Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Creative Advertisement


I am a big fan of Creative Advertising . A well conceived and designed Ad is best way to Attract audience and ensure a recall . Like every good thing in life a Good Advertisement is never in abundance . its scarcity make it value able .


I am attracted toward this medium Since my college days ,I always made it a point to participate in Ad mad Event when we used to go to Antaragini (Cult Fest of IIT Kanur ) .but lately there is a decline in the Quality of advertisement . with the rise of text link based advertisement on web there is very little room for creativity left in ads here

that is why it is always a refreshing to see a Good Creative Ad . when Jason of 37signals recently posted some real good work in creative ads it was treat for me

i am reproducing it here,for you to see !!









Some Great Inovation in something very basic as Shopping bags














(C) all rights acknowledged .

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Improbable Collapse : Truth About 9/11 Media Cover UP

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"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality."

- Alighieri Dante

I am not a Political person . I for the most of the Time have nothing usefull to say about policitical event around me . I see politicians as a neccesary evil and i am happy to pay the ransom if they leave me in peace .

But Once in a while I [and i guess you too ] feel like revolting and destroying everything around you . and chage the system for good .

I was reading Tara's blog . in a post she amde today she linked to a Video on google .Its Called Improbable Collapse .It's about the Event of 9/11 .Improbable Collapse is the first film to thoroughly review the evidence for WTC demolitions from a scientific perspective. and conclusion ??

9/11 was an insider's Job .

Each one of us was effected by that tragedy . even though i have never been to US but still i can understand the agony of Families who lost their Loved One in 9/11 . All along we cursed laden and Taliban for this henious Act . But what if he was not alone in this ? what if there was an Hidden hand behined this act . What if we were feeded with this propoganda so that Bush can justify his own agenda of Attacking other countries to control Oil Fields .

Improbable Collapse
examines the increasingly widespread notion that the World Trade Center buildings were brought down using explosives. Force of collision and Heat of Jet fuel Fire was not enough to melt the high quality steel used in the construction of WTC . Even if that was enough it can not expalin the way the whole building was collapsed with in its foot print .Using highly scintific method scientist have shown that Pan Cake Theory , spreade by Bush and Gang is just a house of card .

I was infuriated to see the video . i was rivetd to my desk for an hour . how can they do it to their own people ? a Cover up of that magnitude ? thousands of people lost their loved one in this tragedy and Bush Government used this Tragedy to to jsutify its dracounian measures like
Pattriot Act ,War on Terror and Pre emptive Strike on IRAQ .

I want you to watch this video . so what if its an hour long video , so what if you have got work to do , code to write , E-mails to write , Shopping to do . As a citizen of free world who loves to remain free its our duty to stop this madness and make sure when its time to decide we decide in full knowledge .


For once i have a opinion , for once i want an explanation ,For once i am not neutral



Tuesday, October 17, 2006

And Time Can Do So Much



My Ex roommate and College Buddy Rohan Arora got married last Saturday . it was a memorable ceremony , got a chance to meet a lot of friends from College . kinda nostalgic to catch up with the Gang . All dressed up like a Fashion parade [i wore a Sherwani , it's a weird outfit ,special the chudidaar part of it ] and felt like going to a Farzi marriage .

Once in the car park and with snacks and Beer we remembered Sutta meetings for Strike planing at College Gate ,drinking beer in "contri" [rohan was paying this time ] . (still ) Talking about those Girls and how they are married to some guy who is no better than us [ arrange marriage you know ,No Background Check , We were sure he was worse than us , You agree with me . don't you ?] , we were sure she must be realising her mistake now [are you ?]

Damn. No one has info about HER . I hope she is still single [I am , just in case , you are reading this :) ]

Strange what few years can do to a person . Some of the Folks were bald ,some were silent ,some still got funtush after a single Beer , Everyone Agreed that In Delhi Girls always do a overkill of Makeup & look horrible [as if we are Beauty expert, so what if we don't look like one .after a beer sometime we are Rocket Scientist ]

Most of the guys were heavy by a few pounds since i last saw them . some were with their better Half and were under a chronic fear that We [read ,Bachelors] will tell the truth to their wife . some played safe and came alone. To my great surprise a Brat among us was concerned about Diapers of his baby and an Eternal late comer were worried about reaching home in time .

One thing i learned is that if you are newly married don't even think of buying CAR . people will always see it as "That Gift " even if you are the one who is paying the EMI ,and god help you if it carries a licence plate of your home town . It was a refreshing to see that our the Fighter guy Vivek was still the same . no suit no change and same enthu still the old self .i love him for that .

Time take its toll both in body and spirit . Inside the suit some guys were New Men they were different but i expected that . I still miss the old Tribal warmth but still i feel good that all my folks are well settled and Happy .

Hope to see guys you at next ceremony from our gang [There are still some trees to be chopped down]

I wish Good Luck & Happiness to Rohan and Ashima , Godspeed .

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Trying SlideShare

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Yesterday I signed up as a Beta Tester for Slideshare . [Thanks to Amit & Jon for sending the invite] .

Slide Share is a free service launched by Uzanto for sharing presentations and slide shows. You can upload presentations, tag them, embed them into your blog,search presentations uploaded by other users . In short its a perfect solution to circumvent the email attachment way of sharing your presentation . you can read a more extensive review of service here .

I am impressed by slideshare . I admired the Ease of sign up , use and sharing it offer This is what we come to expect from folks @ uzanto . Though it still lacks in some functionality like Custom Animations are lost (you only get one slide at a time as a single object), and downloading the hosted presentation . still as they are in Beta yet so Its really a neat Application by any yard stick.

