Syed Waqar Hussain
A men enjoying freedom of writing and covering Pakistan.
Archive for October, 2009
Google Music Search
29 Oct 2009Google has just announced the launch of Google Music. This new service is powered by Lala and MySpace’s iLike. Other partners include Gracenote, iMeem, Pandora and Rhapsody. Google has also partnered with the major music labels: EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music Group and Warner Music.
Through Lala and iLike, Google will also be able to feature music from a large number of independent labels. This new service will be available only in the US for now and will be integrated in the default search results page.
Rumors about the impending launch of Google’s music initiative flared up last week when members of the press received invitations to an event in Los Angeles that was going to feature both iLike and Lala (not to mention “members of Linkin Park”). Users could already use the parameter “music:” to bring up Google’s music search, though Google never promoted it, and this old feature didn’t include the ability to stream music right on the page.
What Will This New Feature Look Like?
In this new implementation, users can’t choose between the Lala or iLike widget. Instead, Google will randomly decide which widget a user sees. This gives Google the option to switch between services and to include other services in future as well.
Buy Songs from Rhapsody – See Lyrics from Gracenote
Underneath the music onebox results, Google will feature links to its other partners, like Rhapsody and iMeem, where users will be able to purchase MP3s.
Google’s partnership with Gracenote also allows it to show lyrics in the search results now. As Marissa Mayer pointed out in today’s announcement, finding lyrics is still very hard on Google. Now, users can type lyrics into the default search box and Google will return results from the music search feature, and users can play the song right on the search results page.
Big Winners: Lala and MySpace
The big winners here are obviously Lala and MySpace/iLike. For Lala, this has been an especially busy period. Just last week, Lala announced a partnership with Facebook. It now powers Facebook’s music gifting service.
iLike has a traditional streaming model. The company streams some song full length and some as 30-second samples. Users can buy MP3s from iLike for between $0.99 and $1.29. MySpace bought iLike earlier this year, and the widget on the Google search results page will be MySpace-branded.
Lala’s business model is more interesting. Users can stream every song on the service once for free. After that, customers can buy the right to stream it for $0.10 or buy the MP3 for $0.89. Users can also upload their own music library to Lala and then stream those songs freely over the Internet.
How important this move is for the two streaming music services becomes clear when we look at the current traffic data for music-related searches on Google.
Update: We just had a quick chat with Lala’s CEO Geoff Ralston after the event. The Lala team is obviously very excited about the partnership with Google and as Ralston told us, the company worked with Google for quite a while to get this new feature up and running. According to Ralston, Lala’s partners in the music industry were very supportive of the integration. We also asked him if he was worried that the new influx of traffic was going to bring Lala’s servers down. Google, however, stress tested Lala’s servers and couldn’t bring the service down with up to 550 queries per second.
What Does Google’s Current Music Traffic Look Like?
Hitwise’s Heather Dougherty took a close look at Google’s music traffic earlier today. According to Hitwise’s data, about 6% of last month’s top 1000 search terms on Google were music-related. In total, Google sent about 1.48% of its traffic to music sites. The majority of these searches (15.32%) lead to a Wikipedia site, but almost 10% currently go to YouTube, 5.7% to Yahoo Music and 3% to MySpace. Now that users can listen to music right from the search results page, these services – including Google’s own YouTube – will likely see a drop in music-related traffic over the next few weeks.
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- Tags: google, ilike, lala, music
Make Your Own Project Life Cycle
28 Oct 2009If you don’t want to have to start every project from scratch, then it’s worthwhile creating your own Project Life Cycle.
How should you do this? What should it look like? And how do you use it?
A Project Life Cycle is a series of steps that you take to complete a project from start to finish. Of course, it implies that you can complete the same steps for every project – so should you?
In principle, yes. Every project will have an Initiation phase, a Planning phase, an Execution phase and a Closure phase. However within these phases, the steps you take may vary slightly between projects.
The trick is to create a Life Cycle that is generic enough to use for all of your projects, while still being specific enough to add value and save you time on delivery. Here’s how to do it…
Map it out
Every project is delivered in some form of Life Cycle. You probably usually define your project upfront, then you’ll hire your team, you’ll plan and complete a set of tasks to create some deliverables and then get your customer to sign it off as complete. This sequence of steps are what is called a “Life Cycle” and chances are that you’re using the same generic Life Cycle every time you deliver a project!
So start by mapping out your current project Life Cycle on a blank sheet of paper and identify the elements that you know work well, and those that don’t.
And improve it
Then try and improve your Life Cycle by analyzing why certain steps don’t work well currently. Analyze the root cause and identify which steps you could take instead, to improve your chance of success. For instance, maybe “scope creep” is an issue for you, so by putting in place better steps for managing changes to scope, it would help.
