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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" media="screen" href="/~d/styles/rss2full.xsl"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~d/styles/itemcontent.css"?><rss xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" xmlns:feedburner="http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner/ext/1.0" version="2.0"> <channel> <title>Profy</title> <link>http://profy.com</link> <description>Internet news and commentary</description> <pubDate>Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:30:07 +0000</pubDate> <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7</generator> <language>en</language> <sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency> <atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Profycom" type="application/rss+xml" /><item> <title>Why Do Startups Forget about the Value They Should Generate for Users?</title> <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~3/V6HMmMj8Bx0/</link> <comments>http://profy.com/2009/07/31/startups-forget-value-for-users/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:30:07 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Svetlana Gladkova</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[correctmytext]]></category> <category><![CDATA[languages]]></category> <category><![CDATA[monetization-model]]></category> <category><![CDATA[startups]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://profy.com/?p=13448</guid> <description><![CDATA[When it comes to web startups, it often happens that after the first buzz in the blogosphere is over after about a week from the launch day, people forget about the startups entirely and never visit again - unless bombarded by numerous newsletters and reminders from the team. The main reason for this problem is [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-13449" style="margin: 10px" src="http://profy.com/files/2009/07/correctmytext.png" alt="correctmytext - paradoxical startup" width="228" height="49" />When it comes to web startups, it often happens that after the first buzz in the blogosphere is over after about a week from the launch day, people forget about the startups entirely and never visit again - unless bombarded by numerous newsletters and reminders from the team. The main reason for this problem is that some startups regularly forget about one simple thing: they need to generate some real value to their users. This value should not necessarily mean enticing users with opportunities of making money by sharing advertising revenue or paying users for some actions within the site. It can really be anything: a convenient way to store photos (Flickr) or a strong communication platform (Twitter) or a nice place to stay in touch with friends (Facebook). Whatever it is, people need to know what they get from your site for them to be willing to stay and use your site at all. But why does it happen that sometimes startups are launched without any value or motivation for at least some of their potential users? Today I have noticed such a paradoxical example in my own inbox and even despite of the fact that the email arrived from a Russian person so the startup is obviously from Russia, I could not help but write this negative post despite of the fact that I try to be favorable to the web projects that come from Russia. The startup is <a href="http://correctmytext.com/">correctmytext</a> and it offers exactly one thing that the name suggests: correcting texts written by foreigners in your native language (or in other languages you are fluent in). Currently the site supports 10 of the most used languages of the world so people speaking them can help each other by correcting texts submitted. Another thing you can do here is request a sound recording of your text so that you knew exactly how it should be pronounced by a native speaker as well. Now it all sounds pretty good probably and it is obviously appealing to be able to get help from native speakers of the language you learn or need for business and easily get an edited version of a text you need for some reason (without paying to a professional proofreader). But can anyone explain me here what the point is for the “language professionals” who are supposed to correct submitted texts? I think I can easily call myself a language professional myself having almost 10 years of translation experience and still working in the field of localization of software and web applications for my customers willing to enter the Russian market. And unfortunately I can’t see any reason for me to spend time on the site if I could use the time in some more productive manner. Believe me, any good translator has very little time to spend helping people with language tasks without any substantial motivation (and while helping people may make you feel good, it will hardly turn into food in your fridge). And if you can spend your time translating things for your customers (and get paid for it), why would you do the same for free? Ok, some translators are enthusiastic enough to work for free on localization of some websites (and even companies like <a href="../../../../../2008/08/01/google-takes-pride-in-not-paying-translators/">Google are sometimes happy to avoid paying translators and prefer crowdsourcing</a>) but such jobs at least let you add a nice line to your CV and it could be important enough to attract new customers. But how could participation in correctmytext help you achieve comparable results? Unfortunately after registering and playing with the site for a few minutes, I don’t see anything. At the same time there are probably some ways for a site like this to lure real language professionals into participation. For one, they could offer some sort of a badge to language professionals that they could use on their sites or profiles in various translation communities as some type of an endorsement for the corrections they offered to foreigners - and transform these activities into new paying customers. Also there could be some money-related motivation as well. For example, for people who need correction of texts they will use in their business (and I have seen quite a number of examples of such texts on the site) there could be a special paying account that would guarantee that they get corrections from real language professionals because such professionals will have a reason to help - in the form of revenue sharing offered by the website. So it could be a way to get professional language support without dealing with hiring a professional. Finally, it could be possible to display ads on the texts people correct and if such ads generate some revenue, the users submitting corrections could also be offered compensation in the form of advertising revenue sharing. It could be a very small revenue source but people do tend to like such things anyway. So to me it looks like the possibilities for a substantial motivation are here but for some reason the website owners decided that relying on people’s desire to do good things would be enough to succeed. I’d really want to share this attitude but my experience is that people need at least some motivation to do something good long enough (versus doing something good for a short time out of curiosity and only when you have free time you can’t use otherwise) and for every startup it is important to find that motivation and offer it - or chances are it will not work. <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HfGzlfih6cHe-iwg1gb9s67Mfaw/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HfGzlfih6cHe-iwg1gb9s67Mfaw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HfGzlfih6cHe-iwg1gb9s67Mfaw/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HfGzlfih6cHe-iwg1gb9s67Mfaw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~4/V6HMmMj8Bx0" height="1" width="1"/><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=Um2smq7kz3o:rBaNaN4A9I4:I9og5sOYxJI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=I9og5sOYxJI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=Um2smq7kz3o:rBaNaN4A9I4:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=Um2smq7kz3o:rBaNaN4A9I4:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=Um2smq7kz3o:rBaNaN4A9I4:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?i=Um2smq7kz3o:rBaNaN4A9I4:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> </div>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://profy.com/2009/07/31/startups-forget-value-for-users/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <feedburner:origLink>http://profy.com/2009/07/31/startups-forget-value-for-users/</feedburner:origLink></item> <item> <title>Russian