Emergic: October 1, 2005 Archives

Saturday, October 1, 2005

Google Commodifies Everything

Jeff Jarvis writes about the impact:

The leveling that the internet and Google enable is what makes it possible for a mere blogger to swim alongside Big Old Media.

But in that process, let’s note that the unique identities, brands, qualifications, interests, relationships, and values we have as publishers, citizens, users, or marketers — the very values the internet enables! — are lost. We’re commodified.

The real conclusion one should come to with this is that we are presented with new opportunities to find new definitions of brands and new ways to bring them to the surface and highlight them and find value in them.

I believe, for example, that there will be a need to put together trusted networks of distributed content for advertising.

Search Engines | PermaLink | Comments (2)

Isn't commdifying good, because its taking the market (whiche ver it is) towards a perfect competition. And those who are good (in case of media and blogs, famous bloggers and media houses) would survive. But they can't breathe easily because the entry-barrier is almost nil. Thanks to Google!

Posted by Indraneel

I welcome the trend towards commodification of services. Traditionally commodification was driven by cheap imitations achieving "acceptable" quality in a mass mkt framework. And this mass marketization of so many products has brought tremendous uplift in living standards for millions the world over. Imagine if cellphones were still only an elitist plaything...?

In services, mass-customization should supposedly drive the ommodification trend. Only when services such as banking, primary healthcare and basic education are cheap-but-acceptable can living standards in India rise.

Posted by sudhir

Searchable Conversations

Charlene Li writes:

I was thinking the other day that one of the things you can do with VoIP is to record it, using shareware like SoundStudio to record them to your hard drive (look at all of the podcasting interviews being done over Skype). Once it’s on the hard drive, you could then run speech recognition against the file and create an index that can be searched by, yup, you’ve got it, Google Desktop Search.

Kinda spooky, isn’t it. But think of the real-world applications, ranging from cheaper call center management (there’s some software today that does this, like Witness Systems and VoiceLog), to eliminating the need to keep detailed notes from conference calls. My personal dream application: archiving all of my voicemails and being able to search through them, just like my emails.

Search Engines | PermaLink | Comments (0)

$100 Laptop

The Economist writes:

The idea is as audacious as it altruistic: provide a personal laptop computer to every schoolchild—particularly in the poorest parts of the world. The first step to making that happen is whittling the price down to $100. And that is the goal of a group of American techno-gurus led by Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the fabled MIT Media Lab. When he unveiled the idea at the World Economic Forum in January it seemed wildly ambitious. But surprisingly, it is starting to become a reality. Mr Negroponte plans to display the first prototype in November at a UN summit. Five countries—China, Brazil, Egypt, Thailand and South Africa—have said they will buy over 1m units each. Production is due to start in late 2006.

How is the group, called One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), able to create a laptop so inexpensively? It is mainly a matter of cleverly combining existing technologies in new ways. The laptop will have a basic processor made by AMD, flash memory instead of a hard disk, will be powered by batteries or a hand-crank, and will run open-source software. The $100 laptop also puts all the components behind the screen, not under the keyboard, so there is no need for an expensive hinge. So far, OLPC has got the price down to around $130.

Thin Client-Thick Server | PermaLink | Comments (3)

It's hard to resist the idea of $100 laptop- and the noise that media would make about it. So far, they are talking about numbers in millions.

Media Labs Asia was in the thick of controversy in India- they talked about setting up "technology incubators"- and wanted a 100 million to set up the whole charade. Speaking from the media sidelines, Indian government was shown in poor light all along.

I agree that thin client model might just work- but we are still to see a large scale application for it. Incidentally, India has an answer for the same- Simputer. I really wonder why noone thought about it before- to really publicise it.

I believe that the governments should sink in their monies to set up their priorties right first. The monies need to go in for public health, manufacturing and government spending in social sector. In case of aided countries, a strict time line ought to be set with proper audits.

Posted by Dr.Abhishek Puri

I think, to manufacture laptop in $100 is quite possible due to low cost h/w, mass production and remove all fat ( dvd/cd burner, various software etc ). And, I believe, real cost comes when you add online services & software on top of it.

As this laptop won’t have storage capacity will require online storage for sure. This will require more robost software to encrypt data to give user comforts level about its personal data security. It’s a challenge.

I can imagine that there will be online content management shop in near future where you get service like

a) Individual’s data management ( backup, encryption, virusfree )
b) Order to burn your data on DVD/CD ( photos/video )
c) Online Software service ( Msoffice, audio/video software )
d) Wireless Print Server ( give your location and it will print in nearby location )
e) Order online movie / audio of your choice ( don’t require to store in local drive ).
And lots more…………. UNLIMITED IN $25/MONTH

Wireless Service provider [ OR google’s free Wi-Fi ]

Getting interesting ……..

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