Random Note - Why Write, Just Type!

These days the only time I wield the pen is to sign cheques!!

I had quite a lousy hand-writing which affected quite a few grades in school and college! In fact, I am surprised how I ever passed some of my engineering papers. By the time I finished scribbling on the last ream of paper, it was illegible to even me!!

Anyways am happy, I don't have to wield the pen any more. On MS Word, finally I have caught up with some of my more calligraphically gifted school friends:-)

Hopefully, in another couple of years, with speech recognition software getting better, my slow typing speed will also cease to be a handicap...

Maybe finally the thinking > typing > writing...

I wonder of what use are the hand-writing sessions that my 4 year old son Neo under-takes...He will learn wriitng only to never use it in later life...Why don't schools teach typing instead. Make it compulsory...

And why don't we teach better thinking tools in schools. We need better thinkers in larger numbers today, far more than guys with great hand-writing....

Joshi Saheb, Mudra and Dumbistaan2

I am a double amateur when it comes to appreciating music! But the songs of Taare Zameen Par and in particular the lyrics by Prasoon Joshi have been a constant earworm* for me this month!

The Filmfare award to him for best lyrics(for Maa)is well deserved. Though my favourite is 'Kholo kholo darwaze...' A matter of pride for the advertising industry...Congratulations Joshi Saheb! I am your admirer...(no I don't want a job in McCann planning...LOL)

Away from the glitz of Bollywood, Mudra won an award for Continuous Innovation and HR Strategy at Work by the World HRD Congress! Though it's a little difficult to tell from the HRD's pedestrian web-site and the India-centricity of the awards(in 2006)how global they really are!

But for an industry never really known for it's HR friendliness forget HR innovation this is good news! I hope others get inspired.

And finally I had to reproduce this e-mail sent by a friend of mine(inhabitant of youngistaan)...

hey (insert my name)....finally caught it on youtube...i watched it...n then i watched it again thinkin that maybe i'm slow n maybe i missed the point in the ad....but this defintely is one of the crappier ads SRK has done and lil ranbir is getting quite a reputation for behaving nonsensical...deepika looks way better in anythin else that i've seen her in...she looks like just another girl in this ad...all she hadta do was stand n look pretty but cudnt manage that here...they shud've gotten the same make up artist they used in OSO!!!! lines are drab...idea is moronic...acting is so-so...actually everything about this ad is crap...also read the interview by XYZ of JWT...XYZ may be able to sell the interview to a few weak minds but definitely won't sell any pepsi with this strategy...this calls for a change of agency, people!!!!

Hey guys...I didn't make that up:-)

*Earworms is a term for a portion of a song or other musical material that becomes "stuck" in a person's "head" or repeats against one's will within one's mind...Check wikipedia for more details here

Dil Peechha Karta Hai Dil Ka....

Watch the video here!
Tere ishq mein apni manzil ka...thus goes the new viral video from SimplyMarry.com! Watch it here on FireandIce.co.in

Simple, clean, hummable track with cute animation - dil karta hai forward karene ka... Ab yeh 'Youngistaan Hai Meri Jaan!'

The Feminisation of the Internet

Meraj forwarded me this link from NYT. Thanks Meraj, somehow it feels you still work for me(and that too without pay..LOL). It's an article of how more girls than boys are creating content on/for the web!!

Come to think of it there are more and more women creating content on the web or are more conversant with technology in India as well. The other thing is many of the content-creating guys have a strong feminine side to them(including you Meraj and me:-)

Some key points from the article...
1. Among the youngest Internet users, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

2. A study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35% of girls compared with 20% of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 % of girls compared with 22% of boys).

3. Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17). Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely as girls to post video files.

4. A Pew study published in 2005 also found that teenage girls were the primary content creators — but the gender gap for blogging, in particular, has widened. The findings have implications beyond blogging, according to Pew, because bloggers are “much more likely to engage in other content-creating activities than nonblogging teens".

It's interesting. The idea that the gender of the world wide web might be changing over time...Mental Bookmark.

Picture Source : www.jupiterimages.com

The Danger of Getting Dooced!!

Came across this word - Dooced at the Urban Dictionary

dooced : Getting fired because of something that you wrote in your blog.

"Blogger Heather B. Armstrong coined the phrase in 2002, after she was fired from her Web design job for writing about work and colleagues on her blog, Dooce.com" (Source: Yahoo.com)

Last October, Delta Air Lines flight attendant Ellen Simonetti was fired, she said, for what her supervisor called a misuse of uniform. Simonetti had posted on her personal blog, Queen of Sky (now called Diary of a Fired Flight Attendant), pictures of herself, in her uniform, on an empty plane. Her blog also contained thinly veiled work stories.
(Yahoo! News)

Thank God for low internet usage and lower blog readership in India!! LOL
Picture Source : www.blogwriteforceos.com

Youngistaan - Quite Dumbistaan

Saw the new Pepsi film on air. It's been talked about in ET and agencyfaqs

I found it quite dumbistaan. Though, my wife says am too old to evaluate 'youngistaan':-(

SRK is wasted and frankly as Deepika's bade bhaiyya, in the immediate aftermath of the sizzling pairing with her in Om Shanti Om is a bit off-putting!!

Ranbir looks stupid as always! But maybe, it's just me and my blogistaan that thinks like this...

And yes, one more thing! For a brand that's so Youngistaan and all that, it forgot to upload the TVC on either agencyfaqs or youtube-istaan!! LOL

The Great Pink Stink

This day, last year had written this post.
It's Valentine's again & pink is haunting like a ghost!

