Pradeep Kumar's blog

New series: Business Ideas, Part 1 - Technology for the elderly

2011-02-09T22:17:00.000-08:00

In the first session of the series, Business Ideas, we discussed technology for the elderly with Raj Oswal. Raj Oswal is the Director of O'interface and a Director at ShorthandMobile and is a very good friend.

He has been thinking about trying to bridge the gap between latest technology and elderly and connect them to the web 2.0 world

Monday blues

2010-05-10T00:21:00.001-07:00

It's friday !!

2010-05-07T03:01:00.000-07:00

New Year Resolutions 2010

2010-01-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

Another year turned up and it's time for the new resolutions, now briefly my new year resolutions are:

1. Read 10 books
2. Write a blog post atleast once in a week(probably on WATblog.com)
3. Work on my new startup idea .
4. Network more,attend more business conferences.
5. Dream,dream and dream more ...
6. Workout regularly

and hey Happy New Year!!! I know this year is gonna be great to us all!!!

Image: http://www.citylifechurch.com/info/images/Vision2010_Logo.jpg

Interviewing Sridhar vembu,CEO Zoho on Saas market and Zoho

2009-08-30T12:57:00.000-07:00

I interviewed Sridhar Vembu,CEO Zoho at Nasscom Emergeout Conclave 2009 on Saas and Zoho,the questionnaire was mostly impromptu. here's the video.

A look at Rural VAS,Mobile services set to change lives

2009-08-12T11:15:00.000-07:00

The other day I was discussing “Rural VAS business in India” with couple of my friends, and one of my friend argued that information about the right prices is always available with the farmers and making market price information available on mobile is little if not of no value addition to the farmer.

Another friend of mine Ashok, An IIT KGP graduate pointed out that he used to go sell vegetables in Jaipur city and he never knew what the correct price was, there it was one of the problem’s Rural VAS is trying to solve, making information easily accessible to farmer because information put’s him in a power position and helps him get more profit for all the hard work he has put into.

Innovations in Rural VAS:

It is quite amusing to see how mobile phone has already changed and still continues to change the lives in third world countries for better,be it Grameen phone in Bangladesh providing employment and connectivity to millions of Individuals in that country or the socially evolved banking solution,Sente in Uganda. (If you haven’t already seen Jan Chipchase’s video of his presentation in TED conference, do watch it.)

Sente of Uganda makes a very interesting innovations in the rural VAS space, where in people buy mobile recharge coupons and transfer money calling up the destined villages mobile kiosk and giving them the topup code. Sente brings the basic banking services to people where even the banking services are not available and to the people who probably are not eligible to have a bank account and the greatest thing is it is completely community evolved solution and not controlled by any organization.

IBM’s HSTP is probably the most important innovation in this space as it could solve the basic barrier rural VAS could encounter, illiteracy. Most of the rural population in Emerging and third world markets can’t read and write and that’s where IBM’s talk to web technology fit’s in,a person can switch on a phone and just use IVR access all the information and perform banking too.

Challenges in Rural VAS:

Apart from effective implementation of IVR and making services affordable, local information aggregation makes up a serious challenge in rural VAS. Reuters,the UK based news service company is already working on this problem with it’s pilot project “Reueter’s Market light” where in Reuters is providing commodity prices,crop and weather data to Maharashtra farmers on their mobile phones and it costs them only 60 rupees a month, recently launched Nokia’s life tools services also get’s local information from Reuter’s market light.

Future of Rural VAS:

Though rural telecom market went un-adressed until now with all of the attention going to latest VAS advances like Mobile TV, Multimedia streaming, Mobile social networking and location based services,it is getting lot of attention lately especially with the increasing mobile penetration in the country and with a major part of the growth contributed by the rural India.

With Urban and semi-ruban markets getting saturated,rural India is for sure the only place to grow and decreasing TCO (total cost of ownership)for mobile phones (less than 5USD) makes Rural VAS is one of the next big things and apart from making big bucks,businesses can add a great amount of value addition by providing farmers the right kind of information and banking solutions.

As Iqbal Quadir of GrameenPhone quotes it “The Cure to Poverty Is Connectivity and Individual Empowerment” and Rural VAS is just going to do that, empowering the farmers and the poor, making mobile phone more of an investment for them than an expenditure.

Posted on WATblog.com

An "Intel Star" TV ad -- Sponsors of Tomorrow

2009-05-07T10:52:00.001-07:00

This is so awesome, I just felt like posting on my blog :)

Where the hell in KGP?

2009-01-28T01:51:00.000-08:00

building of a construction and consultancy firm

2009-01-16T05:52:00.000-08:00

Here's a funny pic

Cognitive Bias and pattern seeking

2009-01-16T03:59:00.001-08:00

An interesting video demonstrating human tendency to seek patterns

Proto 5 is here

2008-12-05T22:17:00.000-08:00

The countdown to the Jan. 2009 Edition of Proto has started. Don’t forget to attend India’s biggest Startup Event at Bangalore on Jan. 23-24, 2009.I wish I could be there,but will make sure I attend next one.

Hey one more thing nominations are still open!!

How I fixed my water damaged Ipod?

2008-12-01T00:59:00.000-08:00

Now I'm not going to go into details about how I dropped my Ipod in water not once but twice and how it was lying in water for more than 3 minutes. It was damaged; I switched it on and soon found it slowly turning off.

I knew that the circuits in Ipod are all wet and all I need to do if nothing got screwed up (with my stupid maneuver of turning it on still it's wet) is to dry them.

You know Incandescent light bulb's emit enough heat ,In my kitchen the light bulb was in my hand's reach, I placed the Ipod very near to the bulb ( don't put it on the glass enclosure) and forgot about it for about two hours ,then I took the Ipod ,it was really hot, I turned it on and Voila!! It was working normally.

P.S: This technique works for phones too

VC Model Broken?

2008-11-16T23:43:00.000-08:00

Adeo Ressi of TheFunded arguing that the VC Industry is broken.

TheFunded - Canarie

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: lp investing)

Solving a wrong problem

2008-11-10T22:24:00.000-08:00

Solving a problem is a great thing to do,especially if you are starting a business, but what about solving a wrong problem,one which doesn't exist in the first place, It might be a foolish thing to do if people are never gonna encounter that problem even in the future,right? What might be a real classic situation is the cost of solving that wrong problem is big.

What could one do to avoid this kinda situation?
People say you should not waste time on surveying and evaluating the market,very true,but at least one could/should always ask his friends,if the problem you are solving is not yours and not of your friends, there are great chances that it is not a problem at all.So whenever you start working on that great idea or set out solving that problem,do find out if it's a real problem.

