I versus I - India and Internet

Internet has changed almost everything on earth. According to juxtconsult, India has 50 million(50,000,000) internet users, out of which 25 million use internet everyday . Just think of this as the ultimate source to market a product/service online.... I mean enormous amounts of hits can be achieved if your product/service just grabs the eyeballs of all those 25 million internet users in INDIA alone, imagine about other countries!:o.

Indian population is 1 billion(1,000,000,000,000)+ and there are 50,000,000(50 million) internet users! If my math is correct(it rarely is :P), then 5% of Indian population use internet. What about the remaining percentage i.e 95%.. What are they doing??? ........ This got me thinking on how India needs change to become ready for global competition.

While pondering about it a few weeks ago, I was discussing about 'the internet' with my mom :-) who is a legal adviser, I explained to her about the internet and the websites where you can learn whatever you want in just a 'click' and about Blogs where you can write your own thoughts......and she was amazed and inspired........with no further doubt, she started to blog, and showcased her thoughts and ideas to the whole world, and she has written totally 6 posts in 10 days! All are worth reading, They talk about Human Rights and legal awareness for the general public.Everyone in India must read and know about their Legal rights! She blogs about 4 hours daily, navigates the web to find interesting articles, and improves her knowledge and thinking pattern!..... You can chance upon other adventures if you go on browsing.......This is her blog-> LEGAL CRYSTAL feel free to add a comment or ask any questions.

Finally, The reason why I am talking about my mom's blog is :D ....... Each one of you out there, should start blogging and those who already have blogs, please help/inspire other people to blog and let them know the power of human spirit and thoughts.... because blogs spread the 'INTERNET MANTRA' and in a small/big way we can change the world. So basically "If you start blogging, a lot of amazing things happen, which in turn enhance your life."

Have a look at these interesting Links -

Indian Bloggers List

Indiblogger

Blogadda

India Blogs 1.o

* This is my first step in spreading awareness to the ignorant 95% , about the internet and I hope to see more people utilizing its power and reach!

Open Coffee Club - Bangalore

Open Coffee Club is a place where you can discuss any topic, talk IDEAS, trouble-shoot a generic problem or just share whatever you know and much more. This was my first OCC meet.There were GEEKS, Entrepreneurs, and of course developers from open social community. This time the agenda was "Open Social and its applications",

• The discussion was started by Rajesh from CIRCLEUP, he spoke about Facebook developer API, Using FBML, CIRCLEUP has developed a app for facebook check it out. Their app targets upon managing focused groups,events,teams......It also helps in Viral Marketing of a group.

• Then there was slight turn towards ORKUT apps security issues, i mean developer bugs, there are bugs wherein crackers can know your username and password by phishing, it is also done by Cross-site scripting/ SQL injection.

• Monetizing the app is one of the ways to make money, but there are some apps wherein they promote their company's website, so if a user adds the app, they target them to their website, IREAD app on ORKUT and TRUTHBOX app on myspace are some of the examples.

• Prateek co-founder of muziboo talked about future of opensocial apps, according to him there will be no "add this app" link...., just LOG-IN and you have all the apps because of the current speed in developing apps and using it. He pointed out one major drawback i.e Open social isn't stable, every quarter the company releases new version and the developer has to change the code of the app for each version, according to lot of open social developers that's a major issue. He also touched upon statistics and monetizing open social apps and mentioned about SGN , a Social Game Development company which is very popular on social networking websites and they are very good at viral marketing and monetizing ads. Facebook ads is also on example for VM.

• My friend Akash Bapna developer of "TAG FRIENDS" app on ORKUT said that myspace is highly restrictive and its not as easy as Hi5,ORKUT,FACEBOOK........ to develop applications. He also talked on "Intro to Open Social"........ here are the slides....

View Upload your own

• Pooran Prasad, founder of Zealous Solutions and also a MVP just shared a thought that , .net can be used to develop facebook apps check out this "FACEBOOK.NET".

As It was a open discussion and my first OCC meet, i didn't know many of the speakers.The discussion continued, they spoke about "coderunner" test-app which runs java script calls to test your app and finally the discussion turned out to be totally hi-tech which went totally over my head!

Thanks a lot to Amarinder Singh, the event organizer and all the participants for sharing such a vast amount of knowledge :-) .
Pictures of OCC-bangalore meet
*For those who attended OCC, If i have missed out some discussion or thoughts please add a comment....

Student Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship is a challenging sport! It is filled with uncertainties and yet each step gives a lot of experience and satisfaction, I feel , here in India there is no encouragement for student enterprising. Based on statistics, there are more number of students joining IT companies, rather than working on their own ideas or making choice on their own.First of all they aren't aware about what innovation actually is ! I have seen many blogs talk about many points on starting a startup or being successful, but there is no blog which has content in a practical way for a student.

I have a IDEA, but I am not sure whether it can be implemented or not, this is how it starts, then we plan , discuss and think on all possible angles and open ourselves to new opinions, finally we try to eliminate all the uncertainties to the possible extent, then financial problems arise hmmm... wait a second , Isnt this applicable to all people who are starting a startup?? i agree whatever i am discussing holds good for a graduated professional too, but remember one thing these exams are the worst enemies for student entrepreneurs and in a country like India where they totally believe in marks its very tough to go against or balance both! The best place for student entrepreneur is "UNCONFERENCE". But I hardly see students in any unconference!, Here is a video where student entrepreneurs share their experiences on starting their own business even before they graduate... In one of My previous posts on "Education" I have share my thoughts on , how to eliminate this problem from the current system.

I google'd and found some interesting links... check it out

• Article on a bangalore based student entrepreneurs
  
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• Young Entrepreneurs Network
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• What bush told young indian entrepreneurs?
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• Entrepreneurship Development Cell
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• Article on Student Enterprising
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• Entrepreneurship in India
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• How India can have more entrepreneurs
  

* Our Education should support Student Enterprising and encourage entrepreneurs for a better world.

Image courtesy : IMAGERY