A few good creative men

Came across this hilarious video.
Makes for a good laugh...
Njoy

Video:A few good creative men

beyond the musical note

Yesterday i had the pleasure of listening to one of the most passionate musicians perform at Prithvi cafe.I love music and dance and have often attended many a concert, but the notes that Suhasji a master flute musician created were in a genre of their own.

Pure from the heart love for music.Under dim yellow lights of beautifully decorated lanterns at the Prithvi cafe,in a snug corner of the cafe there comes a very talented musician who plays his flute almost every day for anyone and everyone.Whats beautiful about the experience is the absolute genuineness with which he plays,its not about the fan following for the applause, its about playing because you feel like sharing something with someone,and its this puritan purpose that make Suhasji stand out from the many other musician i've come across.

I've always believed that we in advertising sit in glass cabins heads buried into the monitor when the most creative influences in society sit out in the open in the glare of the public eye.Maybe its time we step out of our cabins and into the real world where pure emotion is felt and chords that move the heart are struck.

Yesterday to me was surreal,the sound of the flute in the background as you sip on a drink and light up a smoke is an experience no band or high funda music equipment could recreate.

Thank you Suhasji for in your own unique way creating a haven for us to escape to!

See,hear,touch,feel...the 360 degree sensory delight!

Todays consumers are all about the experience...
We are innate story tellers and the wilder the experience the greater the story!!We want to try new things,explore,test personal limits and see whats possible!Whether is kayaking down the Ganges,trekking up the Himalayas,taking up kick boxing,learning to pole dance,water yoga...you name it and there are takers for something unusual today!!

The new age customer wants to break out of the shackles of monotony and drudgery!and are more willing than ever before to experiment can create unique experiences for themselves!This quest for experience could be something even as small as learning to use the new PDA.There is a longing to feel alive and to shake up a stale routine.

Theres also a deeper push to engage the sense.Life is often too scripted and it feels great to cook from scratch that Mexican dish or paint that oil painting you've been meaning to do for over a year.In the new playground experience is the currency.Its the more valuable and prized than any material belonging.

Also unusual experiences spark interesting conversations and provide a vehicle for exploring latent passions,talents and desires in the attempt of developing a stronger sense of self.

The search for unusual experience also stems from the feasibility to create your own content.So now on your trip to Egypt you can create your very own video of the pyramids and mix it with your favorite track and upload it on your blog or youtube instead of picking up a souvenier!!

Busy bodies

Dialing a number...
Its ringing...
My call is cut!

Have been noticing something for sometime now,its something that most of my friends have succumbed to and flaunt unabashed!

Call anyone today and they are always busy!!!Ask them what their plans are for the weekend and they are busy with work!!or planning the next weeks workload!!

Its like the whole of India is running on hyper drive!i really got thinking about this so called 'BUSY BEE SYNDROME' over a beer with my fiance and friends the other day when these guys started pulling each others legs about how early the other one got off work and how lazy and not focused they were to do so.Now i personally completely disagree with the whole I've put in 18 hours a days =I'm hardworking,successful and an over achiever, in fact i believe quite the polar opposite!
My funda is work hard!work fast!work efficiently!

Getting back to the point,Gen x seems to have created a new disorder to add to the never ending list that already exists!!Conversations like"I'll call you back am in a meeting","Working over time this week","Cant make it for the movie somethings come up at work!"are daily occurances in the vocabulary of Genx.

So why the devil is everyone pretending to be so freaking busy!!??!!
This Gatorade powered generation caught in a fast paced constantly changing world has created the impression that working longer means working harder.[And if you really don't have that much work you jolly well pretend you do!!]Getting off work early is associated with aimless less,lack of focus in ones career.Parents and society too are to blame for reiterating these perception.Movies,theater,ad commercials all showing the overworked individual as a successful professional makes one believe that this is the way to go.

The end result an over worked,over tired generation of youngsters with little or no social life,with work frustrations that build up often to t he point of exploding,nervous break downs and sorry to say a generation living in the shades of grey devoid of any colour in their lives!

