Sometimes

Sometimes you have to set your eyes off the target to enjoy the race. You loose the race, you can be happy that you enjoyed the race at-least. And you win the race, Bingo. What good is winning a race if you didn't enjoy the race at all.

Caveat : I do believe in goal setting and slogging for your goals. It' just that I don't slog, when I don't like something.

Ads : Short and expressive

Can you put across an idea effectively in less than 10 seconds with an audience that you have no connection with? Ads answers affirmatively to this. And that is the reason I have always believed that ads are the best form to show case one's talents if one is interested in fields like acting, direction and cinema.

Marketing in itself is a huge market and it is in-fact a science. It is as much science as math or physics is. But instead of studying static entities like geography and algebra, it ties to analize  the more dynamic entity namely human beings. With dwindling attention span of the current generation it is really a difficult task to capture the imagination of the you and old alike. But there are few marketing campaigns that achieve this feat seamlessly.
And the  marketing campaign of Kotak Mahindra on the eve of turning 25 is one such example.

This was their ad campaign in print

and these are there videos in the TV and internet.






and this is their website for the event http://25.kotak.com/

Why was I impressed with the ad campaign?

1. Marketing campaign spread over print, media and internet(you tube banner ad).
2. Print ad on TOI first two pages. Pleasing + Capturing the attention + User participation.
3. Youtube Videos. Short + Creative + Emotional appeal + No on the face promotion of products.
4. Over all : Celebration of 25th anniversary can easily connect with you and old alike.
5. Over all : Concentrating on the long term brand building rather than promotion of individual products.

3G : Mom is the world..

"Guys of your age should be going out with girlfriends and having fun, Shravan" she told. 

Shravan is her only son and her only hope in life. Two decades ago when her husband died, she lost all hopes and was crestfallen. Plans of killing herself crossed her mind too. But when she looked into the innocent eyes of Shravan, she knew she had to live and indeed she did. She got back to her life. But there was no life in her. She started to hate everything around her. She locked all the doors around her which would lead to the world outside. Her only connection to the outside world was Shravan. And Shravan made sure that his Mom didn't miss the world too much. Though he didn't hate the world like his mom did, he didn't find it interesting. His Mom was the world to him. He felt comfortable with him Mom and he was happy being that way. He didn't feel the need for extra love and care from others as his mom always made sure that he gets enough.

"May be thats true. But they don't have a Mom like you :) So they have to. I don't know Mom. Whenever I sleep on your laps, I feel so protected and get peace of mind. I am happy for that. I have no regrets of not having a Girl Friend" said Shravan. They hugged each other and he slept on her laps.

"Wake up Shravan, Its 7 you need to go office..", the sound brought him back from sleep. He woke up to see the smiling face of him mom. This had been the routine right from the day his Dad had expired. He never woke up without looking at his mom's face. The smile on her face was his driving force. He spoke to  his Mom for sometime and got ready for the office. He was having breakfast and the bell rang. It was the signal from his friend Sharath, who was waiting for him outside. "Ok Mom, I am leaving to office", Shravan said looking into his phone and he left. 

She (Shravan's Mom) had died 2 years ago. Shravan was in a situation similar to what his Mom was in a few decades ago, but this time it was more worse because he had no one else. Nobody ever imagined that he could cope up with the loss. Looking at the way he had  handled himself for the first few days after his Mom's demise, everybody felt that he would not last longer than a week or so.  But thanks to the new app 3G Buddy(Virtual simulation of your loved ones), which brought back his mother to life and hence saved a life (or should i say two.?).

There are many Shravans out there in the world. I wish 3G Life will being their loved ones back to life.

What is your October Indirank...?

The long wait for the October Indirank is finally over. And the results are here. And I am not happy with my results. My previous ranking was 50 and so is my current ranking. When life is all about growth, no growth : no life. And stagnancy stinks.....

Since I have blogged regularly of late and am having decent traffic, I naturally expected my rank to improve. And so I am disappointed :(

Guys please console and motivate me to keep blogging :) Hey did I tell you that I wrote my first 55er.

I like the way you lie : My first 55er

All I wanted was to hang around her and have some fun. But she was a serious kind. I looked deep into her eyes and said “Love you, dear” . "I like the way you lie", she said and walked away. As she was walking away, I heard the words “But still I love you”.

