Venkat's Weblog

Verizon and Google's Deal

Verizon and Google’s partnership is something that many look forward to. According to the deal, Google would become the official search engine on the Verizon phone. The home screen would show a Google search bar. According to Reuters there are some issues which are being discussed between Google and Verizon before the deal could be made official. So I am sure that Verizon users are looking forward for the deal to come through!

China-VC's choice

My Account of my trip to U.S of A would shortly follow! Meanwhile to keep abreast with the happenings here goes.....

Olympics with its fun and glory seem to have also bought investments into China!
According to reports venture capitalists have pumped in around 1.37 million into China. Red Herring article says that about 71% of the investments have been concentrated into Information Service/Media content. Same article reports that the highest investments were for Oak Pacific Interactive.

China seems to have gained more popularity with the Olympics and its potential for development is quite apparent in its support and infrastructure facilities!

Air Bus in all forms

Looks like Wired has dedicated an entire article for people like me. Their autopia sections talk about 'Electra Flyer C' which runs on a rechargeable 5.6 kWh lithium battery. Second article was on the 'Superluxe Airbus A380' where a first class ticket which comes with a whole load of luxury stuffs is priced at $14,000, of course the plane makes a round trip from New York-Dubai, where else! Here is a good and interesting news for all the 'Virgin America' frequent fliers. The article talks about points being used for a trip on space on board the 'virgin Galactic'. Wow 'virgin America' flier kindly check your points and head to space! and a lot of other interesting tidbits are loaded.

Technology and Celebrities

Have you wondered about people like ‘M.C’ Hammer, Ashton Kutcher and Andrew Shue. If you are raising your eyebrows as to why I am? Well the answer is a featured article in the wired magazine about celebrity startups and the names that were mentioned were those of above. For example Andrew Shue has started something called as cafemom.com as the name suggest a social networking site for moms and M.C Hammer is busy with managing business which is a Youtube counterpart, but which specializes in uploading dance videos ….. quite interesting don’t u think? Technology does enthrall everyone.

Reinventing

Reengineering (or re-engineering) is the radical redesign of an organization's processes, especially its business processes. Rather than organizing a firm into functional specialties (like production, accounting, marketing, etc.) and looking at the tasks that each function performs,

"reinventing the wheel" is an important tool in the instruction of complex ideas. Rather than providing students simply with a list of known facts and techniques and expecting them to incorporate these ideas perfectly and rapidly, the instructor instead will build up the material anew, leaving the student to work out those key steps which embody the reasoning characteristic of the field.”

The above definition is from Wikipedia. Reinventing, Reengineering are the most commonly used phrases. What is the need for reinventing oneself or reengineering the business process? Well when a person achieves his or her said goal, it is not the end of things, it is important to maintain the level and all the more to achieve higher plains, well how does one do it if one is already exhausted the strategy and planning to achieve his goal; here is where ‘Reengineering’ and ‘Reinventing’ the process comes into play.a When one approaches a fresh goal or tries to maintain the standard one achieves. This not only gives a fresh lease of life to the person but brings in new perspective where process of doing the same thing can be viewed in a different light and this makes achieving the goal all the more interesting and fresh.

It is also important to put in those ideas and tools that we already know to proper use and practice such that the consequences are better. This gives added values to both product and process.

It is important for any person or a business establishment to reinvent itself to bring about freshness, zeal and of course to achieve a whole new height!

Bloggers Help!

Nowadays Marketing strategy involves making a beeline for all the prominent bloggers. Some of the practice involved might make the bloggers to take notice and write about you but some might just not be the case. As an ardent fan of Guy Kawasaki (No this is not any marketing technique by me!) I came across an article written by him in ‘Entrepreneur’ magazine and hope this would be helpful for all those executives who are trying to adopt a ‘bloggers’ attracting strategy!

Some of the points are self explanatory, and some I really liked. I don’t want to reproduce the entire 9 points that Guy wrote but would point out some which is quite interesting and informative like that of ‘Create a Product’: Be sure that you have a great product in hand which can be talked and written about-simple and straight forward.
Secondly is to make connections to bloggers before you really need them and not that you approach them when you want to market your product alone, this would also help both of you to know each other and the blogger to really understand about your product and you. The last but definitely not the least is to be a ‘foul weather friend’, i.e even if the blogger seems to write negatively about your business or product, instead of steaming away at the blogger or ignoring it is best to see the actual point and see if there is room for improvements. Great compilation Guy, I really enjoyed reading it

Yahoo's Stand.

