SROYS

By far the best cross browser checking tool

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:13:00 -0500

By far the best cross browser checking tool:

Adobe’s Browser Lab is probably the best cross browser checking tool I’ve ever used. Fewer options in terms of the number of browsers and resolutions covered but most major ones are present. The best feature, other than the user interface, is the onion skin display which overlays each image screenshot to show you the differences.

#Sopa #Censorship Show them the money!

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:32:00 -0500

Power sits on top of humanity because it exists to control human flaws. Human beings are corrupt by nature - most would rather not do many of the seemingly right things - like pay for books, movies, music - which is why we need laws.

The SOPA idea is simply devious - it’s easier to shut down the site (Facebook, Google, Youtube… any site really) - than to go after the users. But it’s obvious that, with this law it’ll be easy to frame any company, it can actually effectively be used to find violations on all the government sites - of course they would put in a clause to keep them away from the ambit of this law.

It’s probably more important to try to create a law to force the media and technology companies to work together. We have in our hands possibly the greatest distribution channel ever made - use it!

The job of those in power is to identify and take out problematic elements which violate the laws of “Intellectual property”, “right to life and liberty” and “freedom of speech” and others - but surely not dampen the process which allows innovation and advancement of the human race by promoting those same fundamental rights.

We live in a complicated world and having laws which effect open communication is probably the most dangerous thing one can get into.

What the media companies should be doing is fairly simple:

There is existing technology which can assist in identifying content theft or near accurate content identification. Google by itself has technology which allows youtube to identify copyright infringement plus their search can pretty much find any content based on (hate) keywords.

Videos

Create a central organization which will get these media companies subscription money from online shares - make it cheap for users ($10 to see all copyrighted content which is distributed according to the number of views of each publisher).
Use the identification technology to place media company’s ads on video content - even if shared by someone else. Reduce monitoring needs by automating ad replacement if the user has placed his own ads. More money earned as per views. Google possibly already offer this to major publishers.
Direct ad space control - add trailer distribution, other promotions on copyrighted videos - the video companies will love this.

Copyrighted ebooks and text

Behavioral ads, promotions - they need to work with the ebook reader software companies to create technology to identify if the ebook was purchased or if it was downloaded for free.
Direct ad space control to copyright owner who should be able to put in any promotion they want or show behavioral ads.
Creation of a script which gives text based sites a way to easily be copyright complaint by adding a script which can place origin links and source attribution so authors can get actual traffic to their sites from where users should be able to download more of their books - which of course would have ads and promo space.

Music

Work with technology companies to identify and place ads - directly embedded in files or via the music players - huge boost in revenue for both media companies and independent artists.

Hate Speech

Really! after what goes on in the parliaments! But yes… this is a problem and it should be addressed by the companies by creating filters and letting people have access to these filters. Possibly also commit to take down requests when it’s an issue of national security on a case basis and move court if they disagree. But no law should be passed for prosecution of companies based on this - the wording of the judgement must include the content which is ruled for/against and should never be generalized.

The solution to content theft seems fairly simple, economized promotion space on the content and direct control to the content creator. It seems Google is the leading party which has a lot of this identifying technology but it also seems that the media companies are being to proud to ask “what does that button do” on technology they don’t understand completely.

Unfortunately it seems its up to “Google” to extend their helping hand and help out these media companies continue to be profitable - and both parties would also be raking in a ton of cash if they do this, not to mention Google will also live up to their “Don’t be evil” catch phrase. They need to open source some parts of this technology and also create a way for it to be used by other small parties who may not be so technologically adept.

Since almost all media is moving to the internet - it makes sense to try to solve the problem with technology rather than prosecution. The law should be to create and make companies use this technology and be complaint and possibly even give the distributors a cut for being compliant.

But will these big boys ever work together - maybe if there is money to be made!

Zomato may change something very fundamental - #food

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:35:00 -0500

Every now and then there is a company which has the potential to change or rather inspire quality by showing organizations a promise of more business. Zomato is right now at that place, where they have a statistically significant amount of data on Indian restaurants to help create a change.

Not many years ago - eating out in India was almost always concluded with some form of unhappy abdominal pressure. Having the restaurants care about a rating will make them cleaner and possibly even make them look into innovating unique offerings. But there seems to be some fundamental problem in the system of rating and this can be improved in some ways… It’s a long list but please read slowly and carefully to understand the ideas…

Getting people to give a simple star rating is a good start but it’s not sufficient - have a link appear after the initial rating asking people if they would like to subscribe and rate the various aspects. Show them the aspects - ambiance, customer care, food quality, kitchen cleanliness etc. Make them register to make specific changes & get specific interest details - that way you get more people to come back when you send them promotions about the kind of food they like - ask for their permission and interests first.
Restaurants will be more keen on getting registered if they are shown clear indications that the site is giving them more business. Include a way on your mobile app for the user to get a photo of them clicked by someone in front of the restaurant and post it to the restaurant listing. Allow only positive photo votes - so it works like - the more photo votes you have the better you probably are.