Mobile Market Players in Troubles over Unsold iPhones</title> <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~3/ZKG92FM9wok/</link> <comments>http://profy.com/2009/07/30/russian-mobile-market-players-troubles-over-unsold-iphones/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2009 09:39:24 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Svetlana Gladkova</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Apple]]></category> <category><![CDATA[apple-iphone]]></category> <category><![CDATA[iPhone]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://profy.com/?p=13454</guid> <description><![CDATA[I am sometimes asked by my friends about how the situation with the famous Apple iPhone is in Russia - how popular it is, how many phones have been sold, etc. Unfortunately I have never had any really good things to share with them as while some people here want to have an iPhone (and [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img class="alignright size-full wp-image-13455" style="margin: 10px" src="http://profy.com/files/2009/07/simaphon.png" alt="simaphone - Russian style iPhone" width="182" height="335" />I am sometimes asked by my friends about how the situation with the famous Apple iPhone is in Russia - how popular it is, how many phones have been sold, etc. Unfortunately I have never had any really good things to share with them as while some people here want to have an iPhone (and a smaller number actually own the gadget), the vast majority of the population simply can’t afford it. The problem is that here in Russia the phones can be sold without any contract by three major mobile carriers. Under the agreement with Apple, these three carriers are obliged to sell a total of 3.5 million iPhones over the period of two years but during the first 6 months after Apple’s phone became officially available in Russia the three of them only managed to sell 250 thousand devices so it is quite obvious that this ambitious number will not be met. There were <a href="../../../../../2008/10/11/is-mr-jobs-really-sure-1000-is-a-fair-price-for-iphone/">numerous reasons for this disaster</a>, the most important one of them being the price. Initially last fall iPhone was introduced here priced at over $1,000 and even now it is still sold for an amount in the range of $700-800. This is definitely not a price that makes it an affordable phone at all. Also as many as 400 thousand devices are reported to have reached the country illegally even before they became officially available here so many of the people who wanted an iPhone already had one so this must have damaged the sales additionally. At that it is interesting that such poor sales happen amidst heavy advertising support for the iPhone coming from all the three carriers. So it is no wonder that this year the three carriers are not buying and importing any more iPhones and are now negotiating changes in the contract with Apple not to buy the devices they will not be able to sell in Russia. Time will tell what these negotiations will result in and the results will probably determine the future of iPhone 3GS in the country as well. But right now some of the players in the mobile market here in Russia happened to get into even more significant problems than simply staying with plenty of unsold Apple gadgets. The thing is that the carriers who signed the deal with Apple agreed with a number of retailers for them to sell iPhones on their behalf additionally - as here people tend to buy phones from retailers without contracts (because contracts are very uncommon here at all) than they are to buy from carriers’ outlets. Now one of such retailers (the large Euroset) will pay as much as $8.5 million dollars to the carrier they had an agreement with (MTS) for the unsold phones. Of course it is obvious that the retailer is now more than willing to return the unsold devices instead of paying the huge amount but their ex-partner will hardly want to get the iPhones back at all as they must realize chances of selling the phones are very low. To me this looks like yet another example of how different the Russian market is and how difficult it is to achieve success for foreign players - even if they find local partners. But the worst part is that this disaster will hardly teach Apple anything and I’ll expect seeing ridiculously priced iPhone 3GS here as well - way after everyone who wants to have the latest model manages to buy it abroad. <a href="http://www.cnews.ru/news/top/index.shtml?2009/07/30/355885">Via CNews</a> (in Russian), image - Russian exclusive SimaPhone by Denis Simachev <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/bMGVKgPqfahjVyr4VhHttXMHunE/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/bMGVKgPqfahjVyr4VhHttXMHunE/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/bMGVKgPqfahjVyr4VhHttXMHunE/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/bMGVKgPqfahjVyr4VhHttXMHunE/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~4/ZKG92FM9wok" height="1" width="1"/><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=I_eKhIaDQeY:QiKPEpWgngc:I9og5sOYxJI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=I9og5sOYxJI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=I_eKhIaDQeY:QiKPEpWgngc:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=I_eKhIaDQeY:QiKPEpWgngc:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=I_eKhIaDQeY:QiKPEpWgngc:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?i=I_eKhIaDQeY:QiKPEpWgngc:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> </div>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://profy.com/2009/07/30/russian-mobile-market-players-troubles-over-unsold-iphones/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <feedburner:origLink>http://profy.com/2009/07/30/russian-mobile-market-players-troubles-over-unsold-iphones/</feedburner:origLink></item> <item> <title>Does Yahoo Look Way Too Microsoft Pragmatic To Me Only?</title> <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~3/-rH5Bs4i-U4/</link> <comments>http://profy.com/2009/07/29/does-yahoo-look-way-too-microsoft-pragmatic-to-me-only/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:07:03 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Svetlana Gladkova</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Dont-Be-Evil]]></category> <category><![CDATA[microsoft]]></category> <category><![CDATA[online-search]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Yahoo!]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Yahoo-Microsoft-deal]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://profy.com/?p=13442</guid> <description><![CDATA[Ok, I think I could not avoid the buzz around Yahoo partnership with Microsoft that is finally officially announced - after all, it would be strange to ignore the event when it is the only thing everyone speaks about today, even the small TV stations here in Russia in their news sections. But to tell you [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-13443" style="margin: 10px" src="http://profy.com/files/2009/07/3768403287_dc885656a8_m.jpg" alt="Yahoo and Microsoft finally sign search deal" width="240" height="160" />Ok, I think I could not avoid the buzz around Yahoo partnership with Microsoft that is finally officially announced - after all, it would be strange to ignore the event when it is the only thing everyone speaks about today, even the small TV stations here in Russia in their news sections. But to tell you the truth, I’d have to admit that I feel almost allergic to the entire Microsoft - Yahoo discussions already after so many months of reading and covering news about it. Really, at some point the relationships between the two parties began to look like a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Barbara_%28TV_series%29">multiyear soap opera Santa Barbara</a> that was widely popular here in Russia in 90s and ran for so many years that a rare person could admit watching it from the very first episode till the end (I myself have no idea if it actually ended or not). Unlike the soap opera, there’s finally something substantial that resembles a certain result in the Microsoft relationships with Yahoo - the search partnership that was announced in the early morning. For those of you who somehow avoided the news everywhere else, I’ll just point that this partnership is focused on web search only and will last 10 years. The deal involves Yahoo rejecting its own search efforts and relying on Microsoft Bing search engine which will create a search power that will be more attractive to advertisers served by Yahoo as the combined sales force. And while Yahoo