It's easier said than done

2008-10-29T23:51:00.000-07:00

People in the Entrepreneurial scene get to hear loads of cliche`, especially ones' like me who read books and blogs on marketing,entrepreneurship and stuff.
You constantly hear things like Differentiate( be a purple cow), create a Blue ocean strategy and stuff,the other day I was at Nasscom Emerge out conference and somebody commented in a session that things like differentiation and stuff are easier said than done.

Yes to create a purple cow or a Blue Ocean Strategy is difficult, sometimes very difficult and may be that's what differentiates between Success and failure,I think it's a nature's way to weed out stupid and mediocre stuff,If you want to make your product a purple cow, if you want to create a blue ocean strategy you got to go through the pain and probably that's the only way.

Interesting Pic

2008-10-27T03:17:00.001-07:00

The Game of Business

2008-09-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting video of proto.in , Bhavin Turakhia of Directi on the game of business

Quick survey details on Mobile usage

2008-09-25T05:09:00.001-07:00

I did a quick survey in my friends circle on the mobile multimedia usage, 25 people did the survey. I am not happy with the report but It kinda says something about this cohort.

Did you ever share any video online?

Yes 14 56.00%
No 11 44.00%

Did you ever share a picture online?

Yes 25 100.00%
No 0 0.00%

What do you use to share Videos/Pictures?

Email 16 24.62%
Youtube 13 20.00%
Flickr 3 4.62%
Picassa 9 13.85%
Orkut 19 29.23%
Facebook 5 7.69%

did you ever send an MMS to anybody?

Yes 3 12.00%
No 22 88.00%

What is the frequency of MMS Usage?

Zero 20 83.33%
<1 in a month 2 8.33%
<5 in a month 1 4.17%
<20 in a month 1 4.17%
>20 in a month 0 0.00%

Do you have a GPRS connection on your mobile?

Yes 16 64.00%
No 9 36.00%

Do you use Bigadda on mobile?

Yes 0 0.00%
No 25 100.00%

Will you use a Mobile web service, which will make it easy for sharing multimedia?

Yes 18 75.00%
No 6 25.00%

My worst performance

2008-09-19T00:14:00.000-07:00

Here's one of my worst performances,my voice is so loud I thought I will move away from the mike, the host knows the same and he made the sound guy decrease the volume of my mike,topping that I don't remember the lyrics,classic!!

Listen to people shouting "iska talent kahaan hain" , he he he

I posted the video coz I want to remember the day as it was.

Series A Funding

2008-09-15T05:42:00.001-07:00

very funny, but this is what it is

http://www.labnol.org/assets/images/WhatisseriesAfunding_1927/venturecapitalcartoon.jpg

Can a gorgeous looking girl lure me to join a new social n/w?

2008-08-22T04:09:00.000-07:00

I donno, I don't think so,coz I didn't. I just don't understand why people are adhering to cheap tricks to lure people. Today I got an invite to my mailbox to join silicon India (www.siliconindia.com) from one padma kapadia, I got no idea who she is! But one thing is the mail shows her photograph and ostensibly she is very beautiful.

If people from silicon India are hoping to get people registered with these cheap tricks, I am afraid that might not work. With endless new social networking sites sprouting,silicon India needs to offer a really good reason why one might register with them.

I found a blog post on silicon india
http://nullpointer.debashish.com/silicon-indias-networking-ploys

Medicine or Pain Killer ?

2008-08-16T04:10:00.000-07:00

What would you prefer to calm your pain a medicine or a pain killer? If given a choice between them rationally one would choose medicine,right? Though awfully tasting medicine will eventually cure the pain.

What get's me go crazy is when I know what is causing the pain and know the right medicine and I still go for a pain killer.

"duh!!! Dude Just go for the medicine !!!" so You'd say, I Know

.

Yes people,I know it's high time to face the fears!

Wow !! Power of Conformity

2008-08-13T08:43:00.000-07:00

Found through Guy's twitter http://is.gd/1pYi

Are you making a chindogu?

2008-08-08T03:27:00.000-07:00

Well if you are a internet startup, It's difficult to know if you are making a chindogu. While a quick feedback from you friends might help to figure out if you are making one,but it doesn't guarantee you are not.If you believe you are not making one and your friends say so, the only way to figure out is implement your idea and let the people decide if it's not one.

what's a chindogu?, Wikipedia says

Chindōgu (珍道具) is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. However, Chindōgu has a distinctive feature: anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions, would find that it causes so many new problems, or such significant social embarrassment, that effectively it has no utility whatsoever

image:http://www.chindogu.com/chindogu/chin3.html

Scaling, One problem I wanna have

2008-08-05T02:02:00.000-07:00

Scaling is one problem I'd love to have sometime soon, I know that this is the one thing that every internet entrepreneur dreams of achieving. Have a look at the number of web startups adding up everyday and you will know why most of them don't get to have that problem.

If you are not having a scaling problem even after a few of months of release, chances are that
1. You are not providing enough value addition.
(or)
2. Your product is too disruptive and you don't know how to cross the chasm.
(or)
3. You haven't done the right kind of marketing.

Now you know,most of the internet startups fail for the first reason.I'd like to believe that we don't have first two problem's ,coz snizr has got enough value addition and is not disruptive,now all we need to worry about is marketing.

With snizr scheduled to release in the last week of September, we have crossed our finger's and we wanna have the scaling problem.

Maslow's hierarchy

2008-07-31T02:05:00.000-07:00

Today I was discussing the mobile market in India with some of my colleagues, and during the discussion I told them that I really don't need a mobile phone, right now I have a I-mate JAMA and am thinking of moving to Iphone 3G the very moment it's here in India.

"Logically" speaking, I don't need a PDA and I don't need any of the features of 3G, yet I am thinking about buying Iphone,This is what makes me think and get amused of the Maslow's Hierarchy of needs and how people make wonders by making their products climb up the hierarchy.

Image: http://businessballs.com

audio books

2008-07-28T02:02:00.000-07:00

I love audio books,but the problem is that not all the books I read are available in audio format, right now I am listening to
1. Rich Dad's Increase your Financial IQ
2. The Disciplined investor
3. Snoop
4. How to Win Friends and Influence people

You can't connect the dots looking forward

2008-07-25T04:54:00.000-07:00

Though I watched this video long before,today I felt need and a great urge to watch it again

Double or Nothing

2008-07-10T06:09:00.000-07:00

Man I love this book!!

Making social proof work for your business

2008-06-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

I had to go to this place called munchin in Sahara Mall,gurgaon, just coz my friends were hanging out there and otherwise I'd never feel like going into places like this,it's a small food place with things on their menu ranging from sandwiches to maggie, it was freakishly small , it had only two tables and some chairs placed un-evenly.

Now I went there I didn't order anything, but I saw something on one of their walls, a collage,they've made a collection of scribbled napkin paper's, appreciating their sandwich.

