I am very happy that finally WordPress now provides what Blogger/Blogspot has always been providing. Press by email. In simple terms, one just has to establish a “secret email” from “My Blogs” page within WordPress Admin. To publish a post, all you have to do is send an email to this address and you are done. Though there may have been a delay on my part to discover this feature. I saw this today, and clearly remember was not there when I started using WordPress.

You can also change this email ID any time you want. This has an even more powerful implication. Since any one sending an email to this ID will publish a post in your blog (there is no check on sender’s identity). One can quickly change this “Secret” email and share with others to invite open posts/views etc creating an open forum. Once done, this can be changed again, closing the entries, and making email pressing private again.

I just wish for some more goodies from WordPress:

1.  Any ideas/tricks on how to tag a post which is pressed from email
2. The WordPress blog URL which serves as OpenID is platform 1.1. Please start dishing out OpenID platform 2.0 which is what everyone else seems to be using now a days (including Google, Yahoo, Facebook, MyOpenID to name a few)

By the way, I got my OpenID 2.0 from “MyOpenID” and thats http://sidfadnis.myopenid.com/

Cheers !!
Siddharth

Already 1 week I’m reviewing the features “Google Wave Preview”.

Today, after login to my google wave account I found there are 8 pieces of invitations which I  can use.
For those who do not know yet about this cool product, Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation
and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html

So  …

For those who are interested may be able to PM me your Gmail Account for using my invitation. Only 8 pieces left now…

I assure you, Google Wave is a very cool product … you should try it 

http://www.theindependent-bd.com/details.php?nid=151450

2nd Sub-marine cable to be set up at Mongla: Dr Moshiur
Independent Online

Nov 25: Adviser for finance to the Prime Minister Dr Moshiur Rahaman said the government has already decided to set up the second sub-marine cable at the Mongla Port for connecting it to the information superhighway as part of building Digital Bangladesh.

The government also has taken a project involving Taka 850 crore for supplying gas through pipelines to the Khulna region.

An IT village will be established in Khulna and preliminary work for it has already started.

After inaugurating the Khulna Pedia, the adviser said a cross of people including readers, researchers, traders, tourists and all professional bodies would get the opportunity for connecting them with the modern information technology.

Dr Moshiur made said this while inaugurating a day-long Khulna digital festival-2009 as the chief guest at Khulna Government Zila School maidan.

Speaking on the occasion, he also said the people would collect their necessary information relating to geographical, historical, educational, economical and business activities from now on.

The adviser said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has taken a project that would create human resources after getting training through computers at the end of 2001. For this purpose, the Prime Minister has given computers to many schools in the country, he added.

Dr Moshiur said Sheikh Hasina is doing politics for welfare of the people, not for making money. He termed the recent development in the information and communication technology field as one of the major development tools for the nation.

Organised by the Khulna district administration with the technical support from Pranon Private Limited, the Khulna digital festival was presided over by Khulna deputy commissioner N M Ziaul Alam.

Mayor of Khulna City Corporation (KCC) Talukder Abdul Khalek, Molla Zalal Uddin, MP; Begum Noor Afroz Ali, MP; Khulna district Awami League president Sheikh Harun-ur-Rashid, Khulna divisional commissioner Md Eunusur Rahman, DIG of Khulna range Sheikh Hemayet Uddin, KMP commissioner Md Helal Uddin Badri and Khulna police super Md Samshddin addressed the function as special guests.

President of Khulna Nagarik Forum freedom fighter Sheikh Abdul Quiyum and Khulna Press Club president A K Hiru also spoke.

Prof Dr. Mahbubur Rahman of Khulna University and Prof AKM Azhar of Khulna University of Engineering and Technology presented separate keynote papers.

Earlier, a colourful procession was brought out from Khulna Government Zila School.

Various socio-cultural organisations and general people joined the procession with banners, festoons and replicas of different species of animals of the Sundarbans.

Later, a cultural function and a day-long IT fair were held besides inauguration of automation of traditional Umesh Chandra Public Library in the city.

At least 12 IT stalls were set up by different organisations at the school maidan.

http://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/more.php?news_id=85428

Info centres to be built in all UPs: Nanak

State Minister for LGRD and Cooperatives Jahangir Kabir Nanak has said access to information as well as information technology by all is essential to materialise ‘Vision 2021′, announced by the present government.

