Pakistan’s Mindstorm Studios launches world’s most sophisticated Cricket game (PC)

Awesome graphics and an unprecedented level of sophistication are hallmarks of Mindstorm Studios Cricket Revolution

Lahore-based Mindstorm Studios have been working on this project for a while now… but the wait is finally over! Mindstorm Cricket Revolution is OUT (no pun intended). As will be amply evident from all the screenshots I’m posting here, the game looks absolutely amazing. There is great attention to detail, a rich team selection, multi-player mode, realistic action and a variety of controls to make gameplay incredibly interesting.

The potential for this game is massive… Cricket is the world’s second most popular sport with over 2 billion fans and watchers internationally. And the numbers are growing. In fact, China is becoming increasingly serious about developing an international quality cricket team and has been seeking Pakistan’s assistance to train its local talent. None other than Pakistan’s legendary batsman, the indomitable Javed Miandad, has been appointed as the Chinese governments’ advisor for Cricket. With China’s inclusion in the world’s cricketing nations, Cricket would rival Soccer as the most loved sport on earth. So, with that sort of market, Mindstorm Studios really have a behemoth of an opportunity looking them square in the eye. We certainly hope they are able to capitalize on it.

MySpace India staff getting the axe; China and Japan offices in-tact

Home page is still ok. 41% of the workforce? Not so much.

MySpace has had its share of troubles recently. Unlike Facebook, they don’t seem to believe that it’s OK to raise hundreds of millions of dollars and never make a cent. But what do I know? Clearly, Smart Investors seem to love Facebook’s business model and their $10 Billion valuation. Previously, Even Smarter Investors couldn’t get enough of the $15 Billion valuation and just had to put in a$240 Million to prove their Smartness. I can just hear the lead investor… “We’re actually 350% positive on this one as compared to an equally sized investment in the Moscow Bourse!”

Anyway, MySpace under News Corp is being downright old world. Believing they need to get their costs in line with their revenue and actually buckle down in the recession. Pshaaaw! How non-dot-com can you possibly be? In pursuit of this dated (like steam-punk dated!), albeit common sense strategy, MySpace is cutting back on the fluff… and about 75% of their international staff. This comes on the heels of their earlier announcement about a 30% reduction in their US headcount.

TechLahore decamelized

TechLahore online. Neuralnets processing. Jetpack is a go.

Yeah. I’m done with the camel. Say hello to the new me.

LUMS students launch an internet based radio station

I recently heard from Farrukh Jawed over at LUMS. He wrote to me excitedly about a project that he and his LUMS compadres have been working on for quite some time now. No, it’s not a souped up dialup network for people in developing countries, or a submission to an MIT contest. It’s actually a new internet based radio station! I’ll let Farrukh introduce it in his own words:

Warid Zem’s wzone brings popular movies and music to your phone

A monstrous Warid billboard in Lahore, introducing wzone

Driving around in Lahore the other day, I came across these large Warid banners at several places in the Cantt. area. As you can see from the image, Warid is investing quite a bit in advertising their newest service, wzone.

wzone is a mobile destination you can visit using your cell phone which provides you with real-time access to a huge selection of movies (Hollywood and local cinema) and music. Pretty cool! In fact, seen together with Telenor’s TV service, and Mobilink’s multimedia offerings, the trend is quite clear. Multimedia based value added services are the really the next frontier in the cellular war.

We wrote recently about the change in leadership at Telenor Pakistan. Clearly, one of the key challenges facing the new CEO would be to continue Telenor’s innovation in the value added mobile services arena. Warid, for a long time was focusing and competing pretty much solely on price. Not so much anymore. They’re growing up and getting to be a worthy competitor. Mobilink and Telenor both better watch out.

Is Pakistan the best place on earth to launch a Web 2.0 company?

Lahore's under-construction Software Park tower.

Quite possibly. I started thinking along these lines when a hot-shot American investment banker friend mentioned that “70% of the US’ GDP is consumer driven”. That much, huh?! It’s no secret that THE key point of interaction for consumer businesses is now the web. In fact, most Web 2.0 companies are consumer focused, even as Web 2.0 technologies and concepts make inroads into the enterprise (aka Enterprise 2.0). The upshot of all this is that the consumers who drive the vast majority of the US GDP are now accessible by a company in Pakistan about as well as they would be were you based in the Bay Area. Exciting stuff! How meaningless market size calculations by geography have become! My TAM (total available market) is the WORLD.

