Firefox took over the digital world earlier dominated by Windows Internet Explorer, in a complete monopolistic market (MS used to command a 95% market share then). Firefox saved the world when Microsoft had stopped its investments on the Explorer research for few years, just because it was by far the market leader. While Microsoft remains the market leader still, the monopoly was shaken and stirred long back and today the company enjoys a 40% market share only, that too only from the corporate users of Microsoft Windows. The tech savvy netizens really needed a change at that time which could jolt the monopolistic market dynamics and improve the market of browsers drastically.

Within a few years of its launch, Firefox had demonstrated the power of CSS and JavaScript and how the two may be leveraged to change the web experience of the netizens, altogether to a new level. In fact, it was Firefox that triggered the HTML5 revolution. It is because of Firefox that Windows 8 application developers could develop the same in JavaScript. And ironically, it is because of Firefox’s spirited success and huge adoption, that Chrome was conceptualized in 2008.

When introduced in 2008, Chrome was foreseen by many technocrats as being an extension copycat of Firefox only, but lighter, with almost no features. The positioning of Chrome was simple yet effective: it addressed a single basic need of the netizen, Speed. This came at a time when Firefox was slowly becoming sluggish with tons of Apps which was making the experience of web-surfing cumbersome. However, shrugging off initial concerns on stability and security, Chrome has come a long way, and may now be equally poised to challenge Microsoft’s position within a few years.

Today, Firefox has lost a third of its market share, from around 30% down to 25% in 2011 end, and Google Chrome has surged to almost 26% market share, to become the new leader in the consumer web-market. StatCounter Global Stats reports that Chrome took 25.69% of the worldwide market (up from 4.66% in November 2009) compared to Firefox’s 25.23%. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still maintains a strong lead globally with 40.63% although the share arises from Microsoft’s Windows/Office users mainly. In fact, almost as a party to rejoice its victory, Google has recently announced the launch of full version Chrome for Mobile, putting a fully fledged web browser on a phone’s tiny screen.

The future seems exciting, and we may witness a splurge of innovation in the browser technology, in an attempt to control the market share. Whatever happens, the netizens and cyber citizens will benefit from this competition which is bound to keep all the netizens at their toes to see what happens next. What do you think? Do let us know your take on this gizmotalk.

While this goof-up may have not been done intentionally, in an attempt to promote Google Chrome, it has got into a mix up, when paid bloggers in-inadvertently placed -do-follow links instead of no-follow links to the Google Chrome download page. This created a huge influx of juice to the Chrome page when a video advertisement of the same was launched. It was an attempt from Google to become the market leader in the Internet Browser industry, by re-branding and relaunching Chrome.  This happened after Google hired Unruly Media, an international media agency, to get a number of paid bloggers to promote a video for its Chrome browser featuring a US flour company. However, another SEO firm named Essence Digital has “come to the rescue” of Google by declaring that it acted as an intermediary between Google and Unruly Media.

However, to clear up this “mistake” Google has now lowered Chrome’s position in the Search results, in an apparent effort to correct the mistake. However, it is interesting to note at this juncture the degree of strictness with which Google penalizes bloggers and webmasters for indulging in link exchanges, link purchases or even black hat SEO tactics.

In an era where management principles are often scrutinized for ethical legitimacy, this blunder by our favorite Web Prodigy, will no doubt leave a lasting impact on its fans like us. While Google “might not have” authorised this campaign directly, it is indeed in violation of their own webmaster guidelines, and thus the managers of Google should be held liable to fulfill a higher ethical standard, given the fact that they take such a strict action against similar defaulters.

1. Small and Medium Enterprises (Popularly called SMEs) will ride the wave on e-business offerings. The time has come when even the smallest service provider will leverage m-commerce to advertise his service range for the customer in serviceable range, with the growing popularity of location based services. Everyone with a mobile is potentially reachable through this technology, which is fast increasing in popularity. The fact that Forrester Research predicts m-commerce will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 39% through 2016, and that tablet adoption will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 56% per year through 2015, indicates Location Based Services have a really bright future.
2. With the increased popularity of SaaS models in Information Technology offerings, small business can today harness the power of costly powerful technological resources, shared by multiple users, without shelving off millions of dollars. I foresee more and more focus of offerings in the domain of Business Intelligence, which are in a cloud model, for SMEs from the technology service providers. With the resources moved to a cloud, it would be possible to harness the power of ever improving processing capabilities to the available data and then leverage the information and knowledge and gain competitive advantage. The offerings of Business Intelligence on the cloud, should be of the greatest boon to the SMEs and should have a great rate of technology adoption.
3. With the increasing access and penetration of the internet, the years to come may witness a growing proliferation of web based start-up ventures, which may operate purely on a click first e-business model. There may be a splurge of knowledge disseminating service providers or web-based internet marketers leveraging the power of affiliate marketing. However, it would remain to be seen whether this time the wave survives longer than the last wave which crumbled during the dotcom burst of the late 1990s. These pure-click e-business models may be further boosted by the integration of such business with the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, the likes of which have seen a faster adoption amongst the consumers than any other technology.
4. With a greater focus on web-based offerings, very soon SMEs will start harnessing the power of open source resources and applications, in the regular operations and transactions. Job monitoring, scheduling, live meeting and communications in general will start being more accessible to the SMEs without deep pockets. This may see a fast growth amongst businesses who are able to assimilate the benefits of the increasingly accessible technological offerings.
5. Last, but not the least, technology may again be leveraged in providing social services. With the increasing focus on social marketing, and the issues centered on triple bottom line, sustainable governance structures may evolve amongst the SMEs which would be heavily leverage on the power of technological advances in general, and e-Business models in particular.

