Wake Up Carrier

It was a time when VoIP used to be in the news and geeks used to like it just because it was a change and it did things in more techie way even though the quality of service it provided were substandard. In spite of its lousy quality people found it something interesting to try because it was free of cost in the internet.

And now again it seems like there is endless news around messaging, VoIP and video calling and lots of organizations actually implementing VoIP in their organizations. They are growing very fast recently and lots of companies adopting it in their products. Google Voice, Skype services, and Apple announcing Facetime Support for the Mac with 19 million such devices shipped since June, might explain how it has captured the attention of the big companies as they see a big emerging market in it. The issue in VoIP still remains because of a conception that still there are technology issues in it but it needs to be understood that it is the next generation of network technology and can’t be ignored.

The way messaging, voice, video, and chatting applications are on fire lately implies that VoIP will be the biggest competitor of carriers and finally the winner. It means that soon Carriers will become irrelevant in Voice and Messaging.

At present because of telco monopolies these companies are very slow to respond to the change and innovation. On the other hand VoIP is getting advanced both in technology and services day by day. And in Indian context, Gosh..! 3G is yet to be implemented by these companies.

Right now VoIP applications like Skype enable its users not only to make voice and video call but provide other services like enabling the user to view distant users desktop and lot more. Now Imagine the future of communication on your smartphone: you’re on a video call with your significant other across the world on different networks, you tap your screen, and instantly their phone screen mimics yours as you flip through photos of your trip while continuing your call. Or imagine sending out an MMS to a group, and when each of your friends open it they immediately tap into a live HD audio/video stream which you’re broadcasting to everyone. No delays, no dialing, and no going in and out of different apps—it just works. All of these amazing use-cases, and more, will be enabled by 4G wireless standards. This is because 4G is 100% IP-based, which is what the internet was founded upon.

Today, voice is routed separately from data on mobile networks due to  “circuit-switched” architecture. With LTE, the first phase of 4G, voice and video sessions will be packetized and sent over the network from a smartphone just like any other application layer data, which will open a range of new capabilities. This is because the future in mobile communication is being written at the application layer — both by innovative giants like Apple and Google, and smaller startups such as GroupMe and Twilio — not at the infrastructure layer. The carriers had a chance to provide a better voice and messaging experience with 4G, and to charge a toll for that experience, but they are missing that window. What the carriers really need to do is get out of bed and resolve how voice will be packetized, then move forward and deploy it but right now they are not interested in doing it because they have better profit at the carrier.

This kind of slow change and lack of innovativeness at the carrier will lose its customer to VoIP with new and better services to be provided at lower cost in future. This provides a scene that there is going to be some big Mergers and Acquisition at the telcos if they don’t provide the services at the application layer.

ShivaDMD Health and Education Trust

It was just few months’ back we lost a sweet and typical 13 year old boy named Shiva. He was living with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a cruel and unforgiving muscle wasting disease that will cut short one’s life if a treatment does not come in time. Actually there is no proper cure for DMD. Like 35% of cases, Shiva DID NOT inherit DMD, it is because of his body's own spontaneous mutation that he suffered from DMD.

He was the boy with full of intelligence and determination. He used to be one of the top scorer in the class. He was better in understanding the purpose of life than other guys of similar age.

The words he used to say often was “There is no limit for dreaming.”

"Jab Sapne hi dekhna ho toh bada dekho na.. Sapne dekhne me kya jata hai..??"

And his principles were “When it is about dreaming then don’t get scared to dream too high. You are not going to lose anything but, by doing so, you are increasing your scope”. And when it comes about charity he used to be the first to help used to criticize the people not believing in charity.

 “Help others and you will get them back for sure.”

He never dreamt low. It used to surprise everyone around him that a boy of thirteen year had so much to dream about his life.

He is no longer with us but he left behind his principles for us to live with. On his name ShivaDMD Health and Education Trust was started.

Then Recently we met a boy named Shivam. Shivam could be described as your typical sixteen year old boy. Shivam is a ticking time bomb as he was recently diagnosed with DMD.  He loves playing cricket and he is one of the biggest fans of Sachin Tendulkar. He even has a bat signed by Sachin Tendulkar and inspires to meet Sachin ONE DAY VERY SOON. He loves other sports as well and wait till early morning to watch FIFA or Olympic in TV.

He is a popular member of his class at school, where he excels at reading, mathematics, art and computers. He used to spent spends his playtimes doing his best to keep up with his friends but he is becoming physically weak because of which he feels like he is losing his friends slowly. He loves playing Computer Games and these days he is more into it and watching sports. Shivam is fascinated with other countries, the people, and their way of life. He follows news more than us and used to have in-depth thoughts about them.

He misses playing cricket these days, and his body is losing strengths. He no longer can count on his muscles and needs support to sit, walk, write or eat. He recently passed HSC with very good mark of 73%. I personally checked his mark sheet and found it very impressive. His Doctor feels that he no longer could study and sit in exams. He needs regular exercise and is being treated for DMD. Unfortunately, medical science has not discovered any effective treatment strategies against the disease that is slowly destroying the muscles in his body. It is said that he will eventually lose the ability to walk followed by the ability to breathe. His heart will slowly lose its ability to function. At this moment in time, there is little that anyone can do about it. Sometimes a little improvement in him after stem cells, each injection costing 2 lakhs Rs, gives us hope that he would be able to play like his friends very soon. But everything looks dark when his doctor says If there are no significant research advances made soon or may be if not given a proper treatment, Shivam will face certain death .

