Silicon City

The Unfacebook
Entrepreneurs: Spikes
Web 5.0: Face Time
Search: Much Is Lacking
A Web 3.0 Manifesto
Dell, HP, Apple
Google Books: Primitive
Carly Fiorina: "The Academy Awards Of Business"
Google Audio, Google Office
The Next Search Engine
Google Video Has Hit The Docks
Internet Phones, Video Blogging, Nano

Silicon City

I moved to New York City a little over two years ago. I never had a hometown before. That is a statement on the ethnic politics in Nepal where I grew up and the racial politics in Kentucky where I went to school.

New York City is a very special place. You have to be me to appreciate the city to the last inch. This is the capital city of the world and I am a global citizen.

I am also a netizen, and this city more than any other on earth deserves to become a Silicon City.

People from every single town - not every country, not every city, but every single town on earth - live here. This city has to be the geographical location for every company that wants to be a truly global company.

The city is the Amazon forest of humanity. You find every possible human life form in this city. There is not a human being on earth who can not said to have been represented in this city.

There is talk of Web 2.0. Others and I have talked of Web 3.0, although my version of Web 3.0 is different in that it is not just about software, it is primarily about hardware and connectivity: that is where I depart from the flock.

But I don't know of anyone else to have talked of Web 4.0, and most certainly not Web 5.0.

Web 5.0 is the clincher. And that is where no place on earth can beat New York City. Web 5.0 is Face Time.

You have to be able to walk the walk. I have walked from Times Square to Little Bangladesh south of Prospect Park a few different times after midnight. I have walked from Little Bangladesh to Jackson Heights: I got there close to midnight, the train ride back home was an hour. I have walked from deep in the Bronx to Little India on the Lower East Side.



I have walked and walked and walked. I have crisscrossed Manhattan from every angle imaginable.

I have walked both ways from Little Bangladesh to Coney Island. I have created a walk that goes straight south of Little Bangladesh to the train line and along the train line to 86th Street and then onto the F line and back to Little Bangladesh. I have walked all over southern Brooklyn.

I have walked right outside Prospect Park more times than I can remember. You go once around it. I have walked inside Prospect Park like I was the first human being to explore it.

My first long walk inside New York City was when I was not living here. I had come over for a weekend. I walked from the south side of Central Park and on into Harlem. The city disappeared and I got a kick out of the suggestion.

You walk so you can take it all in. There is no other way to get to know a city, to really get to know.

I routinely get mistaken for a politician. I guess I am really into it. Some people watch baseball with a passion, I watch politics with a vengeance.

Before Barack's second term in the White House is over, I expect to have become one of the richest persons in the city.

I have written in my online autobiography, I am looking at a private jet for me in seven years or less. I am into motion, into speed, into meditation, into thinking. But if I am only going to fly once every few months, I am not sure owning might make the best sense. Renting or borrowing could do. We will cross that bridge when we get there.

I am going to start with hardware, but I am going to work on it like it were software. As much as possible of the work and the collaboration is going to happen on the screen.

Then I am going to dig into connectivity. Then software down the line. But it is going to be software that is not even being imagined right now. It is going to next next generation software.

My company is going to define the next era of computing, the IC era, the Internet Computer, mainframes to PC to IC. The big PC names of today will still be around, but they are never going to get sexy in the IC domain. My competition is going to come from other imitator startups, and I am going to beat them all. But this is capitalism. There will be more than one player.

You necessarily have to be Third World to excel in the IC era, and I am Third World into my bones. Just look at my teeth.

I have something in the group dynamics domain that the Google guys had in the search domain when they started out. The business schools don't have the textbooks and journal articles yet for my style of group dynamics. I will help them acquire in a few years.

Whoever writes the mythical 100K check into my seed money round will have their progeny thanking them.

There is nobody on the New York City tech scene who can make the claim I am making. California will continue to be big. But New York City will get as big or bigger in about 10 years.

Californians will tell you, New York lacks attitude. Investors here are too careful. They think like bankers. They are less prone to taking chances. A one paragraph idea is not enough.

Well, I don't lack in the attitude department. I got plenty of attitude, and I am willing to generously share with my hometown, the first hometown I ever had.

California took the lead on Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. But Web 3.0 and beyond is going to be a different story.

A global company has to have a global face. It has to look global. Diversity is key. Diversity is everything. You create a company that is home to the post-ISMs individual, and you make bigger pots of money. It is a productivity thing.

I am itching for fights. Primarily I am a creative person. But fights are fine. I was in Kentucky for five and a half years. There is nothing you can teach me about race that I don't already know.

Primarily I am in the business of inventing a corporation. I will leave the nitty gritty of engineering to the engineers. My engineers.

The company I will invent will be the best company on earth measured many different ways. It will be different.

