Grrr, you just spoilt the climax.

It is 28 of December today. I was tucked in my bed and having a great dream. It was a mystery thriller and the key person was about to get reveled, but alas, the alarm spoils it all. We had made plans to go for a morning walk today. The thought came from nowhere. Me being me, the laziest dog in town, who refuses to get up early, was planning to get up early during the peak of winter and go for a walk… Ho Ho Ho… Almost everyone, me included, felt that I was in my usual previous-day-resolution-and-break-it-next-day mode. To mine and everyone’s surprise, I promptly got up and asked Jyo if she was ready.

“Mmm… you go du ga.”

“What did you tell?”

“Mmm… Still Feelin’ slee…. “

As she tucked in her bed further, I figured out that she was saying she was sleepy and she wanted me to go by myself. The chill Bangalore weather was resisting her from even talking properly.

I went to the hall where Isha was sleeping and spoke softly.

“Isha, you awake? Coming?”

From beneath the Rasai came a sound, a prolonged squeak, Aaahhhhmmmm, and slowly she lowered the Rasai. She was trying to open her eyes and focus on me. She replied in her usual Dilli accent.

“Yuu gott upp?”

Yes. All with double of U, T and P.

I replied, “Yes. It’s cold outside. Do you want to go for a walk?”

“Chal. Mera paas Jacket hai.”

That reminded me of Shashi Kapoor’s “Mera paas ma hai”. (View it here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KkHkggf_aU&feature=player_embedded).  We both washed our face, brushed our teeth, put on our jackets, slipped our feet into the floaters and got out. It was a long time since I “saw” morning. It about quarter past 6 and the first rays of the Sun had reached Earth. The air smelt fresh and pure. As I got down and walked towards the gate, I was in for a pleasant surprise. My watchman aka security guard was awake! How can this be? I always had a bit of complex as he was by biggest competitor in sleeping.

Finally, he is awake.

We came out of 13th cross, turned left and walked towards the 6th main. My first spot was at the cross roads. There was a thin man sitting on the footpath selling fresh greens. He wore a make shift cap using his orange, black and white colored dirty towel. He was selling green – Methi, Palak, Pudina, Curry leaves, Coriander etc etc.

Wow. I should get up early daily and buy them.

We took a right turn and started walking in 6th main. By then, we had picked up pace in our conversation. I started explaining to Isha that the 6th main was known as walker’s street and tried to spot a board or two mentioning about it. As we were walking, we saw guys wearing different attire. Elderly women chose to wear saree, while the youth wore tracks. Invariably, most wore white canvas shoes which were similar to the ones I wore when during school. Elderly men were dressed in formal and youth wore shorts and Tees. There were a few “hatke” styles as well like dressing like a Tennis player – white Tees and white Shorts or shorts with full sleeves, etc.

We continued talking about various worldly problems and in a while came near CTR. CTR or Srisagar as known now is a famous food joint in Malleshwaram. It is located on Margosa road and opposite to Malleswaram grounds. The joint is famous for its finger licking Benney Masala Dosa and hot coffee. If you are in Bangalore and haven’t visited CTR, then you don’t deserve to be in Bangalore. Period. It was around 6.20 am and the door was ajar. The lights was yet to be turned on, but we could see a few guys busy moving here and there carrying huge cylindrical jars clearly telling the world “We are not yet ready”.

What time do these guys open?

I decided to check out Raghavendra Idly and see if I had any luck there. I cleverly rerouted and started walking in the 6th main. Isha was not sure of the route and hence didn’t ask me any question. I reduced my pace to give the extra time to Raghavendra stores.

All of sudden, I felt a silence. I was thinking that the shift from Margosa road to an inside road could be the reason as traffic was low. But nope, that was not the reason. We had stopped talking too.

Great. I can do a quick (walking) Pranayama.

It was a long gap. As we started approaching the dead end, we could hear the sound of a moving train. We were there, almost there.

Slurrp. I can order a plate of two of idly.

And then, as we were about to take a right turn…. to be continued.

Oops… Guys… have time poverty. Will write soon.

Till next time,

Ram

“With Windows 7, the OS is great again. It’s what people said they wanted out of Windows: Solid, more nimble and the easiest, prettiest Windows yet… Something people can grab without fear.”

