My Ordeal when my bike crashed

Yesterday, late in the evening when I was returning home, right in the middle of traffic my bike just broke down. It has been happening with me for the past couple of days, so I was cautious enough to have the tools right with me to fix my bike.

There has been a problem with Airfilter, I tried to fix was in vain, my local mechanic fixed it up once.

From Koyambedu Bus terminus to AnnaNagar West, I kept dragging my Bike, it was good exercise , lots of things came in to mind, one of which was

Did I ever hurt any body in life
Did I do some thing bad in my previous life
Did I hurt my dog, Did I hurt my X girl friends
Did I make my Wife cry, My kid Cry

that I am repenting, This kind of realization happens when you are miserable

At last they found out that, there was no petrol, Yeah I can see lot of gleam on the faces. BTW my bike was in Main and not in reserve, after my  bike broke down I changed it to reserve, but never had the intention to check petrol, because my reserve was one and half liter, The Petrol tap was the culprit.

Technorati Tags: bike, crash, ordeal, petrol, culprit

Car Owners Pride – Visual Add on

Why do you need security for your cars?
You don’t need them any more, your neighbors will do that job for you.

Wonderful  Ad, executed by Agency: Publicis Graffiti, Argentina
Director General Creativo: Cheche
Creative Directors: Diego Medvedocky, Lisandro Grandal
Copywriter: Diego Cavalli
Art Director: Julián Mizrahi
Account Manager: Valeria Pulice

Courtesy : Adsof theworld.com

I will be trying to get this Sun Protectors very soon from Abroad, If not available in India, I will print this one on my own and will show off

Technorati Tags: car, sun protector, ads, advertisement, adagency

Passion down to the pyramid

Working is important, but with passion is even more important, because that is one which shows the right path to reach for your goal in life (career).
successful product/service have passionate users and passionate contributors.

What happens when the passion doesn’t drive down the pyramid?
There is a solid example right on my blog.
If you have noticed, few posts of mine have attracted more views because of problems which the end user faces/faced (Castrol Bike Zone). The product Manager had the passion, but failed to communicate to the people who are actually delivering the service/product.

What is the fix?
When you develop a product, you become the rightful owner of the product (so called the brain child of yours), What about others who have worked along with you. Most of the time you as a Product Manager don’t give the feeling of product ownership to every individual who worked with you (you could have observed this on a team meeting, your team members would have been least bothered about what you say) If are passionate enough, spread the words, speak, give them freedom, make them the rightful owner of the respective part of the product.

If you have observed the pyramid image, I had separated the top portion, Which is You, who have to deliver the same passion down the line, meaning spread the work with your team mates (team work is the word, fight for the customer and not for your owner), if you felt the customer will be happy for a small price which you can bear, do it.
Have this as your work culture and I am sure nothing will go wrong. End of the day what you provide is user experience and what you learn.

Technorati Tags: passion, pyramid, passionate, teamwork, ownership

Celebrating Children’s day with Fever

From Yesterday, my son had a running temperature and I had booked for consultation with a pediatrician this morning. This guys wakes up early this morning says “I need to go to school, it is children’s day and it is party time”

I had to cancel the consultation this morning, skipped my proper breakfast, didn’t bring lunch to office and I dropped him @ school.

The tough part which I faced apart for my Son, My car broke down
yesterday, My Bike broke down yesterday evening, lucky was able to fix
the bike, it is still raining in chennai, If I have to take my son to
doctor, I have to take an Autoricksaw if it rains.

Things which I could have done

1. Say no to school, take him to doctor
2. if he refuses to visit the doctor, spank him and straighten up things inspite of fever.
3. Let him go to school (which I currently did)

 This spoilt brat of mine has a bad attitude, he keeps cribing about the same subject “that I didn’t leave him to school” and make our life (me and my wife)  miserable for the rest of the day.

My question to parents is that, What would you have done, if  you were in my shoes?

I believe parents at Jambav can also help me out on this

currently I had made another booking for him to visit the doctor this evening.

My only feeling is that, Am I spoiling this little brat of mine, by allowing him to do things on his will.