Highlights : Bangalore Indiblogger Meet

When     : 3rd October 2010
Where    :  Fortune Park JP Celestial
What      :  Indiblogger Meet
Twitter    : @indiblogger
Trending :   #indiblr








There are going to be a zillion posts on this topic. So i will only write about the highlights.

• Awesome location :  Fortune Park JP Celestial.
• Cave like entrance and lots of cavemen (read as indipolice)
• More than 250 bloggers.
• Live tweet streaming was great and innovative.
• Meet started 20 mins late.
• Girls to boys ratio was very low, and only few hot chicks :(
• Introductions were long and a bit boring. But a wide variety of folk were out there
• 3 lucky guys walked away with HP printers for theirs intros. I didn't get any though I deserved one
• Write on our backs : The comments galore, wish my blog had so many comments
• 15 mins wasted on mobile blogging, he could have as well just shared the link http://m.wordpress.com/
• Case study by Raghava(who called himself bling photographer) was inspirational
• Open discussion for guidelines of the forum.(Indiblogger teams attempt to portray themselves as democratic)
• Three winners for sprit of bangalore photo contest.
• A clean,simple,great  ppt on how HP is adapting to the new generation demands.
• Snacks and tea time. Samosas were worth loosing the sunday after-noon nap.
• Promotion of social causes in the meet was nice :)
• I mentioned about my sanskrit site
• Voila we got indiblogger T shirt...

Live Tweets

And few things off the record ....

• The most famous line : I write some crap stories on my blog
• The most innovative idea of the meet : IndiBRA
• The coolest chick in the house :  Indipolice chick at registration desk (man she was hot)

Who is she?

Of late I was thinking "Who is my closest companion.?"

Mom?.. Dad?..Bro?..(from the title you know it's a female) Colleague?.. Friend?...  Nope

Let me tell you about her

The first thing I do when I wake up is hold her in my hands gently and stare at her lovely face to see if she has got something to say to me. Most of the days I am reluctant to wake up and feel like sleeping again holding her in my hands. If I don't find her find on my bed when I wake up, I jump out  in a hurry, and start searching for her frenziedly. My heart beat becomes normal only after finding her. My day starts with her and ends with her, barring bath (I should admit that generally I don't take her along for bath, for some strange reason.) Barring that she is with me 24/7. She watches me getting dressed up, she is with me when I have my breakfast,I decide when to go office only after looking at her,she is with me when I ride to office, she sings for me when I am riding. She sits by my side when I work, she accompanies me when I go for lunch, she is there for me whenever I need her. Most of my friends envy me because of her. Some feel I don't deserve her while others while others feel she is too obliging. A few true friends feel that I give her too much attention. Some of my friends really get pissed off when I hold her close to me and start playing with her in-front of them;). But I can't help it. Well most of my day surrounds her and I enjoy every second of it. In fact my day ends with her in my bed. Sometimes I sleep just holding her in my hands. At other times when I don't I just wake up, stare at her for some time, play with her then get back to sleep.

Oops I forgot to tell you that I put her on charge before I sleep!!!. Don't be confused I was speaking about my phone ;) Yes indeed my phone is my closest companion and this is true for most people. And hence what I expect from my phone is what I expect from my companion.


The features I wish my phone had........... My favorite phone would be


A phone with a mood detector : I think this is what differentiates a companion from a phone. Our best friends are the ones who can read our moods very well. They know when to shut up and when to pull our legs. I wish my phone could do the same. A phone that can detect my mood and play songs accordingly.
Just imagine if your phone could play your favorite romantic song in low volume when you are thinking about the moments you had spent with your GF. Or just imagine if your phone can constantly remind you about your GF's birthday and suggest you the kind of gift you can get for her(This one would be an instant hit with the guys). 
Just imagine if your phone could suggest you with names of your best friends or autodial them when you are not in good mood.
Just imagine if your phone could cool your nerves when you are tensed.
Or at last imagine if your phone could search the net for a hot video of your taste and start playing it when you get horny ;)

A phone that I can converse with : Somebody please get rid of these keyboards from phone. I just hate them. Until and unless phones become interactive they are just machines. They can't become your companions if you cant talk to them. Touch phones are fine but phones with which we can converse will be great. I feel like we are still in stone age when I need to type, to convey my thoughts or do something. A phone should be your PA. You just tell you PA to do something. How to do it is her headache. You don't type for her. If talking with your phone is one part, the phone talking back to you to convey something is the other part. 


