Dorai's Learn Log http://dorai.wordpress.com Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:25:57 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ en hourly 1 http://www.gravatar.com/blavatar/5f835e7f439766f29236c7a27339df70?s=96&d=http://s.wordpress.com/i/buttonw-com.png Dorai's Learn Log http://dorai.wordpress.com If You Are a Product Startup Building a WebApplication… http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/if-you-are-a-product-startup-building-a-webapplication/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/if-you-are-a-product-startup-building-a-webapplication/#comments Sun, 22 Nov 2009 03:25:57 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/if-you-are-a-product-startup-building-a-webapplication/ ]]>

If you are a product start-up building a web application here is some good advice from Programming Google App Engine:

If you delay your launch to build big, you miss the opportunity to improve your product using feedback from your customers. Building big before allowing customers to use the product risks building something your customers don’t want.

Small companies usually don’t have access to large systems of servers on day one. The best they can do is to build small and hope meltdowns don’t damage their reputation as they try to grow. The lucky ones find their audience, get another round of funding, and halt feature development to rebuild their product for larger capacity. The unlucky ones, well, don’t. But these days, there are other options. Large Internet companies such as Amazon.com, Google, and Microsoft are leasing parts of their high-capacity systems using a pay-per-use model.

This is such a relief. These services take a chunk of your worry away and let you focus on your application and the initial customer interaction.

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Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/if-you-are-a-product-startup-building-a-webapplication/feed/ 0 dorai Collective Creativity in Product Development http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/collective-creativity-in-product-development/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/collective-creativity-in-product-development/#comments Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:02:04 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/collective-creativity-in-product-development/ ]]>

While reading How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity , I was struck by the similarity between movie making and building a Software product.

Here is a “product version” of one of the most compelling paragraphs in the stories with apologies to Ed Catmull.

 

A software product contains literally thousands to ten thousands of ideas. They are in the form of every service and interaction the product provides; in the design of interfaces, modules, interactions between functional units, every message the user sees, every key or link they need to click on.The product management does not come up with all the ideas on their own; rather, every single member of the product team makes suggestions. Creativity must be present at every level of every aspect of the product development. The product team sorts through a mass of ideas from the members, customers and find the ones that fit into a coherent whole – which is a difficult task.

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Posted in Ideas, Innovation, products Tagged: collective creativity, Pixar, product creation ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/collective-creativity-in-product-development/feed/ 0 dorai LinkLog: When Do Customers Know Exactly What They Want? http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/linklog-when-does-the-customer-know-exactly-what-they-want/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/linklog-when-does-the-customer-know-exactly-what-they-want/#comments Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:57:09 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/linklog-when-does-the-customer-know-exactly-what-they-want/ ]]>

Principles of Simple Agile is a good read. Here are two principles that I really like:

  1. Respect
  2. Keep it Simple

Here are some snippets from the article. I reformatted the para on Respect and trimmed it a bit.

When does a customer know exactly what they want?  When they see it of course!  When do they know how they feel about your product?  When they see it.  Let them see it more often, gather feedback and utilize the feedback. 

Respect the process by sticking to it and holding each other accountable for process success. 

Respect the product by reducing complexity and technical debt. 

Respect the team by not having unrealistic goals, being sustainable and letting them solve their own problems. 

Respect each other by working together toward success and supporting each other at all times. 

We should do the simplest thing that works – then stop. 

Ask the customer (remember we are respecting them by getting them involved) if we hit the mark.

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Posted in Agility ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/linklog-when-does-the-customer-know-exactly-what-they-want/feed/ 0 dorai Readability http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/readability/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/readability/#comments Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:04:08 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/readability/ ]]>

Readability makes your reading web pages easier and better and completely uncluttered. It removes all the clutter surrounding the text in the page to make reading simpler and easier.

