Is personalized news a mirage?

Having been personally associated with an attempt to create a 'personalized' news reader, it was amusing to read views of Eric Schmidt on the subject. Bang on target – Eric steered clear of what a personalized news reader should be, and just highlighted that the increase in the personalized (also mobile) devices which we use to consume info will automatically lead to need for personalizing the content itself.

However, looking at personalized news from someone else's eyes, I for the first time am realizing that for all the good efforts of the geek world – humans may not need personalized news after all!

By personalized news I mean, the news which I as an individual am interested in. For example some ways to determine the classifications for such news are:

• All News from sources chosen by me
• Any News related to the topics which I am interested in (Sports / tech etc)
• News being read by people in my network (colleagues, friends, family)
• News which relates to any entity in my life (my school / qualification, my city, my company etc)

But consider this – when you open the newspaper everyday, do you expect to see what's happening round the world or what's just happening in the limited span of your 'personalized world'? You may be a tech enthusiast or sports buff, yet you would want to know about what's the biggest news of the day, only then would you turn to your areas of interest.

Second, not everyone is a die hard sports buff or geek! There are people who read the newspaper just to read about interesting stuff. They possibly can't define their interests if you ask them, but would end up reading the Sunday Times back to back which talks about everything from politics, spirituality etc to cooking and travel.

This makes me feel that the more information (news) is available in the world, the more the need for good human editors. Machines can probably create filters or 'personalized' news but only for those who are:

1. professionals looking for updates on their field of interest (like Web programmers looking for tech news)
2. Editors themselves, looking for what could be a part of the next edition of their journal, magazine or website's homepage.

But definitely, personalized news cannot replace the traditional magazine / newspaper (print or online - any news source supported by a news editing organization as in reporters, editors etc).

So I guess all the 'personalized news engine' makers out there (Reddit, AideRSS, Me-Zine, even newsrivers like TwitMeme and TechMeme), need to rethink their goals, target audiences and appeal. Probably a combination of an automated news-filtering engine with a human editorial team is indeed the ideal choice.

That's my take! What do you think?

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*Personalized news reader was one of our aims for Bloozle though we wanted to limit our sources to blogging world than include generic news sites also

Rise of Indian economy - Groundswell or Reactionary?

Continuing the chain of thought from my previous post, I got thinking as to whether the changes in the Indian economy since 1990's have been top down and visionary or merely reactionary and ad-hoc. The conclusion which I have reached has been that they are a combination, but above all - they are based on a Groundswell from the masses.

While multiple sectors - IT, Retail, Financial Services and even manufacturing - have contributed to rise of the Indian Tiger; to illustrate my point, I would concentrate on the Financial Sector [related post].

Pre-liberalization, there were many shackles, like license raj, on the Indian financial services sector. But more gruesome were the factors of immature or absent regulatory supervision and resulting power of large investors to manipulate the free markets. The Banking sector meanwhile was dominated by PSU banks which were slow, bureaucratic and customer unfriendly.

Starting the 90s there were many top down reforms starting like Dematerialization of scrips, setting up if a fully automated National Stock Exchange (NSE), and complete eletronification of the Taxation system with the entry of PAN Cards and Tax Information Network (TIN). These were preceded by strengthening of regulators like SEBI setting up of others like IRDA. (The success of regulators in Financial Services also paved way for setting up regulators in other domains like TRAI in Telecom).

How did these reforms come into place? The strenthening up of SEBI and dematerialization of securities was a direct consequence of the scams in the Indian securities markets such as the Harshad Mehta Scam. These changes were actually demanded by the common people who lost their savings in such scams, rather than any government reforms dreamed by bureaucrats.

The next was the electronification of the stock exchanges - again, while the SEBI set up the NSE, it was the large scale movement of small investors to NSE which prompted the BSE also to modernize and match the NSE's transparent operations.

Similarly, the rise of private banks has been aided by migration of customers in hoards from the old PSU banks to private banks. As a result, PSU banks in India too have been forced to modernize themselves technologically and convert their operations from bureaucratic to commercialized.

