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I understand why people want to share their thoughts, status updates, pictures and everything else in between on Facebook. What I fail to understand is the idea of sharing your financial data via services like Blippy, Mint.com or Wesabe. The current security architecture seems so ripe for abuse and hacking it’s not funny. Blippy allows you to connect your credit card purchases to a social stream that ultimately can be piped into your Facebook newsfeed. Blippy had a security snafu back in April 2010 that revealed a handful of credit card numbers but the implications are that something bigger could be looming.

Wesabe just recently shutdown after burning through USD 5 million in VC money (Union Square Ventures backed). Even Wesabe thinks internet security is a big concern, below is what they have to say about security in their farewell letter:

…because Wesabe stores such highly sensitive data, continuing to operate the service with shoestring operations and security staff is not acceptable, and we do not want to continue accepting new accounts if we cannot guarantee the security level we believe our service requires.

The idea of aggregating all your financial data to some online website seems risky to me.  At least in the US if there is a hack attack you can take the company to court and sue for damages.  In India, good luck…imagine 26 years later the Union Carbide case is still going on and that case involves over 25,000 dead people.

Some people don’t care about securing their online financial data and that is fine…I do care. If we look at Mint.com which is a great service that I would never use, they should have an option where I can retain all my data locally. Then if I want Mint.com to analyze the data I can send it to them encrypted. Once they send me the results/advice via email they delete all my financial data from their servers all within minutes.

I think we are still in the early days of online data security and people have a carefree attitude about it. It will take one major security catastrophe to shake people and make them realize the security implications of “over-sharing” their financial data.

Ever wonder how much TV you watch, what are the most frequently watched programs, who do you call the most or when do you make most of your calls? Maybe I’m unique, but I’m surprised with all the technology I have no clear answers to those 4 questions.

We might have the social graph via Facebook, but what about the personal graph or personal analytics. I believe over the next 2 years we will have access to our TV viewing habits and telephone call log being sliced and diced by the most unlikely of sources.

With the introduction of Google TV, I can see them tracking (with permission) all my viewing habits and then making recommendations. Something similar to what Netflix does for movies. Then you can measure what you are viewing and scale up or scale down the viewing. The futuristic vision of 500 channels never quite happened but have access to over 100 channels is bad enough and something like Google TV would revolutionize the way we watch TV.

But, more interesting for me is my phone bill. For years, I would look at the printed bill and think what a waste of paper. They really should have had a one page summary with charts showing your top talkers, time of day graphs, etc. Since the carriers controlled the data they just didn’t care to really offer this. With the introduction of smart phones I can see an app sitting on the iPhone or Android and harvesting my call logs and then spitting out daily/weekly/monthly reports depending on what I want to track.

For me, the ultimate would be an app that would look at my “Top 10″ callers for the week and create a “favorites” list on the fly. Truly personal.

Motilal Oswal (MO) one of the larger stockbrokers in India is launching its first structured product the MOSt Shares M50, which is an actively managed exchange traded fund (ETF). ETFs as an investment vehicle are pretty old school in the US where over USD 600 billion are tucked into them.

In India, ETFs are relatively unknown and most of the ETFs have been passive index funds tracking the Sensex or Nifty. Benchmark has been the 800 lb gorilla in the Indian ETF space with their Nifty BeES which tracks the Nifty index. The MOSt Shares M50 is one of the first actively managed ETFs in India. Which means that a fund manager, Rajnish Rastogi, is actively managing the money and can tweak the investment model in real time. According to Rastogi’s LinkedIn profile he “developed the first (worldwide) fundamentally enhanced index and obtained regulatory approval to manage an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that tracks it.” If you are looking for more details about the ETF you can visit their site and download the mind numbing PDFs.

For me what is interesting is seeing the ETF space grow in India. ETFs typically have a lower cost (known as expense ratio in the biz) and can be traded via your local stockbroker. When people ask for investing advice, I give them my 3 stage process:

1. Absolute beginner – get an ETF or mutual fund that tracks the index (Benchmark Nifty BeES is an example)
2. Intermediate – broadly invest in ETFs or mutual funds (for example: Reliance Growth Fund or MOSt Shares M50)
3. Expert or gambler – invest directly into the stock market by picking the stocks yourself

I will be tracking the MOSt Shares M50 to see how it outperforms against the Nifty. According to them, they will pick the same stocks in the Nifty 50 index but “remix” the index. Would I recommend this product? Potentially, but I need to see how the ETF stacks up against the index and more importantly does the ETF have enough daily trading liquidity.

For more information on how ETFs got started checkout Wikipedia.