Once you have identified the sequence of steps that you know will deliver your projects successfully from start to finish, the next thing you need to do is to “get detailed”.
Get detailed
With a clearly defined series of steps, you now need to define the tasks and activities that are needed to perform each step efficiently. For instance, if your first step was to get funding for your project, then do you need to create a Business Case or Financial Plan to do it? What type of person will authorize the funding and what information will they need to do it?
For every step, describe how you intend to do it, the tasks and activities to be taken and who is responsible for them.
Tool up
Great, so you have mapped out your life cycle for delivering projects. Now you need to use a tool that allows you to link all of the steps together into a methodology, so that you can follow it for every project you undertake.
How to Document Your Projects
14 Oct 2009As a Project Manager, you have to document your projects quickly and efficiently to ensure success. In this newsletter, we’ll tell you which documents you need to complete to deliver your projects on time.
How to Document your Projects
Here are the essential documents you need to complete…
Initiation
- Business Case: To justify the financial investment in your project, you need to write a Business Case. It lists the costs and benefits, so everyone knows what the return on investment will be.
- Feasibility Study: Before you kick-off your project, you need to determine whether your project is feasible, using a Feasibility Study.
- Project Charter: You then need to document the objectives, scope, team, time frames and deliverable in a Project Charter.
Planning
- Project Plan: You need to create a Project Plan listing all of the tasks required to undertake your project from start to finish. Every task must be scheduled, so you know what needs to be done and when.
- Resource Plan: Next, you need to plan your resources by documenting the money, equipment and materials needed for your project.
- Quality Plan: You then need to set quality targets, so that the project deliverables meet the expectations of your customer.
- Risk Plan: All of the risks need to be documented and their likelihood and impact on the project identified.
- Communication Plan: You need to plan your communications, so that you send the right messages to the right people, at the right time.
Execution
- Time Management: You need to use Timesheets to track time spent on your project. Then update your Project Plan with your Timesheet data to see whether your project is still within schedule.
- Cost Management: Track your costs using Expense Forms. Every expense is formally logged and approved, so that you can confirm at any time that you are currently under budget.
- Change Management: Document each change to the project scope, using Change Forms. You can then control change to ensure your project is always on track.
- Risk Management: Use Risk Forms to document each risk to the project. You can then manage project risk carefully to ensure that nothing happens that will affect the project schedule or budget.
- Issue Management: As each issue occurs on the project, you need to investigate its impact on the project and then write it up on an Issue Form. You can then kick off the tasks needed to resolve it quickly.
Closure
- Project Closure Report: When your project is complete, document all of the actions needed to close the project properly. This includes releasing teams and suppliers, equipment and materials.
- Post Project Review: And after your project has been closed, you can review its success and document the results for your sponsor. That way, you can show that all of the objectives were met and that the project was delivered on time and within budget.
And there you have it. By completing each of these documents for your project, you can boost your chances of success.
According to a report published in The News, an investigation into the geographical locations of Internet Protocl (IP) addresses used for the 26/11 Mumbai attacks has been identified as places locatied in Pakistan, Russia, Kuwait and the USA.
Five out of ten IP addresses associated with the terrorist activity has been identified as beign located in Pakistan, Indian media reported. During the hearing of the Mumbai attack case, cyber crime brance inspector Mukund Pawar told a local court in India that the US federal Bureau of Investigation had handed over a list of 10 IP addresses to Indian authorities.
Pawar said he used a website to find out the actal geogrphical origin of the IPs and retrieved the ten locations. ” I downloaded the information available on the website with respect to the 10 addresses. “Five IPs – 58.27.167.153, 118.107.140.138, 203.81.224.201, 203.81.224.202, and 203.81.224.203 were traced to Pakistan.” Pawar Said.
Until now, if you wanted to use Google PowerMeter to track your energy usage, you had to hope your electric utility had or was willing to install a smart meter for you. Today, Google announced the availability of a device that puts your energy usage data into your own hands.
The TED 5000 from Energy Inc. is a real-time electricity usage monitor that you can purchase and install yourself, with packages starting around $200. It can run the free Google PowerMeter tool, allowing you to check on your personal home energy data from any device that can access the web.
The TED 5000 is Google’s first official device partner for PowerMeter, but the company indicates they plan to work with more providers who make energy monitors to get PowerMeter support built-in. And if you already own a TED 5000, you can perform a firmware upgrade that will allow you to run Google PowerMeter on your existing device as well.
Do you use Google PowerMeter or other tools to better monitor the energy usage in your home? Have you made any interesting discoveries about unexpected sources of electricity usage? Are there other software tools your fellow energy-conscious individuals might want to check out?
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