Now they've done an excellent thing,I ate their sandwich and it tasted pretty good, may be it's because of the anticipation of the emotion's that the knowledge the collage provided me,I don't know.

Social proof can work miracles for your business.

Insurance plan

2008-06-12T01:26:00.000-07:00

Quite hilarious

Three books in thirty days

2008-06-09T03:16:00.000-07:00

1.Predictably Irrational
-Dan Ariely

2.The Lucifer Effect
-Philip Zimbardo

3.Double or Nothing
-Tom Breitling,Cal Fussman

21'st century Leadership

2008-05-26T23:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a video of Tom peter's I stumbled upon on ben casnocha's blog.

Tom Peters on the Definition of Leadership from Tom Peters on Vimeo.

One Crazy thing a week

2008-05-06T23:04:00.000-07:00

Just to make life more interesting,I've decided to do at least one crazy thing a week.
I will try to post them,If I can :).

New age marketing

2008-04-30T03:16:00.000-07:00

I've never seen somebody with an old age business use new age marketing so well!!,
watch this video of Blend-tec using youtube viral marketing for their blenders.

How to build a web startup

2008-04-01T23:31:00.000-07:00

Is consciousness effecting reality?

2008-03-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

Quantum physicists say the double slit experiment proves this.the act of very observation is changing the result of the experiment.

Now it is completely baffling and may be you already know that when nobody is observing the photon could take all of the four possibilities simultaneously.
1.Photon could pass from left slot
2.It could pass from the right slot
3.It could pass from both
4.It could pass from none.

But right when somebody is observing it assumes only one.

Now I always believed one can change the world by changing one's self,but to this extent?!!!

The other day I asked a friend of mine who practices Buddhism to transfer energy through telepathy,I was skeptical,very skeptical,She did the transfer and I literally felt it.

Now I feel like I am introduced to a whole new world,where miracles happen,where life is a magic and physics proves that.

Now I really don't know if this is a better paradigm,because when I try to analyze this with the little bit of Social psychology I know,I know that this is how cults are built.

But the people who are driving this paradigm, the new agie quantum physicists and all the people who live their life as a magic,are they entirely wrong.I don't know

But one thing I really know now is I really know less,almost nothing, and I am happy about it.

Go Green initiative in my office

2008-03-18T06:10:00.000-07:00

This is pasted on our PC monitors and reads "TURN IT OFF!, SAVE ENERGY/GO GREEN".
Ostensibly my company doesn't want people to work :)

Follow your bliss

2008-03-07T02:28:00.000-08:00

BILL MOYERS: Do you ever have the sense of... being helped by hidden hands?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time - namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

One of the greatest Ideas

2008-03-03T05:09:00.001-08:00

I got to know about this from Guy's blog,a PlayPump Water System and is one of the greatest invention for the third world countries,using this all that children need to do to fetch water is play.

This is how it works:

While children have fun spinning on the PlayPump merry-go-round,clean water is pumped from underground into a tank standing seven meters above the ground.The water then can be accessed using taps.

See the video

This months reading

2008-01-26T02:27:00.000-08:00

This year started off really well, I've read 5 books this month.Viz.,

1.Meatball Sundae.
2.Getting to Yes.
3.The Secret.
4.What the CEO wants you to know.
5.Beyond Buzz.

Ali G pitching his idea

2008-01-10T23:23:00.000-08:00

Awesome.

Terminating Cisco's founders

2008-01-03T22:28:00.000-08:00

I found this rare video of Don Valentine from Sequoia Capital and Cisco’s founders, Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, discuss Len and Sandy’s termination, through venturehacks, It's interesting, have a look.

awesome quote on creative mind

2007-12-31T00:28:00.000-08:00

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than...
a cruelly delicate organism with the overpowering
necessity to create,create,create--so that without the
creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or
something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from
him. He must create,must pour out creation. By some
strange,unkown, inward urgency he is not really alive
unless he is creating.

-- Pearl Buck

Building remarkable products

2007-12-29T01:35:00.000-08:00

A remarkable product is something that's worth making a remark,something that makes it easy to strike conversations among customers,make meaning for them,solve a bugging problem and inspire awe.

Yesterday I watched the hindi movie Taare Zameen par,it had all the traits of a remarkable product.I heard people telling me that they could identify one of their child with the character Ishaan awasthi at some point or the other.The movie provided a point of view and a novel one for bollywood.It pointed a serious problem and the solution for the problem too,the other important thing is,it is one of those David Vs Goliath stories and people love these stories.It is a truly remarkable product.

Ineffective marketing

2007-12-25T23:23:00.000-08:00

Here's a classic example of ineffective marketing,a huge billboard hanging on one of the busiest malls of gurgaon(India),I am pretty sure it might have costed them a bomb and what would be a miracle is getting back just one dollar from this investment.

I just don't understand why companies aren't moving out of their "billboard" mindset to more effective ROI based marketing models.

2008 Resolutions

2007-12-25T21:29:00.000-08:00

Hey here are my list of resolutions for 2008,

1.Read 15 Business books.
2.Solve 5 puzzles every day.
3.Watch TV no more than half-an-hour (classic movies will be an exception).
4.Be more productive everyday.
5.Meet at least one Entrepreneur a month.
6.Run a Kilometer everyday and workout once in a couple of days.(This is the toughest of all)

and there's another one,actually two, but I can't disclose 'em on blog,:)

10 books I'm gonna read in 2008

2007-12-23T01:39:00.000-08:00

I thought I should make a list of books I'm gonna read in 2008,So here's the top 10 list

1. Duct tape marketing. - John Jantsch.
2. Negotiate This!. - Herb Cohen.
3. The millionaire next door. - Thomas.J.Stanley.
4. How to Read a financial report. - John Tracy.
5. E-supply chain. - Charles C Poirier & Michael J Baver.
6. The 4-hour work week. - Timothy Ferriss.
7. Presentation Zen. - Garr Reynolds.
8. Advertising Secrets of the Written Word. - Joseph Sugarman.
9. Naked Economics. - Charles Wheelan.
10.Alpha Male Syndrome. - Kate Ludeman & Eddie Erlandson.

What books are you gonna read?

Random Information

2007-12-16T06:55:00.000-08:00

People are quite uncomfortable with randomness,so much that they try to rationalize things that are inherently random,brain always tries to form links between the stored cognitive information and the random stuff,this actually gives rise to emotional roller coaster.Since the stored cognitive information in the brain is the information passed through the perception,attitude and prejudice filters,most of the time the resulting emotional up and downs are quite useless and the information resulting from the rationalizing too (I think..)

This weekend I was through one of these and I should tell you(I'm sure you already know) it's quite freaky out there,I wasted a whole weekend!

n Hi, to all my blog readers,this post comes after a long break,actually I'm quite busy with my work,but may be now I'll write a post every now and then.