Let the listing owner remove any photos they want. This way you will remove the fear from the restaurants perspective for negative votes. Give people an easy way to post the photo simultaneously to their social networks like facebook, Instagram, twitter via checking simple check boxes.
Add focus on important aspects like locality, cleanliness, chef credentials, manager speak, special events. Inspire these places to be more interactive with their customers and be more open. Create chef channels where users can immediately send a “Pat on the back” if they like the food. Almost everyone will have an Android phone soon - so create that app first and promote it among the chefs so they get the feeling that they are doing an important job. If you can get the chefs and the owners to care - people will have a valid way to send feedback and will automatically embrace this.
Allow users to upload water marked (zomato plus restaurant name, address) images of the food they are eating. Again allow the listing owner to remove anything they want to remove from their listing.
Create an app specially for the restaurant manager to keep track of their listings - to view their position add/edit details, view/remove social photos etc. The more feedback you are able to provide them directly the more connected they will feel to this service - the more people will care.
Use the foursquare model and create a community around locations with mayors (big foodie, giant foodie etc). People will care for these positions as they want to feel important and will create regular updates on places. Make it so that no one misuses these powers to harass restaurants (very important).
Let these restaurants send out special promotions to carefully curated lists of people (the list you created when you asked people for their interests) who are in the locality and like certain kinds of cuisine. Charge them per email. Automate this process as much as possible so you make the highest profit and don’t need to add staff to get this done. Have a help desk maybe and teach the restaurants how to do these promotions themselves by creating visual “how to” guides and possibly a telephone help desk for the people who are just not able to do it.
Simplify the process of getting listed - create steps to get them on quickly. The on boarding process can be much simpler. Ask them to fill in the details and upload everything themselves and then review the listing and ask for corrections. Don’t first ask them to copy paste the form into excel and email you. Just because you think they can’t do it yet is not reason enough to not make them learn - it’ll work to your benefit in the long run. Create an interface that is intuitive - provide language translations and helpful tool tips.
Keep cost to the minimum and create a community around your site to make your voters tell restaurant owners about you. The more real interactions you can provide the more you will be known.
Now that you have the largest database of listings - you should move into creating an intuitive interface for online ordering. There needs to be an app on both sides - easy ordering on customer’s side and easy editing of the menu/prices on the manager’s side. Keep a fee for yourself - another revenue stream. There is of course a lot of things that need to be taken care of inside the ordering application.
Allow future checkin to the restaurants and give the option to the owner to display it on their listing (option because they may not have many checkins and may not want to display it) - something like 16 people are having dinner here tonight. Again give options to update foursquare and facebook checkin system (and twitter post) to make the event social. Privacy is a concern here so see if there’s a way that users can choose the group to which to post the event.
One of things I find missing is crowd demographics - the social sharing of the photos will tackle the problem to some extent but there should be some classification of what kind of place it is. Is it suitable for family outings or is it a teens place, easy access for the elderly, play area… many such things. There needs to be some sort of easy categorization for such details.
Food is something very personal and has the ability to give people a lot of joy. When I go to a restaurant I want to see that the people serving the food are excited about it - I want it to be festive and not some dull experience of eating with some nice background music. Unfortunately I find this to be very rare.

Zomato should try to think of ways for these restaurant owners to liven up their service so there is more and more reason to go out to eat and experience different cultures (without worrying about health hazards). A kind of a revolution for restaurants in India. Absolutely NO ONE is doing this or have the capability to promote new ideas. If Zomato can create a team and an advisory blog for restaurants to help create new fun ideas it would really be awesome.

There is one restaurant in Gurgaon which created a jungle safari atmosphere - but when we went there we found the place sticking of alcohol - clearly the idea was not followed through properly. Creating a support service for restaurants will help Zomato really stand out in this niche.
Get into listing and rating of catering services and event locations - we do not have enough data on either - we are never really making an informed decision in these matters.

(List may get updated if something else comes up)

Very old documentary about Next - the company Steve Jobs...

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 06:19:00 -0500

Very old documentary about Next - the company Steve Jobs created. The video contains a lot of footage from their internal retreat meetings when the company was being formed. It was a NeXT Computer that was used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN that became the world’s first web server. Apple later acquired NeXT and got Steve Jobs back eventually.

