From Tag Clouds to Social Analytics

In a recent enterprise transformation program, we used a click path analysis tool to determine the usage patterns of the users on existing systems. We found that the usage patterns did not follow the navigation steps that were laid out in the software. We used this information to redesign workflows in the re-engineered system. The new workflows improved usability and productivity of the users significantly leading to increased adoption. This got me thinking...

Tags and tag clouds have emerged as an alternative navigation paradigm, and usage pattern and relevancy drive site navigation in today's Web2.0 world. While tag clouds are extremely useful from a user navigation standpoint, what's in it for the marketing organizations behind the websites? I think it's a good idea to link these tag clouds to social analytics which will provide immediate insight into the trends that are developing. Sentiment analysis in social analytics tools provides actionable business insights into the consumer thinking. Brands can use this feedback to grow their business. The link between tag clouds and social analytics gives a top down view into customer sentiment. It will help measure campaign success and identify future opportunities.

Black Mountain Side

As I put my iPod on shuffle, out pops Led Zeppelin's "Black Mountain Side" and sends me down memory lane. Takes me back 10 years to the numerous mountain tops that I hiked with a bunch of friends in good ol' Pune. Those were the days when I was building up my album collection like crazy and tripped on music and hiking, big time! The only pub that entertained stags in those days was "Thousand Oaks" and ever so often, we would end up at a friend's place and a couple of us would love to play DJ showcasing the songs that we had discovered. I was learning to play the guitar and my roommate was drumming away to glory. Every song on our weekend was analyzed once for the lead guitar, another time for the bass and once for the drums. And every weekend jaunt ended with Floyd's "Umma Gumma" (u know what I mean). From "Black Mountain Side" to "Misty Mountain Top", here's one for getting the led out

Switched to a Mac

After multiple Windows crashes, loosing valuable data and my 2 year old Toshiba laptop finally giving away, I decided to switch to a Mac. Mac is so cool, much better performance-wise and Leopard is way much better than Windows. I couldn't have been happier. Check out this link on the issues with MS software from Bill Gates himself and I stand vindicated..

http://gizmodo.com/5019516/classic-clips-bill-gates-chews-out-microsoft-over-xp

Best coffee in the world is a marsupial's excreta!

Check this out...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_luwak

Euro Quarters disappointments

Amazes me how the highly rated Portugal and The Netherlands lost in the quarters of Euro '08. The Dutch were on the defensive throughout the game and Russia attacked well to earn their place in the semis. Cristiano Ronaldo failed to live up to the expectations and the billing of the current "greatest footballer". This leaves Germany as the favorites. Russia could upset their applecart if they continue in the same vein.

Zoho

Recently a friend asked me for help on coming up with a solution that his SMB enterprise was facing...

• Raw data comes in 4 times a day from various stores in the form of flat files
  
• Need to automatically upload into a central database
  
• Create reports with the right permissions so that each store can see and analyze trends on various days and months
  
• Create centralized reports for HQ to check how stores are performing relative to each other and take decisions accordingly
  

I looked at various options with the underlying theme that I needed it done quickly (in a week) and I did not want to resort to extensive programming

Zoho turned out to be the best option available

• Zoho DB and Reports lets you import files into the database
• Auto updation is not available on the website but when I contacted their support team, I got a response within 24 hours with a utility to set up automatic imports
• I could create reports with a powerful drag and drop interface
• Setup permissions on those reports so that only specific users could see them
• Zoho has a limitation of 3 MB file size support. However, if you contact their support team, they should be able to support it

One issue that my friend had that I could not resolve was the issue on branding. He wanted his company logos to appear on these reports and easily link with his website so that it was seamless to his end users. I guess Zoho will support such requirements soon enough to make it a more compelling proposition

Free market economy and pricing

I'm amazed at how the free market economy works through... Met a diehard Packer fan on my flight back from NJ. He was traveling this weekend from NJ to Green Bay for the NFC Championship game. He told me about the flight tickets that he bought the previous week. During the Giants Cowboys game, the ticket prices were hovering around $500 and as soon as the game was over, all flights to the Wisconsin area were a $1000 dearer! Free market economy and demand based pricing at its best. But, in a stark contrast to this is the price of coffee beans which is the second most traded commodity after oil. No matter how much you pay for your coffee at your neighborhood Starbucks, the farmer who produces the beans with 5 years of toil spent on each coffee tree, gets paid less than a $1 per pound! Taylor Clark in his book "Starbucked" analyzes this conundrum with the conclusion that the cheaper robusta coffee beans flooding the market have brought the coffee prices down and even the genuinely good arabica coffee bean prices have been hit as a result. The book was an amazing read for its insights into coffee and its roots.

Cloud computing

Got interested in Cloud computing recently and the potential it has in revolutionizing the IT world. This distributed computing model is akin to the commoditization and distribution of electricity a century ago. Google, Amazon, IBM, Yahoo! and Microsoft will fight this battle and the winners would emerge as the utility computing leaders of tomorrow. Jeff Bezos' EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) initiative has been catching up with the SMBs. Yahoo!'s Hadoop support which is the Open source distributed computing leader places it at an advantage. Google is investing $2billion a year in data centers and is the leader in cloud computing. My bet is on Google-IBM and Amazon winning the cloud computing war.

WMG - EMI

With WMG deciding not to bid for EMI, the Big Four label groups remain intact.

Market share of record music companies:
Sony BMG - 25.7%
Vivendi Universal - 21.2%
WMG - 13.8%
EMI - 12.8%

Apple iTunes continues to dominate digital music sales.

Recently, while doing my daily reading on 247wallst.com, I found newly inserted in-text ads. Chances are, while you hate invasive ads which hamper your web-surfing experience, user initiated online ads within the text of relevant web content are going to get you excited. This is a step further from google's text ads which show up as part of search results.



Vibrant Media is the in-text advertising leader and I can't help but wonder that they are a potential acquisition target for Google in the not-so-foreseeable-future, once they gain some traction in the content driven blogosphere.



We are slowly evolving into a world of advertising as portrayed in the futuristic interactive personalized ads in the Hollywood flick "Minority Report". 2054 is not too far away, after all!