Web 2.0 is catching on everywhere!

This is something interesting I saw in the news. I wanted to share it with you guys.

Mobile talk moves to Web 2.0
With a growing demand for a better browsing experience on our mobiles, there is, according to the industry, demand for Web 2.0 on the go.

Click here to continue reading

Shutdown Day

Have a look at this link. It is a global experiment to see how many people can shut down their computers and not use them for a day. I guess it will go to prove all the critics just how important and necessary they are in our lives and how technology is something we can no longer live without!

Our Elevator Pitch

Here it is folks! Go on and have a look! Oh and also leave some comments on how we could probably improve upon it further.

Session 6 Review

This week was a different type of seminar in our course. We spent the majority of the class doign a case study and analysis. The case was"Wireless Infrastructure for a Regional Food Safety Initiative in Southeast Asia".The case was about using technology to keep a track of livestock and meat lifecycles. This meant everything, from what the animal ate, where it went, where it was bred, and so on. It was an interesting concept that gets you thinking as to why we do not actually have this already, especially considering all the paranoia about bird flu, etc. Anyway some thing to learn here was how to actually speed read and grasp the important points of the study and manage time with the group to answering questions. I must say our group did not get off to the best of starts. We seemed to initially lack the ability to figure out how to go about doing this case analysis. I think we struggled in basically analysing what had to be done and with the time limit that was a bit of a problem. Some how though we did manage to come out with a relatively decent presentation of the interface. Similarly each group presented their ideas and at the end we had a discussion on each ones presentation. Most of us actually used pretty similar ideas and unfortunately none of us made something with use of graphics or visual aids. Great minds at work i guess haha!! What was nice about it was it gave us a feel of what case study tests are like. Infact a lot of companies are actually adopting this method is their recruitment methods. This is known as an 'In-box' exercise.

After all the group discussion was over Prof. Gilbert stressed that it was important to recognize which approach, for example, Value Chain or Process Flow Analysis, Value Systems Analysis, Financial Analysis, is required for the case. He also walked us through what a DHL value chain looks like. It was a different way to look at cases and being an engineering student I have not really been exposed to such things. Its a nice distraction from our technical subjects and in fact might even prove to be one of the most useful.

Last but not least we were briefed about the upcoming (actually it has already begun) Citibank Case Challenge 2007. It is a case study competition between Singapore university teams and organised by Citibank and SMU. I am proud to say I am taking part and in fact have already begun the preliminary round case with my group. It is great exposure especially since my group consists of 2 business and 2 engineering students. I hope we make it far in the competition and hoping to learn as much as possible.

The coming week will be spent editing bits and pieces of our elevator pitch and posting it up on YouTube. I will load it for you guys once it is done. Hope we get the most view ;)

Session 5 Review

Well this week began with each group presenting their elevator pitch videos which will eventually be uploaded on to YouTube. Infact the minute I entered the class you could sense everyones excitement to see what the other groups have done. It was the first time I have actually done something like this and was a great experience learning how to summarise info into such a short presentation and at the same time make heads turn and really generate an interest. Well that is what I would really define an elevator pitch as. To be honest I have never done a flash presentation so even though our presentation was just a powerpoint slide show converted to a flash presentation I did feel a sense of achievement. I must say I was rather impressed with all the groups presentations. Each one had its own unique style and I particularly enjoyed the one cast inside an elevator. Prof Gilbert then proceeded to critique each presentation which helped a lot ofcourse since we all knew where we could improve upon. That has been one of the really refreshing experiences of this class. The fact that the professor and students keep pointing out areas where you can keep improving. I really wish this was spread throughout NTU to gain a more active learning and interactive learning experience. You may even call it a real-life web2.0 experience =). Our presentation is currently undergoing some changes and the minute it is complete I will add a link for you to view it.

The next topic we moved on to discussing was that of Governing the Freedom Economy: do we need new rules? This was really interesting and there can be so many examples to expand upon. It was wonderful to reflect and see how with different technology suddenly norms and rules need to be ammended. And at the same time how it all suddenly also becomes so acceptable to society. It takes you a while to really think: How have our norms and rules changed over the past few years? What is responsible for these changes?

We discussed the examples of the ERP system used in Singapore and how it has changed to a norm in this society. It actually is really wonderful living in this part of the world and being able to see how technology is really affecting everything. Being a foreign student I guess it is a lot easier to appreciate as I do not take it for granted and notice all these changes compared to my home in India. Getting back to the discussion what was interesting to me was how previous norms have actually aided in the formation of new rules. The ERP system would not work as well if the norm of actually following the traffic law did not exist in the first place. This has infact made it a lot easier to introduce a new rule for a new technology.