Hugh MacLeod - Cartoonist, bestselling author, marketing apostate.

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:21:00 -0500

Hugh MacLeod - Cartoonist, bestselling author, marketing apostate.:

Very modern and accurate depiction of our state of affairs.

The Last Question - eerie!

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:44:58 -0500

Complete at: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/54421334/last.png

Offline Vs Online Retailing - FIGHT! Don't actually.

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:37:00 -0500

Maybe I am just being naive but to me it makes perfect business sense. The retailing industry players, it seems, have still not realized that one or a few very large companies can’t really provide an optimized shopping experience - at least not in the way we are expecting this business to be conducted. As more and more people want to be treated as “Humans” the solution we’ll have from the big players will always be a compromised one. We would all love it if things were better than what they already are.

Shopping is a very personal thing - I am very picky when I go in to buy things for my son - I would definitely like someone to go give me some personal attention. Right now where I live the idea of”customer satisfaction” hasn’t really peaked - people are still learning that “customers are kings and queens” but in more mature markets this is pretty much the norm - you do more business if you treat your customers well and go the extra mile to serve their needs.

The large and small, online and offline retailers should go into a search <-> publisher/retailer <-> consumer model that is usually followed on the internet for content consumption. The major brands will become the search, the little corner shops and retailers will become the publishers and the consumers will use a local inventory to find and choose the best places to shop (according to their needs) or get the stuff delivered. This would be the most efficient and the most profitable for all parties.

Let’s take a use case: I have a list of things to buy -

Clothes for my son
A gift for a visiting friend
Some groceries

The three items have very different personalization needs. I would like to see and then do a try out for the clothes for my son. I want ideas for the gift - then I want to see it. For groceries I just have a list of items but I am open to getting some extra nick-nacks.

The way I do it now is I either order in the groceries on the phone or go pick it up (I don’t really want to do that) - I go in search for a nice gift to the malls - at the same place I check out the kid shops and get my son to try out some clothes. Simple but not efficient.

The way I see it happening in the future is I’ll use choose one shopping application (from one of the large retailers) on my desktop or mobile phone - preferable synced via the cloud. I add my items to buy as and when I think about them - then when I have time I sit down to do my search.

I see a listing of the local grocery store in the app who has all that I need - I check out some nick-nack options and I push the order to them - and since they are 5 minutes away - the order is delivered to me very quickly. My linked account is debited. Done.

Then I go on to search for the gift - I feed the data about who I am looking to buy for - the shopping app possibly is aware of the person’s profile (maybe even facebook/twitter feeds) so it checks what options are most suitable and gives me a list. I “like” a few items - the shopping app gives me options about shops where they are available (checking from inventory) nearest to me. I shortlist the stores and I move on to my next item in the list.

I then check some baby clothes - again mark the ones I like and then shortlist the stores for this item. Then I ask the shopping app to optimize my route - if there are 2 gift items I likes and 1 kids store I liked in one location - that gets more priority than if one gift store has 3 items I liked.

So now I know exactly what I want - I know exactly where to go and all the retailers have a made a profit - the big retailer search app, the local retailer.

This option will work beautifully because many times I don’t really want to spend my time to go out to look for some item - I don’t mind ordering it and waiting a couple of days for the delivery. But if the big/small retailer partnership existed this would become even faster.

There are many reasons why the large online retailers would want to do this:

It’s easier and cheaper to deliver if there are local retailers in your team. Both small retailers and large retailers do MORE business by optimizing inventory.
Even the online orders can be delivered much more quickly - the users are happier and spend time on more productive things.
The big retailers are not cutting out the local retailers but rather making them a part of the process - giving them accurate data about what they should stock and when - they know this from the search queries and if they had to send a user more distance than was necessary.
The big retailers are able to outsource the personalization factor by training their retailers.
Logistics and demand planning can be optimized to serve the users in the most effective way by forwarding order requisition to the retailer who has the “most” of the item and is nearest depending on whether the person wants to pick up the item or if it is to be delivered.

Thanks to @Leenarao for writing this article on retailing on techcrunch - I ran into it through @jackabraham ‘s comment on his twitter.

Update: Turns out milo.com is already doing something to this effect (sorry I just started writing after I read Leenarao’s article) through their milo fetch software here https://pointofsale.milo.com/ - no wonder they got acquired by ebay for $75 million. I haven’t checked out their shopping app (or if they have one) but if it does the kind of stuff described above it would be awesome.