  • It is a bookmarklet
  • It is open source with Apache license
  • I tried it with a few pages and the experience was amazing

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Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/readability/feed/ 0 dorai LinkLog: Design Thinking for Social Innovation http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/linklog-design-thinking-for-social-innovation/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/linklog-design-thinking-for-social-innovation/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:22:18 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/linklog-design-thinking-for-social-innovation/ ]]>

The Sternins’ work is a good example of how positive deviance and design thinking relies on local expertise to uncover local solutions. From Stanford Social Innovation Review.

D E S I G N T H I N K I N G AT WORK Jerry Sternin, founder of the Positive Deviance Initiative and a professor at Tufts University until he died last year, was skilled at identifying what he called outsider solutions to local problems. His approach to social innovation is a good example of design thinking in action.(1) In 1990, Sternin and his wife, Monique, were working in Vietnam to decrease malnutrition among children in 10,000 villages. At the time, 65 percent of Vietnamese children under age 5 suff ered from malnutrition, and most solutions relied on government donations of nutritional supplements. But the supplements never delivered the hoped-for results.(2) As an alternative, the Sternins used an approach called positive deviance, which looks for solutions among individuals and families in the community who are already doing well.(3)

The Sternins and colleagues from Save the Children surveyed four local Quong Xuong communities in the province of Than Hoa and asked for examples of “very, very poor” families whose children were healthy. They then observed the food preparation, cooking, and serving behaviors of these six families, called “positive deviants,” and found a few consistent yet rare behaviors. Parents of well-nourished children collected tiny shrimps, crabs, and snails from rice paddies and added them to the food, along with the greens from sweet potatoes. Although these foods were readily available, they were typically not eaten because they were considered unsafe for children. The positive deviants also fed their children multiple smaller meals, which allowed small stomachs to hold and digest more food each day.

The Sternins and the rest of their group worked with the positive deviants to offer cooking classes to the families of children suff ering from malnutrition. By the end of the program’s first year, 80 percent of the 1,000 children enrolled in the program were adequately nourished. In addition, the effort had been replicated within 14 villages across Vietnam.(4)

From Design Thinking from Wikipedia

Is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success. Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the "building up" of ideas. There are no judgments early on in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation in the ideation and prototype phases

From Design Thinking – Thoughts by Tim Brown

One of the most important ideas about design thinking is that it creates new ideas that provide new choices for business and society

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Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/linklog-design-thinking-for-social-innovation/feed/ 0 dorai The Power Law http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/the-power-law/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/the-power-law/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:37:46 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/the-power-law/ ]]>

From Gary Hemmel's Outrunning Future

Out of 1,000 crazy ideas, only 100 will merit serious consideration. Of those, only 10 will be worth a serious investment, and out of that modest bundle, only 1 or 2 will have the power to transform a business or spawn a new one.

Many innovative companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon get this. That is why they are constantly innovating, releasing new products, endlessly trying out new features, new variations.

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Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/the-power-law/feed/ 0 dorai It’s hard to out-run the future if you don’t see it coming. http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/it%e2%80%99s-hard-to-out-run-the-future-if-you-don%e2%80%99t-see-it-coming/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/it%e2%80%99s-hard-to-out-run-the-future-if-you-don%e2%80%99t-see-it-coming/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:22:55 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/it%e2%80%99s-hard-to-out-run-the-future-if-you-don%e2%80%99t-see-it-coming/ ]]>

From Gary Hemmel's Outrunning Future

It’s hard to out-run the future if you don’t see it coming.

Learn from the fringe. What’s true for music, fashion and the arts is true for business as well: the future starts on the fringe (not in the mainstream). As William Gibson once said, “The future has already happened, it’s just unequally distributed.” To see it coming, managers have to pay attention to nascent technologies, unconventional competitors and un-served customer groups. A good rule of thumb: spend an hour a day, or a couple of days a month, exploring emerging trends in technology, lifestyles, regulation and venture capital funding. The future will sneak up on you unless you go out looking for it.

Can't think of a better advice for startups and small technology businesses. By exploring and keeping track of emerging trends, you are ready to leverage technology to disrupt an antiquated business model. Can you imagine the impact some of the emerging trends in Mobile, Learning and Cloud Computing will have on many existing businesses?

