Gadget Tips 2012: Agustus 2004

Minggu, 29 Agustus 2004

As I've Matured... (Humor)

I've learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is stalk them and hope they panic and give in...

I've learned that one good turn gets most of the blanket.

I've learned that no matter how much I care, some people are just jackasses.

I've learned that it takes years to build up trust, and it only takes suspicion, not proof, to destroy it.

I've learned that whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.

I've learned that you shouldn't compare yourself to others - they are more screwed up than you think.

I've learned that depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

I've learned that it is not what you wear; it is how you take it off.

I've learned that you can keep vomiting long after you think you're finished.

I've learned to not sweat the petty things, and not pet the sweaty things.

I've learned age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

I've learned that I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy it.

I've learned that we are responsible for what we do, unless we are celebrities.

I've learned that artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

I've learned that there is a fine line between genius and insanity.

I've learned that the people you care most about in life are taken from you too soon and all the

less important ones just never go away. And the real pains in the ass are permanent.

As I've Matured... (Humor)

Kamis, 26 Agustus 2004

Some regular websites I visit

A man is known by the company he keeps. Also, A man is known by the websites he visits frequently. I guess knowing the internet usage pattern of a person, and the site he visits regularly, one can judge or make a calculated profile of the person..

some of my fav sites:

Search

www.google.com

www.yahoo.com

www.ask.com

www.hotbot.com

www.howstuffworks.com

Emails:

www.www.com

www.indiatimes.com

www.hotmail.com

www.ameinfo.com

Internet News:

www.wired.com

www.internet.com

www.searchenginewatch.com

www.yahoo.com

News

www.msn.co.in

www.indiatimes.com

www.agencyfaqs.com

www.nytimes.com

www.ameinfo.com

www.khaleejtimes.com

On branding:

www.brandchannel.com

www.buildingbrands.com

Blogs:

www.stopdesign.com

www.blogger.com

www.blogskins.com

http://mycysphere.blogspot.com

Cricket

www.cricinfo.com

Music

www.raaga.com

www.smashitsusa.com

www.live365.com

Others

www.overture.com

www.workinghumor.com

www.instantchess.com

so much i could gather from my history cache.... any new sites, i get to know about, and i find interesting... i'll add it along...

Some regular websites I visit

Senin, 23 Agustus 2004

The road less traveled, a website less visited

Hi..

Internet is more like the real world. There are some places that many visitors go.. and some places, only a few know about. Most visit a particular place either on business, pleasure, or are related to the place, or maybe just passing by... same is the case with websites...If the place is popular destination, then infrastructure is good (all roads and travel routes lead there :))... and of course a lot of companies like to advertise their product or service in such a place...

...and there are some blogs/sites that are famous, and most that are not so famous... there are web logs/sites that many visit regularly... and there are many that no one ever comes in...

What makes a web page popular??... Well, it is a million dollar question... and if i knew the answer.. this page would be popular too :))... and of course, half this page would be immersed in banner ads,... and I too would have millions in my bank account.

Lets talk about Internet Marketing Strategies, and on website promotions.. What everyone are doing.. or claim to do.

First, what is the reason for people to use the Net for?

Casual Information

News, sport and entertainment

Research

Shopping

Email

Online applications

Downloads, etc... (Well, these are the reasons I can think of now... if I did miss out any thing particular.. please let me know...)

Second, how does one reach any site...

1. Referral - by word of mouth (i rate is prime as most of the sites i'm regular to, the URLs are given by people I know)

2. Online search engines, and directories

3. advt - from other medium (offline)

4. Advt. from other websites - incl. image ads, text links, etc

5. Emails/ newsletters etc

6. Typing some generic names directly on the http address field (like if you want to know more on Golf... type golf.com, etc)

Word of mouth - if there is any powerful advertising tool, it is by word of mouth. It is given to you by people you know, people who knows you, and most importantly it is interactive... hallmarks of a great advertising medium. It always helps to keep in touch with your regular visitors to the site - Newsletters, building community, testimonials, referrals (discount offers etc), and 'contacting' them offline...

