Will Email Be a Thing of Past in Near Future?

Right from rise of social networking, there have been predictions that Email will soon be thing of past  Recently Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has declared that email is dead. Email has come long way from first message sent by programmer Ray in 1971. 40 years later we are talking aboult email being obsolete but its far from over.

Social networks definitely have made people feel that email is obsolete. Modern day communication tends to be informal, minimal and most of time immediate. Though Messengers/Communicators existed for long time they didn't kill the Email. Social network has definitely reduced the amount of personal emails exchanged but its far from over. In-fact Social Network themselves use Email to bring back the users to their sites.
Corporates still rely heavily on the emails, but recent decision by CEO of major European tech-firm ATOS to ban the emails in company raises some serious questions on future of the email. May be even corporates are now looking for alternative tools which can make collaboration more efficient.

What do you about future of email, Just mail your comments to Email_RIP@2020.com!! Just kidding, post your comments below.

Easy Steps For Amazon SES Integration into PHP Applications

Amazon Simple Email Service is highly scalable, cost effective bulk email sending service. In this article I will be explaining how to integrate Amazon SES into your existing applications built in PHP quickly. 

1. Sign up for Amazon SES
2. Add a verified sender email id -  Login to AWS Management Console, Add an emailid to the verified senders list. Email would be sent to the specified address and once verified the senders email id gets added.
3.  Once user gets added to senders list, you can send test mails to any valid email id using the AWS Console
4. Request production access from here. Initially you will get a max Limit of 1000 mails per day and maximum of 1 email/second.
5. Get AWS access keys - Go to http://aws.amazon.com, click Account, and then click Security Credentials. Navigate to the Access Credentials section of the page, and click the Access Keys tab.
6. Download Amazon SES PHP class from here
7. Sample PHP script which will send the email using Amazon SES

require_once('ses.php');
$ses = new SimpleEmailService('Access Key Here', 'Secret Key Here');

$m = new SimpleEmailServiceMessage();
$m->addTo('recipient@example.com');
$m->setFrom('user@example.com');
$m->setSubject('Hello, world!');
$m->setMessageFromString('This is the message body.');

print_r($ses->sendEmail($m));

Thats it all set to send messages using Amazon SES.
Pricing: Amazon charges $0.10 for 1000 messages and $0.12 per GB of attachments.
You can also request Amazon to increase the quota limits from here.

Hope that article was useful, See ya!!

Will Google Migrate Orkut Users to Google Plus?

Google launched its social network Google+ yesterday and its already hot topic among the tech blogs. Once again Google goes via invite route for the launch. I didn't get chance to play with Google+ yet but seems to be like one of the best UX/UI from Google.

What happens to Orkut (another social network from Google!) now? Most probably it would be shut down. Its known fact that Orkut is fast losing its user base, but as per Alexa, Orkut is still ranked 11th in Brazil and 17th in India, which means they still have users who are using it.



Possible reasons why people are still using Orkut:

1. Inertia to move to new social network like Facebook
2. Some users still using orkut (inspite of having facebook account), because many of their friends are still on orkut and they have not moved to Facebook.
3. Love for Orkut or may be the apps on the Orkut (though, I seriously doubt if people use any apps on Orkut these days)
   

Possible options for the Google:

1. Shutdown Orkut all together
2. Continue running Orkut and wait for user base to reach to zero :)
3. Migrate all the Orkut users to Google Plus

In case of option 1 and 2, users moving out of Orkut may either go to Facebook or Google plus. At this juncture its more probable that they move to Facebook.

If they opt for option 3 they can migrate all of their Orkut users to Google plus, also it makes sense as they are loyal users of Orkut and should be given privilege to be early users of Google plus :). There will be having their own set of challenges migrating Orkut to Google plus, as not features can be migrated, possibility of some data loss, applications will go away.

My option would be to go with step 3, Lets see whats Google take on that. What do you think is best option, please do comment!!

RoopIt : SMS based Classifieds

RoopIt is Bangalore based startup in an innovative SMS based classifieds space.

How It Works:

• Buyer can search for any item and click on want it button and sellers mobile number will be SMSed to buyer. Buyer can contact seller offline.
• Seller can post an ad by selecting the category of item, location and then description about the item he is planning to sell

This service does not need any registration/sign-in and further users can post the classified even by sending an SMS. This service is simple and at same time powerful as it eases the entire process of selling the item.

User base/ Statistics:
Roopit launched in June 2010 as of date has 14998 users (or registered Mobile numbers) and 4617 classifieds posted. Currently its enabled for Bangalore alone.

Challenges:

• Privacy: Will the sellers be fine with their mobile numbers floating around.  
• Revenue Model:  Revenue generation is big problem for any SMS based service and its no different for RoopIt.

In current shape, roopit is definitely a useful service but building a viable business out of this is a huge challenge. But since they know the needs of their users they can definitely do some targeted advertising.

All the best for RoopIt.

Bye Bye Bangalore!!

Today is my last day in Bangalore. I am moving back to Hyderabad. I have been in Bangalore for 2.5 years. Two and half memorable and enjoyable years at Infospace. I definitely have gained a lot of knowledge in these 2.5 years and in process have found many friends. 2.5 years of stay at Infospace was a perfect combo of challenging work and great fun. On personal front, I came to Bangalore after my engagement and now leaving Bangalore as father of 10 months old kid:). I’ve had a great time in this great company of wonderful people. Needless to say, my tenure with Infospace has contributed in making me more knowledgeable person. There have been some great moments which I shall remember throughout. It's never been easy to say goodbye, but after Aditi Technologies taking over Infospace India, I had to look for job change and Hyderabad was my obvious choice. I will be joining Microsoft IDC soon.

Thanks to all the people who have supported me throughout. Please write your scraps/testimonials about me as comments (you can do it anonymously as well, so feel free)

WikiReader: Wikipedia On Portable Device, Original Webaroo's Idea!!

WikiReader is $99 portable device which stores all the Wikipedia articles for the offline browsing and searching. WikiReader uses two AAA batteries, a low-power CPU and monochrome touch screen, and standard microSD cards to house all the articles. WikiReader is not a connected device and hence not very useful in keeping updated with real-time news. WikiReader can be just used as a pocket-reference when you are not online.
Remember Webaroo, which originally came up with similar idea 3 years back. Webaroo released desktop and mobile applications for content caching which can be used for offline search later. Webaroo also had bundled the wikipedia slices on laptops, mobiles and SD cards but it never became popular, probably because the content was not real time.
WikiReader also faces the same challenge as webaroo, except that it has its own hardware. WikiReader allows you to update the content either by downloading th latest content from their site or can recieve updated SDcards by paying an annual fees. WikiReader will be available shortly on Amazon.

Will WikiReader go Webaroo way? What do you think?