The bendy Indian

Hinduism is marked by two very strong ideologies,the first being,the tolerance injunction ,this basically emphasizes Hinduisms willingness throughout history to negotiate other world views and accept changes without sacrificing an unchanging essential core.

The second being Hinduism's universality,which essential is the belief that for every Hindu the fundamentals of his religious beliefs are the fundamental insights of all religions.The flexible Hindu is generally urban,educated and belongs to the ever expanding middle class.He may be traditional when it comes to religious rituals, he can be a nationalist when it comes to Islamic or Christan conversion activity and a globalist who enthusiastically embraces new religion and spiritual movements.

The bendy Hindu is much more eclectic in his religious attitudes and beliefs than his more traditional counterparts and a lot lest adamant when it comes to ideological beliefs when it comes to ideological beliefs.

The new Hindu prototype is an ever evolving breed who has to deal with the ever increasing pressures of urban life,he often tweaks age of rituals and modernized them to fit his new time shifting life.So from prayers offered to the Siddhi vinayak temple online or virtual donations.

The yearly pilgrimage has also seen a revamp with transportation and accommodation facilities at pilgrimage spots improved by leaps and bounds many a time the family vacation is plannedas such touristy-spiritual locations.

Another major feature of this prototype is the welcoming of new age healing gurus.From the Sri Sri Ravi Shankars of the world to the now very many Aamas and Matas the flexible Hindu shows not aversion to welcoming them with open arms.

This often topped with a modernized yoga and meditative session or weekly sath sang are not an uncommon feature in their lives.The flexible Hindu has no problem integrating New Age practices as they don't really disrupt his existing religious practices and dont alienate him from his core beliefs.

Its not just practices like reiki, pranic healing,lama fera,tarot or feng shui but also Hindu cultural concepts-for instance,the idea of karma-that are being re imported in their Western reincarnations.

The new age flexible Hindu is an enterprising, innovative,level headed individuals not afraid of a changing world in fact pro actively contributing to a changing religious culture!

The bendy India

must clicks!

Heres the first of very many posts on interesting sites i've stumbled upon

Drum roll pleasssssssssseee!!and the first site is!
http://www.mtvindia.com/itsmy/index.php

Its the coolest thing ever!You design your very own logo,you can even put your own pic, get to give it your name,choose the colors and motifs and the best part is it is aired on Mtv!!
How cool is that!!

Nike Just doing it for its consumers!

New York Times carried this interesting article on how Nike is shifting its attention from conventional marketing to doing more for its consumers

Of course size matters!

Noticed that bar of Cadbury's 5 star looking alot less than it used to!or that packet of Fritos Lays having a handful of chips!I'm sure you've noticed this,"YOUR PAYING THE SAME PRICE FOR
IT!!
To beat the rising cost of raw materials, more and more consumer goods companies are taking advantage of the amended Standards of Weights and Measures Rules,1977 to reduce quantity without changing the price.

To make the tale a little more woe filled manufacturers like HUL,ITC Foods and Parle have increased their prices whilst reducing the weight!!so be ready to shell out more for a lot less.With statements from the Godrej consumer products Ltd, COO RK Sinha like,"Our consumers feedback shows they realised the weight is less only after they bought the product home and started using it" and"there is a resistance from consumers to price hikes,especially for low end packs,Pravin Kulkarni,Marketing Manager Parle Products, only goes to show that marketing minds are gettin more devious by the hour!!!

Gettin in the loop!!

When BPL Mobile launched its 'Get in the Loop' campaign as apart of their re branding exercise, i honestly didn't quite like the campaign, it seemed quite cluttered and the all encompassing 'LOOP' managed to get more importance than BPL Mobile.

Just the other day i came across an article on something really interesting that BPL had done, wouldn't really have expected BPL Mobile to be the first few to ride on the digital wave but turns out they did just that.
BPL Mobile launched an innovative online marketing strategy wherein they asked their users to upload their group pics on the site www.getintheloop.in and the winners pics would be put up on a billboard promoting BPL Mobile ‘get in the loop’.