Most exciting time in India

2007-11-04T11:35:00.000-08:00

It might be the most exciting time to stay in India,only next to the freedom struggle times for me but for businesses sure,it's the most exciting time to stay in here.Stock indices rising to the unprecedented highs,rupee ascending dollar,genuine businesses flourishing,it feels like heavens are singing for this country,now it seems so true that

There hasn't been a better time to start a business with no money

What do you people say?

Sustainable growth for software

2007-10-27T00:28:00.000-07:00

I got quite intrigued by the very question,Is software growth going to sustain for a long period? Now,I'm not aware of the subtleties of economical growth but as far as I think the answer is No.IT companies are quite aggressively developing software and after a couple of years I'm not sure if people would need any better software for years to come.

A changethis manifesto The six laws of the new software reads

....., Most home consumers have all the software they will ever need, and most companies out there already have all the basic technologies they
need to successfully compete right now.

The trait of software is,it does not depreciate or wear and tear like a car or a pair of NIKE does,it continues to serve your purpose and there's no need to upgrade it if it's serving your need aptly,unless you encounter a bug.Now when there's no need,there's not going to be any demand and thus no growth.

Image:stockxpert.com

Colbert for president?

2007-10-23T04:40:00.000-07:00

I am a big fan of this guy,Stephen colbert,I laughed my ass off watching the video of his speech at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.The first time I read about his presidential bid I thought he was joking but it seems like he is serious(???) and yes he is running for president!

The wikipedia page for the colberts presidential campaign reports that he has even agreed to endorse Garry Kasparov's bid to win the Russian presidency in return for Kasparov's support for his campaign.I'm really intrigued to know if America really wants to vote him to the white house and make him the Man of the Year?

Innovating Business models

2007-10-20T01:35:00.000-07:00

Conventional wisdom has always told people not to innovate on their business models,many don't.I really don't know if Radiohead proved the cliché wrong or it's just an exception.

The english Rock band Radiohead had released their new album In Rainbows with a new pay-what-you-want and download MP3 kind of distribution,though this is not a new concept for Music industry where small abstruse artists are already using this, but it's the first time that a big group like Radiohead has dared to pull this off. Though ran a risk of getting paid nothing as users could choose to pay £ 0.00 and download the entire album(like me),the band was BIG enough to take the risk.It was a sure thing(atleast for me) that it's going to be a big hit and the news is as of today Radiohead sold over 1.2 million albums, $8 each.

Biggest SEO mistakes

2007-10-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

My articles on marketing placed me in top two for related searches on google and obviously the largest chunk of my blog traffic used to come from Google.

Then I committed two SEO blunders

1.I created a backup for my blog on Wordpress on http://pradsworld.wordpress.com

2.I submitted my feeds to atleast five feed news readers.

Apparently wordpress is more SEO friendly and with my feeds supplied to those news readers there were many duplicates of my posts spread on web,you know Google is duplicate averse and obvious happened,now my articles figure no where in google search results.

This drove me into quandary and I know it's going to be pretty difficult to reverse it all.

Using iphone causes sterility?

2007-10-16T06:57:00.000-07:00

This is regarding latest of the lawsuits filed against Apple iphone by The Center for Environmental Health in response to Greenpeace's report that the iPhone earphones contain "phthalates,".

According to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald

An information sheet on the Phthalate Information Centre website, produced by the American Chemistry Council, said studies found that high doses of some phthalates, when administered to pregnant rodents shortly before they gave birth, "suppressed levels of testosterone, a male hormone key to sexual development in the male fetuses, and interfered with the development of male reproductive organs".

.

Steve jobs has already made bad decisions with his iphone strategy and now the series of lawsuits filed against iphone are only making it a big blunder.

Blogging is such a waste of time !

2007-10-13T22:13:00.000-07:00

I seriously think that it is a big waste of time,at least for the 98% of the bloggers,including me. I think blogging is more like buying a new pair of shoes,and buying that new pair of nike is so much fun that you get addicted to the fun and forget running,running takes hard work and diligence and most of the time you eschew it.

Blogging is completely different to doing things,while it might give you a pseudo feeling of actually doing things,I see that most of the blog readers are bloggers themselves,that means people are squandering valuable time around blogs which could be used to actually do things which are worthwhile.

So all that I say to all you bloggers(and to myself)is get your butt off that couch and start running.

Recommended reading:
1.Blogger fantasies by Rajesh setty.
2.Are you blogging like its 1999? by Jon Symons.

Image:www.stockxpert.com

5 easy steps to increase your blog traffic by 10 fold

2007-10-13T10:17:00.000-07:00

You can get more than a ten fold increase increase in your blog traffic,just follow these five steps

1.Register with digg,stumbleupon and technorati.

2.Look for the top searches and tags on technorati and top 10 topics on Digg.

3.write a post on any of the top searches.

4.Digg and stumble your post yourself.

5.Now watch your blog traffic increase.

This works like magic for the people blogging for money.

Somebody else will win the lottery today,just not me!

2007-10-08T06:20:00.000-07:00

Somebody else will win a lottery today,just not me!
I know that and I need to find another way out.I bought Benjamin Graham's "Intelligent Investor" like a year ago and I never had an urge to read it,I've started reading it and I am quite excited though I'm not sure if Investing will give me enough leverage,I think speculation might give me some.

Earning a million dollar's is quite tough thing to do,at least for me,but I'm quite sure there will be some way I could do it, I need to ferret.I love this quote from paul coelho's The Alchemist

When you pursue your personal legend the universe will conspire with you to make it happen

Is strengthening Rupee a problem for India?

2007-10-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

Rupee is strengthening,the vigor is quite obvious in the alarming bells of corporate India and in the words of Mr.P.Chidamabaram,Finance Minister

level of appreciation of the rupee was well beyond comfort levels......
I suppose the central bank will intervene..

he said.

The rupee has gained more than 11 per cent against the dollar this year, and this month strengthened past 40 per dollar for the first time since May 1998 and today its trading for 0.25220US $,but is strengthening rupee a drawback for India?Reserve Bank of India is trying hard to keep the rupee down,but should RBI do that?

Experts at wharton and elsewhere say that though the rise in Rupee is a problem for companies like Wipro and TCS who earn most of their revenues in dollar,it also creates opportunities for Indian firms by making it less expensive for them to acquire overseas assets.

Jeremy seigal says
"My feeling is no, they should not intervene" (here they implies to Indian Governement)

but the RBI has bought around 28.4 billion in dollars between January and May 2007 to bring the inflation down,they shouldn't do it,it's not possible to keep the value of rupee down for a longtime and it's not good for a growing economy,Companies in India should now stop whining about acquiring dollar and possible decrease in outsourcing,but should exploit the advantage of rupee inflation and create more jobs, embrace new business models and concentrate on the high end work with a higher payoff.

photo: istockphoto.com

Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen

2007-10-02T00:41:00.000-07:00

I've got no words to say about the video,Awesome!.

