techdigest

This comparison is unfair to Powerset and to Google. Powerset is a very new company that is trying to solve a subset of search and with a different focus. Google has been in the search space for last 10 years, relentlessly innovating, has a lions share in the search space and the focus is to solve the search for all the use cases rather than the “Semantic Web”.

In spite of this, since Powerset is in the search space (It is good and bad for Powerset. Good becasuse Google has made search a very lucrative market and bad because it will be compared to the likes of Google), it will be compared with Google for sure. So what the heck, I also tried few queries

Query: When did India win the world cup?

Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=When+did+India+win+the+world+cup%3F&btnG=Search

Powerset: http://www.powerset.com/explore/pset?q=When+did+India+win+the+world+cup%3F&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

Winner: Google (Much better results and more information)

Query: When did Mahatma Gandhi die?

Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=When+did+Mahatma+Gandhi+die&btnG=Search

Powerset: http://www.powerset.com/explore/pset?q=When+did+Mahatma+Gandhi+die&x=47&y=11

Winner: Google (Powerset yielded zero results. Google gives the precise answer)

I am sure I can find hundreads of queries that work better in Powerset. Moreover, I should probably restrict the search of Google to wikipedia Since Powerset only searches on wikipedia and freebase. But that is besides the point. Powerset is trying to solve a different problem for different use cases and it has a very long way to go to get there. For me, I am not sure if I will use Powerset. When I am searching, I do not have “?” all the time. Sometimes I am in the “discovery” mode and sometimes in the “exploration” mode. And both times, I can pretty much frame my query and have Google answer it for me. What I might find useful is if I have the power of Google and some features of clusty that can tag the search results of my query.

Query: When did mahatma gandhi die

Clusty: http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=When+did+mahatma+gandhi+die

Clusty creates these clusters of the search results on the left that can help you navigate through your search results. Of course, Google strives to give you the answer at the very top, Clusty can be useful if you are in the exploration mode! I quite like it.

Anyway, there are lots of blogs written about powerset and Google and I found some to have done a good job :

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/powerset_vs_google.php

http://www.appscout.com/2008/05/powerset_vs_google_semantic_se_1.php

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2304247,00.asp

I have not really done too much searching for online bus booking website for India. I only knew of www.raj.travel that doesn’t work on firefox (Shame on you!). I was googling for some other service and this google ad caught my attention. http://www.redbus.in.

Nice clean website. Works on firefox ( <<clapping>> ). I liked the logo a lot.

Now that thing which triggered me to write this blog They have this link on the home page -

Boss is watching - Look busy 

Clicking on this  opens up an excel worksheet with some graph Simple sites with all browsers support, nice navigation, clean layout and some humor is a far cry for Indian websites. Good job!

Today (December 11th) was the first day of TiE 2007 summit (http://www.tiesummit.org/). I was there for 3-4 hours. Got to hear Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Uday Challu - founder of iyogi, Pradeep Kar, and various others including panelists from Sierra Ventures, SIDBI, Citibank etc. I particularly liked Uday: he was very objective and to the point. There was also lot of yada yada. Something that we Indians need to work on. Asking relevant questions and answering to the point. Much of it was irrelevant. I didnt come to know about any new companies, ideas, challanges, solutions but nonetheless, I liked the energy in the conference. Upbeat, positive and raring to go.

There was an interesting question that was raised. I do not remember the exact words but it was something around the lines of how can we extend the growth that “India” had to “Bharat” I think it was a very interesting question. My colleague also asked a question around the same lines: He asked if the entrepreneurs are reaching out to the VC community with models targeting the rural India. The answers were not too convincing. Usual yada yada One related comment from SIDBI was that they have funded 100 companies looking out to start micro financing firms. We definitely need to come up with better business models that can tap into the rural market.

Looking forward to day 2 and 3.

