World Cup 2007

Seriously, its disgusting to think of Indian team's performance (and the team as such too). We're almost out of the world cup as I'm writing this now.

India need 96 runs in 74 balls

India: 159/8 (37.4 Ovs) H Singh* 2(7) Z Khan 0(0)

Sri Lanka: 254/6 (50.0 Ovs) L Malinga 8-0-39-1 S Jayasuriya* 8.4-0-31-1

Run Rate : 4.22 (Required:7.78) Current Partnership: 0(1)

Last Wicket: Rahul Dravid c M Muralitharan b S Jayasuriya 60(82) - 8/159 in 37.3 ov.

Well, Indian team all that I have got to say to you is, "Its not a shameful thing to be called a minnow... You deserve that pretty much... and I seriously dont understand why your Test nation status hasn't been grabbed yet"

Topless Chick in the middle of the Beach - Image

Is Twitter better than a blog?

My experience with Twitter & potential applications

I am a die-hard fan of Twitter ever since I knew about it. Even though not many of my Indian friends use it, I'm quite happy playing with it - who would like to resist the ability to have live conversations with people like Scoble?

For the forthcoming ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 (which nearly 25% of the world population is going to follow), I thought its a great way to help them receive LIVE UPDATES right on their mobile/IM absolutely free of charge. And I set up this website at www.crictimes.com

The goal of this website:
Send LIVE CRICKET SCORE UPDATES to any cricket fan on the world absolutely FREE irrespective of the medium (mobile, IM, email, RSS or web)

I didn't publicise much about it as I was not completed with my testing of the service as such. Some of the problems I observed:
(1) It doesn't work on few mobile networks (for example Hutch in India)
(2) It doesn't have local numbers for all parts of the world (Some people find it expensive to send ISD messages everytime to update from their mobiles)
(3) Apart from these, there were several random instances when the updates don't arrive on my devices at all (mobile or IM) and there is NO real reason as why its not getting updated.
(4) There is ONLY one UK-based Twitter number I can use. Although this is beneficial in most cases, having a couple of options doesn't harm/

I contacted Twitter team on this and it seems clear that their growth itself is a big barrier to offer a stable service. I can definitely understand this but I had to re-consider my decision now to run crictimes and I might not possibly run it because I dont want to let cricket fans down who might be looking for that important update on an important match.

Considering the potential applications of Twitter:

(1) You can be a broadcaster of a particular event (just like I thought of updating all the cricket fans with the live scores and related newsbits around it for the next two months)
(a) Even if you're not generating content, you can think of setting up a Twitter account exclusively to update all the breaking news on CNN / IBM / New York Times / TechCrunch or just about anything or any other blog.
(b) How about an account to follow Web 2.0 expo exclusively and keep the world virtually follow you all next month?
(c) How about a soldier/civilian following activities at Iraq and updating his Twitter account?
(d) How about someone following George Bush?
(e) How about if someone following things happening inside North Korea and updates us?

Anything like that. Possibilities are endless. Once you have followers behind you, you can set-up a business model like sending upto 10 relevant ads per day as updates to same mobile or something like that. That way you get paid for your time as well :D

Twitter is NOT a replacement for a blog but it has a great potential as a notification service.

If everyone subscribes for their own Twitter account, we don't need special news correspondants to cover an event and show us "edited" content. Every one of us can be a news correspondent covering our own topics in our own way - be it of global scope or something restricted to your friends circle.

If James Kim had used Twitter, I believe we would have had more chances to save him. The opportunites & applications are immense and sky is the limit with something like Twitter.

The beauty of twitter is the marriage it conducted between web and mobiles. I think its time for early adopted like us to support it offer a stable service. To offer a stable service, they need money. Its time now to make VCs realize that twitter is a revolutionary concept and has a huge potential just by tweaking few aspects of its business model.

Lets show our support to twitter by digging this.

L O L, can't get closer than this, Scoble !!!

Seriously, that's how closer you can get to Scoble here . L O L !