Mobile Portals are becoming very popular, especially in Asia. Within Asia, India is interesting, for being a high growth market for Mobile and for Value Added Services (on top of basic Voice in Mobile) like Mobile Portal services and at the same time being very price consious.

In India, in Mobile Portal services you have rich content being offered by MSN-Hutch GPRS Phones followed by Reliance phones. The list of service providers are going to grow in the next 6 to 12 months and the consumer is going to decide the winner(s) based on ease of use, reliability, speed and above all relevance to their daily lifes. Currently these portals in many parts of the world are offering basic news, enterainment and downloads like RingTones, Screensavers, etc. Over time these portals will start to offer relevant content (relevant to the user based on current location and time) like travel information while I am away from home, eateries details while I am in a food court, emergency medical information, be a repository of all my personal information and more. Let me explain the shopping experience I am looking for in the long term. Today when I go to a mall and say I see a TV that I like. I would do little bit of comparison online on other options before I buy it. I don't want to do standard Internet Search and go looking for TVs for hours. Based on my location that is inside the mall, inside an electronic store near a TV, I would like to see comparable options closer to that. May be even Manufactures information about the TV, about its features, technical details, etc.

In the near term too, I see big scope for mobile shopping. In fact, I see that mobiles have great potential to make online shopping available to vast number of people in India, who otherwise cannot afford (or have) access to a PC and Internet. This can include simple shopping options like food while working late, do some gift purchases for friends in last minute, greeting cards for occassions, discount purchases, books, etc.

Yesterday (21st June 2004) was an important day for me for two reasons. First it being the first birthday of my son “Vaageesh”. Last year same day, I spend several anxious hours waiting to see the baby and to find the well being of my wife.

The second reason for yesterday being special was the inauguration of my company's (Vishwak) new facility. The pooja was performed on 4th of Februrary 2004 and then the interior work started. Lots of work was involved in getting it ready, because most of the interior work was made for us at the site. The ceiling was made with Gypsum on site and Armstrong tiles, tables and furnitures (custom design) were made by local carpenters, flooring was with Marble that were polished for several times after laying and so on.  I had many people known to me already working in the project: the Architect for the project was Mr.Sridhar of Viraat Associates, Bangalore and the contractor was Mr.T.N.C.Venkatesan, Chennai.

Facility being opened by
Mr.Shriram Adukoorie, Director, MSN South Asia

You can view more photographs of the event at Vishwak.com

Finally I found some time to start writing and posting the photos about my recent Mysore and Coorg trip.

On our way back from Coorg, we made a stop-over in Mysore. I didn’t miss the chance to go again to Mysore Palace, this time in the broad day-light. After buying a Rs.15 ticket you are allowed inside the palace. Cameras and Footwear (Shoes/Chappals) are not allowed; both have to be deposited in respective booths. Cameras for the reason the flash lights will damage the delicate handmade paintings. Footwear to be left outside as there is a Lord. Ganesha’s temple with poojas performed everyday inside the palace. This follows the Indian Tradition of respect not to have having footwears inside temples.

Though guides/guided tours are not compulsory, we hired the services of a local approved Guide (Mr.Rajasekhar) to explain us about the palace. It costs about Rs.280 for the 90 minutes guided tour for a team of 4 adults. After the tour, I should say without our experienced guide, we would have missed appreciating 90% of the charm of the beautiful palace. So please do hire a guide to enjoy this once in a life time experience.

I have been to palaces in UK especially the Palace of Holyrood, Edinburgh (Scotland) and to Buckingham Palace in London; I should confess that in sheer beauty Mysore Palace impressed me more.

Though the “Dynasty of Kings” are abolished in India, the Raja of Mysore (Wodeyar) still lives in the Palace. He allows public access to about half of the sprawling palace. Unlike earlier days his income now comes from the many businesses which he owns. The palace itself is run by a board of Trustees with active support of Karnakata State Government.

The Palace was constructed in 1912 at the expense of Rs.42 Lakhs (!) and was designed in Indo-Saracenic style by Henry Irwin, the British consultant architect of Madras state. Indo-Saracenic architecture represents a synthesis of Muslim designs and Indian materials with some European influence.  It can be seen clearly in the following photo of the domes on top of the palace.

