Opera Unite- Not convincing Yet.
This morning’s news paper took me to this article by Chris. Chris Shared his views elaborately on Unite services. There’s a good amount of conversation on his site, i would recommend you to head over to his post to get more on the discussions.
I am writing a post here in detail as i could not share all my thoughts on his site due to lack of time.
Opera Unite is a set of services that are integrated into the browser using which one can share files, photos, chat with people, and better make it your web server.
These are quite interesting features you can expect to run from a browser. I tried them yesterday, and i was really excited to see the review by Chris. I have to tell you Chris, opera deserves an appreciation for such an attempt given the fact unite is still in its alpha stages and has to go a long way. Its true that all the services are implemented pretty neatly. I felt all the services offered are really not necessary for the layman at least for majority of them. The following are reasons why i think.
1. Hosting a server on my laptop is good, but it has a long list of limitations and that is why we prefer web hosts.
2. As for as file sharing goes, there are a variety of options which i use already, why would i need to use this.
3. With respect to other services, If i am already using a lot of social sites (facebook, flickr, etc. where i am happy with what i am) then why would i be interested to move everything into opera’s services. I am sure most of my friends are not on opera’s communities.
But there are a few things i really would like to appreciate. Opera is slowly getting that polish as browser which lacked in the previous versions. It really did not seem like an alpha experience, at least not to me trying out the browser and the service. The browser still rocks when you compare it with Chrome or Firefox or Safari or Flock, etc.
Self discipline and Success
Since the day i stumbled upon the TED site, I have been a fan of TED. People who talk at TED are really exceptional and they have made it on TED because of their intellect and ideas. I really appreciate every one of them who have presented there for sharing their knowledge and making everybody wiser.
I recently got to watch Mr. Joachim on this nice interesting video. What he speaks about is really very simple, something we know about. Not all of us realize it often and capitalise with it.Well he speaks about self discipline. I would say self discipline is all about yourself and you fail at it you loose in life and the best part is you can’t blame anyone else for it but your self. I feel self control and self discipline are not two different things. The more you have control over your self the more you can groom your self. The take from the video is “the more disciplined you are the better are the chances for success”. I really enjoyed the video hope you will too. Head over to Ted Talks and keep checking them for more thought provoking Talks. BTW a big hats off to team TED!
You can download the video from here.
Feel like bashing me for this post, you can leave a line below 
. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Four Reasons y Chrome will be your default browser.
I have never found time till today to express my thoughts on the browser wars. I follow the browser wars very frequently. I not only follow the browser developments and i dare to take the risk of downloading the latest build of one and test it out. Just to tell you i have played around with Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE8, Chrome, K-meleon, Kninja, Deepnet, Flock, Amaya, Maxthon, Netscape for couple of months. I am always amused to see what browsers will be capable of in the future. I recently realized that somehow chrome has become my default browser instead of Firefox which was my default for almost 3 years prior losing out to chrome.
Rendering Engine:-
Webkit is the best (I mean it) ever rendering engine, that i have seen so far and used. Two companies(Google, apple) trust it, makes it worth looking into. Web kit is known for its speed and cold start. gecko is till on the heels of Webkit to be precise. Google was supporting Mozilla for a very long time and in spite of it they chose to go with webkit and Gecko, proves worthy.
Memory Management:-
The browser has been redesigned in such a fashion, that each tab is managed as a separate process makes it really simple to manage multiple tabs, i.e if a tab crashes due to a plug-in problem or memory problem or something, your browser will be still up and you will loose only the tab that crashed. There is not better browser than opera on memory management, i feel chrome will be there soon.
UI simplicity:-
The UI is designed to be minimal and uncluttered, which helps people view more of the web than the browser. Before Chrome, Safari had the simplest of UI, after chrome safari changed it to the chrome style, shows simple the UI really is.
Community:-
A browser gets really complete when it has an open community working on it to improve it in all possible directions, Google has created that environment for webkit, with the initiative of chromium. A lot of add-ons, new features etc will be available as the development progresses. Moving ahead chrome will have a major market share.
Chrome still is in its very early stages of development and has to travel a long way to be the best browser, but am confident its on the right track. It is rough, it crashes etc.. so it might not be your favorite for now, but you can’t stay away.
I have been and am still a fan of Firefox and i extensively try a variety of the stuff the Mozilla labs innovates. I will miss the Weave, Ubiquity and a long list of add-ons that i use, But considering the general user on the web, what matters most is speed, memory and the UI and chrome will win everyone in no time on these aspects. If you are really interested in what changes browsers will bring in tomorrow have a peek here… i seriously wish chrome also gets a similar community.
IPL BUSINESS- Larger than what U think.
It has been an year since i wrote this post. The post has attracted a lot of traffic especially the last quarter considering the hype about IPL season 2. Considering the traffic stats from search terms, I thought i should write a followup post with a better analysis of the revenue figures.
The basic Numbers of IPL are as follows. 
