Archive - June, 2007

iPhone Mania?

June 29, 2007 in blog, Marketing with 1 Comment

I wonder if I will be grilled for saying, “Americans are crazy”. But I have no choice but to feel that way (particularly for the last 6 hours). Reason: I have been following the iPhone release for that long. And all I can hear everyone and anyone talk about is the iPhone. There are long queues.

Waiting for the iPhone the iPhone WaitRobert Scoble, Kristopher
Photos credit: Gabe Rivera of Techmeme

TechCrunch is covering it. GigaOm has a series of posts ranging from comparisons between iPod and iPhone to speculates why Edge is not included in the iPhone. Seth learns a lesson from why Verizon turned down the iPhone. And Zooomr’s Kristopher is playing the host live on Ustream.tv. Robert Scoble is in line. And there are lots more.

In India, waiting in queue for a new gadget (or anything new for that matter) to come out is unheard of. Please correct me if I am wrong. And I find it amazing that people would go to such lengths to do this.

Steve Jobs must be so happy! And GigaOm says there is still 5 hours and 16 minutes left.

Activated Feedburner

June 29, 2007 in blog, Tips with 0 Comments

Finally got Feedburner activated here. I have found it an easier way to share feeds and add to a wide range of web based rss readers. So if you plan to subscribe to my blog, the link is on top of my right-side panel or click here – http://feeds.feedburner.com/ashed.

Tip: If you are trying to use an offline RSS reader like Mozilla Thunderbird or MS Office Outlook, you just need to use http://feeds.feedburner.com/ashed for Feed URL and the application should automatically detect the posts.

Happy reading!

Sputtr: Multi search in one

June 29, 2007 in Ideas, Web 2.0 with 0 Comments

It can be called “multi search in one”. But it really isn’t. Sputtr.com is a new search website that helps you search across 36 (as of today) different websites and search engines.

Sputtr Search Engine

Simple layout. A text box and a whole lot of buttons underneath. Each button corresponds to a website that you can search. It is quite simple and easy to understand. The last button lets you suggest a website to the Sputtr team to add to their list of sites.

They also have international sites – 7 of them now, including Chinese, Italian, German, Spanish, French and even UK English.

I love the idea. But the issue I am finding now is that I have to keep using the back button in the browser to search with any other search engine and that’s quite a pain. Even the “right click and open in new tab/window” won’t work. It would have been great if they have a “framed” version too. A toolbar with all these options would be a thriller.

But yes, if you like specialised search and don’t always rely on Google for everything, this may make a lot of sense, especially as your browser start page. You have all the options on that page.

Wishing good luck to the Sputtr team!

Poetry & Drawings

June 29, 2007 in blog with 0 Comments

There are wonderful people on the web and they have wonderful blogs. http://ohgimmeabreak.blogspot.com/ has some classic poetry. (For some reason, she has stopped posting for a while.)

The other one is in sketches. http://inktales.blogspot.com/

Love their creativity!

Positive Marketing

June 27, 2007 in Advertising, Marketing with 1 Comment

Seth Godin talks about Verizon’s rant against the iPhone. Well..it is a memo to Verizon employees on how the iPhone is not such a great phone and what they should know to possibly dissuade customers from getting the iPhone. Seth makes an interesting statement – “your criticism of the phone is also criticism of my judgment”.

Positive marketing means you focus on the pros of your product or service. It also means that the customer understands what stands out in your offering.

Negative marketing may mean harping on the bad points of your competitor – or just plain poking fun! But does it really help? It may just put off the customer and help tilt the scales in favour of the competitor.

Scoble wants to get three iPhones. Wow! But that’s exactly the problem (not Scoble getting three phones!). You see Apple has created such good hype over their latest offering – everyone wants it. And you putting some mud on it is not going to take off the sheen. You need to make yours shine better.

Security & the Buying Process

June 26, 2007 in Customer Service, Music with 0 Comments

I was looking for a guitar processor and decided to go for a used/refurbished model. My friend recommended Guitar Center (www.guitarcenter.com). I spent close to 12 hours researching what would be my best buy. I called the store finally to confirm availability. It was. But I ran into trouble because they said the shipping address and the billing address needs to be the same. So plans squashed.

Another google search landed me in Daddy’s Junky Music (www.daddys.com). Found my processor. Made the call. Again the same issue. But this time, the store clerk asked me to call Daddy’s corporate office and find out if something was possible. Well l did just that and they said it is quite possible to buy with separate billing and shipping address as long as I am able to validate the genuineness of card and card owner. Voila! I ordered my guitar processor and look forward to it.

Two similar situations. Two different approaches. It is good to know that stores are taking precautions to avoid credit card fraud. But when every other online store has some approval mechanism in place, why should you miss out? Security is a good thing. But it shouldn’t come in the way of the buying process. It should enable it.

Could it be possible that the Guitar Center store clerk did not know that his corporate office may have had a workaround?