On the outset, many of these reforms look as if they were pushed by regulators, but occasional public uproar and gradual but constant demand and preference for transparent and efficient systems has been the primary driver why these reforms have taken root in India.

While we may still seem to lament the lack of control we have on our own economic fate (ex. "I did not bring the recession - nor can I end it!") , but our intense aspiration to control our own economic / financial fate has brought about several changes which are keeping the Indian economy afloat in these recessionary times.

I believe the rise of the Indian economy today while seemingly reactionary is actually based on a groundswell of people demanding improvements in the system - which keeps me hopeful that we are not done yet and we may soon lead the world in further improvements to create the most efficient norms to govern the global Financial Systems. What do you think?

Atanu Dey is not always right

I have previously pointed a lot of links [1][2][3]to Atanu Dey's blog, also praising his RISC model for development of Indian rural/semi-urban areas. However, this comment on his blog (by someone with an alias Human Blasphemy) sets out some very pertinent doubts on this model - reproducing it here:

Dear Atanu,

I heard you during your session on RISC at XIMB. One of the members asked you a question whether Rural Infrastructure can be developed through people’s participation and through microfinance. Which according to you is not possible, because large infrastructure projects have to be completed at one go. But the problem is that why will any private company invest in rural infrastructure? You only said that i dont know how it will be possible.

I believe you will agree that in future Microfinance will not remain microfinance it will become SM-finance [Small and medium finance. We have already seen the examples of increased limits of credit in Andhra Pradesh, where Mf loans have reached upto Rs5lakhs. Through Microfinance, we can go for rural infrastructure development through following 4 measures:

1. Framework for expanding contours of MFI roles and financial limits
2. Modification of Regulatory Framework
3. Integrating Private Institutions with MFI’s and Community [venture cap n equity]
[SKS Microfinance is attracting VC, which can also be applied to RID]

=======================================
According to the theory of economic developement you suggested, the innovation has to be done at top level, then later on when competition will grow, it will be affordable to the masses. You also gave the example of Mobile phones.

I believe that this theory is successful for the technology sectors.When we talk about growth, we are also concerned with people’s development. YouR example can be negated by the fact that if we allow big companies to grow and capture the markets, the small and medium enterprises will never be able to grow. Big companies will not ALLOW them to grow once they see them as a threat. In that case the open markets will not become open markets, they will actually be the oligopolistic or monopolistic. And in the developing countries where large chunk of industries consist of small industries, the top down approach will not be helpful.

We have to allow small companies to grow and them many of them will become large companies. So the bottom up approach is successful if implemented properly. The reason of failure of this approach is not that it is flawed, but because it is not supported by those who are able to invest in it.

The example of Orissa can be given, where government is encouraging industrilization at large pace, but not able to develop people at the same pace. The result is the improper usage of resources [Economics deals with optimal usage of resources] and there are no rules or regulations in the state. If people are not ready and they are not able to use the resources the industries are generating, what is the use of industrialization. At the later stage the economy will be in a chaos and government will not be able to implement any regulations. People are already opposing such practices. Because they are not ready, or you can say they dont know that it will be beneficial. In such case first Bottom should be developed and not the top.

If you read Nandan Nilekani's Imagining India, one gets a feeling that most changes in India today were brought about by common people from the masses rather than a top down reform from the top. (While top-down reform was done, it usually followed some courageous and pathbreaking demands from the masses). I guess the commenter on Atanu's blog is hence quite right in his theory.

Death of the PIN Code

I was reading this GigaOm piece on augmented reality when I realized that we may be very near towards making the Zipcode (or Pincode as we know it in India) completely redundant in the next 10-15 years.

The article talks about how location aware application - Layar delivers ATM locations, restaurant information and available jobs on the phone’s screen as users point the camera at their surroundings. This innovation is a combination of 3 technologies coming together - GPS (location awareness), persistent connection (ability to extract information on the move) and image recognition (point the camera and the phone knows where you are). The latter is probably a complicated and expensive technology to build everywhere, but the former two are now almost ubiquitous.

