Autotwit: Making mundane automatic

Idea:AutoTwit - Unix Cron job like twittering service.
Execution:

Tired? Stressed? Overworked?

No time to keep Twitter informed about what you're doing?

AutoTwit takes the effort our of updating Twitter.

Simply write a post and schedule an update.

It's that easy!

Key Benefits:

1. Make you wealthy
2. Improve your appearance
3. Help you to be more well-liked by your family or friends
4. Make you live longer
5. Attract members of the opposite sex
6. Update Twitter automatically

About AutoTwit

AutoTwit is the rather hare-brained idea of Toby Hede.

In no particular order:

1. AutoTwit came together in a Friday lunch break and Sunday afternoon.
2. It's made with Ruby on Rails and Love!
3. It's dedicated to Scoble in the interest of making Twittering much easier.
4. Toby lives in Melbourne, Australia.
5. He works as a software engineer for a small web company in between hacking things and creating games.
6. He is increasingly obsessed with Rails, Prototype and Scriptaculous.
7. He is available for project work.

Contact: tobyhede {a t} autotwit

About AutoTwit

Most things © AutoTwit 2007

Twitter posts probably belong to the people who write them

AutoTwit: Automatically Pointless! Now with 50% more Web 2.0.

Made with Ruby On Rails and a pinch of love

Profit: A washing machine does the washing for you, a VCR watches TV for you, similarly AutoTwit will twitter for you! Yet another playful profitable idea out of twitter ecosystem like TwitterLit. How small thing can make big leverage.

Advantages of Blogging

Idea:Five Advantages of Blogging
Execution:When I talk to students I tell them these five benefits:
1)Blog can improve your communication skills: By blogging your clarity of thought improves. Reinforced by written communication, the overall communication skills improve.
2) Blog is great way to keep your network of family and friends posted: Only if you keep them posted they will be able to add value to the relationship. Cluttering them with email is a bad idea. Inbox overflow is a major problem for many people.
3) Blog can be a good way to increase your network of family and friends: What you write about may not be relevant for your family and friends. But your writing gets found by people who are interested in it. They start interacting with you and becomes part of your network. Serendipity works!
The above three are personal benefits. Here are the biz benefits.
4) Blog can be a wonderful marketing tool. Many people simply google anything and everything. If they find you in google, your ideas have reached them before you. That is marketing. Google, 'paper file tracking' and reach me! Enough said.
5) Blog can be a good sales tool. If you are into selling low value item where people trust that it will be shipped. You can sell off your blog itself. Blog +paypal will just do wonders.

As an added bonus blogs by itself can make money. You can feature ads( like google ads) and make money off your blog. There are people like Amit Agarwal( http://labnol.blogspot.com) that pay highest tax bracket due to earnings from single blog.

Nuf blog sermon.

Profit: Make money with blog. Make money because of blog.

Unconference the Book

Idea: Unconference The Book
Execution: Wiki
Profit: Fun!

TwitterLit: Terse teasers that kills the cat, milks AZ

Idea: TwitterLit?
Execution: Interesting first line of an interesting book, twittered!
Profit: Amazon referral fee.

Online Backup software

Idea:Online Backup service DataDeposit and a book by David B Little)
Execution: With DataDeposit it is much easier to implement suggestions made in the book Implementing Backup and Recovery: The Readiness Guide for the Enterprise (Paperback) And it is a good deal at $2/GB month.
Here is an overview from the site

Online Backup Features
Easy to Set Up

* Register online for our secure online backup system
* Installation is easy and takes less than 5 minutes
* Backups are instant and will never interrupt your work

Extremely Secure

* Bank grade encryption protects your data
* All data is encrypted before it leaves your PC
* Only you have the key to access your web storage data

Affordable Price

* With our online file backup system you can store as little or as much as you need for just $2 per GB per month.

Ideal for Small Business

* Backup as many computers as you like with our web backup system!

Fast Recovery

* Restore lost files from your secure online file backup system in a matter of seconds.

Web File Sharing

* Share files or entire folders with others by emailing password protected links.

System Requirements

* This web storage system runs well on any Windows PC with an Internet connection.

Profit: Data is more valueble than money. A backup can save a lot of angst!

I, II, III Life, Kitkat video

Via aTTa boy Rajat

Of incompetence, innovation and cashcow

Nitin Borwankar has an interesting post on how companies 'settle down'
The Peter Principle of Innovation

He also talks about why potentially viral innovative ideas dont take off due to self created containment:
Virus in a Petri Dish and instantly illustrates it with an alive example on the post itself.

Interesting!