Technorati Tags: brat, children, jambav, fever, childrensday, childrens day, pediatrician, school, spank

Proactive Castrol BikeZone MSF Manager

Mr. Baskaran
MSF Manager Castrol BikeZone

First Things First: I would like to appreciate the proactiveness of Castrol BikeZone MSF Manager, actually I was quiet surprised, I didn’t expect it to be so soon, He came down to my office at velachery on rainy afternoon, just to address the procedures what they follow at Castrol BikeZone and what actually went wrong in my case, This just reminded me  of SouthWest Airline, where the CEO or chairman would actually travel in the flight just to get the feel of the customers,  Mr. Baskaran, just did the same thing, I could feel the passion for his brain Child (Castrol BikeZone)
here is where I had blogged before BikeZone – Not your usual Service Center
I made my point very straight, just by penalizing the members of the AnnaNagar BikeZone team is not going to help him out and nor the customers. By the way if you had any complaints, when you receive your invoice you could check for an email id to report your queries.

Mr. Baskaran
Castrol BikeZone MSF Manager
Mobile: 9884400621, email: p_baskaran@castrol.co.in

BikeZone seems to be equipped, not sure whether the assurance/promise will be kept. Will try one more time to service my bike.
Will even blog how was the service.

Castrol BikeZone seems to enjoy the publicity thru my blog (you guys woe me), one thing which I would like to highlight, If people are responding even for the bad service remember that you are actually cared and not ignored.

The above graph is ideal where you can actually talk to your customers, take feedback and fix the same.

Technorati Tags: customer service, customer, service, customer relationship, bad customer service, Bike Zone, Castrol, Castrol Bike Zone, Bikers, Bike, quality of service, bikezone, chennai, india

What is Site24X7 beta

Do you have a website?
And if your service provider never cares to provide you a site availability report, here is the magical tool which does the following capabilities

1) monitors the URL
2) checks for a supplied keywords on your site for eg any important keyword on your content, there are 2 uses of this

a) to check whether the site is been hacked
b) if your content is database driven the words are checked, hence to ensure your website database is working perfectly

3) Allows you follow a sequence of page tracking on your site
4) Alerts through email, provides with additional email fields to alert your service provider or your friend or boss
5) provides you excellent graphical report of Availability and Response time history
6) you can have your alerts through SMS
7) All this for Free

So get started, Register now and get your sites monitored for Free.

What is Site24X7 beta?
Site 24X7 beta is a URL monitoring tool, i.e a website monitoring tool to check for Availability

Wonderful tool for the network and system administrators, if they had to monitor their company website.
Opmanager- Network monitoring software too, has this feature, so Network administrators can also use the URL monitor feature available with Opmanager

Technorati Tags: url monitor, network administrator, system administrator, adventnet, opmanager, site24X7, monitoring, website, availability, response time,

World Usability Day 2006

Satyam Computers is the main sponsor for this event
If you are an usability engineer or any thing to do with usability in India and would like to participate, please register, as the last date is 13th of November 2006
the event is on 14th of November 2006.
Hope to catch you guys/gals out there.

Technorati Tags: usability, event, satyam, chennai, india

Royalty Free & Rights Managed Images (getty Images)

What is the difference between Royalty Free and Rights Managed?
I had asked the same with Getty Images (an Indian representative company in India) answered me as
Royalty Free Images
are the ones have a fixed price and can be used as many times you want irrespective of the media (web, Print, TV etc)
Rights Managed
are the ones which they offer for a price and there is constrained period, you may have to renew the rights if you wish to have them used on a media. some times the media can just be one (web or print or TV or others)

My only question is Why are the cost so high when compared with http://SXU.hu

Technorati Tags: getty Images, Images, copyright, royalty, rights managed

Mudleggers from the roads of Chennai

You have heard of Woodland Shoes, but they are not made of wood, but a new fashion trendsetter in Chennai brings “Mudleggers” from the Roads of Chennai, They are real to have mud, and this shoes is not for the faint at heart.



This is how the road was

The whole thing happened because of the rain in chennai on November 1st early morning while crossing guindy Industrial estate, the road is made of mud (kacha road) some anonymous agency has dumped huge loads of mud on the roads just to faciliate the commuters, but it was my bad luck that I had cross this way.
Thank you guys Three cheers for bright Ideas.

Technorati Tags: mudleggers, chennai, roads, rain, fashion, trendsetter