InfoBeans – Software Services

The InfoBeans blog has moved. We thought we should eat our own dog food and to fulfill that philosophy got our corporate website and blog ported to a CMS – Drupal.

Experience the new blog at http://blog.infobeans.com or http://www.infobeans.com/blog

Moving to Drupal was the automatic choice since we needed a lot more flexibility in managing our blog and indeed our other content, including our website. We will miss WordPress – it is a great blogging tool!

Happy blogging!

Yesterday, Avinash and I had the good fortune to be part of the Nasscom mentorship program. No, we were not the mentors, we were being mentored. Sanjiv Aggarwal (Helion Ventures, founder Daksh) and Rajiv Puri (ex CEO JobsAhead.com).

The session lasted for almost two hours and we got a wealth of insights from these two gentlemen on how to grow businesses. There were some pointed observations from them that made us look up and take notice.

I must thank both of them, not only for their invaluable time, but mostly for their cutting edge evaluation of where we stand, what we need to do and their implicit stimulus to goad us into achieving more.

I must also thank Nasscom and specially Avinash Raghava for organizing this in such a professional manner. Everything was arranged well with extreme professionalism and it shows what a great organization Nasscom is.

My organization looks forward to contributing in larger measures to the Nasscom initiatives in the times to come.

We will be taking up the advice that our mentors have given us very seriously and drawing up action plans to take on the challenges in the future. We are slated to meet with them again next month and we eagerly look forward to that.

Thanks everyone!

This post has nothing to do with software, but very relevant to services of all kinds. Read about how Ritz Carlton takes it beyond just customer delight. They work on customer anticipation and employee liberation. I am surely going to test this out someday

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/30/simon-cooper-ritz-leadership-ceonetwork-hotels.html/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/28/google-should-make-apple-beg-for-maps-navigation/

Apple should have learnt its lesson. And should stop being arrogant!

Check out this augmented reality feature. My question is, why would I even go to a store to do this? I could easily just do this on a screen at home. Yeah I know, the screen will be expensive – but for how long? We will have screens like this everywhere soon (10 years soon enough?). I guess the stores will “again reinvent” themselves to get people in.

Couldn’t resist putting this on the blog – enjoy!

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-29-2009/deep-space-naan

Please see pictures of the Nasscom meet organized in Indore by InfoBeans. Avinash was instrumental in organizing the meet up. It saw great response from the government, Nasscom and IT players from Indore and around. Everyone appreciated the effort taken and the result of the meet. Focus of the discussion was on how to move the IT agenda forward in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Hon’ble Shri Kailash Vijaywergiyaji, Minister for IT in the MP government was present at the occasion and assured the gathering of the government’s support to the IT/ITeS industry in MP.

Check out the pictures below.

We are inviting new suggestions for TouchMeNot – our best selling free game on the Apple App Store for the iPhone.

Please send in your comments here or email us at iPhone@infobeans.com

With you help and involvement, we look forward to making the game even better!

You can download the latest version from here.

Hmm – read this somewhere, can’t remember. Maybe it was the New York Times.

Tweeted about this a few hours ago. Initially liked the concept. But then had conflicting ideas.

It is all great to see third party apps and different uses for a device. One might like to surf the internet and play games on the Kindle. But look at it from Amazon’s point of view. The primary revenue source that Amazon is banking on from the Kindle platform is book and subscription revenue. After all, the incremental cost of delivering a book to the Kindle is close to zero and hence the profit margins are huge – close to 100%. Now, if you and me start playing games and surfing the internet, would it not cannibalize on those sales? I would buy the Kindle, read a few books, but then conveniently go online and spend my time there. One might argue that if you can do it on a plethora of devices around you – phone, PC, game boxes and so on – why spare the Kindle? That is where the conflicting thoughts come in.

Would Amazon prefer you to spend time on the internet (for reading, mostly?) or playing games with your buddies (social networking)? Or would it rather have you buying books and subscriptions on the Kindle (whether you read them or not) that directly add to its bottom line?

After some deliberation, here is my opinion.

There are many devices out there that allow you to do what you want to on the internet and social networking sites. Use them to your heart’s desire. If you want to read a book, come to the Kindle and stay there for reading books.

From Amazon’s perspective, they are leaders in the eBook segment and would want to remain that. They have the biggest (?) database of books and subscriptions which they want to capitalize on. When one buys a Kindle, they are doing it specifically for reading, not anything else and they know what they are going into. So Amazon’s priorities are set. They would like to continue to build on those strengths.

Now, if Amazon were to open up their APIs, it would rather be to capitalize on their existing strengths, not enable you to browser the internet or play games, unless they can find ways to restrict you to do so in a manner that has very good chances of enhancing their bottom line. They would rather open APIs so that third party software developers can create integration points allow you to create, say a social network recommendation engine, share what you are reading to get other people excited about that and eventually buy.

My opinion – if Amazon were to open up the Kindle API doors, open them only so much that would allow development of software that directly helps their book and subscription sales. Chess can be played on the other device(s) that you own.

Varun created a new high score on touchmenot – 4000

Who are you touching? Get on with the game and let us know your score.