Television rights
Joint bid by India’s Sony TV network and Singapore-based World Sports Group secured the global broadcasting rights for 1.026 billion dollars for a 10-year period.
The deal was re-negotiated this year after the IPL cancelled the Sony-WSG deal citing poor production quality. Sony-WSG won back the rights after agreeing to pay 1.63 billion dollars for the next nine years till 2017 in an out-of-court settlement.
Dollars paid by individuals and groups at an auction in January 2008 to buy the eight teams
- 111.9 million by industrialist Mukesh Ambani for Mumbai Indians.
- 111.6 million by liquor and airline tycoon Vijay Mallya for Bangalore Royal Challengers.
- 107 million by newspaper group Deccan Chronicle for the Hyderabad-based Deccan Chargers.
- 91 million by BCCI secretary and businessman N. Srinivasan for Chennai Super Kings.
- 84 million by business group GMR Holdings to buy Delhi Daredevils.
- 76 million by Bollywood star Preity Zinta and her friends for Kings XI Punjab.
- 75 million by Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan for Kolkata Knight Riders.
- 67 million by Emerging Media group, partly owned by Lachlan Murdoch, for Rajasthan Royals.
Top IPL earners (per season, in dollars) :
- 1.55 million – Kevin Pietersen – Bangalore Royal Challengers
- 1.55 million – Andrew Flintoff – Chennai Super Kings
- 1.50 million – Mahendra Singh Dhoni – Chennai Super Kings
- 1.35 million – Andrew Symonds – Deccan Chargers
- 975,000 – Sanath Jayasuriya – Mumbai Indians
- 950,000 – Ishant Sharma – Kolkata Knight Riders
- 950,000 – Jean-Paul Duminy – Mumbai Indians
- 925,000 – Irfan Pathan – King’s XI Punjab
- 900,000 – Jacques Kallis – Bangalore Royal Challengers
- 900,000 – Brett Lee – King’s XI Punjab
- 850,000 – Harbhajan Singh – Mumbai Indians
Note: Players not available for the entire tournament are paid on a pro-rata basis per match.
India’s ‘icon’ players
Five Indian stars were given ‘icon’ status and were not put up for auction last year, thereby ensuring they played for their ‘home’ teams. They earned 15 percent more than the highest-paid player in their respective teams
- Sachin Tendulkar (Mumbai Indians) – 1.12 million dollars
- Sourav Ganguly (Kolkata Knight Riders) – 1.09 million dollars
- Yuvraj Singh (Kings XI Punjab) – 1.06 million dollars
- Rahul Dravid (Bangalore Royal Challengers) – 1.03 million dollars
- Virender Sehwag (Delhi Daredevils) – 833,750 dollars
Prize money
- Winner: 960,000 dollars
- Runners-up: 480,000 dollars
- Losing semi-finalists: 240,000 dollars
- Fifth-placed team: 160,000 dollars
- Sixth–placed team: 140,000 dollars
- Seventh-placed team: 100,000 dollars
- Eighth-placed team: 80,000 dollars
A little bit of googling lets me understand that the revenues will be shared in the following manner which i confirmed from here.
“World over, any league has three main sources of income namely media receipts, gate receipts and sponsorships. Under IPL, these three streams are categorized under central and local. Central revenues are through IPL.
A Central
1. Media rights – To be shared equally amongst franchises after removing IPL’s share. 2. 2. Sponsorship rights (IPL sponsors) – 60% of the amount collected to be distributed equally amongst the franchises.
B Local
1. Sponsorships – Team sponsorship revenues are the most variable and are dependent on the marketing skills. For example, teams like India Cements have marketed their teams based on the format of IPL – where sponsorships are sold on categories. ICL’s main sponsor is Aircel. In contrast, the other team of Deccan Chronicle will have team partners. These partners will have ownership of the team. For example, in case of an entertainment partner, anything to do with entertainment from cheerleaders to fours and sixes will be seen by that party.
2. Gate receipts – Are anticipated to be a major source of revenues. 20% of tickets are to be allocated to IPL.”
So far the predictions are that IPL Season 2 ’s Revenue will be around 10,790 cr which according to Modi is 1725 cr more than last season’s revenue.
That’s it with the facts and figures which I can share. 10,790 cr is really a huge amount of money to rake in from the common man’s interest in cricket. Now I know what my interest in cricket is worth(atleast approximately). Last year I had made a mention in my post that some part of the IPL’s revenues be spent for a social cause. I am not sure if they heard me, this year they have the HEAT programme which is aimed at spending about Rs 40 miIllion for education of the youth in South Africa. I definitely appreciate their start. Hope their spending increases drastically over the years.
Have an idea? Wanna share ur thoughts. Go ahead, leave a comment… I would love to talk to you.
Wishes!
Three days past new year and i still feel i can Wish you all a prosperous 2009! This is indeed a brief post to wish you all and to thank Guy and his team for sending the Gift. I am delighted today because i have got my hands on to Guy’s Reality Check. Its a gift, that i never expected to receive. It really is interesting, i just managed to glance it a bit.(I am yet to begin reading it).Thanks Guy, I am looking forward to getting some tips from it this year.
