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Money – it’s been around for 1000′s of years and drives most people to do things, good or bad. When you have money, you also need banks to provide a safe place for people to deposit their money. These banks then turn around and lend this money to others. This simple business model is how banks have operated for 1000′s of years and thrived on the difference of what interest they gave to depositors and what interest they received on outstanding loans. Over time, banks started to offer more and more products to generate more and more revenues. Many of these products were not that simple and in the process were given a fancy name – structured products, which just means they are customized for each customer based on their specific needs. Then BOOM, the financial markets collapsed and many of the banks faced near bankruptcy because of their loosing lending practices and their structured products which started to come undone. In the aftermath of this financial carnage a new group of “banks” are emerging in the US to get back to basics in banking.

The four that have emerged include – Bluebird, GoBank, Moven and Simple. All are pretty similar in that they have low fees, no physical locations, heavy use of technology but a couple are not actual banks. To be called a bank you need to be a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) which means the deposits are insured by the US Government for up to USD 250,000.

Bluebird - Bluebird is a partnership between American Express & Walmart, the distribution strength of Walmart and the credit card experience of American Express (AmEx) is what makes this offering interesting. The product is a no-fee checking account that has a debit card. The target audience is low-income shoppers who have a tough time getting a regular credit card. Bluebird is a bank since at the height of the financial crisis AmEx was turned into a bank holding company so it could accept money from the Federal Reserve.

GoBank - Green Dot first made it big with it’s prepaid cards it offered to low-income consumers, then it forayed into other parts of the banking sector. Green Dot acquired Bonneville Bank, an FDIC member bank, and renamed it to Green Dot Bank. GoBank is brand of the Green Dot Bank. The offering is similar to Bluebird in that it offers an online checking account, debit card and access to most ATM’s in the US.

Moven - Moven started out as Movenbank then changed its name because it’s not a bank. It has partnered with an unnamed FDIC member bank. Moven offers the usual banking products but really shines around the money management tools it offers. MoneyPulse is one of their tools which tells you where you are spending your money. Moven was started by Brett King who has authored several books on the future of banking, his latest book is called Bank 3.0.

Simple - Simple also started out with a different name, it was first known as BankSimple. But it also is not a bank and has partnered with The Bancorp Bank, a member FDIC bank. Early on Simple attracted a lot of attention as one of it’s early founders Alex Payne was an early employee at Twitter. Alex left Twitter to startup Simple which was seen as a stamp of approval for Simple in that it solves a real world problem. Alex has since left the company. I signed up for the service but I really don’t use it much since I don’t live in the US and most of my transactions are Rupee denominated, however the overall interface has definitely got some great eye candy.

Bottom line – Most of these new age banks are offering a convenient mobile platform via iOS and Android devices to allow consumers to interact with their bank information. In addition, most of them have spent a large amount of time and resources on the UI of their website and mobile apps. However, I still believe it’s early days with these banks and feel they need to also address the investment portfolio part as well. By adding the investment piece, it creates an end to end solution which many consumers are still looking for.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone expects me to write down the same thing over and over again when they are are providing a service to me. An example of this would be the medical system in India. I’ve visited the same hospital about 4-5 times and everytime I use their service I end up writing down my name, address and etc.  And, this is even after they have given me a customer ID which has all the information already. When I question them, the response is always the same “sir, that is the way our system is.”

For the medical system to be so antiquated in this day and age is a shame. Everyone is so busy we don’t have time to keep on repeating the same thing over and over. Writing down my name is actually the least of my concerns, what is more alarming is that certain things slip through the cracks.  If a persons entire medical file was put online, the doctor and/or hospital could constantly monitor what is happening and throw up any red flags if a certain medicine was given for a prolonged period of time. Or a new doctor could instantly have access to the entire patient history file online and quickly get up to speed about the patient.