I ignited two revolutions in Nepal the past two years working primarily in a Web 2.0 environment. That is going to earn me the Nobel Peace Prize 2008.

Igniting a company is comparatively less ambitious an undertaking. Of course I can do it.

My Back Against The Wall

P.S. Barack Obama reads my blog.

Barack's Mother Makes An Appearance
Barack Has To Talk Much About His Mother

In The News

Scaling the Social Web Businessweek
Give a Laptop and Get One After two-and-a-half years of relentless organizing, product development, and evangelizing, the so-called $100 laptop is ready to go into production in October. ....... $188 each to produce initially, nearly twice the original estimate; and, so far, not a single government has written a check. ...... Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, and Rwanda. ..... U.S. customers will be able to pay $399 to buy two laptops: one for themselves and one to be shipped to a child in one of those four countries. ..... there's a huge gulf between a head of state shaking your hand and a minister making a bank transfer ..... Quanta Computer in Taiwan can produce 1 million XO Laptops a month .... the brilliant idea of getting governments to buy in huge volumes is a flawed strategy ...... Negroponte and his cohorts are sometimes too doctrinaire ...... buying and assembling the 800 parts that go into each machine ..... NComputing .... a single PC that connects with up to seven simple computer terminals for a price of $142 per student. .... "I'm concerned that programs depending on charity will never meet the real needs of children in developing countries"
BW Blog: Time to Call OLPC a Failure? broke the most important design rule from the very beginning of the project. Design from the bottom up, not top down. ..... a traditional top down product development, that involved the rural children in India, Africa and China only in the late stages. ..... Despite all the handshakes, the Indian and Chinese governments didn't order any XOs.
Dell Goes Retail in China adding a second factory in the southeastern city of Xiamen ..... a new low-priced desktop PC designed by Dell's Chinese engineers specifically for domestic customers. ....... Dell's market share among domestic consumers is tiny, just 2.5%. ..... market leader Lenovo as well as the second-largest Chinese company, Founder. ..... the Chinese likely to buy more than 33 million PCs this year .... teaming up with the biggest Chinese electronics retailer, Gome (or Guomei, in Chinese,). ..... almost 1,000 shops in 200 Chinese cities ....... a market where few consumers are keen on shopping on the phone or via the Internet. ..... among Chinese city residents "shopping is an activity that has cachet." ..... more than 80% of PC sales in China take place in such malls.
Internet Pioneers' Next Frontier from cyberspace to space. .... protocols for deep space communications, known as the Interplanetary Internet. ...... Cerf, who is now vice-president and chief Internet evangelist at Google. ...... space industry .... $180 billion in 2005 ..... space tourism and commercial transport. ..... 300,000 to 400,000 feet ... experience weightlessness. ...... we are not and should not be a one-planet species .... "the Internet, transitioning to a sustainable energy economy, and the third was space exploration and the extension of life beyond earth ...... Brin's father was forced to abandon his dream of becoming an astronomer in Soviet Russia because of anti-Semitism that essentially barred Jews from the physics program at Moscow State University. ....... "I have a T-shirt that says, 'I'm a rocket scientist,'" says Cerf.
Where Have the Leaders Gone? "What happened to all those great leaders of the past?" ..... The lack of trust in our leaders in virtually every sector of U.S. life is palpable. Recent Gallup polls indicate that only 18% of the American people trust the values and ethics of business leaders; even fewer—15%—trust their elected officials. That's not just a temporary problem. It is a formula for disaster. ..... cynical, disengaged, and even prone to anarchy and rebellion. ...... Corporate boards, shareholders, and voters—and the media that influence all of us—give far too much weight to leaders' charisma and far too little consideration to their character. ..... style over substance; image over integrity. ..... ego aggrandizement—for money, fame, power, and glory. ..... When they prove they have feet of clay, as all leaders do, we take pleasure in their destruction. ..... Genuine humility, the ability to be vulnerable under pressure, and admitting when you're wrong ..... surround themselves with other leaders who know more than they do. .... They openly admit their mistakes. They acknowledge their weaknesses and shortcomings. They ask others to help them through crises. When things go well, they give the credit to others. When they go poorly, they are the first to accept responsibility. ....... achieved results by empowering people, not by using them.
Is Starbucks Anti-Union? 32 counts of unlawfully stifling organizing activity. ..... another example of a low-wage service sector employer with inadequate benefits. ..... only 42% of Starbucks "partners," or employees, are covered by the company's health insurance ...... even less than the 47% at Wal-Mart Stores