So far a good start and hope its betters out coz it seems like a rough year ahead for the world, am charged up to face it.. Are U?
Signs to know your company is on a decline.
What I have dared to list out here is about those small signs that hint you of a failure just before the major ones of revenues dropping or market share reducing actually show up. I was able to dig deep and find these obvious symptoms.
- Most of your important & talented employees are leaving or already have left, though they don’t share the same reasons for leaving you. If these employees are the key to your organization, if they were the pillars then its obvious that moving ahead you will see the value of their function declining. The level at which these people are moving out will tell you the factor at which that function might go down by. The higher the level, the more you decline will see in terms of revenues.
- A screwed up hierarchy structure. Its understood that if your key people are leaving, the hierarchy gets messed up. Ensure you have the right people to replace them just in time to minimize the loss. Care should be taken, that the balance in the structure is maintained and that there are enough people to work. The ratios between employees and managers need to be taken care of, and this is primary else people at the bottom will also start to move out because of pressure.
- When you are promoting people for all the wrong reasons. The worst thing that you can do to an organization is to give the wrong person the job you have. Just because a trusted key employee leaves, don’t find another employee who is just trustworthy to replace him. Do so if and only if he has the skills to take up the job at hand immediately. If he has skills that needs 6 months of grooming, promote him when he is fit to take up the responsibilities (six months is a big time,you can go bankrupt by then).
- When you have more meetings than you have time for acting upon your decisions made in those meetings. This one is a clear symptom isn’t it. Running around meetings, the entire day planning to firefight makes no sense until you implement them. So make sure you act on your decisions and then review them.
What do you think are the signs that companies can use to identify and save themselves from a decline? Do you have something to add up to this list or against this list. Just drop in a Line. We will discuss them here for the world.
A little Motivation!
Life moves on whether your live it or not. Its almost over a 100 days since I’ve posted some thing on this blog or any blog for that matter. Things have changed dramatically over these days and I feel I just have a small chance before things go even worse. These are the days when things are not right everywhere especially when there is an economic slowdown everywhere. There’s a lot of Negativity in the air that keeps me worried. This is a pretty important time in my career, where I have made some bold decisions at this point of time and I just have a few more days to prove that the decisions I have made were worthy ones for my career. To be precise I live on an edge. Oh I forgot I’ve changed the title of my blog to On the Edge! not because I live on the edge at the moment but because we all live on the Edge!
These are days when I seek motivation. Something that came as gift to motivate me, via google reader was this video which Gaurav Mishra tagged in an inspirational Post a few days ago. I didn’t want to miss this video hence I’ve tagged it to my blog as well ( I thought U would be lazy to head over to Gaurav’s post and watch the video, I would still recommend U to read his post)
Steve Jobs has always been an inspiration for me especially for an apple fan like me. He simply amazes me this time as well. Incase you haven’t watched this video yet, I bet its definitely worth 15 minutes of your life. Let me know if you have something inspirational to share.
Be More
Something that really touched me lately is this Be More Ad by O& M for Titan.
Generally I am the person you would say is very cautious of himself and hence very observant of what others are doing and especially very keen on learning from other’s mistakes. This ad just took me by surprise the first time I watched it on TV. The Script of the ad, the message and they way its presented is brilliant. Though there’s another friend here who doubts whether the ad solved its true purpose of its creation. I never before was impressed with Titan till this ad I always wished for a Seiko or a citizen, but the ad has made me consider titan as well. Though am yet not sure when I will actually buy a watch for my self.
Hope u also like it.
Alltop
This time I am not writing about something that’s not hot but definitely some thing that’s very useful. I came across ALLTOP when I started subscribing to Guy Kawasaki. I always have this desire to play around with new stuff and as usual just started exploring Alltop and guess what it just ROCKS (the WebPages r very neat and interactive and to the point). The concept is pretty simple but at the same time is very useful for lazy guys like me. It saves a lot of time for me at least; I don’t search anymore for news regarding Apple or about the latest in the Browser Wars which I am most interested about nor do I need to subscribe to lots of feeds. These days I just check out on ALLTOP. BTW thinking about how Alltop works, I recollect that REVIEWGIST which came up sometime in 2007 is also pretty similar to Alltop. Reviewgist brings reviews from the top review sites about all the Gadgets to one place just like Alltop which collects all the top stories and classifies them into different subheads. But there are lots of differences with them; one among them is how they collect their data. Review gist crawls those top review sites and condenses them and delivers it to us (sorry for the raw language, I am no software geek) while Alltop imports the feeds from the top sites and they modify it and present it. But am sure the Alltop is way ahead (web2.0 stuff) in terms of its presentation and I especially love that red banner, though it was annoying initially its kind a cool now and am used to it now. So guy’s if u aren’t using any of these, both of them are my recommendations for the month.