Super duper leveraging of the internet!Who wouldn't want to see themselves on a hoarding!While BPL got the faces they wanted, brand recall, more interactivity than before.Maybe if this online campaign was backed up with more on ground and social networking activity maybe there would have been much more hype around this marketing strategy

No A sale here, not a sale there, not a sale anywhere :(

I love the festive season!More than buzz than surrounds the festive preparations I'm guilty of looking forward to the Mega sales!Dhamaka offers!!the 70% offs!!

This year sadly i cant see too much of that,there are the discounts,sales and offers but nothing that one wouldn't already find anything during the year.It seems like the festive season has lost its sales appeal with marketers.Across sectors,October-December sales are down 7-10% as marketers create events out of Valentine's day,Womans day,Friendship day,Mothers day and others prompting consumers to spend a packet on each of these occasions. Consumer durables a segment that once clocked in record sales during the festive season are the hardest hit.
According to R Zutshi, India deputy MD,"The October-December season now accounts for 25-30% of our annual sales down from 40% three years ago"

The key reasons for this are:

• Globalization

With the dawn of globalization came high disposable incomes,increased consumer awareness and reference for new high quality advanced products.

• Buyers market

No longer is it a sellers market where the customer has little or no choice and is subject to high prices and low quality.Today custmers demand quality prices and with cut throat competition from international players sellers have no way out other than to sell their products at reasonable prices

• Youth driving purchases

The Indian youth today are a techno savvy bunch, well aware not just of Indian trends,products and prices but their international equivalents as well.They constanlty demand better quality, more advanced technology and lower prices for the products they purchased.The chances that a seller could dupe this lad or lass are unlikely

Sound of Itches

The Itchy Family

Itchy School

Itch Farm

Everybody lets scratch

Thakur ka inteqam

INDUSTRY INNOVATORS!!

Co-founder and chief executive Steve Jobs and his team at Apple have made the iPod as ubiquitous as cell phones and changed the way we listen to music.

CEO David Neeleman is known to take JetBlue flights and chat with customers on how he can make their time in the air more comfortable.

CEO Raphael le Masne de Chermont is gunning to make Shanghai Tang the first luxury brand to come out of China, and changing the face of global competition in the process.


Its Aeron chair become a symbol of the "dotcom job," but after the bust, Michael Volkema, chairman of the board for Herman Miller, CEO Brian Walker and their team downsized and made a radical investment in R&D to once again become the trend makers in the industry.



It started with aromatic, carefully roasted coffee beans and grew into a model for how a large company can do business responsibly and still grow like mad. Chairman of the Board and Chief Global Strategist Howard Schultz has been influential in putting a Starbucks in just about every corner of the world and on your local grocers' shelves.



When Samsung Chairman Kun-Hee Lee found the company's products gathering dust on store shelves, he made it his company's priority to create stylish, premium digital products that sparked customers' emotions with elegant, human-centered design.

Lyndon "Duke" Hanson and his partners at Crocs sold 6 million pairs of their different looking casual shoes last year, putting them on the feet of toddlers, parents, teenagers and grandmothers, and taking the concept of boat shoe as casual shoe mainstream.


Mark Constantine, the CEO of Lush Cosmetics, insists on shedding one-third of Lush's entire bath products line each year to avoid missing the next hot thing. With this strategy, he plans on tripling Lush's size by 2008.


Cold Stone Creamery founders Donald and Susan Sutherland created an ice cream experience where customers can have custom made ice cream concoctions folded and mixed to their hearts content.

startup to watch out for!

1. www.stumbleupon.com Launched in 2002 by three 20-somethings in a Calgary, Alberta, apartment, StumbleUpon now has 2 million registered users drawn by its knack for finding websites that match their interests and those of others with similar tastes as they "stumble" around the Net.

Co-founder Garrett Camp (shown right), who totes around a mid-'80s Nikon F3 (yes, with actual film), came up with the idea as he was working on a master's in software engineering.

