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Thursday, January 07, 2010

JyotiConnect: Executive Summary

A little over two hours ago I sent my executive summary and powerpoint presentation to Irene Hodes and Yao Huang for the Dot Com Hatchery event on January 13. This is what I sent. I hope to elaborate on the themes at this blog over the coming days leading up to the presentation. That is the social media way.

Hunger, Vision, Money

JyotiConnect Inc.
Executive Summary by Paramendra Bhagat

JyotiConnect Inc.’s vision can be encapsulated in two letters: IC. IC, as in Internet Computer. The PC ended the mainframe era. The PC will not die. But the center of gravity in the computing industry is going to shift to the IC in a rich ecosystem of computing devices from smartphones, to netbooks, to PCs, to servers, to huge data farms. The IC will be the primary way the average human being will interact with the internet in a meaningful way.

The smartphones are all the rage today as they should be. And the mobile space will bring many more people their first web experience than the PC ever could have. That is exciting. But you can’t write a term paper on a smartphone. You need a device that speaks to the human dimensions for the screen and the keyboard. The hardware will look like a laptop of today but will be vastly different. Something much simpler, much cheaper, much lighter, much stronger.

There are three components to the IC vision: connectivity, hardware and software. My company would like to tackle it in that order. One and a half billion people are online today out of more than six billion. That is not good enough. Down the line we have to be able to offer wireless broadband supported by ads. But in the short term we have to be technology agnostic in how we bring people online.

You create few pilot projects, and once you have the basics down, you grow globally through the franchise concept. That way you tap into local capital, local ad markets, and locals’ awareness of the local political, social, cultural knowledge.

The hardware part could be a great second step. And you could argue everyone but everyone is already doing the IC software. Google is in the lead. Google today is the premier IC software company.

You want a barebones operating system that runs the browser, because all your computing needs are met online. If Web 2.0 has taught us anything, it is that the people, the masses are the very center of computing. Technology is secondary. And the web is poorer for every human being who is not yet online. The push for globally universal broadband, I am calling it Web 3.0. The semantic web is not it. That would be Web 2.1. (Competing For the Web 3.0 Definition)

I was done raising my round one goal of 100K and then in February 2009 most of my investors walked away reacting to the worst economy in 70 years. I took some time off, focused on social media, and now I am taking a second crack at my idea. This is the very first round, round 1, as I call it. I am looking for 100K.

Like Steve Jobs said years ago, the PC wars are over, Microsoft won, let’s move on to the next thing. And he gave us the iPod and the iPhone. I am saying the dot com wars have been won by Silicon Valley. If the center of gravity in tech is going to shift to NYC, it is not going to be because NYC finally outdid those on the West Coast in the dot com space. I don’t see that happening. But NYC is magically suited to take the lead on Web 3.0, as I define it. My company would like to take the lead. (Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World)

Presentation

JyotiConnect Inc.
The IC as in Internet Computer Company
5 slides for 5 minutes
By Paramendra
Twitter.com/paramendra
Facebook.com/paramendra
LinkedIn.com/in/paramendra
paramendra@gmail.com
Google “paramendra”

Slide 1: The Vision

o Mainframes ---> PCs ---> ICs
o Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0
o And the visionary.
o Me, the butterfly effect, and Nepal’s magical April Revolution 2006.
o I am extremely good at vision and group dynamics.

Slide 2: The People

o Adam Carson, former Morgan Stanley banker, currently at the Tuck Business School, no longer a team member, though still a friend.
o Khushboo Vaish, IIT, IIM graduate, same school as Indra Nooyi, the Pepsi CEO.
o JP Rangaswami, CIO of British Telecom, mentor. (And If This Is Not JP Rangaswami, JP Rangaswami, Utterly Confused Of Calcutta (2))
o Anu Shukla, friend, California person, sold a company for $300 million in 2000. (Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising)

Slide 3: Step 1, Step 2, Step 3

o Step 1: Raise and burn 100K. One full timer in NYC, a pilot project in Nepal, the poorest country outside of Africa.
o Step 2: Raise and burn 1-5 million. 5-10 full timers in NYC. 20-50 full timers in Nepal and Mumbai, Calcutta.
o Step 3: Grow like crazy globally through the franchise concept.

o I was done raising round 1 money and then most of my investors walked away in February 09. I let them. This is me taking a second crack at it. Ride the upswing. The future is now.

