What would 4 KG of old books fetch?

You must be thinking what kind of post is this with this type of title.

My son was gaga over a week about the thing that school is offering notebooks for the weight of old books, Initially I ignored, then thought,  they are giving it to some school children who can’t afford to buy books.

For 4 KGS of old books, my son was offered a Classmate 180 pages note and a nice Classmate pencil.

It is an awesome marketing effort by  ITC “Classmate books” to enter each house of Chinmaya Annagar School students.

I still wonder, how Schools allow these kinds of activity. Earlier they resorted to buy books, by sharing pamphlets, at times forced us to buy the same book as we had two children studying in the same school.  Phew, fed up with these activities.  What are they trying to set in to these innocent young minds?

classtmate marketing @Chinmaya Vidyalaya Annanagar

Why set top box implementation in hurry?

Probably we are busy, our children want to watch Cartoon channel, Ladies don’t want to miss the never-ending saga.

There are a lot of projects which are moving in snail pace, but this process is with a deadline.

The worst part of these paid channels is that we continue to watch them with all the advertisements. Oh, OK HBO has new paid channels which boast of with no advertisements. Any more?

Earlier a lot of companies where making money, now the Government has a large share I guess in terms of taxes. Phew.

dish antenna

Maruti rating has got to do with JD Power

For a month I have been researching on buying a new hatchback, had a Mahindra Renault Logan petrol GLX for 2 and half years and finally gave up on Mahindra’s marketing strategies of reducing the pricing of car. Imagine what happens to early adopters is a big middle finger.

My criteria was responsive, economical, spacious for 2 adults and 2 kids, good mileage and little occupy little space on parking.

Cars I had in mind where, Hyundai i10, Hyundai i20, Fiat Punto, Chevy Spark with gas, Maruti Alto, Maruti wagon R, Maruti Ritz and Maruti A-star.

The real battle was between Chevy Spark with gas and Maruti A-Star Vxi.

No rants out here. Maruti A-Star finally won my family’s heart, and I was happy that I did have to shell out much on the accessories. The deal had sun film control, PU steering grip, PU car seats, Car body cover, Pricol Remote locking and under chassis painting.

PU – imitation leather.

Finally had to give the feed back when people from popular vehicles people call me up, I said my rating was 6/10 for Maruti. The person who call me said it was a problem, check the rating which I have attached as image. I said Maruti has their rating system for which I will not respond. I had my own rating system were 6/10 was actually good.

These are marketing guys gimmicks. I have a feeling J.D Power satisfaction report has got to with Maruti rating system. Where every customer responds with 8/10 naturally J.D power will have to be biased towards Maruti. Check the link below

http://www.indiacar.com/jd_power/default.htm

check the "customer satisfaction index" for 2008. You will understand what I am referring to.

P.S: I believe Chevy Spark will do better in coming days. I received a call from Spark guys and they wanted to analyze on why they lost a customer. I told them about resale value, mileage. It was indeed a call I didn’t expect. I love their "Chevy" car design, interior, responsiveness and handling. Just that, this time it didn’t work out.

tags: Photography, Chennai, Cars, Maruti, Hyundai, Chevy, Fiat, JD Power, Customer Satisfaction

maruti a star

maruti rating card

Know you customers – need & usage

A disappointed salesman of Coca Cola returns from his Middle East assignment.

A friend asked, “Why weren’t you successful with the Arabs?”

The salesman explained, “When I got posted in the Middle East , I was very confident that I would make a good sales pitch as Cola is virtually unknown there. But, I had a problem I didn’t know to speak Arabic. So, I planned to convey the message through three posters…

click on the image for a large view

First poster- Aman lying in the hot desert sand…totally exhausted and fainting.

Second poster – man is drinking our Cola.

Third poster – Our man is now totally refreshed.

Then these posters were pasted all over the place

“That should have worked,” said the friend.

The salesman replied “I also didn’t realize that Arabs go from right to left”

Kindly note: this was a forward mail, I liked it, so I am sharing with you all.

Her Morning Elegance – Amazing Video

It is been a long time since I have seen a nice video, by using simple technique, like the stop motion photography. I wouldn’t say making this video is simple, it takes hours to create the video, the main thing is the lighting which needs to be considered.

Oren Lavie – Her Morning Elegance
by IgnitionVM

Hats off guys

mGinger Captcha Challenge, UserExperience

mginger captcha challenge

After a long time, I finally login to mGinger to find any thing interesting happening and wanted to know how much I had earned so far.

There was an interesting promo to refer a friend, I did fell for the marketing stunt, so I choose the option as Orkut, because most friends at orkut don’t mind getting spams and they are not that serious types if I had sent them an advertising promo the chances are high that they would visit the link.

Now the challenge part, Orkut has captcha installed to reduce spam, and mGinger wants its users to spam Orkut, Imagine If I selected 60 contacts to send an invite, I would have to fill all the 60 captcha correctly inorder to send the invite.

OMG – mGinger could have warned me about the captcha when I was selecting the orkut friends for referrals

There are actually 2 options available for mGinger to keep the users from frustration or to provide better user experience.

• Option 1: quietly remove the orkut referral program
• Option 2: Beat the orkut captcha to give a better user experience

so how many of them actually made pocket money for every month is still a question with mGinger?