A phone that simplifies social networking : I get to know what my friends are upto through social networking. So sharing on a networking site has to be simple, easy and an enjoyable process. Just click a photo and say share it on facebook as my profile image. And dhuumm.. my friends should be able to see it in their updates. It should reduce the time lag :) 
And the other aspect is more social networking has to be incorporated into my phone. When I play a song on my player in the phone, I should know how many of my friends like the particular song. After all we the youngsters live our lives through social networking, sharing is a part of our lives and we share our lives. So why not through our phones?
    

In short a phone to me is 

"Somebody with whom you can SHARE your LIFE and something through which you can SHARE your  LIFE with others"

  

Tata DOCOMO OneTouch Net Phone promises to be one such phone. Let wait and see..... 

MBA is neither a necessary nor a sufficient criteria for being a leader.(written for TestFunda)

If you are still waiting for the answer of the question "Can an MBA alone make a leader?", the answer if definite "NO" in capital letters. I wish leadership had a clear definition like the one MBA has. But the truth is that it doesn't. MBA is an acronym for Master of Business Administration, and that is what it does.Make you a Master in Business Administration. But we all know that  Leadership is much more than that. There are innumerous masters in this world, but hardly a few leaders. 

MBA might have Leadership as one of the subjects in one of the semesters, but this in no way symbolizes that leadership is a part of MBA and having an MBA alone can make you a leader. I am not saying that an MBA doesn't instill leadership qualities but  my view point  is that "MBA is neither a necessary nor a sufficient criteria for being a leader."

Since Data Interpretation(DI) is an important requisite for an MBA, lets interpret the data at hand. 

Data : MBA is neither a necessary nor a sufficient criteria for being a leader.

The data consists of two statements. For the given data to be true both the statements have to be true. So lets verify the truthfulness of both these sentences.

Statement 1 : MBA is not necessary for being a leader

Proof : We have many leaders who do not hold a MBA degree.

Statement 2 : MBA is not sufficient for being a leader

Proof : We have many people with MBA degrees but not considered as leaders.

By proving that Statement 1 and Statement 2 are true, I have verified the given data and hence in the process justified my title which was the sole purpose of this article.

Retype Your Password : Why should I ?

I have created countless accounts online, needless to say that i use only a small fraction of them in reality. In the process of creating these accounts i would have filled hundred if not thousands of forms which say Type your password in one row and Retype you password in the succeeding row. But I had never ever seriously analyzed  as to what I gain and what I loose by Retyping my password.

Recently I created an account and happily filled the Type your password and Retype your password fields in the form. I browsed the site that day. Few days later I tried to login to the website. "The username and passwords don't match" the server scowled at me. Bingo!! I tried few combinations, but all in vain. Rather than trying to recover my password, I set about to understand what had actually conspired against me.

And here goes my story : (Read this paragraph at the end)

What had actually happened was that I had mistyped my password. That's fair enough as all of us make mistakes. But what saddens me is that i had mistyped while retyping the password. Thats also acceptable though rare. But what interests me is that in both the cases my typos were same. So the poor system assumed that, what I typed was the actual password. And there I was blissfully ignorant of the my blunder. It would have been a tedious process to regain my password, if I had tried. But I didn't as I was busy analyzing what had happened and I was content with what I was doing.

Now lets analyse all the scenarios that arise in this context and see whether the extra effort we put in retyping the password is worth  it. There are four scenarios.

	Password[P] Correct	Password[P] Wrong
Retype Password[RP] Correct	Case I (P = RP)	Case II (P != RP)
Retype Password[RP] Wrong	Case III (P != RP)	Case IV  (P = RP)  OR (P !=RP)    V                   VI

Step 1 : Enter your Password

Step 2 : Retype your password

After completing Step 2, we can't differentiate between case I and V. After step 2 we also can't differentiate between Case II, Case III and case VI

Case I : Both Password and Retype password are correct - OK Scenario

Step 1 : The password is correct. So there is no need of Step 2, but since we don't know that password is correct we go to Step 2. That is where are trying to eliminate Case II here. But in the process we are creating chances for Case III, which is an unfavorable one.

