Dina Mehta: Skype and VOIP

Moving on - New Blog

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 06:56:59 GMT

This is my last post on this blog. Radio Userland has served me well since I started blogging in 2003. I will post more details on the transition, at my new blog - for now I just wanted to make this announcement, and provide the new url and feeds.

New Blog URL - http://dinamehta.com/
Subscribe via RSS 2.0 - http://dinamehta.com/feed/
Subscribe via Atom - http://dinamehta.com/feed/atom/
Comments feed - http://dinamehta.com/comments/feed/

The new blog will also be called Conversations with Dina - it's just a new blogging platform - but the same old blog! I do hope you continue reading and feeding it.

My old blog will be archived at its old url (http://radio.weblogs.com/0121664/) and I will keep the archives going. Stuart, who has worked out the platform for Conversations with Dina on Wordpress has done some neato hacks - one that I love a lot is that the search function will not just search the new blog archives, but also my old Radio blog archives. And he has managed to transfer some of my posts over too. That's so cool!!! Lots more needs doing there ... and that will emerge I'm sure.

Blogspot (and Typepad) blogs blocked by some Indian ISPs

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 08:52:45 GMT

This is so utterly weird. Since yesterday afternoon, I haven't been able to load any Blogspot blogs - they seem to be blocked somewhere. I can get into my Blogger dashboard and post to blogs though. Neha and Mridula have been sleuthing to get to the bottom of this ... if you're in India, do go over to their blogs and help them out.

From Neha's post:

If you are on MTNL or Specranet in India, could you please let me know if blogger.com has been blocked? In fact if you're in India, can you please just let me know if you can access these sites? Thanks.

Update 1 - Dina (Bombay) confirms that she can access only her dashboard on Blogger. She even managed to post to a blog. However she cannot access Blogspot. She's on Reliance Powersufer. Aparna (Calcutta) who is on BSNL can access both the sites.

Update 2 - Over IM, Mridula (Delhi) confirms that her ISP's call centre stated that they have received a letter from the Government, hinting that it has something to do with the block. Dina called up her ISP's call centre and they confirm that there is no blocking or filtering at their end.

Update 3 - Anupa on Sify.net and Rit on Airtel can access. Monica on Tata Indicom confirms that she can post and access Blogspot.com.

Angelo showed me how to access blogspot blogs - "use an open proxy - go to www.hidemyass.com -

type in the blog url (in this case I typed in http://mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/ - type in the validation code, and you should be able to see it." It worked!

Still, this isn't the solution, its a real shame if this is a directive from the Government of India. We must all raise our voices against it.

Update:

This morning, I was checking out some Typepad blogs - same problem as with Blogger blogs. This is what I got from tracert:

C:Documents and SettingsDina Mehta>tracert typepad.com
Tracing route to typepad.com [204.9.178.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 192.168.17.1 reports: Destination net unreachable.
Trace complete.

Am really puzzled now ... and wonder what's going on. I just called Reliance Powersurfer again and they tell me that after all my calls yesterday, they checked again and wished to confirm that they were not blocking or filtering any sites themselves. However, the big news from the call centre employee on the line was that they did check and it seems that Blogspot has been blocked by the Ministry of Communication centrally. I asked them for more details, or any sort of confirmation of the same, which they were unable to provide.
Update - July 17

A set of neat tricks to access blocked websites.

A wiki set up by Peter - add your ISP's contact details if you are facing this problem

I have written letters to Powersurfer and to CERT-IN - here's the text:

Dear Sirs,
I am a long term subscriber to Reliance Powersurfer and since the last few days, I have been unable to access several blog sites. Have run tracerts on them and they show destination unreachable. However, I can access them through proxy servers.
I also spoke to the Reliance Powersurfer Help Desk, and they confirmed that Blogspot blogs have been blocked centrally by the Ministry - and that Powersurfer is not filtering or blocking them at their end.
I would be most grateful if you could look into whether there has been any directive from the Government to block blog sites on blogspot.com and typepad.com.
There is already much being written about this by way of speculation -- see these --
http://www.gonomad.com/traveltalesfromindia/2006/07/what-is-up-with-blogspot-blogger-sites.html
http://www.withinandwithout.com/?p=854
http://radio.weblogs.com/0121664/2006/07/15.html#a854
This is really important, as all blogs regardless of content are being blocked on these sites - and we would like to get to the bottom of this. We'd like confirmation of this from you and any other details, before we can take it up with the relevant Ministry, and any other information you may have to help us.
Many thanks,
Dina

I'd urge all those affected by this to write to their ISP providers and to CERT-IN.org - incident@cert-in.org.in for clarifications. Please add responses as you get them into the wiki.

