Desicritics Category: BizTech: Web 2.0

Kindling The E-Book Revolution

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:53:07 EDT

In the dim and distant past, I have used the Palm Pilot as well as the Sony Clie before as my e-book reader but after having moved to a Blackberry which did my PDA bits, I never could get back to getting an e-book reader. In an ideal situation, if the Blackberry can give me Windows functionality, a very good camera (5-6 MP) and some kind of e-book reader capability, I would be happy. Just one device to carry around, but in the meantime, I either had to read on my laptop or on my home pc.

But recently, on holiday in the USA, I was gifted an Amazon Kindle by my brother-in-law and his sister. This is one of the best gifts one could have hoped for and I immediately started drooling over it.

The Kindle comes in an attractive box, it looks like a book itself. Nice packaging. Something that you can easily plonk into your bookshelf without any issues, looks pretty neat, those letters and symbols floating around?

The package is clipped closed with a rubber band and opening it shows you the kindle on the right and a storage compartment on the left which contains the leather case, the charger, USB cord and the manual.

Took it out, charged it up (see the white charger? shades of Apple?). This was in the USA and I have an amazon.com account. So when I powered it up, it asked me for my amazon.com account, put that in and viola, I was up and running.

Can you see the little round button on the right hand side? looks like a wheel? It is a wheel and click mouse. The lone channel on top of the wheel with a small silver pointer running up and down is the main guidance mechanism. Pressing it brings up a context sensitive menu, you can go to the Kindle Store (I am in the UK, so the wireless network doesnt work, but in the UK, you can subscribe to newspapers, blogs, magazines and the lot, brilliant stuff).

It seamlessly connected to the Amazon.com website via the wireless cellular link, showed me my purchases and recommendations, and so on and so forth.

I did a download for my son and it was again seamless, a chapter came down, he read it and it was quite easy.

As I would be in the UK, I would not be able to connect wirelessly, so have to do the USB business. So I connected to Many Books, a site with free books in kindle and mobipocket format books and downloaded the top 10.

Here's the Count of Monte Cristo e-book. Pretty crisp to read. There are 2 buttons on the right, for next page and back. On the left, there are 2 buttons, back page and next page.

You can change the text size, this is the default big ass size, which I reduced as soon as I could. The battery life is amazing. I have been carrying it around for the past week in India without charging and have read it for about 15 hours now, and the charge meter has rarely shifted. Oh! yes, I did have a problem with it, it froze at one point. But being a good old windows user for a long period of time, simply opened the kindle's back flap, got out my trusted paper clip and gave the reset button a damn good shove. Obviously nothing happened. Still frozen. So swore at it, banged it on the desk, prayed to Ganesh, poked the reset button for 5 seconds and it worked.

I have downloaded the mobipocket creater to convert my e-library to the mobipocket format. The Kindle comes with 200MB of built in memory which is good enough for about 100-150 books, I guess. I have a few CDs full of scanned and downloaded and free and gifted and every weekend, there is a pleasurable time reading and converting those books. There is also a slot for an SD card, where you can store music and additional books if you need, although I dont see the need for it. I use my mobile phone to listen to music.

All in all, a very neat device, very hardworking and rugged (have dropped it, travelled with it jammed in my backpack for 1 week, swore at it, read it in the bog and in the dusty environs of Gurgaon, no problems) and is quite well readable in all angles and lighting.

And yes, you can read this in the bath, you have to be careful, of course, dont drop the thing into the bath, but then, you would not do that to a paper book either, would you? Some drops of water did splash on it, but a simple wipe took care of that. Only quibble? It just doesn't smell the same, but you can annotate and clip away to glory..

Oh!, the screen saver is just brilliant, the images that it throws up are very amazing, old authors, old wood cut impressions of printing presses, exotic and strange word definitions, very good. Good first impression. Anybody who is a logophile and/or a bibliophile would love this.

Technorati Tags: Bibliophilia, Logophilia, Kindle, Reviews

Product Review: Google Chrome - The New New Thing

Aaman Lamba — Tue, 2 Sep 2008 15:47:07 EDT

Google seems to bringing order to its cornucopia of services, slowly yet strategically. Like all grand designs, the emergence of something big wasn't evident in the beginning, perhaps even to the creators. The basic structure remains the same - to provide convenient access to information through an unobtrusive intelligence layer. The services have been layered in, providing essential plumbing to what is evidently an operating system for the always-connected noosphere.

