Hello

I am looking for some technical experts in the areas below

We are looking for two classes of people: experts and analysts

Some notes:

A). You should be an expert in one or more of these areas – but must be an independent contractor or a self employed consultant i.e. not having a job with a company

B). We need a profile, availability and daily rates

C). Working remotely is ok.

D) Expected commitment

Experts: 20 days over a 12 week period

Analysts for full time work over a 30 day period

e) as usual, no agencies please

f) offshore contacts welcome but please send me only a direct response to the email i.e. profile, rate and availability. I cannot provide any more details

The technical areas are:

Platforms: Linux,Qualcomm, Symbian, Microsoft

Phone RTOS : Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson etc

Development environments : Flashlite, Java, SVG, Open C

Any Japanese or Korean application development also welcome

Please email me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com

kind rgds

Ajit

This comes out of a discussion at a conference last week .. It may seem obvious – but I think it is often overlooked ..

With mobile applications, the exception is the rule .. I.e. what is ‘blocked’ normally thrives as a mobile application ..

For instance:

Bluetooth dating in the Middle East(elsewhere in the world, there are fewer restrictions to dating – hence dating via Bluetooth is not that popular –except in the Middle East)

I don’t have statistics for this, but apparently facebook has a high uptake on mobile because it is banned in most offices

Mcommerce has taken off in Africa – where traditional banking still lacks in remote areas

Again, not statistics, but I believe that recruitment sites and applications have shown an uptake on mobile devices in the UK – because people don’t want to be seen browsing them at work

So, for a successful mobile application, find out what is banned .. And then see if Mobile applications can solve the problem ..

Thoughts? What else can we think of?

Ayn Rand’s classic Atlas Shrugged is fifty years this week. Like many people worldwide, especially

Business people, Rand has had a deep influence on my thinking since reading Atlas and

Fountainhead at age 19 in India.

NY times has a great article HERE

In a nutshell .. Atlas Shrugged (and Ayn Rand’s writings in general) are a moral defence of capitalism.

Many of the thoughts from the NY times article resonate well with me .. Especially

Rand said she “set out to show how desperately the world needs prime movers and how viciously it treats them” and to portray “what happens to a world without them.”

And also ..

Influence on ideals, business and values

But the book attracted a coterie of fans, some of them top corporate executives, who dared not speak of its impact except in private. When they read the book, often as college students, they now say, it gave form and substance to their inchoate thoughts, showing there is no conflict between private ambition and public benefit.

I know from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 C.E.O.’s that ‘Atlas Shrugged’ has had a significant effect on their business decisions, even if they don’t agree with all of Ayn Rand’s ideas,” said John A. Allison, the chief executive of BB&T, one of the largest banks in the United States.

“It offers something other books don’t: the principles that apply to business and to life in general. I would call it complete,” he said.

Distinction from both conservatives and the left(i.e. Ayn Rand’s principles lean to the right of the political spectrum – but are not conservative)

The book was released to terrible reviews. Critics faulted its length, its philosophy and its literary ambitions. Both conservatives and liberals were unstinting in disparaging the book; the right saw promotion of godlessness, and the left saw a message of “greed is good.”

Rand as a person had flaws ..

“She wasn’t a nice person, ” said Darla Moore, vice president of the private investment firm Rainwater Inc. “But what a gift she’s given us.”

Rand as an inspiration

Ms. Moore, a benefactor of the University of South Carolina, spoke of her debt to Rand in 1998, when the business school at the university was named in Ms. Moore’s honor. “As a woman and a Southerner,” she said, “I thrived on Rand’s message that only quality work counted, not who you are.”

Rand’s idea of “the virtue of selfishness,” Ms. Moore said, “is a harsh phrase for the Buddhist idea that you have to take care of yourself.”

Some business leaders might be unsettled by the idea that the only thing members of the leadership class have in common is their success. James M. Kilts, who led turnarounds at Gillette, Nabisco and Kraft, said he encountered “Atlas” at “a time in college life when everybody was a nihilist, anti-establishment, and a collectivist.” He found her writing reassuring because it made success seem rational.

“Rand believed that there is right and wrong,” he said, “that excellence should be your goal.”

Many thanks for my good friend Judy Breck for pointing this article to me!

One of the key trends I have been following for some time is Cloud computing – and the belief that Mobile Ajax is more than the user interface i.e. once documents are in a cloud, they can be accessed more easily from the browser – what I call Mobile Ajax is more than a pretty face.

I have also been following SoonR for their technology (Ajax / rich browsers on Mobile devices). SoonR is focusing more on the Enterprise/SME space and SoonR announced a partnership with Teliasonera(Denmark) for TeliaSonera’s Easy Box offering in Denmark at (Easy Box Live Backup)

Easy Box Live Backup provides SoonR services for SME mobile customers. The service backs up data automatically and continuously and also makes it available to any device.

This is a simple and useful service and I expect that there will be wider uptake of similar services (not just from Operators – but also from others like Google who are committed to cloud computing)

Watch this space!

I have reposted the previous entry under a different heading so its easier to track and identify. So, we are speaking of the trends in Mobile TV, Google phone, Mobile address book based on my personal experience.