will be able to make money off search advertising, an important aspect for Microsoft is that the two search properties combined (and powered by Bing) could finally present some noticeable competition to the almighty Google - which is important for the overall search landscape. As I consider myself a Yahoo user having an email account (admittedly that I have not checked for many months now), chatting with a few contacts using it as IM handle and being a huge fan of Flickr and sometimes visiting MyBlogLog, I think I can’t be indifferent when it comes to Yahoo future. In fact, Yahoo has always looked like a very good company that at some point lost a direction in which to go and still preserved way more loyal users than it probably deserved. Watching so many bad things happening to Yahoo in the financial field recently has been quite painful and witnessing the entire blogosphere criticizing Yahoo for every move did not feel good either. It has been obvious for a while that Yahoo must change something dramatically and do it soon in order to stay afloat at all and some kind of a partnership with Microsoft was an obvious move for the company. Now I know that Microsoft does not enjoy real popularity among internet users who are both unhappy about some of the products by Microsoft that they use (like someone really makes them use Vista and there are no options available at all) and about the attitude of the company that brings real businesslike attitude to the world wide web where it is not really welcome. On the web you will regularly see companies that act like they don’t even think in terms of business and the affection of their community is the only thing that matters. And Google keeps reminding us “Don’t be evil” as their motto as if it is still possible to ignore quite a number of evil things, especially in how they treat users’ privacy. And everyone in the online business has corporate blogs for everything - sometimes choosing their blogs over formal press releases. Everyone but not Microsoft which sticks to the regular formats. What I’m talking about is that in the online business world it is the usual attitude to demonstrate a company as a friend to everyone online and to care about the community - at the same time hiding all the talks about real business and money somewhere deep inside. It is normal to be shy about what your company actually is about - even if everyone realizes it is all about money. And Microsoft has arrived to the online world from the real software world where people make real (huge in case of Microsoft) money and are never shy about talking business. It has always been visible in Microsoft’s steps to the online world and this position has often prevented Microsoft from achieving real success online - simply because the company tended to sound like an alien and did not behave like the users expected them to. But this is the usual attitude from Microsoft as the company is known to think of everything in business terms but when Yahoo behaves in an even more pragmatic manner (sounding even more pragmatic than Microsoft itself), it feels like an unpleasant surprise - to me at least. I am referring to the phrase from Yahoo’s Carol Bartz in the <a href="http://ycorpblog.com/2009/07/29/what-our-microsoft-deal-means-to-you/">blog post where she tried to explain the deal to Yahoo users</a>: As a result of the deal, Microsoft, which has great technologists and deep pockets, will have the scale to bring users faster, more useful and more personally relevant search. Now I’ve been teaching myself hard to be a pragmatic person for the last few years and I think I have achieved certain success in this as I will hardly be persuaded to work for free when I have paying customers who need my time - simply because I can’t afford working for free. And I will never criticize any person or company that shows the same attitude and thinks about having the food for the family (or salary for employees) first - and everything else second. Yet Yahoo has been building the image of a friendly and open online company that is not very much into real-life issues and turning into a pragmatic company all of a sudden does not feel right even to me. Ok, everyone knows that Yahoo did not really have any reasons to pursue this kind of partnership other than financial ones: Yahoo needed someone to help the company survive and Microsoft with the “deep pockets” was an ideal candidate. But is it fair to your partner to admit this fact like this in a blog post where you are supposed to talk to your users openly and explain all the benefits they will now see? And admitting that the money from the deep pockets of your partner will let you all live better (because you can’t afford it yourself) sounds like a young girl explaining to her friends after marrying a millionaire that while she is certainly not in love, they will all now be able to go to an exciting trip to Europe - and to Africa next year. Honestly, if I were a husband (read Microsoft here), I’d certainly be offended. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/yodelanecdotal/" target="_blank">Photo credit: Yahoo Anecdotal</a> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/cI8Cfbbj_aQpMJQoWG72zWrUK24/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/cI8Cfbbj_aQpMJQoWG72zWrUK24/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/cI8Cfbbj_aQpMJQoWG72zWrUK24/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/cI8Cfbbj_aQpMJQoWG72zWrUK24/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~4/-rH5Bs4i-U4" height="1" width="1"/><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=fHSIb7juYVc:_psD0asey6g:I9og5sOYxJI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=I9og5sOYxJI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=fHSIb7juYVc:_psD0asey6g:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=fHSIb7juYVc:_psD0asey6g:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=fHSIb7juYVc:_psD0asey6g:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?i=fHSIb7juYVc:_psD0asey6g:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> </div>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://profy.com/2009/07/29/does-yahoo-look-way-too-microsoft-pragmatic-to-me-only/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <feedburner:origLink>http://profy.com/2009/07/29/does-yahoo-look-way-too-microsoft-pragmatic-to-me-only/</feedburner:origLink></item> <item> <title>Russia Wants to Achieve Independence with Russian Software</title> <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~3/bz2Y5O5L1Wc/</link> <comments>http://profy.com/2009/07/28/russia-wants-independence-with-russian-software/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:57:21 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Svetlana Gladkova</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[microsoft]]></category> <category><![CDATA[open-source]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category> <category><![CDATA[russian software]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://profy.com/?p=13434</guid> <description><![CDATA[Have you ever thought about how dependent you personally are on all the software vendors whose products you use? We normally don’t pay much attention to such concerns, but just imagine that one day Microsoft goes out of business for whatever reason it may be and many of your personal files will need to be [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[Have you ever thought about how dependent you personally are on all the software vendors whose products you use? We normally don’t pay much attention to such concerns, but just imagine that one day Microsoft goes out of business for whatever reason it may be and many of your personal files will need to be converted to some other format for you to be able to open them at all - be it an article you wrote years ago for a local magazine or a spreadsheet you had for your family budget. And who knows how good conversion will be and what portion of the documents will be converted flawlessly and where you will encounter errors? Come to think of it, it is scary to know that one single company has so much power over your life - be it Microsoft, Apple or Google. And now imagine that you are a head of a country where all the lives of all the people depend on some company that resides in another country and that you cannot reasonably control? In this situation the entire issue is taken into the realm of national security where a country is not supposed to rely on external resources to an extent where it could pose a danger. This is a very simplified description of the reasons behind Russia’s idea of sticking to