Category Archives: Innovation

Innovation, Start-ups

Low Cost Laptops by 7iDigital

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7iDigital has been working to offer very affordable low-cost consumer electronics: Laptops, Mobile Phones, and Digital Cameras — starting with laptops in the very near future. With healthy specifications, and price starting under $250, they can meet the need of a wide range of students, professionals, and businesses.

Here’s the key message from 7iDigital:

“We believe the cost of mobile/ notebook computing is way too prohibitive and that today’s market leaders are just not capable of offering low cost laptops, even if they wanted to do it, because of their heavy fixed and operating costs, along with millions of dollars that they must spend on advertising to stay alive — all of which you have to pay for when you buy your laptop!

And on the other side, we are also seeing some innovative models coming up, which are priced under $400, but they often lack something useful/critical – a good hard drive, a dvd player, or a good battery pack. With millions of new Internet users every year, there is no reason why we should not have a low cost laptops that can also do all the basic professional work.

And we have been thinking about this for a while now, and decided to use our collective technology and business expertise to come up with quality laptops that are still very low cost. We plan to do this by having a minimum fixed cost base and will let our satisfied customers advertise for us and pass the savings to them. “

You can sign-up at www.7iDigital.com to receive more info and updates by email. Based on info that can be shared as of now, the laptops will be first launched in India in the very near future, and then they will also start becoming available for shipment in Europe and North America.

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Just last week, there was a news report of Intel planning to launch sub-$300 laptop, though no timeframe was given. Intel, the leading chip maker, is right in its market assessment. Over the last two years, the growth rates of notebooks have overtaken that of the desktops.

One of the most frequent questions has been: “What are the specs for your laptops? What all can one do with them?”

Here’s the Answer: We are committed to bringing good quality laptops at affordable prices, but we will not offer weak specs like some companies are doing. For example, bringing models with prices like Rs 14,500 etc but some of them are not even fully functional with just 128 MB RAM and 2-3GB Hard Drive – you can’t do much with those specs!

When we say low cost laptops, we are not aiming to cut corners on essential capabilities. We want to address the need for a functional laptop at low cost that will support the full range normal home usage – e.g. Internet, email, audio-video playback, office applications, document editing etc.

While our focus is to offer affordable low cost laptops, we also want to offer a couple of high performance models that can be used for computing intensive works like software development, gaming, etc.

Our laptops will support two operating systems: Microsoft Windows and Linux — our customers can choose. We are bound by business agreements not to share details till end-June.

We believe many of our buyers will are located outside India and they would like to buy a laptop for their family members in India. Reputation is important to us and we will not offer you something that we would not buy for our own family members.

Well, that’s all for now. We will share more updates about the planned notebook models soon.

Thanks, 7iDigital Team

Advertising, Business Development, Innovation, Internet, MyOrbit Blogs, Online Marketing, Sales & Marketing

MyOrbit Lab Report: Increase Website Traffic with Web Traffic Machines

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More Test Results: These tools are working. On our test site, we have got 30% increase in real visitor traffic in 2 days – that’s a significant increase worth reporting. But we spent a whole day in learning the system. So it is important to follow the tutorials to the exact word.

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Our Original Post from March 2nd:
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Now, which online business does not want to increase their online traffic? We can’t think of any! Whether you are selling insurance, or real estate, or credit cards, or printer-ink, or any other service, you want “interested” people to come to your site. We call that targeted website traffic.

A couple of days back, a new product suite has been launched by Bishop Anders from Texas, which looks like the most comprehensive website traffic generation system there is. In addition to 26 simple and complex tools, the package includes informative videos and guides to help you understand the full framework.

The tools are showing promising results in our experiments (remember we have lab to test these new products), and hence we will recommend this product. If you have an online business that needs more visitors, then should be good for you.

It operates on a monthly subscription fee $97 (easily worth the amount) for the value, and one can also try it out for 10 days with just $37. Learn more at their website: Web Traffic Machines

It is very important to understand that not all the tools in the package will be useful/relevant for each website/online business, and that you will need to see these as long-term helpers, rather than short-term tactics which could get your website under scrutiny, which is not good.

The membership slots are limited, so if you like it, join risk-free using the trial offer rather than losing the slot.

Innovation, Internet, New Media, Online Marketing

Podcasting For Business Communications

Podcasting is one of the newer methods for Business Communications. You may have already seen podcasts from a variety of special interests groups sending out their messages online to interested individuals. in the same promotional theories.

If you use podcasting properly, you can send a recorded audio message/discussion to all employees or to specific customers who has agreed to receive the information. Podcasting for business can also be information made available to recipients without it being automatically delivered to their device – like sending a URL where the actual podcast is available. This practice is more friendly to the target audience as they can view the message at their convenience.