On a second thought Exclusion of These feature might be a conscious choice as Jon is a Getting Real Fan and Know that "It is human nature to be unsatisfied ".

TechCrunch described Slideshare as a YouTube of PowerPoint and i agree with him . With wirtely and Google Spreadsheet in their stable Google Guys will be looking for a Application to complete the G Office jigsaw . In fact they have started the process of Backward integration . Google is famous for snapping promising start up in Beta . So stage is set for slideshare . Good Luck for Team Uzanto .

Godspeed

P.S : "I am trying to embed My Presentation on "Web 2.0 & Power of Default" using Slide share . I used this presentation during my session at BarCamp Delhi . Surprisingly that's where i meet Jon for the First time . is it just a co-incidence ? May Be May Be Not ."

Friday, October 06, 2006

Social Networking??

























Permanent full-time position for a personal social coordinator for a New York-based web designer. Your primary responsibility will be managing my accounts with various online social networking sites including, but not limited to, Friendster, LinkedIn, Tribe, Orkut, Ryze, Spoke, ZeroDegrees, Ecademy, RealContacts, Ringo, MySpace, Yafro, EveryonesConnected, Friendzy, FriendSurfer, Tickle, Evite, Plaxo, Squiby, and WhizSpark. ,
…………..
There's even room to grow in the position:

Future duties may include discouraging companies and individuals from starting new social networking sites so that additional staff won't be necessary in the future. Past employment as a bouncer, "heavy", or hired goon may be helpful in this regard. Benefits include addition as my friend in all of the social networking sites I belong to.
:Jason Kottkee in Being your friend is hard work


In Early 2004 When ace Blogger Jason published this post . I was amused and didn’t think much about it. I thought this is the (small) price of being a celebrity . But three years down the line I am paying the price but I am (at least until now ) less than a celebrity .

On the last count I subscribed to 6 Social/Professional Networking sites ,12 mailing list and not to mention a daily dose of Digg ,reddit, Flickr, slashdot,gigaom, emergic, venturewoods etc. Sometime I have to skip my lunch or read email from home to keep up with all the action.

Strangely I don’t know how does all this got started and snowballed. I kept receiving invitation my friends .Out of courtesy or curiosity I kept accepting them and kept feeding this menace. Initially I was very excited to see all those weird request in my inbox . I was too happy when a girl from Brazil add herself in my FAN list @ orkut . I thought she must have checked my photo album J .Never before in my whole life I was so close to having a date ..or so I thought L . but I discovered that she does it for every one of her contact .

But now its time to do some math. What is the over all value addition this “get to know “ craze offer ? And how can I optimize the ROI?

First a little bit of book keeping .

In my previous assignment I have closed 3 significant deals through Linkedin . In Mobile Monday 25 people from my various networks were there including One of the prominent guest . I am in touch with few VCs and a lot of Domain experts whom I meet first time at these sites . and I am in touch with some of the most interesting folks because of them .

Not a bad score card I guess ,But i think i could have done better . how ? actually i waisted a lot of time understanding the very idea of how it work . After almost two year of using these sites I discovered few rules of game .

at the risk of being overly simplistic and redundant ..here they are

#1 Find out the core activity/agenda of the network.

Every networking site will offer sun moon and milky way to you . don’t trust, find out from your Real World Friends what this site is being used for ?

Linked in was started as a sales referral site now it’s a De Facto Destination for recruitment of Mid to Higher level Executives .

Orkut was started as a content sharing/ URL or book mark forwarding site now it is being used as ..god knows what ..but its addictive

Flickr is for shutterbugs

My space is predominantly used for discovering music or new bands

Ryze is for exploring new business opportunity

And so on

Don’t go by websites claim about what it can do for you. Look at the flow before you jump in the conversation . and think do you really want to be a part of this ? is it what you are looking for ?
Trying to find a date at Linked in or trying to find a serious professional at Orkut is the biggest idiosyncrasy you can do . I know because I had tried to do both .

#2 Don’t Fall for Temptation:

This is more true for professional sites like Linked in and Ryze . You should not accept everyone’s invitation to connect. I have 80+ direct contacts in my linked in network I know only 60% of them. Rest 40 % are those guys whose invitation I accepted out of courtesy. Initially I used to find it very hard to refuse but now I know I need to maintain a sanity of my network so it’s good to refuse
Don’t worry you will eventually find a network which will work for you. Power of network is not in number of nodes but in connection between the nodes. As a matter of fact we only need six nodes to reach any one in world.

#3 Remember after a while It should be platform independent

Sometime back I Meet a girl at Flickr . She was lovely and everything I could have asked for in a girl (don’t worry.. I have found at least 100 such girls). I admired her photographs she admired mine and we were happy. Life was beautiful. Than one day I sent her a casual email about “ howz life? “Crap. That was the first time we talked anything outside of Photography. Guess what?? She never replied.

So what is the moral of the story ?

There is no substitute of one to one conversation .If you want to nurture a meaningful association through all these sites make it a point to connect via email ,phone ,coffee when you happen to visit there city or birthday . site specific communication are not a yardstick to measure reliability of your network . like every other good thing in life it require nurturing and you can’t out source it to orkut.

#4 Bonus :

I can safely say that much of the folks in this networking mad rush are looking for a DATE . my two cents advice for them . Chat Room, IM, IRC, ICQ are far more effective in this. Stuck to them and please clear the stage for some serious business

Incase you are a entrepreneur planning to launch a dating site . My friend Rajiv has some excellent Ideas/ Advice for you. Read it here

This is my idea of a effective use of these sites .I would love to know how you make it work for you .

Wishing you a great weekend.

P.S . Image Courtesy Masahiko