First Class Entity

As a student of Object Oriented Programming, I was always fascinated by the sentence that, to me, best described OOPS - "Classes are the first class entities in OOPS". Since then I have encountered the phrase "first class entity" in several walks of Computer Science like - Software Design, Architecture, Algorithms, Programming Languages, Web Programming etc. Each time when it is used in the right context and in the right way, it only enhances my understanding of the point of discussion and the views of the speaker/author.

 I think it is worth trying to understand the first class entities of businesses, in order to clearly understand the value contributions, especially those of startups. In a constantly evolving world of entrepreneurship, where businesses with great potential go into oblivion, and others with sometimes, very similar models become run-away hits, I believe first class entities give third parties a hook at improving their understanding of the true potential. Once we understand these, a business model is just a set of interactions/relations involving the first class entities, while providing value addition to the stake-holders !

 Here is what I think are some of the companies and their first-class entities:
 Facebook - User, Information
 Yelp - Restaurant/Business
Twitter - Message/Tweet, User
Google Search - Document, Query
Foursquare - Place, User

Cool Dozen

At TechDisrupt 2011 Vinod Khosla enthusiastically spoke about what he calls his “cool dozen” areas that excite him in the technology space. A few of them are: data reduction, big data+machine learning to focus on user preferences, apps (context-aware and mobile) that tap emotion, eduction, health, utilities, the democratization of publishing, interest graphs.

Points to ponder in some of the broad directions that VCs (Venture Assistant as Vinod calls) are headed:
Social Advertising: We have seen digital advertising evolve from banner ads to search ads and now social ads. But what is the definition of social and how can we turn user engagement into business? More importantly, how can we encourage people to do targeted advertising for us via their social channels (facebook,twitter, foursquare etc.)?

Clean Technology: How can we make existing mass production processes more not only better, faster and cheaper but also CLEANER !

Voicify : Crowdsourcing Voice Aquisition

Workflow:
1. Upload a photo of text, document, URL pointing to the data you want speechified
2. Select from a list of existing users, judging by samples or open an audition for a sample !
3. If satisfied by sample continue to completion !
4. Website provides quality assistance: cleanup of voice samples, voting mechanism for the same.

Acquiring userbase:
1. List of people who post on elance, mturk for voice overs
2. Signup people from Mturk / Crowdflower and ask them to post sample of voices
3. Spread the word !

Research and Technology:
1. Storage on E2 cluster
2. Background noise cleanup (filters etc)
3. Quick samples can be obtained on the web or on devices similar to - blip.me, voice.ly

Who may be interested:
1. Animation companies (Project description must be more detailed to accomodate such)
2. Speech Researchers looking for voice overs
3. Every startup wants to spread its wings into new domains possibly with a video
4. Audio books
5. Voicify your Websites to reach people with hearing disabilities

Existing:
www.audiodraft.com (A site for crowdsouring music)
www.castingwords.com (A site for crowdsourcing speech transcription - other way round)
http://voiceover.com/
http://vocaroo.com/ (Record and send voice emails)