Much like India missed the industrial revolution, it is clear that India is going to miss the Web 2.0 revolution as well. There are many “Web 2.0″ startups in India and some have been doing well, e.g. Zoho and SlideShare but that’s mainly due to an international user base and not indigenous Indian users.
I’ve been hard pressed to find an Indian Web 2.0 company, doing well and making money by serving the Indian subcontinent. The simple reason for this is that there are just not enough Indian computer and Internet users. Most casual Internet users will check stock prices, buy an airline ticket, look for a job, check their email, hit a social networking site and chat with others. There is a younger Indian demographic that is heavily using social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut but the amount of time they spend on these social networking sites is questionable.
Beyond the tech-savvy in India, very few people have heard of Wikipedia, Digg or the power of social media. The social “web” is taking form in India but not as most of us from the West have experienced. I predict that India will mostly leapfrog Web 2.0 and go directly to Mobile 3.0. Mobile 3.0 being highly personal, highly location specific products and services that allow 3G+ phones and even lower-end phones capable only of SMS to become part of the social fabric of the Web. There shouldn’t be any distinction between the Internet and Mobile platforms. One is just an extension of the other. As innovative user interface designs are produced, India’s 250 million mobile users can be brought into the social web much more quickly and provide them with true value which, unfortunately, they aren’t aware exists on the Internet today.
The largest impediment to bringing these 250 million people into the social web is going to be cost and the carriers holding the golden keys. Expecting the carriers to work with these small startup companies will be difficult at best. Not to mention, Indian carriers have a very bad reputation of bleeding their partners dry. They also have brought the “walled garden” to mobile phones. Companies like Airtel try to push their “Airtel Live” services instead of unfettered GPRS/EDGE. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing right now to allow non-tech-savvy people access to a limited online mobile experience, the way AOL gave subscribers an online version of a walled garden in the late 80’s and 90’s. Users will eventually outgrow the walled garden and seek more.
Estimates put the Indian mobile VAS space at about USD 1 Billion in March of 2008 and predict that it could hit USD 2 Billion by the end of 2008. These aren’t numbers to sneeze at. It’s just the beginning of the mobile application usage. Today, over 40% of VAS revenue comes from SMS. As smartphones like the Nokia N96, Blackberry Bond, Nokia E71, and Apple iPhone penetrate deeper into the Indian market, the desire for richer mobile applications connecting people together will only grow.
I’ve recently gotten back into some development and needed to run MySQL on my Leopard computers. The easy way out was downloading and running MAMP (a great pre-built package of Apache and MySQL). Unfortunately, I hated starting the Apache and MySQL daemons manually.
I created OS X launchctl scripts to start Apache and MySQL but I hated the fact that I was maintaining two installations of Apache (the one that comes with OS X and the MAMP one). I wanted one simple installation of everything that would start automatically. Also, occasionally, weird things would happen with permissions and I’d have to shut everything down and restart again.
It’s been some time since I compiled my own software so I was looking forward to compiling MySQL from scratch. The first thing I found was this great post on Hivelogic about compiling MySQL. I’m not going to regurgitate what’s in the post but I’m going to highlight the configure flags for Leopard. Most times, when compiling applications, getting all the flags right is the only way to ensure your specific OS and architecture are properly supported in the compilation process and it’s the only way to squeeze out the best performance.
CC=gcc CFLAGS="-O3 -fno-omit-frame-pointer" CXX=gcc \
CXXFLAGS="-O3 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -felide-constructors \
-fno-exceptions -fno-rtti" \
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql \
--with-extra-charsets=complex --enable-thread-safe-client \
--enable-local-infile --enable-shared
Make sure you change your root (data base administrator password) by running:
/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'new-password'
/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root -h localhost password 'new-password'
Don’t forget to secure your server as indicated on HiveLogic.
My plist file for automatically launching MySQL under MAMP is here. Feel free to compare it to the post at HiveLogic or change it to suit your needs. If you have any suggestions on how to improve it, please let me know.
A great post by Fred Wilson titled “Venture Fund Economics: Gross and Net Returns“. Do take a look if you’re even remotely interested/involved in a startup.
Preparations for BarCamp Delhi are under way. The date for the fifth installment of BarCamp Delhi has been set for the 4th and 5th of October 2008. Please join the BarCamp Delhi Google Group.
It’s great to finally hear that MSFT is beginning to see the light and getting involved in open source projects like Apache. I just hope the right hand knows what the left hand is doing and this continues.
Read more about MSFT donatine cash to the Apache Foundation and pledging to open up some of their communications software and protocols.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft backs open source work
Here are some screenshots of apps I have downloaded from the Apple App store. All the apps are running on a 1st generation 8gb iPhone that was recently upgraded to the 2.0 firmware. My carrier is Airtel in New Delhi and this post is being made with the Wordpress app for the iPhone.
Recently, I’ve seen three interesting timeline applications. Kronomy which Guy Kawasaki twittered about, LifeBlob which presented at Proto.in and I just stumbled upon the third, Dipity.
Here’s my Dipity timeline (it might be a little slow to load b/c of the various pictures and videos):
I haven’t tried LifeBlob yet, but creating a time line using RSS feeds made setting up a simple Timeline on Dipity really easy - 5 minutes easy! Kronomy was a bit more of challenge to setup RSS feeds in.
This is my first post using the new Wordpress App from the iTunes App Store. Pretty good so far and really easy to use.
So far the Indian government looks like it will stay in power. What does that mean for the Indo-US nuclear pact? It looks good. What does it mean for the Indian economy? More of the same once the initial euphoria of the government not falling wears off.
A great post from Nik Cubrilovic on those of us forgetting about our FOSS ideals by falling victim to the consumerist attitudes that the shiniest, sexiest gadgets in the playground evoke.
TechCrunchIT » Blog Archive » The New Apple Walled Garden
For all you economics and business-minded folks out there, I put up a post about my thoughts on the Indian economy and the direction it’s heading in over here.
I’d love to hear your thoughts …