Frustrated as he tried to indulge his hobby online - "There wasn't a good way to find the best photo sites," Camp says - he tapped his own background in clustering technology. With coding help from Justin LaFrance and Geoff Smith, he created an early version of StumbleUpon. Having nailed the photo problem, the team quickly saw how the technology could click with all sorts of media.

In the same way that it matches users with like-minded websites, StumbleUpon's technology also pairs online ads with targeted demographics and interests. Now StumbleUpon is attempting to do the same for online video and video advertising. In December the startup launched StumbleVideo, a service that offers the closest thing to channelsurfing that you'll find on the Web.
Business model: Advertising, subscriptions





2. www.slide.com Slide has developed customizable and easily assembled slide shows of photos that can be embedded in a blog or a MySpace page, sent out in an RSS feed, and streamed to a desktop as a screensaver.

Funding: Not disclosed (Peter Thiel, Vinod Khosla, others)

Founder & CEO: Max Levchin (shown right)

Business model: Advertising, subscription

3. www.bebo.com

Bebo has built a social network, more than 30 million members strong, that keeps users' pages private but still allows them to share things like video and drawings made on an online whiteboard.

Founders: Michael Birch (also CEO), Xochi Birch (shown right)

Business model: Advertising

4. www.meebo.com

Meebo lets users manage multiple instant-messaging services from one site. Meebo's killer app is a widget that places an IM window on your blog or webpage.

Founders: Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg (also CEO), Elaine Wherry (shown right)

Business model: Advertising

5. www.wikia.com

Wikia operates a hosting service for ad-supported community sites that use the same software and collaborative content model that made Wikipedia a Web phenomenon.

Launched in 2004, Wikia communities range from fans of 24 to politics junkies. Wikia is also working on an open-source, user-generated search engine.

Founders: Angela Beesley, Jimmy Wales (shown right)

Business model: Advertising



6.www.joost.com

Forget the three-minute video blog. The 30-minute, broadcast-quality Web 2.0 TV show is coming in all its full-screen glory. And if serial disrupters Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom have their way, neither television nor the Internet will be the same.

The duo behind peer-to-peer services Kazaa and Skype will officially launch Joost this spring, aiming to merge the best of TV with the best of the Net.

The service provides more of a television-style experience than current online video sites, with channels you can flip through randomly or program yourself. Viewers can also share playlists of their favorite shows with friends or chat with them online while watching the same program.

Joost will be free, supported by highly targeted ads based on people's actual watching habits, their friends' viewing patterns, and information they volunteer. Ad revenue will be split between Joost and the content owners.

Joost can offload much of the heavy bandwidth and storage costs borne by Web video companies like YouTube because the service is a partial peer-to-peer system, with content distributed among viewers' computers. And to reassure Hollywood moguls who watched the music industry get burned by Kazaa's legions of illegal file sharers, all Joost video is streamed and encrypted.

Founders: Janus Friis, Niklas Zennstrom (shown above)

Business model: Advertising

7. www.dabble.com

Dabble has designed a tool for organizing videos into playlists of favorites. Users share them across the network, so, say, food lovers can dabble in one another's video collections.

Founder & CEO: Mary Hodder (shown right)

Business model: Advertising

8.www.metacafe.com

Metacafe's service ranks uploaded videos by popularity and feedback from a community of 17 million monthly visitors - and pays the creators for the success of their work. The auteurs get $100 after 20,000 viewings and $5 for every 1,000 subsequent views. Since September, Metacafe has paid a total of $250,000 to 200 contributors.

CEO: Erick Hachenburg (shown right)

Business model: Advertising


9. www.revision3.com

Revision 3 is a production studio for geek-oriented online shows. Started by Digg founder Kevin Rose and its CEO, Jay Adelson, Revision3 sells sponsorships to companies like Go Daddy, Microsoft, and Sony for as much as $10,000 per episode.