College Students, Bee a smart Lender – use LendBee

Photo Courtesy: Rosie Hardy

Imagine countless books for reference on top of your semester books, Carrying them, taking care of them is a much pain. Here is a cool solution which will make you feel better

Lendbee is a system which allows you to share books, CD, DVD, Movies, Magazines, Ebooks and those online manuals which you can actually share with a closed group of friends and college juniors. The best part is no ones else knows what materials you share except the ones on your group.

Bee a smart Lender and let some one take care of your materials and how to place them in their apartments, when you need them back, the lendbee allows you to track the materials on who currently has them.

So check the lendbee today, remember knowledge is power, so can even expect your friends to share materials which you can get them for free.

Technorati Tags: free, books, CD, DVD, Movies, Magazines, Ebooks, lendbee, social networking

Singles Advertisements at its best

After a very long time I am seeing some funny advertisement which provoked me to go and look at what the site is all about.

Three simple advertisements as follows



really cool ads from neu.de
This site never said a word about dating or singles, just the intension of an idea person.

Technorati Tags: singles, advertisement, ads, funny, humor, dating, women, inspirational, copy writing

Lend and earn through Lendbee

Lendbee is a closed contact network which allows you to share eBooks, Books, Old Magazines, Old Movie CD/ DVD, educational CD/DVD, Old Games CD/DVD and much more.

Whom does it cater too?
Office: Close pals in an office network of like minded people who buy managerial/ management books or Technical, fiction, spiritual or self discipline based books can lend their books. Apart from that people who love movies can lend them to their friends. The best part is no ones knows what movies, books and audio programs you share other than your closed group members. Once you register, you can create as many groups, one could play a role of cynical playboy with girlfriends to totally spiritual types with respect to family.

The best way to save money: each one buys one book or magazine or movies of their choice and share among them selves.

College: For students money and room space could be a major problem. Here are some nice tips to earn money and saving your room from getting messy.

Being students you should be having lots of books while you did your 1st,2nd or 3rd year, Currently bundled and kept under your bed. Here is how to getting things done.

Register now, create a group which remains private, choose your trusted junior girl friends to be part of your closed group to lend your college books/CD/DVD or audio programs, While you lend, you could make little money if you ever needed. Well lendbee never knows in what terms you lend your books, because every thing is offline.

School: Being a school student comics, novels have remained favorites rather than those boring text books. Here is how you can make the most of it.

Most parents subscribe to comics like Tinkle, Magic Pot, Tell me why and Amar chitra Katha collections Why not each parent subscribe to one of them and be shared among friends, Exchanging books is simple, children meet at school So ask your parents to register here and make the most of it.

Friends in a locality or town or city: Are you part of Photography community or Music or Dance group in your locality. The best part is gaining more knowledge is by self realization, reading books or watching dance performance could improve your skills. You could make your own style.

A cool feature is on its way at lendbee, Imagine if you are a designer and in need of black book (Best Award winning Advertisements to logos and inspirational works). You search for that items across groups if found, you could communicate with the person who owns the book through lendbee – both the lender and borrower email id’s are not revealed to either parties. Being a lender your identity is never revealed, but the borrower identity is revealed to the person who owns the book. So that he can decide whether or not to lend.

So don’t wait register now. Create as many closed groups and experience the power of lending/sharing. By the way, who knows you could make more girl friends, gain more knowledge and save more money.

Technorati Tags: lendbee, books, CD, DVD, Audio books, Ebooks, Sharing, lending, Privacy, group, friends, Office, College, school, girlfriend

Are we still Indians?

The question which raises in mind, because of two issues which I came across the “The Times” daily, seems to be better than “The Hindu”. Content is the King.

1. Hogenakkal dispute – border for Tamilnadu and Karnataka
2. IPL – Indian Premier League

There is no dispute in this world which cannot be solved by just talking
All it takes is members from both sides to talk about their issues and come to a conclusion for the wellness of the society.

This is not the first time in the NEWS about Hogenakkal, Tamil people residing in Karnataka have under gone the troubles, Vandalism to Tamil people’s property is outrageous, with cops being on their side and the political system adding fuel to the fire.

Whom are we fighting against?
Aren’t we brothers and sisters, fighting is good for good relations. We have seen them with siblings. But destroying your own brother’s/sister’s property is not tolerable. Parents have only one thing in mind, their children well being. So what is the political parties behaving as parents do?

So coming to the IPL – Dravid remarked that after hitting a four in his own country, India, there were no cheers from the crowd. What a shame being brothers and sisters. Well about Sreesanth and Harbajan Singh I would say that happens in Cricket, I have got the beating from my friends and some times have given blows to my close pals, players have the right spirit – sportive ones.

I feel Political systems in India have turned us in to enemies in terms of borders,landmarks, divisions,caste, creed for their own benefit of making money and remaining in power.

What can make politicians run for their lives or at least change them to do some thing good for people of India?
People refraining to VOTE

The current political motives is exposing to the outside world about our own unity. There needs to be significant change in the way we think about being Indian. Were is all the taxpayers money getting into. Just wishing if some money put to educate people to unite.

Mera Bharat Mahan

Technorati Tags: politics, caste, creed, land, borders, parent, Indians, India, Bharath, politicians, VOTE