Update - July 17 evening:

Updated list of ISP's banning blogs - from Neha and some more pointers on who to contact for information.

Spectranet
MTNL
Airtel
Sify
Reliance Powersurfer / Infocom
Exatt
7 Star Cable Service
Blogspot.com has been blocked by all.
Typepad.com and Geocities.com have been blocked by the others.

Shivam shares his frustration on calling some of the authorities to get more information.

My guess is its just a matter of time, before all ISP's in India will enforce the block. This is really bad news. Or a terrible mistake somewhere.

Update - July 17 night

BSNL and Iqara added to the list. The plot gets thicker as more bloggers are alerted to the fact that an increasing number of Indian ISP's are involved. We're treading with a little caution before we go whole-hog at the government. There is a possibility that it is all a mistake - where a directive from the government on a few blogs might have been misrepresented by ISP's here - who have blocked entire domains.

Update - July 18 morning
Front page news at Economic Times - Terror Trail - Govt blanks out select blog
Financial Express also reports.
Times of India reports - Bloggers upset at government clampdown

Hindustan Times - This is outrageous - "Officials defended the decision saying, "We would like those people to come forward who access these (the 12) radical websites and please explain to us what are they missing from their lives in the absence of these sites."
Indian Express - Post 7/11, Govt targets ‘extreme’ websites, bloggers on the blink

More updates on press converage here.

Also, some proxy server aren't working anymore - http://hidemyass.com/, http://pkblogs.com/. Other ways to bypass the ban.

Update - July 18 afternoon.

Proxies are now all working again.

More voices against:

Slashdot - read the discussions there
DNA

Saket informs us that Angela, the owner of wikia.com has moved our wiki from Scratchpad (which is a casual sort of wiki) to the censorship section of Wikia. The new URI is: http://censorship.wikia.com/wiki/Bloggers_Against_Censorship.
Existing pages on the Wiki currently:

List of ISPs that seem to have blocked blogger
Group Members - Short Introduction of Bloggers
Protests By Bloggers - Listing of Blog posts about the ban
Quotes by Bloggers
Bypassing the ban (Workarounds)
Press Coverage of The Ban
Blogs and RTI Act

Update : July 18 - evening

We want answers. The silence isn't helping. I was talking to a journalist who asked me whether the silence from the Government has left us in much confusion. My answer - an unquivocal yes. Questions in my mind ....has the Govt goofed ? Or is it really talking censorship? If it is the latter, as a citizen I feel my constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression is under severe threat. And that disturbs me greatly. There is a lot of anger too as is evident in all the discussions at the Blogger's Collective google group. There is another angle to this too - is it a goof on the govt's part ... or the ISP's - if the Govt banned certain blogs ... and the ISP's banned entire domains ... that's perhaps the ISP's screwup. But now that the issue has taken such serious proportions that we want answers, and soon - what really toook place between the government and ISP's? Why it happened? What does this mean for my rights as a citizen? What assurance that it will not happen again?

Update: July 19

Filing RTI's - here's how. The Right to Information Act was enacted by Parliament in 2005. It mandates timely response to citizen requests for government information. Any ordinary Indian Citizen can file a Right To Information application and the Government is compelled to respond. You can find more information here: http://persmin.nic.in/RTI/WelcomeRTI.htm.

This thread discusses Effective Filing of RTI's at the Blogger's Collective.

Sarbajit Roy, a cyber-law expert, said, "This block is a mindless exercise and shows that our bureaucrats don't understand technology at all." [HT - Govt blames ISPs - Blogger's Protest]

Update July 19 - afternoon

RTI Filed - here's the text.

Update July 19 - evening

Jace spots this - messenger - based VoIP including Yahoo and Skype to be banned too??? Skype - hope you're listening.

Update July 20

Peter links to a scanned version of the ACTUAL document that went out to the ISPs and Rediff tells us that the block on blogs (no, not the other sites) will be lifted in 48 hours plus notes on the kind of websites that have been blocked. [Neha]

Serial Bomb Blasts in Mumbai - terror unfurls this evening

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:09:10 GMT

Serial bomb blasts in first class coaches on local trains on the Western Line in Mumbai. The first was at Khar Station at 6.25 pm, and 5 other blasts are being reported at Jogeshwari, Matunga, Borivli, Bhayander, Matunga. Western Railway services have been suspended.

