Ebrahim Ezzy writes:

What I'm calling Search 2.0 are actually third generation search technologies. To explain the generations:

* First-generation search ranked sites based on page content - examples are early yahoo.com and Alta Vista.
* Second-generation relies on link analysis for ranking - so they take the structure of the Web into account. Examples are Google and Overture.
* Third-generation search technologies are designed to combine the scalability of existing internet search engines with new and improved relevancy models; they bring into the equation user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence, a rich user experience, and many other specialized capabilities that make information more productive.

The Guardian writes:

It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it.

It's a meme that emerges strongly in statistics from YouTube, which in just 18 months has gone from zero to 60% of all online video viewing.

The numbers are revealing: each day there are 100 million downloads and 65,000 uploads - which as Antony Mayfield points out, is 1,538 downloads per upload - and 20m unique users per month.

The New York Times writes:

The print-on-demand business is gradually moving toward the center of the marketplace. What began as a way for publishers to reduce their inventory and stop wasting paper is becoming a tool for anyone who needs a bound document. Short-run presses can turn out books economically in small quantities or singly, and new software simplifies the process of designing a book.

As the technology becomes simpler, the market is expanding beyond the earliest adopters, the aspiring authors. The first companies like AuthorHouse, Xlibris, iUniverse and others pushed themselves as new models of publishing, with an eye on shaking up the dusty book business. They aimed at authors looking for someone to edit a manuscript, lay out the book and bring it to market.

Forbes has a detailed report on the S60 platform:

There are certain advantages for developers as well who have turned to the S60. Developers of mobile content say that it allows them to create content for a wide variety of handsets at a reduced cost. Kansas City, Mo.-based Handmark, which aggregates content and develops and publishes wireless content, says that it ordinarily has to do more than 17 "builds" to support 20 different phones. Those are costly and time consuming. However, by using the S60 platform, it can do six "builds" to support 50 phones. That means quicker time to market and lower cost.

Jon Udell writes:

n March, Amazon.com introduced S3 (Simple Storage Service ), a metered storage service for arbitrary blobs of data. Recently, Amazon’s adventure in metered Web services continued with the announcement that its SQS (Simple Queue Service), which had been in beta since well before the surprise announcement of S3, has now joined S3 as a commercial offering.
...
Like S3, SQS is an extremely general-purpose service offering that will undoubtedly be used in ways nobody can predict. It’s therefore appropriate that Amazon has tailored both services to the broadest possible swath of developers.

With Rajshri Media’s plans to launch a broadband portal focused on Indians globally, the wheel has come a full circle for me. More than 10 years ago, in March 1995, I launched a portal, IndiaWorld, to offer news and information to Indians worldwide. For the first few years, the primary audience was made up of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs). The same will probably be the case with Rajshri Media’s portal. One aspect of the story of the Internet’s first decade is this evolution from text to video.

I don’t watch a lot of television. Occasional glimpses of cricket on TV is what my viewing is limited to – along with soaking in some of the soap operas my wife, Bhavana, watches. It has been about 18 months since I watched a movie in a theatre – thanks to Abhishek’s birth last April. The coverage by the Indian news channels reminds me too much of that of the newspapers – shallow and tabloid-like. I have little or no interest in the stock market so that eliminates the business channels.

This is not to say that there are no programmes on TV I would not like to watch. The problem is two-fold: discovery and recording. India still does not have an electronic programming guide which lists out what’s on TV now. This makes the search and discovery problem hard. And even if I could find a programme, I probably would not be in front of a TV to watch it then. So, recording it becomes important. Setting a VCR still challenges one’s intellect!

It is in this context that I look ahead to the future. The digitisation of the video content chain will make me want to spend time and money. There are many Hindi movie classics that I’d like to watch. There are some terrific programmes on BBC like Horizon that I’d like to make sure I don’t miss. Whether these are ad-supported or I have to pay for them is a secondary issue. For me, it is about availability and access – when I have the time.

In 2002, I started my blog. That was a first effort at being a ‘content creator.’ Now, as Abhishek grows up, I can also imagine being a ‘producer’ of videos – and sharing them with friends and family. The text to video viewing evolution may have taken a decade. But the content creation evolution from text to video will have probably taken less than half the time. Tomorrow’s world is coming – and its rich with media, created by us, for us.