- Gizmodo

Instead of switching up the formula, Windows 7 is really an extension and a refinement of the true tenets of Windows (that we just made up): broad hardware compatibility, coatings of usability over deep functionality, and a “everything for everybody” approach to feature sets and SKUs.

- Engadget

Windows 7 is more than what Vista should have been, it’s where Microsoft needed to go.

- CNET

On September 12, 2009, I came across this video. The Microsoft team generated enough buzz by roping in a cute and innocent kid. The ad lured early adopters (me included) to keep track of Windows 7 release related news. The demos look cool.

On the day of launch, I went up to my IT team and said, “Guys, I want you to upgrade my laptop to Windows 7. Can you help me?” My startup luckily is a Microsoft BizSpark partner and we did not have to pay anything for this new version. The files were downloaded and I was all set to install Windows 7.

Installation

Prior to Win7, I had Vista installed on my system. I, being a power user myself, am actually very satisfied with Vista. Except for the security pop-ups that kept annoying me at regular intervals, it was decent. All I hoped was that Win7 would not annoy me anymore.

I had to format my C-drive as Win7 enterprise version would not upgrade from Vista Business edition. This was OK with me as I smartly saved all my files in D-drive. The installation took about 25 minutes. It was easy, simple and about 7 clicks in all. I would give a rating of 4/5 for the installation.

Learning Curve

My first reaction was “Hmm… Looks the same as Vista”. Fairly simple to use, Win7 has some interesting UI changes. All apps are grouped into 1 single icon on the Task bar. While this looks cool and removes clutter, it certainly decreases productivity. Though not intuitive, the related recent documents (currently works only for MS Office docs) shown when I right-click the Icons on the taskbar is a welcome addition. Personalization options like theme, changing wallpapers etc enhance the look and feel of Windows 7. Apart from these minor improvements, the rest are quite similar to Vista. I would give 2/5 for this.

Application Compatibility

Thanks to the format-and-install procedure, I had to re-install all my apps. The first shocker came when Norton Antivirus v9 installation failed. Reason: the app is not compatible with Windows 7. For now, I have to be happy with a 30-day trial version installed till my IT team gets back with a compatible version.

Microsoft Office installed without any problem. Next was Mozilla Firefox. I am not a IE8 fan. Mozilla gives me the convenience of add-ons that has significantly increased my browsing and research speeds. The installation was smooth. The problem is when I run the application. Every time I open a new window, Microsoft fails to recognize this. The windows do not show up on my Taskbar. This is painful especially when you want to browse multiple websites simultaneously. Other apps like Greenshot, Google apps, etc worked fine.

I have an hp 6530s laptop. Windows Vista had automatically installed relevant drivers for this laptop. So did Windows 7. Except that it has installed incorrect drivers. My TrackPad is set to high sensitivity. This means that when I start typing and my thumb hover’s the TrackPad, it is treated as a click and the mouse points to a new location on the screen. I had to download the driver to set this right.

Further, I am not able to control the brightness of the screen. Reason: Windows 7 thinks that it knows the right settings. Brightness and contrast has been set to low and there is no way I can increase it. I tried installing the driver, but Windows 7 throws up a message saying that the driver I am installing is and older version. Phew! Searched the net and I find I am not the only one facing this problem. A clear 1/5.

Performance

Vista used to take about 60-65 seconds to load after installing about 25-30 apps. Windows 7 also takes about the same time. Network related features have been greatly improved. I am saved of a few clicks when I have to switch between network connections.

I use two monitors and re-adjusting the display automatically is quite helpful. I would give it 3/5.

My Verdict

Microsoft ½-a-Billion dollar budget has definitely worked. It appears to me that reviewers are more influenced by “how much they get” than actual performance of the product. The annoying pop-ups continue to be there. Compatibility issues are many. Productivity levels have decreased thanks to the new UI. Overall, I would not recommend upgrading to Windows 7. If you have Windows Vista or an XP running on your laptop, you are not missing anything significant.

