Independent Analysis: AI, SaaS, and Revenue Growth Strategy

I have been reading Tech Crunch for a long time and respect Michael Arrington for being fair. It is fairly impossible to please everyone and I am not surprised  that TechCrunch has its critics. In a civilized world there is always a need for  opposing views as a step to learnging and getting better. There is no cause to get personal and I am shocked at what Michael Arrington revealed in his post.  Michael Arrington has done a good job in using the social media first to turn a blog into a publishing machine and built up an audience, many times put a link to the opposing arguement in his post . See the Network Soloutions pos t from a few month's ago. The community needs to gather to make sure people are not intimadated for writing their vies and hope this does not happen to other influencers. Micheal Arrington said in his Post  "I’ve decided the right thing to do is take some time off and get a better perspective on what I’m spending my life doing. I’ll be taking most of Febru...

Nancy Trejos looking for some folks who may have made some changes in saving habits die to the current economic situation. Here is the message from Nancy: How Americans are now saving more and spending less. Economists are expecting the savings rate to increase from below zero to as high as 5 percent. So I am searching for some savers! Have any of you or your friends recently (as in the last few months) started saving when they had not before or stepped up their saving habits because of the economic climate? If so, and if they live in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area, would you be willing to ask them if they would talk to me? Please let me know if you would like to talk to her and I will send you her email.  If you have any personal finance questions, you can send them to her too through her column http://cli.gs/Gz8MDm . Want to something more than just 401k and credit cards head over to her column and send her a question. Feeling shy I can connect you if you leave a comment h...

Kim Hart wrote an  article Washington Post Article on Twin Tech 3 and a new idea to do some mobile networking  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/25/AR2009012501878.html Peter Corbett of Istrategylabs doesn't wait for executing ideas. In June 2008 when Zach Goldfarb of the Washington post wrote about Washington DC as aTwin tech town   : two sides of the Washington technology coin. On one side were the established technology companies, many of them serving the government and business customers -- and on the other were the young start-ups hoping to make it big in a Web 2.0 world. In a few days Peter had his thoughts organized , he met NVTC and got together with them to have the first Twintech in July just a month after Zach Goldfarb had pointed out the distinct groups. Twin tech goal   The Potomac Region's technology community keeps growing and innovating with each passing day. Keep the pace by grabbing a drink wit...

My blog post this morning on the article in yesterday's Washington Post about Smithsonian's Web 2.0 efforts attracted Ustream's attention and they let me know that UStream will be powering the live stream today of Wayne Clough's installation as Secretary of the Smithsonian and Regent's Meeting at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/smithsonian-on-ustream.tv beginning at 2 p.m. Eastern Time. Hon. John G. Roberts Jr., Chief Justice of the United States will be in attendance at the ceremony, and perhaps other officials from the new Obama administration. I take it as a sign that this administration will use a lot of mew media tools to get the message across. See the show right here or go to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/smithsonian-on-ustream.tv beginning at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.   Live Videos by Ustream

As I took the print edition of the Washington post off the grass this morning, I  found 2 of my pictures of the Twin Tech 3 bus. I had met Kim Hart of the Washington Post on the bus. I was there as a guest of Bob London of London Ink.  Read more about the bus in the Washington post article . The pictures are not in the online version and only in the print version. During my conversation with Kim Hart I had told her that all my photos are free to use under creative commons.  So my wife and daughter will be happy now and I can get the "family budget council" approval for spengina little more on photo equipement. A few months ago we discussed this in David Berkowitz article  in Inside the Marketer's Studio . Another factor is that it is also important to upload the pictures as fast as possible as many of the events reporting is time bound. Some of my picures have been used by bloggers, sites like schmap.com , nowpublic.com, Flickr groups etc. What do you think? Do you shar...