Another simple example coming to my mind is the use of cell phones while driving vehicles and slowly how many countries seem to be fining people talking on cell phones while driving. I recently read that the mayor of New York is thinking of banning the use of cell phones and music players while crossing the street. It is quite hard to think of these things and I really do hope that some rules never come into existance as they seem to be challenging our norms and more importantly our freedom. Can you imagine taking off your headphones everytime you cross a road? God knows how many blocks it would take us then to complete a song!

Another topic recently come into the light is that of Apple using DRM coding to allow certain songs to be played only on certain players. In fact it has become such an issue that Steve Jobs actually wrote out regarding and explaining the stance of Apple (Steve Jobs' Thoughts on Music). Due to new technologies providing the abilities to exchange songs between countless number of individuals over the globe tagging systems have now become a rule for online retailing music stores to protect the copy rights of the music.

New technologies are giving us the possibility to do probably what was unthinkable a few years ago. This is why moderating and a constant watch on new technologies will eventually give rise to new norm, rules and even freedoms!

I came across this while reading throught my RSS feeds and it just shows you how technology can be used in our world today!
Google is playing an unlikely role in the Iraq war. Its online satellite map of the world, Google Earth, is being used to help people survive sectarian violence in Baghdad. (Source: BBC News)
Click here to carry on reading.

Session 4 Review

This seminar was held in a new IT lab since the previous class had problems with computer confirgurations. The computers were much faster and better and it was a little unfortunate we did not have to use it much!

The seminar started off with group presentations and discussiong on the Jurong Bird Park case study. The study asked us to come up with a single slide presentation on how to avail all the shows at the bird park in many different languages using just a mobile phone. Our group, the Wizards of the Web, came up with a three tier solution. We intended to use the IVRS system for all cell phones to call and listen to shows in different languages, SMPP protocol for cell phones to receive messages with information and Bluetooth A2DP profile to stream sound and additional information to bluetooth capable handphones. Looking at all the presentation I thought we encompassed quite a broad array of ideas. Infact we have decided to broaden the scope a bit and take this on as our project for this class. Other groups too came up with similar based solutions and infact one used a really different approach. They spoke about the registration and receiving of a bar code which has the visitor's mobile number linked to it. This would be used at scanners all over the park so that calls will be made to the registered number as and when the bar code was scanned. After all the groups finished presenting we had a short but detailed discussiong with our professor about the life cycle of the system. After listening to that it suddenyl struck all of us how general and vague our ideas were. The next step and discussion was basically fine tuning the answers and trying to eliminate as many loopholes as possible. One important point our professor pointed out was that none of the groups looked at it from a behavioural point of view. I now realise that is very important and will keep it in mind for future projects and discussions. All in all it was an excellent discussion and I enjoyed the open discussion going around the class which actually uses something from last week: the crowd wisdom concept.

Later on we also had a short discussion on how Google and Amazon get revenue. They mainly used advertisements to earn revenue and what is unique about Google is that its so 'clean'. The dont seem to allow companies to post up big pictures or anything of the sort. Infact its just a few lines on a corner of the page with a link to the website. I think it is fantastic for users since pages are no longer cluttered with millions of pop-ups and ads.

Towards the end of the seminar we briefed about four different models.
1) Business to Consumer
2) Business to Business
3) Consumer to Consumer
4) Consumer to Business

But what I realised was more important than all this was the 'Value proposition'. It is always important that some value is added to a process for the consumer and that is what our projects should also revolve about. We must try and add as much value as we can so as to sell our ideas. I enjoyed this seminar as it involved a lot of ideas and open discussion. It gave us a lot of chances to rebound ideas and discuss as a group. For our next class we have to come up with a 2 minute long elevator pitch selling our idea for the Jurong Bird Park project. Untill next week then...

Session 3 Review

The third seminar is over and it was quite different compared to the first two. For starters we started of the seminar discussing about the collective wisdom/intelligence/decision making of a crowd. Initiailly I was a bit confused with this but later on I realised why Prof. Gilbert introduced the lecture in this manner.