As his mother with a big hope in her thinks that in future she could see Shivam finishing his studies and backpacking around the world. She dreams him commencing a creative career dedicated to his work, just as dedicated to his play.

Our dream for Shivam is to have a long, happy, and fulfilling life in relative health so that he is here with us to fulfill his dreams. WE have already lost enough children because of DMD and we don’t want to lose more. We have been working on it and for the dreams of every other child and their parents who has got such incurable disease.

But it will take the help of people like you to see this dream come true. Visit www.shivadmd.org to help us end Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

ShivaDMD in Facebook

ShivaDMD in Twitter

ShivaDMD in Orkut

Me in Google Me

There has been rumor in the internet for a long time about Google me – Google’s super social network. It was according to a tweet from Digg founder Kevin Rose long back, Google is preparing to launch a rival social networking service called "Google Me." The Wall Street Journal and Reuters quoted Google CEO Eric Schmidt saying the company will integrate social networking elements to its services.

To see at Google’s history, Google has made a number of attempts to corner the market of Social Sites, with limited success at best. Back in February, Google had launched its Twitter competitor, Buzz, which was a big failure, and was roundly condemned for the perceived privacy issues surrounding that service's e-mail integration. Buzz was like Twitter meets Digg and not a true social networking site where you can spend virtual time with your friends. Google Profiles, Social Search being Google’s other properties of Google with some social networking features are not a called a success as well.

 Google’s Social Networking Site “Orkut” launched in 2004, was hit in India and Brazil. However, it hardly carries the same cache as other Google properties in other part of the world. More conservative companies would have cut their losses by now—but that thought process has never applied to Google, particularly when it comes to launching new properties. It is Google, Boss.

Google Me ‘the Facebook killer’ as said, was about to be launched in fall. It’s time now but there is no clue yet. News about Facebook is that for the last few weeks Facebook is in lockdown period and are coming out with redesign and added features in it. Facebook group has already created hype in the internet.

TO come back to Google Me, the service will introduce what Google calls “a social layer” into online search, video and Google Maps. I feel Google would do this by integrating all of its social sites into a single platform. By doing so Google Me may have initial user base of 200 million. This is speculation by the next wave for the reason of combination of Google and Gmail accounts would give such user base.

Facebook has already reached user base of 500 million and it is growing. The way Facebook is progressing, it might be considered foolish to start a project to compete against it and with a hope to succeed. However If Google Me gets it even half right, they could be the first real competition Facebook has seen in a long time.

So is Google Me getting Real?

When will I see Me in Google Me?

Suraj Sharma

A Suing WAR

I have been coming across to many updates regarding the major war going on in telecoms world.

Actually It is really funny to see the cases and the number of companies involved who are cross suing each other.. It would be really interesting to see how it ends. .

The image explains the war , however just see whether it would solve your queries or raise even more questions.

Who's suing who? an Explanation in detail to solve your queries.

Google unveils Google Instant

Google, the Search Engine leader comes out with many new and innovative features that would make the search engine more accurate and faster so that it stands out from the rest of the competitors in the field. When its competitors announce a new feature in their search engines, the Search Leader (Google) surprises everyone with more advanced features in it. As we have seen in the past to help it one-up the competition and maintain their dominance in the search engine arena Google had unveiled a set of new features like Real time search, mobile search updates, Google googles and voice translation, when Bing had announced twitter integration, visual search and a new Maps application. This makes no surprise to me that Google successfully crossed the one billion users a week milestone recently.

Today Google unveiled its new Instant search feature - Google Instant, which auto loads search results as we type >. Basically, the Google no longer waits for us to hit Enter while searching and starts updating its results page Instantly as we type. Google describes it as a fundamental shift in search engines and has estimated that it'll accumulate a 350 million saved hours over the course of a year.

Google's also integrated a predictive algorithm into Instant, which it describes as a "psychic element, in that it is able to predict what we're going to type. Gmail already does this with contacts, and it’s a big time saver. Now extend that concept to a half-dozen other forms of local search: Google Books, Google Scholar, Froogle, Desktop, News, Reader, Apps, Images etc. Imagine it in all of Google’s local search sites, popping up thumbnails and textual descriptions.

Google Instant isn't yet available for mobile, but the plan is to release it soon. This might be coming this fall. The service is rolling out right now to signed-in users some of us even got to use it ahead of the announcement, but it's pretty much a question of luck as to when you might get it over the next few days. The first countries to benefit from this new hotness are the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Spain and of course the United States as, while Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 8 are the first supported browsers.

Right now Google instant might not save significant time but with more and more refinement of algorithms it would understand and predict what user is going to search and thus would successfully serve the master better.

IF I HAD MY LIFE TO LIVE OVER

IF I HAD MY LIFE TO LIVE OVER

I would have talked less and listened more.

I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded.

I would have eaten the popcorn in the 'good' living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.

I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.

I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.

I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.

I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains. I would have cried and laughed less while watching television - and more while watching life.

I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.                                                            

I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day.

Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.

When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get washed up for dinner."

There would have been more "I love yous"... more "I'm sorrys"...but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute... look at it and really see it...live it...and never give it back.

Sharing with you someone's dedication in memory of Erma Bombeck who lost her fight with cancer. "Be courageous and bold. When you look back on your life, you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did."