6 Best Twitter applications to manage your Twitter followers

There are many applications that help you manage your Twitter followers. Some of them help in mass un following and following. I personally found that these tools are not very effective as you like to be aware whom you are following and not following. ex. if you un follow in bulk, you miss many celebrities and important people ( who may not follow you, but you still like to follow them to get their tweets). After struggling with many applications, I found the following few to be quite useful.

1) Twellow : I found Twellow to be the No 1 application to manage your Twitter followers. I rate it high because, you can ask it to list all the people whom you are following but those that are not following you. While many applications provide this list, Twellow is unique in providing the people's profile as a part of the list. This is very important information for you to decide whom to unfollow selectively.

2) TwitterCounter : This application will show you how many new users one is adding per day. You can add TwitterCounter to your site / blog / social network.

3) Qwitter : It is also good to keep an eye on who is not following you anymore. Qwitter e-mails you when someone stops following you on Twitter with a message.

4) Twitterfriends : Find out the hidden network of Twitter contacts that are really relevant for you. I liked the quick stats that this app provides. You can also see who of your Twitter friends are online this very moment.

5) Mr. Tweet: I found this application to be quite useful in finding new and relevant people to follow. It will analyze your Twitter network, help you discover interesting people, and also recommends you to others.

6) WeFollow : One can find new and relevant followers with keyword search, of interest. It is good to list your profile here and use this site to find new people as well as get found by others.

McKinsey conversations with global leaders: John Chambers of Cisco

Listen to the McKinsey conversations with global leaders: John Chambers of Cisco. John Chambers is always an excellent leader to hear to. A few take aways:

-CISCO always looks at every downturn as an opportunity. John claims that, during everydownturn, CISCO always gained market share and emerged stronger than they went into it, as they don’t look short term and are able to anticipate and invest into market transitions. CISCO is able to do this as they are cash rich. I am sure CISCO can afford to do that with their 34B cash.

-Move fast but not with out process a process behind it that can scale, have flexibility, and be able to be replicated. Moving fast without a process would be equally as bad as not moving fast at all.

- CISCO think we are entering the second phase of the productivity growth and it's all going to be around collaboration and network-enabled technologies called Web 2.0 that enable collaboration. CISCO thinks that they can use this downturn to catch up, move aggressively while competition is cutting costs and lead this wave.

This is a big bet for CISCO but looking at their past, hopefully they pull this off. We want them to.

- John's answers to a question on " What does this mean for your customers?" is quite illustrative and impressive.

Tweetie .. Excellent Iphone Twitter client

Tweetie is the best iPhone Twitter client that I came across. 3 things that I like about Tweettie

- You can manage multiple Twitter accounts easily
- Check the Twitter trends ( best way to check the latest news)
- Retweet very easily

Watch new Videos on You Tube

Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com

Stream live video fast to the world. Right from your phone

Here is a cool tool QIK that allows anyone to stream live video right out of your mobile. Experience the possibilities .. amazing ..

Currently it supports streaming from Nokia phones only .. I wish to see iPhone support ..

CLick here

The Coming Death Of Indian Outsourcing ; Need to go up the value chain

Here is a good article from FORBES on the "danger of death" for Indian outsourcing.

CLick Here for the article from FORBES

I totally agree with the author's views. It is time for the top management of Indian SOftware Houses to think beyond the low end services game and move up the value chain by start producing innovative products. This fact is very evident if one looks at the balance sheets of these large Indian comapnies like INFOSYS, TCS, WIPRO, SATYAM etc. The revenues from products is 0 to 2%.

Innovation is one part of the story. Some of these companies did come up with some software products in the past but never were successful in creating the global brands. It is not easy for the management and sales force to adopt to this new business model. It is not a rocket science but needs focus, commitment and will to take risk. There are handful of Indians who has this expertise. These sales experts cannot do much when they do no thave mamageemnt support. Today, they all go afetr easy money with short sales cyles.

The sales cycle for a body shop could be anywhere from 1 day to 1 month, where as for an outsurcing project it could be anywhere from 1 month to 6 months depending on the size of the deal.

The product sales cycle could easily be anywhere from 1 yr to 5 yrs, depending on the customer profile. One has to invest in time and money in marketing, building the prodct brand, acceptance of the product by the customers, testimonials from customers etc before one takes off.

Americal companies and the teams are masters in executing this business model, over the time. Indian companies need to learn this game. One way to do this is to induct and integrate the American expertise. This is where the Indian companies are still struggling. It is easier said than done to do this due to many factors. The long sales cycles of the products is something a company with outsoucing business model ( short sales cycle) can not digest easily. The associated cultural changes pose problems too. It took 25 yrs for Korean gaints like Samsung to understand, overcome the cultural barriers, integrate and finally win the US markets. Do the Indian companies have such persitance? I think they have no option.



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Free math courses online

Here is an excellent resource for people looking for Educational Portal. In perticular, check out all those free math courses online from top schools ..