If you need results that are fresh, say less than 5 mins ago, just do a power tweak. This is how.  Insert “&tbs=qdr:n5&tbo=1” at the end of the Url. Our example would change to http://www.google.com/search?q=Thanks+Giving+2009&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&tbs=qdr:n5&tbo=1

An Yo! New results, less than 5 minutes old, appear along with a power navigator to the side.

Have fun going real-time…. Cheers!

Marketers around the world have spent considerable time, in million man hours, trying to get the formula right – a proper marketing message that will help them increase the sales of their products, or get more eyeballs if its a virtual product. If you are a marketer yourself, answer these questions

1. Have you embraced Social Media Marketing like twitter and facebook pages. If yes, were you successful in acquiring the customers?
2. Did you find yourself in a situation where you didn’t know where to begin, yet wanted to do something “market” for your product or service?
3. Did you find yourself spending dollars and not getting results?

Further, a poll conducted by the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association (SVAMA) among 3,500 of its members and their friends found that while 88% of respondents reported measuring their marketing activities, only 52% of them measure at least half of those activities. This finding means that marketers spend millions of dollars without accountability for results.

User metrics is a new tool that is being used by companies like ours, Apple, Twitter etc to help draw value information – from product roadmap to messaging.

Constructing a User Metrics – High level framework

1. Begin with the User’s Goal – they fall into 2 categories a) Certain and b) Uncertain. The user then gets down to a set of activities to achieve these goals.
2. These activities can either be Information Search, Analysis or Task Fulfillment. Detail these activities of the user.
3. End with user expectations. This again depends on user’s previous experience, user’s brand rank and user’s zero-state.

Till Next time.

Mr. Obama became the president of the world’s most powerful country with the help of Digital Technology. Now the wave has moved to India.

Those visiting Indian websites will have noticed L K Advani’s advts. Almost all of Google Adsense India customers are carrying his advts.

Google officials have confirmed that BJP’s L K Advani advertisements will reach about 75% of India’s Internet audience – over 2.5 crore Internet users above the age of 18 – which is BJP’s target potential. 20% or Rs. 40 Crores of the overall campaign budget is fuelling this Web 2.0 strategy of BJP.

Has BJP chosen the right target audience? Or are they just aping Obama’s marketing strategy for winning the elections. Read my earlier post on Obama’s marketing Strategy.

BJP has created the following internet marketing channels (or Web 2.0 channels):

1. Website >>> http://www.lkadvani.in/ on the lines of the http://www.barackobama.com web site
2. Blog >>> http://blog.lkadvani.in/
3. YouTube channel >>> http://www.youtube.com/user/bjpuploader
4. Facebook page >>> http://www.facebook.com/pages/L-K-Advani-Communications-Office/49867629720
5. Orkut community >>> http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Community.aspx?rl=cpp&cmm=56531778
6. Friends of BJP campaign

Further, BJP has also come up with IT-Vision document used as an instrument to boost Internet Audience Votes.

Highligts of BJP’s IT-Vision.

• Multipurpose National Identity Card with Citizen Identification Number (CIN) in 3 years; to replace all other identification systems.
• Raise farm productivity, bring cost of cultivation down and increase kisans’ income through revolutionary transformation of agriculture using IT for water conservation, soil enrichment, procurement, marketing and credit needs of kisans’, waste elimination, and taking R&D from ‘lab to land’.
• Taking the benefits of IT to all shops, small and medium enterprises (SME), and the informal sector.
• Broadband Internet in every town and village, with unlimited upload and download data transfer limits, at cable TV prices.
• National eGovernance Plan to cover every Government office from the Centre to the Panchayats. The ‘E-Gram Vishwa Gram’ scheme in Gujarat to be implemented nationwide.

BJP’s “Friends of BJP” campgain looks promising though.

The “winning” elements

The voting mass in India in the rural. We have seldom seen a huge turnout by urban crowd. The Web 2.0 Strategy of BJP might have good intentions, but the target audience is not the voter mass. BJP may have to revisit their strategy and concentrate on rural issues.

In India, About 70-72% of the population lives in the rural areas of which 80% is dependent on agriculture for its income. Initiatives in agriculture and allied areas should be the focus for winning the 2009 Elections.