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Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/it%e2%80%99s-hard-to-out-run-the-future-if-you-don%e2%80%99t-see-it-coming/feed/ 0 dorai Intelligent Tutoring Systems http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/intelligent-tutoring-systems/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/intelligent-tutoring-systems/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:33:20 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/intelligent-tutoring-systems/ ]]>

This post was triggered by an email I received for papers for a conference. One of the suggested topics was Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Here is what Wikipedia says about ITS:

An intelligent tutoring system (ITS) is any computer system that provides direct customized instruction or feedback to students, i.e. without the intervention of human beings, whilst performing a task. [1] Thus, ITS implements the theory of learning by doing.

It occurred to me that a simple system can be modeled (and tried) with AIML (artificial intelligence markup language) to provide introductory courses in several subjects. There is an AIML engine available written in Python called PyAIML. We already tried a simple student project (a help system for SugarCRM) using this engine.

The UI can be implemented using Processing or some other similar powerful visualization tool. The visual models can also be built using a Visualization Modeling Language (on top of SVG). A better method, would be to blend an instant messenger like chat interface, with a response window that supports simple graphics (to display diagrams). To do a project like this, we need the following:

1. A customizable chat (based on Jabber or some other similar client)
2. A surface that can display not only text but simple graphics
3. A KB built on something like AIML
4. Content customized towards teaching an introductory subject
5. A simple visualization interface like Processing

This is certainly an exciting area to explore for some student projects. A few good tools to create content in AIML format would be a great first step.

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Posted in Python, teaching, Tools Tagged: aiml, intelligent tutoriing systemes, Processing, PyAIML, SVG ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/intelligent-tutoring-systems/feed/ 0 dorai Best Inventions of 2009: The $20 Knee http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/best-inventions-of-2009-the-20-knee/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/best-inventions-of-2009-the-20-knee/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:48:49 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/best-inventions-of-2009-the-20-knee/ ]]>


Best Inventions of 2009: The $20 Knee

November 16, 2009 by Rich Whittle | 0 Comments

Now a team of Stanford engineering students has designed a knee that’s not only dirt cheap — just $20 — but also mimics the natural joint’s movements. Developed with the Jaipur Foot group, the JaipurKnee is made of self-lubricating, oil-filled nylon and is both flexible and stable, even on irregular terrain.

The device is being tested in India; more than 300 people have been fitted so far.

via  @danec

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Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/best-inventions-of-2009-the-20-knee/feed/ 0 dorai Attributes of a Great Teacher http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/attributes-of-a-great-teacher/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/attributes-of-a-great-teacher/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:30:44 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/attributes-of-a-great-teacher/ ]]>

I wrote this down a while ago when I heard a bunch of students complain how bad some of their teachers were. We were discussing how to tag teachers with a set of attributes. I came back home and drew a mind map. A Twitter exchange with a friend reminded me of this list. So I decided to post a bunch of Tweets almost at midnight.

Here they are, in no particular order. Some of the teachers who inspired me had many of these attributes. The greatest one was my grandfather. I had the privilege of watching him closely as I was growing up. He did not have a very high level of education but I have never seen any one with such unparalleled dedication. I don’t know whether they know it or not. But good teachers have a lot of influence on lots of people. In their tenure as a teacher (20-30 years or more) they probably have the potential to  influence 20-50K students directly. When you think about it, you notice how amazing that is. According to Teachers without Borders, there nearly 60million teaches in the world.

Attributes of a great teacher:

  • Dedicated
  • Motivating
  • Engaging
  • Some times Entertaining
  • Good story teller
  • Has Knowledge of subject matter
  • Conversation starter
  • Inspires students
  • Challenges students to think
  • Can demystify hard subjects
  • Egoless
  • Innovates in teaching methods
  • Life-long learner
  • Has Infinite patience
  • Not judgemental
  • Understands student’s difficulties,
  • Understands student’s learning styles
  • Takes pride in students’ achievements

If I love this profession so much, why did I not take up  teaching profession? I ask myself that question a lot of times. I don’t know the answer. I studied engineering and jumped into a job and never looked back. But the most fun part in all my jobs and all my startups was the opportunity to teach a bit.

