Valley Chai

got my hands on search monkey preview for developers, thanks to an old acquaintance from verity days. looking at the ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots, the results are quite stunning.

The ‘Before’ Shot: here’s how my post titled Laloo School of Business is shown in google and yahoo search result pages.

The ‘After’ Shot: here’s how the same page can appear after being customized by search monkey on yahoo! search

this, after a hapless product manager with half-baked programming skills hacked at the tool for a couple of hours. imagine what a PHP stud could do?! some some of my quick take-aways:

• the long toil to generate better automated summaries of pages is blown to bits
• yahoo is essentially handing the serp real-estate over to the content owners. a stark contrast to big brother mentality of the past
• the serp is essentially a listings display page, a la ebay, and each page is no different from a listing
• ability to show the image is good, but when would video be playable? why wait?
• will SEO’s now stop griding their noses and focus more on a more deterministic messaging for each of their pages?
• not sure where microsoft kicked yahoo, but it sure restarted blood circulation over there

very nice product indeed.

here’s some tweets during my recent train ride from bangalore (the undisputed center of gravity of india’s software services, a la silicon valley) to hyderabad (a very viable alternative, a la silicon alley).

Train just left bangalore junction. Nice fruity fragrance and clean bathroom with well stocked paper towels. Damn this ain’t yo papa’s train. 07:58 AM May 08, 2008 from web

With two other people in our cabin/coupe. Mom and a (quiet) 6-yr old. 08:11 AM May 08, 2008 from web

Power outlet, and boys watching ‘max and ruby’ on my laptop. 08:12 AM May 08, 2008 from web

Rs.2,350 ticket price for First Class AC from Bangalore to Hyderabad. Think of it as our own Nerd Bird. Or Techie Train. 08:25 AM May 08, 2008 from web

Probably at 40 km/hr till it gets out of the metro area. 08:41 AM May 08, 2008 from web

3 course dinner served by on-train attendant. Soup done. 08:42 AM May 08, 2008 from web

The boy in my coupe/cabin has ‘baseball playoffs 2005′ on his t-shirt. He doesn’t know what baseball is. 09:36 AM May 08, 2008 from web

Lights out. Me and a boy on one berth, missus and a boy on the other. 09:54 AM May 08, 2008 from web

Railways considers 5 and lower as infants - they ride free, and doesn’t allow you to buy them their own berths - even if you wanna. Idiots. 09:55 AM May 08, 2008 from web

In the train station, going to hyderabad with kids. Rajadhani express plastered with airtel advertising. Pics later. 07:29 AM May 08, 2008 from web

Train is haulin’ ass now. 09:57 AM May 08, 2008 from web

Btw the dinner is included in the train fare. Rice, chapati, aloo gobi sabzi, paneer masala, dal, salad, yogurt. Vanilla ice cream dessert. 10:00 AM May 08, 2008 from web

Ice cream was half melted. And I hit a couple of tiny stones in the dal - crushed the little buggers and polished off the meal. 10:14 AM May 08, 2008 from web

My twitterberry is at the mercy of my vodafone gprs. Going into quiet zone while the train passes through the-middle-of-nowhere next few hrs 10:44 AM May 08, 2008 from web

At a town called “Sri Satya Sai Prashanti Nilayam” - a town built around the ashram of a very powerful god-man. 10:56 AM May 08, 2008 from web

Dark territory from here on. Going to bed. 10:57 AM May 08, 2008 from web

Tea and coffee served. Beautiful country morning outside. Train is 45 min late into secunderabad. 06:24 PM May 08, 2008 from web

Passing through the town I was born at. Cooool! 07:27 PM May 08, 2008 from web

Rolling into secunderabad - the engine is honking continuously to avoid inadvertent bystanders. 07:53 PM May 08, 2008 from web

Painfully slow into the last few miles. 07:53 PM May 08, 2008 from web

Arrived. Its hot! 08:02 PM May 08, 2008 from web

Catching up on lost sleep. At home with parents. 10:06 PM May 08, 2008 from web

during the walk this morning, i noticed something somber. at 7 am, a woman was picking at a large fallen palm leaf. it leaf was dry, and sitting on the sidewalk, she was peeling it off, apparently to put the dry palm leaf to good use - probably a basket may be a toy. a pathological efficiency freak that i am, my immediate reaction was that this is a brain under utter misuse, a life is being wasted.

you see this at every single turn in the daily life - young men and women doing things that are quite extraneous.

* at the office entrance: one person to check if you have a badge while entering the office, one person doing the same thing after you enter.
* in the evevator : one person to press the buttons, seated on a stool inside the carriage
* at the coffee counter: there is a person to pour coffe in your cup. another on to add milk to it
* at the apartment block : one watchman for every gate, another to open the gate when you arrive in a car. a gate that is kept partially open.
* at restaurants : a person manning a coin-operated phone booth. people serving food at a buffet - one person per dish.

clearly these are gainsome employments for millions in india that can’t do or find any better. but imagine, how much of good could could come out if these people could be put themselves to better more productive work. what could a 6-months of vocational training do with their productivity and their own personal self-worth? multiply that by about 700 million, what could you see?

i see a revolution. i see a renaissance.

even in IPL cricket, indian players are going in for value-pricing. 17 of the top 20 players (in terms of production on the field vs. player contract value) are indian players. check out the complete rediff story. very soon someone will start playing the moneyball.

Posted by mobile phone:

msft withdraws the bid. i guess (a) msft will come back again (b) yhoo probably has one more quarter to blow open the growth in sales (c) and for employees, a bit longer view of what they’ll be working on.

yahoo ego has been wounded by this whole saga, and there are still many folks in the company that can kick some serious butt. pual kedrosky has a good post on it, including very good comment stream.

until then, i guess it’d be google’ lapdog than msft’s bitch.