Telephone lines are jammed - I was lucky to be able use SkypeOut to make calls to family.

We're live blogging this at the MumbaiHelp blog - where you will find regular updates.

Looking for Research Participants

Fri, 26 May 2006 12:38:32 GMT

I'm currently working on a study for a Client around building new applications on Skype, that would be of benefit to users for both business and personal use. To this end, we're organising some focus group discussions with dinner or lunch as appropriate, on June 2nd at 7 pm or June 3rd at 10 am. The discussion will be for about 2.5 hours, with about 6 persons, and will cover three basic areas:

a detailed understanding of your current communication habits and patterns

a demo of the new application, and your responses to it

an exploration into how you might find it beneficial to you

I'm looking for active Skype users in Delhi and Gurgaon who would be able to participate in this exercise ... we want people who have more than 25 contacts on their Skype buddylists. If you fit the bill, and are willing to participate, please do drop in a comment here or get in touch with me at explore(at)vsnl.com or Skype me at dina_mehta.

Many thanks!

Bookmarked !

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 14:16:37 GMT

Thought I'd share some great blog posts and papers I had bookmarked and finally got down to reading:

Rashmi Sinha has some really good essays on Tagging. She has a whole category dedicated to this area, and I found the following posts particularly useful:
- A cognitive analysis of tagging (or how the lower cognitive cost of tagging makes it popular)
- A Social Analysis of Tagging (or how tagging transforms the solitary browsing experience into a social one)
- "Tagging: From Personal to Social" - a powerpoint presentation here.

Some good tips in An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in Enterprise by Suw Charman. She suggests that its key to identify users "who would clearly benefit from the new software, helping them to understand how it could help, and progressing their usage so that they can realise those benefits". I still struggle with tryig to figure out how we can enable the lowering of perceived risks in using such technologies.

Doc Searls introduces the concept of the Intention Economy turning on its head the Attention Economy conversation that focusses more on the 'seller'. He says:

"The Intention Economy grows around buyers, not sellers. It leverages the simple fact that buyers are the first source of money, and that they come ready-made. You don't need advertising to make them.

The Intention Economy is about markets, not marketing. You don't need marketing to make Intention Markets.

The Intention Economy is built around truly open markets, not a collection of silos. In The Intention Economy, customers don't have to fly from silo to silo, like a bees from flower to flower, collecting deal info (and unavoidable hype) like so much pollen. In The Intention Economy, the buyer notifies the market of the intent to buy, and sellers compete for the buyer's purchase. Simple as that.

The Intention Economy is built around more than transactions. Conversations matter. So do relationships. So do reputation, authority and respect. Those virtues, however, are earned by sellers (as well as buyers) and not just "branded" by sellers on the minds of buyers like the symbols of ranchers burned on the hides of cattle.

The Intention Economy is about buyers finding sellers, not sellers finding (or "capturing") buyers.

In The Intention Economy, a car rental customer should be able to say to the car rental market, "I'll be skiing in Park City from March 20-25. I want to rent a 4-wheel drive SUV. I belong to Avis Wizard, Budget FastBreak and Hertz 1 Club. I don't want to pay up front for gas or get any insurance. What can any of you companies do for me?" — and have the sellers compete for the buyer's business."

Reading this, and with my limited understanding of the Attention Economy, am wondering .... does one follow the other ... from Attention to Intention ... or Intention to Attention?

Tracking the Future of Telephony ... a great transcript of a very interesting by Norman Lewis director of research for France Telecom at eTel. Really good stuff ... some snips:

"The fundamental point is voice and audio now just becomes another application on the Internet. And that is incredibly exciting, as far as I am concerned, because it is like time, it is now liberated, it is not a stand alone application anymore. It is embedded in everything we do…Time has became intrinsic in everything. I think that is where voice is going in the future. I think that is truly revolution".

"... we have that possibility of taking that application [voice]…and liberating it [voice] from that kind of stranglehold that I think telcos have had in the past… and now we can begin to do things we have never done before. …If you just look at the recent period with Ebay-Skype...voice is becoming something of an adjunct to other services and will open up new possibilities...I see this as a huge golden opportunity for immense innovation...What we [the telcos] are doing is re-arranging the deck chairs on the titanic. That is essentially what a lot of us are doing in our companies. The innovation landscape has changed…"

"It can actually create a sweet spot for all of us…for me innovation is rarely about identifying problems our customers have got and trying to solve them. Real innovation is about social change. It is about adopting, it can be incremental, it can also be very disruptive. But if really had to begin with real social motivations, of why people are doing things. What kind of things that they really want to do… it is a social consequence that they [“digital children”] introduce technology into their lives in ways we do not quite fully understand… understanding customers [social] behaviour and motivations…that is the coal face as far as I am concerned…Are we going to develop Internet apps that really embed voice in everything we do, and fundamentally transform that whole experience. I think that is the question."

danah who is a really really smart researcher, ethnographer, media-ecologist, digi-culturist, sociologist, (she's looking for someone to bestow upon her an 'ist') explains Why Youth Heart MySpace.