“Getting information as well as services is very much essential in the technology-based life and livelihood,” he said while addressing the concluding function of a national workshop as the chief guest on District Web Portal and Content in the city Tuesday, reports BSS.

To this end, he said, the government has undertaken an initiative to build an information centre in each Union Parishad (UP) of the country.

“Activities of such information centres have already begun in 30 UPs and construction work of more than 1,000 centres is going on,” he added.

UNDP-funded Access to Information (A2I) Programme under the Prime Minister’s Office organised the workshop for additional deputy commissioners and high officials of various levels.

Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Mohammad Abdul Karim was the special guest at the function chaired by Project Director of the A2I Programme Nazrul Islam Khan.

“To make the programme successful, training for divisional commissioners and deputy commissioners was completed and training for Upazila Nirbahi Officers is on,” Mr Nanak said, adding that web portal will be launched in all districts by December 16 under the A2I Project.

…when you solve your own tech support issue while the IT professional still is trying to figure out what the issue is?

That’s what happened to me today, and it’s not the first time. Usually it’s a function of how little the IT support person knows about OS X. But in this case, it had nothing really to do with the OS but with browsers in general. I was surprised yesterday to find that upon going to the URL of an ob/gyn journal, I got an error message in Safari indicating that the page would not load. I restarted Safari-same thing. Emptied the cache-no change. I assumed the site was just down, but if I went there via Firefox or the Safari browser on my iPhone, there was no problem.

I contacted the site’s support team and they were stumped. I indicated that I was running OS 10.6.2 which led to the question “are you using a Macintosh computer?” So I figured that OS X wasn’t necessarily their forte. They thought it might have something to do with an old version of Flash, but I’m running the latest version and besides, if it were a plugin issue, it would also have produced the same behavior in any other browser on my laptop.

So I had a hunch and deleted all cookies relating to the site in question. That did the trick, and I let the tech support person know what the issue was. Case closed. But this must be the tenth time or more in recent memory where I had to solve my own problem. And as previously, I had the same feeling that had I not figured it out myself, the problem would not have been solved. That happened to me around 2000-there was some network issue at work that resulted in OUtlook 2000 for the Mac no longer working. The IT person was not happy to have been dealing with a Mac issue, and basically I was on my own. After a few days I figured it out and life went on just fine. But had I not persisted and arrived at the solution, no one was going to bail me out. So I’ve always had to be self-sufficient as regards the Mac. Still, it is a shame that the user frequently has to solve the problem.

Just the other day, Debbie and I noticed that many Web pages would require a refresh to load at all, and some downloads of as little as 100 MB would stall. This was happening on two different computers running either 10.5 or 10.6, and even emptying the DNS cache or using an OpenDNS server wouldn’t resolve the issue. Multiple calls to Verizon tech support failed to solve the issue, since our bandwidth appeared to be just fine. Finally I got someone who told me to restart the DSL modem, something that should have occurred to me, but definitely should have occurred to someone during the 4-5 calls to tech support I had made.

So it’s nice when tech support can come through. But it’s a challenge. And to be fair, they have a tough job. I don’t envy these folks. But many times tech support people seem to be reciting from a script when they should be listening to the user and formulating possible solutions on the fly. The last person I spoke with at Verizon did just that. Unfortunately, this happens too infrequently.

With the recession, everyone in business is looking to invest in branding, outreach and market development programs that are cost-effective.  This blog starts with 10 simple ideas, some tried and true, some off the wall, and some, somewhere in between to guide small and medium businesses during the downswing so that they’re ready for the upswing.

1. Measure twice, invest once.
It’s the reinvention of an old adage, but it’s still true for businesses today. A year ago, businesses could take a few messages out to the public and see what stuck. Today, we have to focus on narrowing the message even more than we normally would. That puts the emphasis on solid research to understand the buyer, but it also puts the focus on low-cost tools that can help us conduct that research (e.g., using Google adwords and other paid search to understand what key words and messages have the greatest resonance with our audiences). It’s important to find the best message you can, since the budget to get that message out is probably going to shrink and you’re going to be increasingly reliant on viral marketing.

2. If it ain’t broke, don’t let anyone try to fix it.
Once you have a good message, stick with it. With the downturn in the economy, one of the first suggestions that everyone making business decisions will hear from everyone else is: “maybe we need to change the message!” If your message has always focused on a solid value proposition that resonates with your buyer, there’s no reason to change your message at all. In fact, changing your message involves a lot of difficult to calculate costs in terms of your time, re-educating your buyers about what’s important about your offerings, and so on. If there’s no evidence that your message is the problem, don’t change it.