1. Political parties should look at providing un-interrupted water supply for irrigation and domestic consumption. Nationalization of rivers can be looked at.
2. Debt has been a lifestyle of the rural population for quite some time. Initiatives in rural banking can be looked at. Micro lending and Soft lending are some options.
3. Middleware options can greatly help the rural masses. Middleware procurement of agricultural produce, live-price and bidding are a few examples.
4. Health has always been a key issue and Virtual options can be explored.
5. Electricity issues can be tackled by embracing Solar Technology.

The campaign strategy is crucial for any party or firm. While the potential of emerging trends like Social Marketing, Online advts etc can help to get eyeballs, one should not lose focus on the foundations of Marketing (4P’s).

Till next time.

“The style of Communication has changed drastically now. How many email greetings have you sent to your loved ones. Or how many queries have you emailed to your co-worker. On the other hand, you make it more personalised by sending a greeting on Orkut or Facebook, or you quickly log on to the instant messenger to type your query to be sent to your colleague. When in urgency, you SMS and get an instant reply.

Marketing Executives have to realize this changed trend and adapt to more personalized form of communication rather than undertake email campaigns or snail mail campaigns. They have to adopt newer models to reach a wider audience on a personalized platform.”

Today’s article on BBC News, Social Networks are the new email has this to say:

“Status updates on sites such as Facebook, Yammer, Twitter and Friendfeed are a new form of communication… “

The new trends that have emerged in the last quarter are in line with the predictions I gave. It re-affirms the merit of my thought.

Going forward I see the following trends:

1. Facebook Pages will emerge as the widely used Marketing tool in the Q1FY10. Facebook, on the other hand, might look at a possible revenue stream. If I were a Facebook staff, I would be looking at introducing Slab Pricing: 0 – 10,000 users free, 10,000 – 25,000 users $X, 25,000-50,000 users $Y and so on.
2. Twitter may start “Live” Advertisement program. Marketers can quickly look at accelerating topics and position their advertisements around them – all taking place real-time. These channels could be banners, #messages and so on.
3. Companies will shift from emails to Private Friendfeed and Yammer for internal communication.

The mid of Q2FY10 will see the introduction a new app, which will again change the way world communicates. Consumers and Enterprises may quickly migrate to this new app and the Facebooks and Twitters of the world might have to re-visit their product roadmap.

Till next time.

The complete post can be found at http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/2009/03/14_ways_to_get_1.shtml

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff

Is there a secret to coming up with a breakthrough idea? No, there isn’t. But there are things you can do to increase the likelihood.

1. Follow your fascination
2. Immerse
3. Tolerate ambiguity
4. Make new connections
5. Fantasize
6. Define the right challenge
7. Listen to your subconscious
8. Take a break
9. Notice and challenge existing patterns and trends
10. Hang out with diverse groups of people
11. Brainstorm
12. Look for happy accidents
13. Use creative thinking techniques
14. Suspend logic

It has become increasingly difficult to manage so many gadgets at a time. Some call it cool to have many gadgets. I call it pain.

But there’s good news. Microsoft, Google, Apple, and others are quickly realizing this. Skydrive from Microsoft, Google Sync etc are all trying to solve this problem. They are just scratching the surface and have a long way to go before they can call themselves “helpful”.

Why do I say so? While they are trying to solve the problem of existing gadgets, they are not looking at the constant innovation that is taking place. For eg, Kindle 2 that got released a few hours ago. I download a book on Kindle. I can view it only on Kindle. Can I look at a way where I can transfer the file (read No Piracy) into my netbook, so that I end up taking only my netbook and not both. Isn’t that cool? And isn’t that convenient?

I give below 3 Sutras which companies can benefit from.

1. Look at ways for improving the unorganized user’s tools.

Yes, unorganized was used intentionally. I am not a big fan of David Allen or Merlin Mann. They ask us to stay organized etc. All cool and yes it works, but in the process I am losing out a lot of free (read personal) time. By following their process all I am doing is to get things done by sacrificing my free time.

What is this guy talking about? Is he nuts, to talk against David and Marlin.