Keeping your site close to the generic name possible... It pays to have a domain name that reflects your business or core values your website is going to project. It is very hard for people to memorize an unrelated URL. Some hallmarks for a good domain name are:

1. Try and keep a generic name or include a generic name in your domain name.. e.g. if you are having a website on selling used cars.. then "usedcars.com" could be an ideal name...

2. It is also better to have your brand name as the domain name... it helps in advertising and also in brand recall...

3. Keep the domain name short... maybe up to 9-11 characters (note: max length of a domain name can go up to 67 characters)

4. NO SPECIAL CHARACTERS (~!@#$%^&*) in your domain name... it is sure sign for typo error and will be a F#!@ ALL Idea

5.In case you do not get the name you desire... try the combination of adding plurals as an alternative name.

I guess I will leave the discussion for Search Engines and Online Advertising for another day... as it is a huuuuge subject and there are a lot of websites that discuss these topics in detail.. Take a peek at the stats on how the major search engines fare...

The following are the percentage of total searches for each of the major search engines;

Google - 36.8%

Yahoo! - 26.6%

AOL - 12.8%

MSN - 14.5%

Excite - 4.3%

Ask - 1.8%

infospace - 1.3%

lycos - 0.8%

Others - 1.1%

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

Did you know that "sex" is the most commonly looked up word in most of the search engines... So if you need more visitors to your site.. You know what to do... bring in Sex appeal..:)) Well, have to conclude that the Famous Marketing Strategy is fully justified here... that... "SEX SELLS."

The road less traveled, a website less visited

Selasa, 17 Agustus 2004

What's in a name.....

Hi,

Me kind of tied up for the past few days.... and also at the moment nothing much, interesting happening...

I'm not sure about the authenticity of the following message... it was fwd. to me by a cousin of mine... I found it an interesting read... hope you too enjoy it...:)

Adobe: This came from the name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.

Apple Computers: It was the favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobbs.He was three months late for filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 0'clock.

CISCO: It is not an acronym as popuraily believed.Its short for San Francisco.

Compaq: This name was formed by using COMp, for computer and PAQ to denote a small integral object.

Google: The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor; they received a cheque made out to 'Google'.

Hotmail: Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters "html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective uppercasing.

Hewlett Packard : Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.

Intel: Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company 'Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

Microsoft: Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.

Motorola: Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.

ORACLE: Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name for the company.

Sony: It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

SUN: Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the computer.

Apache: It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy'server -- thus, the name Apache

Jakarta (project from Apache): A project constituted by SUN and Apache to create a web server handling servlets and JSPs. Jakarta was name of the conference room at SUN where most of the meetings between SUN and Apache took place.

Tomcat: The servlet part of the Jakarta project. Tomcat was the code name for the JSDK 2.1 project inside SUN.

C: Dennis Ritchie improved on the B programming language and called it 'New B'.He later called it C. Earlier B was created by Ken Thompson as a revision of the Bon programming language (named after his wife Bonnie).

C++: Bjarne Stroustrup called his new language 'C with Classes' and then 'new C'. Because of which the original C began to be called 'old C' which was considered insulting to the C community. At this time Rick Mascitti suggested the name C++ as a successor to C.

Java: Originally called Oak by creator James Gosling, from the tree that stood outside his window, the programming team had to look for a substitute as there was some other language with the same name. Java was selected from a list of suggestions. It came from the name of the coffee that the programmers drank.

LG: Combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar.

Red Hat: Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone!

SAP: "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by 4 ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM.

SCO (UNIX): From Santa Cruz Operation. The company's office was in Santa Cruz.

