Random Ramblings on a Few Findings
Greetings from Siddharth Rao’s blog! Another month passes by – since my last post. Summer days are surely long, but they do fly fast as well. I have so much to do and I always find myself falling short of time. Phew – the same old human mindset of never being satisfied!
Anyway, in this post – I’m going to talk about a few findings that I stumbled across, in the last 4-5 weeks. Also, at the end of the post – is an update on my dollar product experiment : - )
Finding # 1: To start off with – I stumbled upon an advertisement in my Gmail account about a domain on sale. I have been seeing this ad quite frequently since then and every time I see it, my head spins thinking that how can anyone justify the cost that they are asking for the domain? Take a look at the screen shot below:
YES !! The domain is up for sale at 2.4 million dollars - Crazy stuff. I know the dot-com era of the late 1990’s – when someone would still agree to pay a super-hefty price tag for a mere domain name. That too – only if it is a premium domain name and it matches the name of the company that needs the domain for it’s own branding. However, on today’s date – selling a four-letter domain like lisa.com for 2.4 million dollars – just does not make any sense to me. It would be interesting to see how many months (or even years) these guys can wait to see if they get a prospective buyer for the domain, with that kind of a price tag.
Finding # 2: Off late – I’ve started discovering a new avenue and breed of tech-savvy roadside beggars. Remember seeing those shabby people on red lights - with cardboards reading “Homeless, Tired, Broke, Thank You, God Bless”, etc.?? These are spotted more as we hit spring, summer and the fall seasons.
I received seven emails in the last 5 weeks – from un-identified people who called themselves homeless, etc. Surprisingly – Gmail’s spam filter filtered none of these emails. The email read the same thing like their banner reads and it had a link to initiate a paypal donation of $5/$10 etc. to these so called homeless people. I said to myself – WOW – here comes the age of a homeless Internet literate and email enabled beggars!
Finding # 3: The job market in the US appears to be picking up quite nicely these days. If I compare what I see now versus what we saw in Q1 and Q2 of 2009 – it looks so much better. Of course – there are countless number of people sitting there to latch on to these new opportunities. But the fact that we are seeing such activity is a positive sign. I hope we have already hit the bottom and the only direction we can see this market go – is upwards! I know at least half a dozen friends who got new jobs in the last 5 weeks : - )
Finally – here’s a small & quick update on the experiment that I am conducting. I posted about this experiment back in May. You can read the full post here. So far – things appear to be on track. I have managed to build my initial set of prototypes, blue prints, wire frames, etc. – whatever you want to call it. I’m now working on the dirtiest part – paperwork for incorporation, legal terms, etc. It is a part of any business and if not planned well – it can act as a systematic time bomb and destroy your business.
And yeah – here’s something new I’m planning to do on my blog. In a few days – you’ll start seeing a weekly contest banner on the top right section of this page. Of course there will be prizes as well. I’ll make a detailed post about this when I get ready. Just wanted to add some fun and interaction on my blog for all you readers!
That’s it for now and perhaps this month. Stay tuned for the contest thing I mentioned above! I bet it’s going to be fun and interesting.
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Hey Sid, Just came across your blog while surfing on the net, are you the same Sid I know. Your blog posts are very interesting. After reading your posts I can surely tell, you are the same Sid. Anyway write me back. - Jen