This really is a guide for anyone living outside the five countries (US, France, Germany, UK and Japan) where the iPhone is currently available. But, since I’m based in Bombay it will be from my perspective.

In the past 48 hours I have fielded about 20 questions about the iPhone. So this guide is to summarize the challenges/hurdles of getting an iPhone to work in India. I also got sick of hearing the following from people:

- My phone guy said I can get the iPhone in US and he will unlock it. YOUR phone guy is probably some Nokia loving jackass working from Heera Panna
- Damn, the iPhone costs $200 in the US. FAIL…that’s if you sign-up for a 2 year contract with AT&T. Are you planning on living in the US for the next 24 months, didn’t think so.
- I heard the current price for the iPhone 4 in Bombay is $2000….yeah probably, if people are stupid enough to pay $1000 a sq/ft for sub-par home construction they will blow 2 square feet of their housing budget on a phone.

On with the info. Right now, you face 3 challenges and I’ll go through each one.

1. Getting the actual phone. In the US you can buy the phone from Apple, AT&T Wireless and a handful of big box retailers (read Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc…). The AT&T Wireless Stores sell a “no-commitment” iPhone 4 for $599 (16GB) and $699 (32GB). This means if you are an AT&T customer and want to buy the phone you can. No commitment does not mean unlocked, we’ll get to that in a minute.  All of this assumes there are ample iPhone’s in the supply chain.

2. You got the phone, now how do you unlock it?  The guys at iPhone Dev Team have come out with a jailbreak/unlock for the iOS 4 for the iPhone 3GS. BUT, they have not tested the jailbreak/unlock on the iPhone 4 hardware since it’s been out for only 24 hours. If they can’t issue a jailbreak/unlock right away, you will have yourself a very expensive paper weight.

3. If you have cleared the first 2 issues then the last one is easy.  The iPhone has a new micro SIM card format, which means you will need to cut your existing SIM card to the new format.  Luckily, there are tools that accomplish this and honestly you can even do it without a tool.

So what am I going to do? Funny you should ask. My wife landed into NY on the day of the launch and will spend the next 10 days there, so enough time to try and get an iPhone from AT&T Wireless and hopefully by then the iPhone Dev Team will issue a jailbreak/unlock.  But, I’m not holding my breath…I’m more positive of getting an officially unlocked and non-contract iPhone from the Hong Kong Apple Store and not deal with all this jailbreak/unlock crap I’ve had to “enjoy” with my first gen iPhone.

Update: Apple Store unlocked and non-contract prices:

France – 16GB @ €629 ($750), 32GB @ €739 ($885)
UK – 16GB @ £499 ($722), 32GB @ £599 ($866)

Update 2: Apple Stores in the US are selling without a contract for $599 (16GB) and $699 (32GB). Thanks @pjain

While the US is currently dealing with the largest oil spill in history courtesy of BP. The Union Carbide (UC) disaster from 1984 is truly an Indian story.  The accident took place in 1984 and estimates run as high as 25,000 people have died because of the gas leak and thousands more injured.

So why am I talking about something that took place 26 years ago? Because the Indian court system last week found 8 people guilty of “death by negligence”….26 years later.

Parts of the media want Warren Anderson, past CEO and Chairman of UC, to be extradited to India to face charges. I’m thinking why not focus on the people in India that are alive and that might be able to shed some light on what really happened.  This happened in 1984, almost 7 years before the Indian economic reforms began.  A company like UC could not exist back then without a boat load of people getting compensated…follow the money trail.

I’m really surprised no one is talking about Keshub Mahindra, past CEO and Chairman of UC India. He was one of the 8 people found guilty. I’m assuming no one is mentioning him because he is the Chairman of Mahindra and Mahindra a very large industrial group.

The media seems fixated on targeting people that can’t hurt them in the future. If they target Keshub Mahindra you can bet they won’t be getting any advertising dollars from Mahindra Motors, Reva, Kotak Mahindra, etc…truly Indian.

I just came across a must read article for anyone interested in creating new markets. The article is about De Beers and how they used marketing to help create new markets for their diamonds. The article is even more intriguing when you realize it was written in 1982. Since then, the diamond markets have grown by leaps and bounds. De Beers is no longer the monopoly it once was, but that’s not the point.

The point is, very early on De Beers worked to create the “need” for diamonds. Almost every week there is some founder of a startup talking about creating a new market for your product. De Beers is the ultimate in making this happen…compressed carbon into cash.

