A friend of mine forwarded this link to a hilarious, but very professionally made video on what would happen to some elements of branding if iPods were to be made by Microsoft instead of Apple. Worth every second of your time. If you a marketing professional and appreciate subtle humour, cannot afford not to view the entire clip.
iPod
Updated Nov 20, 2008: You may want to read my recent post on Chandrayaan success.
Greedy about the possibility of carrying an R K Laxman cartoon in my pocket, I signed up for a designer credit card offered by State Bank of India. Yes, the silliest reason I can think for signing up for a card but let me be honest. It turned out that the card was a co-branded Indian Railways credit card and came with a free membership to Frequent Flyer Traveller programme, which I never cared about since my travel with the railways can hardly be called Frequent.
Over the next day I discover I find that the book is about finding the small little reasons which make a ripple into a wave.The book is not a very easy to read book. Malcolm Gladwell packs in lot of facts and observations, and before you can absorb some, he throws lot more at you. Look at his reasoning of why communities should be limited to 150. He says that is the number human mind can really take without creating disconnects. But the reasoning moves from description of human mind to observation of hunter gatherer communities of ancient times and how their average community hovers around 150. Then he brings in a company called Gore Associates, which has a fascination for number 150.Wilbert Gore, one of the founders is quoted as saying,”..we put a one hundred and fifty parking spaces in the lot, and when people start parking on the grass, it is time to build a new plant“.Man, what a simplified strategic planning!
The book, as I read it, made me pretty excited as one should while reading a bestseller.But perhaps no wiser. If you have read Freakonomics and felt confused, this one will obfuscate things even more.So by evening I put the book back in the bag. Mr. Iyer and Mr. Mehta are engrossed in some discussion that I must get involved. Mr. Iyer’s ‘foreign return’ son (America, he helpfully clarifies) is getting married in few weeks. Mr. Mehta is returning home after engagement of his daughter, who is also with him. She is lost somewhere, I could not figure out where but that somewhere is infinite distance focal length across the wall towards ‘dah-ly’, while Mr. Iyer and Mr Mehta are busy discussing the nuances of the marital traditions in different parts of India. Much more interesting than the book. This is my tipping point. So I hook on, uninvited!
Kiran Karnik, the venerable President of Nasscom is all set to leave, Economic Times, reports. Nasscom is the premier coalition of Indian IT and BPO companies and apart from lobbying and awareness building about IT and BPO, Nasscom has been playing an active role in envisioning future business opportunites in IT & BPO space. This news comes the same day when Infosys(INFY) announced Q4 results and several others are all set to come out with their Q4 numbers in the next few days.
With temperature in Chennai and rest of India soaring, Chennai’s Elliot’s Beach(also called Besant Nagar beach) presented a soothing relief. This picture was taken few days back around 6:30 AM when fishermen were heading out to sea.
Blogstreet is an India based feed aggregation cum rating tool. But unlike other sites such as Technorati, it suffers some major drawbacks.
The application itself seems pretty stagnant.
Looking at state of things, it certainly does not seem its pink of health, and not sure of the experiences of others, but to me it certainly seems going downhill. Is Blogstreet a Techcrunch deadpool candidate already?
More on Blogstreet at Technorati here