Do we Indians search as much as people from developed countries? I doubt. What are the reasons? I refuse to accept that it is because of absence of search engines in native languages or anything. As one of my colleagues put it, Indians do search a lot but the searches are like assisted searches so to speak. People search on job sites, travel sites, matrimony sites where they are asked to enter specific search terms in specific text boxes. Well, lets keep vertical search engines aside. I believe it is because of few reasons. One, there isn’t enough content out there! Imagine, if you are Indian and if you need to read news, you probably have one of your favorite from 5-6 portals. Same is true for travel, reviews, blogs, jobs, matrimony, real estate, local listings etc. Only when we have lot more portals with good content and users do not know which one to go to find that right information, that will actually drive the search volumes. Second can be the broadband reach. We have far too less number of people on the internet. We might be fifth largest in terms of total users but the percentage of these users to the total potential is far too less. Third can be that there is lot of content out there but search engines cannot make too much sense out of it. There are portals in bengali, malyalam, telugu, tamil, gujrati, marathi but search engines are more or less unable to crawl this data. Once we have all these issues (broadband reach and enough content creators) sorted out, I am sure the search volumes will go up.

This is just a ridiculously funny post that I got on my company’s email account. Just wanted to share the fun

---

Om Jai Google Hare !!
Swami Om Jai Google hare
Programmers ke sankat, Developers ke Sankat,
Click main door kare!!
Om Jai Google Hare !!Jo Dhyawe vo pawe,
dukh bin se man ka, Swami dukh bin se man ka,
Homepage ki sampatti lawe, Homework ki sampatti karave
kasht mite work ka,
Swami Om Jai Google hare!!

Tum puran seach engine
Tum hi internet yaami, Swami Tum hi internet yaami
Par karo hamari Salari, Par karo hamari apprisal,
Tum dunia ke swami,
Swami Om Jai Google hare.

Tum information ke saagar,
Tum palan karta, swami Tum palan karta,
Main moorakh khalkamii, Main Searcher tum Server-ami
Tum karta dhartaa !!
Swami Om Jai Google hare!!

Din bandhu dukh harta,
tum rakshak mere, Swami tum thakur mere,
Apni search dikhaao, sare reasearch karao
Site par khada mein tere,
Swami Om Jai Google hare!!

Google devta ki aarti jo koi programmer gaawe,
Swami jo koi bhi programmer gaawe,
Kehet SUN swami, MS hari har swami,
Manwaanchhit fal paawe.
Swami Om Jai Google hare.

BOLO GOOGLE DEVTAA KI ————- JAI

It came to be as a surprise. India is the fifth largest internet users country in the whole world!

This is truly astonishing. We are a force to reckon with. The number of unique Internet users 15 years or older rose 33 percent in India to 21.1 million. This is a report by comScore networks. Now what I will be really interested in is the business model to capitalize on this big user base. We need to come up with solid monetization models for these users. Everyone is talking about mobile as the number one platform for India. I do not deny it. The country added 6.57 million mobile subscribers in May this year, taking the total number of subscribers to 178 million, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in Delhi. The country added 6.11 million new mobile subscribers in April. India has additional 40 million fixed phone line users. Of course more than half of them will have cell phones as well. Hence the overall phone users might be around 200 million. The Indian government is targeting 500 million telephones, both fixed and wireless, by 2010. In spite of this, 40 million internet users make up for a significant monetizable user base. I still think the form factor (mobile screen size) is a problem to monetize all these phone users. Where as, PC is a proven and developed platform for monetization. We just need to figure out what works in India and develop business models around them.

Some more links:

Internet & Mobile Association of India

2005 report of Indian internet users

Google just introduced the coolest feature I have ever seen in any online maps. Street View! What is it? Check it out!

San Francisco bay bridge street view

Street View allows users to view 360° panoramas of street-level imagery. It almost gets you in the real world. No more virtual experience. Way better than second life! Do take a look at the above link. So where can I really use it? After all it needs to have some application. Well, I suppose driving directions to mark the landmarks on the way, to familiarize myself with the place, to see the neighborhood I am going to move into or just to get the feel of places of interest so that I can plan my outing! Its way too coool! No more wastage of time, fuel, money and effort to know that you just drove 100 miles to come to a lousy place! Use street imagery and save yourself all that trouble!

When you are browsing Google Maps, street views show up like a layer on the map that highlights areas with available street-level imagery. It opens up in a panorama window and expands much like the local results info window, and users can drag, zoom, rotate, and navigate from panorama to panorama. At present, it is available in San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver. Lets hope that it will be available in more cities soon.

This is what I call super cool. Way to go Google!

78% of the bloggers write blogs to prove their intelligence (Remember, 48.9% of the statistics are made on the spot! ). But I am posting this to prove how big an ass I am. Absolute ignorant good-for-nothing IT guy! Ok, let me cut the chase. Just yesterday (May 28th, 2007), I came to know about the existence of second life. My spiritual friends and readers, I am not talking about another “Janma”. There is a virtual world out there called Second life.

