Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Data Centers And Light Phones

World map depicting Asia Esperanto: Mondmapo b...
World map depicting Asia Esperanto: Mondmapo bildiganta Azion EspaƱol: UbicaciĆ³n de Asia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If the data centers are pervasive enough and powerful enough, your phone can be light as light. The two extreme ends feed on each other. Larry Ellison is right. There is no cloud. What we refer to as cloud is really these data centers. I am surprised Google lags so far behind in Asia. And I am guessing it lags even further behind in Africa and Latin America. Come on, Google, you can do better than this.

New Google Asia servers expected to bring 30% speed boost when they go live later this year
the new servers could provide up to a 30 percent improvement in the speed of Google services in Asia .... Google already operates seven data centers in the US and facilities in Finland, Belgium and Ireland, but the lack of an Asia center has likely inhibited the company’s potential for growth in the region
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The Underbanked, The Underserved



There is a lot of room for for profit microfinance.

Tech’s Hot New Market: The Poor
some 2.5 billion people globally lack access to basic financial services like checking accounts, debit accounts, credit, and insurance. Though not integrated into the mainstream financial system, they will still spend around $6 trillion annually
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Tuesday, January 01, 2013

Snapchat, Poke And Facebook

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase
You end up feeling like you have seen this movie before. Facebook tried to do in FourSquare. FourSquare's popularity skyrocketed after Facebook's try.

Pokey
Snapchat, the trendy smartphone app that lets you send photos and videos that self-destruct after a few seconds ....... Facebook constantly “roams the tech universe in search of interesting technology, then mercilessly assimilates all the best stuff into its ever-larger catalog of features.” Over the last couple years it has copied the defining ideas behind Foursquare, Twitter, Google+, Groupon, GroupMe, Instagram, Quora — and now Snapchat. .... The only reason that the app could acquire millions of users in a few months’ time is because Snapchat spread through each of its users’ Facebook friends. Instagram and Pinterest, the two other recent social-networking successes, also benefited tremendously from their users’ Facebook’s connections. .... Every photo that people were sharing through Instagram was a dagger at the heart of Facebook, the world’s largest photo site. That’s why Facebook attempted to copy Instagram—see its Camera app—and then had to buy it. Similarly, every message that you send to your Facebook friends through Snapchat is a lost opportunity for Facebook. That’s why Facebook had to squash it. ... But Poke is already losing to Snapchat in the app standings. Like Facebook’s failed imitations of Instagram and Quora, Poke’s quick decline shows that if Facebook wants to stay on the vanguard of online communication, it needs to act even before it sees an opportunity—by the time somebody else has had success with something, Facebook’s version isn’t going to catch on.
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