Essay-Mary Schmich
Music-Baz Luhrmann

Wow Ron Paul did it!

2007-09-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

Wow,This is awesome, it's a pre-win kind of thing for Ron Paul! He grossed $1m a day before he targeted it!

People always support "a man with a mission",may be that's the reason for the success of this fund raising campaign.

CoolHotmail ?

2007-09-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

Microsoft India has launched a new website www.coolhotmail.com offering unique domain names for email id's,have a look at the domain names

yourname@apunkaid.com
yourname@clickass.in
yourname@coolmail.co.in
yourname@samepinch.in
yourname@samepinch.co.in

and there's a huge list including fan club domain names.
I guess it's targeted at Indian Youth who's becoming increasingly conscious about its unique Identity,but I'm quite skeptical if it's really going to be a hit because these "unique Domain names" are ubiquitous from the very advent of web based email and I don't see anybody using them.

The Ron Paul Phenomenon

2007-09-28T02:31:00.000-07:00

I'm completely amazed with the whole Ron Paul phenomenon and how people are actively contributing for the campaign,Ron Paul has grossed over $500,000 and now he is aiming at raising $1m by midnight, September 30th.

More News on Ron paul

Who is Ron Paul?
(Source:www.ronpaul2008.com)
Congressman Ron Paul is the leading advocate for freedom in our nation’s capital and is seeking the 2008 Republican nomination for President of the United States. As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dr. Paul tirelessly works for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies. He is known among his congressional colleagues and his constituents for his consistent voting record. Dr. Paul never votes for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution.

Stardoll

2007-09-27T04:28:00.000-07:00

Virtual world's are becoming increasingly important for people,after SecondLife now it's stardoll. Stardoll,the virtual paper doll social network has a whopping 10.64 million registered users,Comscore reported it as being the number one site for girls of age 9 to 17.

The recent development in the stardoll world is DKNY and Sephora have signed up with Stardoll to become the first major brands to launch shops at stardoll,now the stardoll members will be able to buy DKNY fashions and Sephora makeup using the "Stardollars" virtual currency.

You don't know stuff?

2007-09-27T03:55:00.000-07:00

There's nothing wrong in not knowing stuff,I see some people trying to intimidate other's because they know,I think they are just being fatuous becuase I beleive there's nothing wrong in not knowing stuff,but it's wrong when you don't try to know stuff,I tell this to people all the time.If you think you are intimidated with that "smart aleck" in your office? Let me help you out.

Now you have to promise me that you are not going to use it in a wrong way,Ok?

It's called Fundamental attribution error,

From the very moment you start interacting ,people kind of start building a character around you,they see you from their own perception,Wikipedia says

In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations. In other words, people have an unjustified tendency to assume that a person's actions depend on what "kind" of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces influencing the person.

So what has that gotta do with this?
Ask questions!Yes,Fundamental attribution error,People asking questions are perceived as being "smart",now the next time someone tries to intimidate you, you just ask questions and also I sincerely advice you to learn things,because learning things will make you smart for real.

photo:freefoto.com

Book Giveaway

2007-09-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

This months book giveaway is for Harish B and Deepz

Harish is a Marketing Evangelist in a Business School in India,I'm a great fan of his blog,Marketing Practice,where in he analyses the marketing practices in India.

Deepz,I remember I got to meet him because both of us have same name Pradeep n he had a domain name www.pradeep.tk ,Deepz is a web designer and blogs at http://blog.pradeep.net.in

n people if you want a book too,suggest me,drop in great comments,mail me or teach me stuff and I'll give a great book to read.

Facebook Openness

2007-09-26T04:14:00.000-07:00

The exuberance of Facebook is still on,the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 is now valued $10 billion,The thing that is so unique about Facebook is ,contrary to other social media it's Open,Facebook offers an open platform that allows other's to develop applications for Facebook,and now the advent of Facebook Javascript(FBJS) has increased the ease to develop richer interactivity,the leverage the "Openness" has given to Facebook can be construed from the fact that 80% of Facebook users have installed third party application.

The Facebook user base is so huge(42 million active users) that every marketer has an eye on it,when marketers are involved obviously there are going to be some malicious ones too and recent development of Facebook opening up the user profiles for search has increased the concerns for user privacy,here the more serious concern is sexual predators accessing private info,previously a user had a choice to control his privacy information,but now it seems to have changed for worse,yesterday one Lisa Barone has reported the spottyness of Facebook,she reported that people can now ferret user's private information,exasperating this situation for the company,Newyork Attorney General has announced that his office is going to investigate Facebook over the companies negligence in responding to the loop holes.

republishing my first post

2007-09-25T00:34:00.000-07:00

I've got no idea why I'm into this Kirk's blogging project,but It feels so good to republish my first post,I had a roomie who was blogging ardently on rediff about stuff(after sometime into blogging he dropped it) and I thought may be I should blog too,I created an account with blogger and started writing just coz I was very bored with the mundane work I was assigned.

Only later I got into reading Social psychology and marketing and I felt like I should express my views on similar kind of stuff,though I was quite skeptical If any body is going to read it,but now I think I've become an avid blogger,I've realised that blogging is just not a fad,its immensely powerful,I've learnt lot of things from people's blog's,Now I'm communicating with few and hope to communicate my thoughts and learn stuff from a wider ensemble.

Hey,read my very first post

what do I blog??I donno!!, for the job I'm doin now, I'm in the lower right portion of the graph 'n I'm pretty bored.(While this is mihaly's flow chart, which shows how you can maintain the flow in your life. )

There's a ritual in here, I've been tagged by nishu and I need to tag two,So I tag pradeep sabi and maneesh,I got to know them through web and they are really good guys,let's hear from 'em

Wanted: Asia's Best Entrepreneurs

2007-09-24T22:54:00.000-07:00

BusinessWeek Asia is in search of "The Best Young Entrepreneurs",the announcement reads

Asia is home to the fastest-growing pack of economies on the planet, including China, India, and a resurgent Japan. Less appreciated is the growing and dynamic entrepreneurial class of young managers cropping up in the region, who are starting to make their presence felt. This new generation is globally aware, extremely Internet savvy, and willing to pounce on a smart idea even if it means grueling hours and financial risk early on in life.

We need your help in identifying these emerging leaders of tomorrow. Tell us who you think is worthy of consideration this year, and fill out the accompanying form. Remember: Nominees need to be 30 or under. Our editors will review the nominations and narrow the field to a group of 20 finalists. Then you will get a chance to vote. We will post the winners later this summer.

If you think you are one or if you want to nominate one click here.

johanna cardona?

2007-09-24T09:08:00.000-07:00

Porn is one thing that sells like crazy,and yeah the self made "love" videos too,there's lot to learn from why porn sells and how could one liken its sales for their product.

