Windows Phone App Wish List for India

Here is the wish list of must have apps for India.

Must Have Travel Apps
1. Booking for Meru Cabs and other Cab services;
2. Metro Schedules and Live status for Delhi, Bangalore and other metros
3. Redbus, APSRTC, KSRTC etc for inter city bus travels
4. IRCTC ticket booking and IndianRail live train status for train service
5. Makemytrip and flightstats for air travel

Must Have News sites
1. ESPN Cricinfo
2. Newshunt has amazing apps on iOS and Android. You can read most of the popular daily regional and english new papers

Must Have Entertainment Sites
1. Raaga, Musicindiaonline or similar sites like Saavn for music streaming.
2. Live FM Stations RadioMirchi, Red FM etc..
3. Bigflix

Big Name Windows Phone Apps for India

I was in for a little surprise when I launched 'AppFlow' app on my Samsung Omnia with Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) last night to see a few India specific apps in the 'New and Impressive' list. Curiously all of them were launched in the Market Place on 28th December 2011. I suspect it has got some thing to do with Nokia Lumia launch. Nokia is claiming around 750 - 1000 India specific apps would be launched in the coming days.  I suspect we might see a marketing campaign launched soon to highlight the local apps.

So far I have found following official name brand apps in the Market Place.

Times Of India Link
Economic Times Link

NDTV Link

NDTV Good Times Link

IBN Live from Network 18 Link

Money Control from Network18 Link
Bollywood Hungama Link

India Today Link
Business Today Link
Mid-Day Link

Book My Show Link
Flipkart Link
SnapDeal Link
Zomato Link

The All-Star Game of the Web

Look at the players - Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, News Corp's MySpace, Time Warner's AOL.
It all started Google's unstoppable growth in Web advertizing at the expense of others. Despite of numerous high quality efforts by Microsoft, Yahoo and others, there is no stopping the Google's march. So MS cannot see itself fighting Google on its own on the web, wants to buy Yahoo in the hope that 2 is better than 1. Yahoo then tried to run away from MS to court News Corp to maintain its independence. News Corp didn't see itself able to compete MS offer and tried to join MicroSoft in the deal. MS see no benefit bringing in News Corp when it can have Yahoo all for its own. Yahoo doesn't want to have anything to do with MS, tries to tag in with AOL and its even prepared to work with the player that is responsible for all its problems, i.e. Google to keep itself independent.

It'll be interesting to see how this game ends. To me, it doesn't look like any of the outcomes would even come close to challenging Google's domination on the web advertizing. You can't beat an innovating market leader at its own game. MS should have known it from its Zune experience. Xbox experience has got more to do with Sony's bigger plan to push BluRay.

MS, instead of buying Yahoo to play Google over the web, should take the game to a different battle field - In-Game advertizing for Xbox, Contextual Advertizing for Television with IPTV, In-car advertizing with Sync or other GPS and what not. If it doesn't make its moves on other fronts faster than it is doing now, it'll be too late.

Yahoo, there is no syngergy to go with MS or AOL or even NewsCorp. It'll be another business deal that would result in different degrees of failure. For Yahoo the game should be to be independent and work with everyone. Be the media company it always supposed to be. Delivering the content and services to its user community whether they are on the web or tivo or mobile or gps or facebook or myspace. Be the no.1 destination and monetize the traffic as best as you can.

Google is at the top of this game with majority of the marketers in its fold. Just sit tight and make no mistakes.

It's not Google, It is Adobe!

Looks like Adobe has the best chance to be a Microsoft Killer!!!

Sure Google is doing great on the web, but that was never Microsoft's money making machine. It's strength is its operating 
system, its development platform and the office suite where MS makes most of its money which it could funnel into the newer fronts. It could sustain losses for multiple years for its Xbox platform and Mobile OS and of course it would do that with 
Zune which is soon going to be a force in the MP3 player market. Google is putting its billions to take the Office suite with its web based apps. But the fact is that it is no where close to challenge MS on that front and it would be few years before it could come up with a serious challenger. Of course MS is not going to sit sucking its thumbs. Already there is a major push 
with MOSS to improve collaboration using the office tools. Also Google doesn't have much experience with Enterprise Business sales, which is on a different plane when compared to Adwords accounts it has got.

But it is different with Adobe, whose intentions are getting clearer by the day. It has already got a great foot hold in the small business with it Creative Suite and its Macromedia web tools. And it has got a dedicated army of developers who use their tools. It started with the online versions of its creative suite. Then came the killer Adobe Integrated Runtime, which I think is the future of the software with its unique ability to bring the best of the desktop and web worlds together and has very little learning curve for the scores of the web developers to adopt to. With the huge success of Mac OS X in the recent days and lack of cross platform support with .net (they are trying), there is a great potential for Adobe to become the choice for the developer community. And then it has Adobe flash which is on 98% of the browsers and is improving with every version. 
Now it is coming with the Office suite based on AIR. With its amazing presence in the small business world in both PC and Mac worlds and its connections with the web developer community, Adobe has all the armour to take on MS .net  and their office suite. 

