Virtual Money

The concept of money has been so deeply rooted into our psyche that we unquestioningly equate value and money. Whereas money was designed to be, and continues to be a metric of value, and not value itself.

Idea of the day:

Virtual Currency

Since money is a metric of value, then it is indeed possible to have other metrics as well. In fact, there are already heavy layers of abstraction that have been placed over the abstraction of money, to create advanced metrics, such as real estate, stocks and options, and a hundred other instruments that an economist or a financial analyst could tell you about. In the virtual world of the web media, a new metric is also being spawned.

All over the world, gamers have been paying real money for products that do not exist except on the web. Even people who are not serious gamers, but would just like to kill time playing Farmville do not mind spending some cash for the sake of what they consider to be entertainment. And since money itself is an abstraction, one may argue that the virtual goods are as valuable as real goods, and so is the virtual currency. How much this line between "real" and "virtual" currencies would be blurred in the years to come remains to be seen, but the potential of virtual currencies and goods in making "real" profits has been capitalized upon (pun intended!) by companies like Zynga, which is one of the fastest growing web-based start-ups today. And what also remains to be seen is whether this is indeed an encouraging concept or a disturbing one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/technology/internet/07virtual.html?_r=1

Reverse Business

A lot of time energy and money is spent on figuring out the right business model for a venture. But sometimes the most obvious sources of revenue may be glossed over.

Idea of the day:

Pay me for my information

Almost everyone has an online presence in the form of your Facebook account, your Twitter updates or your simple Gmail activities. The largest source of revenue for web-based businesses comes from advertising. This advertising is targeted to your "needs" and "interests". Every time you check your mail, you get advertisements on your page related to the content of your mail. Facebook proposes to use your social online network to enhance the quality of information reaching you, and in the process, make profits for themselves. These business models essentially make profits by processing your information.

Is it then possible to have a model in which you charge for your data? If companies can charge advertisers for using their online presence as a platform to make profits, it should also be possible for you to charge companies for using your online presence to make their profits. This may seem like a shift from traditional models, because typically individuals do not charge for access to their information. There may come a paradigm shift where individuals realize that they are not mere customers, but are themselves service providers. Something thats worth exploring surely!

Open World

Speaking of sources, one cannot miss the biggest one of all-- the open source movement. Companies and individuals are being forced to think of ways to embrace and include open source design in their strategies.

Idea of the day:

The Future is Open

To say that the open source idea offers exciting opportunities would be a definite understatement. The applications of open source design is making inroads into healthcare, where doctors can monitor and access patient information through websites for various uses and patients can learn from experiences of other patients suffering from the same diseases (see this talk). It is making its way into education where Universities are making content freely available for anyone who wants to learn. Ideas are germinating for open source methods in art, design and hobbies. Perhaps one of the most powerful areas of its application is the shift in conventional wisdom about Government and bureaucracy. David Cameron, the leader of Britain's Conservative Party gave this great talk at a recent TED event.

Here is a great infographic showing the progress and applications of open source. One of the frequently asked questions about open source business models is that if its all open source, where does the money come from? The CEO of Red Hat, Jim Whitehurst answers these questions in this interview. The bottomline is, open source has a lot of avenues to offer, and if you aren't thinking along these lines yet, now would be a good time to start!

The Crowd is Out there!

Recently a start-up called CrowdFlower raised $5 million for expanding its services globally. What does the company do? It offers companies labor that is floating around in the cloud.

Idea of the day:

Crowdsource

We've heard enough about outsourcing. Now there is a new possibility that is taking shape: Crowdsourcing. There are a lot of jobs that companies do not want to spend valuable resources on. For example, tedious tasks such as data aggregation and organization do not need highly skilled professionals. The idea behind Crowdsourcing is that you delegate these tasks which do not demand a high level of quality to anyone out there who is willing to do it. The model has a huge potential for success because there are a lot of people who are willing to spend some time in performing such non-demanding tasks, and there is no dearth of such tasks either. It's a powerful concept which has already proven itself in the case of say Wikipedia or Open-Source technology. What tasks would you want to delegate if you were a company? And what tasks would you like to do if you were in the Crowd?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/20/crowdflower-raises-5-million-for-cloud-sourced-labor/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)

Don't forget your notebook!

Remember the time when you always had a notebook within your reach? Well with information becoming digital, the notebook has been relegated to unreachable corners. But that does not necessarily mean you should stop taking notes.

Idea of the day:

Use an online notebook.

There is such a large amount of information available online that it is becoming more and more important to curate and manage this information. On a personal level, you may come across interesting articles and bits of information which you would want to store away quickly somewhere, without opening notepad or saving the page each time. An online notebook tool makes it easy to store and retrieve such information. Evernote is a great tool which a lot of users have found easy and effective. It lets you save images, links, paragraphs and lets you create multiple pages and notebooks. And since its stored online you can access it from any system. The good 'ol notebook is still here, in digital form!

Subtle Persuasion

We are all salesmen in some way or the other. And being a good salesman means being able to persuade. This may not come naturally to most of us. But there are patterns that we can find and use.

Idea of the day:

Be Persuasive!

Persuasion usually involves two layers of communication. The top layer is the actual message you want to convey, like "buy this product" or "I'm the best guy for this job". The layer beneath is how you convey it. This is the layer that most marketeers try to capitalize on. It involves a certain amount of trickery and is by no means obvious. If you know the methods, you could either use it yourself, or know when you are being tricked into something you don't really want to do. Here is a list with great examples of what these methods are:

http://www.moskalyuk.com/blog/yes-50-scientifically-proven-ways-to-be-persuasive/1624

And here's the idea: Try to notice these methods in your everyday interaction with different media and personalities. Eventually you might start using these methods yourself. Its highly interesting and could be highly useful in ways you may not foresee.

Mental Gymnastics

You must have heard of this before and most of you must have already tried this.

Idea for the day :

Wiki-hopping!

This is a fun and easy way to broaden your knowledge horizon and also get insights into how different topics are connected. Anticipating such curiosity, Wikipedia already provides a link called "Random Article", which serves as a convenient starting point. Once you're on a page you click on the 1st link on the page, which leads you to the next page where you do the same thing and so on. When do you stop? When you run into a loop (or you can go on all day calling it "constructive procrastination"!). The idea is to do this on a regular basis, like once everyday. Its a good way to take a short 10 minute break.

Too...Many...Ideas!...Must...Blog!

Apparently writing blogs is good for you. I'm willing to give it a shot. Its nice to have a place to go to when something suddenly pops into your head and you need to do something about it. Welcome to the jungle!!

Idea for the day :

Have multiple blogs.

We all have multiple aspects to our personalities and thoughts and they don't all fit into the same category. By limiting ourselves to a single output channel we end up setting boundaries which need not exist. For example, you may want to talk about your trip to Paris and also want to talk about how you made spaghetti yesterday, or how you are going to make a guest appearance in the next Star Trek movie. In my opinion by recording all these items in a single place you are only confining yourselves!

http://weblogs.about.com/od/startingablog/tp/Top-Ten-Reasons-to-Blog.htm