Strategic Foresight - Insights in Business and Technology

Every day we read/hear about the new web 2.0 applications that start up with interesting concepts used. The recent acquisition of YouTube by Google has raised hope for new startups to realize their dream of making it big time. Aussies are not behind in this trend. There are quite a few interesting applications that have come out of hibernation. To-do list - Remember the Milk It allows users to manage tasks online as any to-do list will do. It is integrated with Google Maps, and Skype (IM) and is available on Mobiles as well. This is a very popular application around the globe with more than 100,000 users from 155 countries. It was launched in October 2005. Digg clone for funniest email - FWDitOn This is inspired by digg . It allows users to read hilarious emails, do a rating and share it with others. It is an interesting concept and has caught the attention of a few Venture Capitalists from overseas. This site was covered recently on TechCrunch . Community for parents -

IBM has acquired Datapower , one of the non (web 2.0) companies in the overly hyped environment. And it seems it hasn't got any coverage in the main media yet, but might get in the coming days. Currently, everyone seems to be focused on Web 2.0, but it looks like this acquisition might have long-term effects on software (S/W) applications. The question is what exactly Datapower do and how IBM's acquisition is significant? Today, S/W applications are built on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Legacy applications are enhanced to have SOA-based infrastructure. What it means to the layman, is that there is a service available on some website like (Google, or Amazon) and you can send a request for that service, and it replies to you back with the desired answer. SOA based applications mainly have data sent over the wire as XML, it can be SOAP (XML/HTTP) or XML/JMS. In a broader sense, it's a message (containing XML data on some transport protocol) that is sent across the wi

The Financial Times and Goldman Sachs have announced the finalists in this year's Book of the Year Award , which include: John Battelle, The Search Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics Constantinos C. Markides and Paul A. Geroski, Fast Second Pietra Rivoli, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy James B. Stewart, Disneywar

After finishing writing my blog on Google vs Microsoft I bumped onto this post on Wired.com which has published this article on top 40 technology based business in leading innovations... and surprisingly they had Infosys . I know about Infosys for two reasons, a) They are one of our competitors in Australia and putting too much pressure on us as our jobs are under threat b) Second reason is I was born and brought up in India, So I know that, as I have grown up seeing this as the leading and one of the best companies to work for in India at least. According to this article Infosys is going to be Dell in consulting business what Dell is in PC industry today. Some thoughtful thinking for the likes of IBM, Accenture and EDS.