Top benefits of Linkedin and tips on inviting more people   I have been a member of Linkedin since 2003 and that was my first foray into Social Networking. I have built up about 1.1k contacts and here are the top benefits Linkedin Answers Asked 13 questions and answered 45 questions 50% of my questions related to information I needed for my job Most answers were to help people with my expertise. 2 of the people who answered my questions were featured in the Washington Post for that topic Connecting people Connected old friends, colleagues to each other Connected headhunters to prospects 3 times Connected vendors to companies 2 times Vendor contacts Used Linkedin in 2 times to find biz dev folks at companies for partnership enquiries Job Hunt I am still at my job so I cannot say it helped me find a job but the fact that an averag...

Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Toyoda, son of Toyota honorary chairman Shoichiro Toyoda and grandson of Kiichiro Toyoda, will be the first founding family member to become president in 14 years.The Toyoda family owns 2% of the company. Toyoda,  holds a master's degree in business administration from Babson College in MA. Atleast one other Babson Collegian I know is Simeon Margolis who is an entrepreuner in the mobile world with utterz and now Monkey Bed Media

  Newsweek text of the speech: http://cli.gs/VEP6PG   Credit Wordle.net

Being faceless doesn't work anymore. The Personality Project is an online collaboration to uncover the many ways that personality matters for brands and individuals to stand out. The site is inspired by the new marketing book Personality Not Included . I was honored to be on Rohit Bhargava's list for the Personality Project where he has interviews with people who have excelled at their business by adding perosnality to the mix. Please give me feedback on the way I answered the questions and other ideas you may have on making my job better.

Since I had the question after seeing a lot of tweets about DC area stores running out of Hand Warmers. I got the answer from Ellen Di Resta @elldir with this link http://cli.gs/LTGUJR If you are short of time here is the description from Amazon for Heatmax HotHands: Designed for skiers, hunters, fishermen, golfers, or anyone who works or plays in the cold for long hours, the Heatmax HotHands-2 Hand Warmers are air-activated and will provide up to 10 hours of soothing warmth inside gloves, pockets or wherever you feel a chill. All Heatmax warmers are made of natural materials, including iron powder, water, salt, activated charcoal, and wood fiber. When exposed to air, these materials react together to produce heat through an extremely fast oxidation (or rusting) process. Users should allow 10 to 20 minutes for the warmers to reach their optimal temperatures. Technorati Tags: hand warmers , Heatmax HotHands , keep warm

If  you were wondering what time the Presidential Inauguration was in your country here is a handy list from TimeandDate.com (http://cli.gs/Lgqd8N)

We Are One , originally uploaded by Presidential Inaugural Committee . I am glad the stream of pictures from citizens and govenrment continues to grow on Flickr. This is the official stream from Presidential Inaugural Committee's photostream Other flickr streams of friends: @somewhatfrank http://www.flickr.com/photos/somewhatfrank/ Erin_m http://www.flickr.com/photos/erin_m/ Andy Carvin @andycarvin http://www.flickr.com/photos/andycarvin/3210129956/ @kj4jbj http://www.flickr.com/photos/kg4jbj/

NYTimes.com readers are sending in their photographs from Washington and elsewhere. Images are organized in the order they were received. To participate, send an e-mail to pix@nyt.com , attach your file(s) and tell us your full name and the location pictured. Files must be in the JPEG (.jpg) format and no larger than 5MB. MSNBC firstperson@msnbc.com . or submit your story here  http://cli.gs/MApsRs CNN iReport http://cli.gs/QRDr0r When you're away from the computer, you can e-mail photos and videos with your mobile device to ireport@cnn.com . Flickr group collecting all photos of Inauguration Day, Flickr also organized a meetup  January 20, 2009 at a Washington DC-area Flickr meetup . NPR  Inauguration Report: Dispatches From Listeners http://cli.gs/GVuP0s Smithsonian : Submit your photo to be considered for click! photography changes everything , a Smithsonian Photography Initiative online program that explores how photography shapes the way we understand...

