Anyone who hasn't already read it, should read it. The blogs from Steven Strogatz :
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/steven-strogatz/
The real joy of reading mathematics ...
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Commonwealth games 2010
People are searching for Commonwealth Games 2010, the largest such games currently going on the earth. The not-so-surprising fact is that people are not probably looking for Games result or prospects, but they are actually searching to get updates on poor infrastructure.
To get a confirmation, open Google and search for Commonwealth Games Delhi, the suggestions you would get are shown below -
The infrastructure comes at third most related one as of today. It's good that "ceremony" has generated enough hype to beat "infrastructure" as the single most searched word along with "commonwealth games delhi". I'll report the same once more, when the Games is over.
Updated near the end of the Games :
The picture actually is worse than what we started with.
Now another feather in the crown has been added to it. Corruption was always a part of Indian organizations and will probably remain so in near future. So, it just made a cut in the list.
To get a confirmation, open Google and search for Commonwealth Games Delhi, the suggestions you would get are shown below -
Updated near the end of the Games :
The picture actually is worse than what we started with.
Windows Mobile, Kinect and Holiday sales
Microsoft is going to unveil a couple of new products in this holiday season. The first is their new Windows Mobile. It's understandable that people who plan to buy it will definitely would like to search for it on Google. Although time is still left for playing a late catchup game, the numbers still doesn't look good for Microsoft.
See above - Windows Mobile (blue) against Android (red), Full Report
The other bet Kinect is generating poorer response compared to Sony's Move, the competitor in this game.
See above - XBOX Kinect (blue) against Playstation Move (red), Full report
See above - Windows Mobile (blue) against Android (red), Full Report
The other bet Kinect is generating poorer response compared to Sony's Move, the competitor in this game.
See above - XBOX Kinect (blue) against Playstation Move (red), Full report
Friday, September 17, 2010
Bollywood Movies And Their Hype Cycle
I read about Gartner's famous Hype-cycle and am a follower of the same. It puts technologies in different places of a curve that they name as hype curve. In my thoughts this is applicable to a lot of other areas, may be in a variant of the graph Gartner proposed.
I tried to fit the Bollywood movies in a hype cycle. Unlike the last part of Gartner's cycle, where the productivity plateaus, the last part for movies remain flat. So, let's see what's the curve for movies released in last couple of months.
The full report is placed at here.
Diging into details of the report, "Dabangg" was particularly a big hit in Punjab, where "Aisha" did really well in Bengal. But one thing is evident, all the movies follow a certain hype cycle. "Dabangg" is now at it's peak, "khatta meetha" and "aisha" are in the flat trajectory. Any prospects of "We are family" had a premature death, perhaps due to massive popularity of "Dabangg".
What happens if I extend the range beyond the movies produced in last couple of months? I took a few films deemed successful in last decade and ran the same experiments. Here's what I get (link to the report) -
Three Idiots was far more successful in India than the others. But if you move back to the whole world (link to the report), the best performing movie is "Slumdog Millionaire" (see blue line below).
There were multiple reports that "Slumdog Millionaire" was not so popular in India. It was correct, proved by the data from Google.
I tried to fit the Bollywood movies in a hype cycle. Unlike the last part of Gartner's cycle, where the productivity plateaus, the last part for movies remain flat. So, let's see what's the curve for movies released in last couple of months.
Diging into details of the report, "Dabangg" was particularly a big hit in Punjab, where "Aisha" did really well in Bengal. But one thing is evident, all the movies follow a certain hype cycle. "Dabangg" is now at it's peak, "khatta meetha" and "aisha" are in the flat trajectory. Any prospects of "We are family" had a premature death, perhaps due to massive popularity of "Dabangg".
What happens if I extend the range beyond the movies produced in last couple of months? I took a few films deemed successful in last decade and ran the same experiments. Here's what I get (link to the report) -
Three Idiots was far more successful in India than the others. But if you move back to the whole world (link to the report), the best performing movie is "Slumdog Millionaire" (see blue line below).