Slide 4: Round 1

o Looking to raise 100K.
o 15-20 K for the pilot project in Nepal.
o 25-30 K for a mobile, global team of part timers.
o 50 K for one full timer in NYC.

Slide 5: Web 3.0 and NYC

o Like Steve Jobs said years back, the PC wars are over, Microsoft won. Let’s move on. And he gave us the iPod and the iPhone.
o If the center of gravity in tech is going to shift to NYC, it will not be because we will produce the next big dot com. Silicon Valley won that round. Let’s move on to Web 3.0 as I define it. We will win. No place quite like NYC. (Empire State Of Mind)

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Droid Does

Mashable story: TIME Names Gadget of the Year: Droid

Verizon Droid competes with the iPhone and Amazon's Kindle faces competition in the Barnes Noble product. For now the newcomers seem to have the buzz. Mashable thinks iPhone is the superior phone. TechCrunch thinks it is Droid. My bias is for Droid. I have a feeling the iPhone is the Mac and the Droid is the PC, poised for a wider adoption. We will see.

Monday, November 16, 2009

When O'Reilly Said 2.0

Image by Frans Persoon via Flickr

Obama not on Twitter. This makes the "humbled" tweet really interesting.
Outright book keeping.
Microsoft to Google: that was fast.
IBM eating its own dog food on business analytics.
That all in one device will be the Internet Computer. It will replace the PC, the Netbook, the smartphone, the Kindle.
When O'Reilly said Web 2.0. This interview is of outsize importance.
And what are those mistakes?
Tablet PC. Still elusive. Overhyped?
A L?
Droid does?
Slum kids' easy ways with the computer.“Where’s my Oscar?” Ha!
Mashable beat TechCrunch on page hits with Twitter marketing.
Anonymous no more.
Amazon + Twitter.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Droid Does

I have viscerally stayed away from the iPhone, for all the shaking of the culture that it has done.You could argue this Third World guy simply could not afford it, and that is why. I have admired it but I have not taken the step. My tech startup is to do with the IC - Internet Computer - vision. A key part of it is a laptop like device that competes with both the PC and the smartphone to become the center of gravity in computing. So not going for the iPhone has been to eat one's own dog food, even if that dog food has only existed

Image representing iPhone 3G as depicted in Cr...

Image via CrunchBase

so far in vision. But a browser-centric life and work style can feel like you are already living it. And if you spend as much time online as I do, when you get offline, you want to be offline. I am not much of a phone person as is. I have preferred digital communication: email, blog, Twitter, Facebook. Even digital phones carry analog baggage. Recently I have found a great use for my prepaid mobile phone. I tweet from my phone once in a while these days. You report on the world when out and about. You get a phone because you need a number for others to have.

But Droid has me excited. Android promises to deliver the smartphone for the masses. Steve Jobs is an icon, and I admire him a lot, but my democratic impulse takes me to the likes of Dell. Go where the masses are.

The iPhone has been a smaller desktop. The Android phones promise to be about web applications. Finally we are about to have smartphones for the masses. And that is not coming from the company that built the computer "for the rest of us."