Another critical component was introduced today - the much-awaited Google Chrome web browser. While one might wonder what incremental value yet another browser might provide as an interface, it is the primary means of human-Internet interaction, and played right, could mean a consistent memory layer that brings the Google Mind ever closer to sentience. From a user perspective, there's little to write home about just yet, if one overlooks the relatively new process-independent tab architecture (IE 8 does the same thing, and IE 7+ separates the browser UI and tabs in terms of permissions) and the minimalistic interface. The pain of giving up essential add-ons and workflow steps might mean more than using the next new new thing, but Google is looking beyond the desktop client, even if the first release of Google Chrome is Windows-only.

In a few months or perhaps sooner, it is highly likely Google Chrome will be the front end of Android-based phones. The non-standard Windows UI used in Google Chrome makes sense when one visualizes a small scale equivalent on a mobile phone. The near-instantaneous startup is going to be handy for an always-on interface. Google might go further in terms of bundling services if it didn't have the ghost of Microsoft Anti-Trust in its rear view mirror. As it is, it allows you the option of changing default search engines from Google and Google applications don't seem to be running any differently within Chrome or other browsers, expect perhaps Google Reader. The most-visited sites are a nice touch when opening a new tab, and the ability to slide a tab over others is a neat touch. There does not seem to be torrent download capabilities and I strangely didn't see any auto-discovery of RSS feeds on a website. The setup told me it was importing my Firefox bookmarks, but I don't see them anywhere, and why leave out IE?

JavaScript and CSS rendering appear to be smooth, and performance is good. I noticed five chrome.exe processes in my task manager when I had only three tabs opened, ranging between 20 MB and 42 MB each in terms of memory usage, but a large number of page faults, and minimal bloat over an hour of running. The memory utilization was almost three times that in Mozilla Firefox for a similar load. One simple script in MovableType gave unexpected results, triggering a search when I hit the save button. Pages can fail to be rendered, with an 'Aw Snap!' error that blanks out the tab. Not a nice experience, to be frank.

Incognito Mode, or as it came to be known when Microsoft announced the feature in Internet Explorer 8 - porn mode - is invoked by Ctrl+Shift+N and removes pages browsed from the browser cache and history, and avoids cookies.

For the moment, I'm not going to be giving up any of my current browsers, and it remains to be seen if this new kid on the block lives up to its promises.

The CFO-CIO Crossover, Part III

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:30:59 EDT

We spoke about the interesting roles of CFO and CIO and about the development of both roles in the past and the present. In this essay we will look at the future and make some predictions about the cooperation between them.

1. What developments will occur in IT in the next three to five years? If one looks at a standard finance function, then these are the broadly the main chunks: Product Control, Financial Control, Finance Administration, Operations, Mandatory Reporting, Management Reporting, Taxation, ALM, Risk etc. All these areas are going to get impacted by improvements to workflow systems, communication applications, business intelligence systems, reconciliation systems, fraud detection and exception management systems, product control systems, spreadsheet management applications, better reporting cube / data warehouses / data marts, ERM systems, better cost analysis applications, and so on and so forth. One can write a full book on just this question, but those are the application facing bits. There will be huge numbers of finance related changes coming from the internet, the client aspects, the hardware bits, the database bits, the networking parts, the communication channels, the IT people, the service delivery model, and so on and so forth, which is too much to go into now.

2. What issues will arise for finance and accounting in the next three to five years? The main issues which will arise can be divided into the following categories:

(a) future regulatory driven change such as liquidity risk management proposals, contingency funding modelling etc. – this will cause a significant impact, best case scenario – a new regulatory report, worst case scenario – a full-blown Basel II type implementation;

(b) feeding old regulatory changes into BAU such as Basel II – Basel II has been rolled out but it will need more time to bed down and impact BAU aspects such as risk weighted capital allocation and performance evaluation;

(c) hitting barriers to service delivery such as human capacity or process architecture / issues;

(d) sharply increased demands for aggressive capital control and management;

(e) increasing demand for better quality financial intelligence and MIS by the business;

(f) little appetite for errors or operational risk or high emphasis on reputational risk management emanating from financial misstatements or mispricing,

(g) continuing and increasing M&A activity etc.