Step 2 : Retype your password is also correct.  Hence we ended up in case, but we could as well have ended up in Case III.

Case II : Password is wrong and Retype password is correct - Ideal scenario

Step 1 : The password is incorrect. So in the absence of Step 2, your account would have been created with wrong password.

Step 2 : Retype your password is correct and hence you catch hold of the error in Step 1. But we could have as well ended up in Case IV

Case III : Password is correct but Retype password is wrong - A bad scenario

Step 1 : The password is correct. But at this step since we don't know that, we proceed to Step 2

Step 2 : The Retype password is wrong. Oooops though the password in Step 1 was correct we ended up in Case III and we will have to create our login again.

Case IV : Password is wrong but Retype password is wrong - A good/dangerous scenario

Step 1 : The password is wrong. Good that we have step 2

Step 2 : The Retype password is also wrong. Shit how could we mistype in second attempt also.

Now this is where this particular case gets interesting, if the typos in step1 and step 2 are different then we are saved and we have good scenario. It the typos in step 1 and step 2 happen to be the same then we are in for a toss. That's dangerous situation. Because we end up in what we tried to avoid. We will be erring with more confidence that we are right, which i think is more dangerous.

This is just the common sense analysis, the mathematical analysis with the use of probability shall follow ...

Google instant : Change the way you search

The google instant was an instant hit. The proof was instantisation of google maps, youtube,bing so on and so forth. So now we have moved from instant coffee and  instant chats to instant search. Googling has easily become one of the things a internet buff does on a regular basis. Whether you are looking out for a location in a google map, searching for a nice hotel on burp.com or searching for an instant video on youtube what you are doing basically is search. So making google(read as search) instant definitely goes a long way in saving a lot of time.

But what baffles me is with bigwigs like google, microsoft and yahoo fighting for monopoly over search(as it is the gateway to the world of lucrative business namely internet), what took them so long to instantise search. The only reason that comes to my mind is lack of resources. In place of one hit/query on the server, the current instant google will hit the server more than 5 times for an average query. So that's like saying that the google servers must be five times bigger in capacity or five times efficient in handling the search queries. That might seem to be  asking for too much but still that seems to me like a lame excuse these bigwigs can give.

The unusual spin off of google instant is that Japanese addresses are showing more quickly on google instant maps than its counter-part western addresses. Let's find out the reasons but first lets understand the japanese addressing systems. Japanese addresses reflect the primacy of the group in Japan. They proceed from the general (the prefecture, or Japan itself for mail to Japan) to the particular (the addressee). So the general address looks like this

107 Tokyo-to, Minato-ku,
Akasaka 1-chome, 
10-ban, 5-go, 
Watanabe Kazuo

It starts from the generic address Tokyo and moves to the specific addressee name Watanabe Kazuo in the order. Japanese got lucky as their addresses work the same way as google instant does.

Google instant is a Progressively Refining Search(A term i have come out with). Put in simple terms, with each keyword enter your search gets refined. So you can see your search getting refined with every typing letter. There are two ways you can build your search query now.

1. Start with the most specific term and then move to the generic term.
2. Start with the most generic term and then move to the specific term.

The first method is the traditional way we use to search. An ex : The famous hotels in bangalore,India

This is how our search queries used to be till now. Lets analise this under the current google instant search. The moment you type good google is confused as to what get for you as there are many things which are good. then when you say hotels it tries  get you hotels from all over the world, whereas hotel in bangalore was what you were looking for. :( 

The second method is the query suited to google instant. Since google instant is a Progressively Refining Search, starting with the most generic term and then moving to the specific term goes with the flow and you can see the search results getting better as you type. So now our search query will be India bangalore hotels famous. So when you type india google will fetch results only from india, and as you type bangalore the results will be refined for banglaore, and when you type hotels it gets you the list of hotels in banglaore. So as you keep typing your query the search keeps getting refined. ("Hotels, India bangalore good" may be a more efficient query)

So the next time you are googling my name remember the query has to be India,Karnataka,Bangalore,Mindtree Gokul

Caveat : There are exceptions to this rule. Comment on this post if you want to discuss. But remember that it still holds good if you are looking out for a geographical location.