UNIX: When Bell Labs pulled out of MULTICS (MULTiplexed Information and Computing System), which was originally a joint Bell/GE/MIT project, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs wrote a simpler version of the OS.They needed the OS to run the game Space War which was compiled under MULTICS.It was called UNICS - UNIplexed operating and Computing System by Brian Kernighan. It was later shortened to UNIX.

Xerox: The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say `dry' (as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying).The Greek root `xer' means dry.

Yahoo!: The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book 'Gulliver's Travels'. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.

....now you know, from where most of the 'inspiration' comes to create a brand name.... and imagine many who pay the 'consultants' all the monies to come up with a good name for their product or service... ahem:)

C ya... take care

What's in a name.....

Rabu, 11 Agustus 2004

Games people played

Last couple of days, my Net connection was down; I was lazing around and playing some computer games... It reminded me of my early days of introduction to computers. It was late 80's (remember, India was a late- entrant into the IT field) and my college computer courses included intro to DOS environment, BASIC, DBASE, some other stuff like WordStar, AutoCAD, C, and intro to UNIX environment etc.. Programming was kind of bore for me like -

cd:\> basic

CD\BASIC:\> qb

INPUT

PRINT

DIM

FOR...NEXT

STEP

GOTO....... 80

IF...THEN

COLOR 00

LOOP

CLS

It was during that time I got hooked to computer games - PACMAN was my fav., then came PARATROOPER, there was also game called as SNAKE (or was it Centipede.. it

was a game where the snake grows each time you eat)... then was BRICKS... DIGGER, and the then ever-popular DAVE.

The graphics of WOLF 3D was amazing for me... and so was PRINCE (DOS version)... I

thought that the graphics I saw in games like GOLF, CAR RACING, ALLEY CAT, MARIO, FLIGHT SIMULATOR, were to be the end point of the games software… that made me think hey, can we go any farther?

Soon my interest for the games was over.... and after few years, around 1994 I saw this game called Age of Empires... well, graphics and gaming had come a looong way... but by then I was bitten by another bug that was prevalent in India... the INTERNET

Looking back, today, even though there are Nintendos, and Playstations around... give me the good ol' games... i liked them.... and I like them even better now :)

Games people played

Minggu, 08 Agustus 2004

SMS wrks: A shrt 'n swt strategy

While new business will certainly be created in wireless space, under the present arrangements, the most obvious area in which SMS may be useful to a wide range of companies is in marketing and promotion.

Studies conducted have discovered a very ready acceptance of advertising and promotion making use of the mobile. Reviewing the findings, found that although advertising in this medium was expected to have the same effect as direct mail, it already has a much higher response rate at a much lower cost per head. This high success rate is due to a combination of attractive qualities that text messaging posseses for its audiences.

Immersive: SMS messaging has an interactive quality that younger users find particularly attractive. Personalized SMS messages, particularly those that are delivered in response to a SMS request, involve users in an interactive experience familiar to and desired by those with a knowledge of the online world.
Freedom from clutter: For the moment, clutter has not particularly afflicted this area. Advertising messages tend to be less common than in other media and importantly tend to remain highly pertinent to the mobile experience, alerting users to such things as new rates or other offers of particular and immediate relevance.
High recognition: High ad recall
WOW factor: As a spin-off from the lack of clutter in this area, messages maintain a degree of surprise. Not yet inured to being communicated with in this manner, users have a higher degree of acceptance.
Viral marketing: Due to a combination of the two factors above, the proliferation of messages through viral means is an appreciable contributor to the effectiveness of campaigns. As mobiles are habitually used for social communication, the possibility of enhancing the effectiveness of messages via communities of interest remains strong. Users often interact with their mobiles
while with groups of friends 'showing off' any attractive new content.
Communication at point of purchase (with GPS): The fact that advertising is received on mobile personal devices means that the audience can, in theory, be located right next to sales points.

All of these factors play particularly well for the youth, where the mobility and social interaction around technology are highly desirable.

