Microsoft BizsparkCamp launch in progress

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Microsoft is organizing an event in collaboration with Saif Center of Innovation for the launch of BizSparkCamp. Microsoft’s BizSpark program is a must register for a small startup for multiple reasons like Software, Support , trainings and visibility (through Microsoft Startup listings and promotions). This can prove priceless in business development during initial phase of a startup. Startups like Xobni and Loopt have been a part of this program.

The event is targeted towards IT companies especially Startups. The seats are limited so i recon all the young entrepreneurs should register here as soon as possible. Here is a excerpt from official invitation.

Innovation and entrepreneurship is the backbone of the IT software industry. We at Microsoft and Saif Center of Innovation are committed to foster innovation by helping young companies succeed.
That’s why I am writing; to invite you to the BizSparkCamp Launch event – a new program Microsoft is launching in partnership with Saif Center of Innovation (SCI). BizSparkCamp is specifically designed to help high-potential startups connect with latest technologies, software and training and put them on a fast track to success.

Registration link for the event : click here
Facebook Event (to officially register for the event use the link above) : click here
Event Agenda : click here

Its been a while since brands started noticing Facebook as an opportunity worth exploring which resulted in a flurry of Fan pages and ads from brands. Building on the opportunity, Facebook seems to be moving towards making this engagement more promising and lure those brands into more advertisement by providing them better and more converged placements.

The recent “Like” from “Become a Fan” transition is doing something special; making the virtual social media presence of all the brands that haven’t yet bothered about their existence on Facebook. All those attributes of your personality, all your likes that were just sitting there in your profile were doing nothing but providing an indirect method for similar people to search you. Now its more direct where you can find people with similar interests as they are grouped into Fan pages. This change will provide more branding honey pots to all those brands Facebook aims to attract. I think thats how the future landscape would be, if you want real sales and traffic go for Adsense but if you want branding go for Facebook.

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If you want to just view pictures on your winmo phone then the built in HTC Album does a great job. However if you want something more than just a photo viewer Resco Photo Manager is one of the best out there. From picture viewing to slideshows, basic picture editing to social network integration this software has got all the things you would need on your windows mobile. Some of the features include

• Basic editing (Adding GPS coordinates, editing tools, commenting)
• Touch optimized interface
• Slideshows
• Lightening  fast browsing with record time in thumbnails loading
• Accelerometer  support
• Picture transfer (BT,Email,MMS) at one touch
• User Friendly Mass transfer
• Direct Uploading to Flickr, Facebook ,Twitter, Picasa( This one being my favorite as i store all my pictures on my Picasa account)
• Deeper integration with these services for uploading to certain online albums and selection for resolution and compression.
• Support for creating albums on phone

This one is really recommended for all the picture lovers on phone.

There was a time when people would refrain to give away any information about them online (for general users even their names were something not to be mentioned online). Introduction of Social Networks have totally revamped the way we use internet. Now its a very tightly coupled system shaped by our online behaviors. This deep integration with Social Media and Social Networks have completely changed how we search for people online. There is a big market for search of information but now we see another emerging market which is search for people.

Here is a search for “Yaser Awan” which gives following results in google.

My Blog (Bhonpoo) , Twitter Profile, Facebook Profile, Linkedin Profile, My Profiles on Isamaa, SeenReport and GeoDost and my urdu blog Buzm-e-bayadab. Thats pretty much sums up the first 2 pages and whatever i do online.

Its been a while i updated my blog (courtesy micro-blogging) but now is the right time to write about something that just came up.
Google Buzz is google’s recent initiative in social direction. Most probably all of you already know what it is so lets not go into that and lets try speculating whats it about. here are some random thoughts.

• Where Google seems to be not doing much on Social Networks its a fact that it hasn’t been sitting idle. Adding small social features in its services like Google Reader (sharing and friend subscription), Picasa (Name tagging), Phones (Android integration with google account) etc shows exactly in what direction Google wants to go from here. Google wants to be the ultimate social network without labeling itself as just a social network.
• Google Buzz also shows that what is google good at; it knows with whom you want to communicate and they have translated it good enough (using your email data). They seems to be doing a better job at finding people you know as compared to Facebook and Twitter.
• On the first go you will start using it like Twitter but you will soon notice all the conversations are happening similar to Facebook and with the same circle of people you communicate on Facebook.
• Above proves a points, a very big portion of internet users who have never been to Twitter and dont want to be there just to enjoy sending 140 character updates to strangers will definitely use Buzz.
• Sometimes Public Buzz seems like public emails which somehow makes me believe its google Wave but repackage into something that will be more acceptable.
• Google Buzz does integrate activities from your other social networks but there is no way to integrate your google buzz activities with other social networks which is a big question mark.
• Google seems to have solved the problem of notifications (that they faced in case of Wave) by integrating Buzz into inbox.
• At the time when corporates are looking to have fun on Web 2.0 , Google Buzz is the closet to corporate cultures as its closet to email so there is a big market for which Google Buzz will be most acceptable.
• Buzz has the coolest interface on mobile (have only tried it on Android) as compared to Twitter and Facebook.

Having said all these things there is still a long way to go for Google Buzz and its direction and potential User base might be different. Whats are your thoughts on it?

Today marks the birthday of Isaac Newton, thats the reason apples are falling on Google’s homepage. Clicking the logo does a search on Isaac Newton. In the search results Google is now showing Real Time tweets about Isaac Newton. Google in the recent part did a deal with Twitter to incorporate real time tweets into search results. Now you can actually see Real Time Search Results in action (highlighted in picture below).

We have seen the information flow transform from uni-directional to multi directional, we have seen the web transform from static to collaborative. This transitional period has seen many guest and grand appearances. One of them is Social Networks. Some of us might have a lot against them, some like wasting time on them and some have really good uses of this new technology. The overwhelming use of Social Networks has also sparked a debate that have these networks already hit the limit of their growth or they are about to? Are they here to stay or its just a temporary boom like Dot com era?
One thing is for sure that today’s Social Giants might not live for longer (in the form they currently are) but Social Networking is here to stay. The only question remains is in what form?
In the past few years we have not only seen an overwhelming information influx also we have observed a phenomenon with appearance of these Social Giants. The specific type of information started getting centralized at various HotSpots. These information Hotspots couldn’t live longer while being isolated  from rest of the web and have started to integrate themselves with other HotSpot. So there is considerable balance between  decentralization and  centralization.You end up doing something at a website and your friends across the netwroks see your feed. Which brings me to a conclusion that the Future Social Networks will just be aggregators. You do one action at a website and some other action at another and your friends across the web on different platforms get updated. There will be no Social Network in isolation there will only be aggregators that will help you converge information.