Jason Day may have stolen the show at the Byron Nelson Championship, but it was Monsoon’s software that lit up faces in the digital playground at the tournament. Monsoon premiered an application that allowed visitors and participants to create their Golf alter-ego and customize it with the touch of a finger.
 
This year has already been a lot of fun for us – we continue to focus on touch and mobile experiences.   With projects from the NBA, PGA and ITF, we’re excited to combine the power of touch and social gaming to create fun and engaging sports applications. 
 
No one from our team may be able to pull off an eagle at the 18th hole (unless you’re talking Wii Sports), but we’re excited to make software that brings smiles to a sport that has lately been masked by controversies.

Last year, we launched the first touch Twitter application for Windows 7. Since then our obsession with touch, Twitter and 3D user interfaces has continued. Okay, maybe it has gotten a little worse, but it has allowed us to work on some really fun stuff!

We recently had the opportunity to create a Twitter mashup and are excited to bring you Touch Twitterworld in 3D.

The 3D Twitterworld app first premiered at Earth Day on a giant touch wall (courtesy HP). It will soon be offered on the web and as a download for all the fanboys.

Click the image below to see a teaser video showing real-time Earth Day tweets from around the world (3D glasses optional).

Free business idea:

1. Get hold of a South by Southwest Interactive schedule.  (All you really need is the schedule, although I recommend actually attending the conference, for a variety of reasons that have little to do with technology).

2. Glance through the panel listings until you notice that one programming language is repeated more than a few times.  (You should see it listed with an ironic title, like “Technology X: 5 Reasons it will Get You Laid More In 2010″ or with a technical title that is designed to scare away marketing people: “Technology X; Database Architectures for a Semantic Environment”)

3. Note the technology that gets mentioned the most.  Then, build a landing page that positions you as an expert in the field.  (It helps to mish-mash popular programming terms on this landing page. Try “Technology X On Rails” or “Standards-based Technology X.)

4. Get your first project from an unsuspecting customer.  (it helps if said customer is from a large corporation and is looking for this technology because he also attended the “Get Laid More Often…” panel mentioned above)

5. Post a Craigslist, eLance, and/or oDesk ad for Technology X.  If you’re in India, hire people who claim to know this technology.

6. Screw your client over, when it’s revealed just a week before launch, that the developer you hired also attended a panel at SXSW, and believed that his attendance at said panel qualified him for your project. (unfortunately, it wasn’t even the technical one)

7. Go to SXSW next year and repeat.

This is stupid.

Yet, this is essentially what many development shops do.  We wait for projects that require new technology, instead of investing in them early.   We hope, unreasonably, that a client will approach us with the perfect project: one that is simple enough to learn as we go, but still challenging enough that our team emerges with new-found expertise.

This is a mistake, and every year, it’s killing your potential to increase revenue.

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After years of using red carpet metaphors, we finally made it to the red carpet. Well sort of. Monsoon partnered with Motion Picture Television Fund and Variety Magazine to create the official touch-trivia application for the Oscars. We are totally psyched about launching this at the Oscars this weekend!

The application lets you spin a virtual orb and answer Oscar worthy trivia questions. HP will be giving away trivia participants some amazing prizes including TV’s, laptops, cameras and free Oscar morning kits.

And while the blue Pandorians may end up mourning their loss to The Hurt Locker, we’ll be celebrating…..because at the end of the day, it’s not really about who took the Oscar home, it’s about which consulting firm made it to the red carpet!

Special thanks to Kevin and John for helping with the install and sharing this video!

At Monsoon, we may never be able to rap like the pantless knights but, we still like to think of ourselves as hardcore apple fanboys. We own 3 generations of every Apple product, camp overnight for new product launches and celebrate popcorn-hour each time Steve Jobs gives his keynote.

With every piece of digital loveliness made by Apple, being a part of this brand and culture fits right into our techno-chic lifestyle and gives us endless gratification. But the ultimate high for us is to see our work on Apple products. We’ve been developing applications for the iPhone for quite some time but we recently had the opportunity to work on an app with another one of our favorite partners, South By Southwest. SXSW brings together some of the world’s most creative artists, speakers and entrepreneurs and my business partner Sandeep has previously had the opportunity to captivate audiences with interactive panels on Outsourcing.

There is no other conference that fosters creative growth and networking opportunities the way South by does. Which is why we’re so excited to announce SXSW® Play, the official media discovery app for the SXSW 2010 Music, Film, and Interactive conferences. The app features a wealth of rich media from musicians, films, and interactive panels that will be featured at the festival in Austin, TX from March 12-21. With this app at your fingertips, you’ll never be bored in line again!

Features of the application:

You can download the free application from the Appstore and find out if you’re an Apple fanboy here.