Image via CrunchBase

A Big Week For The Mobile Web
And this past week was a big one for the mobile web. We got three big things we've needed badly:
1) A real competitor to the iPhone - the Droid
2) A scalable business model for mobile apps - in app transactions in free apps
3) A standard for broadcasting video (and audio) to mobile devices

Sunday, September 06, 2009

Memory Upgrade

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Friday, August 14, 2009

It's Not Dell, It's The PC

Image via CrunchBase

Dark Days at Dell BusinessWeek For company founder and Chairman Michael Dell and Chief Executive Kevin Rollins, this summer has been one mishap after another ....... its predicament may be intractable. Dell remained slavishly loyal to its core idea of ultra-efficient supply-chain management and direct sales to consumers, even as rivals have stepped up their game and markets have shifted to take away some of Dell's key advantages. Instead of adapting, critics say, Dell cut costs in ways that compromised customer service and, possibly, product quality. ........ "They're a one-trick pony. It was a great trick for over 10 years, but the rest of us have figured it out and Dell hasn't plowed any of its profits into creating a new trick." ....... [Dell's] culture only wants to talk about execution. ..... "Dell is not a fun place to work, and it's less fun now than it used to be." ....... Notebook PCs are becoming a far larger percentage of the market, but the Asian contract factories that make them for Dell also make them for other companies ...... a tightfisted approach to research and development stunts new-product innovation

Dell is not having a bad quarter or a bad year. Dell is a victim of a paradigm shift that is underway. The PC will stick around, but just like planet earth once, it will realize it is not the center of the universe. Dell was born and raised as a PC company. The chances of it doing well through the paradigm shift are slim at best.

Dell has been hit by a double whammy. One, the paradigm shift away from the PC that is underway. The netbook portends of things to come. Two, Dell has become the victim of its own success. It did well what it set out to do: churn out cheap PCs. But just like Microsoft is stuck with Windows, Dell is stuck with cheap PCs.

Blog Carnival: Bill Gates, Chrome OS
Blog Carnival: Cheap Laptops
Blog Carnival: Wimax
Blog Carnival: Internet For The Billions

Image via CrunchBase

The IC Vision: Sequencing The Components
David Gelernter: Manifesto
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing

Image via CrunchBase

Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
Dell, HP, Apple
Michael Dell
PC
The WiMax Appeal
The $100 Computer
Not Hardware, Not Software, But Connectivity

Friday, May 22, 2009

Android Netbook

Android revolutionizing the mobile space and then sturdily moving into the Netbook space is kind of like Gmail coming offline into the Outlook space. The lines are blurring. The competition is heating up.

The Netbook space is not a subset of the PC space. While the PC space seems to have stagnated, the Netbook space has seen some action. The Netbook is half way between the PC and what I call the IC, Internet Computer.

The beauty of a free, functional operating system is it brings the price down, and so you have Dell running up and down the street.

Will Microsoft counter with a stripped down version of Windows, one that might go for $10? Since we know they don't do free.

If all the operating system needs to run is a browser, how much stuff do you need, really?

On The Web

Skytone Alpha 680 Android-powered netbook spotted | Google Android ... Chinese manufacturer Skytone. ...... The Alpha 680 is expected to retail for around $250 and be available sometime in Q3 2009. ....... nice to see what appears to be progress on the Android netbook front.
Android Set for Netbook Leap? sees Android making the jump off of smartphones and into the netbook arena in the near future ..... Android taking between 10% and 15% of the netbook market within two years ..... Netbooks and laptops are a big growth area; they have higher growth potential than smartphones even ..... certainly within Android’s best interests to find its way onto as many devices as possible ...... In time, it will be interesting to see how many different gadgets are hosting Google's operating system
Freescale Android Netbook for $199, Coming Soon? | Android Central a summer 2009 availability and a price point of around $199.
ASUS coming up with a Google Android netbook? | GadgetMix.com!::.. ASUS has already allocated a team of engineers to work upon an Android-based netbook and they will able to fully develop the Android-based netbook by the end of this year. It will be interesting to see the place for such a netbook, where 90% of the netbook market is using the old and trusty Windows XP as their OS. One reason that folks at ASUS may be looking upto the Android platform is the fact that it is free. ...... there are plenty of linux custom distros which offer full firefox even in the instant-on OS.
Android Netbooks Tested By Google | Android Phone Fans They were even testing out Android on a netbook… LAST YEAR! ...... back in the day somebody had almost got Android running on a mini PC - this was a year ago or more ..... I wouldn’t discount the possibility of seeing a gBook of sorts that comes with all Google products. That means based on Android, Chrome Browser, Google Gears for using Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets, Google Reader and all down the line. ....... who wouldn’t want a super cheap netbook running Android?
Dell Demonstrates Android-powered Mini 10v Netbook - Laptop News ... We've heard that many netbook manufacturers are planning to put Android on their netbooks, but Dell has gone a step further and proved that it's testing "something called Android." ..... three Mini 10vs running Dell's vanilla Ubuntu, Ubuntu Netbook Remix and, most interestingly, Android's Cupcake build. ...... Who doesn't want a "very nice, little, very small and very snappy little operating environment," which "actually runs very nicely," after all?