I still think Amazon can do this better and should get behind the local retailers and make them part of their chain even if just in words “Amazon Enabled” and build their phone app to do the stuff making it really simple for people like us to shop.

Followerwonk - find who you should follow on twitter

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 23:38:39 -0500

Followerwonk - find who you should follow on twitter:

Looking for prospects? Whether it’s new talent, customers, or just friends, we help find whom you’re after.

Google+Facebook : Ideas for improving our social sites!

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 08:02:00 -0500

The basic problem is that no one is really sure what the perfect social application would be - Facebook, twitter are their best bets right now but there is immense room for improvement and there will be changes which will come in the future which will get us closer to a real online life social experience.

What is being social? Social means different things to different people - to the constant chit-chatter sister it’s about hyper connecting with all her friends, to a family person who wants to remain in touch it’s about sharing, liking replying to various family updates, to a business person it’s about developing new connections and keeping the existing ones. Each group has a different idea about being social and the reason Facebook is winning is because of it’s modular design.

This is a very long post about some new things which can help improve our online social experience.

Why is Facebook winning the biggest pie of online socializing?

most or all of family connections
some of the business connection (possible lead: linkedin)
some of the event connections (possible lead: Google)
some of the news sharing connections (possible lead: twitter)
some of the interesting article sharing connection (possible lead: twitter)

Ease of use, modular design, the stories about Facebook, first mover into the news feed model, gained momentum so most new people joining already had friends with active accounts and relevant content for them to read.

Why is twitter winning the news/article sharing battle? It’s fairly obvious - I don’t want to read elongated paragraphs about what you are saying - keeping it short, simple and fast wins hands down as I can focus on more people and connect with more people much more quickly. Twitter is a different breed and will become the plugin for shorter versions of your public post for any social network that emerges.

What exactly is Google+? real life sharing, rethought for the web. Google+ aims to make sharing on the web more like sharing in real life. That’s their goal. The tag line on the sharing box says “Share what’s new…” Hmmm.

Facebook’s share box says “What’s on your mind?” - anyone can see which seems more human or rather which would seem more “real life”. But let’s not rattle around such small issues like tag lines - the issue is much deeper and we can possibly get better if we attack the problem rather than trying to see which little thing each company is doing right or wrong. I just wanted to start with that because that is what most people seem to do.

So let’s get on with the problem.

The problem we want to solve is building the perfect online social platform. Social is never JUST about sharing (stuff on our mind or in our hands or computer) - it’s also about connecting - that is what we expect when we go to any social gathering. Share stories, photos and also meet new people - talk about new experiences and opinions. We also talk about news, politics and stuff. So if we are to move this to an online platform we need to look at different aspects.

Design: Making it easy to share “what” we want with “who” we want - I think the Paul Adams presentation has drilled this well into the minds of the designers at the top social network and they are making good progress in solving this problem - circles or ajax dropdowns both work well - and one may only give the network an aesthetic advantage. But that said the Google+ circles interface is really quite a feat.

Here’s what I think will be part of that perfect social network.

Make ALL the items the same size and balloon up larger versions of images or videos or text when the user interacts with them. NONE of the social networks do this well. It’s confusing and irritating to say the least - you brilliant ajax developers can DEFINITELY do better than this.
Make connecting with new/unknown people less freaky. What I mean is you need to create validated accounts if you want to do “real” new connections. In a social gathering we generally won’t appreciate someone just coming up to us and acting all friendly - but when a friend introduces us we respond well.
The core of the reason is the validation - you don’t always need people to introduce yourself to others in an online platform. Validation can be solved by doing credit card checks to identify people - piggyback on the visa verification process. Simpler and faster. Only people with verified accounts should be allowed to do public posts. Then identify the personalities and show glimpses in a separate section. AGAIN - making the items fit properly and ballooning additional information would make people more open to reviewing the material.