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Posted in Inspiration, teaching Tagged: teachers ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/attributes-of-a-great-teacher/feed/ 4 dorai Innovating With Tweets http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/innovating-with-tweets/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/innovating-with-tweets/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:03:45 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/innovating-with-tweets/ ]]>

It is always a pleasure to see meaningful, useful applications of any technology. Some of these are just surfacing for Twitter. Here is one mentioned in the article India Inc is All Twitter.

Of what use can 140 characters be to a very large private bank in India? If those characters make a “tweet”, you will be surprised with the results. With the help of Mahesh Murthy, founder and CEO of search engine marketing firm Pinstorm, and his team, this private bank monitors around 1,600 tweets or conversations a day.

Murthy and his team respond to 200 to 300 tweets daily to either thank the twitter for a complimentary remark concerning the bank or “correct a perception” as Murthy puts it.

“Even simple things like not having enough cash in an ATM get reported in tweets. It is extremely important to react at the earliest to such problems and the tweets give the bank ample opportunity to take quick action, remedy the situation, and preserve their brand image in the bargain,” explains Murthy. The other tweets are ignored but nevertheless stored for future reference by the bank.

Ideas trigger ideas. I hope Mahesh and his team get the due recognition for taking Twitter to Banks. I hope they continue innovating and inspire many of us to do so as well.

Source: A friendly Tweet from @nramaiah

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Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/innovating-with-tweets/feed/ 2 dorai DBPedia New Release Contains Over 2.9 Million Things http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/dbpedia-new-release-contains-over-2-9-million-things/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/dbpedia-new-release-contains-over-2-9-million-things/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:34:55 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/dbpedia-new-release-contains-over-2-9-million-things/ ]]>

DbPedia is a public database built using RDF and is a great example of LinkedData. When you see DbPedia and Freebase, you can see the slow emergence of data web. From their web page

The new DBpedia data set describes more than 2.9 million things, including 282,000 persons, 339,000 places, 88,000 music albums, 44,000 films, 15,000 video games, 119,000 organizations, 130,000 species and 4400 diseases. The DBpedia data set now features labels and abstracts for these things in 91 different languages; 807,000 links to images and 3,840,000 links to external web pages; 4,878,100 external links into other RDF datasets, 415,000 Wikipedia categories, and 75,000 YAGO categories. The data set consists of 479 million pieces of information (RDF triples) out of which 190 million were extracted from the English edition of Wikipedia and 289 million were extracted from other language editions.

Source: Reddit Semantic Web thanks to  @mhermans Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/dbpedia-new-release-contains-over-2-9-million-things/feed/ 0 dorai Cough into Your Mobile Phone for Instant Diagnosis http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/cough-into-your-mobile-phone-for-instant-diagnosis/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/cough-into-your-mobile-phone-for-instant-diagnosis/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:46:57 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/cough-into-your-mobile-phone-for-instant-diagnosis/ ]]>

Feeling a bit under the weather? Soon you'll be able to cough into your mobile phone for an instant diagnosis. A research firm called STAR Analytical Services is working to develop software that can analyze the sound of a cough and identify it as either associated with a common cold, the flu, or something worse – like pneumonia or another serious respiratory disease. Just as doctors have been doing for years, the software will "listen" to the wetness or dryness of a cough and determine whether all you need is a lozenge or if you need to come in for a doctor's visit instead.
Turn Your Head…Towards Your Mobile Phone

The American and Australian scientists at STAR have received a $100,000 grant from the Gates Foundation to develop the cough-analyzing software for developing countries where access to health care is more limited than in first world nations.

from Read Write Web http://bit.ly/32YC8U

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Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/cough-into-your-mobile-phone-for-instant-diagnosis/feed/ 0 dorai It is an Innovative World http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/it-is-an-innovative-world/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/it-is-an-innovative-world/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:07:03 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/it-is-an-innovative-world/ ]]>

It is amazing how innovative the world is. This blog is an attempt to share some of them with all of you.