Free Mobile Services Set to Take Off ad-sponsored cell-phone service .... has traditional mobile operators nervous ..... billions in revenues could shift from traditional subscriptions to advertising ..... currently worth only about $1 billion worldwide, mobile advertising is expected to grow to as much as $19 billion within the next five years. ..... Advertising on the Internet, especially pay-per-click ads alongside search results, quickly erupted into a multibillion-dollar industry, and online companies hope mobile phones will follow a similar trajectory. ...... the mobile industry itself is increasingly embracing mobile advertising .... Users must fill out detailed information about their lifestyles, areas of interest, and brand preferences. In exchange for agreeing to accept targeted advertising via text messaging, members get 43 minutes per month of free mobile voice service and 217 free text messages. The service is accessed through SIM cards mailed to new users, who simply plop them into their existing phones ....... Early market testing showed that consumers did not want to be bugged by advertisements during voice calls .... append targeted text-only ads to the end of incoming text messages ...... L'Oréal ..... turn mobile operators into mere "dumb pipes
No Honeymoon for Japan's New Leader the factional politics that dominate the LDP but irritate voters ...... Koizumi could work a crowd with ease .... Fukuda .. looks more salaryman than showman.
Trichet Warns of France's Economic Ills 2007 ... France will be the country spending the most in public expenditure in relation to gross domestic product, not only within the eurozone but among the 27 members of the European Union ..... "I am at the head of a state that is in a position of bankruptcy, that for 15 years has been in chronic deficit, that has not once passed a balanced budget in 25 years". ...... "Sarko the American"
Tech Titans: India and China
China's Generic Drugmakers Challenge India China is coming from behind and challenging India in an industry it has traditionally dominated ..... moved to challenge the validity of India's patent law, which does not protect incremental innovations .... India's generic pharmaceutical industry is legendary and has helped bring down the cost of essential medicines. It takes compounds that are unpatented in a particular country, copies and sells them cheaply around the world. ...... A stronger legal framework combined with skilled scientists and government incentives are turning China into a pharma powerhouse. MNCs are queuing up to build R&D centers in the country ........ "If tomorrow the Chinese decide not to supply the world with raw materials, the pharma industry would collapse ...... India and China together accounted for about 2.5% of global pharma sales by value last year ..... y volume, they account for a combined 25%. ..... In 2005, China surpassed the US to become the world's most litigious country for IP disputes with 13,424 cases filed.
Asia's Tech Concerns Aim to Stay Nimble a foundry, which means it makes chips on a contract basis for customers that want to outsource their production. ..... big foundries in Taiwan or Singapore ..... Both countries have booming economies growing at or near 10% a year. .... increased competition from multinationals on their home turf. ...... India's top companies are responding by picking up the pace of global expansion. ....... face greater urgency in diversifying their workforce and reducing their reliance on Indian labor ...... Satyam is expanding not only in Malaysia but also in Brazil, Egypt, and Hungary. ..... "Once some problems happen in one Chinese company, people feel that all Chinese companies have problems" ..... cellular operator Bharti Airtel .... software services powerhouses such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Wipro. .... Of the six languages in which the 59-year-old is fluent, one is Chinese, something he chose to study almost as a lark while a graduate student. ..... competition for talent is so intense ...... Figuring out how to hang onto their Chinese workers and recruit new ones is one of the toughest parts of the job for many foreign managers like Gronski. ...... even a country with 1.3 billion people has a limited supply of top-notch workers ..... turning those green engineers into trusty managers. ..... "Knowledge workers are in great demand"
China and India's Top Tech Companies
Selling Cisco to China's Tech Talent Pool
Selling Computers to India
Intel's Barrett Has a Vision for India the new room in the hospital that has been set up for telemedicine using Intel's WiMAX technology. .... Barrett is a crowd-pleaser. ..... Making "it," i.e, broadband connectivity, happen in India is Intel's big goal. ...... more than 250 trials and commercial deployments in more than 12 countries worldwide, where he's running pilot WiMAX projects in schools and hospitals. ...... Hardware is one part, but "connectivity," says Barrett, "is just as important." Homegrown Indian hardware companies like HCL Technologies (HCLT.BO), he notes, have a large opportunity here. ...... donated 500 computers to 50 municipal schools in Tamil Nadu, equipping them with WiMAX technology—an experiment Intel has already put in place in government schools in China, Egypt, Russia, Mexico, and elsewhere across the world. ...... "We are going to bring technology to rural India with the help of American companies like Intel," he says. Anti-Americanism is nowhere to be seen in this part of the country. ...... and invited Barrett to work his magic in Ramadoss' hometown of Tindivanam ...... The country is notorious for starting projects and then leaving them incomplete. ..... the public-private partnership model, like India's with Intel, is the best way to ensure that projects are completed. .... In connectivity, India trails "everybody except Africa