Monsoon partnered with the NBA and HP to create a touch app that allows you to customize an avatar and create your NBA alter ego. As huge basketball fans (tragically, Warriors fans), we are really excited to announce this application. Let’s face it: this is the closest a group of Indian guys will ever get to the NBA!

The app can be seen during jam session week at HP’s digital playground from Thursday through Sunday (Feb 11- Feb 14) at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Texas.

Here’s a sneak preview and we’ll share more pictures and videos next week.

During the discovery phase of almost any website project these days, Monsoon is asked to recommend a Web CMS (Content Management System).  This post is an attempt to explain why, for the past year or so, we almost always recommend Wordpress.

Core Functionality

At their core, all strong web content management systems accomplish the following:

· Template: provide a collection of easily-edited design themes that determine the style for a website.

· Edit: simplify with a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) system that allows non-programmers to create and edit html

· Function: perform with core functionality and plug-ins that allow dozens of website features to be implemented easily (e.g. ecommerce, mailing lists, analytics, discussion, etc.)

· Process: organize permissions and processes based on business rules for publishing content within the organization.

· Document: store, organize, and retrieve text files, images, and video

· Syndicate: export website data in a standard format (such as RSS)

Dynamic vs. Static Publishing

For the vast majority of CMS projects at Monsoon, we consider three industry-leading Web CMS products that accomplish the above extremely well: Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress. These three systems use a dynamic publishing model.

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“Experts say this global warming is serious, and they are predicting now that by the year 2050, we will be out of party ice.” –David Letterman

Jokes about climate change may not always garner lasting belly aches, but let’s face it, they tend to be more captivating then scatter diagrams and pie charts. So when the UN decided to collaborate with Monsoon for COP, we wanted to build an application that would be fun and interactive; something even Al Gore would appreciate.

We wanted to leverage the power of touch technology to ensure negotiators and leaders participating in Copenhagen heard voices of those affected by the impacts of global warming. We worked with the UN to create the Climate Wall, an experience that allowed conference attendees to spin a virtual globe and watch real-life stories about climate change.

Sights and sounds from around the globe bear witness to how the changing climate is changing lives. One of these stories takes us on a virtual journey to the Prey Koki forest, located in a quiet corner of eastern Cambodia. The forest has lost most of its cover to desertification and while planting trees, Buddhist monk So Kon shares the impacts of climate change . “Here in Cambodia our climate is changing. It’s getting hotter and the rainfall is irregular. But we believe that these trees can bring rain and help the farmers with their crops and daily life,” says Kon.

In an era where buzzwords like Corporate Social Responsibility and CO2 emissions make climate change feel like a distant paradigm, Monsoon’s virtual globe application brings stories from real people like Kon to your fingertips.

The concept was a success and featured on the home of Seal the deal and the UN. We simply feel blessed that we had the opportunity to make a small contribution in raising awareness about climate change.

See more pictures here.

There are advantages to being done with the holiday season…

While at TED India, I had the privilege of sitting down with Ajai Chowdhry, the founder and CEO of HCL.

While I admire their early grit and determination, most of the largest Indian IT companies don’t really impress me anymore.  The market cap of any Indian IT giant is directly proportional to how long they’ve been in business, not to innovative services or bold moves.  That’s how cost arbitrage works – stick around long enough, and people will eventually figure out that you’re the cheaper option. [yawn]

That said, I’ve always been impressed with HCL, primarily for their decision to stay focused on the Indian market, during a time when companies like Infosys and Tata Consulting were raking in the dough from foreign IT contracts.

This short interview covers HCL’s decision to focus on India, Ajai’s view of the state of Indian education, and the major IT challenges that India currently faces.

A warning for our American readers: this interview is Ajai in his own words, so please respect the Hinglish.

Why did HCL choose to focus on IT projects with customers in India? At the time, it seems that foreign projects would have been the much more attractive, if not the blatantly obvious choice.

It was our vision and passion towards creating an ICT market that guided us right from our inception and our efforts over the years to pioneer the technological evolution and revolution in the country and to prominently project India on the global IT map. The Indian IT story has come a long way since then. Globally, India has been a strong player in software and services. However, the PC penetration in India is still low and a lot is to be achieved to bridge the ‘Digital Divide’ and therefore makes it an exciting challenge for us to address even today. In the words of C.K. Prahlad “Improving the lives of the billions of people at the bottom of the economic pyramid is a noble endeavor. It can also be a lucrative one”.

What is the biggest advantage of working with clients in India?

One of the fundamental components is understanding the tradition that forms the basis of India’s society. With this deep understanding we have been able to develop and sustain long-lasting relationships with our customers. Moreover, with a strong presence across the country features which are salient to India gave us the competitive edge to serve our customers better.

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