As I have written earlier, mapping services are improving every day in India - already maps to smallest detail are available for most Tier 1, 2 and 3 cities in India. With ISRO's project Bhuvan, imaging information should soon be available to a much minute detail for the smallest of villages and taluka's. Bhuvan being a government funded project, most of this imaging data will be available for public usage.

Combine this with availability of high-bandwidth persistent connection (3G / WiMax) in remote parts of India, it may soon be easier to pin point a location on a web-map than locate the Pincode for the place. The mapping location is essentially the GPS coordinate which is far more accurate a pointer than the Pincode.

The Pincode, introduced in 1972 is a 6 digit number so that there is one for each 3.29 sq kms of land in India (India's area is 3.29 million sq km). Within the 3.2 sq kms, the postman must now figure out the exact address of the recipient. On the other hand, if the sender can put the GPS code on the snail mail envelope, the post man (probably equipped with a GPS enabled mobile) can pin point the exact address of the recipient!

Given the above hypothesis, the government's plan to increase 2 digits in the Pincode is a completely redundant exercise. The department of post should rather spend money on equipping its postmen with high-tech devices and capture their tacit knowledge to develop detailed maps.

The department can engage a private player to develop special GPS enabled mobile phones for its postmen and collaborate with ISRO for imaging data from Bhuvan. The postal department could use this information not only for its own use but even sell it to private players and make some money!

My latest figure is 57-63-104!

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My previous figure here

KPMG Thought Leadership Update

Reshaping for future success What's next for Private Equity in India This report, based on research conducted in the second quarter of 2009, examines the impact of the global financial crisis on private equity in India and the prospects for the market in the near and long-term. The research, undertaken by KPMG in India in conjunction with Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center includes a detailed survey of 40 General Partners (GPs) and Limited Partners (LPs) active in the Indian market. I hope that Thought Leadership update will prove to be a valuable resource for you. Regards,

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How Indian Finance Sector has matured

I was Googling for some information on Financial regulations in India, when I chanced upon a few old news items from the early 2000's [1][2]. While reading those new items I realized how the Indian Financial sector has undergone a rapid transformation in the last decade or so.

India's financial sector has undergone a very rapid phase of transformation in the last 10-15 years. While scam ridden 90's brought in multiple regulators like SEBI and other related organizations such as NSDL and NSE, the private banks which grew brought in newer leaner ways of banking and infusion of technology - Core Banking Systems and Straight-Through-Processing.

However, it was only in the new millenium that these changes as an aggregate started hitting the psyche of the common man and the government / regulators together. This trigerred massive national level initiatives - many of these fueled by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Some of these were the introduction of Electronic Clearing (ECS), Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS), and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT).

The first phase of these changes ushered in transparancy in operations and funds movement in the country. However, speed for still lacking - for example EFT when first introduced used to take 4 days for settlement; it was also location dependent [More].

RTGS was the first exception to the speed rule - it broke barriers of money transfer for very high value transactions. Money would get transferred in a matter of hours (4 hours being max) and every day the RTGS books of all banks would close at zero balance.

The other funds transfer implementations are in their second phase now - NECS (National ECS) and NEFT (National EFT) - are unleashing a new wave of efficiency and speed in monetary transactions in the country.

While these changes look more institutional, Retail customers are getting benefited by these changes via the internet banking facilities introduced by Banks. PSU banks also, which till now have lagged behind in technology are also now implementing all these solutions and given their reach in the smallest of towns and villages - this should pave way for another rush of blood in the Indian financial sector.

Weekend Trips and Google Maps

I am a self confessed Fan (yes with a capital 'F') of Google and its products - my GMail remains open on my laptop as long as it is switched on; I visit Google to reach every 9 in 10 websites I visit; I save most of my documents as GMail attachments or Google Docs; all the websites which I manage are managed through blogger.com; and almost every time I drive to a new place, I use Google Maps!

