Leading Trump - Pradeep U.N. & his Blog about Nothing. : Technology, Competition and Innovation

FareCast.com: Da Shiznitz in AirFares websites

Pradeep U.N. — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 01:34:00 GMT

Now *This* is Coolness! Everyone whoz anyone knows that the chances that the person sitting next to you in an airplane is paying the same airfare as you is extremely low especially in the US airfare industry. There have been several interesting websites to this industry since the the dotcom boom - expedia, priceline, orbitz, hotwire to name a few but this new addition - farecast is da shitnitz.

So why is this so cool, apart from the simple yet cool macromedia enabled interface? It predicts when the price will rise and by how much and (hear this) with a confidence interval for that prediction - and ofcourse the TIP that says "Go Buy Now".

P-Values for fare predictions - Why didnt I think of this?

Currently the site is for flights leaving Seattle and Boston only (suits me perfectly) - but you should give it a go. Why? Well if the reasons so far aint good enough for you, how about - "jus-coz!" Its at www.farecast.com

Vista and my Laptop - Where Love and Hate Collide.

Pradeep U.N. — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 05:28:00 GMT

Chalk this one on my list of Stupid things to do.

Given that Office 2003 on XP was running as fast Daffy Duck on a marathon - what was I thinking when I decided to upgrade to Office 12 on Vista at that. The pointed Fingers are aimed at a certain Felipe Oyanadel who had a pretty elaborate methodology to install that on a similar machine (his) which was the same except for a few cycles of Ghz more on his CPU. I am such a sucker for sucess stories, cool interfaces and superfast graphics that I Spent my weekend at work trying to "upgrade".

Quickly learning my mistake I went back to a fresh XP installation and tried Office 12 on it - much better performance - but outlook is chewing up my 2GB Pst files like it was a mouldy toothed ogre chewing on raw steak. All this aside - the interface was cool and I cant wait to get a new machine to upgrade to this next release. Its supercool yes. My machine is just not ready for it yet. Bummer.

Lesson Learnt: When older software is slow on current hardware, do not move to newer software on same hardware. And you'd think thats a no-duh axiom. No wonder its on my list of Stupid things to do.

Visa Beta 2 - Bit Torrents bends the line between official and unofficial...

Pradeep U.N. — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 01:15:00 GMT

Before u read any further - do realise this post is more a reflection with interest and NOT an endorsement, support or remark of any kind.

Last week's update when we opened up Vista Beta2 Download came with a usage warning on June 9th that high demand could cripple wait & Download times. Not sure if the demand was underestimated or there was a truly serious constraint on infrastructure decisions but bottomline - download usage was high (No that did not tip the stockprice up - well not yet atleast) and download times were horrible.

A torrent site that came up soon on the web (Like thatz a surprise) now offers an "unofficial mirroring with official validation" with its BitTorrent download for Vista Beta 2. In their own words they say .....

This is not a crack, this is not a hack, this is not software piracy - it's unofficial mirroring with official validation. You can get a Windows Vista Beta 2 product key for free through Microsoft, as the OS won't install without one.

Yes this does bend the lines of official and unofficial. And I am a sucker for business-debates. So now comes the question of software assurance and trust. How would I trust what I download from this site to not have any "naughty" code? Will code downloaded from this site be supported by MS? Based on the documentation this site does sound to be from a very positive evangelist with very noble intentions - but legal ramifications in cases of exception are still valid. But this makes for one very interesting business case :)

Google Current: Google comes to a TV Near You!

Pradeep U.N. — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 15:54:00 GMT

Google Current - a brief really hip TV Segment on what people are searching for online being showcased on Current TV an interactive cable channel. Shouldnt be long before this becomes pop-culture and behavioral trends of searches and reasons to search would be geared towards getting your 2 mins segment online.

In fact one of the recent Google Current segments was on Tamil - my native language . The accent and style of presentation of Conor Knighton (The Host) ofcourse was super funny almost made me wonder if this was a video spoof that I was watching. NOT! This was the real thing. Also interesting was how the segment within mins of starting went from the language into Tamil-Matrimony (and arranged marriages) and quickly into casteism. Ugh!? Double Ugh.

Really cool RealEstate Valuation Mapping technology at Zillow.com

Pradeep U.N. — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 11:01:00 GMT

Talk about Killer apps - this one is da bomb.

Zillow.com takes in your address and spits out the evaluations of the houses in and around your locale all this on a really cool Satellite/Hybrid Map.

Love it.

Thanks to Business2.0 to point me towards this!

Google Desktop 3 should raise eyebrows on privacy.

Pradeep U.N. — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 10:32:00 GMT

True to form - Google released its Desktop Search 3 beta tonite - 2 hrs ago, while I was having dinner. And yes the launch was through its Blog.

The new version is loaded with features that I have seen some internal beta versions of some tools that MSN had been showcasing for a while (I will let them share information on that through their medium). But what was intriguing was the Search across computers feature.

The various privacy statements and "Clear my files from Google" options apart - Yes this does mean Google stores your file on their computers for a period of time. Ugh! That is SCARY! The security implications of a small mishap could be really tragic on several fronts. For example - what happens if one happened to install this feature on their corporate network on their desktop? There is just something that makes me cringe under my skin - even though searching my file across computers is really really cool!

Heck if I needed my files that badly I would just use my 1GB USB drive on my keychain. After all - Bling-Blings these days are measured in GB!

TechCrunch even wrote an article on this titled: Google Desktop 3.0: Privacy is Dead(er)

Makes you wonder, doesnt it?

The "Desi" Answer to Google....

