Guess who’s the latest one in the list of sites wanting my gmail password to import my contacts?

StumbleUpon!

It says “Login info is not stored in any way“. Feels like testing the limits of my paranoia….

While it’s a good idea (don’t really know - may be I’ll hate some of my friends after looking at the sites they stumbled upon … haha…), I can’t really see myself trusting individual website interop mechanisms like these. This is where MoveMyData (still in planning) sort of desktop open source applications come into the picture - and I think such apps are going to be quite useful for everybody (specifically those who really care about the data).

[tags]stumbleupon, movemydata[/tags]

Exactly what I was trying to explain to a bunch of fresh graduates the other day, albeit in different terms:

“…in small companies, having a skill can mean having a responsibility”

true dat!

(from this post).
[tags]industry[/tags]

Yeah, I still think that Jot Rocks.

Among “everyone else” who thinks so, there’s Google now.

Ken Norton wrote today that Google has acquired JotSpot.

They’re fast, aren’t they?
Nice, and good luck, Google Jot / Google Spot / Google Wiki.

[tags]jotspot, google, wiki[/tags]

Sony TV commentator (Sonali) on the sale of flags in Stadium for today’s Cricket match…

“… and the interesting thing is …. the Indian flag is selling for Rs. 60. And there’s the Australian flag on sale too … it’s selling for Rs. 100. Obviously a case of Demand and Supply here ... “

Oooh. So do I view Demand and Supply as in salt, or as in gold?

[tags]tv, economics, bakwas[/tags]

I hate it when Firefox freezes for (more than) a few moments to load Acrobat Reader inside the browser window.

[tags]annoyance, software[/tags]

The Windows Live people revampled it a little. Again.

It’s not only the user interface; now search results seem to come up faster (something that *never* worked earlier).

I would hope that they don’t stop at this point. The Live! people should continue trying (at least ) to compete with Yahoo! Mail and GMail.

[tags]live, mail, hotmail, beta[/tags]

(Short Post / CopyPaste)

From Guy Kawasaki’s blog:

“India has its own version of Amazon.com. At two intersections, kids came up to the car to sell us paperback versions of current business books. We bought a copy of The World Is Flat for $3. Not sure if I should be happy or depressed, but The Art of the Start was not available.“

[tags]copypaste[/tags]

Couldn’t resist posting this. Most of this post is just copy-paste from a comment.

In the Slashdot discussion thread for Steve Yegge’s Good Agile, Bad Agile post, I found this gem of a comment by rockmuelle. Here it goes (reproduced here as it is):

Google is not a software development firm, but an ad sales firm (check their 10-K if you have any doubts). It uses software to attract viewers in the same way television networks use programming and magazines use articles. Under this model, it makes sense to give developers a large amount of freedom to develop whatever they want. The final type/quality/status of the software doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that there are new features appearing on the site from time to time to attract new viewers..er, users… and keep old users. Most of the applications probably won’t amount to much, but just like with any media company, you only need one or two big hits a season to keep people coming back.

Google develops a large amount of its content in house in much the same way old movie studios developed all their films in house. For Google, the talent is not actors and directors but developers. Movie studios learned that you treat the talent well to keep them around and Google has taken that lesson to heart. Developers tend to want complete freedom to work on what they want with no deadlines and giving them this is the easiest way to keep them happy. Call it ‘good agile development’ or whatever else you want, it’s really just keeping the talent happy in the hopes that they’ll keep developing content to attract users.

Unfortunately, software companies that rely on software or service sales for revenue cannot take this extreme approach to agile development. They need to deliver software on occasion or someone else will replace them in the marketplace. Agile development is still the best way to go, but unbounded development only works if software isn’t your primary source of revenue.

Good observation - something that many others tried to pin point, but couldn’t articulate. I don’t have much to add to it.

[tags]google, business[/tags]

I have been a WorldSpace listener for a couple of years now. Voyager is my favorite channel, and while I enjoy the music, there’s something missing from the experience.
Here is what WorldSpace needs, according to me:

1. Bring the community together: The WorldSpace Forums are vacuous at best. Why not announce on the channels, along with the hourly channel reminder blurb? Tell people, and many will join in to discuss the music they like. You get a community to get constant feedback from. Instead of recreating a full-fledged music community with biographies/latest on artists, just integrate with popular community sites such as last.fm.
2. Provide song listings on website: It will be convenient for listeners (specifically of stations like ‘The System’ - techno/trance) who are curious about the current playing number, but cannot figure out because they couldn’t catch the lyrics properly (and later search), or the portion didn’t have any lyrics at all. I typically end up searching on google with the lyrics to get the artist information.
3. ‘Mix Channels’: The ‘Preview’ doesn’t cut it. Start ‘Mix Channels’ that combine genres whose fan following is likely to be common. If I like ‘Rock and Pop’, and if market research tells the company that there are thousands more like me, then it’d be a good move to have channels that mix and match (jumble up) the content on the two individual channels and present to the pleasure of these thousands.
4. Portable ‘Personal’ devices. In-car receivers are out. But how about something to complement the iPods and the Zens? It may be an iPod add-on, or yet another small pocket device. The Market is calling. Where are you?

Back to the radio.

[tags]worldspace, music, radio[/tags]

Rob Levin (lilo) is no more.

ouch.

RIP, Rob.

[tags]lilo, freenode[/tags]