3. Focus on conversion.
Your sales pipeline may stay constant or it may even increase depending on the kind of product or service you’re selling, but more than ever, closing the deal should be your mantra. Sales are what count in a recession (and even when it’s not a recession). Everyone in the organization should be looking for ways to help the sales team close deals. Role up your sleeves and get out there. Get involved in account plans if you company works through channel sales so that you can help your partners market themselves. If you’re company is more of a direct play, work with your organizational teams to identify, qualify and close key opportunities. Don’t take no for an answer!

4. Follow the buyer.
This is good advice even when it’s not a recession. Invest some time and research into learning more about how your buyers makes purchasing decisions, what sources of information they consider to be important, and which they take to be most credible. Most buyers, for example, don’t make major purchasing decisions about software by going at a tradeshow, and yet, many marketing professionals spend a great deal of time and capital investing in shows to drive awareness with the buyer. There’s nothing wrong with attending a tradeshow if you can afford it, but you should invest the most amount of capital you can reaching your buyer directly through media and venues they trust. Maybe that’s a tradeshow, but more likely, that’s a Wikipedia article, a YouTube video, a how-to blog article, and other Web 2.0 media.

5. Don’t just imitate.
Many senior marketing pros repeat what they learned while they were coming up through the ranks. There’s something to be said for the wisdom of experience and all that, but your tactics should be guided by what’s happening on the ground. The economy in North America has been largely on the rise for the last two decades, and that has meant more liberal spending. Buyers have been looking more at maximal value rather than optimal value. Relationships and convenience have been more meaningful buying criteria, but buying formulas are changing. The question is: how? If you’re not sure, work with your sales team to get out into the field as much as you can and get some empirical data.

6. Learn and adapt.
As a corollary to 5, put a renewed emphasis on your willingness to adapt. The recession will naturally affect everyone’s buying cycle as well as their criteria. If you don’t have a lot of experience with the micro- and macroeconomics of recession and how that affects buying, you can help yourself and your company with a little research. The importance of perceived value tends to go up in the minds of purchasers as the economy goes down, but it’s difficult to predict and depends on what you’re selling. You can also help yourself and your company by understanding what new objections there are to purchase decisions among your customers and thinking of new and creative ways to counter them.

7. Understand your brand.
This was a truism even before the recession, but every buyer knows that marketing is marketing and most buyers tend to treat marketing as white noise. In terms of branding, that has meant a turn toward minimalism (all those Nike ads without much Nike branding in them are a good example). To make use of a Zen koan, the focus has turned from the designing of the bowl itself, to understanding, designing and, indeed, inventing the space that the bowl creates and how that space is meaningful and useful to your customers. Today, your brand should much less reflect who you are, much more reflect who your customer wants to be because your business should be a happy marriage of the relationship between you and your customers.

8. Solve the right problem.
Once your house is in order, start looking at the rest of the pre-sales cycle. If sales are flagging, nine times out of ten, the problem’s not with the message; it’s with the delivery. A successful pre-sales cycle that takes the customer from cold lead to closed deal is a matter of making sure things fall into place as they should when they should. You can’t solve an awareness problem with better messaging. You can’t solve an interest problem just by throwing more money into promotion. You can’t solve a channel relationship problem with more creative and compelling advertising. You can’t solve product problems with a blog. Understand the company’s pre-sales (and if you can, its post-sales) proceses inside and out, figure out which problems are a real impediment to sales, and press as much as you can to address these problems with the right solutions.

9. Remember, you’re also always branding, marketing and selling yourself.
If one thing is true about being being in business, whether you’re an entrepreneur, in sales or marketing, or a little of all three, it’s that you’re always having to prove yourself. Sales proves itself with closed deals. Development proves itself with a working product. Operations proves itself with working processes and supply chain. Customer service proves itself with happy customers and closed cases. How are you proving your worth to your customers? Web traffic, leads and other traditional marketing KPIs may not be enough anymore. Look to the successes in other organizations and build a clear, compelling story about how your leadership was necessary to make every other organization in the company successful. Closed deals indicate a strong, easily understood value proposition, articulated in ways customers understand and value. A good, working product that customers value indicates a proper understanding of and response to customer needs. Happy customers mean correctly set expectations, and so on.