3. How will these issues and developments impact the CFO/CIO relationship? From a generic basis, as can be seen from the above, the level of technical and technology impact on the CFO is just going to grow and grow and grow. So CFO’s will become much more demanding. Not only that, they will expect CIO’s to take responsibility of BAU activities, something that is not commonly understood and accepted. SOXA approvals by CIO’s have caused a severe issue in terms of how CIO’s see their roles, but if this is going to be extended to other parts of the Finance business, then the CIO will become much more embedded in the BAU Finance Change function. So the impact will be from both sides, pushing each other into each other’s arms. Whether it is a hug or a squish depends upon how open-minded the two executives are.

4. How will the issues change the way IT aligns with business strategy? IT will move up the decision making value chain. Before any changes come down the pipeline, IT will start getting involved, because financial institutions have started to understand the benefit of including IT earlier in the decision making process. The business has started to realise that while they define the strategy, delivery is most often dependent upon IT. So the more they involve IT, the more delivery is improved in lock step. IT has to become proactive as well, in terms of analysing its service delivery model to become far more agile and mobile; in terms of analysing its technology M&A methodology; in terms of its reporting data warehouses; etc.

5. Will IT drive changes in business strategy? Will business strategy changes and external factors (e.g. globalisation) drive changes within IT? Will both occur simultaneously? Will IT drive changes in business strategy? On a corporate level we will see very little of that, but on a line of business level yes we will. I can see and have seen business strategy change because new technology has come forth, such as in trading. For example, expansion of product coverage within the FIX protocol can trigger changes in business strategy by suddenly opening new markets or changing existing markets. Changes in technical market infrastructure, such as addition of a new stock trading platform can trigger and driver changes in strategy. Better risk management and fraud detection technologies can give confidence to managers that they can extend personal loans or credit cards to new customer bases. Will business strategy and external factors drive changes in IT? Of course, completely. And yes, both can and do occur simultaneously.

6. How will these changes play out? Let me bring my tarot card deck, crystal ball and tea leaves cup out. That is to say that anything might be possible.

7. Will these changes have an impact on IT’s influence on the integrity of the financials? Anything that changes IT has a 30-50% chance to impact the integrity of the financials (based very roughly on the proportion of systems impacted by SOXA compared to the non-impacted systems). So that will indicate where we have an issue if any external factor impacts technology.

8. What does the future look like for finance and accounting technology? Very bright. And that is primarily because the finance and accounting arena is and will be hit by a tidal wave of changes from its business clients, regulators, professional bodies (IASB..), and so on and so forth. And massive, rapid and huge change like this is perfect breeding grounds for that perfect storm for technology, it will provide mandatory driven investments, fear, ambition, vagueness, and dreams for results/order where technology loves to breed and innovate

We have spoken about the interesting roles of CFO and about the development of both roles in the past and the present. We have also made some predictions about the developments in the future. One aspect is certain, technology is here to stay. While before a CFO would worry about the professional standards, rules and processes versus the humans who would operationalise them, the CFO has to worry about the technology as well. In many structural ways, technology itself is changing the finance profession and vice versa. The future not only promises to be bright, it promises to be entwined like the proverbial double helix.

Technorati Tags: technology, management, financial institutions

Photo Essay: Worldwide Photo Walk, Bangalore

Tanay Behera — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:47:06 EDT

Last Saturday morning offered perfect weather for going out and capturing a few moments of Bangalore city through camera clicks. I, along with other shutterbugs, made full use of this opportunity as we participated in the Bangalore leg of the Worldwide Photo Walk. The Photo Walk was held to mark the release of Adobe Lightroom, a photography software application developed by Adobe. Bangalore was the only city in India where this was talking place, apart from the other 192 cities across the world.

There was no planned agenda for the walk and it was quite informal. We all started the event at around 7:30 A.M. from Mayo Hall, one of the prominent landmarks in Bangalore. Then we clip-clopped on the Residency Road. On our journey we were free to capture anything and everything in our camera lenses.

I was in a mood to make some bio-scopic compositions, even though I was walking down a road heavily masked with glitz shopping malls. Bangalore's old memories are fading very fast, both in the physical environment and in the social atmosphere. That's a logical outcome of economic growth, so better capture those in pictures before they are reduced to dust.

Just a decade ago, anyone could walk down the narrow alleyways and sip a cup of coffee or tea for one rupee or so. But today rusted locks adorn the entrance doors of these neighborhood tea/coffee houses. The once sleepy get together places have given way to a cosmopolitan shopping juggernaut.

