Author Archives: Rakesh Agrawal

About Rakesh Agrawal

Rakesh Agrawal is a 0-1 product leader. Ex-Amazon, Ex-Microsoft, as well as a number of startups. He tweets at @rakeshsfnyc

World Explorer: A new way to look at the world

Posted on January 19, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

The folks at Yahoo! Research have used flickr’s APIs to create a new way to look at the world. The TagMaps take tags from flickr and plot them on Yahoo! maps. The current implementation is slow and the display of … Continue reading →

Posted in city guides, flickr, geotagging, gps, local search, maps, travel | 3 Comments

Post on privacy

Posted on January 16, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

The Post’s Ellen Nakashima follows a real estate agent around for a day pointing out all of the times when she’s being tracked – whether it’s by a security camera, email server, electronic toll collector or search engine. (There’s no … Continue reading →

Posted in privacy | 1 Comment

Netflix movies without the red envelope

Posted on January 16, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Netflix is beginning to experiment with streaming movies and TV shows on demand to PCs. Customers will soon be able to watch movies and TV shows like “The Office” without having to wait for the red envelope to show up … Continue reading →

Posted in movies, video | 1 Comment

Yahoo! Search knows what you mean

Posted on January 16, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

I was looking through the referrer data for this blog and noticed an entry from Yahoo search for “redisgn my screen on yahoo”. I tried the search to see why the blog would come up – it looks like Yahoo! … Continue reading →

Posted in aol, google, search, yahoo | Comments Off

Using the Web to shame

Posted on January 16, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

The WSJ has a fun story (subscription required) about using the Web to shame people who do bad things like cut you off in traffic, park in handicapped spots and talk too loudly on cell phones. The digital age allows … Continue reading →

Posted in flickr, web 2.0, YouTube | 3 Comments

What’s missing from iPhone

Posted on January 11, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Despite all the hype over the last few days, the iPhone seems to be missing some of the key technologies and applications that are included in high-end phones these days. Three of the most important: 3G. Even though much of … Continue reading →

Posted in apple, iphone, mobile, wireless, wireless data | 2 Comments

Picking the right ticket marketplace for the job

Posted on January 10, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

TechCrunch reports that eBay is acquiring StubHub, an online marketplace that allows people to buy and sell tickets. Last fall, I had two extra tickets to a Redskins game. I posted the tickets on craigslist, eBay and StubHub at various … Continue reading →

Posted in ebay | 2 Comments

Apple’s iPhone fixes voicemail

Posted on January 10, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

As much as I hate SMS, I hate voicemail even more. It’s a truly broken experience. There are three major problems with traditional voicemail: It’s linear. If you have 10 messages in your mailbox, it doesn’t matter if the 9th … Continue reading →

Posted in apple, iphone, ipod, mobile, wireless, wireless data | 3 Comments

A phone that could only come from Apple

Posted on January 9, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

The iPhone could only come from Apple. And I’m not talking about the elegant design or the technology. Handset manufacturers routinely cripple phone features for the U.S. market to make sure that customers use their phones in exactly the way … Continue reading →

Posted in apple, consumer electronics, google, iphone, ipod, mobile, wireless, wireless data, yahoo | 9 Comments

Making online calendars useful

Posted on January 8, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Google Calendar surpassed MSN Calendar last week and is inching toward Yahoo! Calendar. The biggest competition for all three: lack of use. For the most part, online calendars today solve problems people don’t have. Of the three, only Google Calendar … Continue reading →

Posted in aol, google, yahoo | 2 Comments