There were multiple reports that "Slumdog Millionaire" was not so popular in India. It was correct, proved by the data from Google.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Job Trends USA : Facebook beats Smartphones
As per indeed.com job trends, facebook jobs in US Market trumps all others. This is a surprise to me since I expected the smartphone apps to be better placed than social networking apps in job market. Let's look at the graph -
On the other hand, Java probably trumps all other Object Oriented languages in job market.
So, if you are looking at US Job market, you should practice building facebook apps in Java, isn't it?
Interestingly, the search for the term "Java" in Google is slowing dying.Google reports (blue = Java, red = C#, yellow = Perl) :
Even though our interests with Java is going down, we use more and more of Java these days. It may be because Java technology is more matured today.
On the other hand, Java probably trumps all other Object Oriented languages in job market.
So, if you are looking at US Job market, you should practice building facebook apps in Java, isn't it?
Interestingly, the search for the term "Java" in Google is slowing dying.Google reports (blue = Java, red = C#, yellow = Perl) :
Even though our interests with Java is going down, we use more and more of Java these days. It may be because Java technology is more matured today.
Android Gains, Others Lag
The comscore quarterly update on Platform and OEM market share is now available. Smartphones made an interesting 42% leap in general cell phone market. More interestingly, the Platform Android seems to trump all others in platform market share gaining a +3% while all others lost a point or two of their share.
Here's the Platform share data. For details, see Comscore report at this link.
Additionally, here's the OEM market share for Smartphones. However, I don't see any interesting trend here. The gain from Korean Samsung in US market is presumably thanks to it's adoption of Android.
The battle is heating up ...
Additionally, here's the OEM market share for Smartphones. However, I don't see any interesting trend here. The gain from Korean Samsung in US market is presumably thanks to it's adoption of Android.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
India and Her Neighbors : All about cricket
[Just to follow up on my previous post]
In the last post we googled the media war between India and her neighbors. This time, we'd dig deeper into Indian mind with their attitude towards neighbors.
I used Google trends this time to find out what Indians are looking for in Google. Indians do few searches on terms Pakistan and Bangladesh. As per google trends, per 70 searches for India, 1 search is for Pakistan and 0.3 is for Bangladesh.
If we look at Bangladesh-Pakistan comparison, we see the term Pakistan is searched most in Punjab, the state adjacent to Pakistan. Similarly, the term Bangladesh is searched most in West Bengal, the cultural twin of Bangladesh. In fact West Bengal is the only state in India (and Kolkata to be the only city), which searched more for Bangladesh than for Pakistan. It can be explained easily.
Digging a bit deeper, I selected 2010 replacing "All years" to see what the current trend is. Interestingly, throughout the month of January, Bangladesh remained on top of Pakistan in Indian search world. Why? India-Bangladesh cricket series was on that month. It started off with the first match of the tri-series on 4th Jan and the last test ended on January 27th.
More interestingly, Pakistan did climb a lot towards the end of the year through betting news, still doesn't touch the height of Bangladesh in the beginning of the year. Why? Because cricket reigns in India.
Need another verification? Go back the the first image and see the tall red spike to the left of the image. It's really that tall - people searched for Pakistan frequently. Why is that? The India-Pakistan cricket series was on. That's the last time India played Pakistan and the search never climbed that height again.
Continue the topic to my next post ...
In the last post we googled the media war between India and her neighbors. This time, we'd dig deeper into Indian mind with their attitude towards neighbors.
I used Google trends this time to find out what Indians are looking for in Google. Indians do few searches on terms Pakistan and Bangladesh. As per google trends, per 70 searches for India, 1 search is for Pakistan and 0.3 is for Bangladesh.
If we look at Bangladesh-Pakistan comparison, we see the term Pakistan is searched most in Punjab, the state adjacent to Pakistan. Similarly, the term Bangladesh is searched most in West Bengal, the cultural twin of Bangladesh. In fact West Bengal is the only state in India (and Kolkata to be the only city), which searched more for Bangladesh than for Pakistan. It can be explained easily.