Several interesting facts from the article:

- The slogan “A Diamond is Forever” was chosen because they wanted people to think of diamonds as family heirlooms and kept in safes as opposed to being sold on the open market

- In just 14 years, De Beers erased a 1,500 year tradition in Japan with the introduction of the diamond engagement ring

- The “Eternity Rings” campaign came about when Russians mines were producing smaller diamonds that were not high quality. So they took 20 of these diamonds and set them into a ring and called it the “Eternity Ring” – brilliant

I’m still waiting to hear from the team that created the “Two month salary” campaign for De Beers…they have some explaining to do.

A little under 6 years ago I started to write a blog mainly to have a “voice.”  In the past 6 years I have met many people because of the blog, brushed up my writing skills, got some hate mail and overall it’s been a great experience. However, over the past 6 months I’ve been getting a bit bored with the topics I have been covering (anytime I start to write about cars, you know it’s a slow news day). I’m not putting the blog to rest but going to write maybe once or twice a month as opposed to a blog post every week.

Instead, I will be focusing on finally getting a real “voice” with audio. Today, I’m launching a podcast with a co-host that covers business and technology from our perspective of being on the ground in India. It’s called “The DotMatrix Show” – connecting the dot…of biz and tech in India.

The co-host is Sahil Parikh who has similar views and passions but also many times we agree to disagree on stuff as well. You can subscribe via iTunes or visit our website to check it out.

A couple of days ago I was introduced to a video featuring a guy name Salman (Sal) Khan (not the no talent Indian actor) and was blown away by it. Sal quit his job at a hedge fund and started a non-profit teaching academy delivering content via YouTube.  When you watch the video you get the sense the guy really loves what he is doing and the concept is so simple – teach people via short 12-15 minute videos on various topics.  He has done over 1400 videos by himself. I watched a couple on the sub-prime crisis and he was able to distill the contents into basic blocks of info.

In India, education is broken and many investors (private equity and VC’s) are chasing the “next generation” of teaching institutes. When in reality, something delivered via the internet would be a great start.

You can check out over 1400′s videos at http://www.khanacademy.org/

The thud you heard on Thursday was a 1,000 point drop in the Dow which then recovered 650 of those points in a matter of minutes. So what happened?  Within hours, we got to hear all sorts of excuses such as a Citi trader fat figured a sell order for 1 billion instead of 1 million.  Then the next round of excuses were about “algo black boxes” making a bad situation worse.

If these orders were executed within milliseconds, then how the hell are we still trying to figure out the cause 48 hours later.  I’m sure a lot has todo with ECN’s, which is where about 60% of all trades now take place. ECN’s provide a way for traders to be not so transparent with their trades. If algorithmic trading funds are called black boxes then ECN’s are the mother of all black boxes.

What we have experienced over the past 18 months in the financial markets seems to have a similar thread – transparency. The entire CDO complex was opaque since they were not listed on an exchange and only after it blew up did we start to learn what was happening.

True transparency leads to quicker price discovery and that’s the problem. You can’t make a boat load of money if everyone knows what you are doing. That’s the struggle of Wall Street vs Main Street, Wall Street likes the current structure and Main Street wants to open it up. Since the sub-prime meltdown NOT ONE rule has been passed to regulate the CDO market, however the US Government has bailed out Wall Street to the tune of over $1 Trillion.

I really hope the SEC makes an example of this ridiculous 1,000 point dip and specifically names the client, the broker/dealer and where the trades took place. Let the transparency begin with this government inquiry.

Last week at the Facebook Developers Conference (termed f8) they released a simple yet powerful feature called the Like button. In a single line of code any website can become part of the massive Facebook matrix instantly. Sites such as the Wall Street Journal are already serving up Like buttons and it adds a whole new dimension. Now when you see an article on cnn.com and notice some of friends Like an article, you can judge the social context of the article. Is the article “liked” by your business friends, family friends or friends that like tabloid trash.

The Like button concept is not new. It’s been around for years, digg.com was one of the early social news aggregators. Digg over the past few years has been sputtering around and it’s CEO Jay Adelson was shown the door early this month. Kevin Rose, the founder, is back at the helm and was the internet poster child in 2006 when he was on the cover of BusinessWeek. As for digg, I see more and more sites adding the Like button and will most likely have it along side the digg button and other similar buttons. But honestly, who is going to sit there and press 2 or 3 buttons. I see someone pressing one button if they like an article and that button will be the Facebook Like one. I also see Facebook working with big content providers and “suggesting” they have only one button – theirs.

It’s a brilliant strategy too extend Facebook’s reach beyond the facebook.com domain. An example of someone executing this concept one step further is the site http://likebutton.me. It aggregates all your friends that have “Liked” stories and overlays it onto an easy to view grid.