As more details and outrage seep out about the plans by the Associated Press into what looks like a slow descent into madness, I think there may just be some method to it. Since I am trying to wrap up thngs before I head for a much-needed vacation, I'll post my comments as points:

Facebook's supposed hoard of cash must really be starting to get restless these days. In acquiring an overwhelming ability to do a real-time of Robert Scoble's life, otherwise known as Friendfeed, Facebook has made a major stride into defeating Twitter... um.. no.. Google..um.. well.. I don't know, defeating someone or something? Our extreme analytical perspective has gleaned it that maybe Facebook has figured it out that it is cheaper to get Friendfeed developers on-board than to copy them feature-for-feature in the longer run. Makes sense Zuck, it really does.

After the latest fracas on the tech blogs about Joshua Schahter's indignation about the Twitter-integration at Delicious, I was left wondering about how did the product get to where it is these days. In its early days, the product was widely used, it was the de-facto standard for social bookmarking and it had a growing user base. The future is not all that rosy for the product. It is one of those platforms that has languished since its acquisition by Yahoo!. What is rather interesting is that the site features almost zero Yahoo!

When was it that last time, as a customer or as a consumer, you have felt absolute delight at using a product? I can bet with reasonable certainty that the answer would be, in most cases, a 'no'.

For all the money that is spent on advertising, the so-called social media and other standard means of outreach, most businesses are found to be lacking using in the best form of advertisement that they could do for their product; which is to make the experience of procuring, owning and using their products a genuinely delightful experience.

This is a post that has been long in the making, but it was Jason Pontin's Manifesto for saving media that finally compelled me to publish it. Jason's manifesto itself deserves a post on its own and we will tackle it later, but, before that we will tackle a common misconception, that media somehow has to be in one of the formats: printed, televised, published on the internet or published on radio.

By now it is all over the place that Pirate Bay (or at least the four defendants) has lost its lawsuit with the authorities regarding their enablement of piracy using the website. Neither will this ensure that piracy related to entertainment will come to an end, nor will this ensure that artists will find another way to monetize their efforts beyond what the entertainment industry can offer.

Ever since I bought the Nokia E71, I have become a bona-fide GPS junkie. This addiction is helped in no small measure by my increasing ability to get lost anywhere and everywhere. In the past four months, I have tried few of the available solutions and I am going to jot down my observations. Till date I have used Nokia Maps, MapmyIndia and Google Maps and I will be trying out Satguide's software soon to complete the product line up.

The greatest price that terrorism extracts, and it does that silently, is fear. This is fear is leveraged often by authorities around the world to enforce laws that don't do much more than constrain the freedom of the majority, while presenting only a minor inconvenience for the for tiny minority who cause all the harm.

The state of broadband in India is a rather saddening affair. Any connection that is above 256 Kbps either costs over a thousand rupees per month or it involves download caps which will make the whole point of using it like how broadband is meant to be used out of the question.

For many years we have been trying very hard to unlock the potential in India's internet market. Beyond all the hype, the fact is that we have made little headway in realizing that dream. Even with the stellar growth numbers quoted year after year by IAMAI and other industry bodies, most individual internet properties seem to have a lot of trouble in growing, organically, beyond the three million page views in a day line in the sand.