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

We want to miss you ICICI Bank

We want to miss you

Yes, we want to miss you, because

1. You have old ATM machines – really slow
2. Your ATM centers don’t have proper ventilation, It is hot, NO A/C
3. Poor old security, cannot guard 6 ATM machines at ATM center, for that matter he cannot even help himself.
4. Hardly there is enough parking space

#ICICI Bank #fail

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

McDonald now @ AnnaNagar Chennai, Launch today

McDonalds Congrats, and thanks for bringing it to AnnaNagar Chennai. Ascendas Chennai outlet was a real pain.
McDonalds covered the entire roundtana AnnaNagar for its promotion, check out the photos.
OK the outlet is next to Shah's.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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

How Commercial Software, can fight against the Free Softwares?

Before you jumping in to making of a software you looked in to the market and realized there is enough market share. Now you made it, wanted to test them. You made it free as a beta Phase, you now started making commercial version of the same and by retaining the free version with limited features for people to try.

Guess what? A new player comes and provides a me too version of the software for free, only revenue channel being advertisement inside the product.

How do you fight the free version?

Now let us look at same problem solved by the big software companies, I am just taking 2 examples.

1. Microsoft Windows VS Linux
2. Camtasia snagit VS Firefox addons Screen Grab VS WINK (Free)

Microsoft Windows – People continue to make fun of the “Blue screen of Death” in Windows, but funny bone people continue to run their machines with the same Microsoft Windows OS at least the majority of them.

When the threat came from Linux for Windows, I remember every media said that it was death of Windows and even now people say that web will be the new OS, that is still speculative.

What did Microsoft Windows do?
If I am not wrong, they came with lot of advertisements to educate users about the benefits of using Windows. They came with Windows XP SP1, SP2 & SP3 and fixed as much as they could. They executed it well.

I believe the marketing spend on Microsoft XP could have been almost or significantly nil when XP sales was at its peak. Word of mouth still holds good in business. Techies still continue to say XP is stable compared to Vista and there is no major innovation in Vista, that people have upgrade to Vista.

To say, we are still dependent on Microsoft for most of our office productivity. Aren’t we?

The second story is the most significant one. Their product is easy to create and it requires less effort and they still continue to be leaders in their USP. I am taking about TechSmith the makers of Camtasia Snagit.

They did face the similar issue of free software from the open source community.

The popularity of Firefox add ons created a market slow down for Camtasia Snagit and on top of that was the Freeware software called WINK, it did almost the same functionality of Snagit and it was free and forums was available for support.

How did TechSmith Camtasia Snagit fight?
Camtasia Snagit 7.2.5 the earlier commercial version of the software was given free.

Do you want to know why they made it free?
The story goes like this in the Indian shop vendors or Medical Shops, If you ask for a medicine and if it is currently out of stock, they will send one of their members to collect the same medicine from the medical store just opposite their store or even few streets away to procure the same and give it to their customers. It is that the customer gets a feeling that any medicine he needs can be obtained. And that he will come back to the same medical store if he needed one.

TechSmith didn’t want end users to try free software instead allowed users to try the previous commercial version for free.

I use Camtasia Snagit free edition as I experience the reliable, proven and easy to use screen capturing/recording software. BTW, I have already tried the software and its features, and even know each and every interface. It is just that it is easy to use, Comfortable. The only feeling being left out, that I am unable to use the advanced features, which are available in the current commercial version.

For the extra mileage they have contributed few projects called Jing Project and ScreenCast
That takes care of community etc etc

Final Notes: Winning over Free is difficult, but not impossible. If you believe in Free, you can’t win over Free. Undo the learning and fight against Free. If you wish to.

Technorati Tags: software, free, commercial, fight, microsoft, Linux, techsmith, camtasia, Snagit, Jing, Screencast, story, advertisement, revenue, marketshare

Pictorial representation of …

I love country music, click for a larger version

Try to translate each of the pictorial representation.

check out the new facebook layout

I have been wondering why the url had subdomain called “new”
http://www.new.facebook.com and it turned out that Facebook is trying out a new layout.

A nice way to gain acceptance from users to try out old layout to new layout. If people still stick on the old design the designers at facebook know that their design sucks

Guys your new design is kewl, I am sure more users will adopt to the new design. All the best.
Technorati Tags: facebook, layout, new design, design, users, acceptance, usability, screen, designers