A bit of a background. I spend time talking about Innovations in Learning. I am also exploring setting up innovation cells in Engineering institutions in Chennai, India, where I spend a lot of time nowadays. It is amazing to see how much creativity exists among students. Hopefully the icell effort will help foster more innovation. We plan to conduct workshops on innovation and share knowledge with students. Will chronicle how this turns out on this blog. Meanwhile, I may just do a couple of posts a day about stories on innovation and tools we find.

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Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/it-is-an-innovative-world/feed/ 0 dorai Google Alert – multicore OR multi-core OR “parallel computing” or “parallel programming” OR “concurrency” OR “manycore” http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/google-alert-multicore-or-multi-core-or-parallel-computing-or-parallel-programming-or-concurrency-or-manycore/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/google-alert-multicore-or-multi-core-or-parallel-computing-or-parallel-programming-or-concurrency-or-manycore/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:44:47 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/google-alert-multicore-or-multi-core-or-parallel-computing-or-parallel-programming-or-concurrency-or-manycore/ ]]>
Google hopes to remake programming with Go
CNET News – San Francisco,CA,USA
Go also is designed to tackle one of today's big challenges, multicore processors. … Go's libraries supply resources for handling concurrency, …
Intel Software Network Blogs » Videochat with Microsoft's Steve …
By Michael J Huelskoetter
This means two things: first, "multi-threading and parallel programming" is a hot topic and second, that software developers are really looking for decent information regarding parallel computing. Seems as if the time has come that …
Intel Software Network Blogs – http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs
Message Passing Concurrency in Erlang
By Sujana
Message Passing Concurrency in Erlang. November 10th, 2009 · No Comments. ØREDEV, Developer conference was held from Nov 2nd to 6th in Malmö, Sweden. The conference was founded in 2005 by Jayway and Dotway, two companies comprised of …
MulticoreInfo.com – http://www.multicoreinfo.com/
TechEd: Four top tips for parallel-enabling your software from …
By softtalkblog
SoftTalk – multicore and parallel programming. For software developers interested in the issues around multicore processors, multithreaded applications and the optimisation of programs for multi- and many-core processors. Expert articles and opinion, case studies, … It struck me as interesting that three of these strategies related to the user experience, so perhaps manycore processors will enable us to be much more innovative with the experience we deliver to users. …
SoftTalk – multicore and parallel… – http://softtalkblog.wordpress.com/
TechEd Parallel Computing for Managed Developers « SoftTalk …
SoftTalk – multicore and parallel programming … Im in Berlin this week reporting from Microsoft TechEdsee the parallel computing highlights listed here …

Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/google-alert-multicore-or-multi-core-or-parallel-computing-or-parallel-programming-or-concurrency-or-manycore/feed/ 0 dorai Three Courses Every Engineering Institution Should Consider Adding http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/three-courses-every-engineering-institution-should-consider-adding/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/three-courses-every-engineering-institution-should-consider-adding/#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:28:53 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/three-courses-every-engineering-institution-should-consider-adding/ ]]>

In addition to teaching core engineering subjects, I think we need to add three (may be optional) courses.

1. Entrepreneurship
2. Learning and Thinking
3. Innovation

The idea is to give students an appreciation of what entrepreneurship is all about. Students joining smaller start-ups learn every thing faster in the first few years (though may not make as much money).

We take both learning and thinking for granted. The best training we can give students is the ability to understand how they learn and think. We can include several aspects of thinking including critical thinking, later thinking, thinking about thinking etc. Learning to learn is taught implicitly (by just forcing them to learn a lot). Increasing awareness of learning styles, multiple intelligence will help students realize several ways to accelerate their learning.

Innovation is taking ideas and realizing an implementation (the joy of doing). Most of the labs I see repeat some standard set of problems. Why not let the students do a bit of exploration and research in problems they are interested in solving and innovate in identifying and solving problems?

