Facebook Friends

So now we have almost entire social circle including friends and families are available in FB . all of them see what we are updating on FB and respond to it , depending on that we have following scenarios

1. Friends who check all the updates by all people - There are very enthusiastic folks who check updates posted by everyone in their circle . Obviously they have internet connectivity across the clock from home / office , school and they are curious about whatever is going around .

2. Friends who check all the updates by selected people : - These are the users interested only in a very close circle which may mostly contain best freinds , Girl friends , boy friends and family members . They are interested in whatever their close ones doing over the net.

3. Friends who check selected the updates by all people :- These users are obviously more interested in topics of discussions than the individuals themselves , they may be interested in their alma mater , native place , a particular organisation , certain hobbies or activities .

4. Friends who check selected the updates by selected people :- These are busy set of users who have interest in limited activities from selected set of people . Such users may belong to middle to high management level or mid career executives who are just balancing the act between family and demanding work environment

Next is (G)Wave

It is a lesson for us all to know how ahead of time google keeps itself , It has started developing google wave 2 years back and now is the time when it is ready with this amazing communication and collaboration tool named google wave, needless to say it is designed to accommodate todays youths changing communication method where they are now communicating in a group involving more than 2 people , hence the walls, scrapbooks or tweet posts are growing stronger day by day.

The other point to be noted was growing usage of instant messengers which are almost replacing emails, now even if the receiver is offline than also one can IM him which he can open after coming to online so the very first work GW did was to take a hybrid look of IM and email where now there is hardly any difference left . In GW when sender is editing /writing /musing in his email text editor , that is instantly visible WORD BY WORD , now imagine that , this is what is called real time messaging , messages at the speed of your thought ( though I would never like this much realtime ness so google has also given a check box to disable this ). Even more exciting is that attachments also appear realtime on the recipients wave window. The time sender drags and drops attachment , thumbnails will appear at receivers window much before he has downloaded entire lot.

Another cool function is to playback forwarded mails in the sequence in which they were originated and evolved,its so common to forward a mail chain to a new recipient and he has to go through entire chain from bottom to top but now he can just click on playback option and this chain will start appearing from scratch , pretty impressive I would say.This way it is much easier to add a person to the wave and again for people who would like to choose to send a private reply , they can do so privately in wave too. Google calls it a tree structured mailing/messaging where any branch of tree can be taken and expanded only to a limited group ( or to entire public).
This wave will without any doubt collaborate and consolidate all your communication channels. Very soon you will be using waves in your orkut accounts, blogging portals and anywhere else and yet be able to control and monitor all of them from your google wave (email ) editor. So what happens about editing, currently if you share something across so many comunication channels you edit it every where but in wave you just have to edit it once and it will be reflected everywhere . This collaboration is even possible for documents editing and production where same document can be edited (simultaneously!!)by multiple members ( it will include power point , spreadsheets and text based docs).
oh yes it also works on mobiles !

Undoubtedly it is the first and foremost collaborative tool of its kind and competitors of google (like yahoo, MSN and now their marriage..) will find themselves in a shocked state to counter it ,may be copying this formula from google would be easy and at time people do it well ( like facebook copied stuff from orkut and twitter and today is leading the social networking area) but we all know google has the ability to take a quantum leap every time..

My pick on top tech trends

I believe next technology business would see lots of potential in following areas
Mobile application : Internet did spread like a wild fire and every one had gut feeling about its potential but today mobile has much wider penetration then internet and also the time people spent on mobile is almost their entire waking up time. Currently where internet penetration in India is for 250 Mn people on the other hand mobile penetration is almost double with
around 500 Mn people . Organizations which missed on net applications can directly jump to mobile . Recently SBI's Mobile banking is a classic example , SBI could never make it big in ebanking but counting on the fact that now mobile technology is mature and secure , plus their are regulatory frameworks around , it can instantly reach to such a large user base.
With cheaper high end sets ( including iphone and BBs) applications dealing with media contents are also becoming popular and a large segment is using these apps exhaustively. Mobile is already transferring good amount of data from one place to other.

Security : Here I am looking at all kind of security , with global connectivity Internet security has definitely become high priority and companies and professionals in this business are making a fortune a logical extension to it is mobile security which seems to be more vulnerable thanks to wireless , blue tooth , data card etc.
On the other side now physical security is also taken very seriously not only at corporate level but also for personal and private usages, look around the new real estate development and you would find each flats have security systems.

Television applications : Television penetrates even much larger segment then Internet and mobile and now holds lots of potential . The first immediate preference would be to make it interactive and start selling products via live televisions. however the hidden treasure is in on demand content , today's lifestyle make it very difficult for people to follow some
program on a regular schedule , they must have flexibility to watch any program at any time of their choice , In India some operators are now already equipped with these facilities where any one can view any program ( at his own preferred time )telecasted in last one week .
Going forward a huge entertainment library which would empower users to pick and play her favourite programs ( no matter whether they are telecasted on current week or closed down last year) and watch them. Latest plasma LCD panels and home theatre system will compliment it very well

Connecting India !!

When it comes to digital divide and internet connectivity , For a country like India it will not be possible to make one size fit all , we will have to work on different models . The best way would be to take the best practices from different models and integrate them . Here is a framework

1) Use of WLL : Traditionally the infrastructural aspect of digital divide has been focus of internet connectivity . India must improve its infrastructure to support internet deployments across the nation , If it can not be done then we must look to alternate solutions recently Patrick Gelsinger from Intel suggested that developing countries should say no to copper wires and use wireless local loop and fibre optics for backbone.

Pabal, a small village located 70 km from Pune in Maharashtra, is all set to join the Internet revolution.
Efforts are underway in the village to provide Internet connections to an area of 2,000 sq km through the Wireless Local Loop Technology (WLL). The technology was developed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, and is marketed by N-Logue.
2) Setting up Kiosk : The way telephone services were made available to the masses by setting up PCO’s similarly now it is time to set up internet kiosk where people can walk in and browse internet , the biggest benefit which consumers get out of this is cost effectiveness , here they are exempted from cost of buying a computer system and paying monthly rental to ISP . All an user has to pay is 15-20 Rs per hour. These kiosks can be set up in existing government infrastructures like railway ticket booking outlets , postoffices , schools , hospitals , panchayats . These are the basic government offices which are there in every villege .

3) Encouraging private players to enter in this field : Private players can be invited to setup infrastructure and resources , some players have already entered and successfully innovated business models in urban and remoter areas. The focus should also be there to organize these resources well .

4) More employment generation : There should be more employment generation with the help of internet so that more people can be attracted towards it . Specially in terms of setting up internet kiosk , small BPOs and data entry centres . n-louge and ITC both create local service partners who can earn their living by running these kiosks

5) Offline availability : Small backup servers and data repositories should be maintained which can help providing offline data when there are issues in connectivity . Electricity is also a problem even for tier 1 and 2 cities of India in such situation proper battery backups , UPS Circuit breaker and voltage stabilizer should be provided

6) Making internet more relevant : Information which are relevant to diverse sector of society should be made available online . It should include agriculture, Veterinary , Health Care, Education , current affairs and much more
7) Finding alternate ways : There can be still many remote areas where we may not bring IT revolution in such cases we should be ready to work with non conventional ways , for example the alternate solution implemented by DAknet where data is collected by mobile vans.