Those could be clicks for my blog. 

Hello people, the free lunch is over. 

I never really did the RSS thing, and I tried Google Reader but I did not become a regular. I was using Twitter for all that. But no more. Now I create my own news feeds in the form of daily blog posts that link to many news items from many different sources.

A 4 AM Traffic Peak, Mostly From Canada
Traffic: Canada Top Country, 2 AM Peak
What Just Happened? 3,000 Page Hits
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A 4 AM Traffic Peak, Mostly From Canada

Internal development of Canada's internal bord...Image via Wikipedia

How do you explain this? I think people in Canada sleep less. Or this is traffic from the northern parts of Canada where the sun is around many more hours of the day. Or parts where the sun never sets in summer.

Hello there. Thanks for dropping by.

The page hits for today stand at 1200, which used to be the previous peak for the longest time. And the day is still young. Looks to me like this blog's traffic is about to take off, enough that I can do this full time, if not right away then perhaps in a few months, or maybe even right away.

Blogging full time would be the best thing I could do for my startup that I expect to launch in about 15 months after I get my green card. Blogging full time would allow me to read all I want to read, to network feverishly in the New York tech ecosystem. I would explore the landscape for my startup through my blog.

If I have 1200 page hits for the day, and the top page for the day is getting only 80 of that, and that page is not a new page, but from a week back, that means I am doing well with the search engines. Traffic from search is the best kind. Otherwise sometimes you get a spike in traffic because some big shot blogger linked to you, and then all that traffic has evaporated in a day.

Search engine traffic is the good kind. It is more stable. Although Google can always tweak the algorithms and make you go away. But then that tweaking can go the other way as well. You could see another spike, spike upon spike.

If I were to treat this blog like a full time business, what would I do?

I like the blog's name: Netizen. It is a solo operation.

Every day I would put out a page of links to all the top stories from all the top tech blogs and from top news sites. A top story is what I determine a top story is. I would be making no attempt to be objective.

And I would write a few blog posts every day on topics of interest to me.

I would go to and blog about many of the key tech events in town. The two top tech events in town are:
I would watch and share videos from the top tech events anywhere and everywhere. You do that enough and you realize watching those videos is often better than showing up for many of those events. You can't show up for all of them anyways. And if you are going to every event on the list, your networking is not focused enough.

I would be commenting at other blogs much more. You have to be out and about, you know.
  • Content
  • Traffic
  • Monetization 
Those are the three elements. 

As for monetization, the Google ads are back up. But Google ads only make good money if you have a ton of traffic. I wish I could dig into the NY tech ecosystem to have more companies let me do blog post ads. 

Or maybe it is too early to think of full time pro blogging. The traffic is building up but it's not there yet. But it would be nice to be able to do it full time for a year. And then I could do a $1 salary thing for my startup the way Bloomberg does for the city, he is a $1 a year Mayor

I should probably send out a few emails. Hey, how would you like for me to do a blog post ad for you? Letting me do a blog post ad or two for you is almost like hiring me as a business consultant. I bring along more than exposure. I bring perspectives. 
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