I think Google has to stick with its ad selling business and take it to television, radio, news papers, magazines and hoardings and make the most of the 1 trillion dollars of Ad Money out there.
And leave it to Adobe to cut the life line of Microsoft.

Do No Evil (Series)

"Viacom is a company built from lawsuits, look at their history," Schmidt said on Friday.
"Look who they hired as CEO, Philippe Dauman, who was the general counsel for Viacom for 20 years," he added.

Google takes swipe at Viacom

Now it is getting personal.
You built an empire by pirating the copyright material, i.e youtube. You are making money off the content you do not own. And when they ask that you should do something about it you didn't care. And when they file a law suit, you come around and abuse them. When you can screen sexual or racist content from appearing on youtube, why can you not screen copyrighted content? Which part of it is not Evil. May be you can get out of the court unscathed but that doesn't make what you are doing any less evil.

It just shows that they all are the same, Evil Corporates.

Apple and MS

Hmmmm.... i like apple products... but am not a great fan. I particularly don't like the smugness of the apple fanboys. I do have a Powerbook which I like very much. I have ipod shuffle which I repent buying. I don't think Mac OS X is a better OS than Windows XP or Windows Vista. Infact I like the bright colors and the ease of use of Windows and all the software that is available on windows. The only thing I miss in windows is the 'expose' which can be set up using 3rd party softwares. But there are a whole lot of features I miss when I am using a Mac. I think what makes Mac OS X seem better is the combination of Mac OS X and well designed hardware. In built webcam, well thought out placement of keys on the key board, back lighting of the keyboard, two finger scrolling on the mouse pad, the sleek power cord and the built in mike and speakers and such. Security is a non issue for me, because I know what I am doing.

I think Microsoft should work more closely with their hardware partners to bring out the best of the Windows OS. There are Sony Vaios and Lenovo thinkpads, but I don't think they are doing a good job in Marketing their products as well as Apple does.
I know how it works when you have a partner channel selling your product. Its not very easy. The image in the public is that Macs are cool, easy and fun to use and that Windows is boring. Which is completely ridiculous and false. Mac is not much just as an OS, but with the Apple hardware it has one of the best computer line up out there. And they only have one line up to market and can pump millions into that small line up for marketing.

Microsoft should partner with a partner to pitch some windows pc (say vaio) directly against the Macs and market aggressively. they cannot pretend that they are not affected by the Apple phenomenon thats happening. It may be too late if they wait longer.

Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC

Samsung update the Q1 UMPC. And seems to be a great improvement interms allround.

• performance (dual core processor),
• battery life (3.5 hours or 6.8 hours),
• ease of use (qwerty keyboard, jorstick, mouse, touch screen, stylus)
• connectivity (Wi-Fi, bluetooth, Wi-Bro, GPS (optional), HSPDA, over the air TV - DMB)
• features (2 cameras for photography and video conferences, fingerprint recognition for uname/passwords)
• software (It has got vista, and so all the software that is available on Vista)

I am all for a new formfactor that goes inbetween the mobile/pda and laptops. And it does more than any laptop can do in an extremely protable form factor. It can be just an mp3 player or a full fledged PMP, a Navigation system, Just plain web browsing and messaging system, a book reader, a notebook replacement. It's great not just for the road warriors or business travellers, its extremely useful to even the daily commuters who travel by publich transportation in big cities, or even at school for students and the possibilities are endless.

This is a dream convergence device. Only downside and the most important downside is the price $1300 to $2000. OOPS!!

But I'd think this form factor wouldn't make it big for atleast 4-5 years unless Apple comes up with Newton II.

Web based apps vs Desktop apps (Take Two)

Wow!!
I was talking about this earlier on which of the two is better.
And i said i think there is a middle ground i believe is the way to go.
And you've got it.

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo

This new run time (??) would do exactly that.

The developers need to develop flash based or html based (and more) applications and they can be run on this Apollo run time. (like java run time).
The good about this platform is the interface is not constrained by the web browser, you have access to desktop resources, its cross platform.

It sounds like it is the future of apps.
Can't wait to see the beta and the products.

Web based apps vs Desktop apps

While google is trying to move apps from desktop to the web. Microsoft is attempting to bring some of them right back on to the desktop. At least one of them, that is online blogging with a desktop publishing - Live Writer

I think there is middle ground for this 'every thing on the web' vs 'everything on the desktop'. That is, to have light weight zero foot print clients on the desktop and have the information on the server. In that way you could use both the power of processing and rich user interface at the desktop and have your preferences and data at the server. You can have nice interfaces with out getting into the limitations of web based technologies like flash and AJAX standards. And you can have access your data every where.