The main hall is adored with a set of 3-dimensional paintings that depict the splendid Dasara festivals. The specialty of these paintings are that each of the faces in the paintings are unique and correspond to real people who lived in those times (so in a way it is like a Manual Photograph). Also the paintings have a unique ability to have the objects in it face you, no matter from what angle you see it. So walking from left to right in front of the paintings the people (their eyes, shoes, dresses, face) also walk along with you. “Spell Bound” is the only way to describe this.

The palace built by Chamaraja Wodeyar also has many other interesting things. Concealed Electrical points in the floor with brass caps, Tall Belgian Mirrors and Huge Iron Cast Pillars imported from UK. There is lot more to write about the palace but I leave those for you to see in person.

You can read more about the palace from MysoreSamachar site or from Tourism Website and about the Mysore Rulers here.

While Windows Explorer makes basic file handling like copying, moving, deleting very easy through its intuitive GUI, it leaves much to be desired when it comes to advanced tasks. For doing Advanced file handling tasks, I generally turn to DOS Command Prompt, where I can use wild cards like ? or * to tag along multiple files.

One file handling task that I find myself often doing is to have my Digital photos renamed manually to meaningful names from the cryptic DSCF0001.JPG types, that my digital camera keeps by default. Normally I use rename *.JPG command to get it done, but that was until I found this program. This freeware by name “A.F.5 Rename your files” allows you to rename multiple with ease and power. Check it out.

Last Saturday, we had the privilege of having a pooja for God Danvantri (God of Medicine) in my house. The occassion was made special with the oppurtunity of having in our house for few hours, the utsava (smaller version of the main idol, which is taken out of the temple to places during festivals) idol and main idol of God Danvantri from Sri Danvantri Arogya Peetam, Walajapet.

Utsava Idol of God Danvantri

Main Idol of God Danvantri
(A beautifully decorated granite sculpture, measuring about 6 1/2 feet)

We all have heard about "Black" Gold, right?.

"Black" Gold is a term used to refer to Crude Oil/Petroleum to bring out that oil is precious and expensive as the original “Yellow” Gold. This term is very apt with today's high oil prices of around $40 per barrel.

Anyways, yesterday while driving I listened to a question being asked in one of the local FM stations, on what is "White" Gold?. It turns to be "Cotton" (பருத்தி), the term is used to highlight the high demand for quality cotton seeds worldover.

Bugged with this, I searched in Google for Gold of other colours. Do we have a 'Red' Gold or a 'Pink' Gold?. So far I could find nothing. If you do know, drop about them in the comments link below.

 

While the world is paying tributes to the late American President Ronald Reagan; Reuters today has carried a story on his lighther side. I am giving below two of the quotes that I enjoyed reading.

He told a story about how an old Russian woman had asked Mikhail Gorbachev whether communism had been invented by a scientist or a politician. Gorbachev said he thought it was a politician. "That explains it," said the woman. "A scientist would have tried it on mice first."

I enjoyed this for its good timing and also on how it communicates Reagan's strong views on communism in a way that reaches even to the common man.

The other quote satires the political office of a President. "A lot of people wondered, 'How dare an actor have the audacity to run for this job,'" Reagan told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1990. "There were times when I wondered how you could do this job without having been an actor."

 

After the bad days of dot-com burst, the interest and more so implementation of e-commerce is now growing. During the last 3 years, the number of B2B implementations using Web services increased, but it is only in the last 6 months that many innovative B2C implementations have started to happen.

This week Mr.Anto Peter  of Softview invited me to present for an hour in their website design workshop, which happened today. My topic was on “E-Commerce” where I covered on various Internet/E-Commerce Myths and Realities, payment mechanisms with respect to India.

It is interesting to note about one of India's successful ecommerce sites. It is none other than Indian Railways' ticket booking service at www.irctc.co.in which sells over One Hundred Thousand Tickets every day, totalling a turnover of Rs.102 crores per year.

When it comes to usage online there is a marked difference between the west and India. In India, the Credit Card penetration is very low, Debit Cards are growing slowly in popularity only now. Many online shopping sites in the country have adopted successfully COD (Cash On Delivery) as a payment mechanism. Though we expect COD to have high failure rates (people declining the purchase), the experience so far has been good with many of the merchants, with failure rate in the order 1% and less.

Download here the PPT of the presentation

 

After a weeks' sight seeing & vacation in Mysore & Coorg, I am back to work and to blogging. In the next few days expect lot of photos of my trip.