The key in any web2.0 application or any social network application platform is to remember what kind of users are you interacting with.  Usually, they are not Computer Science wiz’s you are dealing with. 400 million users on Facebook . Guess what about 95% or perhaps more are just casual internet users who have basic operational knowledge of computers and web. Most of them doesn’t have knowledge of securing there privacy settings (Thats good for facebook, as they have made it complicated enough and people on top of that have no knowledge so thats even better, helps them make money)..They are not MS office Users. So Wave was a good application but perhaps for Professionals. It was for a community that is using MS office and WebEx a lot to get there stuff done – Only these kind of people can see a value in it. Now everyone who is a Professional not necessarily need these tools unless people are working on projects. So a good question to ask, out of all internet community that exist out there – how many people use collaborative application such as WebEx, SharePoint or lets say Google Waves for their daily project or work accomplishment.  The answer is ‘very little’ or perhaps a number that is insignificant with respect to entire Internet Users Sample Space. The application doesnt have a lot of demand in Internet Users sample space and thats it – there is no further reasoning needed to be endorsed. Enterprises and Organization can be a good sale point but then its difficult for organizations to adopt such a big change within themselves – it will be learning curve for them and also may bring in other interoperability issues (such as a customer might not be able to interface with Waves the easily as he does with WebEx) so the adoption phase may have some challenges. Google can’t sell into those stuff unless they invest in time and money to market it out to consumers. I can learn something about Google’s line of sight after hearing the phase out of Waves as a platform. And that is the following:

1) These guys are in haste

2) They want to make another big Impact but doesn’t have patience that may be required

3) There marketing doesn’t have a vision clear on all of their products or Perhaps they dont want to work on any project that just focuses or impacts a small group of users

4) Trial and Error is the strategy they use more often and there  product planning is not bringing results.

With all these being said, this product was not inline with Google’s expectation just because they didn’t saw it from the view point of user space that exist on internet today. Another similar failure of Google Product is Nexsus as its not going to be produced any more. The concentration now that exist is on Android which shows they want to definitely take up this Mobile Market and snatch some of Apple’s Iphone revenue. Google TV ‘s strategy of media room -Extending concept of online TV and collobrating Video Contents that exist today to a high resolution TV platform. It will require a SetTop box device which will stream live content to TV and will provide an interface to search and customize content based on users interest. Its interesting and for that purpose they have got DishNetwork, BestBuy, Adobe(as its rich flash application’s framework) and Logitech (Google TV SetTOP Box manufacture) as partners to get this product out in market in 2011. The price of one box is expected to be around 200-300 dollars range. Per Google, there are 70 Billion dollar worth of revenue in the TV domain which they are going after. Youtube content will the prime feed into this product. One of the key differential and contributor that brought strength in Google TV Product  is incorporation of Flash into HTML5 and Acquisition of On2 Technologies – On2 technologies has something called VP8 Codec which would reduce the playback complexity by 40% compared to H.264 implementation . So this would definitely uplift the content quality and gives room for scalability. VP8 is in use nearly all Youtube content and is helping to reduce complexity into playback of Higher Resolution Content.