Over the past 4 months, I’ve been on Storvas (a cholesterol reducing generic of Lipitor) and have had to get my liver functions tested every month as the doctor adjusts my dosage of Storvas (20mg, 10mg, 5mg…). It’s the same racket every time – I fill out a form at the hospital, they take my blood, after a day or two I pickup the results and then go see my doctor.  Could this process be automated? Of course. In an ideal world I would have given my ID, they take my blood and my results would have come via email as a PDF attachment. Then I could have forwarded the results to my doctor. (Of course, my doctor is 85 years old and I can’t see him screwing around with the latest version of Adobe Reader to view my blood results.)

Another example is when I get my car serviced by the same company that sold me the car. They already have all my information in the system but yet they will always ask me to fill out a form. And yes, the form has the basic information such as car, plate number, address, etc… Luckily, they do keep track of the work done to my car. I asked if I could get access to that historical information and of course it’s a closed system…not surprised.

Writing things down for your personal benefit is fine, the problem is when you are in a commercial setting is where things break down. In India, the writing things down system (WTDS) is super cheap and thus if someone has to write down the same thing 10 times it’s okay. It takes real money to modernize a system and I’m assuming as businesses get more competitive in India, they will have look at technology to up their game.

I thought after the tragic events of 26/11 in Bombay that security would get beefed up around the city. Instead “security theater” started to appear at hotels and malls, which is the illusion of security but is just smoke and mirrors. We would drive into the Phoenix Mills mall complex and the routine would begin, they check your glovebox and your trunk. For a period of 3 months, I had an empty suitcase in my trunk and not once did they question me. During busy periods the outsourced security guards sort of give up and just let people through.

The reason for the theatrics is to give you the illusion that things are safe but when the shit hits the fan that’s when you see the true colors.  For example on 26/11, most of the police force abandoned their posts and ran home. I don’t blame them, when you confront someone who has a semi-automatic machine gun and you have a police issued wooden stick, what would you do? If the Indian government was really serious about security it should own the responsibility just like it does for airports and providing protection for government officials.

Over the past few days, I’ve see this “security theater” playing out again but this time involving the internet. The government is trying to curb all the rumors that are being spread about what is happening in Assam and I can understand their reasoning for stopping it. What is more difficult to understand is their method for going about it.

Currently, if they find questionable content they will goto Facebook or Google and ask them to take it down. If those companies don’t take down the content then the Indian government adds that website link to their blacklist of sites to block. All of this takes time and honestly is pretty useless because people can create hundreds of links a minute and their is no way to regulate it via this manual process that the Indian government loves so much.

Twitter seems to be the current flashpoint in part because it has no business operations on the ground in India and doesn’t have to listen to the Indian government. Facebook and Google are in a tough spot since they don’t want to be known for censoring content but then again they don’t want to jeopardize their large workforce in India. Thus the Indian government is looking at various options in dealing with Twitter, if they block the entire service in India they will look stupid in the eyes of the world. But the cat and mouse game of blocking certain accounts is also a waste of time.

If the Indian government was serious about this issue they would look at creating a firewall for screening content and blocking content on the fly. But, it will never get implemented since it will cost real money and I don’t think the Indian government is that serious about this issue, again it’s about “security theater.”

Several weeks ago Flipkart was the cover story in the July 6, 2012 issue of Forbes India and it was a fairly controversial piece as the sub-title declared “India’s e-commerce darling is headed for a fall.” It was one of the most commented pieces on the Forbes India site and links were flying all over the interwebs.

I think it’s easy to lose sight of what Sachin and Binay Bansal have created in such a short period of time. Indiaplaza.com has been around since 1996 and has not reached the scale of what Flipkart has done in 5 years. Flipkart has created many new online shoppers that would have never dreamed of buying anything online in India. The Bansal’s are true entrepreneurs who essentially re-shaped a market out of thin air with nothing more than a website, books and desire.

I first used Flipkart in January 2011 when I was trying to buy a friends book (The SaaS Edge) which was not available at Crosswords at the time. Since then I’ve used them for countless purchases and delighted with their rock bottom prices and their under promising (estimated delivery in 4-5 days) and over delivering (actual delivery in 1 day). How could you not love that? Having used Amazon.com in the US for over 10 years, I was skeptical of online shopping in India because of online credit card fraud or e-tailers not processing a refund. Flipkart single handedly turned me from a skeptical shopper into an online shopper.