In short the next few years promises to deliver a lot to us. But to what extent the technology evolution and revolution will witness an adoption and assimilation in the SMEs will be interesting to monitor. What do you feel about this era of technological evolution and its impact on SMEs? Write to us.

For example, you are at location X. You suddenly need servicing for your car or gas. Also you are hungry. With Location Based Services enabled on your mobile device, you can be guided to the closest place at the time of your need to the junction that can service your needs in the best possible way. It may be a Gas Station with a food joint.

This is not all. Location Based Services have a very high potential for cross-selling and upselling new services and lower cost of customer acquisition. Intimation of location specific services may be offered to potential customers, and conversion of leads to sales may be extremely high, in certain services. For example, close to a highway, if a joint is present that provides refreshments, and the travelers are intimated of the same during a journey about the same, this may rake in huge benefits.

With the increasing popularity of cloud computing in the era of information technology enabled services (more often internet enabled services), Location Based services are one of the more promising services technology majors are focusing on, due to it extremely high potential revenue generating future. Started first by the 3 majors in 2000, Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia,Location Based Services and the research on the service science on the domain has never looked back. The first major full-scale commercial Location Based Service was launched by DoCoMo in Japan , based on triangulation for pre-GPS handsets in 2001. Services like Friendfinder, Yellow pages, houseposition, emergency call location etc. were the first few services that harnessed enormous acceptance from its targeted consumer base across geographies.

Today technology majors like IBM have their own extensive solution for work-force management, that uses platforms for location based management systems. The recent acquisition of GoWalla by Facebook is another such indication that even Social Media majors are considering potential revenue from advertisements from such services. The potential profitability of such services are encouraging the trend, and as more and more focus is increased on the Cloud Computing, these services are bound to be a major revenue earner for technology giants, and can be a crucial ace for the players in the IT services and IT enabled services industry.

Although the methodology was conceived in the early 1990s, it started gaining in popularity after 2001 when the methodology started getting adopted in research laboratories of major technology companies. Generally speaking Agile software development is more suitable for products and less for services. Even amongst products, Agile software development methodologies are more suitable for smaller to medium sized products. Ideally development teams for such products have a size ranging from 5 members to 20 or 30 members, although, instances were noted when the methodology was successfully used with a team of 100 members.

Some of the more popular Agile methodologies are as follows:

•     Agile Modeling
•     Agile Unified Process (AUP)
•     Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
•     Essential Unified Process (EssUP)
•     Extreme Programming (XP)
•     Feature Driven Development (FDD)
•     Open Unified Process (OpenUP)
•     Scrum
•     Velocity tracking

A major difference of Agile methodologies from the Systems evelopment Life Cycle (SDLC), or software development life cycle models is that the requirements from the client is collected iteratively and in an evolutionary manner. In contrast, in the SDLC methodologies, each stage, including the requirement analysis stage, needs to be completed and finalized, before moving on to the next stage.

Also, another major difference of Agile methodologies from the Systems evelopment Life Cycle (SDLC) is that the degree of documentation done is typically a lot lesser. Because of smaller team size, extensive informal communication makes high quality software development feasible. But it would be difficult to ensure high quality in larger projects, due to this methodological limitation, which is mostly made by choice to ensure faster delivery of software projects.

The Agile methodologies focusses on different aspects of the software development life-cycle. Some focus on the practices (extreme programming, pragmatic programming, agile modeling), while some focus on managing the software projects (Scrum). There are also methodologies which have a focus on all the stages of the SDLC (DSDM, RUP), although most are tailor cut for the requirements specification phase (e.g. FDD).

Hope this short and simple note is sufficient for an introduction to Agile software development methodologies. Do let me know if you need any more information.

The Agile methodologies focusses on different aspects of the software development life-cycle. Some focus on the practices (extreme programming, pragmatic programming, agile modeling), while some focus on managing the software projects (Scrum). There are also methodologies which have a focus on all the stages of the SDLC (DSDM, RUP), although most are tailor cut for the requirements specification phase (e.g. FDD).