Forbes writes:

The long-term case for investing in India is a no-brainer. India's many attractions have been well-chronicled, but they can't be emphasized enough: a tradition of democracy, respect for the rule of law and widespread fluency in English. These qualities are not easy to find in emerging markets and they give India a huge advantage in the global marketplace.
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India is volatile. But if you're willing to be patient, it's one of the most compelling investment destinations the world has to offer.

InfoWorld has a special report on open-source Ajax toolkits. "Interest in AJAX is exploding, and while there are several good proprietary packages available, the open-source options can be just as useful -- if you have the time and app-dev expertise...Packages from Dojo, Zimbra, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and OpenRico/Prototype showcase the variety of libraries available to AJAX developers."

Techcrunch writes:

A few years ago, online TV guides were just a paperless version of what was arriving in the mail or the middle of Sunday papers. Today, however, as we get closer to the world of TV over IP and video on demand in every home, the space is evolving, giving customers more than they can get in paper.

At the same time, advertisers are realizing that TV guides with demographically targeted content present a promising vehicle for delivering targeted ads. Market penetration for these sites is still relatively modest, but it is growing and, as the prospect of not just finding television programming, but also watching it online, becomes more likely, usage will grow exponentially.

The Inquirer writes:

Ray Ozzie, has been sharing his thoughts with leading analysts. And he's declared that Microsoft will be concentrating on the sort of Internet-based services we've already seen with the Windows Live Mail beta.

"In a previous era – in the PC era – Microsoft would naturally begin with a PC mindset," Ozzie opined. "We're in a new era – an era in which the Internet is at the centre."

There are six reasons why I believe the time for the mobile Internet is coming.

First, users will want more than just voice and SMS on their phones. Ringtones and games are a good start for the value-added services, but there’s a lot more to life than that! I think of life as having a mix of ‘empty moments’ and ‘know-now’ moments. In both of these moments, the mobile is there with us and can be the window to a wide world of services.

Second, the mobile data infrastructure is very good. It may be hard to believe this but I think India’s mobile data networks across operators are amongst the best in the world. Even though the focus of the operators is in customer acquisition, the technology to support data services exists. This is probably true not only in India but also in other emerging markets.

Third, the mobile phones themselves now come equipped with data capabilities. Compared with 2000, the phones of today are affordable and data-capable. The screens are much bigger and support much higher resolution. The phone’s multimedia capabilities are also driving the desire to create and share content – which in turn needs data services.

Fourth, mobile operators will need to focus more on value-added services in a world where there isn’t much growth coming from voice and SMS for the existing user base. For the next couple of years, they can get away with market expansion, but these users come with much lower ARPUs (average revenue per user). There will be a need to target the top-end of the users with new services – and I don’t think the killer services are going to be visual radio or voice SMS.

Fifth, there are two technological disruptions which will accelerate the arrival of the mobile Internet. Even as 3G will being higher speeds to the phones along with always-on connections (much like what i-mode’s underlying technology infrastructure was), there is WiFi on mobiles lurking in the background. As WiFi hotspots proliferate and mesh networks envelop entire neighbourhoods, mobiles equipped with WiFi will be able to bypass the traditional operator networks for data access. WiFi on mobiles will also impact operator revenues as voice moves over WiFi networks.

Finally, I don’t think the PC-based broadband Internet is going to happen quickly and for large numbers of users in India. Most of the investment that the government-owned telcos (BSNL and MTNL) are doing is in the mobile space. Their control over the last-mile into homes remains tight but without large investments into DSL and low-cost devices, the broadband Internet will happen very slowly in India.

Taken together, these factors create the right environment for the mobile Internet to take-off in India.

Tomorrow: Views

ZDNet writes:

Text mining is a computer technique to extract useful information from unstructured text. And it's a difficult task. But now, using a relatively new method named topic modeling, computer scientists from University of California, Irvine (UCI), have analyzed 330,000 stories published by the New York Times between 2000 and 2002 in just a few hours. They were able to automatically isolate topics such as the Tour de France, prices of apartments in Brooklyn or dinosaur bones. This technique could soon be used not only by homeland security experts or librarians, but also by physicians, lawyers, real estate people, and even by yourself.

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