Mumbai suffered one of its worst terror nightmares these last 3 days when armed terrorists took over strategic spots in Mumbai, leading to a bloodshed yet unparalleled in its gruesomeness.

While the terror attacks received worldwide media coverage, it was no less covered extensively by citizen journalists and common people who used a host of digital mediums to add to the story. Internet, and new media tools, came on the forefront as reliable tools to track the terror drama.

A wikipedia page was constantly updated by vigilant users, providing a single point of reference.

Many twitter feeds contributed to real-time reporting & status update, which were utilzed heavily by the administration, media as well as citizens to get regular updates as well as channelize real-time help.

Twitter feed for Mumbai

Twitter-fed list of useful local numbers

Post the attacks, these feeds have become the buzz-ground for discussions, opinions and to plan next steps to solve the problem at its roots.

A google maps page also became a ready reference guide, especially for people outside India to get a real-life perspective of where and how things were happening.

Vinu’s photostream was picked up by Fox News & CNN as well as multiple channels to provide real-time updates on all that was happening.

Over 2000 videos have flooded youtube post the attacks.

The MumbaiHelp blog has updated lists of all relevant helpline numbers as well.

via audiencematters

A TNS global survey entitled Digital
World, Digital Life, probing online behaviours and perspectives shows
that, on average, people across the 16 countries surveyed are spending
close to a third (30%) of their leisure time online.

It appears we like our 30% digital time regardless of how much free
time we have.

Digital World, Digital Life found that respondents with
up to 2 hours leisure time each week day, spent the same proportion of
their leisure time online as respondents who had between 7 and 8 hours
of leisure time on a week day.  This means there is no direct link
between the amount of leisure time we have and how much of it we spend
online.

What are the top 5 activities that people undertake while online?
TNS asked people to identify a range of activities in the month before
they took the survey.

A total of 81% had used a search engine to find
information; 76% had looked up the news; 74% had used online banking;
65% had looked up the weather; and 63% had researched a product or
service before buying it. These activities are all inherently very
practical.

The highest ranking classic leisure activity – “watching a
video clip” – only came in at number 8, with half (51%) saying they had
done this in the past month. Another leisure activity – “listening to
an audio clip” – came in at number 10 (44%).

Arno Hummerston, Managing Director, TNS Global Interactive, said:
“If our leisure time is so precious, then why do we on average spend
almost a third of it using the internet? We believe it is because we
are making more efficient use of our valuable time, specifically by
using the internet – thereby allowing us to fit more into our lives.
Being online helps people fulfil certain tasks and activities quickly
and efficiently. By spending productive time online, we are actually
making more time for leisure. With more social and entertainment
activities available online, it is also easy to understand why our
lives are becoming more digital.”

Who and where are the most avid onliners in the world? Younger
people under 25, as might be expected, are seriously engaged with
online life. The under 25s surveyed in the report say they spend well
over a third (36%) of their time online. On average, Chinese
respondents under 25 spend half (50%) of their leisure time online.

If the world is to take its lead from Japan and Korea – countries
that are seen as being innovative and pioneering in the online world –
then we can expect to spend even more time online. In those countries,
respondents say they currently spend on average around two-fifths of
their leisure time online.

There are particular groups of people that are more avid users of
the internet than others. For example, across the 16 countries
surveyed:

students spend 39% of their time online.

US Housewives spend 38% of
their leisure time online while in the UK, this was even more pronounced
with almost half (47%) of housewives spending their leisure
time online.This might be explained by the rapid expansion of online
food shopping, particularly in the UK where online shopping expenditure
in general now tops £1 billion per month (Source: Mintel 2008).

The Digital World, Digital Life survey also underlined that mobile
handsets are frequently used to connect to the internet.

Worldwide, 1
in 10 respondents surveyed say they connect to the internet once a day
via mobile handsets. But Asia’s adoption trends imply significant
growth prospects. Among the Japanese and Chinese respondents to the
survey, for example, over a quarter of people access the internet over
mobile connections at this once-a-day frequency.

Thanks to Sean, I just caught this on youtube..

Goes on as an attempt to say what money can’t buy…but halfway through the video, just what all it can really!

Great work Bill. You wont be missed much, however.

Courtesy: googlesystem blog

Google’s new experiment that lets you reorder and annotate search results is now live. Google SearchWiki should be available automatically if you are logged in to a Google account and it can be recognized by the visual clutter added to the search results.

Next to each result, you should see three new options: a way to promote a web page at the top of the results, an option to remove results from the page (they’re still visible at the bottom of the page) and a feature that lets you share public comments about a result. After promoting a result, Google shows some unnecessary information about the other people who promoted the result.

It’s important to remember that all the changes are saved to your Google account and they won’t affect the search results for everyone, at least not directly. If you want to see an aggregation of all promotions, demotions and comments, go to the bottom of the page and click on "See all notes for this SearchWiki". This is the real wiki built by Google and it’s easy to access by adding &swm=2 to the URL of a search results page: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=google&swm=2.

Comments are not very useful, although you could find insights for some obscure queries. The absolute number of people who promoted a search result is not very useful either, especially when you’ll see big numbers like 314,159,265.

SearchWiki’s main idea is to give users the opportunity to manually customize the search results and make them more predictable. Since many people repeat common searches like [mail], [weather], [news] and Google’s results are constantly changing, it’s nice to pick your favorite results and display them at the top. If you can’t find a site you like, click on "Add a result" and manually add a page in the list of top results.

