7 Pillars of Information Age – Part 8

EDUCATION

What is Education?

It is a blend of communication and dissemination & still a unique entity. There are not any Blue Ocean Pioneers in this branch. The ocean is still blue.

7 Pillars of Information Age – Part 7

AUTOMATION

What is Automation?

Any form of automation in the process or business workflows and computing is  the automation branch.

Who are the players?

On the automation branch we have ERP, CRM , Accounting players.

Who are the Blue Ocean Pioneers?

• ERP – SAP, Oracle etc.
• CRM – SugarCRM, SalesForce etc.
• Accounting – Tally

7 Pillars of Information Age – Part 6

RECREATION

What is Recreation?

Any form of activity like gaming, online gaming, watching videos online, downloading Mp3s etc. is a form of recreation.

Who are the players?

On the dissemination branch we have gaming sites, YouTube, iTunes etc.

Who are the Blue Ocean Pioneers?

• MP3 – iTunes
• Video – YouTube
• Games – IndiaGames, StickCricket

7 Pillars of the Information Age – Part 5

DISSEMINATION

What is Dissemination?

Any form of activity with which you disseminate some knowledge capsule whether by text, picture, audio (podcast) or video (vodcast) is called dissemination.

Who are the players?

On the dissemination branch we have each and every blog engine and Wikipedia and Flickr and YouTube and Podcasts portals.

Who are the Blue Ocean Pioneers?

• Blog engines – WordPress, Blogger
• Wiki Engines – Wikipedia (actually Mediawiki)

7 Pillars of the Information Age – Part 4

TRANSACTION:

What is transaction?

Any form of activity with which you transact which mean you spend money is called transaction. The transaction could be for buying books from Amazon, or for buying an online subscription for Playboy or for buying a .com domain name or for buying a online space at a B2B market space.

Who are the players?

Under the transaction pillar lie we have each and every .com which might be a ecommerce website or any other .com where people are trying to sell goods or services directly online. Any transaction that does not happen online is not under the transaction pillar.

Who are the Blue Ocean Pioneers?

1. eCommerce companies who were on the forefront of the technologies. Amazon.com is the pioneer and the market leader in this segment. Their investment, strategies and returns are in the way of making shopping just a 3 click job, selling more products contextually and a good margin which is there because so many middle man hands are cut off in this way of business.
2. Now eB2b companies are still lacking far behind the game, because they don’t have any standardizations.
3. Then there are sites which help in paying money online by assuring you that your credit card won’t be abused like Paypal, Google Checkout etc.
4. There are sites where in you can trade in stocks e.g sharekhan.com

7 Pillars of the Information Age – Part 3

COMMUNICATION:

What is communication?

Any form of activity with which you express yourself to an acquaintance and get immediate response which is nothing but formation of a loop cycle then it is called communication. Communication is different then broadcasting. So communication in the information age happens via networks which carry the messages across. The networks carry the information in text or audio or video format. When its text it could be an email or a SMS or a chat session on an IM or a chat room. When its audio it could be a phone call from one terminal to another terminal using a telephone, it could be a call from one computer to another computer using VoIP. When its video it could be again through broadband connections using special gadgets otherwise using a computer terminal mounted with camera and a good software to cast it to the receivers computer desk.

Who are the players?

Under the communication pillar, we have each and every telecommunication company and some IM’s who allow text, audio and some times also video communication.

Who are the Blue Ocean Pioneers?

1. Telecommunications Companies…any names(well many..). Their investments and returns are in the way of the networks and gadgets and subscription fees or meter bills respectively.
2. IM’s (Yahoo Instant Messenger, Microsoft Messenger, Google Talk, Skype & iChat). Their investments, strategies and returns are in the way of making great software, giving it for free and advertising & meter bills. They do give lot of offering for free, which is nothing but an investment in getting people aboard on the Information Age and getting them used to this mode of communication.

7 Pillars of the Information Age – Part 2

INFORMATION:

What is Information?

Information is every data that has been tagged upon with some name and has some meaning for the reader. The data could be a recipe for cake, it could be some management principles, it could be college time-table, it could be a movie script or a brochure of a company’s products. It is everything and anything that gives us information and insights into the topic with which it has been tagged or titled.

Who are the players?

Under the information pillar, we have each and every online publisher as the contributor to the Information System. They do have their investments, strategies and returns in their own ways.

Who are the Blue Ocean Pioneers?

Search Engines…any names(Google.com). And their investments, strategies and returns are in the way of data centers, great user experience & contextual advertising respectively.

7 Pillars of the Information Age – Part 1

There are 7 pillars of the Internet or Information Age. They are:

1. Information
2. Communication
3. Transaction
4. Dissemination
5. Recreation
6. Automation
7. Education

All possible services, products and money is built and has to be built around these pillars. As and when I have time, I will be writing more about them.

Book Review -::- Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug

Don't Make Me Think - Steve Krug

Don’t Make Me Think – I bought this book quite a time back, and also finished reading it very soon (It took me 2 days, the book says it should be read in max 3-4 hours).

I have made a small extract of 8 pages from the book to use as guidelines for all my projects.

It is a very very good book to start with as far as Usability and User Experience is concerned.

Steve Krug the author has an accompanying website at http://www.sensible.com/ , and he rightly puts it as Advanced Common Sense Home.

Cool book, cool price, cool thoughts……go fot it.