There are a number of other things that have also happened that make it incredibly easy for a Pakistan  based company to appear to have a US or European identity. And let’s not fool ourselves, the facade of a US identity can be important for the US consumer. With Skype, Vonage or a variety of other VoIP services you can now have local US and European numbers with great call forwarding, IVR and essentially a Fortune 500 level phone interface with your customers. There’s no reason why you can’t sound exactly like Procter & Gamble do on the phone.

AT&T calls people who don’t use their service, “Idiots” – TechLahore calls AT&T crude and tasteless

In one of their latest, “More bars in more places ad”, AT&T shows a basketball fan shooting hoops at an arcade. The fan’s alter-ego – his phone – appears and says, “Chuck can’t answer right now because Chuck’s an idiot. He doesn’t have AT&T.”

This is completely uncalled-for and inappropriate. We’ve gone from subtle enticements, to telling people to buy products so that they can be ‘cool’, to namecalling?! I can understand how some marketing hack thought this was going to be really funny and maybe to some folks it was. But in general, a mass-campaign directed at the consumer base at large should not… how should we say this… insult its viewership!

Whether or not you are an idiot in AT&T’s book, you can click on the video above and take a look for yourself. We even the score after the fold.

PTCL launches broadband entertainment portal in Pakistan

PTCL (Pakistan Telecommunications Corporation Ltd.) has an uphill battle ahead of it as the number of its landline subscribers continues to shrink by the day. PTCL’s wireless services, Ufone and VPTCL, have been doing well, but the company still needs to offer value added services and widen its wireless subscriber base if it is to regain the leadership position it once enjoyed in Pakistan’s Telecom market.

After the Etisalat acquisition, we’ve heard at least some noises of the right kind that indicate a move in the value-added direction. One such noise is the launch of PTCL’s broadband entertainment portal. While mobile penetration has grown in leaps and bounds, and by all accounts, about 50% of the country’s population now possesses a cell connection, Broadband penetration remains low. Over the next few years, with services like wired broadband, Fiber to the home (FTTH), DSL, Cable, ISDN and WiMax, a broadband explosion is almost guaranteed. PTCL’s timing with their latest venture, therefore, is not bad… Read the Daily Times story after the break.

The Pakistan/YouTube affair: Media bias, anyone?

What is up with the extreme media bias against Pakistan? This morning, CNN focused its cover story on Pakistan’s decision to block YouTube due to the presence of content deemed offensive and inciteful. In the past, Brazil, China and Thailand – to name just a few – have blocked YouTube, but CNN has never presented those instances as a cover story… And in this day of a kajillion websites and thousands of ways to get around pretty much any kind of block, an action of this nature does not even constitute a cover story! To put things in perspective, some of the other headlines that had taken a back seat to the Pakistan/YouTube affair:

1.  American Airlines’ staff refusal to give a dying woman oxygen - resulting in her death
2. The rape of a woman at the Hawaii state Capitol building!
3. The ceremonies held for an 8th grader who was shot dead in class (in the US), as the spate of random killings in US schools continues
4. Ralph Nader entering the Presidential race

Now I don’t know about you, but I would call this unbelievably biased reporting. Shame on you, CNN!

Emirates and Microsoft setup innovation lab in Dubai

Now this piece of news was interesting to me at multiple levels. First, since I travel quite a bit I’ve always wondered what the next generation of entertainment and business technologies available in-flight would be. Well, we now have an institution in our own neighbourhood that will be dedicated to improving the travel experience by providing newer media, information and communication tools to us as we are hurtling through the atmosphere in overgrown cigar tubes. Emirates has already rolled out back-of-the-seat USB ports in economy that allow a USB thumbdrive to be plugged in. You can then have access to your own documents and music in addition to the huge multimedia library already available through Emirates’ excellent “ICE” system. I am waiting with baited breath for new and even more useful innovations that might emerge from this lab.

 At another level, Dubai has done a fabulous job promoting itself, and there is a lot of multinational presence there. Thus far, though, most of the companies have focused on sales and marketing presence. There hasn’t really been much in the way of a development center or a true innovation lab. This Emirates/Microsoft joint venture changes that… definitely a good thing.