20 ways to fool @April fool

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Sehwag’s record

• First opener in Test cricket to record two triple centuries.
• First player to post two triple hundreds at two different venues - Chennai and Multan.
• Joined the elite club of Sir Don Bradman and Brian Lara as only the third batsman in the history of Test cricket to score two triple centuries
• Sehwag’s triple century off 278 balls is now the fastest in the history of Test cricket
• Virender Sehwag became the first man in the history of the game to be
  involved in two 200 plus partnerships in a single innings of a Test
  match, this is also the first instance when the first two partnerships
  of an innings has been 200 plus
• Rahul Dravid became the 3rd Indian to go past 10,000 Test runs after Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar.
• Dravid created the record of being involved in the most number of hundred partnerships in Tests, 72 in all.

He never cares for a bowler whether scores 10 or 100. His score will always be maintained by seconds’s needle not by minute’s hand.

Speech by Thomas L. Friedman@The New York Times

‘When we were young kids growing up in America,
we were Told to eat our vegetables at dinner and not leave them.
Mothers said, think of
the starving children in India
And finish the dinner.’

And now I tell my children:
‘Finish your homework. Think of the children in India
Who would make you starve, if you don’t.’?’

Google Bites Microhoo Yet Again

Nielsen Online data confirms both Yahoo!’s and Microsoft’s gradual path to irrelevance in search, making it seem less likely that the two will be able to take on Big G in the long run.

According to the report, Google’s market share in the domestic search engine market continues to grow, at the expense of the fading silver and bronze medalists.

	Jan.	Feb.
Google	56.9%	58.7%
Yahoo!	19%	17.6%
MSN/Live	12.1%	11.2%
AOL Search	4.7%	5.2%
Ask.com	2.4%	2.5%

In other words, in the span of one month, Google’s market share has grown from 56.9% to 58.7%, while Microhoo’s combined stake has shrunk from 31.1% to 28.8%. It would have needed to acquire IAC’s (Nasdaq: IACI) Ask.com to stop the organic bleeding, or make a pricier purchase of Time Warner’s (NYSE: TWX) AOL, to keep pace with Google.

If a Yahoo!-Microsoft combo was good enough to reach Google’s armpit a month ago, it’s now closer to its belly button. Any lower, and we’ll have to move this analogy over to an adult website.

This is clearly a race that Microsoft won’t win, especially if it’s hitching its horse to the only other search engine within the top five to join it on the downslide. This is even before we turn to the global playing field, where Microsoft actually trails China’s Baidu.com (Nasdaq: BIDU) by a fair margin for the bronze.

Numbers fluctuate monthly, but this clearly does not bode well for either company, especially heading into next month’s quarterly report from Yahoo!, where the potential carnage could wind up being a dealbreaker.

One may also speculate that sour impressions of Yahoo! and Microsoft combining forces — a deal that was announced at the end of January — may be weighing on actual usage.

Search engine stats are important because this is where the fat online advertising margins come to party. Most of the other page views in cyberspace are tough nuts to monetize, explaining why Microsoft and Yahoo! generate far less in ad revenue than Google.

So, go figure: That fat Google kid keeps stealing Microhoo’s lunch money. What a bully!

Travel2.0 for hotel websites

The nature of the internet is rapidly changing. The online accommodation business is moving away from the large channel operators and directly to the hotel’s own website.

But the modern or second generation internet user wants real information and service online, with trustworthy customer generated media and interactivity as well as security in booking. The popularity of sites such as TripAdvisor and others is testament to the power of social media in the travel arena, but reviews on such sites can be generated by anyone whether they have knowledge of the service or not. Gathering reviews from genuine customers ensures a proper balance of views for the online reader.
Bookassist has been at the forefront of research into modern internet technologies and Web2.0/Travel2.0 developments and now brings these key technologies into a new product offering for client hotel websites.

The new product roll out will enable customers to embed directly in their website functionality for the sale of online electronic vouchers redeemable online in the booking process; show customer generated reviews, automatically requested by the Bookassist system of customers who have actually booked with and stayed in the hotel; display their location on their website using Google maps as a background with citywide information nearby. Additionally, hotel groups can enable group and individual websites with these features to tie the group functionality together and increase business transfer between members of a group.

“What you are beginning to see here is the enabling of a hotel to compete directly with the big Travel2.0 players, channels which have built their market share on providing detailed mapping and reviews for example.”, said Dr Des O’Mahony, Co-founder and Managing Director at Bookassist. “If a hotel is providing rich online services, there is no need for the customer to go to these TripAdvisor style sites to get the additional information they might want, so there is less chance for the hotel of losing the customer.”

Web 2.0 is irritating and irrelevant

Web 2.0 is of little relevance to most organisations. That’s according to Business Process Management software maker K2, who has said it’s time to stop messing about with Web 2.0.

“This talk of building standards for mash ups is frankly irritating. Web 2.0 is not relevant. It doesn’t address the pain points that companies are facing,” said Perry Gale, regional director at K2.

The firm was launching Blackpearl a Microsoft Share Point snap on BPM product which targets users to build their own application workflow processes. Faced with some tough questions from customers and partners on the management issues associated with user built processes of the kind often associated with the deployment of Web 2.0 applications.

Gale distanced his company from the approach. “Firstly, in general, there is not a clear definition in the mind of anyone I’ve spoken to about what Web 2.0 really means and as a result it is becoming a “throw away” term to describe too many things. The result is that it is becoming largely meaningless at this stage. If we look at it in its broadest sense which is to provide web based availability of information from multiple sources, I guess it has some small relevance. But it’s suggestion of an undisciplined and slightly chaotic approach to application delivery is distinctly unhelpful and I think worrying for business. It was this I believe, that lay behind the questions we got.”

Some customers questioned the potential for users to build too many processes in Blackpearl resulting in increased complexity and IT support.

“Our approach to this is fundamentally different in principle to the naturally unstructured and undisciplined world of Web 2.0. The business is enabled to use IT governed objects to build its own applications. This is distinct from the more chaotic approach suggested by Web 2.0. What Blackpearl is seeking to provide is in effect technical tooling for IT professionals to create “objects” for their business people in a form that is meaningful to them,” said Gale.

Ref: http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=10206