Those who are following these methods diligently – step back and analyse how you have been spending your time. You will be surprised to find out that while your professional efficiency has increased to some extent, your personal life has actually gone southwards. Why is this? These methods bring in productivity in only a few areas, but not all. By trying to collect, organize and sort, you actually end up using the “2 mins” of your freetime. More line items – more “2 mins”. Assuming you do 25 such items daily, you end up cutting 25*2 mins of your free time. I am again making a conservative estimate as we all know that we don’t take 2 mins to do something, we actually take 5-8 mins to do something. that works out to 25 * 5 = 125 mins.

Moreover, you become robots. Human robots! Life becomes mechanical. Life becomes a function of methodologies. And this is when we enter the danger zone.

Nature is imperfect – and hence it is beautiful. We don’t see Nature behaving in a fixed format or following prescribed methods (read best practices). The climatic conditions are always different. When you watch the snow capped mountains, you will find that the mountain is actually irregular in shape. You don’t see an even patch of green land – it is uneven and again of different shades of green. And because of this imperfectness, Nature looks beautiful.

So companies need to figure out how they can make user’s life better, even if users continue to stay unorganized.

2. Become user centric rather than user-activity centric.

The buzz now is Social Marketing – Facebook, Twitter, Bebo etc. A few years before it was Smartphones – Symbian, Android, iPhone. Much earlier emails – Hotmail, Yahoo etc. We will have something new going forward. What companies fail to realize is that it is the same user who is accessing the above products. So instead of teaching the user on how to use the products, companies should being to learn the user – how they can get down to micro (read individual) level and address the needs of the user.

Each user is unique. For eg. I may use more of email, less of social networking and more of cellphone. Similarly another user might be high on social networking, but less on email and cellphone. Clearly, we have two different needs. The need could be a function of many things – from personal to professional life. Companies should recognize this and come up with solutions which can be unique to users. Apple has understood this while the rest need to.

3. Go Bottom up.

User first, Offerings next.

So CXO’s, start building the Unorganized User Persona or ping back and I can help you build one.

Till next time.

As I scrolled down, the results appeared to be not relevant. ‘Man, maybe I should change the keywords’. I quickly switched the Chorme Tab to the one showing Yahoo! Results. Same results. Damn it. ‘But wait, there are some suggestions’. I selected one of the suggestions. Switched back to Google Tab. Changed the key words. Again similar results. ‘Why is this?’. I noticed that the url in the address bar contained “Google.co.in”. ‘Oh! It’s showing Google India’. Switched to Google.com and searched again. No change. Switched to Yahoo! Tab. Something new appeared, but still far from relevant. Changed some key words. ‘No Luck’.

I tried all various keyword combinations and found the results kept re-appearing. ‘What could be wrong?’. I started reading the Google and Yahoo! Algorithm. ‘What! How could these guyz be so dumb?’. 

Have you ever experienced this? You are trying to do some research on the Internet. Obviously you search on Google and Yahoo! or Live. You get the same results again and again. You are in page 5 of the search results. No luck. Not one of these results is relevant to you. Google, Yahoo! and Live are using a Profile based Algorithm which basically means that it will read your previous browsing pattern, your profile and give you the results based on that. No matter what combination of keywords you use, you end up getting the same results. Similarly each one gets the “almost same” set of results based on his/her browsing history and profile. What does that mean? We get to see the same set of results reappearing for a particular topic. Anything new or anything different is saved for some newbie.

Time for change guyz.

What People Eat Around The World.

Ever wondered how you rank with the rest of the world in the amount of money you spend on food in a week? I got this email and it has some great pictures along with the amount of cash each family spends in feeding themselves for a week all around the world.

• Germany – $500 a week for food
• North Carolina, USA – $341.98 a week for food
• Japan – $317.25 a week for food
• Italy – $260 a week for food
• Great Britain – $253 a week for food
• Kuwait – $221.45 a week for food
• Mexico – $189.09 a week for food
• California, USA – $160 a week for food – Apparently it’s cheaper to eat on the West Coast of the U.S.A than the East Coast.
• Beijing, China – $155.06 a week for food
• Poland – $151 a week for food
• Egypt – $68.53 a week for food
• Mongolia – $40 a week for food
• Ecuador – $31.55 a week for food
• Bhutan – $5 a week for food
• Breidjing Camp – $1.23 a week for food!!! {Sudanese refugees in Chad}

Wonder how much Indian’s spend on food/week? May be around $100.00…

Till next Post…