Death Knell to Mobile Banking?

The Finance Ministry has shelved plans to introduce greater mobile banking facilities in the country. The Reserve Bank was opposed to greater freedom as it felt that funds flow would be outside the banking system where it cannot be monitored. The Home Ministry is against the measure due to security fears.

A lot of people cannot access banking facilities as they are simply not available. Mobile banking can actually improve things in this direction. Instead of a general ban on the practice, it would be much better if strict regulations and controls are put in place (and implemented). For how long can we postpone implementing forward-looking practices fearing for our security. I also wonder what impact this decision will have on Nokia and its plans to roll out its Money service in India.

Also, the telecom sector is seeing a price war right now. Mobile payments and similar value-added services can act as differentiating factors in such a scenario. What will happen to these?

Proliferation and China

It has now emerged that the disgraced Pakistani scientist A Q Khan wrote in some notes that Pakistan was helped by China in its nuclear program. He has written that China had actually supplied that Uranium required. If that is not admission of China's help in nuclear proliferation, what is?

But now will the US do anything? At the most they might issue a statement saying that this is being investigated or they might condemn this. Beyond this they cannot do anything. China is too important for American survival today for them to even contemplate taking any action against it. President Obama seems to have cancelled his meeting with the Dalai Lama (George Bush, the earlier President had met him I believe) in order to avoid angering the Chinese.

Are we seeing the emergence of a new global superpower? Shall we have a new concentration of power in the near future? China has either already overtaken or will shortly overtake Japan to become the second largest economy in the world. China has been increasing its power through various means - diplomacy, economic means and military means also. A Chinese intellectual had recently written that India seems to have forgotten the "lessons of the 1962 war" when it allowed the Dalai lama to visit Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. What should India do in such a scenario? What are the Indian leaders' reaction to this changing situation? One can only wonder.

Customer satisfaction in a networked world

A batchmate of mine saw a movie recently. I had come to know that she was going to watch the movie and so I asked her how the movie was after she came back. She said that it was boring, only the songs were worth watching, and these too could be downloaded from the Internet. Hence there was no point in wasting my money.

This got me thinking. Both of us were in our respective rooms. Our conversation was via Gtalk. If I decide to take her advice and download the songs I can do that via YouTube or some mp3 download sites. The rate at which word-of-mouth reviews can travel now (and the ease with which I can pirate the songs) seem to put some kind of pressure on companies (film producers and directors in this case) to make products of better quality. Now whether or not this will actually happen is a different matter altogether. There are websites like mouthshut.com where prospective buyers can get feedback about products they wish to buy.

Companies also are trying to tap the benefits of social networking. There was one article I read some time back where an example was mentioned. A technology company can put up a forum where its customers can interact with one another to solve their issues. This actually reduces the costs incurred by the company in maintaining a customer service department. This is a double-edged sword though. If there is some problem the negative reviews can also spread quite easily.

To quote Douglas Adams, the author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy, "Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws." (http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/33023.html)

If I come back to a simple issue, will Bollywood (or the Hindi film industry if I don't want to anger the purists) ever produce a consistent series of 'good' flicks or is there too wide a range of audience's tastes for films to be of uniform quality?

Synergy between Wikipedia and Google?

I was sitting in class today when this thought suddenly occurred to me. Google is the phenomenon it is as it has been able to satisfy the need of people to search for information that they need. Probably very few people had anticipated the importance of search to the end users. Wikipedia allowed people to become part of the process. There are occasional goof-ups like this. But on the whole I can probably assert that Wikipedia has proved to be immensely popular.

Now I come to my actual point. Previously when I was required to do a project Google was probably invariably the first place I would go to. I still do that but now Wikipedia has reduced the amount of search required. Information from a number of sources (if occasionally the authenticity is suspect) is now present at a single location thus reducing the amount of work (sic) required. In a sense Wikipedia is complementing (even supplementing?) Google today. Now does Google look at Wikipedia as a threat? Wikipedia does not make the user pay anything. Take a look at the mission statements of Wikimedia Foundation (who runs Wikipedia) and Google.

WF - to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally

Google - to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful

Notice the similarity? If I can take some liberties in saying so, both primarily aim to make information that is useful to users available to them without charging them. Thus there seems to be a convergence of philosophies here. So is Google interested in Wikipedia? Are Larry and Sergey listening?