Being a leader cannot be an easy task certainly because In my Opinion real Leaders are not made but they are born with those great instincts that defines leadership in its true sense, it does , however,  takes a toil to find those attributes in a personality. Its not a plug and play situation where one can exercise those abilities as if it was star wars and controls are on finger tips. It is never that simple in reality . Unprecedented  amount of effort one needs to put in to be recognized as Leader- Scarifies is what takes to give birth to Leaderships in its true sense.  A Leader is responsible of stakes that he takes in form of risks and decisions and is visioned to be one who has capability of rescuing its work force or followers from a situation that is depressing or disadvantageous in their interest.  Leader is suppose to think in greater interest of organization or the team he is representing. A leader is one who less thinks of his success but more about the morals and values of team, masses  or task force that he represents. A general perception of a Leader may be the one who owns big houses and mansions or has made tons of assets over a considerable period of time.  An abrupt sign of increase in wealth may not represent life style of true and credible leadership, a constant effort thus bring gradual increase in benefits but its absolutely not possible to get a spike in revenues  overnight and to be part of a true leadership that I intend to define.   Or I should rather put it this way , sudden spikes are only encouragement if they sustain for quite a long period of time .  But in my opinion, Leaders are those who carry a vision, a framework , a thought process that can enlighten several others and are means to find solutions about a particular problem or cause.  A Leader is one who has an ability to bring best out of a person and his team and can best manage them in challenging situations.  A Leader is one who bring results and has an ideology that people trust to follow. Leaders are not cursed but they are always remembered for something good they did or tried. Leaders are creative, professional, humble and never content with success but they always look at bigger picture, bigger problem to solve and great theme to evolve is always in their minds.  They create mindsets of successful people and sets goals which may lead to success or perhaps for some leaders its true that they work on the concept of  ‘eternal success’ . To me these Leaders are real ones and they can have control on almost everything that is around us. This statement is complicated and  perhaps be  a topic of  separate discussion but if  any reader my take interest in this kind of Leadership concept, I would love to elaborate it at some later time. Leaders respect Leaders and that’s the key to their success. Leadership is a blessing that is present in a personality and cannot be regarded as ‘skill’. To act like a leader is very different then ‘being a leader’ and taking ownership of things. Leader do not blame others but they have guts to face the challenge and with their extraordinary humble and responsible attitude they are confident yet careful in laying out strategy over the problem. Leaders strategies and trust teams they form. Leader carry an ability to make decision in tough times and act as a role model for their following teams. Leaders lift their game, they don’t leave the ground – to them every opportunity they get is valuable. Leaders are not lairs.  The success and respect they get is primarily because they have great personality and morals and because of this attribute they have history of bringing ease to their community, team or nation. Leaders are less in number but they tend to make an impact very effectively. Leaders are disciplined and they demand discipline at all times. Quality matters to them then Quantity. Leaders are down to earth but they are always top of the game they are in. Leaders have an ability to convey their ideology and vision that impacts their viewers and listeners. They talk simple yet are effective. They sleepless, eat less and help others as much as they can. They contribute to mother nature in some way which then contributes to the notion of Global or rather Universal peace.

Leaders are Global Thinkers and they tend to solve problems that will benefit greater masses. The magnitude of project less matters to them what values them is the end result and that is nothing but benefit in larger interest of  global  or any respective community. What concerns Leaders? that is Every other thing that is not right is their task to resolve. Some of those things that may concern leaders (endless list of action items to be continued…)

1. Lack of Environmental Control
2. Lack of Values of Environmental Importance
3. Lack of Global Strengthen Economy
4. Lack of  Control on  Nuclear Proliferation
5. Lack of policy that creates Global Harmony.
6. Lack of Jobs and Greater number of homeless people around
7. Lack of abilities in achieving Goals (Short Terms and Long terms)
8. Lack of Cleanness and Its Importance
9. Lack of Education among people and Its Importance
10. Lack of Morals in People and Its Importance
11. Lack of discipline and Its Importance
12. Lack of respect of time and Its Importance
13. Lack of Safety measures and Its Importance
14. Minority Groups that are helpless
15. Strengthening Minority groups among Majority
16. Lack of Research and Its Importance
17. Lack of Respect and Its Importance
18. Lack of Health Care and Its Importance
19. Lack of  Respect of Personal Opinions.
20. Lack of believe in Planning and Strategy and this list would never find its creative end, and thats why leaders are so important.

Leaders respect opinions and values them greatly. They are never scared of people above them as they tend to respect everyone that is around. Leader ponder and believe on self correction. Leaders are not copy cat, they have their own ways of tackling a situation. Leaders are sincere with their objectives and that is what in fact strengthens them, Leader are faithful and compassionate. Leaders are not cruel, they never hurt creation around them. Leaders have noble values and they retain their respect by being extremely humble for all the good they carry along. They blame themselves for every bad that happens. Leaders are not Selfish.

Leaders like constant innovation. It start from themselves. Known leaders have something great about them from their childhood. They were smart yet always reflected their standards that were valuable to them. Brands don’t define them and they are not impressed by defining themselves with success of others. They are in fact role model and they believe on their guts. Leaders proof themselves by their Actions. What they utter is aligned with their actions.  They retain trust and are great listeners. Leaders are not enforcer but heart winners.  Leaders suppress their rights and bring right of others up front. Leaders have credible and true story to tell. Leaders may not be perfect  but they may be considered perfect in relative terminology.  The world lacks a leader that believes on something that is far beyond  his or hers personal gains.