Something is definitely lost, for a few its for the better, while for the rest, its for the worse. The city's populace is no longer nostalgic about the remnants and with an urge to modernize fast, the Government and the builders have gutted the city's very soul.

Bangalore and traffic jams are synonymous. The intensity of the blockage varies with the time period of the day. Even though the day had just started, there were long queues of two-wheelers parked near the road.

Construction sites are a common sight but what really adheres to one's vision is the vibrant life visible on the streets. Like this one, a cobbler mending and polishing shoes, sitting on a tiled pathway by the side of the road, enjoying the cacophony of the traffic in front of him.

Today, the city that is bursting at the seams is home to people from so many different strata of life, each seemingly a different world of its own. Some enjoy food in the elegant and refined restaurants that have mushroomed in the cities and some are happy with the food that a make-shift stall owner provides.

Who cares as long as its food?

This way the walk continued and many eyes in the traffic were settled on me and few of my fellow shutterbugs. Since there were few foreigners in our group, the autowallas thought that we were tourists, exploring the city over the weekend and approached us with invites to take us on a paid tour of the city. It was around 11 A.M. that we finally decided to put an end to the walk. All of us gathered in the Mocha restaurant where many had late breakfast amidst passionate discussions about the snaps that each had taken.

All in all a refreshing way to spend four hours of a weekend, walking down the narrow streets and capturing life in pictures. By the way, were these snaps, Ok?

You can check the photos taken by all the participants in the event here.

Degrees in the Virtual World?

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:46:19 EDT

One of the advantages of having friends who are now big, grand pooh-bahs in the academic world, is that one gets a fascinating insight into what the future of our society will be. After all, these professors are putting in place, policies and procedures that will impact learning, teaching, research and the development of universities now and deep into the future.

This summer, I was having a conversation with two of my friends who are both senior professors in the United Kingdom, and both in responsible management positions with huge publication records. The conversation drifted to how universities would be reacting to structural changes such as the internet, the virtual reality world, globalisation of education, reduction in public education subsidy, globalisation per se, the business cycle, change of the student persona from 'dumb thankful student' to 'demanding educational service recipient customer', and so on and so forth.

It was a fascinating conversation and I learnt a heck of a lot about how universities operate. Given the financial pressures, universities are now moving to get as many students as they can from outside of the EU. Why? That is because they are the students who pay the full whack, sometimes an eye watering 10-20 times the amount paid by local or European students. But then when somebody is forced to mortgage their house, or take a very expensive student loan, then when they come to these Universities, they naturally demand a quality education.

Faced with a university and staff which never had to justify their quality (well, not that much anyway), it is a shocking change in philosophy and operating environments. And from what I am hearing, it is not something that is being accepted easily. Both my friends were talking about how they are finding it difficult to recruit staff, or to motivate them or to keep their students interested with a good pipeline going.

I was obviously coming at this from a different perspective (see here for my previous twittering on universities). I think that the universities of today will be very different from the universities in say, a decade from now. For example, the firm where I work, is planning to set up its own business school. The firm where I worked previously had a full fledged campus and its own business schools. Large firms are starting - or already have - their own educational institutions.

But more importantly, in the dim and distant past, I was qualified as a Prince 2 practitioner. It involved my sitting in a class room and giving examinations, two of them, over an entire week. Now I am rolling this same qualification out to my function and we will end up with more than 100 people working on this by end of the next year. Guess what the major difference is? 70% of the previous time would now be done electronically. In other words, e-learning will replace 70% of the prior classroom teaching. And then somebody will come in and run an examination which will also be electronically administered. So what happened to the teacher?

Oh!, did I tell you that my function is worldwide, which will be deployed out to anybody who wishes to be qualified as such? Something akin to a global university? Why not? See this story as an example. For the first time, an educational certificate will be granted to people who will be trained primarily via Second Life.

Did you spot the other issue, namely that replication of knowledge delivery is now near cost-less (at least to the provider, I still have to pay a few quid for every additional licence). A teacher's main rationale for existing was that knowledge transmission was a 'one to one' or at the most 'one to many', which was not replicable easily. You couldn't just read a book and be done with it, but required additional explanations and practice sessions. But now, it can be replicated and if you do want to see a face, well, you can go on Second Life to get a virtual one.