Roses & hearts & Archies are back with a vengeance.
Painting malls, pubs, skylines, all the Bandra fence!

Raju Srivastava on Radio, was good in cameo parts.
Annoying as hell he is as the new ambassador of hearts!

Diamond talk is the new topic of the week/day.
As if they are unripe Alphonsoes sold in May!

Dr. Mallaya launched a vodka coloured PINK.
Cars, condoms, caviar marketing - all blushing in sync!

Raj Saheb, if you are feeling out of work.
North Indians ko chhodiye, focus on these jerk(s)!

Akhha India is threatened by love-virus PINK.
Somebody please help harpic this new urban stink!

Tip: Buy your roses tomorrow, it's not a big deal.
Your Valentine will be livid, but you will get a great deal!!

Happy Valentine's Day:-)

What do the advertisers get in exchange4media?

Well above is the screen grap of exchange4media...Since there is hardly any content on this page, I have never really bothered to look at any of the ads...

I think the scientific term for this is inattentive blindness:-)

Dainik Jagran, Vanita, Radio One, Radio Dhamaal, Big FM, Dainik Bhaskar, Jagran Solutions, Sahara One, Radio Mirchi, Outlook - that's some 10 brands trying to get my in-attention...LOL

Clutter is as bad in virtual real estate as in the real world!

I feel it's the worst designed media web-site...But maybe exchange4media has high-resolution retinal scan to measure effectiveness and eyeball-enthusiasm:-)

Biztech2.0 - New Kid on the Block

Few days ago, exchange4media reported the launch of Biztech2TV. You can read the write-up here...

- It's a Web18 venture. BiztechTV gives TV-style programming on the Internet!

- Biztech2.0 promises incisive, crisp and business-centered content, offering business technology decision makers never-before-seen videos(their claim), in addition to News, Features, Interviews, Reviews, Case Studies, White Papers and more.

Of course with the f***ed up broadband access I have through the reliance data card, it was impossible to download any video!!

This looks like a media magazine meets youtube meets TV meets reportage.... Hope they live up to the promise/ hype!

Brand Blogs - Hat Na Re

Read this write-up in DNAindia on branded cartoon characters.

- Mumbai-based Phonethics is one firm which is tapping into the new opportunity. It has developed around 20 characters and is licensing them to various brands. (But my 7 min minute google-n-yahoo searches couldn't get me the web-site). Help!

- Sometime back, when Sony introduced Chaalbaz No.1, it used Mian Fekoo, a character based on a street poet, from Phonethics. Content in the form of videos, experiences and ideas were then posted on a blog, where nearly 25,000 hits were generated.

- Other characters include Farmao Jaan, Mr. Madhuri and Bhakt Harvakt. All of them have certain unique traits and mannerisms. Phonethics is now planning to create around 150 such characters!! Must say, they look and sound quite kewl!

- Phonethics clients include Tata Motors, Sony Entertainment Television and Nokia. Nokia is also planning to have a similar strategy for the launch of N82 and has roped in the company to design a character!

I feel these characters are important to mainstream digital platforms and offerings. Used well, they can demystify technology.

Technology brands need to hand-hold the consumers (early and late majority) and educate them a lot. And these characters can help do that!

Tera Kya Hoga Johnny

Was reading Sudhir Mishra's post on the making of 'Khoya Khoya Chand'. You can read it on passionforcinema.com

Tucked at the bottom is this small reference to his forthcoming movie - 'Tera Kya Hoga Johnny' - a film about three people who wonder what’s going to happen to Johnny, this little street kid who sells coffee on the road.

He wonders what’s going to happen to them. They are all going haywire.

It’s about Bombay now. It’s also interesting to capture this transitory phase in Bombay. How it’s changing. The whole city is changing, in terms of architecture, the spaces. How they are being occupied by one kind of thing – malls, offices, commercial complexes.

The city is being taken over and in this transitory phase there’s this little kid who sells coffee.

Some time back, I had had similar thots on/about Bandra. How the quiet, quaint bylanes have been taken over by the builder lobby. Small cottages being razed to make way for ugly(mostly), glass-n-chrome highrises!

Steel over sensibility, aggressive architecture over aesthetics, business clamour over creative calm...Tujhe Kya Ho Gaya Bandra:-(

The Size of Thoughts

I had/have a book by this name. By Nicholson Baker - a contemporary American novelist, whose writings focus on minute inspection of the narrator's stream of thought.

Baker is difficult to follow. Past attempts have been bouncers. But I love this phrase - the size of thoughts...

So, I decided to compile 10 Size of Thoughts Thots:-)

1. Very often, my immediate pressing work requires very small sized thoughts. Nano thoughts. Sometimes, no thoughts at all.

2. If we are satisfied with mid-sized thoughts, that's all we will ever have!

3. The company we keep, affects the size of our thoughts. Some people, organisations just shrink the size of your thoughts! Stay away from them...

4. Children have a habit of why-chaining(aisa kyun hota hai) everything! Their constant company can increase both the size and the shape of one's thoughts!

5. One person can change the size of thoughts of a country, an industry - Gandhi, Ratan Tata!

6. The more we stay with a problem, the more the size of our thoughts increase!

7. In advertising, who has the thought/ or sometimes the department of thought determines the size of thought:-)

8. Has constant blogging increased the size of my thoughts?! Decreased the size of my thoughts?

9. Do you only wonder about the size of thoughts related to work? What about the size of thoughts outside of work? For a social cause, any cause...

10. Have you noticed how News TV is squeezing the size of our thoughts?

I don't know whether it's making much sense...But I enjoyed the shape of these thots if not their size:-)