when technology is a part of the whole!

Internet usage is synonymous with Google  (though this is changing with advent of facebook and twitter) and this gives them the pulse of online netizens. Google has come out with 2010 Zeitgeist and it helps gaze into the minds of online Indians. So, let’s delve into it: Technology: The First love of online folks, this infested in fastest rising queries on Mobile phone brands (micromax, samsung, nokia, sony ericsson). Micromax a relatively late entrant has captured curiosity of the nation while Nokia still continues to rule the trust Indians have on the mobile phone brand. Apart from email (yahoo and gmail rule!) and social networking (courtesy facebook, twitter and orkut), Indians spent most time being musical - looking and downloading songs. IRCTC – the epic ecommerce success has been there in top lists for so long that without this the zeitgeist would seem untrue ! The only other online service that continued to attract attention was Way2SMS (and by logical conclusion

This one is going to be a political post given my home state has just seen one of the momentous events that democracy could provide. Bihar Elections 2010 have culminated on an expected “unexpected” note. The conduct of the elections were “uneventful” (the term is used with reference to the yesterdays of rampant violence and booth capturing). This was expected given that Election Commission had deployed para-military forces at all the booths (with local police left to patrol thereby reducing their interference). EVM use further made the rigging impossible and results were swiftly declared to the public ( incld on the web ) preventing any post polls manipulations. Nitish Kumar returned to power. This was expected. “Unexpected” was Nitish Kumar and BJP sweeping 206 seats out of 243 (political pundits were predicting 170 seats for JDU alliance). This has not only left them stunned but even the NDA alliance is coming to terms with the verdict with disbelief in their eyes! RJD had come

Wishing Everyone a Very Happy Diwali and a Prosperous New Year! Diwali for me this year is “No Crackers”. Let’s see if this makes any difference!

MS CRM is one of the best performing and fastest growing products from the Dynamics suite. Microsoft has just announced CRM 2011 BETA (formerly CRM ‘5’). Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 delivers users the “Power of Productivity” through familiar, connected and intelligent experiences for users inside and outside an organization in the following ways: Familiar experiences through a next-generation native Outlook client, Microsoft Office contextual CRM Ribbon, role-tailored design, and user personalization. Intelligent experiences through guided process dialogs, inline data visualizations, performance and goal management and real-time dashboards. Connected experiences through cloud development, Windows Azure integration, contextual Sharepoint document repositories, teamwork and collaboration and the Dynamics Marketplace. CRM 2011 has been built on .NET 4 and with out of box Azure, SharePoint, Office & Silverlight integration. Scenarios for Azure integration include:

In one of the startup groups, there was a question on the commercials of doing a startup with Microsoft Technologies. Specifically, the question was: “ I would like to know the commercial implications on developing a solution on dotnet. Is there a license one needs to purchase from Microsoft for developing a software on dotnet platform? When the software is sold then does each commercial license of  software requires dotnet license to be purchased from Microsoft ?” While many folks would already know about the above, I am reproducing my answer in order to help any startup out there looking for information on using Microsoft technologies. So here it goes: Upfront, one thing should be clear as water - .NET framework is completely FREE of cost to install. The tools to develop on .NET is a IDE called Visual Studio may be needed to be bought. However, MS has come out with various programs that give out .NET Development tools for free. These options includes FREE Visual

You’ve heard the buzz about Social Networking and how the “youngsters” are spending/ wasting time there. Mostly, you use Social Networking for keeping in touch with friends and family (read facebook or Orkut) by sharing pictures. You may have created a professional profile online at LinkedIn as well. However, all this makes no sense when you are in Office. With all the meetings, replying to emails and meeting deadlines the social networking seems a real waste of time. And you may be right! Now, Microsoft is attempting to make social networking relevant for businesses. Here’s how social networking can aid business: When you receive an email from someone, you get to see their picture with the email. This will help you remember that person who you met at the last conference and who’s written to you now! While you are reading about that person you get to see his latest updates from LinkedIn and Facebook. This gives you a sense of the person’s personality. In my opinion, bot

Sometime in January, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting with Vice President of Symantec in India – Shantanu Ghosh (he also has an interesting food & travel blog ). We discussed the emerging challenges of security landscape in India. What was surprising is apart from viruses, spamming and phishing were equally troublesome for security professionals. An interesting discussion revolved around the declining margins for security solutions. With plenty of FREE security solutions available in the market (including Microsoft Security Essentials), Symantec would be looking for new revenue models. That’s when it came to my attention that Symantec is a big player in the online archive and enterprise security solutions as well. Since then, I had been looking to understand the challenges corporate India faces in the field of security? Recently, I discovered this abstrusely named report by Microsoft – Make Noise Check Noise . The report represents a wide variety of industries includin

Here’s a question that I have been asking whenever I have had more than a handful of people around me - “How many of you use internet on your mobile phone?” And invariably the response were horribly negative. We frequently hear the great number of mobile phones that Indian consumers have been lapping up.. will this communication revolution lead to information revolution? The answer reflects in the recently released report by IAMAI. Here’s a quick snapshot of how the mobile usage in India looks like: From the hugely touted Indian mobile penetration, only 0.4% users actively use Internet. And here is what my worry is: Mobile adoption in India is leading to telecom revolution while the larger information revolution is still far away. The future of the mobile internet seems to hold some promise though. The young generation of school going and college going kids constitute around 68% of this mobile online population. When this generation grows up (probably in 10 years) they will