What kind of Leadership is required: An ideal leadership will be one that may turn peoples toward ultimate success.  Where they may not be any that is deprived of clean water. Where most people have jobs, and where do exist no Hate. Where people are ready for scarifies to bring betterment of others. One may give his chance to fulfill others. Where elders to be respected and young to be given compassionate attitude. Where they may not be anyone who is left without food. There is no one left mind by credible medical care, where everyone may be caring and respectful. Where people may not speak bad about others while they aren’t present. All good to be said and heard. Where people may be forgiving. Where there exist no depression, where there is nothing worrying that may hurt our heads. Where partners may not cheat each other, love to be spread , said and remembered. Positivity is the only way can join our hearts together and move forward together. Otherwise, we would be part of humongous sample space that is fragmented apart by greater distances and there would be no affection as the soul proceed to get closer to each other. The world today presents a scary picture that defines cruelty and injustice all around, unless that diminishes or perhaps reduced there would be great difficulty in making teams that are strong and long lasting. Short Term solutions may not be the need of time, we need Leadership that addresses all these crucial areas and be effective in their decisions such that where everyone may be able to contribute, share ideas and implement solutions that are necessary for coming generations to prosper.

I personally don’t think this is going to happen overnight and also Buzz has a totally different feeling for users who are addicted to Facebook. In addition there is a great market of users on facebook utilizing with various Applications and thats what drives them to stay there. Although Buzz is robust platform in theory but the value cannot be seen by every other user. I personally feel and I could be wrong that there is only certain class of users who may be using Buzz. I have gone around in my group of friends and I have talked to several of them. Those who are some what computer frenzy or geek may see a value or at least willing to evaluate but not every other user who may be just a computer user Folks playing games likes Farmsville, UNO or any other app on Facebook can’t see a value there in Buzz or at least those class of people have to wait to see what new gaming App Google may produce for them! Google’s platform is not for Gaming as of yet and there may be just a lot of users they may not attract on Web. Facebook will retain its market and may grow steadily the way it is – Buzz might be another platform for users but in near future I dont see someone decommissioning use of Facebook and migrating contacts to do Networking at Google Buzz.

New wave of heat has emerged up their in Sillicon Valley when Google announced Buzz implictily challenging Facebook and Twitter. Buzz’s  product design as it appears is going to have more audiences as compared to Facebook as it is meant to serve in enterprises as well. The beta testing platform for buzz before product launch according to their product Manager Bradley Horowitz was Google’s 20,000 employee work force where initially buzz got  tested. Google believes that enterprises can benefit greatly from Buzz once employed in work force.The trade secret behind the success of Facebook and Twitter is the idea of “Comments” or in twitter’s terminology “Tweets” (145 character short blog). People tend to prefer”Tweets” or “Comments” on Facebook which in practical terms are similar functionalities. This however does creates a information wave (in google terminology “buzz”) which then introduces  challenges of organizing this information and possibly use them to study more discrete subjects that are hidden in information cloud. There could  be valuable  statistics that might be off interest to people, companies or corporations and thus if you look in granular terms there lies lot of information from marketing stand point that can prove effective to businesses if there is a way of organizing such a humongous data feed that is coming in form of tweets or Facebook comments. Google’s Buzz is  a platform that will serve such highly valuable data in way that they are organized and can be used to produce other useful information. For example, what was the most discussed subject in San Francisco in the month of February. Predictions and hopes: Who is winning super bowl tonight? What type of business is more effective in San Antonio, Texas.  I personally think, Google’s prime aim is based on a philosophy not to undermine any type of information and to index as much data as possible to create a promising relevance. In a Nutshell, Google’s strategy needs to get applaud here the way they have challenged organizations such as Yahoo in Search Space, Microsoft in OS, Docs, Email and with Buzz standing as a direct challenging to world top social networking platform Twitter and Facebook. It would be interesting to see in coming days how these companies may react to this product launch and will they be able to retain the market they currently hold in social networking space.