A sneak peak into Alpha 680, one of the first Android netbook ... Jan 2, 2009 Thought Android was just for mobile phones? Think again. Matthäus Krzykowski and Daniel Hartmann needed only four hours to compile Android for the Asus EEEPC 1000H netbook. .... The netbook market is one that Microsoft has not completely gotten seized, since most netbooks don't have the hardware to handle Windows Vista. .... leaves enough room for Google's Chrome and Android to make some noise ..... Google and Intel are already in cahoots in bringing Android to a netbook platform.
Android Netbooks on the Horizon? | Mobile Technology ...
The Coming Android Invasion the Linux-based Android could pose a real threat to Windows XP, which runs on the majority of netbooks, and to the forthcoming Windows 7

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Apple's Mobile Space: Sizzling

Granted Apple did not invent the mobile space or the digital music space like it invented the Personal Computer space, but it has done a very good job of reinventing. You could argue Microsoft was not first with word processing, spreadsheets and operating systems, but it did a slam dunk job of defining and totally taking over that space, the PC software space.

It is interesting to me how Apple has so reinvented itself. The creative genius of Steve Jobs has been at play. You could argue Yahoo did not perform a similar second act. Maybe Yang made the big mistake of making someone else the CEO for a few years. Also Yang never declared that Google won the search war like Jobs declared Microsoft won the PC war, that war is over, he said upon taking back the helm at Apple in the late 1990s. But then it is hard to see many directions that Yahoo could go right now. How would it differentiate? Or has it become an old, tired company?

But Apple continues to be at the high end market. It sells its products to people who will buy at any price. It is about cool, not cheap.

Apple's mobile space has been sizzling. It keeps relaunching its hit products. Like there would be Windows 95, then again Windows 98, the iPhone is the god that keeps giving. And with the genius stroke of opening up the platform to outside developers, perhaps learned from Facebook, things really took off, both for Facebook and Apple.

The ecosystem of the computing experience has become so much richer. More is to follow, for sure. The company continues to fascinate, the founder continues to fascinate. And all the while Apple keeps tinkering with the PC space, its original space.