Geeks in Toyland - a Wired article on how Lego managed to effectively convert their customers to their R&D labs and effectively re-wrote the innovation game! [link via Steve at All this chittah-chattah]

"Some Lego executives worried that the hackers might cannibalize the market for future Mindstorms accessories or confuse potential customers looking for authorized Lego products. After a few months of wait-and-see, Lego concluded that limiting creativity was contrary to its mission of encouraging exploration and ingenuity. Besides, the hackers were providing a valuable service. "We came to understand that this is a great way to make the product more exciting," Nipper says. "It's a totally different business paradigm - although they don't get paid for it, they enhance the experience you can have with the basic Mindstorms set." Rather than send out cease and desist letters, Lego decided to let the modders flourish; it even wrote a "right to hack" into the Mindstorms software license, giving hobbyists explicit permission to let their imaginations run wild.

Soon, dozens of Web sites were hosting third-party programs that helped Mindstorms users build robots that Lego had never dreamed of: soda machines, blackjack dealers, even toilet scrubbers. Hardware mavens designed sensors that were far more sophisticated than the touch and light sensors included in the factory kit. More than 40 Mindstorms guidebooks provided step-by-step strategies for tweaking performance out of the kit's 727 parts.

Lego's decision to tap this culture of innovation was a natural extension of its efforts over the past few years to connect customers to the company."

I tested VoiFi ...was disappointed with the basic sound quality. Uninstalled.

Bookmarked ... and still to read/play with:

- When The Long Tail Wags the Dog and The Long Tail of Popularity

- On quick glance, basic orientation by Paul Beleen in a whitepaper called Advertising 2.0 (pdf), on "what everybody in advertising, marketing and media should know about the technologies that are reshaping their business" Printed, to be read in detail on my flight to Delhi later this week.

- Veer, who has an excellent blog that I recently discovered on the Indian mobile revolution, has launched MyToday, a public RSS aggregator, with Rajesh Jain. Haven't yet played with it ... will soon! I like that it has a mobile phone edition too.

- A collection of articles on Creative Thinking [link via Chuck Frey's Innovation Weblog]

Brand Strategy in a Web 2.0 World

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 08:57:37 GMT

Jennifer Rice at Brand Mantra has an excellent series of posts on Maslow and Branding. She's looked at 8 core consumer needs: Security, Connection, Esteem, Control, Aesthetic, Cognitive, Self-Actualization and Transcendence. She starts the series with this ....

"Remember back in your Psych 101 class when you learned about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs? Bet you never expected to see it again in the business world, but...ta da! Here it is. Personally I think a few are missing like freedom and control. But in general, we can easily see how strong brands relate back to the hierarchy. In the next couple posts, I'll walk through the expanded hierarchy (8 needs instead of 5) and discuss their relation to brand strategy."

For the uninitiated, an explanation of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. I've culled out, from Jennifer's multiple posts, some of the key points and examples that she makes - they are in italics:

on Security:

"This is the "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" syndrome. There are people everywhere who will only purchase products and services from companies that have proven themselves over time. They stuck with SBC when their more adventurous counterparts were fleeing to try one of the new competitive phone companies."

on Connection:

"We're seeing this era of fragmentation come to a close, and the locus of connection is reforming on two very different levels: the physical world where brands like Starbuck's are providing modern tribal gathering spots, and the virtual world where like-minded people can connect based on affinity instead of geography (like Slashdot.) As with trust, all brands can work on facilitating a sense of connection through blogs and forums. But newer brands that are plugged into the grassroots economy are making 'connection' a foundational differentiator for their brands. I'll end up revisiting social technologies and grassroots economy after going though the entire hierarchy, because the virtual locus of connection is actually the point at which 4 different needs intersect."

on Esteem:

"Some newer ways of delivering Esteem include: "New Economy" forums like LegoFactory. Not only is this a place to show off your new Lego designs to other community members, but you also get a chance to be publicly recognized for a great design by the Lego Product Designers themselves. Another example is Slashdot, where you earn karma for smart participation in the forums. You can see in the FAQs that people's karma scores serve as 'reputation badges,' and it appears that some folks were a bit peeved when the karma indicator was changed from a potentially unlimited number to a label ( Terrible, Bad, Neutral, Positive, Good, and Excellent.)"

on Control:

"Control is tightly linked to the notion of freedom; without freedom we have no ability to control our environment. Control and Freedom are two sides of the same coin, a linkage that has surfaced in primary research for several different technology and B2B clients. Features like flexibility and customization relate back to Control, but so do social technologies like blogs, forums, user ratings, etc. The emerging grassroots economy is pushing both Freedom and Control into the hands of employees and customers... forming a vast, distributed human network where each node (individual) can connect, communicate, make choices, learn from each other, grow. In essence this new economy is enabling and empowering us to live and work the way we want, not how someone else tells us we must."

on Aesthetic:

"Aesthetic used to be a nice-to-have, but it's increasingly becoming foundational. Witness the explosive success of Apple and the iPod, or the gotta-have Razr phone. Target is bringing designer style (Isaac, Oldham) to the masses, along with InStyle magazine and "The Look for Less" show. Starbucks combined coffee with an aesthetic environment. Barnes & Noble did the same for books. There are now 250 bathroom faucets from which to choose. Style is important because it's an external representation of our own self-image. What we wear, drive, carry... they're all badges to demonstrate who we are. It makes me wonder if Aesthetic really is the core need; perhaps it' something much more basic, like 'validation of self-existence.' Perhaps style is our subconscious way of defining who we are, or attracting a mate (like peacocks and bird plumage)."

on Cognitive:

"This is about learning and understanding the world around us. While many people still blindly accept the doctrines of traditional authority (church, state, corporations, media, etc.), others are taking control, asking questions and seeking answers. Brands that knock down barriers to knowledge and provide easy access are delivering on this need. These aren't just the obvious brands like Google; they're also brands that practice transparency and educate customers on the how's and why's of their products, services and business practices. Transparency and openness deliver on customers' desire to know. FedEx tracking is a great example (of both Cognitive and Control). And of course, blogs and forums fit into this category as well."

on Self-Actualization:

"Nike pioneered the focus on self-actualization with their famous "Just Do It" tag line. Home Depot followed suit with "You can do it. We can help." Brands that demonstrate a belief in their customers' abilities will win the hearts and minds of those who want to reach higher and accomplish more. But it needs to be more than just talk or a nice tag line. Microsoft's campaign, "Where do you want to go today?" appeals to this need, but I haven't found a lot of supporting evidence for the promise (of course, I haven't looked very hard.). How about creating more interactivity with customers, learning where they want to go, offering online education classes, or perhaps social networking tools that connect mentors with learners?"

on Transcendence:

"This need is about giving back, enriching others or championing a greater cause. The Body Shop was founded on core values like environmental protection; their web site reminds visitors, "Never doubt that a group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, that's the only thing that ever does." The Toyota Prius won Edmund's Consumer's Choice for Most Significant Vehicle in 2004. Cause-related brands have strong appeal to small but loyal customer segments."

There is so much potential for social tools and technologies to address so many of these needs - the needs for Esteem, Connection, Self-Actualization, Cognition, Control . Am looking forward to reading Jennifer's thoughts on how they interact. It would require a cultural change in organizations to acknowledge that some of the more powerful human needs, or in marketing terms, customer drivers, lie in the value of actually passing on the control and freedom to customers. Tied into this need are the needs for connection, esteem, cognitiion, self-actualization and ultimately, transcendence.

Web 2.0 companies have shown the way - their products are in perpetual beta, their architecture and marketing is decentralized, they encourage communities of users to self-organize around them. Recently, in an email to Rob, I wrote .... I think one of the most difficult things for people to do is give up control and relinquish 'power' to the many unless they see tangible 'cost-per-click' sort of gains. It's the single largest barrier to accepting and adopting a process that is different to one we have been so conditioned to. Sadly, what few realise the act of giving up that power itself can be so empowering for them - why is Wordpress gaining popularity - why is Flickr so popular - why are del.icio.us and Skype and so many others gaining traction today? They weren't built in a day and pushed onto us as a final product or service - they are being built by and around the community that breathes them. The folks behind them had the guts and vision to say - let's see how our customers 'play' - how they self-organize into networks (developers for instance) - embrace the criticisms with the accolades - and build around what they build. Chaos ..... and creativity. So powerful.

web 2.0