Yes the Presidential Elections seems to be on top of everyone's mind. Especially after Obama's win against Hillary. There are other things of interest too, that seems to be brewing in the U.S. For one is the recent statement by Susan Decker, Yahoo President on Wednesday that there is a possibility of some type of deal that could come up between Yahoo and Microsoft.
Yahoo meanwhile has not taken too kindly to the recent remarks by Icahn and is firing back.
Decker in the Advertisement 2.0 conference in New York had once again reiterated on the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo and said that a conclusion could be expected somewhere next week. Other than the talks with Microsoft Yahoo is separately holding talks with Google.
Guess news other than the Presidential Election to be looked into in the possible Deal of Yahoo and Microsoft or should we say Google! Well guess we need to wait to see.

The Fall out

After the fallout of Yahoo and Microsoft talks, it looks like Yahoo is on a lookout for a likely partner in ‘Google’. Many analysts feel that the talks fell through after Yahoo increased the bid from $31 to $37, while Microsoft was willing to settle in at $33. Reports have it that shareholders are quite upset over the fact that Yahoo did not consult them or they did not vote on the deal. On Monday Yahoo’s share is expected to fall down to 30% because of the fall out. Yahoo most likely would look at Google for a deal. Meanwhile the fallout might increase the share of the software giant Microsoft.

The CEO's Approach

Can I be ever far away from a good article? The answer is No. It was one such very interesting article that I came across in Wired Magazine, which I would like to share with you. The article is written by Leander Kahney- News Editor of Wired.com and is called ‘One Infinite Loop’.

According to the article, it traces the evolving of leaders in leaders in Silicon Valley and how all the top companies CEO had adopted eglatraian approach in managing business and most importantly managing employees. There is one small exception though in the Form of Apple’s Steve Jobs. Tracing back to the times when CEO’s left their cubicles to understand their employees: It is a known fact that Bill Hewelett and David Packard introduced in what is now called the ‘Managing by Walking around’ which encouraged employees to communicate to executives informally. Intel executives gave up the comfort of their offices to become on par with engineers by using the standard issue cubicles used by all. The Mountain View campus of Google is famous for its perks in the form of roller-hockey games and Google’s engineers have autonomy on what projects to choose and to work.

Steve Jobs seems to follow a different pattern altogether in the form of the ‘fear factor’, even the best performing asset seem to have come at least once on the receiving end of Jobs, who demands perfection. Then what makes them stick, one may argue it is the standard that he sets that becomes an obsession for many to achieve, since it is difficult to get a phrase of praise from him everyone in Apple seems to be toiling away to earn the same. But one thing about Jobs that many seem to accept is his ability to get the best out of anyone. Though Apple might differ from others in the Silicon Valley on many heads, it has the ability to bring about the best products in the form of iPod, iMac and iPhone and continues to defy recession to this day and this might be attributed to Steve Jobs strict vigilance.

The argument apart at INXS tries to combine the best of both worlds in the form of egalitarian working environment and freedom to take ownership of one’s work, the perks offered etc. But yes we try to bring about a organized way of doing things and the result it great products and a good support!

Apple's win over recession

Yes extensive travel does take its toll on people and I am no exception. But what made me blink and sit up was Apple's results (yes it was released last week!) one company which seems to defy every prediction made and came out stronger than ever. It is one company which seems to look at 'recession' at its eye.

Mark Selfe's blog on Apple iMac did give some good statistics. The second fiscal quarter for Apple was quite good, with a profit of $1.05 billion and a sale of $7.51 billion in sales, which is a 365 increase in profit. As I have repeatedly said before I believe in the strong product line of Apple. The two products behind the whooping sales were iPod and iMac. iMac sold around 2.29 million units and that of iPod 10.6 million. The next product which seems to have fallen below expectation was iPhone which fell a neat 26% than the previous quarter. The reason for the fall is because all the iphone followers are waiting for the next better version.

So until the next better and sleeker version unfolds, I guess I will joint the Apple followers bandwagon and wait!