Cofounder & CEO: Jay Adelson (shown right)

Business model: Advertising


10. www.blip.tv

Blip.tv has built a platform for syndicating serialized online shows such as Starring Amanda Congdon and TreeHugger TV. Blip provides producers with software, ads, and distribution to websites and blogs. A deal is already signed with Web TV service Akimbo, which lets producers send their videos to TV sets.

Cofounders: Dina Kaplan, Mike Hudack (also CEO; shown right with Kaplan)

Business model: Licensing, advertising

miss teen usa

For all those who didn't catch this on TV,its hilarious!!

the knowlegde worker 2.0

I Am Knowledge Worker 2.0

From: trib, 2 days ago





My presentation from the Office 2.0 Conference. It's a discussion on the changing nature of knowledge workers and how their organisations can help them be better at their jobs and more productive.

The slides alone don't make quite as much sense as they do with the audio.

See it first..the new Apple nano i-pod!!!

Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday brought a new look and new features to the company's most popular iPod.The new nano comes in four colors, and offers a few design changes.

Where the Web 2.0 stars were born

1. Google

Founded: 1998

First Address: 232 Santa Margarita Ave., Menlo Park, CA

Sergey Brin and Larry Page are the latest billionaires to get their start in a garage. But while Bill Hewlett and David Packard and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak worked on wood benches and dealt with cold drafts, Brin and Page enjoyed relaxing breaks in the backyard hot tub. The pair, who rented the garage from a woman who's now Brin's sister-in-law, bought the house last October to preserve this piece of the Google legacy.

2. Facebook

Founded: 2004

First Address: 95 Dunster St., Cambridge, MA

Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg started the company at Harvard's Kirkland House dorm, in the suite he shared with roommates Dustin Moskovitz (now VP for product engineering) and Chris Hughes (once a company spokesman). Facebook's success is already legendary, although Zuckerberg now faces a federal lawsuit alleging that he stole the idea from a rival social-networking site.

3. Craigslist

Founded: 1995

First Address: 1010 Cole St., San Francisco, CA

Newmark's classified-ad site grew from humble origins: a list of notable upcoming events that he e-mailed sporadically to Bay Area friends. He worked out of this two-bedroom apartment on Cole Street for six years; he moved the company to nearby offices in 2000 but lived here until he sold the apartment in December 2005. Now 17 million people visit Craigslist each month.

4. Mozilla Foundation

Founded: 2002

First Address: 466 Ellis St., Mountain View, CA

In an ordinary office cubicle, intern Blake Ross and programmer David Hyatt were working on a new browser for Netscape's Mozilla project after Netscape Navigator was crushed by Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The browser was called Firefox, and it became the first to give Explorer real competition since Navigator's market share collapsed. Both men left Netscape before it was disbanded in 2003, but the Mozilla project lives on.

5. Linden Lab

Founded: 1999

First Address: 333 Linden St., San Francisco, CA

Second Life was born on narrow Linden Alley in San Francisco's quaint Hayes Valley neighborhood. Founder Philip Rosedale worked in the warehouse with a single engineer. Three years later he moved to a larger office on, naturally, Second Street. Company headquarters are now in San Francisco's financial district, while the original space on Linden is occupied by a Moroccan furniture store.

6. Digg

Founded: 2004

First Address: 3255 Sawtelle Blvd., Apt. 107, Los Angeles, CA

Kevin Rose was hosting The Screen Savers on now-defunct cable channel TechTV when he interviewed Apple co-founder Wozniak, whose tales of Apple's early days inspired Rose. Later that day he went back to his apartment and hatched an idea for a news site that would let users decide what went on the front page. More than 17 million people get their news through Digg every month.

The rise of the white collar nomad

From para gliding to of the tops of mountains to deep sea diving in the pacific, they do it all and not when they are on a vacation

Introducing the new breed of the White collar nomad.Page 35,has been traveling for almost a year.He hit the road in 2005 equipped with laptop in hand.He would work on long distance clients over the internet,the nearest internet hookups would be his office.