Angelsoft
Cherple
Jezebel
Gizmodo

In The News

For Apple, 2008 Was a Very Good Year PC World Over the past twelve months, the number of Apple-branded products on the street has become so broad and ubiquitous.... a year that easily ranks as one of the most significant in its 31-year-history. ..... all data on a lost or stolen phone to be remotely wiped .... The App Store concept may prove more revolutionary to the smart phone industry than the iPhone itself. ...... In March, iTunes became the No. 1 music retailer in the world, ousting Wal-Mart from the top spot. ...... With Snow Leopard, Apple will focus on performance and code bloat -- aiming to speed things up and reduce the amount of hard drive space the software required. ..... a leaner and significantly faster operating system. .... innovation ruled Apple in 2008 .... Apple has always been an innovative company, but perhaps no more so than in 2008. Even as other companies pull back from exploring new ground because of the economic downturn, Apple continues to be a pioneering company on a variety of fronts. I won't speculate at this point about what's ahead for the company in 2009, but I expect that there will be at least one or two surprises.
What 2009 May Bring for All Things Google
Dell Turnaround Hits Bump With Reorganization Woes CNNMoney.com the 10-month-old restructuring program of the world's second-biggest computer maker is in trouble. ..... Since the beginning of the year, Dell's stock price has fallen 58%. ..... Jarvis was in charge of a corporate image makeover intended to promote the company as an innovator of cutting-edge products, rather than a discount maker of commodity PCs.
Is Hewlett-Packard eyeing stake in Satyam? Economic Times The global market for computer services is estimated to be around $748 billion. .... IBM has over 73,000 professionals in India and Accenture some 37,000.
I woke up this morning and my Zune was gone CNET News
Yahoo, Intel have high hopes for Internet TV CNN Intel concluded that unlike the PC, TVs are social. ..... Another difference from PCs: it must be simple and reliable .... People in the U.S. spend about 5 times more time watching TV than using a computer, Bell said. Globally, it's a factor of 25 ...... advertising-supported television ..... And nobody wanted yet another remote control. .... Few, though, wanted a full-on Web browser, nor a keyboard to clutter up the room.
Has Chrome Pushed Google Over The Evil Edge? eWeek If you have a browser, you wield a great deal of influence over the Internet software market. ...... Imagine if Google could duplicate the ad-serving success of search on Chrome. .... Chrome effectively put Google in Microsoft's league, just on the Web instead of the desktop.
Google's Top Ten Products (More Or Less) Washington Post Google's main search engine tops the list with an estimated 136.6 million unique visitors in the U.S. Then comes Google Maps (36 million), Image Search (31.7 million), and Gmail (10.5 million). ...... YouTube would be second with 70 million unique U.S. visitors, and Blogger would be in the top 5 with 23.5 million .... Book Search visitors are now at 8.4 million vs. 7.4 million for Google News
What 2009 May Bring for All Things Google PC World Android will at best keep pace with Apple's mobile juggernaut in 2009
A Tough Year for Yahoo New York Times the failed merger negotiations with Microsoft and the failed advertising partnership with Google ...... two rounds of layoffs, seemingly endless rounds of reorganizations and a sense that they were riding on a rudderless ship. ..... a peek at one of the company’s high profile product efforts: a version of its popular Yahoo Mail that was rebuilt into a powerful communications hub
Alaska Air Taps Oracle To Build Customer Loyalty InformationWeek
IBM ThinkPad T43 Laptop: $394.99, save $355.01 Cheap Laptop
IBM bares next five tech innovations Inquirer.net SOLAR technology in clothes, “talking” to the Internet and personal “digital shopping assistants:” ...... “thin-film” solar cells, a new type of cost-efficient solar cell that can be 100 times thinner than silicon-wafer cells and produced at a lower cost. ....... your doctor will be able to provide you with a genetic map that tells you what health risks you are likely to face in your lifetime and the specific things you can do to prevent them, based on your specific DNA — all for less than $200. ...... Genetic mapping will radically transform healthcare .... In places like India, where the spoken word is more prominent than the written word in education, government and culture, “talking” to the Web is leapfrogging all other interfaces ...... “voice sites”
Micron Links with Sun to Bolster Lifespan of Flash-Based Storage Trading Markets
You Need AMD In 2009 Motley Fool
Russia prepares to halt gas supplies to Ukraine Reuters
Microsoft: Zune Glitch Caused By Leap Year Clock Bug CNNMoney.com

Airspan Selected for WiMAX Network in Okinawa, Japan CNNMoney.com
wireless broadband CNET News
Telcos look to benefit from broadband funding CNET News

There’s Gold in Them iPhones Washington Post The mobile-computing space looks a bit like the early days of personal computers, when different operating systems were competing to be king.