10. Focus on the three Rs: reputation, repetition and refinement.
Once you have a formula that’s getting you traction, don’t be content to rest on your laurels. Continue to focus on building your reputation with potential buyers, continue to repeat everything that’s working for you, but also discard what’s not working. It’s true that the problem with marketing is that you can’t always know what will work, but you can always know what’s not working. Build a reputation for yourself as someone who makes highly creative, intuitive decisions, but also as someone who relies on the measurable numbers and strong analytical skills to contextualize the numbers in order to inform those decisions. If something’s not working, dump it and move on.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving I’d like to take a few moments to recognize the technologies (information, that is) that we should be thankful for.  My criteria are simple.  To be considered, the technology must have had a meanful, positive impact on people’s lives and changed the world for the better.  And just so the turkeys don’t feel left out I’ll mention a couple of them.

Wireless communications.  No other technology has had as big an impact on individuals lives and changed the world as much as wireless technology.  In some ways wireless technology is the printing press of our era.  It has liberated individuals from their desks and given them the freedom to work where and when they want to.  But, more importantly, it has liberated people from tyranny by providing access to uncensored information.  Without radio broadcasts into closed societies and, more recently, mobile communication devices that allow people to communicate free of central control, much of the liberalization we’ve seen over the past 30+ years  would not have happened.  [My argument with those who would put the Internet first is that wireless technology was having an impact long before the Internet existed.  Exhibit #1: The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 the same year Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web and well before it was a factor in our lives.]  And wireless technology is still going strong with new advances in wireless communications promising better, more timely access to information as well as increased automation of manual tasks.

Personal computers and network technology.  Let me start by painting a portrait of a (frustrated) engineer as a young man.  I started my engineering studies wasting many hours keypunching cards to run programs on mini-computers and, even after we had ceremoniously destroyed the last of the keypunch machines, waiting in line to use one of the limited green screen terminals.  On starting my first job we had three PCs to share amongst  20 engineers…and they weren’t yet networked!  A couple of years later I was in information technology heaven with my own machine and a connection to the minicomputers (DEC PDP11s) where the data resided.  Around the same time I discovered Lotus 1-2-3.  I was off to the data crunching/data visualization races!  For those wondering, I lumped personal computers and network technology together because, by themselves, they are nothing compared to what they are together.

The Internet.  Ranking the Internet third will no doubt get me lots of flack, particularly from 20 and 30 somethings.  But hear me out.  The Internet is still young and its impact on our lives, while significant, is a ways from peaking.  And its impact would be negligible if personal computers were not as ubiquitous as they are.  It will no doubt move to the top of the list over time but in the meantime we’re dealing with its growing pains including search results that don’t return what we want, the rise of spammers and their ilk, and legitimate concerns about privacy.  Personally, though I’m grateful for the Internet, I sometimes see it as mixed blessing.

Flat Panel Displays.  There are two aspects of information technology that often get no respect – input and output technology.  And, rightly so, because there hasn’t been much change over the years.  But one breakthrough that deserves mention is the emergence of low cost, high resoution flat panel displays.  Without this breakthrough there would be no laptops, smartphones, and GPS systems, to name a few transformational products.  And there’s still plenty of innovation to be had in the world of flat panel displays including flexible displays, black on white displays, etc.  [Honorable mention in the input/output space goes to the mouse.] 

And now for a couple of turkeys:

Battery technology.  OK, I acknowledge it could be on the list above.  There would be no mobile devices without some advances in battery technology.  But progress has been so slow in coming that failure to advance battery technology fast enough has held back progress in other areas.  There are signs of breakthroughs (and certainly no shortage of investment in battery technology recently) but nothing to be truly thankful for yet.

Voice recognition technology.  Maybe this is simply the lament of a failed typist but it seems like we’ve been promised a breakthough in voice recognition technology for over 20 years!  Personally I gave up waiting five or so years ago.  I would have been better served by putting my energies into learning to type when I was younger.  In the meantime, I console myself with the knowledge that on a smart phone everyone has to use two thumbs to type.

So there you have it.  My short list of information technologies to be thankful for.  Regardless of which technologies are on your own list, be sure to put them away tomorrow.  After all, the best technologies are the ones that give you the time to do the things that you’ve always enjoyed such as eating, drinking, and being in the company of family and good friends.

Happy Thanksgiving!