And the education on Second Life or e-learning is and can be asynchronous. You do not have to be online or active at the same time as that of the teachers, because it can be taped or replicated or delivered irrespective of whether it is night or day.

You might then say that one would still need a degree to get a job. Well, here's another issue, because that is not necessarily the case. If all that I am checking is your ability to do a job, I dont need to see your university degree. For example, if you want to trade in the financial markets and offer investment advice, all you have to prove is that you know the laws, language and know the professional standards (which is what Prince 2 type of courses do). Yes, I know I am talking about a unique type of role, but consider most of the knowledge based industries which require professional non-technical training. This is not relating to stuff like engineering, medicine or architecture.

But what if you wanted to hire a salesman for napkins? How about wanting to hire a software coder? No? How about a graphic artist? What about a weather forecaster on TV? What about a customer service representative? What is the link between his job, a degree for it, a way of learning, or even a particular university? How will an electronic degree change this job or its earning potential? Points to ponder, eh?

Technorati Tags: Education,Universities,Internet

The CFO-CIO Cross-over, Part II

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 01:14:13 EDT

We earlier spoke about the interesting roles of the CFO and the CIO and what it means to “manage the business” and to “work very closely”? Before we can answer these questions though we have to take a look at the development of both roles. These questions were taken from a workshop arrangement from New Zealand, the answers are mine.

Part A: The past and the present

1. What influence has IT had in getting business to where it is now?

Hugely important, technology has changed the character of financial services, but then, financial services was always at the forefront of adopting technical innovation, whether it was the idea of using wax and clay tablets in Sumerian times to pigeon post in Europe during the middle ages to telegraph during the Victorian and European wars or fax machines or now in terms of global private banking websites, international stock trading electronic gateways, automated insurance quoting engines, offshore call centres linked by CRM systems, intelligent credit risk scoring engines, and so on and so forth.

Technology has allowed firms to gain scale without needing human investment, it has allowed firms to concentrate on their core competitive advantage factor while disposing of all non-core functions and assets.

2. What is the relationship between CFO/CIO at present?

a. What are the positive and negative consequences of the CFO having responsibility for IT?

The main negative consequence is that the CFO, if he is not smart, sees IT as a cost line rather than something that is as important to the bank as the human resources function. Frankly, you wouldn’t put the HR function under the control of the CFO, would you? Then why IT? So the entire IT function starts and stays defensive if treated as a barely tolerated and often thumped cost line. On the positive side, if the CFO is smart and can see technology as a business enabler, then the synergy that the combination of CFO + IT is world beating. IT can benefit from the discipline that a CFO can bring to the table such as demanding business cases for technology investments, driving strategic change, improving technology and delivery sourcing, etc.

b. What are the consequences of having two specific reporting lines into the CEO? Are there any advantages to two distinct reporting lines?

At that level at a big bank, it far too heavily depends upon the three individuals concerned and not on the functions themselves. Because, at that level, the nitty-gritty details of actually running the technology or financial function rarely appears on the radar screen. What does matter at that level is the autonomy given to the two functions, the level to which the finance function is challenging and managing the business to the level to which the technology function has provided value addition to the business. So whether it is good or bad depends upon the three people concerned.

c. How can the relationship between the two be bridged?

Usually it can be bridged with difficulty, because for a good relationship, it requires the CFO to have a forward-looking, change oriented and risk taking frame of mind, while it requires the CIO to be disciplined, talking business, structured, stabilising and think long-term. But some ways that can be useful is for both to write their own visions of where the business will be in five years, then translate that into what it will require their functions to be (people, technology, process, places, etc.) and then get together to dovetail these two plans. Then operationalise by dumping a dollop of agreed governance and investment. Some questions are below which can help you determine if a bridge is needed or some improvements need to be put in:

i. Do the CFO and CIO meet regularly with a set agenda?

ii. Does the CFO challenge the technology plan? And on what basis? Is that besides a cost basis?

iii. Does portfolio management of IT discretionary spend happen? And is that overseen or controlled by the CFO?

iv. Does the IT function provide rigorous business cases which are tracked and followed up?

v. Are there productivity improvement measures which the CFO and CIO agree on the business as usual side of technology?

vi. How involved is the CFO function in the technology sourcing side?

vii. Do you look at purchasing as a stationary and paper purchasing function or is there a strategic sourcing function which has both technology and finance participation?