open-source software or - better yet - only work with internally developed tools. Here in Russia this has been quite a popular topic for discussions among authorities and even the president and <a href="../../../../../2009/06/24/in-russia-open-source-software-gets-official-support-from-authorities/">open-source software is officially encouraged</a> for use in the country. I myself have always thought that this is quite a reasonable position as the software you use actually determines a lot for you and if you want to be fully independent, use of open-source tools might be a good idea. In fact, I think that if all the talented Russian developers joined the open-source community behind the already popular tools, those tools could rapidly progress and eventually achieve the state where they are as good as (or even better than) those paid-for tools that millions of people around the world have learned to use over the years. But now it looks like not many of the Russian developers are actually eager to join the open-source community and work without compensation for the ideals they believe in (and who would criticize them for their willingness to make money?). The alternative is here as the new project dubbed “Russian Software” is introduced to be officially presented soon. In early September at the first youth innovation forum here in Novosibirsk (the city where I happen to live) a group of local developers will be introducing the ambitious project to the general public. The idea is to provide high-quality alternatives to proprietary international software titles and to make sure that these alternatives will also be much less expensive than the Western products. The project has been implemented by a small (about ten persons) group of recent university graduates and young software developers who have been working on the idea in their spare time while sticking to their day jobs. And while now everything is based on their enthusiasm, it is quite obvious that the approach declared by the guys will easily find support from the government and they may move to full-time development in a fancy office soon if the idea is approved (provided that it is as good as it sounds). All the applications in the package will run on a single software platform that will work on all the operating systems - so they will be available to all the users. Another advantage of this approach is that the platform will fully protect all the applications running on it from viruses and other malware. The developers now admit that it is too early to predict anything for now as the project is still in the very early stage of its development and too many things are still to be completed for the products to become actually usable. But of course with government support this “ruware” will achieve significant progress - and soon - while I’ll be waiting to see if there’s anything good behind the project other than the idea itself. <a href="http://sibkray.ru/news/2009-7-28/3942/">Via</a> (in Russian) <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/0kab2Li_1wedCUv7KYM441rAn0Y/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/0kab2Li_1wedCUv7KYM441rAn0Y/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/0kab2Li_1wedCUv7KYM441rAn0Y/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/0kab2Li_1wedCUv7KYM441rAn0Y/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~4/bz2Y5O5L1Wc" height="1" width="1"/><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=BMHTVKTvbiY:CKU-wIikZaA:I9og5sOYxJI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=I9og5sOYxJI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=BMHTVKTvbiY:CKU-wIikZaA:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=BMHTVKTvbiY:CKU-wIikZaA:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=BMHTVKTvbiY:CKU-wIikZaA:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?i=BMHTVKTvbiY:CKU-wIikZaA:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> </div>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://profy.com/2009/07/28/russia-wants-independence-with-russian-software/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <feedburner:origLink>http://profy.com/2009/07/28/russia-wants-independence-with-russian-software/</feedburner:origLink></item> <item> <title>Looking To Monetize Your Twitter Account? Here Are Some Applications for You</title> <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~3/septttlpfVI/</link> <comments>http://profy.com/2009/07/24/looking-to-monetize-your-twitter-account-here-are-some-applications-for-you/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:30:34 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Svetlana Gladkova</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[adCause]]></category> <category><![CDATA[business-model]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Magpie]]></category> <category><![CDATA[money]]></category> <category><![CDATA[tweetvalue]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Tweexchange]]></category> <category><![CDATA[TwitPub]]></category> <category><![CDATA[twittad]]></category> <category><![CDATA[twitter]]></category> <category><![CDATA[twitter applications]]></category> <category><![CDATA[twtAd]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://profy.com/?p=13287</guid> <description><![CDATA[As Twitter is growing more and more popular as time passes and new people arrive to the microblogging platform looking for a new expression tool and some of them learning to use Twitter for self-promotion or brand promotion as well, it is no wonder that there are other people that create their numerous applications using [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img class="size-full wp-image-12275 alignright" style="margin: 10px" src="http://profy.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files//2008/09/twitter-business-model.jpg" alt="twitter-business-model" width="169" height="175" />As Twitter is growing more and more popular as time passes and new people arrive to the microblogging platform looking for a new expression tool and some of them learning to use Twitter for self-promotion or brand promotion as well, it is no wonder that there are other people that create their numerous applications using Twitter API and offering all the Twitter users various ways to make money off their Twitter accounts. And while Twitter itself is not quite willing to share their plans on how exactly the team and Twitter investors will capitalize on the product’s power, there are numerous other people that build their entire business models around Twitter. I will not talk about how Twitter is used by all sorts of marketers, consultants and promoters to sell their products or services with the help of Twitter, I am only going to list all the tools that are available to any Twitter user who wants to make some money off his or her addiction to Twitter. So here they are (and feel free to add those I leave out below in the comments so that we could jointly build a comprehensive list): The first obvious ways to make money off Twitter are related to advertising: as our profiles and our Twitter updates all get attention from various followers, some companies arrive offering their tools to monetize those online properties. And the approaches here can vary: where <a href="http://profy.com/2008/09/02/another-business-model-around-twitter-marketplace-for-twitter-ads/">TwittAd offers advertisers to buy visual ads</a> on users’ profiles (and has <a href="http://profy.com/2008/12/03/twitter-advertising-roi-revealed-10-cpm-way-too-expensive/">quite a strange eCPM of $10</a> which sounds like way too expensive and strange it terms of ROI), <a href="http://be-a-magpie.com/">Magpie</a> offers Twitter to send sponsored updates with the texts and links submitted (and paid-for) by potential advertisers. A similar service is <a href="http://www.twitpub.com/">TwitPub</a> that also lets advertisers buy premium tweets that will only be distributed strictly to one’s approved followers as they only work with private Twitter streams. Other similar services are <a href="http://adcause.com/">adCause</a>, <a href="http://twtad.com/">twtAd</a> and probably there are others I have not heard of myself. But anyway I think the selection is enough for every Twitter microblogger to find an advertiser who will want to use his or her Twitter stream or profile for their marketing messages. What is still underserved by potential ads on Twitter (and what I think is a huge oversight) is Twitter profile pictures (avatars) because unlike profile backgrounds they are seen by many users when we get updates from our Twitter friends in various Twitter clients like Twhirl. And