However, since the Forbes India story was published my usage at Flipkart is zero. The simple reason is price, they are no longer the low-cost option when buying books. Recently, when I was about to order some books I checked HomeShop18 and Indiatimes Shopping and found them lower. Even though Flipkart has spoiled me with their delivery excellence I really don’t mind if my books come 4-5 days later…they are books not perishable items. And that’s the issue when you compete on price, someone else can come in and drop their prices and take the hit on the balance sheet if they have bigger pockets. Flipkart spends a lot of money on print and TV advertising which is something that HomeShop18 and Indiatimes Shopping can get at reduced rates since they are part of larger media conglomerates. HomeShop18 is part of the Network18 group which recently sold a stake to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries. Indiatimes Shopping is part of the Bennett, Coleman and Co. a media powerhouse which owns many media outlets including the Times of India newspapers.

Can Flipkart survive? In truth no one knows, all this talk is pure speculation. The question is – Is my personal Flipkart experience just my experience or part of a bigger trend where online shoppers will always default to the lowest price option in India? With price aggregation services like Junglee.com it takes a couple extra steps to find the lowest price. I’m guessing for many shoppers like it me it will ALWAYS come down to price, it’s part of our DNA – Do Negotiate Always.

Hiring the right person is one of those challenges that can turn any sane person insane. What is even more frustrating is interviewing technical people who have no idea about the latest technology or  don’t really seem to care. I recently interviewed someone and they had never heard about Amazon Web Services (AWS), I almost fell out of my chair. Being an information technology professional and having zero knowledge about AWS is sacrilegious. It’s the equivalent of the Pope not knowing anything about Catholicism.

I could talk about other interview disasters or I can be more proactive and give back to the community. I’ve decided to go with the latter, not only is AWS the biggest technology platform to emerge in the past 5 years they also provide a free trial for the first year.

The beauty of this tutorial is that everything I use is completely FREE and hence there is no excuse for not trying, hacking and playing around with the technology for the next 365 days. Before the 1 year expires, you can cancel your account and at least you would have learned something in the process. So next time, when someone asks you about AWS you can not only talk about it intelligently you will have gained some real world hands on experience.

You can view or download the entire tutorial from SlideShare. It’s broken up into 5 parts:

Part 1 – Create an EC2 instance
Part 2 – Configure your EC2 instance
Part 3 – Create an RDS instance
Part 4 – Install WordPress
Part 5 – Configure S3

Goal: Setup a blog using WordPress on AWS.

Requirements: Computer, internet connection and credit card. Your credit card will not be charged unless you exceed your Free Tier limits, for this tutorial you will be well within your limits unless your blog turns into the Huffington Post overnight.

What is AWS? AWS is the name of the platform offering from Amazon which encompasses over 20+ services. You might have heard acronyms such as EC2, RDS, EBS or S3…these are the acronyms for the individual services that collectively makeup AWS. Before AWS, most people would rent a server from a web hosting company and if they ran out of space or needed more computing power they would just add more servers. Imagine if you had a car and wanted a bigger gas tank, traditionally you would have to buy another car. AWS breaks all the various computing pieces into distinct services which you can add or subtract on an hourly basis. Need a bigger gas tank for the weekend? AWS to the rescue. Below are some of the core components of AWS:

1. Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) – the central microprocessor that does the raw computing
2. Elastic Block Store (EBS) – location of your system and application files, think of it as network attached storage for EC2
3. Relational Database Service (RDS) – database function
4. Simple Storage Service (S3) – online file storage (Have you used Dropbox? Then you’ve used S3)

The reason why technical people love AWS is because of its scalability, no wonder startups like Dropbox, Instagram and Pinterest rely so heavily on the AWS platform.

For a simple install like WordPress there are many ways to implement it and they all have pros and cons. In the end it’s the age old debate of ease of maintenance vs. scalability. Below is a breakout of the various AWS services we will use to facilitate the install of WordPress:

1. EC2 – raw computing power
2. EBS – system files and core WordPress files
3. RDS – WordPress MySQL database
4. S3 – media assets for the blog

You can view or download the entire tutorial from SlideShare.