Intent Signals With Twitter Enabled Devices

Intent Signals with Twitter.
Twitter the new fad in town 2.0 - dubbed the prom queen of SXSW - all the top geeks are at it. Even if they hate it. I'm trying to figure out what the hell the fuss is all about. I guess a good way of figuring out is think up cool applications for twitter. Here you go: I'm fascinated by the shift in economic paradigm from scarcity based economics to surplus inundation based economy( Just 10 years back I had to wait for a phone connection, now the telcos are queuing up to give me connection along with value added packages like mobile, broadband etc) . In this new market, the customer is the real king. Just grabbing the attention of the potential buyer is not enough. It is not just enough to fulfill the potential buyers requirements. Appealing to his/her ego is a good strting point. To cut a long story short, paradigm is shifting from Attention to Intention. Being tuned to Intention signals of the market becomes the key. My conjecture is, twitter like tools can become Intention signalling mechanisms.

Twittering, in combination with Intent Economy based tools like roots.net could make it a way to signal intents. With tools like yahoo pipes, the intent could be responded by other players - possibly a supplier of a product or a service that will facilitate the intent.

My biggest complaint with Twitter is that I have to actually do it: The lack of automation. If smart devices around me are able to pick up my intent and my activities and post it to twitter, then I can fill in the gaps with more quirky stuff. With so many geeks becoming fans of the Twittering, we can expect a horde of gadgets tuned to twittering soon. And in the mid term, everyday objects becoming twitter enabled.

In a way, Metaverse like SecondLife is striving to do.

Today Twitter looks like a useless waste of time and a fad that will fade. Yet it has lot of potential as a enabler in the conquest of the plenty. Accelerating the era of attention/intention as new currency.

Idea: Secondlife as a business tool
Execution: Secondlife, the online 3d game that is fast evolving as a mini economy is an active breeding ground for innovations. IBM alumni meeting has proved that it can be a wonderful way to convene a meeting. It has good potential as an unconference medium. Recently it is being experimented as a recruitment tool: a place to hold job fairs and such. With the membership base zooming beyond a million, online money spent per day at a million dollars, it will be taken seriously by innovators. The avatar can be more expressive than a chat or an IM making in the process reducing the travel expenses and lost time in travel.
Profit: Richer interaction.

Better Retirement Plan = Better Productivity?

Idea: Better Retirement Planning for Employees using a professional Specialist
Execution:Today I came across a unique service company called Retirment Capital Group. They offer executive compensation seminars in the changing dynamic world of retirment planning. Retirement is a constant nag in every employees back of the mind. If this constant nag can be addressed effectively, it gives peace of mind to the employees and productivity for the employer. Defined contribution, and custom design of plans are hot areas that can differentiate an employer and improve their chances of retaining talent. The Retirment Capital Group's offereing and Knowldege Centre are worth checking out!
Profit: Retirement worry taken out of the employee's mind => better productivity!

Wikicamp.in Video made with SecondLife

Amazon Mturk earnings now in Indian Rupee:: Tap the housewife resource pool

Idea: Tap the housewife resource pool
Execution:There are a lot of household with a PC and internet connection sitting. Just decorating the living room. Where the kid plays the 'educational' game. And the grown ups use it for email and google. Now with mturk earnings available in Indian Rupee, the housewife glued to the TV serials, sob soaps can be given a gainful alternative. Mturk is part of suite of services opened up by Amazon Web Services as part of Jeff Bezeos strategy of increasing the utilization of Amazon installed capacity. To quote the Amazon FAQ on Mturk:

What is Amazon Mechanical Turk?

In 1769, Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang von Kempelen astonished Europe by building a mechanical chess-playing automaton that defeated nearly every opponent it faced. A life-sized wooden mannequin, adorned with a fur-trimmed robe and a turban, Kempelen's "Turk" was seated behind a cabinet and toured Europe confounding such brilliant challengers as Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte. To persuade skeptical audiences, Kempelen would slide open the cabinet's doors to reveal the intricate set of gears, cogs and springs that powered his invention. He convinced them that he had built a machine that made decisions using artificial intelligence. What they did not know was the secret behind the Mechanical Turk: a human chess master cleverly concealed inside.

Today, we build complex software applications based on the things computers do well, such as storing and retrieving large amounts of information or rapidly performing calculations. However, humans still significantly outperform the most powerful computers at completing such simple tasks as identifying objects in photographs—something children can do even before they learn to speak.

When we think of interfaces between human beings and computers, we usually assume that the human being is the one requesting that a task be completed, and the computer is completing the task and providing the results. What if this process were reversed and a computer program could ask a human being to perform a task and return the results? What if it could coordinate many human beings to perform a task?

Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate "artificial artificial intelligence" directly into their processing by making requests of humans. Developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web service to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications. To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call: the application sends the request, and the service returns the results. Behind the scenes, a network of humans fuels this artificial artificial intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work.

All software developers need to do is write normal code. The pseudo-code below illustrates how simple this can be.

read (photo);
photoContainsHuman = callMechanicalTurk(photo);
if (photoContainsHuman == TRUE) {
acceptPhoto;
}
else {
rejectPhoto;
}

In a nutshell, Mturk is a way to give out tasks to the crowd and get the task done by a human. Typically, the task are too difficult for computer, but effortless for the human. The person accomplishing the task, gets paid. The Amazon's ecommerce system takes care of the trust, reputation, transaction etc.

Thus mturk can be used to give out work to housewifes, and the housewifes can do the task and get get paid, all risk free for both the work giver and the work doer.
Profit: The housewife of India are a talented lot. They give up pulme jobs to become housewife. They may be well qualified educationally. They can be meticulous in their work. Tapping this talent pool in a risk free way could be wonderful way to gain competitive advantage for businesses.

Electric Scooter Available in Chennai!

Idea:Electric Scooter/Bicycle is a reality in Chennai.
Execution: Sometime back I wrote about Electric Bike maker survival guide. When I went to a Motor Show at Chennai recently I came across an interesting company displaying electric scooters for sale. The bikes are called Petra and they are made by EPL Technologies Pvt Ltd( Ph +91-44-6453 3333) The bikes are pricey but it will fall whne there is enough demand( A scooty like version costs Rs 27,000 while a luna like version costs 22k and a electic bike like version costs 18K). If someone can bulk buy them, and make them available on short haul rent/lease, it will make them popular and because of the voluem effect bring down the prices and create a demand spiral.
Profit: Apart from attractive gains in running such an operation, the social goodwill earned will go a long way in boosting up the valuation of the leasing/operating company. With the economy very upbeat, I will not be surprised if someone is already thinking/executing this in stealth!


Photo Courtesy Snazzo

Making Text Link Ads Work With Blogger Beta

Idea:Text Link Ads as Feed for seamless integration with Blogger Beta
Execution: Slap Text Link Ads on your Blogger beta blogs. Earn extra ad revenue. Blogspot blogs were not able to host text link ads mainly due to lack of PHP or other language support needed for Text Link Ads to work. Adding a Javascript wrapper around the PHP code does not cut the ice. Javascript is not indexed by search engines so it is not much of use for TLA advertisers. But the Blogger Beta changes everything. In blogger beta there is a Feed widget that accepts any feed. I have converted my Text Link Ad offering(Inventory) into a RSS feed and plugged the RSS URL on to a Blogger Beta Feed widget, viola! Text Link Ads work in BlogSpot! Here is the Text Link Ads as Feed is simple script hack by me. I'd rate it as early beta. Feel free to get your TLA inventory converted into a feed. And start displaying TLA in your Blogger Beta site. Rake in extra cash through Text Link Monetization.

Profit: For a change, here is an idea that has some tangible benefits! So far all my ideas were featuring abstract profits. Here is something, that will put real cash in your pocket(paypal a/c :)) ) immediately.

PS: The feed widget has a limit that display only 5 results. If there is a good response to using the text link ad as feed service I'll come up with ways to fix it.

Cash in conquering the plenty through likeness search

Idea: Likeness Engine Optimization/Marketing

Search Engine Optimization and Marketing are beaten to death. SEO/SEM is passe! Welcome to Likeness search engine( like like.com , I liiiKkkee it :) ) optimization. It might as well be the cash machine for this Christmas shopping season. The folks at Riya have really figured out a nail for their visual search hammer. It is uber cool and it spells cash, cash and more cash for riya all the way. If riya1.0 lacked stickiness beyond techcrunch, Riya2.0( aka like.com) is full of glue for the target audience( it is all about women!). And multiple revenue streams for Riya of course.

Social networks have brought in a sea change in the search landscape( as in del.icio.us), Riya1.0 with face recognition was inherently social network driven. The social network aspect is aparently missing in like.com, but that is just the present day. When women flock a site, men will too and the social potential will finds its own level.

Execution: The likeness search, with all its might indeed conquers the plenty in an interesting way. Yet the 'plenty' is not fully conquered, and there is a lot of scope for recommendations( read social netowrks) to be incorporated in the search. I was suggesting some form of outline based search will be a good idea. Now I guess it will be much much earsier than that. A set of 'meta product images'( similar to the celebrity selection box features in like.com) that will serve as a good starting points for product seraches will be welcome by searchers.