of course I will notice it if some of my friends will use a brand’s logo instead of their own photos for a week. But since no service exists for that (at least a service I am aware of so correct me if I’m wrong), I believe this must be the next step for Twitter advertising networks. Another approach that some startups are build around is evaluating and selling Twitter accounts themselves. <a href="http://tweetvalue.com/">TweetValue</a> offers a mechanism to <a href="http://profy.com/2008/11/20/tweetvalue-will-selling-your-twitter-account-help-you-survive-the-recession/">find out the monetary value of your Twitter account</a> and it will even offer you a way to sell your account after verifying you are actually the owner. The latest idea that has arrived to the Twitter scene is <a href="http://tweexchange.com/">Tweexchange</a> - the <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/01/tweexchange-is-the-ultimate-twitter-name-marketplace/">marketplace for Twitter user names</a> where you can buy usernames from other Twitter users same as we currently do with domains. I can already see prospects for Twittername-squotting but there will obviously be quite a number of people who will want to register some promising domain names while they are free to be able to sell them later. So I think the potential is here and probably if you work on your Twitter account hard enough, you could eventually reach the stage where it actually generates money for you. But it is worth noting that chances are that there are other - and more stable and guaranteed - ways to earn money without spending all your time on Twitter. <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9ttu-ORFAJPIRMCJNRjNtbluFZg/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9ttu-ORFAJPIRMCJNRjNtbluFZg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9ttu-ORFAJPIRMCJNRjNtbluFZg/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9ttu-ORFAJPIRMCJNRjNtbluFZg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~4/septttlpfVI" height="1" width="1"/><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=aYiZ5nEVoOI:WV2jIWgE4RU:I9og5sOYxJI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=I9og5sOYxJI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=aYiZ5nEVoOI:WV2jIWgE4RU:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=aYiZ5nEVoOI:WV2jIWgE4RU:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=aYiZ5nEVoOI:WV2jIWgE4RU:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?i=aYiZ5nEVoOI:WV2jIWgE4RU:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> </div>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://profy.com/2009/07/24/looking-to-monetize-your-twitter-account-here-are-some-applications-for-you/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <feedburner:origLink>http://profy.com/2009/07/24/looking-to-monetize-your-twitter-account-here-are-some-applications-for-you/</feedburner:origLink></item> <item> <title>Hulu Could Turn into a Paid Service. Will International Users Be Granted the Opportunity to Pay Now?</title> <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~3/z7Y78tGj7XA/</link> <comments>http://profy.com/2009/07/23/hulu-could-turn-into-a-paid-service-will-international-users-be-granted-opportunity-to-pay/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:30:49 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Svetlana Gladkova</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[hulu]]></category> <category><![CDATA[international users]]></category> <category><![CDATA[online-video]]></category> <category><![CDATA[streaming-video]]></category> <category><![CDATA[subscription revenue model]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://profy.com/?p=13419</guid> <description><![CDATA[Surprise, Hulu owners have finally realized content is not really destined to be free and there could be people online willing to pay for quality and convenience. So they suggested that at some point in the future Hulu could turn into a paid service to add to the current ad-supported only model. Disney’s Chief Executive Bob [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-13418" style="margin: 10px" src="http://profy.com/files/2009/07/hulu-logo.png" alt="hulu logo" width="112" height="41" />Surprise, <a href="http://www.hulu.com/" target="_blank">Hulu</a> owners have finally realized content is not really destined to be free and there could be people online willing to pay for quality and convenience. So they suggested that at some point in the future Hulu could turn into a paid service to add to the current ad-supported only model. Disney’s Chief Executive Bob Iger (Disney now owns over 25% stake in Hulu) <a href="http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090723/ap_on_hi_te/us_disney_hulu">said that the online streaming site could one day start charging for the content</a> that is now offered for free. This idea is based on the surveys that show that people are willing to spend money online: as much as $5 an hour to watch movies, 75 cents an hour for reading (be it books, magazines or newspapers), and 25 cents for every hour of internet use. To me this sounds like quite an obvious decision as I have never supported the idea that everything that is available online should be free. To me as a web publisher this is quite obvious: many people work online creating the websites themselves and their content that other people enjoy and of course they expect some remuneration for their efforts. This remuneration should not necessarily be in the form of advertising revenue even though this is the most popular approach to monetizing websites so offering alternatives in the form of premium services and subscriptions have always seemed to be wiser to me than only ad-supported business model. But for Hulu this may be something of a revolution because it is always way more difficult to make people pay for something that used to be totally free than to charge from the very beginning. Of course I’d expect some kind of revolt among Hulu users but this will also depend on how exactly this subscription is offered and also on the policies selected by various Hulu competitors. Yet revolt or no revolt, I know one category of users (and a very broad one at that) who will only welcome the decision to let them pay for a subscription in exchange for content - if they are granted this opportunity at all. I am obviously talking about international users here. Hulu is only available to the internet users who visit the website from a US IP-address while everyone else will be able to browse the site but will not be able to watch any piece of content at all. <img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-13417" src="http://profy.com/files/2009/07/hulu-international.png" alt="hulu-international" width="562" height="203" /> Of course for international users there has always been a possibility of using US IPs (easily available for purchase via Chinese IT professionals - they can hardly access anything at all other than Chinese resources without a proxy server). In fact, I do have a bunch of such IPs myself, they were purchased for me to be able to see what ads are displayed on Profy to the US visitors when I am not in the States myself. And these very IPs I could easily use to access services like Hulu or Pandora which are only available to the US users because they are supported by advertisers who only want to target US users and also because there are too many issues with licensing content for international users. But I have never used the IPs to secretly get to the services where I don’t belong because they are not intended for the users outside of the US. Honestly, this looked to me very much like cheating and getting without invitation to a banquet only to eat and drink champagne for free without knowing the organizers at all. Yet of course there are many users around the world who are much less oversensitive and using proxy to use the services not intended for them never seems to sound wrong to them at all. And I certainly don’t think these users are to blame for one simple reason: the owners of these websites don’t offer us any options at all with the obvious one being paying for the content we want with our money where the US users pay with watching ads. Now that Hulu owners have finally realized that there could be another monetization road for the service involving users paying for the content instead of watching ads and consuming the content for free, I do hope that they will not forget those crowds of international users who have been willing to pay for the content for quite a while now - but have never been able to. And instead of