Social is also about collaborating - specially collaboration of ideas and organizations. There needs to be a well designed space for ideas or organizations inside the social networks. Pages are good but can be improved by addition of some collaboration tools and possibly some brand insights - I would pay to see what people are saying about my brand.
If brands can be identified in comments and if permission to copy the comment on the brand’s page can be asked for at the time the person is making the comment it would add a lot of value. For example someone saying “My Nike+ is awesome” and when they hit enter they are shown a dialog where they confirm if they would like to share it on the Nike+ page also - it would be a real connection and the person may then join the Nike+ community and be more involved.
There can be many such small improvements that can be made to help people make connections with other people, ideas and organizations.
Tagging can be made intuitive with the use of a little color on the boxes. It would help us visually segregate different kinds of items - in a real world social experience color plays an important role in our interactions.
Having everything - an article share, an opinion or comment look the same is not the best we can have. The idea is to try to replicate the reactions we have in a social interactions - for example when someone is telling a fascinating story the reaction and mode of hearing is different from say when someone is breaking the news of getting fired.
If an intuitive legend of colors (even if very light backgrounds) could be incorporated into the news feed it would really liven up the reactions and our eyes would flow smoother and stop at what interests us the most.
I guess some sort of AI would be required to judge the mood of the item and color them with a light tinge of the mood.
Avoid temptation to grow fast - when you focus on that you do silly things like put a youtube search bar on the side or try to encourage people to do things they don’t want to. Like when I clicked on the “Click to see popular posts” (this section looks different from the rest of the site - seems like a different designer) - I saw items which almost seemed like stuff my teenager cousin forwarded me - I am NOT INTERESTED in that - I don’t want it there! Stick to what you are here to do - and solve the problem instead of trying to promote other products or trying to push users from other services. Integrate it well and the users will flow to the social experience also.
Do not blend too much - keep services separate and clean from clutter. Do cross promotion carefully and in a minimal fashion. Google was on the right path with the toolbar at the top but they seem to be loosing it.
It seems that the +1 is somehow lacking some flare - in Facebook when I “Like” something - I am saying I really like this - but where I am not “Liking” an item I am not really saying anything. But in search I need to get this feedback which I think Google is missing out on. Google has a lot of data on each profile - so it should be possible to avoid fraud of negative marking. But this is important information they are missing out on. If adding a social element was the goal it’s important to embrace both negative and positive rankings. It should’ve been called +- or show the +- status with a slight indent in opposite direction. Users could click and drag the search listings which they thought were good.
How many people are public speakers? Remove the word “Publicly +1 this”… unless there is some important privacy issue being addressed but even so - this can be worded better.

Marketing: Anything Google does doesn’t really need marketing the tech space will hype it to oblivion but adding some in-product blending may get a lot of users. So here are some marketing ideas:

Millions of people forwarding emails - the so called laggards who are still not on twitter but use gmail - but it’s a decent size of the pie. Having a small +Plus to share the email in a nicely formatted manner may get the laggards in and connecting.
In the words of Sean Parker’s famous line “Drop the Google”. The name is not right - adding Google the “verb” into a product will always seem to have a search taste. Just call it “Plus” or “Circles” - unless there are some trademark issues - these seem like better names.
Find a way to intuitively integrate it into Android - the best way would be to have it seamlessly integrate into the contacts application - with beautiful notifications - make it free for people to sms and add content to their plus account in developing countries. The Samsung social hub doesn’t allow people to add Google Plus - this should’ve been addressed before they launched their hugely popular S2 and Note.
Do some marketing using Google earth and maps - invite merchants to create their plus accounts and business pages and link them to their local listing. Send them a sticker to put on their shop - it would probably cost Google 2-5 dollars to print 1 sticker - can you imagine what 100,000 customized stickers can do? Google/facebook can afford this.

Some comments and more ideas from other people here: http://www.quora.com/Is-Google+-a-failure-Or-does-it-still-remain-to-be-seen

This should be addressed to all our members

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 07:51:05 -0500

Thank you very much for accepting me as a member of CiteHR. For the last 67 years I am a student, starting my learning and training from the laps of my beloved mother. I have a little time to stay in this world but have desire to learn. You are doing a sacred job by disseminating knowledge through CiteHR. My prayers are with you!
Riaz Shirazi

This should be addressed to the all of us - all members of the Cite community. Which is why I am posting it here for all to read.

Quora - will it be the greatest Q&A site ever?

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 14:07:00 -0500

There is a question on Quora about “What turns people off about Quora?” - I think I found my answer when this reply of mine somehow got collapsed right after posting because of some vaguely described reasons in their faq. Here’s the link and my answer:

http://www.quora.com/Quora/What-turns-people-off-about-Quora

I use facebook to connect with my family. I use twitter to follow the people I want to follow. I am now using Quora to read about and connect with people in the startup community. People go to Google for search, gmail for mail - people need classification of what the product does. More examples - airbnb, dropbox, elance, 99designs… the list goes on and on.

There is a trend here. It’s rare that a site would come up and say I can do all subjects - one such rare site is wikipedia. But on wikipedia the users are alligned to believe that they are building the greatest encyclopedia that ever existed - people want to be part of that - they want to own their subjects there.There needs to be an alignment of goals when building a product - for Quora it’s getting forced into being the greatest startup community Q&A site. But that can be changed if they allow people to own their subjects and content.