The resolution and detail on Google Maps for India has improved a lot since I first blogged about MapMyIndia version of Indian mapping software (incidentally, the makers of MapMyIndia now power Yahoo! India Maps). However, Google Maps has forged far ahead of Yahoo! Maps or MapMyIndia thanks to its colaborative features - most of the landmarks and addresses which I find on Google Maps are tagged or identified by users themselves. This kind of crowdsourced mapping info makes Google maps an ideal tool to find anything from businesses (say CD Shop in Powai) to picnic spots and weekend getaways.

My Google Maps habit has also been increasing with the same speed as Google's capability to map the Indian landscape. So much so that I Googled my way to the Borivali Railway Station yesterday before visiting it to double check on the one-ways round the station. On one incident, I had Googled for Kolkata's metro station nearest to the KPMG Guest House where a colleague was staying. I was doing this while she was in her flight to Kolkata, so that I could direct her to the guest house on phone after she reached!

Here's a Google Map I gleaned when I had to visit Viman Nagar in Pune on a business trip and I did not know the way.

Express Way To Viman Nagar

Google Maps has also of late become the most indispensable tool for me to plan weekend getaways in and around Mumbai. I went for a trip to Shirdi and Shani Shingnapur with my parents and brother in May and last weekend I went to Malshej Ghat.

But, the mobile signals in rural India are still not strong to rely on Google Maps on one's mobile. So I have devised a workaround. I chart out my travel on Google maps and then take screenshots of the map at a very high resolution. I paste all screenshots (which make up the complete route from source to destination) in a Powerpoint PPT and then transfer the PPT on my HTC Touch P3000.

Mumbai Shirdi Shani Shingnapur

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My cellphone now acts as a handheld navigation device. Every time I cross a landmark or come across a diversion in the road, I open my PPT and check the route. Also, often local people may not know about the road to your final destination but they may know the shortest path to the nearest town on your itinery - so having a map of all major pit-stops on your way is handy. You need not then ask the 'shortest path' to Shirdi but you can ask them about the shortest path of Sangamner, Sinnar or Ghoti (see the Shirdi route map above).

My travel has become free of the hassle of figuring out roads in rural India and relying on the knowledge of local population which is often very unreliable given that most locals in villagers know only the way to the nearest town and often their advice may lead you to kaccha roads or longer and circuitous routes.

Here's the PPT form navigation map for trip to Malshej Ghat and Shivenri Fort

Mumbai Malshej

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Motivating People

Found this awsome list of statements on motivating employees here.

• people don't do what you tell them to do; they do what gets them a reward
• positive reinforcement is the most effective way to motivate people [Note that in a technology company, a reinforcer might be the freedom to spend some time working on a side project or a pet feature; reinforcement is broader than money or praise; it can be anything that the employee values.]
• reinforcement works best when it is immediate, certain, and frequent (Daniels points out that kids that our public schools diagnose as having an ADD learning disability are able to concentrate for hours playing video games that provide 85 positive reinforcements per minute)
• reinforcement doesn't work if followed up with a "but, you need to improve X, Y, Z"
• monthly reinforcement only provides 12 opportunities per year to shape someone's performance; weekly is the minimum (the annual review and bonus is a joke, as far as Daniels is concerned)
• many goals should be easy to achieve, thus providing many opportunities for people to get rewarded; rewards should not be competitive (no "employee of the month")
• managers need to spend more of their time reinforcing the good performers than trying to deal with the problem employees
• if you set a goal, people stop working as soon as they reach the goal (viz. typical schools and universities; students stop pushing themselves once they've reached an "A" level of achievement)
• you need to come up with a good way of measuring achievement and make that measure available to the worker so that he or she can motivate himself (for a computer programmer in a software company, components of this measure might be "number of bugs fixed, with extra points for the severe or tricky ones" and "pages of documentation written"

Apparantly its from a book Bringing out the Best in People, by Aubrey C. Daniels