Profit: Search is moving beyond text. And visual search for products( like the like.com) is the new frontier with demonstrated revenue potential. There is lot of cash to be made in Likeness search engine optimization. Spruce up your photoshop skills. Get to know what is an alpha channel. Plain old ecommerce is becoming very very interesting indeed!

Intent Gratification; Pay attention to your Attention

Idea: Intent as Commodity
Execution: ROOTS Exchange
Profit!: A whole new evolution awaits!

This week something game changing and interesting happened and as expected went unnoticed! I'm talking about Chicago Board of Trade's small investment of $1 million in ROOT exchange a marketplace for 'Internet generated consumer leads'.

What is (Chicago)Commodities Market?

When people need things and they go buy it in the neighbourhood shop. And where did the shop buy it from? A: The shop got it from the distributor who in turn buys form the manufacturers who in turn buys form a series of vendors; Creating a chain of supply and demand in the process. A commodity market injects liquidity( read money; equals gratification) into this chain so that the players in the chain need not wait forever to be gratified. More the scope( geographic, political boundary) of the market, more sophisticated and complicated the market becomes. Chicago Board of Trade is one of the most sophisticated and highly influential commodity market breathing the pulse of the global economy. The world oil prices and prices of key supplies are determined by the sentiments of the Chicago Exchange traders. Thus prices of things in your neighbourhood shop is tightly coupled to action in the Chicago Exchange trading floor. Chicago Board of Trade, founded in 1848 predates the American Civil War and a pioneer in 'Futures' contract(In simple terms it is glorified, regulated, information based speculation bordering scientific gambling.) Such an entity is investing in ROOTS markets( not just money, more importantly CB T's CEO Bernard W. Dan is joining the board of ROOTS, spearheaded by Seth Goldstien. Which brings up the question: What is ROOTS? and Why should I bother?

Intent as Commodity

The most innovative aspect of ROOTS is they are trying to make 'Intent' a commodity. Without going into the merits of it or morality of it, the idea is refreshing and daring. How they are approaching it is interesting and seems very viable.

With our the increased dependence on the Internet, we validate, amplify and gratify our intent online. Several online services facilitate, intermediate our trips through the intent origination to intent gratification process. ROOTS approach is to simply capture the intent gratification 'history' or Karma. Then it is a question of standardization to make it into a commodity. Once characterized as commodity, it can be integrated with the financial(or whatever) markets.

The first Intent commodity is going to be 'online mortgage leads' which is simply brilliant considering the almost zero resistance in the path.

By combining the direct response capabilities of the Internet with the transparency and integrity of a commodities exchange, ROOT Exchange has transformed the lead generation marketplace. Buyers can now create quality filters and receive real-time quotes while Sellers can set ask prices and increase their sales pool instantly.

But why should I care?

Just like currency system facilitated easy exchange of things( that inspired a planet full of awesome man made things) the new Intent currency will create unimaginable ways to interact with each other with our Intents.

It is said that Water is the cohesion that binds this universe. Money, being a reflection of liquid(ity), indeed is a binder that holds 'The Market'. ROOTS intent to increase liquidity of Intent, is more like adding life on to the Water: A whole evolution is hatching!

Parkade Ventures; mashup of Retail, Realestate, Autoclub

Idea: Recently multi-level computerized parking spaces got Infrastructure status. This makes investing in parkades attractive as it is an intersection intersection of organized retail, real estate, and access to automobile owning yuppy populace.

Traditionally Gold and Real-estate were the only investment avenues available for rich to grow their wealth easily. All other avenues required spending some time or effort and needed a lot of smarts and street savvy. Now there is a retail boom in-turn pushing up commercial realestate prices. And the automobile population is increasing exploding day by day. Urban parking facilities is increasingly a concern. Adding an interesting twist to the situation, recently, multi-level parkades became tax shelters due to their status as Infrastructure. Put everything together, then investing in creating a national retail chain of multi-level computurized parkade is an attractive proposition.

Execution: Buy land in by-lanes of congested business and shopping districts of congested urban areas. They will appreciate given the urbanization trend. Constructing multi-level parking facility is simple considering that it hardly needs major interior decoration like a retail space. There is no AC to be installed. And the power requirements are minimal. Thus the 'depreciating asset' capital expenses is attractive.

The running expenses and manpower requirements are even more attractive.

Computerization and customer management is the most interesting aspect of the investment. And the scale lends itself very well to create national retail chain. Here some smarts needs to be applied. This is what will differentiate the boys from the men.