Ok,but who is johanna cardona? A signaller who used to work with channel TB3 in Barranquilla Colombia until recently and the latest of the self-made sex video victims.

If you have a look at today's technorati top searches she appears twice!( Coz she is also joanna and johana)

Get a XO Laptop and Give One

2007-09-24T06:50:00.000-07:00

After two-and-a-half years of wait,the $100 Laptop is finally going to get released,the XO Laptop is finally going into production in October,the only glitch in the way for the advent of $100 Laptop is that not a single government has signed a check yet and adding to adversity the cost of manufacturing a single laptop rose to $188.

Failing to get orders from governments,OLPC has modified their sales strategy and now they are going to sell them to USA through "Get 1 Give 1" program.

Starting November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a Give 1 Get 1 Program for a brief window of time. For $399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops—one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home.
-OLPC

Business week reports that Peru and Uruguay seem to be on the verge of placing orders and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helú has already pledged to buy and donate 250,000 XO Laptops for Mexico's children.

If you want to gift one for your child for christmas, you can buy one on ebay as soon as they are available.

Trivia :Find out why India rejected XO Laptops?

Never deceive your customers

2007-09-22T02:11:00.000-07:00

Now tricking your customers is worst of the things you could do to make money,it'd for sure create instant wealth for you,but you are going to loose your credibility,you know that the most important asset for a thriving business is "customer loyalty" and if you loose it once it's almost impossible to regain.

I've been using IDEA Cellular's Pre-paid service for the past one year,now the service is so poor in Gurgaon,I'm not sure about other places in India and I think recently they've deployed a new billing software and I don't know if its buggy or they are literally deceiving their customers,I see my account balance eaten up,I recharge my phone,I call my home and the next day I see my account balance is 0,this has happened for last three times I've recharged my phone,the worst thing is that everytime I callup the customer care center all I can hear is " All the IDEA Customer care executives are busy,please call us later",I'm so annoyed and irritated I'm going to change my mobile service.

Havells rinpoche ad

2007-09-20T08:19:00.000-07:00

I love this ad, The ad kind of exaggeratingly touted CFLs brightness,but the agency has done a good job in creating this ad.

Wannabe Entrepreneur ?

2007-09-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

I think everybody is a wannabe entrepreneur,I've talked to many people and I've found out that almost everybody wants to be an entrepreneur,they wanna have a company of their own and I'm no different,So what actually is the difference between people who are entrepreneur's and people who are wannabe entrepreneur's?

Entrepreneur's:
1. They Do things
2. They always go for "Good Enough"
3. They wanna learn stuff by doing them.

Wannabe Entrepreneur's:
1.They wait for that one great Idea to magically strike
2.They believe that only "Perfect" things get sold
3. Above all they wait for thing's to happen and for most of them things never "happen"

How to brand a just an average joe

2007-09-18T04:29:00.000-07:00

Coca-cola is a brand,may be the most valuable,the name alone worth billions of dollars,it's a product brand but what about a human brand?every Individual is a brand by herself,though a simple brand,coz every name is a brand,a simple brand.

Oprah is a major brand,know that products get sold just by associating them with the name Oprah,because it's the "trust" people have in the name,the trust that people have in her

So how would you create a Major brand of a person?
Now I think that's a really difficult thing to do though not impossible,branding is a process of creating positive associations with a name/product/person,so one has to create positive associations for that person.

This is lot easier to do for people in the glamour world like for example, Shahrukh Khan is BIG brand name in India,because people have seen him all the movies doing "good" things, some times unusually "great" things,though what he does in the movies isn't real, his deeds have certainly created a great mental image of Shahrukh Khan in our minds.

Companies pay great moolah just to get a share of a great brand image,coz people almost all the time look out for others on buying decisions,So they "feel" a great desire to follow somebody,so they follow somebody they "think" is dependable,they feel they can "trust",they follow a brand.

The other reason that brand sells is because a big brand personifies Success and people always like to associate themselves with success and thus people embrace the major brands.

Here now we narrow down to the main question.

How would you create a Brand of a Just another Joe?
Now this is what is really difficult,it will take a real hard work for joe to make a brand for himself,I mean not a simple brand but a brand of moderate size if not BIG.
Let's list out things Joe would need to do

1. Promote : Joe has to promote himself,that means to advertise so that people will get to know of his existence.Joe can do this by

I. Sensationalizing
II. Creating a great Social Network
III.Spending money on advertising
IV. Associating himself with an already established BIG Brand

2. Create Trust : This is little difficult,coz its not easy at all to create trust and it takes lot of positive interaction with people to gain trust and just one mistake to loose it.

3. Lead : A Leader is an ultimate brand,Coz people follow the Leader and there could be no bigger brand than a leader,so Joe needs to actually learn Leadership,you already know Leadership is an art and a science and that Leader's are not born but they are made.

summarizing it all, it takes lot of hard work,dedication and effective communcation for Joe to create a brand of himself

Where is my blog going?

2007-09-17T00:57:00.000-07:00

I just wonder sometimes If I have this disease of talking to myself,prattling on things,scribbling stuff,I really donno and I want to cure this disease of mine,I see my blog traffic is very low approx 20/day and I want to increase this,so I'm defining a blogging goal too.

Goal II : Increase traffic : 100 visitors/day by the end of october

What am I gonna do to achieve it?
I think may be I'm writing stuff or writing in a way that I "think" I should write but not what people want to read/hear about.

I've got no knowledge of SEO and thus my blog isn't Search Engine Optmised,So I need to look into that.

I need to do something to promote my blog

and am I missing anything,please help!!

Monthly saving goals

2007-09-16T21:56:00.000-07:00

I've been working for over two years now, my primary and sole source of income is my day time job,In these two years I got paid decently(according to Indian standards) and still I didn't save much,actually you can say I hardly saved some,mainly coz I'm extravagant,and also coz I don't really know how I spend my money,So I kinda thought I needed some stern resolutions and for now I'm making one for myself.

Goal I : Save at least Rs 30,000 by the end of october

Honda recalls .18m civic sedans!

2007-09-16T02:06:00.000-07:00

Japanese auto giant Honda recalled 1,82,756 Civics manufactured between March 24, 2005 and February 8, 2007, the vehicles had a faulty wheel-bearing seal that may leak and cause malfunctioning of brake switch thereby preventing illumination of lights on braking,If they do a recall in India apparently it'd be a second instance in last three months as HSCI had recalled 2,310 Accords in July.Read the article on today's business standard

wordpress hosting

2007-09-15T05:31:00.000-07:00

I'm planning to start a new blog(actually blog kinda blog, ;) you'll get to know soon) and I want to use wordpress and I'm very confused with these hosting plans,I really don't know which one to choose,I want to go for something cheap and secure,people any suggestions??