Posted in Innovation, Learning, skills, teaching Tagged: entrepreneurship, Innovation, Learning, Thinking ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/three-courses-every-engineering-institution-should-consider-adding/feed/ 1 dorai Discovering Relevant Sources of Information http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/discovering-relevant-sources-of-information/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/discovering-relevant-sources-of-information/#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:06:50 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/discovering-relevant-sources-of-information/ ]]>

Discovering relevant sources of information is a recursive process. Let me explain.

Let us say that you want to track clean tech. The easiest way to find a list of sources is to type "cleantech" in your favorite search engine and look at top 20 distinctly different sources. You can also search Twitter using related tags.

But that is just the first step. When you look at these you will find several interesting patterns. You may find portals about cleantech. You may find a directory of resources. You may find some popular bloggers or authors. The list goes on.

The next step is to take each one of these sources and validate them. That is a bit more difficult. How current are they? How frequently do they update information? Are they aggregators? Do they support ads? Are they industry associations or industry publications?

In the end, you come up with a list of valuable sources. This provides a starting point. You can continuously monitor these sources and find what their sources are and start tracking them as well.

You may want your own relevance ranking system. The search engines ranking may not really work for you. For example, if you are tracking an industry for early signals, highest page rank of the site may be completely irrelevant to your needs.

Discovery is recursive and a continuous process. If the information is that important (some thing you may need to act upon) this additional investment in validation and customization may be worth the effort.

Let me know what you think and how you do it. Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/discovering-relevant-sources-of-information/feed/ 0 dorai What Do You Need for Building A Product Building Eco-system? http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/what-do-you-need-for-building-a-product-building-eco-system/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/what-do-you-need-for-building-a-product-building-eco-system/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:46:36 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/what-do-you-need-for-building-a-product-building-eco-system/ ]]>

Here are a few I can think of:

1. More Research In Colleges
2. Increased Awareness of Entrepreneurship among both faculty and students
3. Tolerance for Failure (teaching how to fail quickly and cheaply)
4. A good network of angels, mentors, investors
5. A good knowledge of Trends in the industry
6. Knowledge of Markets and Customers
7. Idea and product incubators (that not only provide infrastructure but help in business development too)

There may be many more. Feel free to add your item here. Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/what-do-you-need-for-building-a-product-building-eco-system/feed/ 2 dorai My passion is to floss the minds http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/my-passion-is-to-floss-the-minds/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/my-passion-is-to-floss-the-minds/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:41:49 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/my-passion-is-to-floss-the-minds/ ]]>

Chris Chapman
I am Creative Catalyst, Product and Graphic Designer, for Disney. My passion is to motivate, educate, inspire, and floss the minds of those that I come across. I problem solve, design, illustrate, innovate, create, dream and play on my own and with others. I love storytelling, creativity, design, and people who are true individuals, mostly those who own their geekyness. My goal, to unlock the child like thought process and allow it to run where the wild things are.

Once in a while I am lucky to stumble upon an interesting Tweeter. I always looks at the way they describe themselves. It tells you quite a bit of what you can expect. Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/my-passion-is-to-floss-the-minds/feed/ 0 dorai In Early Stages What You are Thinking About Customers is at Best a Guess http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/in-early-stages-what-you-are-thinking-about-customers-is-at-best-a-guess/ http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/in-early-stages-what-you-are-thinking-about-customers-is-at-best-a-guess/#comments Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:38:11 +0000 dorai http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/in-early-stages-what-you-are-thinking-about-customers-is-at-best-a-guess/ ]]>

Retooling Early Stage Development – Steve Blank (Serial Entrepreneur)

Ninety-percent of Silicon Valley's start-ups fail not because of faulty product, but because they don't tap the right market and they don't know their customer. Well-seasoned serial entrepreneur Steve Blank drafts a new model for plotting the path between good idea and market success. Some nuggets

Unless  you have some domain experience, the odds are that what you are thinking about customers and markets is nothing more than a guess. May be an educated guess, but still a guess Posted in 6 ]]> http://dorai.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/in-early-stages-what-you-are-thinking-about-customers-is-at-best-a-guess/feed/ 0 dorai