GoogleTV for emerging markets...

GoogleTV can be good for emerging markets (to India, for sure) - as number of households with DTH Set-top boxes are higher than Broadband subscriber base & the power of delivering internet (both text & video content) will be a great way to make people become net literate... I know the GoogleTV, may not be aimed at personal consumption of internet on TV & more targeted for family / group viewing, but it could well be the way to market in India.

Now, is there at an alternate way to make the solution available... for India - as the GoogleTV enabled Set-top boxes might be at least 4 - 5 yrs away from being affordable to Indian consumers.

I think yes, using streaming internet as video technology by the DTH Companies... could it be considered as one of the VAS in STB to open any website page & browse the content?

Challenges... adoption of MHP Standards in STB & percentage of compliance is key!

Idea: Webmail, read receipt?

Has there been a time, you sent out a blast email to 100's of your friends or colleagues (mostly to their personal id's - webmail) & wondering, who all read the email?

It seems to be a simple solution that Y!, GMail, Hotmails of the world can implement, by using the same concept as GoogleAnalytics does to keep count of people who have visited a website. Let me describe this in detail below... (hope GMail developers read this & implement :))

1. Every Y! or GMail user should have an ability to enter their GoogleAnalytics (or similar tracking software) code, that should report their email read metrics

2. Email Compose - should have an option, "Do you want to know, if the receipient read the email?" - this option can be chosen by users, who need it

3. Y! or GMail - read email web page (that displays the email), should use the GoogleAnalytics solution, with the senders code

4. GoogleAnalyics - Javascript code will take care of sending the reader analytics, that can be later analysed by the sender on his Google Analytics account.

Good idea... do comment, if you think was a stimulating thought!

-Bhaskara

Data Provider Partners...

If you are building a new software product, say "changing" the way a certain industry works from being manual to be automated, one of the biggest challenges is to show the value in the product to prospective buyers. It's a chicken & egg problem - "no proven data, hence no customers - no customers, hence no data"

I have been thinking about this & found one possible approach to solve this... read along & give me your comments.

• Design / Architect the product using as much possible inputs from the industry experts, do user interviews, work in the domain for a while (if you don't have exposure) etc
• Build a prototype to show, while speaking to the industry veterans, it helps in sharing the idea / concept much easily - than just speaking about it
• Customers may not signup, because of lack of confidence right? Try to engage them as "data provider" partner, collect all their current manual data & upload into your system
• Anonymise (remove the company name, demographics etc) the data - as much possible and use this as base to run through various business flows, make sure the software is working as expected
• Also - use the data collected (anonymous) as suggestions or boundary conditions data to new or trial customers (whom you have been finally able to convince to come onboard) - they would be happy to see, that system is providing some guidance!

It's not the complete solution, but a possible approach that can be useful for enterprise products.

Thanks
Bhaskara

Idea : Recycling Plastic Bag

Thinking green in the week of "World Earth Day"

We all use plastic bags - from grocery, apparel, utility store etc... but very few of us recycle them in India. Only way a plastic bag is probably recycled now is through some separation of plastic bags that are thrown into the waste & % of this recycle is very low.

Here is an idea to improve this situation in India, at least to start with metro regions...

• Make recycle quality plastic bags, that can be branded to the retails needs (Spencer, Foodworld etc)
• Print a text on the bag, if the user "returns" these cover back into a designated collection points - he would get around INR 25p or 50p (depending on value of recycling)
• Put up collection points, that would have "recycle bins" at the retail outlets or tie-up with city corporation & setup at Post Offices or government buildings
• We will need smart machines that can accept "clean" - recycle quality covers, count them & dispense money back for the user

this seems a noble way of giving something back to the environment... looking forward for people in this domain of plastic bags, recycle experts to validate this & take it forward.

-Bhaskara

Idea : Creating commercial free radio channel...

Are you music lover & hate commercials on the radio channel? then... read on, have an idea to build a product to solve this!

Solution:
Add-on channel on radio, that would buffer songs / music from all other channels & deliver a commercial free music, with ability to use "next", if you do not like a particular song!

What we will need?

1. Multi-Channel Tuner component
2. In-memory buffer to store last 10mins of music from each channel
3. Music analyzer that can differentiate between commercial & music / song
4. Pick next random song / music, after the current song completes
   

Process / Implementation
Using the multi-channel tuner component, tune into all available radio frequency music channels in the region & buffer the streaming music from each of the channel for a duration of at least 10minutes. Build a music analyzer component that can differentiate between commercials & actual song / music, this would be a core logic on the backend.

User tunes into this new commercial free channel, then we pick one of the random channels content, pass it through analyzer & skip to the beginning of the song... if a commercial break comes after this song, then we repeat the process & pick any other random channel for the song... you might have guessed by now, it would be live FM transmission played by this channel, but delayed by 5 or 10mins, which is ok... we don't really listen to LIVE music on Radio!


Next Steps?
Several next steps... to make this idea into reality... below are some of the top few, if you are interested in this - drop in your comments or send me an email!

1. Review, if this is better to be done as complete software on backend & broadcast another commercial free channel on FM? or create a custom physical add-on that can be attached to any radio?
2. Research about any other similar real FM mash-ups like this already?
3. Legal angle / issues with this? would FM channels object for content being buffered & re-broadcasted? they really don't own the content... should be fine?

-Bhaskara