The only way to get out of it is to have many subject matter experts take up sections - but unfortunately many such people are running their own communities or personal brands. So the hook could be if they allow plugining in of their content into quora in such a way that the experts still own and control the content and it’s revenue. Maybe the solution could be to build ports for the popular softwares used by these community leaders so that all the content can be aggregated on Quora and then curated by the much larger community which would be formed.

Or another approach could be to extend the current Quora search engine and get all the Q&A sites to join and get indexed. Then build a layer that can be applied on top of all these single existing Q&A sites. The community owners would love the extra exposure that may come their way and Quora will become what it set out to become. I believe it will also significantly reduce the infrastructure and effort that will be required to keep the information up as it will get distributed.

The idea is to let these community leaders keep their community but be able to plug it into Quora.

That is the only way they are going to suceed into becoming the greatest Q&A product that ever existed. The idea of this change/addition is a daunting task in itself but it sits well with their goal.

Quora connects you to everything you want to know about. Quora aims to be the easiest place to write new content and share content from the web. We organize people and their interests so you can find, collect and share the information most valuable to you.

One of my favorite classical performances… Tina Sani. The...

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 07:46:59 -0500

One of my favorite classical performances… Tina Sani. The sound is as if some sort of awakening is being called for - at the end there is a verse which is recited - it says something to the effect “The one you called god, the one you pleaded, the one you looked for, the one who would rescue you… the one who didn’t come… it was you all along.”

Perceptions & preconceived notions

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 07:13:13 -0500

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OcQ9A-5noM

Such a great example of how perceptions & preconceived notions about you can go pufff… when you start performing like that.

Android screen filter app

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:05:47 -0500

If you are like me and think that some of the amoled screens are just too bright even at the lowest brightness setting - try the screen filter. http://www.appbrain.com/app/screen-filter/com.haxor It’s a life saver… Rather an eye saver.

Running an adwords campaign

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:02:00 -0500

So we have started doing a small advertising campaign on Adwords. We don’t really have a lot to spend so we have put in a daily budget of Rs.500. I think we are doing pretty well and Google likes us because we have spent a little time really optimizing the campaign.

Anyone who has done adwords will tell you that it’s a pretty optimized campaign - getting clicks with 2 pennies a pop for business related keywords is pretty optimized. Try this and go to images if you want to take a look at some campaign image shots.

We are talking about keywords related to business, human resource, employees etc. They are usually not cheap and when we first started we were spending about Rs.10 a click - but then smart pricing kicked in and we are now spending 2 pennies for a click.

And it’s pretty simple to do it also - just be very precise about the ad copy and the keywords you choose plus make sure the keywords on the landing page match the keywords you are trying to buy.

If you strain your eyes a bit you will see we have a click through rate of 4% for this keyword and the ad copy is optimized, the landing page gives you exactly what we say in the ad copy and we are paying Rs.0.46 - 0.70 per click. There is no reason you can’t repeat this for more keywords - you just have to WORK HARD!!

Founder of wordpress Matt Mullenweg at Startup School. Kind of...

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 07:24:21 -0500

Founder of wordpress Matt Mullenweg at Startup School. Kind of the history of wordpress and how he started.

Daily Deals are not getting it yet

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:14:00 -0500

Did you know that I don’t want to buy a wallet at 64% off? Yeah… it’s unbelievable right! But I am happy with the one I have. Did you ask me what kind of deals I was interested in when I first gave you my email address and location? Did you ask me my gender or age?

Clearly you didn’t! You do need to reduce friction but you do also want me to come back to check out new deals don’t you?

I had to really tear away my hand from the mouse and look away to stop myself from buying that ROTI MAKER!!

And how am I supposed to concentrate on a deal over here?

Man! you CAN do better. There are 5 main problems here:

Personalized display of listings
Information overloading - too many deals on one page
Better categorization
More humans at the top
Try new ideas and don’t copy groupon

Solution - go social and be more human.