3. How successful is IT in aligning with business strategy both on an organisational level and specific to the finance department? Is it always complementary or can it end up being at cross purposes?

Generally in financial institutions, IT is well clued-up and successful in aligning with the tactical business strategy, but not the very high-level business strategy levels for obvious reasons. Technology is an enabler of business, not a primary driver of business. You rarely go into a country because your technology allows you to do so, however, you go because of revenue, cost or other strategic drivers and technology makes it happen. On the finance department side, I am afraid IT and Finance are rarely aligned. Reasons are many, because many technology folks are scared spit-less of the finance folks. So the bare minimum is provided and initiative/innovation is frowned upon. Consequently, at best the finance and accounting technology function is outsourced in many industries or ignored at worst. The bright side is there is rarely at cross purposes but that is a poisoned chalice, an ignored function is more dangerous to a firm than a contested function because at least there is more chance of somebody actually noticing that contestation and doing something about it.

4. What influence does IT have on the integrity of financials?

A huge, literally earth-shattering influence. It is a direct relationship, because good IT means good financial integrity. This is the reason SOXA has a deep IT element as well. When I had to sign off SOXA compliance previously, it was clear that the impact was huge and any changes made to the relevant technology systems and processes would have a significant impact on the financials of the firm. Let us put it in another way, 90% of all changes that will hit our finance functions will have some kind of an IT component, and a crucial part of the success of the project will be dependent upon the IT performance and delivery.

We spoke about the interesting roles of CFO and CIO and about the development of both roles in the past and the present. In the last essay we will look at the future and make some predictions about the cooperation between the CFO and CIO.

Technorati Tags: technology, finance, financial institutions, management

The CFO-CIO Cross-over, Part I

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:33:47 EDT

The CFO and CIO roles are interesting roles when compared from various dimensions. As it so happens, I just moved from supporting a CIO to supporting a CFO in a bank, so I thought of shedding light on some aspects of these two roles. The two roles are simple, one looks after the financial matters and the other looks after the information technology of a firm. One would expect the twain would not meet other than the CIO is supporting the CFO's technology and the CFO seeing the CIO as a supplier and a cost line, but life is much more complicated. In a small way, a good CFO-CIO relationship especially in financial institutions, can lead to massive competitive advantage.

Where does one start? One way would be to talk about the past and present of the technology/financial relationship and then my thoughts about the future. As there is a lot of information and facts about these two roles, this will be a series rather than an essay. But before delving into the prosaic matters of organizational structures and strategic alignment, there is the small matter of philosophy to be handled. And that is the philosophy of technology to the CFO herself. And this is where I see the crucial issue.

Accounting and finance, by their nature, are backward-looking and are oriented towards making sense of disorder according to strict rules. There is nothing wrong with that, because that is how you come up with a normative view of the world, something that you can compare and contrast with a fair degree of accuracy and consistency across the world. The field and thus the people working in it are also fairly predictive and reactive in nature. Their remuneration patterns are high and consistent in nature, job descriptions are standardised. This world handles change rather slowly, systematically and gradually, with due consideration and with controls - Salt of the (business) earth so to say. But that sits uneasily with the broader technology world.

The technology area, whether on the web 2.0, the applications, the networks, the technology people, their remuneration, the IC chips, the massively online multiplayer worlds, virtual worlds, ERM systems, virtual reality, Offshoring and outsourcing, SOA, you name it, are almost like the anti-thesis of what I described above. Change is something that is constant; it is creative destruction all the time. The basic foundations of what you believe in change so rapidly, skills become obsolete quickly, and so on and so forth.

You might want to ask, how does that matter to me as a CFO? Here is precisely where it hits the CFO, because technology is redefining our customers, our employees, our ways of doing business, our ways of valuing assets, the question of governance, the communication channels, the people interaction, the coverage of events, and so on and so forth. In other words, just when the CFO is desperately trying to make things simple, explain everything and keep things under control, technology is making things agile, mobile and hostile. You do not believe me? Well, here’s something that you can see for yourself. In a finance department, more and more people are non-financial or accounting people. More and more, the regulators are finding it difficult to just rely on accounting data and demand further information to control the business. And internally, the business also demands much more than just accounting data, it demands commentary which allows the business to be agile, mobile and hostile. Customers walk in and demand information which we cannot provide. Can you imagine trying to provide bank account level information as rich as what you can get from a web page counter software application?