Woot

2007-09-14T00:34:00.000-07:00

I got to know about this website www.woot.com through Seth Godin's All Marketers are liars,woot sells products online at discounted rates and no it's not another wannabe amazon,coz it sell's only one product a day and woot already has overe 800,000 registered members sold over 1,000,000 item's.

This is how the company describe's itself

Woot.com is an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap. It started as an employee-store slash market-testing type of place for an electronics distributor, but it's taken on a life of its own. We anticipate profitability by 2043 – by then we should be retired; someone smarter might take over and jack up the prices. Until then, we're still the lovable scamps we've always been. But don't take our word for it

While everything looks awesome,there is some criticism on woot's customer service as it doesn't provide any,woot's info page on wikipedia says

Woot does not have a satisfaction guaranteed return policy, they only accept returns of defective products. "If you buy something you don't end up liking or you have what marketing people call 'buyer's remorse,' sell it on eBay. It's likely you'll make money doing this and save everyone a hassle. If the item doesn't work, find out what you're doing wrong. Yes, we know you think the item is bad, but it's probably your fault. Google your problem, or come back to that product discussion in our community and ask other people if they know. Try to call the manufacturer and ask if they know

Declined Music sales

2007-09-13T04:13:00.000-07:00

People thought that declined CD sales will actually be compensated by the digital download's,though the digital downloads(sales) have increased significantly,the e-marketer figure's reveal that the average price per purchase has dropped,the main reason behind the plummet being the large number of consumers buying only single MP3 downloads and the decrease in CD sales,30% from 2000 to 2005 is too steep for the digital downloads to alleviate.

With growing music piracy I wonder Music Sales in India might have plummeted more!

Are you blogging Like it's 1999?

2007-09-12T00:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a really good article by Jon Symons on making money by blogging,He pointed out that people are diving into blogging for money similar to how people started investing online in 1999 just because of the ease it provided.Blogging consumes a great amount of time and If you are blogging for money I'd suggest you to seriously contemplate other options as you could do loads of other things which could give you decent returns for the time you invest.

Here's an excerpt from the post

How Would an Investor See The Current Blogging for Dollars Landscape?

Hard to say. I don’t consider myself an expert investor. I don’t think that the the crash has come yet. With the benefit of hindsight, I’m sure many people who had money in the stock markets wished they were sellers and not buyers during 1999 / 2000.

* this may be the time to sell or get out of blogging rather than jumping into the game.
* consider other options before beginning to blog for money. Especially if you aren’t dead certain you can own your topic (and how you’ll accomplish it).
* learn business skills to enable you to work smarter than others. Remember that even a successful blog require a lot of work.
* track your time spent on blogging and measure your return. Be prepared to cut your losses and get out, if the money doesn’t flow fast enough. If after a year you’d be better off working at McDonald’s…

People are still confused about "What is a brand?"

2007-09-10T00:29:00.000-07:00

I was little confused too about What actually a brand is, a quick search on Wikipedia gives the definition of brand,

A brand includes a name, logo, slogan, and/or design scheme associated with a product or service. Brand recognition and other reactions are created by the use of the product or service and through the influence of advertising, design, and media commentary. A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to the product and serves to create associations and expectations around it. A brand often includes a logo, fonts, color schemes, symbols, and sound, which may be developed to represent implicit values, ideas, and even personality.

Dannielle Blumenthal,makes a distinction between Simple and major brand,she writes

A simple brand is just a name. A MAJOR BRAND is a name with a set of mental associations to it. And branding is the art and science of creating a set of associations around a name

Branding the Unbrandable

2007-09-09T23:18:00.000-07:00

I got this Silky Kumar thing wrong, I thought it's a viral thing,yeah,but here it was not intended to be one,but now I get to write this post :),thanks to this guy nikhil.
Branding a person,is I guess what HUL is doing,but branding the Unbrandable is quite difficult,and I guess that's what they eventually got into,one thing they could have done is branding a real talented "Brandable" underdog kinda artist and it could have really leveraged their brand image.

Ideas are for free

2007-09-07T04:17:00.000-07:00

If you think Ideas are difficult to find and you need a really great idea to start something of your own,here's a site www.idea-a-day.com which mails you a idea a day,check the archive of the site and you'll find some of them are stupid but some are really good,so now you can't procrastinate venturing out whining "dude,Ideas are hard to find", :).

Silky Kumar a viral attempt??

2007-09-05T22:20:00.000-07:00

I was gonna write this post "Branding the Unbrandable" after watching this really stupid video featuring a guy called Silky Kumar, I thought he's some dud using his dad's money and trying to create a brand of himself but I became little skeptical when he was touting AXE,I googled for Silky Kumar and found that it is a viral marketing campaign created by HUL for their AXE brand of products.The video "Scent of Desire" is very poorly made and it has no viral characteristics.

Rating : Stinks

Book Giveaway

2007-08-31T04:55:00.000-07:00

I really want to hear from people and I wanna learn things, So I decided to give two books a month for the best of the comments/guestarticles/suggestions,So people speak up,I'm all ears.

Ford's paradox

2007-08-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

7 years before Kevin Baker wrote this article for The Industry Standard,where in kevin says Unions are the solution for the Ford's paradox,Now you might have already read about the Ford's Paradox,for those who didn't let me give a briefing about the phenomenon.

Henry ford slashed the prices of the Model-T almost by half from $825 in 1909 to $440 by 1914 by creating swift assembly lines,In those days $440 was a huge amount for a typical American.Ford realized that in a modern, mass-market economy the people who make stuff are the people who buy stuff and he took a really bold step which was perceived crazy and "distinctly utopian" and "foredoomed to failure", he doubled the daily wage of his 13,600 workers to $5,Ford said"he right price is the lowest price an article can be steadily sold for. The right wage is the highest wage the purchaser can steadily pay", he increased the disposable income of workers and reduced the working hours so that they have more time and money to spend on goods,cars in specific,this act of his increased loyalty in workers and there's no count as how many workers spent their disposable income buying Model-T cars.

Now we arrive at an important issue more specifically a paradox,In a stagnant economy no single business can dare to make the first move toward increasing wages, the market as a whole cannot raise wages,If the market as a whole does not raise wages, no single business can prosper in the long run,because people have decreasingly less disposable incomes to actually buy products,without businesses running how can an economy actually move forward.

Ashley - 17 year old entrepreneur

2007-08-29T22:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I stumbled upon this article on Fastcompany,it read

Girl Power
No Rich relatives? No professional mentors? No problem.Ashley qualls,17,has built a million-dollar web site.

I had to rush back home from office so I took a printout of the article,after my heavy meal I read that article and was like surprised to learn about Ashley,a high school dropout from detroit was running Whateverlife.com all by herself.