Pradeep U.N. — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 03:31:00 GMT

Two Indians, who were among the co-founders of web database company 'Junglee', hope their deep search technology Kosmix can improve upon Google's one-size-fits-all approach with categorization.

Currently they have categorizations along 3 lines - Health (Beta), Politics (Alpha) and Travel (Alpha).

Oh yes - that the media is excited about the fact that the founders of Kosmix went to school with the founders of Google is a point of interest.

Your Cellphone records are now for Sale! for $95 SCARY.

Pradeep U.N. — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 22:23:00 GMT

A couple of days ago - SunTimes ran this article that cellphone records are now for sale to anybody for a price.

Potential scenarios for shortlisting customer segments and therefore positioning strategies were also stated:

Criminals: To expose a government informant who regularly calls a law enforcement official.
Suspicious spouses: can see if their husband or wife is calling a certain someone a bit too often.
Employers: can check whether a worker is regularly calling a psychologist -- or a competing company

No - I am not joking at all - here is a company that can help you in infringe on your privacy! "Though this problem is all too common, federal law is too narrow to include this type of crime," Senator Charles Schumer for Chicago said in a prepared statement. Translation: We have no clue - what to do! Yikes.

Want to test out Windows Live Messenger BETA?

Pradeep U.N. — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 11:47:00 GMT

Beta invites are far and few and Frank La Vigne our .Net Developer has some available here....

Office 12 Preview Invites...

Pradeep U.N. — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 11:33:00 GMT

'Tis the season to open up Beta-Invites I guess

But the New Office 12 invites are available here. ofcourse you register now and get invites later on.. Word from the friends I know at Office who have been dog-fooding Office12 have raved abt the functionality with all the issues that goes with dog-fooding software.

If there is anything I would love to get my hands on Office12 - it is the Graphics capability and charting feature! They were quite mindblowing.

Intel changes logo - and responds to a "Ur new logo sux" Email

Pradeep U.N. — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 11:13:00 GMT

Sure everyone has heard of the Intel Logo change by now. Ofcourse Computer Associates also did the same late last yr moving to CA instead. But this story that I read in BoingBoing was quite funny.

The story goes that a Blogger wrote to Intel:

Subject: Contact Intel, New Logo
About: Question, YOUR NEW LOGO SUCKS. Ugh. What a waste of money.

And gets an auto-response back which starts with the sentence - "Thank you for contacting Intel. We sincerely appreciate your taking time to provide your comments and feedback." and ends with .... "Again, thank you for your interest in Intel. " Full email is found here

Supposedly this new logo is signalling balance between heritage and evolution to platforms and supposedly aligns with how people buy their technology today-in a complex marketplace with many devices.

I dont know about you - but I looked at this logo long and hard.... Heritage nor evolution came up to me immediately.... What abt you?

What is the opinion of bloggers on a topic? Ask OpiniMind!

Pradeep U.N. — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 20:36:00 GMT

This tool was sooo cool when I tried it a few weeks ago - thanx to Business2Blog.

Especially great in collecting data for opinion-debates based on the blogosphere, Opinmind gets a return on the positive and negative opinions across the blogosphere.

For instance - wonder how MSN does against AOL?

or although out of date by years... Bush vs Kerry?

This is quite cool :)

FileSharing? C'est bonne : say the French parliament

Pradeep U.N. — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 20:08:00 GMT

Another update from Xeni at BoingBoing:: Last night, the French parliament voted to affirm the legality of filesharing free music and movies on the Internet. If the amendment survives, France would be the first country to legalize so called peer-to-peer downloading.

This can be very interesting to the whole Ipod/ITunes revolution and the whole outcry from the media companies. Ofcourse there are various stages before that is a concern - first the amendment has to survive, Europe has to think it through after the French took their stand and then see how this affects the US and the rest of the world.

Marketing Innovation??? A$$vertising and How!!

Pradeep U.N. — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 10:01:00 GMT

When Xeni Jardin wrote about this new "derriere media placement" strategy by Kodak in Ukraine.... my marketing mind went "wow" and "you gotta be kidding" at the same time. But then I find there is a whole company running this campaign!

Whoa.... Enough Said.

Microsoft Research catches "gaming" in Google AdSense by Typosquatters

Pradeep U.N. — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 09:04:00 GMT

Ryan Naraine at ZiffDavis writes about how we have uncovered a large-scale, typo-squatting scheme that uses multi-layer URL redirection to game Google's AdSense for domains program in this article by eWeek. This was part of Microsoft Research labs' HoneyMonkey exploit detection system project.

Here are some excerpt examples from the article that help you understand what is happening with Google AdSense....

The Microsoft researchers found that Web sites aimed at kids were a regular target. Several variations of Disney Channel's "kimpossible.com" have been registered and all redirect to a parked anchor for the misspelled "disnryland.com." On that site, Google AdSense ads for adult content and pornography are being served....

Well Kim Possible - if you can do anything.... how about cleaning up these typo-squatters for once? :)

Back to Ryan's article he adds....In an interesting twist, the Google ads sometimes point back to the actual site that is deliberately misspelled, meaning that companies are paying per-click fees to the scammers. The key to the scheme is Google's Google AdSense for domains program, which lets users split revenue from advertising served on parked domains. Google boasts that the service powers more than 3 million domain names. However, as the Microsoft researchers point out, the use of deliberately misspelled URLs in the program may be a violation of Google's terms of service that clearly restricts "site promotion of incentive or fraudulent clicking."

I just had a presentation last week about my Security SKUs for the enterprise in which I was talking about how with advent/introduction new technology the current infrastructure/practices requires updation failing which there are higher risks of compromise... all else equal. Which is not unlike the Red-Queen Effect (when applied to Security). This seems to mirror those statements.