only trying to persuade people in the US pay for what is available to them for free, they will settle the licensing issues and come up with payment options for the international users as well. <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/E_uZ5pCIT7JYcE4kKobKLKbUOqY/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/E_uZ5pCIT7JYcE4kKobKLKbUOqY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/E_uZ5pCIT7JYcE4kKobKLKbUOqY/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/E_uZ5pCIT7JYcE4kKobKLKbUOqY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~4/z7Y78tGj7XA" height="1" width="1"/><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=Os9I4mSo0B4:ChA17XDKWyo:I9og5sOYxJI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=I9og5sOYxJI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=Os9I4mSo0B4:ChA17XDKWyo:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=Os9I4mSo0B4:ChA17XDKWyo:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=Os9I4mSo0B4:ChA17XDKWyo:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?i=Os9I4mSo0B4:ChA17XDKWyo:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> </div>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://profy.com/2009/07/23/hulu-could-turn-into-a-paid-service-will-international-users-be-granted-opportunity-to-pay/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <feedburner:origLink>http://profy.com/2009/07/23/hulu-could-turn-into-a-paid-service-will-international-users-be-granted-opportunity-to-pay/</feedburner:origLink></item> <item> <title>Russian Telephony Operators Panicking over the Skype Threat</title> <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~3/GfAXKWAi84Y/</link> <comments>http://profy.com/2009/07/21/russian-operators-panicking-over-skype-threat/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:57:43 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Svetlana Gladkova</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[cell-phone]]></category> <category><![CDATA[mobile carriers]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Skype]]></category> <category><![CDATA[telephony]]></category> <category><![CDATA[voip]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://profy.com/?p=13412</guid> <description><![CDATA[Today I have seen a very interesting report published by a participant of a meeting of the major providers of communication services in Russia where the challenges posed by VoIP services were discussed. After reading the report, it now seems to me that telephony operators in Russia are in a state that can already be [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-13413" style="margin: 10px" src="http://profy.com/files/2009/07/41676755_a32f9b722f_m.jpg" alt="Skype and VoIP services make traditional carriers panic" width="240" height="226" />Today I have seen a very interesting report published by a participant of a meeting of the major providers of communication services in Russia where the challenges posed by VoIP services were discussed. After reading the report, it now seems to me that telephony operators in Russia are in a state that can already be described as panic over the entire situation with growing popularity of the VoIP services, Skype in particular. And they have plenty of reasons to worry as after certain calculations they now know what damage can be done to the industry they work in by VoIP providers. For example, they calculated that the entire communications market could shrink from $2.6 billion to $0.26 billion only in 2008 if the long-distance and international calls were all processed by VoIP providers instead of traditional landline and mobile service providers. This would have obviously been a disaster for the industry and the existing players are more than determined to fight against the possibility of this nightmare turning into reality. One of their obvious targets is Skype as they look in awe at its immense popularity in the world and in Russia as well. Here in Russia I have not heard of any cases of mobile carriers preventing certain applications from being installed on any mobile devices - simply because you rarely buy a phone with a contract here so your carrier will rarely know what device you use and what type of applications you run on the device. But while they don’t practice any open measures of protection against VoIP applications when used on the mobile devices as a replacement to traditional (extremely expensive compared to the US) telephony services, they are more than determined to fight back and prevent the newcomers from grabbing a significant market share from them. Of course there are two obvious ways from traditional service providers to go: 1)聽聽聽聽聽 provide the same services to their own subscribers and give them a choice between traditional and VoIP calls (and lose some portion of income as VoIP calls will obviously be cheaper); or 2)聽聽聽聽聽 defend their own position and investments by fighting against the VoIP service providers using all the measures available. Of course the first road is much better for the subscribers as the more competition - the cheaper the service. But even if they decide to compete, doubts are here about how fair this competition will be. For example, there are rumors that Skype could actually be banned in Russia unless the eBay company agrees to monitor their traffic and provide all the information on the calls to law enforcement agencies should they need such information. This is a requirement to all the communication service providers in Russia and this could easily be used against Skype here as well. And while it is obvious that this is nothing but an excuse, it could be used at any moment of time to eliminate competition. This paranoia over lack of control over VoIP traffic (should such control be needed for law enforcement reasons or whatever) combined with how unhappy everyone should be about Skype making money in Russia without paying taxes here and without investing in the communications infrastructure could obviously bring Skype to some poor results here. Unfortunately I don’t expect any fair competition here but tons of internal protection of local service providers once the authorities are persuaded that Skype and other similar services are dangerous for the local market. Whatever the future brings, I have no idea how I personally could live without a Skype account and without it forwarding all my calls to my US number to my cell phone in Russia - and there are already millions of people here who rely on Skype for their personal or business needs. So it will definitely be a shame to see news articles titled “Russia bans Skype to protect local mobile carriers”. <a href="http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/telecom/65036/">Via</a> (in Russian), <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/re-ality/">photo credit</a> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/hNpDauhYybGJMWDrAvsWTottkmA/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/hNpDauhYybGJMWDrAvsWTottkmA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/hNpDauhYybGJMWDrAvsWTottkmA/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/hNpDauhYybGJMWDrAvsWTottkmA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~4/GfAXKWAi84Y" height="1" width="1"/><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=GkvOp0kZZEQ:j7prBQg89CI:I9og5sOYxJI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=I9og5sOYxJI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=GkvOp0kZZEQ:j7prBQg89CI:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=GkvOp0kZZEQ:j7prBQg89CI:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=GkvOp0kZZEQ:j7prBQg89CI:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?i=GkvOp0kZZEQ:j7prBQg89CI:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> </div>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://profy.com/2009/07/21/russian-operators-panicking-over-skype-threat/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <feedburner:origLink>http://profy.com/2009/07/21/russian-operators-panicking-over-skype-threat/</feedburner:origLink></item> <item> <title>6rounds Shows How Fun Online Meetings Can Be (We Have Invites)</title> <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~3/xOQL7UC3UqI/</link> <comments>http://profy.com/2009/07/17/6rounds-fun-online-meetings-invites/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:24:21 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Svetlana Gladkova</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[6rounds]]></category> <category><![CDATA[online meetings]]></category> <category><![CDATA[online-video]]></category> <category><![CDATA[startups]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://profy.com/?p=13405</guid> <description><![CDATA[At