Digging a bit deeper, I selected 2010 replacing "All years" to see what the current trend is. Interestingly, throughout the month of January, Bangladesh remained on top of Pakistan in Indian search world. Why? India-Bangladesh cricket series was on that month. It started off with the first match of the tri-series on 4th Jan and the last test ended on January 27th.
More interestingly, Pakistan did climb a lot towards the end of the year through betting news, still doesn't touch the height of Bangladesh in the beginning of the year. Why? Because cricket reigns in India.
Need another verification? Go back the the first image and see the tall red spike to the left of the image. It's really that tall - people searched for Pakistan frequently. Why is that? The India-Pakistan cricket series was on. That's the last time India played Pakistan and the search never climbed that height again.
Continue the topic to my next post ...
Monday, September 13, 2010
India and Her Neighbors : Media war
Indian media covers a little of what happens immediate next to the country. However, this is probably not true from the other side of the fence. People in Indian neighborhood countries do accuse Indians of not knowing enough of SAARC nations. I tried to "Google" the truth.
The method I am going to use is quite easy to understand and I'll soon issue a white paper on this. The parameter to measure the affinity (don't say whether it's a friend or a foe) of a nation to another would be measured by something called normalized google affinity index. To go into details, first let me note the assumtions.
The very first assumption is the people don't know because news media don't feed enough news about those countries. The second one is purely with measurement, (one can easily get away with this if he has more time to research) the one major news media reflects the true coverage of national media. For example, we can take Times of India in case of India as the "one major news media" and calculate on that basis. Let's see what we get.
Search Google News on the site timesofindia.com with India in title for last year : 14,700 results
Search Google News on the site timesofindia.com with Bangladesh in title for last year : 128 results
Search Google News on the site timesofindia.com with Pakistan in title for last year : 553 results
Search Google News on the site dawn.com with Pakistan in title for last year : 1,240 results
Search Google News on the site dawn.com with India in title for last year : 456 results
Search Google News on the site thedailystar.net with Bangladesh in title for last year : 96 results
Search Google News on the site thedailystar.net with India in title for last year : 74 results
The number of search results vary depending on news resource we look at. This is because Google doesn't index them at the same rate, neither the resources publish their news items at the same rate. Hence we need to normalize the rate. For any news resource, most of the time the title captures the own country name. Assuming this, let's calculate the normalized media index for countries.
India : Pakistan = 3.76%
India : Bangladesh = 0.88%
Pakistan : India = 36.77%
Bangladesh : India = 77.08%
India gets quite high attention from news media of Pakistan and Bangladesh compared to what Indian media puts these countries to. Is this the end of research? Not at all. Some of the countries might get more attention because some of the events in that country may get international attention. Let's see, how these countries score on an international media. We'll take google news itself as a base.
Search Google News with India in title for last year : 127,000 results
Search Google News with Pakistan in title for last year : 159,000 results
Search Google News with Bangladesh in title for last year : 5,750 results
So, the result is, Pakistan gets higher coverage than India in international media (not amazing at all), but Indian media doesn't pay attention to it. On the other hand, Bangladesh gets low International attention (4.5% of what India gets) and Indian media puts it even lower. Interesting?
Note : The numbers in the Google results are approximate and may vary with time
The method I am going to use is quite easy to understand and I'll soon issue a white paper on this. The parameter to measure the affinity (don't say whether it's a friend or a foe) of a nation to another would be measured by something called normalized google affinity index. To go into details, first let me note the assumtions.
The very first assumption is the people don't know because news media don't feed enough news about those countries. The second one is purely with measurement, (one can easily get away with this if he has more time to research) the one major news media reflects the true coverage of national media. For example, we can take Times of India in case of India as the "one major news media" and calculate on that basis. Let's see what we get.
