Surprise me!

People love positive surprises. They feel pampered, special when something\someone amazes them. It is surprise that make people travel across the world to visit different places to see different culture, nature or history. Creative advertisements surprise people and we tend to remember those product\services more whose story surprises us. Discounts are also a form of positive surprise (omg, 30% discount on my favorite clothing!) that make people flock to shops. Touch-screen computers are surprising people that computers can be so easy to handle; hence they are and will be so popular. A easy to use product feature surprise you every time you use it and forces you stay longer with that product.
It is beyond doubt that pleasant surprises works wonder for relationships.
So create surprises and your customer will surprise you back with their warmth and their prolonged association.
Did you surprise someone today? 

Photo credit Tetsumo

Enjoy!

Whatever you are doing, whichever field you are in, enjoyment should be your highest priority. This applies to relations, work, your future plans, your journeys etc. When we are happy:
1. We give our best.
2. We spread happiness around and believe me true happy state of mind is contagious.
3. And above all you are happy. Isn’t life all about happiness?


If you are not happy with your current state then keep looking for happiness. As Steve jobs has said “..like all matters of heart, you will know when you’ll find it”. Love, enjoyment and happiness are closely linked with each other. Find what you love, you will enjoy if you are working on your love and this enjoyment will give you blissful happiness.
This post is triggered when I saw one of yanni’s show. All the musicians were literally enjoying to the hilt and that enjoyment is contagious enough to spread happiness to audiences.
If you are not enjoying it, then it’s not worth it.

Given a chance

I have this hidden wish that I want to be a truck driver for few weeks. So many I times I caught myself wishing, “given a chance I want to be truck driver”. Nearly all of us are stuck in vicious ‘chance’ circle and find ourselves saying:
Given a chance I want to leave this job and move to another field.
Given a chance I want to start my company.
Given a chance I want to date that girl.
Given a chance I want to go to Himalayas.
Given a chance I want to live more nomadic life.
Given I chance I want to visit xyz place.
Given a chance…….Ok, cut the crap. No one will bring your wish on platter and thrust upon you to enjoy it. If you really desire something then work towards it and doesn’t leave it for chance.
Get going.

Breakfast at hospital

My daily routine breakfast joint was closed today morning. I was on my weekend bike ride so thought of stopping at one hospital. Why hospital? I don’t know, to be very frank. I have seen that hospital many a times during my various journeys and some light lit in my mind today that let’s try breakfast at that hospital today. I’ve seen that good hospital have average cafeteria and I was looking for some change (that’s the thing I hunt for everyday).

I entered the hospital and was greeted by cool air-conditioned breeze. Outside it was hot and just about right temperature inside made the first killer impression on me. Decor of the cafeteria was really good with well spaced tables. Chairs and tables are light green and white (sorry am not too fanatic about colors so they might be some shade of green or some shade or cream\white) with few well trimmed plants lined on one side. Place was spic and so are the clothes of serving staff. Clothing of staff was not mundane; it was some pleasant flowery shirt with blue (that one you can guess) pants. Prices were pretty reasonable and quality of food was remarkable. I never expected this quality of food from a hospital cafeteria so it was very pleasant surprise. Entire staff was of very happy demeanor and people will really require that if they are in hospital. So overall it was awesome experience. I’m happy that my mundane breakfast joint was closed today.

Sometime I wonder that if one hospital cafeteria can give you such a good foodie cum good ambience experience why can’t the restaurant that are in the business specifically for food and ambience?

My tuppence for Google Finance and Google AdSense

I was just submerged into my weekly dose of new info on my portfolio of stocks on Goggle Finance when I noted a few things:

1. When I am watching trend or reading info on my airlines stocks Google AdSense is displaying advertisement of online travel ticket portal. Obviously if someone is interested in airlines stock that doesn’t mean that he is interested in traveling. This space can be use for more effective Ads.