For all those for whom seeing the world and traveling is a passion in todays day and age there is nothing to stop you from packing a knapsack and hitting the road with visa and laptop in hand.With sites like PayPal.com and other advances in electronic money transfer overseas financial transactions are almost friction-free.In fact Page has created a site for like minded individuals called workingnomads.com for all those who aspire to live this life.

Clients [may not be in India as yet] are beginning to understand that professionals working outside the office are just as reliable and trustworthy and many a time a lot more productive and efficient.

So what are the pre-requisites to choosing the life if a whit collar nomad?

• Make sure you have a reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaallly huge appetite for traveling and the outdoors
• Be prepared to life the life of a new age saint,devoid of almost all worldly possessions
  
• Be open to disruption of your daily life routine daily!
• Make sure you have a reliable laptop handy at all times[most travelers prefer a Mac to a PC that is often more prone to virus attacks]
• Carry a PDA or unlocked world phone that is able to switch networks worldwide and a VOIP software is a definite must.
• A Wi-fi hotspot locator makes life a lot easier when it comes connecting online

The disadvantages of being a white collar nomad are:

• The unavoidable visa problems that any global jet setter must face
• Just plain coordinating life at times can take its toll
• Getting accustomed to a lone wolf lifestyle after working in a normal office setup with colleagues and friends a cubicle away
• Self management skills are critical,because at the end of the day all sight seeing and no work makes for no money tomorrow.

Nevertheless living the life f a white collar nomad boils down to gaining a new perspective on your place in the world.In the words of Inda a white collar nomad,"People ask me where i live,and I'm not sure what to say, I'm not sure where i live in the world!"

send in the clones

Read this interesting article on how International entrepreneurs,inspired by the success of some of the biggest Web 2.0 services,have created their own local knockoffs.Have a look

web 2.o

Meet Charlie - what is Enterprise2.0?

From: slgavin, 3 months ago





A visual and entertaining example of web2.0 within the corporation.

Visually inspired by the brilliant Meet Henry by Cheree Moore of Ethos3 Communications! Check it out: http://www.slideshare.net/chereemoore/meet-henry

Nokia 888 Mind blowing

Its not an accessory!not a curio!Yes its a phone, Nokia recently introduced its Nokia 888 concept phone...
For starters it looks nothing like any phone I've seen before and its definitely not all about the looks only.This baby can do almost anything you want it to.
It is envisioned to run on a liquid battery,has speech recognition,a flexible touch screen, and a touch sensitive body cover. Including an alarm clock, PDA, GPS, phone, push email receiver, digital wallet.
This phone will take the leap with consumer emotion interface where users of this phone can use E-motions to communicate their mood
Check out this video that explains the phones functions
Nokia 888

Yes my lil baby...

Practicing cartwheels,swimming,singing the songs I've written,painting,pottery,gardening...a day in the school life of a new age school goer.

Increasingly there has been a shift from conventional educational formats like the ICSE and CBSE boards to new age school like Tridha and Ecole Mondiale in Mumbai, Heritage in Delhi and Kolkata and Indus International school in Bangalore.

These school are the new elite in the schooling order, demanding fees that are five time the normal fee!!So what is the USP of such schools?What elevates them to the creme de la creme status?

New age schools follow the path of knowledge must guide the spirit of a human being, emphasizing love and understanding.These schools allow the child to explore their creative talents in a stress free unconventional enviorment, without the pressures if examinations and competition.

Many of these schools offer exclusive and premium services lie continental lunch menus,telemedicine facilities, wi-fi zones,buses with GPS.Some of the school activities in theses schools includes community service in near by villages to help imbibe even imbibe social responsibility and social values.When a particular era in history is being taught in class unlike conventional textbook education,the child is taught not just about the events that took place during that time,but the fashion,architecture,poetry,dance and drama.
True these kids may not get a leg up at the IIT or IIM exam but perhaps this is the first time parents are actually listening to their kids when it comes to choosing a school.[maybe that or its another cool tag to flaunt when you can afford it, so why not!]