Podcasting for business can be used to send information to employees by way of their cell phones or handheld devices. For example, a recording by the CEO on the new market challenges.

The podcast is uploaded to a server or distribution service where it can automatically to broadcast to all intended recipients at the same time. This ensures that all employees get the same message at the same time. The receiving devices can be used to view the message at the recipients’ convenience and with the right software and structure a confirmation message can be transmitted back to allow the sender to know the information has been received.

Other uses of podcasting for business include sending information to customers through wireless devices or by sending an email to them giving them the address at which information about products and services are available through podcasting.

This is ideal for sharing information that customers may find useful. For example, some best practices, or an interview with a product/solution expert that answers FAQ on a given topic.

Distribution: Sending an email or text message direct ing them to a podcasting site is recommended when podcasting for business. For example, here’s a podcast from Harvard Law School

Respect Privacy: When using podcasts for sharing information with customers, please make sure the customer has agreed to receive the information, to protect your business from any charges of spamming.

Artificial Intelligence, Innovation, People

Artificial Intelligence Evolution & Trends

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If you are interested in the concept of Artificial Intelligence, this post if for you. Here’s an interesting video on the topic of technological singularity.

The technological singularity takes place when the human race succeeds in creating an A.I being more intelligent than any human could ever be. Let us call it Alpha. Since the act of creating Artificial Intelligence is a task that benefits directly from the intelligence level of the creator, this more-intelligent-than-men being would surely be faster and more efficient at creating his own A.I being, let us call him Beta. This second generation being would too be better than its predecessor, and could in turn create a third one, Gamma, who is even more powerful, and so on. As capacity increases, the median generation time decreases, resulting in an exponential rate of evolution that quickly becomes asymptotic, at which point it becomes difficult to speculate further. No one knows what Omega will bring…

Many people think of Artificial Intelligence (or AI) as the stuff of movies, but it is not. AI is slowly but surely moving forward in multiple fronts. Every time, we develop a software (or a combination of software and hardware) that can make a decision on its based on dynamic events, it is AI.

We can be sure about the potential and very realistic possibility of AI playing greater role in more common works, like helping companies in analyzing data and trends to make business decisions. It may not be something that will be launched like a shining brand new car, but fair amount of groundwork continues to happen – for example, how Google analyzes the activities of millions of web surfers – developing a system that can do more than what any group of peoples can achieve. Some other companies are actively using Neural Networks in a variety of market data analysis and prediction. There are endless possibilities.

Do let us know if you are involved or interested in such projects. Some of our team members keenly follow such projects.

Advertising, Innovation, Internet, New Media, Online Marketing

2008 New Year Resolution: Publish Your Own Book

Over the last one month, it was the season of New Year resolutions, and there’s one resolution which seems to be getting more popular: to write a book (only a handful of folks, but that’s substantial already!). A colleague on Wall Street wants to write a book on Scuba Diving Adventures. And others want to write about better Business Practices, Internet Security, ERP implementation tips, etc. The topics are varied, but the point is – people want to express themselves to a larger circle – very much like a blog works in the online space.

And here’s a question that was asked earlier today by a VP of Technology Solutions, which prompted this post.

My son is near completion of his first book, I’m prejudiced because he’s my son but it is very good for a first novel. Just an opinion of a reader and a father :) What is the best way for him to go about getting noticed by publishers? This is completely new ground for him and I have no experience in this area so knowledgeable experience is greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Book publishing is easier today than ever before. Thanks to the Internet, and extensive communication infrastructure, Print on Demand (PoD) is a very viable and low-cost way to have your book published.

Based on my experience of publishing two books — an EBook and a Paperback that’s WIP, and helping a family member in publishing a printed hard-bound book —  I strongly believe that the old-style publishing of seeking an agent/publisher and the run-chase is not necessary anymore. The agents/traditional publishers are risk-averse and typically accept people with established credentials. So don’t waste time in writing and posting manuscript/ sample pages to an agent/publisher.

Things have moved beyond, and you should make full use of the POD (Print on Demand) capabilities of the following two publishers – they are the two best options for your case:

Book Surge (An Amazon Company): http://www.booksurge.com  
Lulu: http://www.lulu.com  

I have personally used the services of both of them, and spoken with their managers – these folks are very good, and can do any type of book – in 10% the time it will take in the traditional approach. Even when you publish with Lulu.com, you can get your book available on Amazon and other online/offline bookstores by paying about $100 dollars.

And once the book is published, you can use the Internet to promote the book’s web page on Lulu or Amazon – if you are unsure how to do – just let us know using the Contact page. This is something we do N times every day!

Good Luck!
Shankar