Discussing about the various ideas related to collective intelligence of a crowd was extremely enlightening. Certain scholars and authors believed that the quality of dicussion and decisions made by a group is diminished as compared to when they are made by certain individuals. At the same time a select group believes that under the right circumstances a group makes a decision whose quality can supercede that of even the smartest individual in the group. I think it is a topic that can be debated on and on and we can still have two parties leaving with the same beliefs they came in with. In the end I felt the key to the whole discussion was the term right circumstances. When the circumstances are right, meaning team dynamics, chemistry, diversity, etc. it is possible to get a decision and discussion that is not possible to obtain from one outstanding individual. But at the same time if these circumstances are not so called "right" then it will turn out to be the opposite. Those are my conclusions in the end. It shows me to be a diplomatic person in the end, but I do believe group dynamics, chemistry and diversity are keys elements in making a team successful. Besides that it is also the desire of wanting to work as a group (aka being a team player) rather than look for just ones personal glory. I think it has prevailed for groups throughout the world. Political parties and sports teams never seem to produce the desired results when all the "superstars" of their field are put together in one group. Instead, it always the team or party of lesser knowns that seems to come up with better solutions and managed to out do the "superstar" team. Being a sports minded person I can think of the last world cup in Germany as a perfect example. Brazil with the likes of Ronaldhino, Ronaldo, Kaka, Robinho and many more stars not only underperformed but also produced boring football and did not entertain. Infact only when the team stars were replaced by certain lesser known players did the team begin to gel and show its real potential. Well in the end its like I said, it all boils down to the "right circumstances". Another wonderful example that came up was in regard to the show "Who wants to be a Millionare". It was shown by research that 91% of the times the crowd gets the answer right. That is a phenomenal percentage of getting the answers right considering the fact that the crowd is not even labelled within the judges or even panel of experts/scholars.

All this talk about crowds, discussion and decisions makes me realise the power of diversity. It makes me realise that many different individuals can provide so many different insights to a particular topic than just a single individual. This slowly brought us into the differences in the concept of web1.0 and web2.0. Prof. Gilbert used the example of a paper encyclopedia (web1.0) to the online Wikipedia (web2.0). See one of the reasons paper encyclopedias keep getting outdated year after year is because there is new information out there that has to be put down and that may be a new point of view has been uncovered. But the Wikipedia concept is a lot more efficient. It puts together ideas of every single person who updates it and also can be updated at any time. It is a case of having the right circumstances where web2.0 applications integrate interaction to such an extent that people are more involved and sharing more than ever to keep information upto date. It is such a simple idea but yet so powerful and is really changing the mindsets of many individuals!

Thinking about all this brings a wonderful movie to mind: Goodwill Hunting. In the beginning it shows how a group of great mathematicians and scholars are put together but still take so long to figure out math problems. But a janitor roaming the lobbies of the school actually managed to beat them to the answers. Well besides just watching the movie for this I do recommend watching it, it really is worth the couch, eye strain and popcorn!

Something Technical
Now after we were done discussing the whole crowd concept along wit web 1.0 and 2.0 we moved on to figure out how google got to where it is today. Well basically google seems to provide the right search results every time you use it and it does it even better than any other search engine. Google uses what is known as web spiders to form a so called index of all the content of the web, storing headers, phrases, etc. but most importantly page ranking. It is a smart concept were pages are ranked for the information and it places the page ranked highest as its first results for a search for particular parameters. Not only does this tend to give us pages we always want to read, it also leaves Google as one of the sole search engines able to do this and hence the success and growth of the Google brand name. Anyway, once we place a search Google brings up every phrase, character, heading, etc similar to our search parameters from the index formed by the spider and places the results for us based on the page ranking system. In plain english it sounds like something really easy but its not! Ask the other search engines, they're still trying to figure this one out!


High-level architecture of a standard Web crawler
Source: Wikipedia

Nearing the end of the seminar we discussed something called Second Life. Now I've heard of this before but I was never really aware of the power of it. It is basically a so called "game" in a virtual world that allows people to create their own characters, businesses and do as they please under anonymous names. The brilliance of it is the market research performed as it has a total of 3,131,375 people (Source: Second Life). This actually helped me touch upon and revise a bit of the marketing module I had taken in my first year at NTU. It is in infact a "tool" a lot of companies are using to create estimate targets and also control their pricing.




We also discussed about how US mobile operaters bid to be exclusive carriers of phones for a limited amount of time to gain the upper hand over its rivals. The most recent example is that of the iPhone and how Cingular will be the only operator providing it initially in the US! I won't be surprised if Singtel or may Starhub actually adopts a similar method. They can be sure that I am going to follow them if they stock the iPhone. M1 is also the only provider in Singapore providing the Palm Treo 750 in a 2 year plan! It is an interesting and powerful way of gaining market share and I am really surprised providers here have not been taking advantage of it that much as yet. I am sure that had Starhub or M1 been the exclusive provider for say the MotoRazr we would have a new rank 1 mobile provider by this time in Singapore!

Last but not least a small discussion was held on how Mobile commerce is changing the world we live in and how it can be incorporated into our daily life. We discussed about using it for buying movie tickets and have been asked to come up with slide presentations of new ideas to use Mobile technology to aid Jurong Bird Park provide its commentary and shows in many universal languages. Hopefully the project goes well and be sure I will have a small review on it in my next post!