Good things about SearchWiki:

- you can now adjust Google’s results for your typical queries and save time when repeating the searches

- use Google instead of bookmarking web pages

- for unfamiliar queries, check the wiki to find a different ranking and potentially useful comments. Try to avoid the wiki for queries that are likely to be spammed.

Bad things about SearchWiki:

- visual clutter. The only way to remove the additional icons displayed next to each search result is to log out.

- your changes are available only when you repeat the query and, in some cases, for similar queries (e.g.: [google.com] in addition to [google]). That means you can’t remove a web page or a domain from all search results

- comments are public and there’s no option to write private notes (Google removed the option to annotate results in Google Notebook)

- an obvious feature would be to get a permalink for your edited results, but Google doesn’t offer this yet

- there’s no option to toggle between your edited results and the standard results (you’ll have to log out)

- it’s difficult to reorder results, since the only action allowed is to place a web page at the top, after all the other promoted pages. If you promote the page again, it will become the first result.

Google has always used people’s clicks to improve the quality of search results, so the new options could influence the ranking algorithms in different ways. "At this time we aren’t using SearchWiki to influence ranking but it is easy to see how that could happen in the future," said Marissa Mayer. "Search is adapting to the Internet as it becomes a more participatory medium. Now you have people telling us specific things about how they’d like to see their search results. You could imagine if we do see a particular site (about which) people have a unanimous opinion, that might trigger external things. Like maybe we should check out our spam control," suggested Cedric Dupont, product manager for SearchWiki and Google Knol.

All boys & men working from home rejoice…and welcome aboard Gharkamai!

Started by a couple of Delhi dotcommers, Gharkamai is in beta as we speak, and aims at connecting businesses with business professionals as per need.

So if you are looking at home-based work, have an unexplored expertise, need extra income, then log on & create a profile. Similarly, if you need freelancers and project-centric professionals, it makes sense to look some people up over here.

2 reasons why the resource pool should be good here:

1. Home-based workers strive to deliver better, as a sense of entrepreneurship comes in, leading to better results

2. In these recession-led times, pink slipped folks can find solace here!

The only glitch – registration process is a bit long, and you need to submit a CV…painful. Hope the owners do something about that!

Check it out & do post a comment upon your experience…

Just a thought – if India keeps waiting for 3G…next auction date for spectrums is in Jan sometime it seems…will VoIP take over video calls, the prize 3G candidate for business?

Telcos have long looked at video calls as the prime motivator for expensive 3G subscriptions, and handset manufacturers have kept pace with ensuring availability of video-call enabled handsets.

So probably they wont pull out, but does it make sense for telcos to pay such huge spectrum fees when available 2.5G/EDGE Internet is good enough for video & voice VoIP?

Here’s the deal as I see it with Google..

These guys have taken the idea of “disruption” to an all-time high…having turned it now into a web-statement of sorts.

First it was gmail…launched in a market where hotmail & yahoo were kings, usa.net had gone paid, rediffs of the world were trying hard to get attention….basically a very crowded & highly competitive market. So google walks in & “disrupts” the proceedings – 1GB mailbox, by invite only.

2 propositions that turned cult in 5 minutes…EVERYONE wanted one, EVERYONE wanted to have those invites to give out..

So email was great, beating IM was next to impossible, with nearly ALL of us active on either Hotmail or Yahoo messengers. The solution – Disruption again.

Suddenly IM was on email…made sense, didn’t it? You logged in to check mail and logged in your IM around the same time..by combining the two, gmail made Internet communication one seamless experience, and NOBODY has been able to replicate that! And then they even went voice – along with the two other biggies, but essentially kept up with the user experience expectations.

Oh and then there are these 1000s of other benefits – POP access (yahoo pay attention..msn burnt their hands), easy UI..all that & more, that basically started settings standards.

Finally, they have probably put a huge big nail in everyone else’s coffin (not the last one I presume) by going video (MSN/Skype had it)…within Gmail..disruption all over again. And great timing too, considering webcams cave become standard pre-installed accessories only recently!

It makes sense to visit the church of google, I say!

Through the years, Indian consumers have gotten used to the fact that if they want to find out more about laptops, they only have two options:

1. Read international reviews & opinions, a lot of which may not be applicable to India

2. Tread the dusty Nehru Place (New Delhi) or equivalent lanes in the city and dodge the dodgy hardware shops and hope to get a good deal

Both are impractical and unfriendly options, and more often than not, the only savior is the IT department admin at your place of work or Word-of-Mouth via friends. The only problem is that these routes can only yield limited info and hence, limited results.

Thankfully, India now has its own laptop review site – with Indian content, products that are available in India, best laptop deals and more.

http://laptopcommunity.com/ is a community review site designed purely for Indian audiences and their needs. Still in its infancy, and hence beta (!), the site already has 100s of laptop models reviewed including the latest hp laptop, Dell, Apple & Acers of the world..and a list of models rated prominently basis their popularity with users. There is also an integrated discussion board (PhPBB based forum), product videos, Q&A, latest India-specific news & new launch info and some well written & regularly updated articles relevant to the site’s content.

Users who consider themselves laptop experts can join the community as experts to guide others. I am joining for sure…think I have had enough of providing gyaan to all & sundry, and it wont hurt to spread my wings a bit! Brands can look at the site as a niche opportunity to advertise their products to a bang-on TG…makes sense.

Try it out..and do leave a comment here about how you find the experience!