Search Google News on the site timesofindia.com with India in title for last year : 14,700 results
Search Google News on the site timesofindia.com with Bangladesh in title for last year : 128 results
Search Google News on the site timesofindia.com with Pakistan in title for last year : 553 results
Search Google News on the site dawn.com with Pakistan in title for last year : 1,240 results
Search Google News on the site dawn.com with India in title for last year : 456 results
Search Google News on the site thedailystar.net with Bangladesh in title for last year : 96 results
Search Google News on the site thedailystar.net with India in title for last year : 74 results
The number of search results vary depending on news resource we look at. This is because Google doesn't index them at the same rate, neither the resources publish their news items at the same rate. Hence we need to normalize the rate. For any news resource, most of the time the title captures the own country name. Assuming this, let's calculate the normalized media index for countries.
India : Pakistan = 3.76%
India : Bangladesh = 0.88%
Pakistan : India = 36.77%
Bangladesh : India = 77.08%
India gets quite high attention from news media of Pakistan and Bangladesh compared to what Indian media puts these countries to. Is this the end of research? Not at all. Some of the countries might get more attention because some of the events in that country may get international attention. Let's see, how these countries score on an international media. We'll take google news itself as a base.
Search Google News with India in title for last year : 127,000 results
Search Google News with Pakistan in title for last year : 159,000 results
Search Google News with Bangladesh in title for last year : 5,750 results
So, the result is, Pakistan gets higher coverage than India in international media (not amazing at all), but Indian media doesn't pay attention to it. On the other hand, Bangladesh gets low International attention (4.5% of what India gets) and Indian media puts it even lower. Interesting?
Note : The numbers in the Google results are approximate and may vary with time
Sunday, August 22, 2010
How much revenue can we expect from Web?
Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff places doubt on the "notion of the Web as the ultimate marketplace for digital delivery". However, the good part is
"The wide-open Web of peer production, the so-called generative Web where everyone is free to create what they want, continues to thrive, driven by the nonmonetary incentives of expression, attention, reputation, and the like."Read the article.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Google vs Oracle!
Now Google vs Oracle!! It was an expected race where Enterprises are racing for ownership of Java. Let's see who wins !! aha ... whoever wins, I don't want to see any troubles in the consumer side!!
So what has happened? Oracle is suing Google, claiming that Android infringes on Oracle copyrights and patents that are related to Java. Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said in a statement:
Read more :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20013546-265.html
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/08/oracles_suit_ag.html
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/08/oracle-sues-google.html
And will Microsoft gain out of it? There are a couple of different views ...
http://www.pcworld.com/article/203306/surprise_winner_in_oracle_v_google_microsoft.html
http://www.katonda.com/blog/16/2010/1676
So what has happened? Oracle is suing Google, claiming that Android infringes on Oracle copyrights and patents that are related to Java. Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said in a statement:
"In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement."Google begs to differ. Android doesn't use Java in Android, but instead a Java compatible technology called Dalvik. Google claims the Oracle suit is "baseless," and will fight it.
Read more :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20013546-265.html
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2010/08/oracles_suit_ag.html
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/08/oracle-sues-google.html
And will Microsoft gain out of it? There are a couple of different views ...
http://www.pcworld.com/article/203306/surprise_winner_in_oracle_v_google_microsoft.html
http://www.katonda.com/blog/16/2010/1676
Which OS should a developer target for?
It's an often asked question in software development arena. I have an idea, but which mobile platform should I target. Well, the easiest of answers actually come from web usage share. As per the current usage share, we get Java ME, IPhone, Symbian, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile ranked from one to five. Among these, the top four takes 93% share of usage and should be covered. (Image courtesy Geek.com)
However the dilemma doesn't end at merely the usage share. The smartphone market share is another important data point. And here Symbian and Blackberry are ahead of Android but IPhone is behind. (Image courtesy Wikipedia)
CNet has a bunch of reasons why Google's Android is winning the race against Symbian and they, along with Gartner, predict that Android will topple Symbian from it's top position, riding on a better brand value. However, Google's adventure with phones jolted by the failure of Nexus One phone, where the brand couldn't
 |
| Web Usage Share |
However the dilemma doesn't end at merely the usage share. The smartphone market share is another important data point. And here Symbian and Blackberry are ahead of Android but IPhone is behind. (Image courtesy Wikipedia)
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