Let users create a selection of deals to send to their friends.
Let users share individual deals on their social networks (without buying).
Be less greedy - let the merchants profit a bit more. Reduce fees and work with your merchants - this is a new industry. Divert some of your advertising funds into really supporting merchants and customers.
Send merchants stickers with promo code and don’t charge any fees on those buys. The same advice as on the justdial thoughts.
Give more than discounts - offer relationships. Create more than just price point gains for customers - let merchants create list of buyers - tell them to enter the coupon codes which get used and get the data about who is buying what and when.
Create more value for the merchants who should be allowed to connect directly with their buyers (let them send new deals to old buyers - charge small fee for emailer) - you will have access to very important buyer data. You need to impress the merchants to go big. Create a CRM around deals.
When I want to buy a tv - my first though is not “are there any good deal on this on deal….com?” Make the search box BIG and PROMINENT - like airbnb.com. Use the search info to identify what people want.
I won’t refer a friend for you 100 bucks - stop showing off your money - it’ll dry up soon if you don’t become decent. Venture capitals should put good human beings at the top - not cut throat top sales professional.
Deals work well for the merchant when you can gather a lot of people buying the same thing at the same time. Make it fair - allow deals to go live if a certain number is hit. Refund money if it doesn’t - tell the customers about how you care about your merchants and why it didn’t work out. Here’s you money back. The customer will now trust you and buy from you without a second thought. PLUS they will tell their friends.
From an Indian perspective online payment don’t work well yet - so ask merchants for some cash on delivery seed money - send out the coupon and ask the customer to mark it used via an email query after the end of campaign. Trust and confirm coupon use with your merchants and charge them accordingly. Maybe allow a certain percentage of COD for new clients. Too many fluctuations and you ban them. This uses Derek Sivers principle of “Don’t punish everyone for one person’s mistake”.
Just because you have money right now doesn’t mean you should be throwing it on the problem. Search for “Television Deals” and you’ll see deal website ads and the landing page take you to their home page with NO TELEVISION DEALS! Stop wasting money and optimize your campaign. You’ll not only get more sales, you’ll spend way way less because of your landing page score.

I’m astonished by how many have never heard of...

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:35:34 -0500

I’m astonished by how many have never heard of Khanacademy.org - you should tell any school student’s you know about this site - where they can learn through easy videos from this gifted teacher(Salman Khan) and other volunteers.

10 Ideas for future Schools - Gurgaon and everywhere

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 15:08:00 -0500

So, the latest trend is that we understand that a child needs to explore and learn their potential. Things like “let the child learn what he wants to” are being said a lot by new parents these days. Of course most people also do understand that certain other things are important too…

Basic language, science and mathematics
Basic behavioral and social science
Basic physical education and sports

I have often wondered if what I learned in high school (10-12) helped me in any way - I mean trigonometry, calculus - I frankly cannot remember any of it. So was it of any use?

I think yes. It in way cleared my mind that I am not cut out to be a scientist or a mathematician. So I eventually I moved to what interested me - but the exploration was required and necessary.

So until we have some science which can read our genes and predict what we will be good at - we need to explore all turns. But maybe we are never really predisposed to be good at something - it’s possible that everything that we become interested in, everything we become, is because we come across a great teacher.

For example I was interested in music - had a band and everything. But then I got a job offer - and I think my boss David (surname not given for privacy) was instrumental in me getting interested in web projects. I learned the importance of scrutinizing every single little detail. I am not very good at it yet - but he showed me the direction of how to do things the best we can and I am eternally grateful to him for that.

So in effect my work now relates to something that I taught myself how to do - but the exploration into all the other things I did was instrumental in me being what I am, and how I work on things. So school in it’s traditional format still has some value to it - we do need to explore all the basics and then decide on what fits us the best.

But that makes creating a curriculum really difficult doesn’t it?

This should follow the explorer gamification model - students should be pushed to become explorers rather than achievers - they’ll automatically become achievers but these achievements won’t have the blood from competition on them. In the real world competition exists but are won by excellence, and not by being one-up. Excellence will always have the one-up.

So the curriculum? There should be some mandatory courses and some optional courses - and students need to pass every subject they take up - or they loose the subject. The concept of failing a class is old school and should be abolished. We need to add more options so kids can discover their true interest and learn to excel in those subjects from their early days. That way we will create real professionals.

Recently we had a meeting with the management staff at my son’s school and discussed what approaches would be the most human when trying to build a program for preschool kids.

While their basics are all in place where they teach the kids to explore and do their own thing while maintaining a curriculum of things that need to be addressed, like counting, sorting etc. The main problem we were having was the communication of what was happening every day - mothers needed to connect with what their kids were doing in school but the kids were unable to articulate it.

While this may seem like a small little problem - addressing it would create a tremendous connection between the schools and the parents. So how do we do it?

The most trusted international bank today in India is CitiBank - and one of the main reasons is their online banking interface. You can achieve a lot more on their system than on any other bank’s system. They’ve spent time to create processes which are human and reduce the amount of friction in getting something done.

Want to get a new cheque book - 3 clicks. Want to get a draft made and sent to you - 3 clicks. Want to liquidate an investment - 3 clicks. They can do more but what they have is very informative and accessible. The idea is to reduce friction and improve usability by being more human.

So, how do we improve our schools?