With parking charges by the hour cash flow will be attractive. Smart way to bill the customer: half yearly or annual billing with 'subsidy/underwriting' by retail brands and credit card operators etc.


Profit: Retail space is set for consolidation and M&A action 3-5 years from now on. There is a lot of venture money being pumped in to India. This kind of safe ventures are good ways to create good return on exit. And venture funds investing in such ventures will also support a small innovation( GPS/GIS map, travel integration, etc) ecosystem around it. With so much talk about venture money chasing deals stable investments like these will make venture ecosystem sustainable. This will be the McDonalds of emerging India.

AOL Private Data Release Fiasco: Daffy Duck Did It

Top 10 Reasons why AOL Proudly released search and clickstream data

Overheared near the research.aol.com watercooler:
10) Daffy Duck Did It.

9) This is our cool new way of proving to the world that AOLer are not dumb. They *do* search all kind of intelligent things.

8) We want to reassure our users that you can do idiotic things in the Internet and still get by.

7) We want to try out this opensource thingy. Maybe this is the way to do it.

6) We want to be pro-active with DOJ.

5) There is no such thing called free lunch. We are free service from Aug 2 2006. This is our way of saying there is no free lunch.

4) We want to bring it to the notice of the world what Google, Yahoo, Microsoft can do with your data.

3) We just want to quickly show that our API is better than Amazon AWS A9, or GYM's. And we are anyway sinking, and we would love to take Google( 5% Stake holder) along.

2) We are experimenting with he Wisdom of Crowds Thingy that is so popular these days.

1) We wanted to kill Digg. That is not happening, at least let us be on the Digg's top for a while.
PS: Stay tuned for a statement by Bugs Bunny....

Update: Greg Yardley of RootsExchange a pioneer in the area of Intent Economy is going gaga with the data:
You never had privacy anyway

Get your AOL data on
A funny one at:
AOL user says "just kidding" about searching "How to kill wife" 30+ times

TIE-ISB Connect:Venture Market Warming up in India

I came to know about TIE-ISB Connect Seminar through Interpid's Everyday Entrepreneur. It is a serious effort to connect the entreprenurs with VCs and other support services.


Shishir Bhate's interesting article at Rediff Have a biz plan? Here's how to get VC funding

Who can participate?

"Whoever has a bright idea that can make wealth," Sarma puts it succinctly.

To elaborate, basically three categories of enterprises can participate:

* Growth-stage enterprises seeking capital infusion (may be even second round of funding) to ramp up their businesses;
* Early-stage enterprises that have a great idea, put together a good team and are seeking capital to build their businesses; and
* Idea-stage entrepreneurs, who have a great idea and have proof of concept that a viable business can be built around it.

Even if you are not planning to present a business plan it is a good networking opportunity:

Great networking opportunity

TiE-ISB Connect will be a great networking opportunity for entrepreneurs with over 500 delegates expected to participate in the event.

Some of the keynote speakers at the event include serial entrepreneur Kanwal Rekhi, Air Deccan chairman Capt G R Gopinath, rediff.com founder and CEO Ajit Balakrishnan, Headstrong Corporation chairman and CEO Arjun Malhotra, Naukri.com CEO Sanjeev Bikhchandani, and Satyam Group chairman Ramalinga Raju.

Among the venture capitalists to be present at the event are Carlyle Group, Sequoia Capital, DFJ, Helion, August Capital, NthOrbit, Comcast, Sherpalo Ventures, TSI Ventures, ICICI Ventures and Actis Partners.

If you are averse to seeking venture money: Convert your 2 cents to $20m with almost zilch

See you at ISB!

Alexa Thumbnails, darn Why I did'nt think it up!

Today I came across the new Amazon Web Services: Alexa Thumbnail Service. For a really small fee, you can get thumbnail image of the site you specify. This will be useful in showing preview of sites say in a search result.
Ad sites like Text Link Ads, show site preview for potential link buyers. A quick preview of the site's look and feel will be useful for making an ad purchase decision. Site thumbnail could be a good way to link sites in blogs.

I see lot of opportunity for creating widget services around this: A S3 based permalink thumbnail that gets updated as the site content changes. This permalink image can be used as a profile image in social networks.

I was kicking myself why I did not think up this service. Looking back, AWS has all the crawl data available. They just have to render the html as a NxM pixel image to generate the thumbnail. It is simple and cool.

As an extension, if sites can be converted into small flash animations it will be cool.

If you want to enhance the search experience with site thumbnails it will burn a hole in the pocket with 20 cents for 1000 thumbnails.