How does the idea of a going concern relate to a website originated business which can be fully automated, dealing in virtual assets such as songs or coding applets with payment in Linden dollars and the possibility of doing a gift exchange within the World of Warcraft? How do you handle a customer who has no conception of paying for assets because he has spent his lifetime getting his songs, films, phone calls, entertainment, software, assets etc. for free or through swapping them online?

What is the role of an intermediary - like a financial institution - when the concept of assets themselves is changing and everybody is running like mad after Intellectual Property and Virtual Assets? How do you account for depreciation of assets which have no discernible way of judging decay or usage? I can put aside 33% every year for a machine because I guess it has a three-year life, but how much should I put aside for an online constantly regenerating random number generator which theoretically has an infinite life? Actually, most software online technology assets have infinite lives. And if the value addition is happening by a group of enthusiasts based on a free open source model, then what do you say to the tax man?

Lest you assume I am just talking about software, how about virtualization of servers? If the asset based was dependent upon a number of servers, then it has just been virtualized, and if you want to go for the virtualized servers, then they have just gone into the Google or Amazon cloud. It is not like everything is moving 100% into the technology world, but every bit of interest to the CFO is being impacted by technology and is making structural changes. Take the example of resource planning. Previously, if your business grew, you would simply increase the number of analysts and accountants you had and kept on supporting the business, but now you cannot do that. You have to have technology to preserve history, run the rules, generate the reports, do the regulatory stuff.

Basel II taught a deep lesson to the world of finance, namely that if a CFO ignores what’s happening in the business, then satisfying requirements such as Basel II will not be possible. This is so, because the front office business and their systems are simply unable to provide the information in the right fashion which the CFO wants, and mostly, it is because the CFO did not specify or demand the front office business and systems to be transparent and fungible as far as accounting and financial information are concerned. This very same point also applies to the CRO by the way. While there is a surprisingly large number of CFOs who are forward-looking and technology literate, CFOs should recognise that there is a philosophical tension between their profession and technology.

While you might differ, my gut feel is that a CFO has to have a very firm control over the technology that she/he has, what’s coming down the pipeline and what’s generally happening around the technical world. In other words, she/he has to be clued-up and work closely with the CIO to manage the business going forward. Now what does this “manage the business” mean? And what does “work very closely” mean? All these questions are strictly with reference to banking because the relationship between IT and Finance is industry and to a lesser extent size, specific. This is what we will find out in the next part.

The Website Ad Placement Heat Map

Ashish — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 07:27:38 EDT

One of the most important points to consider when trying to make money from ads on web pages is the proper placement of ads. If you have done some studies in this area, you could have come across many people trying to sell their secrets of Ad placement or how to make more money from properly placing Ads. However, the basis of many secrets of ad placement is how the human eye perceives ads, how they fit into the page, and whether people notice the ads or ignore them. And the basis for much of this is something called the 'Heat Map'. The Heat Map specifies positions on the page that are much more likely to catch user attention, and other places where users are likely to ignore the ads.

The Google page for the Heat Map specifies more details: Certain locations tend to be more successful than others. This "heat map" illustrates the ideal placing on a sample page layout. The colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance). All other things being equal, ads located above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold. Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page.

Keep in mind that while the Heat Map is a good starting point, you need to spend more time on trying to figure out how your users read your page, and the amount of ads and their placement such that they earn the maximum money for you. This will not be a one-time activity, but something that is likely to take several iterations before you reach a higher level of earnings.

Why Does Google Search Slap A Warning On Your Site?

Ashish — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:15:13 EDT

Most people have found over a period of time that Google Search drives a large amount of traffic to your sites. If you take an estimate for the number of people visiting sites outside of large corporate or media sites, you would find that Google generates more than 50% of the visits to your site. Now think: Have you ever seen in searches a small line of text below a search result ("This site may be harmful to your computer"). Google does not allow a person to go through to the site easily (you have to copy the link and put it in the address bar of the browser). This is potentially suicidal for the success of the site since your traffic may drop significantly. This has happened to me twice, and I have not yet been able to figure out the reasons.