some point in time a thing like an “online meeting” sounded like something beyond understanding for many humans who could not understand how it could be possible to be separated by thousands of miles yet chat in video chats and talk just like they would on the phone - but all via internet protocol [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-13406" style="margin: 10px" src="http://profy.com/files/2009/07/6rounds-logo.png" alt="6rounds live meetings" width="137" height="50" />At some point in time a thing like an “online meeting” sounded like something beyond understanding for many humans who could not understand how it could be possible to be separated by thousands of miles yet chat in video chats and talk just like they would on the phone - but all via internet protocol and absolutely free of charge. But now that even my grandma knows that when I am abroad she can always talk to me on Skype from my parents’ apartment, I think online meetings have lost the fascination for many of us online. Really, while I don’t think that <a href="../../../../../2009/04/21/why-business-trips-are-still-better-than-video-calls/">online meetings and video conferences can replace live business meetings and real business trips</a> (even despite of the fact that they are so much more environmentally friendly), we all use online meetings from time to time for business when someone wants to show us something or when we want to show something ourselves to someone miles away. But a good part of fascination has certainly left the process of online meetings and no one uses it for fun or because it is simply cool: people use it as a tool that can be useful and can fulfill certain requirements. Now there’s <a href="http://www.6rounds.com/">6rounds</a>, a new startup in private beta that is determined to bring the fun back to the online meetings - no matter whether they are for business or for fun. 6rounds startup was launched in early July and has already received a number of <a href="http://thenextweb.com/2009/07/10/6rounds/">enthusiastic reports</a> from tech bloggers who tend to love everything about online video, especially when it comes in a nice and streamlined user interface. And 6rounds certainly deserves praise for how beautiful and impressive the user interface is as it certainly makes people want to stay - even if they are not even big fans of anything tagged with “video” and “online meetings”. All the activities here are based on the notion of “rounds” - the one on one webcam-enabled speed chats where you can talk to anyone on the site for 10 minutes, both of you from your own side of a webcam. So a round here is an online meeting where you can be engaged with your friends in any type of activity - be it a business presentation or an entertaining chess game or a simple video chat. 6rounds offers you to either meet new people based on your shared interests or just engage in a round with a personal friend who is also on the site. We are also offered a range of entertaining activities that are already here and the list is promised to grow larger eventually as the company opens the API for the platform to third-party developers. And to make things even more fun for you when you chat with a friend live, you are offered some visual effects to make your image looking like it snows on you or something else. I am not certain myself if I need online meetings to be fun or if I’d stick to them as a simple tool that I can need for business or for a talk to my friends or family but 6rounds is definitely worth taking a look at if you feel that you need some more fun in your life. Now if you are interested in trying 6rounds for yourself, I have 250 invites to the service so <a href="http://www.6rounds.com/?icode=6profy">head over here to sign up</a> to see what the future of online meetings is. <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VtSnK0sAb-GHKV6Jrv2jj6nDIUk/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VtSnK0sAb-GHKV6Jrv2jj6nDIUk/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VtSnK0sAb-GHKV6Jrv2jj6nDIUk/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VtSnK0sAb-GHKV6Jrv2jj6nDIUk/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~4/xOQL7UC3UqI" height="1" width="1"/><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=yAJ8Z7r2NK8:3UVJqTnXEoM:I9og5sOYxJI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=I9og5sOYxJI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=yAJ8Z7r2NK8:3UVJqTnXEoM:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=yAJ8Z7r2NK8:3UVJqTnXEoM:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=yAJ8Z7r2NK8:3UVJqTnXEoM:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?i=yAJ8Z7r2NK8:3UVJqTnXEoM:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> </div>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://profy.com/2009/07/17/6rounds-fun-online-meetings-invites/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <feedburner:origLink>http://profy.com/2009/07/17/6rounds-fun-online-meetings-invites/</feedburner:origLink></item> <item> <title>Adding Languages Is Not Always Enough to Add Countries, Google</title> <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~3/zRS501PcynA/</link> <comments>http://profy.com/2009/07/16/adding-languages-not-always-adding-countries-google/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:14:20 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Svetlana Gladkova</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[friend connect]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Google]]></category> <category><![CDATA[google friend connect]]></category> <category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://profy.com/?p=13400</guid> <description><![CDATA[I sometimes can’t help but wonder how carelessly some of the largest companies in the online world tend to treat their international users, looking like they don’t care about these users at all and like these users don’t generate any advertising or other revenue for them - and don’t deserve attention because of this. As someone [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[<img class="alignright size-full wp-image-13401" style="margin: 10px" src="http://profy.com/files/2009/07/google-friend-connect-russian.jpg" alt="google friend connect in russian" width="367" height="53" />I sometimes can’t help but wonder how carelessly some of the largest companies in the online world tend to treat their international users, looking like they don’t care about these users at all and like these users don’t generate any advertising or other revenue for them - and don’t deserve attention because of this. As someone who has been working as a translator for many years and still works on translation assignments for western online companies and software vendors willing to enter the Russian market, I always feel that many companies just waste money on translation of their products and services while they should have asked at least some local experts for help about whether these products or services will be needed in the new countries where such products and services are introduced. And I myself prefer to ask honestly that the market is not ready for a product (and lose a potential customer) instead of luring this customer into the market where they will invariably fail. There’s really a big difference between translation and localization and if you want to get to a new country and achieve something significant there, you should ensure that your product actually meets local expectations. Usually the large international companies that have branches around the world avoid making these mistakes - yet it does not happen in 100% of cases. Today’s strange example is Google with its Friend Connect service. Now I do love the service and whenever I see a favorite blog or website enabled with Friend Connect, I will always join the community of this website because I know how difficult it is to build any community around content. So when I saw the <a href="http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/2009/07/friend-connect-goes-international.html">news earlier this week that Friend Connect is now available in 47 more languages</a> in addition to English, I thought it was not bad - though I certainly did not expect to see its mass adoption here in Russia simply because the service is now available in Russian. But today I have decided to take a closer look at what Russian tech bloggers say about Friend Connect and realized that Google has made a huge mistake here as translating Friend Connect into Russian did