Google is supposed to be focusing on Apple, which is currently dominating the tablet market with the iPad. Instead, it has been forced to fend off another major threat to Android – the Amazon Kindle Fire. The Kindle Fire is the biggest threat to Google, which has been trying to minimize the fragmentation of Android, and ironically, is the most popular Android tablet yet. Even so, Google has been completely locked out of the Kindle Fire ecosystem, so it probably won’t see a dime of revenue generated by the Kindle Fire.

Google is rumored to be working on a Nexus tablet to compete with the iPad, but apparently, the Nexus tablet will be an inexpensive $199 Android tablet powered by ICS which will compete with the Kindle Fire.

If Google is indeed working on such a tablet, it should stop right away.

Launching a $199 Android 4.0 tablet will not only severely impact sales of all other Android tablets and alienate its device partners like Samsung and HTC, but it will also mean Google taking a financial hit. Amazon itself is losing $10-$20 per tablet, and hopes to make money by selling Kindle content.

Here’s what Google should do instead:

Make it extremely easy to install Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on the Kindle Fire. Launch a one-click flashing tool to flash an Android 4.0 ROM on the Kindle Fire.

This would not only give it back control of the Android ecosystem, but it would also be a huge hit to Amazon, which would continue to lose money on each Kindle Fire sold with no direct way to make it back.

I ‘m not getting into the technical specifics of how it would work; I’m sure Google can figure it out.

In case it can’t be done officially, Google can always bankroll such a project or help XDA developers develop such a pure Android 4.0 ICS ROM for the Kindle Fire.

This way, Google won’t alienate its tablet hardware partners, it won’t lose money selling cheap tablets, and it can focus on its main enemy – the Apple iPad.

The guys at sammobile have released an Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich ROM (alpha) for the Samsung Galaxy S 2 II I9100.

You can download it using these links:

Download Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich ROM I9100XXKP8

To install Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich on your Samsung Galaxy S 2, you will need:

- Samsung USB Drivers (Samsung Kies)
- ODIN Client
- Stock Android 2.3.5 ROM

How to Install Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich I9100XXKP8 on Samsung Galaxy S 2 II

Install Samsung Kies from the official website – Samsung Kies

Make sure the USB drivers have been installed properly with Kies. Now close Kies and make sure Kies isn’t running in the Task Manager.

Download Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich ROM I9100XXKP8 (via XDA)

Extract all the files (ROM + Odin client) from the file (password: samfirmware.com)

Start ODIN client as administrator, and select these files:

PIT – u1_02_20110310_emmc_EXT4.pit
PDA – I9100_CODE_I9100XXKP*_CL42141_REV02_user_low_ship.tar.md5
PHONE – MODEM_I9100XXKP*_REV_02_CL1092599.tar.md5
CSC – GT-I9100-MULTI-CSC-OXAKP*.tar.md5

Also select these check boxes:

Re-Partition
Auto Reboot
F.Reset Time

On your Galaxy S 2, go to Settings > Applications > Development > USB Debugging > Enable it.

Now switch off your phone and enter download mode.

To enter download mode, hold the Volume Down + Menu Key and press the Power button.

After you see the yellow Download mode screen, just connect it to your PC via USB.

You should now see the ID:COM section turn Yellow and the message box display ADDED. If you don’t, repeat the whole process.

Click on the Start button to begin the flashing process.

In 5 minutes, your Samsung Galaxy S 2 should reboot with Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich installed.

Note: It’s not risky, but still proceed with caution. I’m not responsible if you brick your phone.

For more details, visit XDA

Excellent argument.

The real market vs the expectations market

In today’s paradoxical world of maximizing shareholder value, which Jack Welch himself has called “the dumbest idea in the world”, the situation is the reverse. CEOs and their top managers have massive incentives to focus most of their attentions on the expectations market, rather than the real job of running the company producing real products and services.

The “real market,” Martin explains, is the world in which factories are built, products are designed and produced, real products and services are bought and sold, revenues are earned, expenses are paid, and real dollars of profit show up on the bottom line. That is the world that executives control—at least to some extent.

The expectations market is the world in which shares in companies are traded between investors—in other words, the stock market. In this market, investors assess the real market activities of a company today and, on the basis of that assessment, form expectations as to how the company is likely to perform in the future. The consensus view of all investors and potential investors as to expectations of future performance shapes the stock price of the company.

“What would lead [a CEO],” asks Martin, “to do the hard, long-term work of substantially improving real-market performance when she can choose to work on simply raising expectations instead? Even if she has a performance bonus tied to real-market metrics, the size of that bonus now typically pales in comparison with the size of her stock-based incentives. Expectations are where the money is. And of course, improving real-market performance is the hardest and slowest way to increase expectations from the existing level.”

Continue reading: The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value

Apparently, fliers with this text were dropped around at #OccupyWallStreet

“We are Wall Street. It’s our job to make money. Whether it’s a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn’t matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn’t hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone’s 401k doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, it’s not a problem until you lose. I’ve never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.

Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back some whatever, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.

Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 4am and work till 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t’ demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.

For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We’re going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and half. I’ll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team to $5k extra a summer, thank you very much. So now that we’re going to be making $8k a year without upside, Joe Main street is going to have his revenge right? Wrong! Guess what: we’re going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren’t going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We’re going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.

The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but its really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom. We aren’t dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Main street our food supply…will he? And will they?”

There hasn’t been any single mobile payments solution in India ever, which just works. Sure, there have been a lot of startups which have tried to crack mobile payments using e-wallet services, but most of them pretty much suck. Some like mChek have been good, but they failed to gain much traction. Even Paypal isn’t an option anymore, after the recent RBI crackdown.

Though I have been a huge fan of NEFT (National Electronic Fund Transfer), it is not as usable as I’d like it to be. There is a significant delay in the completion of the transaction, and to effect a transaction, you need to give out your complete account details, which could make anyone a bit apprehensive about using the service.

IMPS allows you to send and receive money using just your mobile number and an MMID (Mobile Money Identifier) which is allocated to you via your bank. You also use an MPIN (password) in order to verify the transaction.

The best thing about IMPS is the ease of use. Soon, all major banks in India will be offering IMPS as a service. All transactions are real-time, enabling you to send money to any IMPS user within a matter of minutes.

You can use it either via SMS or via a mobile application. Most banks will be launching mobile IMPS apps for all major platforms.

More details: IMPS (Interbank Mobile Payment Service)

With IMPS, we now have a robust mobile payments system in place, and we are inching closer to financial inclusion in India.

What Next?

An awesome Payment Gateway, please.

I really hope that the government also launches a standard payment gateway API in collaboration with NPCI, RBI which supports all major Indian banks and allows users to conduct e-commerce transactions easily and securely. (CCAvenue, EBS, DirecPay all suck from a usability perspective.)

Such a move would address one of the major pain points that all e-commerce startups in India face, thereby encouraging more users to buy stuff online and trigger a massive e-commerce revolution in India which could potentially make Flipkart look undervalued even at the rumored $1 billion valuation.