Inauguration 09 , originally uploaded by jjgardner3 . I am envious of my friends who are visiting downtown several times these days. I am warm at home with a few trips to the grocery store and eagerly looking for Twitter news and TV news of the activities. Jimmy Gardner ( http://www.eastcoastblogging.com ) has some great pictures on his Flickr stream here is a slide show courtesy of Jimmy Gardner. Other flickr streams of friends: @somewhatfrank http://www.flickr.com/photos/somewhatfrank/ Erin_m http://www.flickr.com/photos/erin_m/ Andy Carvin @andycarvin http://www.flickr.com/photos/andycarvin/3210129956/ @kj4jbj http://www.flickr.com/photos/kg4jbj/ Presidential Inaugural Committee's photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/inauguration Washington City Paper http://flickr.com/groups/1001629@N23/ Anyone else ? I am sure 3million people taking pictures today and tomorrow.

Flight #flight1549 from La Guardia to Charlotte NC today landed in the Hudson River and all the passengers and crew were safely rescued. See Twitpic http://twitpic.com/135xa   How Twitter and Flickr covered it http://cli.gs/65hetS Some Flicker pictures http://cli.gs/UbQBnz latimes http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/01/citizen-photo-o.html Twitter eyewitness account http://twitter.com/jkrums As I was flying from Las Vegas on Tuesday night I sat in the emergency exit and wondered about how I would operate the exit if needed. I am glad the flight 1549 episode had a happy text book ending. From the coverage on TV I see that the passengers behaved marvellously and helped each other. The crew stayed back inside the plane till all the passengers were out of the plane.   Capt Sullenberger http://www.kxii.com/home/headlines/37678624.html was a US Air force pilot who now flies for US airways and did a great job keeping the pane flat till it hit the water and ...

I sent this call for help to my network on Twitter and Facebook "need a recommedation for a reliable painter in the DC , Maryland area"   Responses Linda Dickerhoof "please share with me when you get it!!" ( I am doing that through this blog) Melanie Mitchell   "Pete Ferry with Remodel Virginia (peteferry@remodelvirginia.com). They do a lot more than paint and I've used them for several projects but Pete is nice, reliable, honest and fair which is tough to find in that business sometimes :)and of course they also just paint if my answer wasn't clear :)!!! webconsigliere : @ shashib - I have used http://www.juenemannpainting.com/ and strongly recommend him. Feel free to contact me with questions kasrael : @ shashib http://tinyurl.com/a95rba ( expand ) Perhaps this may help? kevindewalt : @ shashib for DC-based service providers I recommend Consumer's Checkbook, http://is.gd/frF   I will Update this post if I get more recom...

  You can add these widgets to your website if you want to provide your visitors with more content. This brings the latest articles from http://mysolutionspot.com and http://blog.networksolutions.com to your readers. Click on get widget and add to Facebook, Blogger and many other sites.

I love all this books and have read almost all of them . I prefer books on Tape since they are easy for my commute between Maryland and Virginia. I loved the WWII series and the series of the Philadelphia Police Department. DO the marines really drink Famous Grouse ? I look forward to this new book . You can buy Black Ops on Amazon.

I was looking at a secret posted on postsecrets.com where the owner of a Christmas tree firm never told the buyer his credit card was declined and let them take the tree. I remembered it because the sacrifice of the small business selling Christmas trees is greater than just those words. I have been using credit cards for over 15 to 20 years mostly as charge cards. Credit cards saved me from going to banks, ATMs to withdraw cash. Another advantage was that everything I spent on a credit card was recorded and I could conduct a post mortem of expenses and make changes. The economic recession has given me a new New Year resolution. When I visit a local Small Business I am going to pay cash. When a customer uses a credit card at a business there is a processor fee anywhere between 1 and 5 percent, In addition there may be merchant account provider fees. You have to also consider that the small business may also be paying a transaction fee which maybe .25 to .50 cents per transaction. ...

