Next generation newscast

Is it time for cyborgs to deliver all news? All automated with no auditing or editing from humans?

Check out News at Seven - a project by Nate Nichols and Sara Owsley, Computer Science graduate students at Northwestern University's Intelligent Information Laboratory (InfoLab ).

The site claims,

News at Seven is an automatic system that crafts daily news shows. It finds the news you are interested in; edits it; finds relevant images, videos, and external opinions; and then presents it all using a virtual news team working in a virtual studio. News at Seven is a uniquely compelling experience that can present traditional news--augmented with supplemental images, videos, and opinions from the blogosphere—all without human intervention.

Techcrunch has some comments on them, basically saying that they did not find it useful for anyone. Nonetheless the technologist in me is thrilled. It is a pretty good news product. Services such as News at Seven have the potential to form the bridge between the way *majority* of people across the world are used to consuming news and the evolving new way in which news is being delivered.

Mercury new's slide show on India

Worth a quick look.

Happy XMas, new year and all that...

How complicated can it be to wish your friends and family? Check out the most complex greeting ever posted by Vinny. Here is an excerpt to pique your interest...

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, nonaddictive, gender neutral celebration of the summer solstice holiday, practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

As for me, I simply wish you all Happy Holidays!

Computing on thumb drive

I had talked about this idea before in a post earlier... now some undergrad in India has done it with OpenSolaris. Fantastic!

A great piece - Failure and fallure

I remember reading the essay by Jim Collins where he draws leadership lessons from his experience with rock climbing when it was first published.

Re-reading it now, I find the timeless piece just as inspirational and perhaps resonating all the more strongly...

Joe meet's Bill G

A *really* old post from Joe Kraus that I found entertaining... worth checking out if you have some time to waste.

A little bit of inspiration...

LiveBooks helps professional photographer create online presence, control content and connect with audience. While browsing their site and offering I stumbled upon August Bradely's portfolio (a must check-out!).

As I enter the final few months of my MBA experience, I have been contemplating various career options and dealing with the possibility of taking up widely different jobs. August's brief bio hit home an important point - to pursue your passion!

The Venice Project

From the The Venice Project Blog

We are in the process of launching a secure P2P streaming technology that allows content owners to bring TV-quality video and ease of use to a TV-sized audience mixed with all the wonders of the Internet. All content on The Venice platform is provided by content owners directly, and it's all protected with the highest standard of encryption and we are working within the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) framework to ensure that it complies with appropriate content protection and ownership regulations.

These are people who were behind success of Skype so definitely worth keeping an eye on...

MediaTube from CBS,NBC,Viacom,News corp ...

NYT writes about recent effort by media companies to create a competing offering for YouTube.
 

"I think people have been trying to figure out: 'Do we take a check from Google, or do we create our own game?' " said another executive who has been in the negotiations said. "But that Google check comes only once. The other option is to create something that is capable of becoming a big asset and controlling our own game."

While no one can dispute the value of sitting on a huge pile of content. That is undeniable a great asset for media companies, I am skeptic about any effort that has so many players trying to put together a simplified product for end users. Almost always each player has his own agenda and alignment of interest is difficult, to add to this Google factor, various partnerships that Google has and the check's that it can write today. I think this effort will turn out to be a good negotiation card for the media players to play against Google/YouTube, and that does have value, but nothing more.

TV to Go

Recently came across this site Zattoo.

Interesting offering... they describe the product as high-quality, long-play video delivery with plenty of channels to choose from and delivered via browser, i.e no downloads required. 

I have not be able to try it out as they are available only in Europe for the moment but if they deliver all the things they promise, they might be on to something...

Fighting identity theft

A few classmates of mine have been working on ideas to prevent identity theft.

Here is a plug for their recently launched website - http://www.consumeradoption.com/index.html

Snap...

Trying out Snap on this blog.. I think it is cool. (-:

We are smarter than me - part II

A few days back I wrote about efforts by Wharton Publishing to involve a large community in one of it's publishing projects. Now Guy Kawasaki is planing to write another book and this time he is 'open sourcing' the content.

Is this the new way to write books? How does the 'wisdom of crowed' reflect the content? How well will the books be received? How much room will these efforts leave for brilliant insights from an expert - the author?

Begin it now...

Loved the quote so much that I am reproducing the entire post from Silicon MBA's blog

Graham Weaver, who founded a very successful fund (Alpine Investments) when he was in business school, came to speak to a class of mine the other day. He related a remarkable quote from Goethe as he urged us to take the plunge and commit to a road less travelled. The quote really reasonated with me so enjoy!


"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

Begin it now...

Loved the quote so much that I am reproducing the entire post from Silicon MBA's blog

Graham Weaver, who founded a very successful fund (Alpine Investments) when he was in business school, came to speak to a class of mine the other day. He related a remarkable quote from Goethe as he urged us to take the plunge and commit to a road less travelled. The quote really reasonated with me so enjoy!


"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

Begin it now...

Loved the quote so much that I am reproducing the entire post from Silicon MBA's blog

Graham Weaver, who founded a very successful fund (Alpine Investments) when he was in business school, came to speak to a class of mine the other day. He related a remarkable quote from Goethe as he urged us to take the plunge and commit to a road less travelled. The quote really reasonated with me so enjoy!


"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

We are smarter than me, part II

A few days back I wrote about efforts by Wharton Publishing to involve  a large community in one of it's publishing projects. Now Guy Kawasaki is planing to write another book and this time he is 'open sourcing' the content.

Is this the new way to write books? How does the 'wisdom of crowed' reflect the content? How well will the books be received? How much room will these efforts leave for brilliant insights from an expert - the author?

Capital efficienty the holy grail for building software companies

Will Price has a good post on how capital efficiency is the holy grail for building software companies. Another aspect that I like about the post is that it proves the point with some good data and does that in an efficient manner.

Cognitive Dissonance

WSJ has a nice piece on cognitive dissonance. I won't say much here except it is well worth the read.

We are smarter than me...

Wharton School Publising is experimenting with Wiki style involvement for a book on management. The press release mentions that over a million business professionals an scholars have been invited to participate in this effort. I am not sure what the time line is but it would be interesting to follow how this effort pans out...

More Than a Million Invited to Write and Edit First Collaborative Book on Management Best Practices
Taking a page from Wikipedia®, publishing giant Pearson, under its Wharton School Publishing imprint, has embarked on a new book publishing project that could involve tens of thousands of authors and editors. Starting last month, more than a million business professionals and scholars -- including faculty, students, alumni, and newsletter recipients from Wharton and MIT's Sloan School of Management -- started receiving messages inviting them to collectively write and edit the book, tentatively titled We Are Smarter Than Mewww.wearesmarter.org). The book's content will examine how Web 2.0 technologies such as social networks, wikis, and blogs can benefit the business enterprise.

10x in 2 years

Cannot agree more with JSharp on how start-ups need to be aiming for 10x in 2 years.

Life at a hyper-ventilating, highly-strung, unstable startup is entirely different. At a startup, you are expected to work 25x harder for 5 times the return - in 20% of the time. Put simply, your target return is 10x growth in the value of the equity within a *two* year period from product launch. 10x in 2 years.
....

Building a "ten-bagger" (a startup that grows 10x in value within two years) is not hard. Every month, someone comes along and shows you how it can be done - YouTube, Skype, PayPal, Google. The key is making sure the people at your startup *understand* the 10x in 2 years rule.

However, I am not sure if it is as easy to be a 'ten-bagger' as JSharp suggests. I guess finding, recruiting and retaining people who share this mentality is very hard, and maintaining the culture, momentum and focus of the team over two highly uncertain years is harder.