not make the service any friendlier to the Russian internet users - simply because the services supported do not fit the list of the most used Russian services at all. On Friend Connect relationship data can be imported from numerous sources, including Google itself, Yahoo!, Twitter, AOL, and others). But I have spoken here already about <a href="/profy.com/2009/07/03/i-belong-to-nation-with-world%e2%80%99s-most-engaged-social-networking-audience/">how unusual social networking is in Russia</a>: while we are the country with the most engaged in social networking population, the process is very different here from what you see internationally and social networking here is all about local players and international ones are hardly noticeable at all (with Facebook holding the 7th position in the list of top social networks). This is why the phrase in the Friend Connect description page in Russian that members of your community will be able to find other community members using a whole range of services sounds like a mockery to me given that no popular Russian social network or email provider is supported at all (ok, Gmail is more or less used here but I would not say it has reached the mainstream already). And what’s the point in seeing Friend Connect in Russian if you can’t find and invite the vast majority of your online friends? What help will it get to the website owners if they can’t expect many new members will be drawn to their sites via invitations from their existing passionate users? Now I understand perfectly well that someone in Google has decided that reaching the milestone of 5 million websites with Friend Connect integrated must mean a good time for international expansion. But any expansion should involve at least some analysis of the local markets and in this case (I mean, in Russia in particular as the situation could be different in other countries) I can’t see the analysis has been carried out at all. Really, having a whole office in Moscow must mean at least someone thinking about Friend Connect translation into Russian and probably adding some local services for the service to make at least some sense to the Russian web publishers as unfortunately for now it does not seem to. <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/kqw32ps6sbRsWizEEKpeV4ItfOk/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/kqw32ps6sbRsWizEEKpeV4ItfOk/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/kqw32ps6sbRsWizEEKpeV4ItfOk/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/kqw32ps6sbRsWizEEKpeV4ItfOk/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~4/zRS501PcynA" height="1" width="1"/><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=n8DfOoayj7I:-sVL_GrLDZM:I9og5sOYxJI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=I9og5sOYxJI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=n8DfOoayj7I:-sVL_GrLDZM:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=n8DfOoayj7I:-sVL_GrLDZM:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=n8DfOoayj7I:-sVL_GrLDZM:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?i=n8DfOoayj7I:-sVL_GrLDZM:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> </div>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://profy.com/2009/07/16/adding-languages-not-always-adding-countries-google/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <feedburner:origLink>http://profy.com/2009/07/16/adding-languages-not-always-adding-countries-google/</feedburner:origLink></item> <item> <title>Internet Addicts in China Can Feel Safer with Electroshock Therapy Banned</title> <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~3/qetWnEjkDus/</link> <comments>http://profy.com/2009/07/14/internet-addicts-china-electroshock-therapy-banned/#comments</comments> <pubDate>Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:45:58 +0000</pubDate> <dc:creator>Svetlana Gladkova</dc:creator> <category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category> <category><![CDATA[china]]></category> <category><![CDATA[internet addicts]]></category> <category><![CDATA[internet-addiction]]></category> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://profy.com/?p=13395</guid> <description><![CDATA[Of course internet can be addictive as it will drag you to spend all your waking hours connected either in front of your computer or with your mobile device and same as any addiction, internet addiction can be equally dangerous. There are already plenty of horror stories about teenagers doing all types of crazy and [...]]]></description> <content:encoded><![CDATA[Of course internet can be addictive as it will drag you to spend all your waking hours connected either in front of your computer or with your mobile device and same as any addiction, internet addiction can be equally dangerous. There are already plenty of horror stories about teenagers doing all types of crazy and horrifying things to get internet access when it is forbidden so it is no wonder that you will easily find advice on coping with internet addiction and helping addicted people recover (online, of course). But some stories of therapy that can be applied to patients are probably even more terrifying. The problem of internet addiction among youth has existed in China for a while now and we discussed two years ago <a href="../../../../../2007/08/07/china-trials-summer-camp-to-treat-young-web-addicts/">China trying a summer camp to treat internet addicts</a> which was a sign of governmental attention to the problem which obviously demonstrated how acute the problem was. Internet addiction was officially declared a mental disorder in China in November 2008 because the government saw many problems flowing from the virtual world to the real one and claimed that 76% of all crimes by teenagers is influenced by online gaming to a certain extent. It now looks that over the years many clinics have emerged in the country specializing in treating internet addiction and offering various remedies to the patients - who are generally brought to the clinics by their parents because an addict rarely will admit actually being an addict. Yet now it looks that some of such clinics have relied on some very strange remedies to help cure the internet-induced illness, electroshock therapy being one of them. Today the Chinese radio informed the world that electroshock therapy is now banned in China as a measure to cure internet addiction because it has not been proven to actually generate positive results. This decision comes after a scandal with one of such clinics where patients could receive their portions of electroshock therapy for all types of minor wrongdoings, including locking oneself in a toilet or secretly eating chocolates. The doctor who invented the method and established the clinic insisted that electroshock therapy was intended to help patients recover and forget their addiction to the world wide web. Now that electroshock therapy is banned in China, the government and the country’s scientists will probably continue their search for efficient and legal remedies to apply to the internet addicts. I have no idea what they will come up with next time but I do hope that they will remain reasonable and will try to investigate how it happens that internet is becoming such a problem in the country and what the teens try to escape from and what problems in the real world send them to spend so many hours online. <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/CF4Pnp-LnFeTgHxqDf_yJ2-y8Yk/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/CF4Pnp-LnFeTgHxqDf_yJ2-y8Yk/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/CF4Pnp-LnFeTgHxqDf_yJ2-y8Yk/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/CF4Pnp-LnFeTgHxqDf_yJ2-y8Yk/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/feedburner/profy/~4/qetWnEjkDus" height="1" width="1"/><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=xgBUV7XmL9E:th1N8a9Y77I:I9og5sOYxJI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=I9og5sOYxJI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=xgBUV7XmL9E:th1N8a9Y77I:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=xgBUV7XmL9E:th1N8a9Y77I:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?a=xgBUV7XmL9E:th1N8a9Y77I:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Profycom?i=xgBUV7XmL9E:th1N8a9Y77I:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> </div>]]></content:encoded> <wfw:commentRss>http://profy.com/2009/07/14/internet-addicts-china-electroshock-therapy-banned/feed/</wfw:commentRss> <feedburner:origLink>http://profy.com/2009/07/14/internet-addicts-china-electroshock-therapy-banned/</feedburner:origLink></item> </channel> </rss>