  Nancy Trejos is a Washington Post Columnist and is always looking for fresh ideas and questions from people for her weekly personal finance column. During a recent conversation she said she is looking for people in their 20s or 30s who were in credit card debt and were able to get out of it. She would like to talk to this person about what she or he did to pay off that debt. Any one reading this post want to get featured let me know. Shashib at gmail .com or you can write to trejosn at washpost.com directly. She interviewed me for the Sunday Post http://cli.gs/0aejWq and I got very good info from the experts who answered my Question. Excerpts from the article : Okay, that might sound kind of dangerous considering how much we have heard about teenagers (and let's face it, adults) getting into trouble with credit cards. Aren't there members of Congress who want to ban credit card companies from marketing to college students and young people in general? read more ...

Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs is helping the Greater DC Cares with a way to get help and support from the tech community. Please take a look at the wiki Peter has setup: http://istrategylabs.com/islwiki    that has information about projects that can help non-profits. I was browsing through the wiki and the projects in the Web Design Category are very interesting . They appear simple and could be completed pretty soon. Along with a feeling of having done something I am sure the DC tech/blogger community will definitely pitch in to promote the people or organizations who help in this effort. I know Peter Corbett definitely will and he has a lot of ideas :) http://istrategylabs.com/islwiki/index.php?title=Web_Design/Dev . Greater DC Cares serves as the hub of the non-profit community in DC - they provide service to all the smaller non-profs (shelters, soup kitchens, etc.)

One the conferences I have steadily attended for the past 3 years has been the Small Business Technology Summit. I am looking forward to learning from the experts, meeting new people and grass roots small business owners and of course taking a lot of pictures.  if you can make it to the Fourth Annual Small Business Summit 2009 New York February 3rd it will be great. See the coverage I did at the Small Business Technology Summit in 2008 http://www.shashi.name/2008/02/advice-to-small-business-backup-use-crm.html Details Fourth Annual Small Business Summit 2009 How to Find and Keep Customers for Life Join us for the Fourth Annual Small Business Summit , produced by Prime Strategies and SmallBizTechnology.com . Once again, you’ll be coming together with your peers in the small business community to learn, share and connect. This year’s theme is “Business & Technology: How to Find and Keep Customers for Life.” This year we’ve gone back to t...

Starting the year with a Tweet-up at Jimmy's in Herndon February 2008: Educating myself about the 2008 election process by joining these Geeks at a Bar on Super Tuesday. Attending my first Social Media Breakfast with Jeff Pulver Meeting Small Business Guru Anita Campbell at Small Biz Technology Summit ( Planning on going to the 2009 event http://www.smallbiztechsummit.com/ ) Jonny Goldstein - Jonny's Par-tay survives despite having me as a guest but Jonny Soon moved to Philly :) Meeting @technosailor for the first time at Social Media Club DC( No this is not technosailor but my Facebook friend Jessie Newburn :) Meeting Guy Kawasaki and going on the Network Solutions Small Business Networking tour Miami and Charlotte Getting all star eyed at South by South West  2008 - Austin Texas Blogger Social and meeting online friends offline - New York   organized by @ck and @drewmcclellan Podcamp DC remembering your "grass"roots ...

  Slide show of Machu Picchu http://cli.gs/P45QYn You can find all pictures here http://www.flickr.com/photos/drbeachvacation/ Some videos here http://www.youtube.com/user/shashibellamkonda The lesson here is also that the way we share media is changing and you are probably using these tools to share pictures with friends and family as well. It’s a pain to do this all individually and picasa is one of my favorites for uploading to Youtube , Windows Live Photogallery for uploading to Flickr. I think I would love it if there was a application that worked to send this stuff from your camera to any of these places all by itself maybe like eye-fi . I want to put them on Facebook too and even back them up to a cloud.

Addison 12 yrs and blogs at http://www.bobsgameblog.com wow , originally uploaded by shashiBellamkonda . I met my good friend Adam ( http://www.wiseaff.com /) for lunch and he had brought his son Addison along. Addison told me very proudly that he had 2 blogs http://www.addisonviener.com / and http://www.bobsgameblog.com . Smart and I think his blog was featured in the Washingtonian magazine. very good for being 12 years old and doing this. Of course we had a 10 year old who created a website for feeding hungry kids about whom we wrote about on the Network Solutions Blog : http://cli.gs/A6SbGY