Or perhaps its me who has been unlucky to sustain to such a cool looking device.  I have been using blackberry phone since 2006 and I didn’t experience anything negative that I can remember. Excellent phone for busy people. I use to love it when I had to use it for conference calls while I am driving (Well, its not really cool to be on a technical conference call while heading to work but I had experience those a lot).  One thing that i noted is i can easily carry out most of tasks with my right hand and dont need to get the help of both the hands to operate it. Its pretty convenient in a sense. For instance, If I happen to have one hand on steering while I am heading to work, I can still use my second hand to connect to a conference call. If that had to be a AT&T Tilt, Iphone or any other it probably wont be that easy and quick to carry out this task.

So yes that confirmed I like Blackberry’s. I have been lucky enough to get BB”s nearly at all jobs I had except when I was working at Performant Financial’s, the company policy was to give BB”s to management staff ! fair enough, I upgraded by AT&T phone line subscription with a Blackberry BOLD. so why BOLD ? Well, Advertisement really works and this one got me to it:

You must play this advert if you haven’t yet, its really cool specially the music they have it in the background. I paid like $399.00 ($100 was mail in rebate), therefore, the the phone came out to be costing like $299.00 ~ 300 bucks!  My wife gave me this as a Birthday present and I really loved it ! So just imagine, this is the first time, when I had to put out my money to buy a Blackberry. Sadingly enough, as you will see it wasn’t really a cool experience going forward….

So I thought its the best Blackberry I got, cuz its BOLD (like me ) and it looks elegant  - and it would be fun to communicate to my folks at work or my social contacts.  Its not quite true what I experienced. The speaker phone started driving nuts as it wasn’t loud and in couple of days of my use the voice got dimmed to a degree that I wasn’t able to hear people properly and shortly I started realizing that I can no more use my one hand to do all that cool stuff ! So what now? Well, call AT&T support and since I am a valued customer they would take care of me ! So the truth is AT&T tried to troubleshoot the phone – I had to go through the pain of “wiping the handheld”, AT&T tried pushing some updates but it didn’t really help. So finally, the end up sending me a replacement phone and that was the most these guys could have done. I was happy at least i would get a replacement phone that should technically be solving my problem. The shipment was done via FedEx and the phone reached to me within no time and for that I would appreciate good support from AT&T ( wish they could lower their rates too). Guess what happens now, within 2 days I received the new phone. As soon as it arrived, replaced the SIM and battery and YES it worked! Speaker phone was working fine as expected!  The next thing I did connected it to my Blackberry DESKTOP software, pushed all my contacts and media files and I am happy AT&T customer praying for them to sustain the market and fights critism done by Verizon! . Just because i touched this subject, I have to say that AT&T has a better customer support as oppose to Verizon’s.  I dont know why but it appears that they are to some degree better then Verizon! But anyways, It wasn’t to long (perhaps, a week) and now I started having the same problems again with the new replaced blackberry! Speaker phone died and I am left with the same hassle. Couldn’t do much, called AT&T went through the same SAGA – and they sent me a new phone again as replacement. Well to cut short, this happened like 3 times! Isn’t this hillarious ! The BOLD that I paid 300 bucks for got returned back to the depo 3 times. Damn! I am no more loving Black Berry’s but guess what its only BOLD that is the problem here? Who knows! All i know this is my first smart phone that I paid from my pocket got me annoyed. So the 4th time, I got this AT&T Tilt 2 phone from HTC. The customer rep made me realize that it was the best phone in the list and it should be solving the problems I am having!  I realized that the 4th time the problem was not directly related to speaker phone but Had reception issue and was directed primarily to AT&T towers which were not sending strong signals.  But then the history with BOLD wasn’t that great and to really solve the problem from Grass Roots, it was recommended to get a replacement with Tilt2. The reality is it was really the service 4th time as I was getting the same issues with Til2 as well. Therefore, I decided to keep the BB and send back the Tilt2. AT&T refunded me about $110 for bad service and have filed a case with engineering. Dont really know how effective that is going to be but I am starting to realize that the fortune BOLD brought with it wasn’t that great and my experience with AT&T has got damped greatly. I aim to try Google’s Nexus sometime soon and hopefully that would heal the wounds costing me $529 dollars. Thats quite a bit of money to heal wound caused by smartphones

Hopefully, this time it would be consistent attempt to populate my blog. life has become so busy that it barely leaves me with time to share what I have been currently doing. But I am pretty sure that going forward I will be able to give you insight to many technology related pointers and hints. Stay Tuned ! more to come shortly.