REINFORCE Learning - Ever see parents asking what the kid learned in school today? Well many parents are now discovering that talking about the same subject at home make kids more receptive to learning and to school in general. It’s pretty simple to address it - create an online interface that will in real time give information to parents about what their kids are learning - address specific issues with students with the parents through private messages.

The way to do it is simple - you use a software (build or choose from the existing school erp systems) to create logins for parents and assign them to separate classes. The facilitator should be able to see the entire list of parents and be able to live blog via their phone or private message the parents easily.

So suppose a new poem is being practiced - the facilitator can post “New poem being practiced… kids are thrilled! Rhyme lyrics here (link to previously created page)”. This way not only are you making this fun for the facilitators you are informing the parents about what they need to reinforce. It’s easy and it solves the problem quickly and efficiently. Parents should be able to comment on the post to make the event more relevant and encourage the facilitator.

Having the information of what is being taught can help benefit the reinforcement of the learning quite a bit - and lessons will no longer feel boring if it relates to life outside school.

Actually this can be taken a step further if any school wishes to venture into it - TELL THE PARENTS HOW TO REINFORCE A LESSON - each day when something is taught push a message to the parents telling them how to continue the lesson outside. Schools need to create the content once and then polish it as they go - but this can really be a USP.
The Real World - facilitators should be exposed to real world excellence. This will in a way prepare them psychologically to learn to push that culture into the kids by using the right keywords and encouraging things that they know work well in the real world. Like for example if the facilitator was exposed to this video here

They will learn that companies who excel do so because they care to be personalized - and it’s important to build that culture into the kids from early on. Do weekly screening of such movies to expose facilitators to excellence - maybe include important stuff happening inside the school. Encourage them to diversify their interests.
Embrace Technology - Schools that will invest in creating lessons using the latest technologies will be the most sought after in some time. Create video lessons cause they are easy to understand and are more engaging (research is there is material already available). Invest in buying latest technology and show their use in social media to build the school’s brand. Not in a show-off kind of way but showing that the school is progressive. Technology is changing everything very quickly and schools need to embrace it to create more value for the students.

If you haven’t heard of khanacademy.org please go through this video and tell your students:
What works elsewhere will work here - One of the biggest problems in high school is bullying - to tackle that, create buddy and coach systems among students. Each student will have a buddy, and each senior student will coach a couple of junior students. Design activities around this system - it’ll help develop both team spirit and leadership qualities.
Parents are friends - well at least most of them. They care and they will help to improve anything and everything if they get the sense that they are in for the long run. Give them that confidence by involving them in development projects. You need to identify the parents you would like to work with and involve them deeply into your projects. If they are in for the long run, they will just volunteer and you will get good work done without any cost.
Develop a core team - like any other organization schools are going to be as good as the people running it. Develop a core team and build a strong culture bond between them - reinforce constantly that they are in the same team and reduce hierarchy. Be open and take care of your team. Recruit very carefully - a single rotten apple will destroy the culture. Review Zappos culture and how they sustain it.
Grow slowly - don’t be in a hurry to grow - focus on what is important and create a growth team who will work to grow the school in terms of infrastructure, branding and recruiting. This team should focus only on this and should collaborate with the top management. Give these people room to try out new things.
Put quality before profits - the world has changed and people know what you are rooting for. Concentrate to improve quality in every little aspect of the school. Right from food, clothing, learning material, people… everything. Create and share stories which show what you stand for. The profits WILL roll in.
Destroy “I know” - nobody knows anything. Ban the words or even the thoughts which start with “I know”. Teach everyone to use their heads and assess every situation, and act to solve the problem. If a problem is mentioned by anyone - don’t say “I know… we are working on it.” - start immediately and address it. If it needs to be discussed, discuss it. When you get into the “I know” mode - you tend to put things on the back burner. Do it now! Don’t design your processes in such a way that it doesn’t allow quick fixes.
Have fun - the most basic and most important of any work - if you aren’t having fun developing a school and you are not putting in those goofy ideas that make people notice you, don’t do it. Don’t run a school just for profits. That’s not unique - every other school is doing it. Schools are anyways going to be profitable - do some good stuff with the money - or hire people who want to.
Okay, sorry it’s 11 - the last idea is to try new ideas - no one knows what you will discover and suddenly that will become the norm.

Derek Sivers - Art of Profitability - 8 different models of...

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:14:09 -0500

Derek Sivers - Art of Profitability - 8 different models of profitability.
It’s a nice talk but the real value is at the end where he talks about the email confirmation which is sent to their customers when they buy a cd from their company. It’s goofy and you can read it here…

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.
Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

More here