MS partners got Zunk'd

MS announced zune. And what is the response from the blog community??
All the web is resonating with articles and opinions on how the MS partners are zunk'd.

Strange, no body knows for sure what this zune is about. What constitutes zune?
And these kids are already writing swan songs for the microsoft partners and their players.
Saying that Microsoft would stop supporting them.. (MS stop supporting Windows Media Player?? Can any one think about that happening? -play for Sure' is nothing more than a marketing campaign)

Stranger thing is that people claim, MS can gain the market share only from their partners and not from apple. Or at least they say zune would have to step over the MS partner players before it can challenge ipods.

There is not word yet from MS on what kind of players they would be releasing. flash or hard disk?? what is the price range. 100 or 400?? What kind of service they would be providing?

Above all, not even a single partner complained about the Zune yet. So what is the problem for these bloggers? Why do they care so much for the small time mp3 players? Or are they afraid that MS would be a strong competitor for their favourite Ipod. Why is the rush to write off MS. Let's wait for the MS to announce the details of ZUNE.

MS Haters

I see a lot of people don't like Microsoft, for the trouble they had gone through using windows. Windows is a very good OS for sure in terms of functionality and usability. The problem is with the security. With spyware, viruses and popups. It is perfectly alright not to like MS.

But people call MS evil for a lot of things. Which doesn't make sense.
One major complaint every one has is that MS killed Netscape by providing IE for free. That is ridiculous. MS is in business and not in charity. If some one introduces a new application, it doesn't mean MS has no right to build a competitor?
If Netscape is that great, people would still have used Netscape as it is also a free software for most of the users. People simply didn't bother because Netscape doesn't give them any thing great.
What has stopped Microsoft from killing firefox. They couldn't. Simply because firefox is simply a better application and had a better marketing strategy to outfox MS. The same people have introduced thunderbird mail application and a calendar. They didn't take off, since they didn't have much for users to move from their outlook applications. Simply MS has a better product here and is providing what the users wanted.
May be if google comes up with a better online office suite, atleast consumer market would go for it even if MS provides office with Vista for free. If openoffice is as good as they claim it to be, what is stopping the users from using it, at least in the consumer market if not in the corporations. I've used it a while ago, when openoffice is not upto the mark. I cannot comment on th quality now. If they really have a great product rivaling MS, they simply lack proper marketing skills. If they don't have money, they can go viral, just like firefox did. Same with Linux machines. You cannot put the blame on MS, for their own failure.

Apple and Google

IPod and Google Search are great products to start with.
They created these markets and are the leaders.
But now we have other players who offers better products.
But the market share of these products keep growing.
the notion is that their simplicity is the key selling point.
But I say it is all marketing. Free publicity. First mover advantage.

Ipod shuffle is a BULL product, but it sells better than other cheaper flash players with a display, FM transmitters and SD slots to upgrade memory.
Yahoo Music and Napster gives you a better music download plans for the real music buffs.

And coming to search, Yahoo gives you better functionality, fewer clicks, social networking in search, great shortcuts,
and wonderful 'also try' feature and many more. But google is growing bigger and eating up yahoo search's mkt share. (firefox and DELL are also major influencers by bundling ;))

That is because these names have become synonyms for what they do.
People plan to buy IPods, they don't plan to buy 'MP3 Players'
People don't search, they google.

Most of them I believe don't even explore further. They just go straight to them!!!

Google buys writely!!

That's a great news. Google bringing more and more stuff to the web. Google seems to have the grandest plans.
It's not just looking to compete with office products.
But they might be work to some extent. If it is doing all this for the online advertising revenue, it would work for sure.
If they are out to kill office, then forget it - it would not happen.

I see a problem in having such grand plans, it takes time. A lot of time. And god only knows what would be the state of the technology in five yrs time. It would work. But it can not become the market leader.

R U excited about Origami??

You bet I am!!

There is definetely scope for another PC form factor. This is going to be huge hit with business users.

It can play music, It can take pictures and above all it runs a full featured OS with all the productivity applications and also your favorite web browser. Exactly what is prescribed for the enterprise customer!! Best solution when you are on the road.

As clearly stated by microsoft, it is not an ipod killer (there are many ipod killers on the way - check with me same time next year), it is not a replacement of the smart phones or the laptops (with a wireless connection it could very well blow them off).

3 things if taken care of would make it a blockbuster.
price tag around $500-$600
seamless connectivity with dummy proof setup (wifi AND wirelesss n/w, aided with bluetooth)
atleast 8 hrs battery life.