Whateverlife is a website which provides MySpace layouts for girls,beyond Myspace and facebook and orkut loads of teenage website come and go,but Whatever life, started in 2004, now attracts 7 million individuals and 60 million page views a month and is ranked 349 ahead of Oprah.com (469) by Quantcast.

Ashley,who started her website with an initial investment of $8 from her mother, has recently been offered $1.5m+ by ValueClickMedia.

Though Ashley found her business whimsically,she actually learned things from doing things and now has built a quite an enviable business.

Ashley in her blog, "The daily Life of a simple kind of Gal"

I'm Doing what everyone says they want to do, "live like there's no tomorrow."

Favicon for my site

2007-08-29T04:40:00.000-07:00

I host my blog on blogger and blogger doesn't accept .ico files so I uploaded it to 50megs and tried to access it and showed up an error

You do not have permission to access http://pradsfavicon.50megs.com/favicon.ico
Data files must be stored on the same site they are linked from.

then I tried freewebs and this time it worked, now I have my own Favicon shown on the blog.

Review my blog contest winners

2007-08-27T03:23:00.000-07:00

I got 11 responses and I thank all of you guys who've done the review and the winners are Ravi Kumar and Deepa Nandan,Congrats I will mail you the books ASAP

False Uniqueness

2007-08-26T23:14:00.000-07:00

People fool themselves with false uniqueness and everybody does that,I do it too, Most of the times it is for good, but sometimes it proves to be detrimental.

I'm talking about people's feeling that they are unique,nothing wrong will ever happen to them,that bomb blasts,road accidents,mishaps, they all belong to another alien world and they don't live in that world.People don't wear helmet's , they take for granted that person in another vehicle is gonna drive careful enought not to hit you,and you know what this is the root cause for all the mishaps,I guess.

Now sometimes mishap's happen and you are not in control of that,something like that happened in Hyderabad,two serial bomb blasts,one in Lumbini park and another one at Gokul chat,41 people died and still we( rest of us Indians) feel that nothing is gonna happen to us,we do all things normally,we feel "False Uniqueness", Yes,we do need False uniqueness and it's difficult to live without it,Coz one can't live normally with all the fear and fret, but I think one should always keep an eye on things,drive carefully and be responsible.

Hangout with people you want to be like

2007-08-24T03:48:00.000-07:00

Yes,coz you eventually liken the friend you hangout with,If you hangout with a lousy guy you'll become lousy,you hangout with fat you'll grow fat,now this psychologically makes a lot of sense,when you hangout with somebody a lot, you'll get to know their perspective of the world and you'll adopt their perspective if you hangout enough and you already know that you are,what you think you are .

If you want to be really successful,I seriously suggest you to hangout with successful people and If you are depressed,hangout with those peppy and high spirited people, If you wanna be thin , hangout with all the thin guys/girls.

Colleges the perfect place for word of mouth marketing

2007-08-23T06:56:00.000-07:00

Colleges have always been the best places for word of mouth marketing, young people are strongly influenced by their friend's advice and you'll find loads of those in colleges and eMarketer just reaffirmed the same.Read the article

Paris hilton at technorati

2007-08-23T02:24:00.000-07:00

If you have a look at technorati top searches you can see paris hilton and I think I've seen her almost all the time, she is one person from whom I guess I can learn a lot about personal branding

Using content for viral marketing

2007-08-22T01:43:00.000-07:00

Internet offers a tremendous potential for marketers,especially for the viral marketing,now you might have already seen the bride wig out video on youtube,the video was made by marketing firm Capital C to promote unilever's Sunsilk brand of hair care products,the video was so viral that it had 2.8 million views in just two weeks.

Lately companies are trying to do the same thing in India,Orbit launched a new comic Thakur Ka Inteqam based on the movie sholay and its really funny and has all the viral traits, Mentos created Mentos Helpline where in executives answer the user's queries and they also have videos of helpline executives offering funny solutions.I love this concept of creating online content for marketing coz it is completely based on viral strategy and even if the viewer isn't buying the product it doesn't restrict him from spreading the word and the best thing is it's cheap.

Big Seed attempt by Truemors

2007-08-15T22:32:00.000-07:00

Facebook being an open platform, lately some really good facebook apps have seen exponential growth of their userbase,they had real viral marketing working for them,now as Facebook has limited the number of invites from infinity to ten,It has become little difficult for developers to spread the new apps.

Guy kawasaki is confronted with the same problem and now he is using Big seed marketing for his Truemors facebook app,He is giving away autographed copies of "Art of the start" for free,for the first 200 people who add truemor facebook app and invite 10 people and post few truemors,he's kinda doing a good thing,but what I really wonder is ,Is this gonna work? coz I find truemors not so appealing and with a very low value proposition it has I'm quite skeptical that it'd liken college humor,ilike and feedburner.I think even the seed of 200*10 is eventually gonna die off generating very less ROI on the expense he's gonna bear for the 200 book's,I donno,Let's see..

Trivia: Google pagerank for truemors.com is 0!

Liking

2007-08-13T00:48:00.000-07:00

Liking is one thing that salesmen like Joe Girard used succesfully to make pots and pots of money,you know Liking can also be triggered by familiarity,we like things we are familiar with,and we start liking things we get familiar with,that is why you hear all the new songs played repeatedly on TV channels and Discotheques.

I never liked this sound track "khaike paan banaraswaala" from the newer version of the hindi movie DON,today morning I was watching this song and was humming it , I realised that I started liking it,this is coz MTV and Channel[V]play the track everyday in the morning and I might have heard it like 50 times, this re-demonstrated me the power of familiarity.

Harry potter marketing!

2007-08-09T07:07:00.000-07:00

No I'm not talking about the marketing of Harry Potter series nor the movie or merchandise,I'm talking about Frédéric Dalsace's idea The Harry potter marketing, which is in the HBR list of Breakthrough Ideas for 2007 and is an unprecedented concept that all the FMCG companies can cash on. We all know that It's lot cheaper to keep a customer than to find a new one,so by targetting a product to a particular cohort than to an age group and by branding the product to that perticular group of customers, the customers will not change the brand with age but the brand matures with the customer and thus you get to keep the customer for a really long duration.

Frédéric says

Like Harry Potter, the fictional schoolboy wizard who grows older with his readers, brands that mature with their users can prove particularly durable.

Review my blog Contest

2007-08-08T03:43:00.000-07:00

The next post is gonna be the 100th post of my blog,So I thought I should better get my blog reviewed so I'm opening this contest,all you have to do is tell me one thing that you like about my blog and one thing that you don't and atleast one suggestion as to how I can improve it,you can mail ya suggestions to me at pradeep@pradeepkumar.com,I have a copy of My start-up Life and a copy of Permission Marketing to giveaway for the best of the suggestions,the contest is open till August 23.