When this happens and you find your own site behaving in this manner, you need to find out what is going wrong. You need to click on the search result link, and you will get to a warning page where you will find a small report on the problem, and a section at the bottom for people who may be the owners of the affected page. There will be a link in this section, and you can use that link to get to a diagnostic page. Once there, look at the problem in more detail. It will also tell you that more details are available at the Google Webmasters Tools page. In order to find more details about the kind of problems typically indicated, use these 2 pages for more details:

1. Google Help Page on Malware
2. StopBadWare.org's tips for cleaning and securing your website
(You get a lot of details on what kind of phishing, malware, bad ads, and other such problems that could get your site in problems. You also learn more about the review process that could help in getting the Google warning lifted)

There are three basic steps to maintaining a clean site:
1. Identifying badware on your site
2. Removing badware from your site
3. Preventing badware in the future
Once you are at #2, you can request a review and hopefully the warning gets lifted (it happened for me).

The Apple iPhone 3G: How Steve Jobs Fooled Me

Sakshi Juneja — Sat, 5 Jul 2008 03:45:12 EDT

Undoubtedly the iPhone is one of the sweetest inventions in recent times. Well at least in my books. And I wouldn't be wrong in stating, countless others share the same view. Released on 29th June 2007 (in the US), in matter of weeks the world was gripped in its craze. I remember constantly eyeing eBay iPhone sellers, looking for that 'one' perfect deal. The temporary trauma that came along with my iPhone package still lingers - let's just say I still have nightmares about paperweight iPhones.

All that was then, the iPhone is now old news. What is in the news however is its rejuvenated version – the iPhone 3G.

The 3G model is yet to be released (a week from now to be precise) and I know tons of folks who can't wait to get their hands on this beauty. Yours truly included, I mean after all it does fall within my "all things sexy" category.

Besides all the new features such as the two colour options (Black/White), 16 GB option, 2 megapixels camera, 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, App store and Microsoft Exchange, the most attractive bit of all is its marketed price; $199 for 8 GB model & $299 for 16 GB model. Now when converted into Indian rupees, the amount sounds easy on the ears and the pocket.

But if you go by this report you will realize things are not always what they seem, especially good things.

The iPhone 3G will cost Rs 20,000 in India - the costliest in the world.

The iPhone 3G will be free in the UK as it's subsidised by O2, a service provider; it's 1 Euro (Rs 70) in Germany, again subsidised by T-mobile and costs US$ 199 (Rs 8,557) in the USA, thanks to AT&T. The phone costs US$ 350 (Rs 15,050) in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and the Philippines. It is not available in Dubai. [Link]

And if like me you too are thinking of purchasing this baby for a lesser price via the ever-enterprising eBay or requesting your chacha's wife's grandfather's cousin's grandson to send you US-made maal – well then, my darling, you are in for a disappointment.

US buyers will have to purchase a service contract with AT&T before leaving the store; you cannot buy it online. The phone has to be activated within 30 days or the buyer will be penalized. You cannot cancel the two-year contract with AT&T. Either a cancellation fee of 175$ (Rs 7,525) will be charged or the phone has to be returned.

And for my buddies in US of A who are jumping with joy (and mocking us poor souls back home) thinking about the dream figure; here's a news flash for ya.

(Only) if you're "upgrade eligible" (log into your AT&T account to see if you are), you'll be able to buy the new iPhone for the discounted price of $199 for the 8GB version or $299 (INR 8,584.86) for the 16GB (INR 12,898.86) model. (AT&T is somewhat vague about the eligibility criteria, although your credit history and the time remaining on your contract are factors.) You'll also have to pay an $18 "upgrade fee."

If you're not eligible for the discount, you'll have to fork over extra for an "early upgrade"-$399 for the 8GB iPhone 3G or $499 for the 16GB model. Ouch.

AT&T also says that a "no-commitment" (read: no contract) iPhone 3G will be available soon, at $599 for the 8GB version and or $699 for the 16GB handset. Pricey, but hey- no two-year contract.

Unfortunately, AT&T won't offer the new iPhone on a prepaid basis, at least not at launch. [Link]

Ha Ha Ha.

On a serious note though, personally speaking, shelling Rs. 20,000 on an officially purchased iPhone isn't much. In 2006 I had bought an unofficial Sony Ericsson W900i for 25 grand and it didn't have half the features present in the 3G iPhone. Also when you compare it to high-Nokia models currently in the market, the price of an iPhone is comparatively quite low.

So it only seems wiser to buy an official piece, the only drawback – can you wait for another 3 months?

(*Picture Source : Apple Inc)