Downside of SMS is realisation per subscriber has actually dropped average revenue per user (ARPU)

The Golden Rules of SMS advertising

To ensure attitudes to text advertising and promotions remain positive, those marketing in the wireless space must ensure that:

» Messages include value-added elements: Among an age group that has become used to interactivity, successful messages will be those that invite participation and response.
» Information received is highly accurately targeted: The high level of acceptance of text advertising and promotion relates intimately to the relevance of products and services promoted.
» Facilitate easy opt-out: Maintaining control of the flow of messages to a mobile device is perceived as highly important by users.

An Eye on the Future?

Such services as General Packet Radio System (GPRS) will not include SMS facility, though they will include more sophisticated messaging services. But that does not mean that SMS will be disappearing in the short-term. SMS services are likely to remain popular, if they continues to grow at the present rate.
But even given the obvious end-point for SMS as we know it, it is still essential for businesses to enter the fray, since those who have come to understand the possibilities of mobile, non-voice communication will be the best place to lead developments in forthcoming GPRS, Enhanced Data GSM Environment (EDGE) and other imminent mobile technologies.
Perhaps, the most important aspect of the rise of SMS technology to recall is the way in which the developers of the technology were not necessarily best placed to say exactly how it will be used. As we move more and more towards providing tools for creating entertainment rather than creating content, it seems increasingly necessary to follow the consumers demand very carefully. And the best way to do this, right now, is from within the SMS space.

On the other hand, mobile games have huge advantages associated with being portable. Given the restrictions, mobile games must create what one game firm has dubbed 'immersion by imagination'. In some territories, branded gaming has emerged, its novelty proving more than enough compensation for the low-bandwidth styles.

_Santosh

SMS wrks: A shrt 'n swt strategy

Selasa, 03 Agustus 2004

Brand Valuation - InterBrand

hi,

I haven’t been blogging for a while now... been busy...keep it a secret.. I’ve been trying to find the source of energy in the body...i mean there should be something like the CMOS battery in our body.. that would be the source of energy.

Well, did not make much leeway.. but I’m sure that very soon I will find out the source..

I was reading the other day, a small essay on brand strength by Interbrand... well, it is not perfect,,, but will give a layman a fair idea on brand value..

Brand Valuation: The seven components of brand strength

The Interbrand model of brand strength - part of their valuation methodology - is a useful framework to consider the performance of your own brand. Reflect on these seven points and you should get a better sense of the strength of your own brand, as well as some ideas on how to move forward…

The seven components of brand strength in the Interbrand valuation model are:

Market: 10% of brand strength. Brands in markets where consumer preferences are more enduring would score higher. So for example, a food brand or detergent brand would score higher than a perfume or clothing brand, because these latter categories are more susceptible to the swings of consumer preference.

Stability: 15% of brand strength. Long established brands in any market would normally score higher, because of the depth of loyalty they command. So for example: Rolls Royce would score higher than Lexus.

Leadership: 25% of brand strength. A market leader is more valuable: being a dominant force and having strong market share matters. So for example on this score it is likely that the Coca-Cola brand would out-perform Pepsi on a global basis.

Profit trend: 10% of brand strength. The long-term profit trend of the brand is an important measure of its ability to remain contemporary and relevant to consumers, according to Interbrand.

Support: 10% of brand strength. Brands which receive consistent investment and focused support usually have a much stronger franchise, but the quality of this support is as important as the quantity.

Geographic spread: 25% of brand strength. Brands that have proven international acceptance and appeal are inherently stronger than regional brands or national brands, as they are less susceptible to competitive attack and therefore are more stable assets.

Protection: 5% of brand strength. Securing full protection for the brand under international trademark and copyright law is the final component of brand strength in the Interbrand model.

This model is not perfect, for example several of the components have a built in preference for older brands and so may not give adequate recognition to the value of newer brands such as Amazon or Starbucks.

Take care... ciao..

_Santosh