I know, I know that you all know about it. But now that I am writing an article about it, I would like to write some lines for the sake of completeness. Second life is a 3D online digital world.  It has more than 6 million, 6,772,013 residents to be precise, till today (May 29, 2007). And I even did not know that it exists! More stats are here.

It seems you can buy and sell land in second life. A friend of mine knows a guy who is a “real estate agent” in second life! For a non-geek like me, it is definitely crazy. I have not watched star wars and I do not even miss it. Only sci-fi movie that I have liked so far is Matrix. I am not an x-box, playstation of nintendo fan. Anyway, the land stats are -

---

Land

Land Sales by Resident Month Total Square Meters Sold by Residents Avg L$ Paid Per Square Meter April 2007 72,537,664 10.3266 May 2007 - MTD 65,174,720 9.2742	Land for Sale Today Residents With Parcels for Sale 6,024 Total Parcels For Sale 34,613 Total Square Meters for Sale 23,374,112
Islands Added Month Islands Owned (End of Month) Islands Added (During Month) April 2007 6557 940 May 2007 - MTD 7299 742	Square Meters Auctioned Month Square Meters 2007 April 37,264,160 2007 May - MTD 20,058,864

---

I also heard that Target gave $40 million contract to IBM to open a second life store. I am truly stupefied. Here is another link to the second life economy graphs.

US $ Exchanged on Lindex (in Millions)

If you are also from the “ignorance is bliss” club and do not know about second life, please drop a comment. It will make me feel better

Disclaimer: It is not about web 2.0 or technology. I just found it fascinating enough to blog!

My wife bought an expensive Nike shoe for her father without knowing his fit. She told the Nike retail shop that she would exchange or return it if it does not fit her father. Well, it did not. So she went back to get another size the the shop created all kind of problems even though they promised they will exchange! So much for the customer service. Anyway, she got another pair and it still didnt fit well. Now the retail shop is not ready for a return and I started to look for options on the web. I accidentally found this site - http://www.kohlscorporation.com/ecom/valueadded/footwear.htm. It mentions a simple formula on what kind of shoe will work the best for an individual.

Flatfoot (Pronated) Fairly self-explanatory, this type shows a complete impression of your foot, as it rests flush against the ground. Because your foot doesn’t form a normal arch, this means it strikes on the outside of the heel and rolls excessively inward. This extra stress, in turn, causes many types of injuries. Around 65% of the population has pronated feet, either from obesity, arthritis, foot trauma or genetics.

High-Arched Foot (Supinated) You’ll see a large open area on the imprint where your foot’s arch didn’t touch the ground. The verdict? More rigid, your foot neither rolls inward enough nor absorbs shock well. Other characteristics include the heel and toes being drawn inward. About 25% of the population has supinated feet. Main causes? Musculoskeletal disorders and genetics.

Neutral (Ideal foot) Lucky you! A moderate space will appear in the imprint’s arch area. This means you land on the outside of the heel, then roll inward slightly to absorb shock. If you are of normal weight, you are considered the most biomechanically sound type of runner. Only about 10% of the population has neutral feet.

Interestingly, the site claims, only 10% of the population has normal feet and they are the natural runners! Guess what? I am one of the privileged lot!!! Many girls have told me how sexy my legs are. Similar to David Beckham’s. I guess I should have shown my feet as well! As humble as I am, I would not make ridiculous claims of my feet perfection. But realistically speaking, I could have been Carl Lewis or Ben Johnson What a great loss to India!

Another good link to shoe size guide: http://paulswarehouse.netregistry.net/shop/pages.php?pageid=25

There is an interesting posting that I just read : Google Tech Talks Showcase

“One of the great parts of working at Google is that every day there are tech talks that I really want to listen too. More than I can spend the time to actually see. Last week I talked about Philip Wadler of Monad / Generics / general functional fame. Yesterday, Linus showed us his strong opinions. Next week, G. LaForge is in to chat about Groovy. This is a strong subset of the great talks. We record these talks, and place them on Google Video for anyone to see. This is great content, and most don’t know it exists,” writes Dion on his blog.

Only a company like Google can bring all these gurus to talk about promising technologies. This is a page where I would regularly want to go at!

Tech Talks: http://almaer.com/techtalkshowcase/

Related: Google Video