2. When I am on Portfolio-related news page, Google finance shows me my portfolio stocks by their stock exchange numbers (like 530073) and not stock names (like xyz Ltd). This is not user friendly. I can’t map any company news to action on that company’s stock as they are just numbers and like many other mortals am bad at remembering so many 6 digits company stock exchange numbers. If I have some news about company xyz then I have to go to my portfolio and check what happened to company xyz stock post that news. Instead on these vanilla numbers Google should display company names here.

3. The info displayed on Portfolio-related news page is redundant. ‘Recent quotes’ and ‘my portfolio’ section is showing same quotes as I just visited my portfolio. As people generally focus on their portfolio only, the info shown in these 2 sections will nearly always be redundant. Of-course Google can check if info for both these sections is same it can eliminate info from ‘Recent quotes’ section and use that space for something more fruitful, may be some more space for one more ad.

Am sure that Google folks are intelligent enough to mine web for feedback\ideas related to their products and soon they will give consideration to my tuppence as well.

101 blog templates that are not for me

As soon as I started writing blog I realised that blog presentation must be reader friendly. No doubt, content of blog is the king but along with content if blog is presentable enough to read then it’s like you can have your cake and eat it too. By presentable blog I mean that blog should not be very flashy, must have good font and colour combination, and soothing background settings. (I am not writing about how to make blog presentable so I won’t delve further into it. Google already shows millions of site on this topic). So to make my blog presentable I started looking for a suitable template.

Google nearly have answer to all my queries (or at least direct me to the right answer). ‘Blog template’ search gave me millions of results back. I scanned through 8-10 websites to find the template I was looking for but all the templates that I saw were like commodity/goods and presented no customisation to me. The blog template that I want should be according to my needs and not according to anyone else’s whims and fancies. I feel blog template is highly subjective to individual’s needs and desires. You just can’t pick and use some flowery/sunset/green/historical/random-coloured template for your blog. If you are serious blogger then you blog is your signature and you can’t design your signature on someone else’s wish. So I discarded hundreds of templates as they didn't suit my style. So here comes this idea.

Why can’t we make a web based 'blog template creator' application. Any blog template basically is some flavour or permutation of font, colour, columns, boxes, background and image (please point out in case I missed something). Application will give people freedom to arrange these flavours according to their wish. Seems like a very simple thing but this can lead to customer delight and give people's blog a unique identity. Currently some people are charging 100s of dollars just to make a blog template that suits your persona. Once this 'blog template creator' application is launched people will throng to try it out. This application will be amongst the best example of tailor made service given to customer.

Image: wordle

Listen Marketers: I am all yours!!

I go to gym quite often, though not as often as I wish. This idea popped up when I was running on a treadmill. I run for nearly half an hour on an average and don’t have anything to do that entire duration but to stare at increasing LED number on a black background screen. Advertiser and marketers struggle for audience attention for few seconds on various media. They have got customers in gym for hours but they have not exploited this avenue.

Ok, gist is machines in gym has to be made more intelligent (more technically advanced) so that they can understand who is working out on them and what he is interested in and show them that very thing.
Current version 15 inches LED screen in gym can be turned into more advanced display like computer screens, better if they are touch screens so that interaction can be better. These machines can be connected to web where an online application can monitor which user is currently working out so that it can display user specific advertisements. Machines can get to know about user info either through users’ memory stick or by extracting info from users’ mobile phones. These days most of the folks have GPRS/3G phones so it won’t be very difficult for machines to interact with phone to get the info. Once this connection is established then it’s like any other media, but with better attention span, where user is yours and you can engage him by various measures.

So marketers/gym equipment makers there lies an unexplored opportunity where First-mover advantage will surely be a huge business opportunity.

**this is just a high level idea. Implementation details like which economical computer screen (plus processor) need to be put on machines that can withstand gym’s environment, how to connect machines to mobile phone, which medium (cable, WiFi, WiMax) can be used by machines to connect with application, how the application will look like and what all features it will have, etc can be easily handled with an meticulous plan. Nearly all of these feature are already implemented in parts in various places they just need to be mashed to cater to our need.

Photo credit Chris Makarsky