The Exponential Power of 'Chindia' New joint ventures between Indian IT service firms and their Chinese counterparts hint at the formidable bilateral economy that could emerge ..... If you are a strategist or a decision-maker in almost any enterprise anywhere in the world, you can't help but see the impact being made by India and China. ...... the possibility of China and India combining strengths across several industries to compete globally. ....... the potential to lead many global markets. ..... a hint of what India and China could collectively bring to the global economy and global balance of power in coming decades. ..... high-level official visits and pronouncements, conference participation, cultural exchanges and, most of all, forecasts of accelerating goods, services, and investment flows across the Himalayas. ...... Both countries are getting better at driving technological innovation. ...... Today, China and India are producing some of the world's best-trained computer science and electrical engineering graduates. ...... China's spending on its IT needs in 2005 was about $119 billion, about four times that of India's. That the majority of this spending went toward telecommunications equipment and services (79%) reflects the priorities of an infrastructure that is still growing. ...... The most significant inhibitor of China's vast potential for innovation is continuing government control over the most basic levers of the economy. ..... The government is often the biggest factor in IT issues and trends in China, and business leaders can't afford to delegate these relationships or distance themselves from the core analysis. ..... move from a low-cost, high-volume manufacturer to the top of the global value chain commanding the heights of innovation and global marketing prowess. ....... 2008 .... see China generate intellectual property at a rate comparable to developed countries ..... surpass the U.S. as the population with the largest English language capacity ..... at least eight Chinese IT brands will be recognized internationally by 2010. .... IT superpower.
Where to Next for India? the logistics, overwhelming bureaucracy, official corruption, and leftist political influences. ....... The intensive activity that supports an export-focused industry has distorting effects across India's economy: It changes the focus of local IT firms; it influences government policy (such as incentives and the establishment of software technology parks); and it hampers the ability of non-exporting local employers to find and retain quality staff. ...... Intel (INTC)—which already employs 3,000 Indians at its Bangalore research and development center—has invested $250 million in a partnership with local manufacturer Xenitis Infotech to manufacture low-cost computers priced at $250—the cheapest machine for sale with an Intel chip. The target market is rural areas within India. ...... In 1996, India's exports of IT services were worth about $1 million. In 2004, they were worth $13 billion. In 2000, India's share of business process outsourcing (BPO) was worth $148 million. In 2004 it was worth $3.5 billion. Any student of business knows what those kinds of growth rates mean: disruptive, challenging forces that can unseat rivals and destroy business plans. ....... China and India will be the dominant economic stories on the world stage, a trend that may well extend through most of the 21st century.
The Many Faces of Tata Group
To Get Financed and Stay Financed, Innovate At any moment in time, countless entrepreneurs worldwide are hovering over hot computers trying to think up the next big thing. ...... The Ansoff Matrix shows four different growth strategies that result by combining existing or new products with existing or new markets: market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification.
Today's Tip: The Customer Isn't Always No. 1 it's their own employees who should be treated as No. 1. ..... The biggest mistake in selling is believing that if you can just tell your prospect enough about your product or service, if you just get the chance to "make your case"—he or she will be compelled to buy. This is false. Selling is not telling. ..... Don't talk so much. Ask questions. Really listen to what this person wants. And then talk only about the aspects of your product that relate to what your prospect desires! Selling is not about what you think is cool about your product. It's about what your prospect wants!
In-House Social Networks With a nod to Facebook, large companies now have the virtual equivalent of the water cooler on the Web ...... "Giving our employees a way to connect over the Internet around the globe made sense—because they're just doing it anyway." ..... More 30-plus employees are signing up with Facebook to trade daily updates with colleagues and friends. They're also building lists of contacts from among the 13 million professionals on LinkedIn. At Ernst & Young alone, 11,000 workers now have Facebook accounts. ..... SharePoint, the Microsoft software that lets companies set up MySpace-like profiles, blogs, and collaborative Web sites known as wikis within the confines of their firewalls, is one of the fastest-growing server products in the company's history. ..... The whole "open" ethos of the social Net—sharing pictures and music and letting "friends" know your every activity—goes against the instincts of big-company chief information officers. ...... all that collaboration will cut out time that's now spent mailing documents and e-mailing comments. .... By having members brainstorm, review each other's work, and prepare budgets on the network, the Film Foundation believes it can cut by half the amount of time it takes to create the materials.
What's Love Got to Do with Internships? I was once under the mistaken impression that, when dating, it was my job to be funny and charming and impressive. Then I learned that it was much more impressive to take an interest in her. Then I learned, to hell with being impressive, this listening thing is a great way to find out whether she's crazy! ........ but as with the highs and lows of my past dating career, I think I've come out of it an improved partner for my future match. ..... I've learned my lesson about prematurely rushing into opportunities ..... attachment can easily blossom in the heat of excitement, but that it takes the nourishment of consistency and dedication to cultivate the kind of career I'd like to fall in love with.