5 predictions for 2009 CNet
Web 2.0 entrepreneur
counts his blessings
For Zune, a rocky
start to new year
Macintosh at 25: Still the innovation leader On January 24, 1984, the Macintosh came into the world, starting the second major revolution in the personal computer industry. Steve Jobs and team took some lessons from Xerox PARC and created the first user-friendly, mass market computer.
China lifts roadblock for 3G phones
Daily Tidbits: Amazon isn't alone in its success
Dell regroups around four customer segments
A computer revolution through a child's eyes
Networking predictions for the new year money will be as tight as a Minnesota Senate race next year
Gawker Media sells Consumerist blog
HP upgrading Home Server lineup, Apple may follow suit
What's in store at CES 2009 Thin TVs will be big. .... a new line of ultrathin laptops from Dell
12-inch Eee PC spotted
Quad-core MacBook Pro on the way?
What good are Steve Jobs and Bill Gates without Josh Silver?
2009: Netbook or notebook?
Microsoft outlines pay-per-use PC vision
Music moguls’ latest strategy: Zig then zag
Universal Music seeing ’tens of millions’ from YouTube
Lifestreaming in Obamaland Citizens and paparazzi armed with camera phones and a variety of other multimedia devices will chronicle every movement he makes in public and post it online. ..... The forthcoming Obama White House will be treated like a reality TV show or West Wing, broadcast 24x7 on the Internet.

A Backlash Grows in Bangalore Over Tech Revolution BusinessWeek fewer than 5% of Bangaloreans have ever been inside an airplane ..... The software industry, he says, has turned the city into a glorified sweatshop. "Where is the innovation?" ....... with growing tax revenues, the city has been able to add bus lines and is building a subway system
Bringing Broadband to the Urban Poor
Tesco: 'Wal-Mart's Worst Nightmare' Tesco will continue to grow at an average of 11% annually through 2012, enabling it to overtake France's Carrefour (CARR.PA) to become the world's second-largest retailer by 2012. ......... unrivaled ability to manage vast reams of data and translate that knowledge into sales ....... the best and broadest range of house brands from any retailer. ...... runs the world's largest and most successful online grocery operation and is Britain's biggest private-sector employer, with 280,000 staff
Ten Stories that Defined Broadband in 2008 more than 400 million broadband users around the planet .... In sharp comparison to the U.S., WiMAX technologies are taking off in emerging telecom economies such as India, a trend that is predicted to gather momentum in 2009 and 2010.
GigaOM Network: On Twitter, Followers Aren't Really Friends
GigaOM Network: Cisco's Misguided Foray Into the Living Room
GigaOM Network: Apple's Got a War Chest of Cash
Gazprom Stokes European Energy Worries
Slovakia Joins Decade-Old Euro Zone
Britain's GDP Will Decline at Fastest Pace Since the 1940s expects the UK’s gross domestic product to decline by 2.9 per cent in real terms over the next year ..... Business investment – forecast to collapse by more than 15 per cent in 2009 ..... “Despite the public declarations by the government that the banks ought to be lending more it is clear that the primary concern of many of our largest banks is to shore up their balance sheets and, for those on the end of the government bail-outs, to pay back their Treasury paymasters.” ...... “With few incentives for banks to behave otherwise, credit availability to businesses may become even worse during 2009.”
More and More Africans Risk Sea Crossing to EU Right wing interior minister Roberto Maroni said on national radio that the migrants will be swiftly thrown out. ...... a significant proportion were also fleeing conflict zones, such as Somalia and Eritrea. .... Malta recently passed a law to automatically detain illegal migrants for 18 months ..... since 1988 at least 9,400 people have died at sea trying to get to Europe

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Thursday, January 07, 2010

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Monday, November 16, 2009

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Sunday, September 06, 2009

Friday, August 14, 2009

Friday, May 22, 2009

Wednesday, December 31, 2008