Bryan wrote an interesting post today about his conversation with a cab driver in Boston. He notes it as Web 2.0 Quotes from a cab driver, but almost all quotes rave about iPhone (and Apple ofcourse):

Web 2.0 Quotes from a Boston Cab Driver

• I got a new 3G iPhone because I am in my cab all day and it is like a laptop for my cab.
• I use Classmates.com a lot to catch up with people from school and find old friends.
• I forgot my phone today and I am going crazy without it.  Usually I am chatting on MSN with my friends all day.

Isn’t this unbelievable? The iPhone is probably going to be the computer that may be most widely used by all types of users all over the world and perhaps for more time then non-technical users ever users their laptops and desktops. If a cab driver who is busy driving all day is addicted to it, think about everyone else. This is going to have a profound effect on what becomes popular on the iPhone Web, which I would classify as web usage by iPhone users anytime, anywhere. Ultimately, if users spend more time on the iPhone Web, then companies will rush to re-purpose their offerings for ease of use on the iPhone platform. The winners, however, will be the ones who figure this out early…like now. This may explain Facebook’s new design (Facebook Readies iPhone-Inspired Redesign) and its rush to make Facebook work flawlessly and natively on the iPhone. iPhone developers and iphone development firms will definitely bubble up rapidly in this landscape and we are bound to see the iPhone emerge as the killer-connected-usable handheld that we have longed for.

Google Insights graphs have been all over the blogosphere after Andrew Chen posted thoughts about popular websites which may be driven largely by Silicon Valley early adopters. I played with Google Insights a couple of months back, and recently have been looking at it more closely to analyze a bunch of different thing, including where do we look for good Ruby on Rails developers in India, to hire at our Pune office. Its funny how the data from Google Insights (see below) matches closely to our own recruitment efforts as well as that of our head hunters.

I restricted the search by “Computers & Electronics” category to take out any unrelated matching terms. I also tested with “ruby on rails” search term with and without quotes. Karnataka state ranked the highest which was expected with Bangalore being the largest software hub in India, followed by Kerala, Gujrat and Maharastra. I was surprised to see Kerala and Gujrat rank above Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu (Chennai has a pretty large Ruby group, or atleast it had in the past) rank lower in the list. But if we assume search keywords being indicative of skills or people cultivating those skills (for software/language keywords) then this is insight from Insights is a pretty good insight for everyone who is looking for Ruby on Rails developers in India. It helps you understand which areas in the country has talent that is upto speed with the latest in open source.

I pulled up a chart for python and that came up as expected as well with a few new insights that I didn’t know. Looking at python and ruby on rails charts, helps find areas in the country where you can find early adopters of new technology, who can potentially also be a good fit for startup founders looking to hire or outsource product development to India.

.NET is pretty widespread in the country Andhra Pradesh leading the list, and so is Java with Karantaka leading the list. I think this can be a great resource for companies and recruiters in India to leverage to figure out where they can find what kind of talent and plan accordingly.

We started dabbling in Ruby on Rails in its early days in 2006 when we had not even formally launched BetterLabs. We fell in love with Rails like everyone else but had a steep challenge. Barely any of the developers we interviewed in India/Pune knew about Rails and the ones who had heard about it knew nothing about Ruby. Our love for Rails was greater than the challenge ahead of us and we decided to pursue it anyway. We convinced our initial core team of PHP developers to move to Rails and started our journey of creating innovative consumer and business web applications with Ruby on Rails. We put up a 1 pager website mainly to make sure that the new developers we interview don’t feel that the company doesn’t even have a website. And soon enough the power of Google was at play with a number of inbound inquiries for Rails development. We weren’t interested in services and hence kept saying no and recommending other companies we knew. A few weeks into this in 2006 I just posted a list of companies and developers I knew of for Ruby on Rails in India and that one post had been bringing traffic and inquiries to all the developers mentioned… until my initial blog webvapors went defunct for lack of time on my end.

That one blog post was the early peek at Rails in India and everyone who emailed us or contacted us pointed back to it as their source. That was pretty cool, I thought. I wish I kept up with that and let the Google juice build up Today, I don’t think there is a need for that or similar posts as you can find a lot of directories like working with rails which lists companies as well as freelancers in India who are developing in Rails. The quality of code and attention to detail are unknown though, may be that is where we need people to share their experiences. I’d say amongst the ones I know or know of, here is a short list of Ruby on Rails development companies in India that I’d recommend.

• BetterLabs, ofcourse which is my company, but focused solely on early stage product incubation.
• Talentica Software
• Blue Whale Labs
• MangoSpring
• SlideShare / Uzanto, though I don’t believe they do any services at all.
• Vinsol

If you know of good Ruby on Rails development companies that you have had experience with, please post in the comments and I will make sure and update the list.

“Every single human being posting their thoughts and experiences in any number of ways to the Internet.”

This is Fred Wilson’s vision of social media and it indeed says a lot. It can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. I think this vision almost cannot go wrong at all if you consider the increasing amount of participation of end users on niche web/mobile destinations. Mike disagrees with this vision somewhat but I think he’s saying the same thing after all.

It funny how the unlikeliest of users can also share information online and participate when they have a need or see a clear incentive or value. If you look at the hundreds of pregnancy and baby related forums on even the not-so-well-done 1.0 sites, you will see how users participate willingly when they want information and give back to the same community later. Same is the case with immigration forums for example. And many of these users wouldn’t be the ones who like to share their “life” online via blogs and twitters at all. But they do share when they see the value. So Fred’s vision is not too far from reality I would say. Glassdoor.com is a perfect recent example of a platform where users share information to gain access to information they value - again the most un-social users would definitely share on Glassdoor to get information back.

Funny thing is - a lot of this now called “social media” has been happening in 1.0 looking forums for a long time now. The true value, I believe, will be in services that distill all the social media information into easily understood and consumable chunks on-demand. May be someone will come up with a name for them.