Big Ideas

why you should be buying Microsoft stock

why you should be buying Microsoft stock, originally uploaded by rganguly47.

These guys get it. Have you seen any mobile work ads other than theirs? Has anyone communicated as well to you about where you're going to be? It feels like there's a ton of talk about mobile and the coming untethering of people from the desktop. But who's pointing the way? This isn't just text messaging folks. This is, "how am i productive wherever i want to be? How do i detach yet lose less than i gain?" laptops are a partial answer. People want more flexibility though. They want smaller, faster, simpler. Enter the phone.. A simpler, smaller networked device. And microsoft is leading the masses towards its vision. Leading manufacturers and service providers to the devices to build, the theories to test and the business models to survive. No one else is leading are they? You should invest in leaders, folks.

*moblogged from my non-smart phone. Wish i had one at the moment*

This is cool, but pretty stupid

(This is version 2.0.. My blog editor crashed, leaving me looking at an empty screen, right as I was posting. No, I'm not bitter..)

Over on 43Folders Merlin has his take on the recent BumpTop buzz. I agree with him. It's cool, but as an interface for your desktop, what sense does it make? Really, do piles and being able to pick things up and move them around help you out in the "real" world? Don't indexing, search and access capabilities in the digital world often leave you yearning for their efficiency in other areas of your life? I don't think that much can be gained from trying to use some swanky and fun interface to apply offline organizational tactics to online/digital interfaces. I'm skeptical, at least.

I'm sitting here, looking at this cool interface and wondering what exactly it could be useful for. The last time I remember having piles and actually using them to be more efficient was when I was a paperboy for the Seattle Times, stuffing the newspapers with the ads each day before delivering them. (Yes, that's right, I've been thinking about advertising since I was 14..weird) Now, that made sense because they came from two different plants and had to be combined in some way. But in a digital context, wouldn't you be able to automate regular combinations of two entities? Again, it just doesn't seem to be that necessary in a digital world.

So Merlin throws out a couple ideas about how this could be useful. Photos, videos, shopping stuff, collectors. Ok, now I start to see some potential uses, but again, I'm left thinking "can't we do this much better?". But the video idea stuck. I could definitely see the metaphor of a digital canvas applied here, with various video clips being easy to manipulate and test out. Seems like a cool application of the interface to a video editor perhaps. But then, another thought occurred to me: How could this be used with the sites that people are starting to post content to? Could you set up a YouTube folder, for example, that you just drop items into and they upload, depending on your connectivity and bandwidth utilization? What about being able to send it to multiple folders, each one representing a different service or distribution vehicle? Maybe one's representative of your blog, or an email list, or a group RSS feed that you're part of?

So here's what I'm thinking. Maybe the interface is a great tool to simplify what is, for most people, a barrier to participatory media. Some of us understand RSS, how to share content online, the usefulness of the various APIs out there. But we're not the majority. Just look at RSS. It took Yahoo's inclusion of RSS into the MyYahoo modules to really lead to adoption and all of a sudden, we started to see these buttons popping up across the web that simplified RSS, provided that you had a MyYahoo or MyGoogle or MyMSN page set up, of course. What we need is more of this simplification. We need more work to hide the cool tech infrastructure under interfaces that make sense to people. Do most users really care about the API that allows them to upload their videos and tag them to YouTube? No, not at all. Just give them a folder to drag the videos into and perhaps a little bit of an option to tag it or otherwise control the sharing.

So, maybe this interface would be a cool cover to a more important development: simplifying the user interface for much of the content creation and sharing that is exploding right now. The thing is, you don't even really need the BumpTop interface to do it, you could probably deploy it using existing Windows foldering etc, but I'm not as smart about those things :) In any case, if you could get it to work, it sounds like a good idea to me. Anyone else agree? Should we go make a little suggestion to BumpTop :)?

Tags: user interface, BumpTop, content sharing, 43Folders

America feels pretty lonely...

I'll come back to this and do it more justice later, but check out this article: The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Feel lonely? You're not alone.

Wow. Seriously. Only 2 close friends? This feels right though. Lots of thoughts to come, eventually.

What would Plato think of this?

In The Republic, Plato introduces his ideal ruler; the Philosopher-king. The wikipedia entry does a good job of laying out the details of the concept and more of the argument, but to summarize, he suggests that those most fit to rule are highly educated and physically capable.

So, when I check out this amazing piece on the new sport of chessboxing, I think to myself, "Hmm, maybe this isn't so crazy..". I mean really, it sounds absurd and I wonder if it'll ever catch on and be successful, but is it a bad thing to emphasize being physical and mentally fit? To be able to succeed under pressure and be nimble, mentally and physically?

Besides, combat sports are at least as much a mental game as they are physical. I practiced Tae Kwon Do for 10 years and despite being generally smaller than my opponents I was pretty successful because of what I brought to it mentally. My master always used to talk about match management as being a chess game. He wanted us to strike early, identify weaknesses, adjust and capitalize. Sound familiar?

I digress. Check out the piece, tell me what you think and let me know if you want to start up a chessboxing match any time soon. I'm off to work on my game :)

 Tags: chessboxing, plato, philosopher-king, modern sports, personal development

regarding customer experiences

regarding customer experiences, originally uploaded by rganguly47.

What can you do to make people say, "That's pretty reasonable" about a hundred dollar meal? Give them an experience. Hire a deejay. Make your restaurant a party. Make them forget that it's just food and make them laugh, have fun and share it.

A few quick hits..

Trying to post a little bit more regularly here, and not necessarily in such painstaking essay-like detail. Let me know if you like it/hate it/don't care..

Marketing to kids, for when they're adults:

-Check out this story in the NYT about Toyota's marketing efforts around the Scion.

My take is that this makes a bunch of sense, when done well. There's certainly opportunity and historical evidence that it works (hellooooo cigarette manufacturers, anyone want a Camel??) but if they go too far into this foray, it might just represent another triumph of "strategery in creativity" over logical decision-making. People often forget how scientific advertising can be, but the best marketers/advertisers find a way to balance both. So, how do I know if these campaigns get the results I'm expecting?

Also, this is exactly the kind of consumer socialization that I referred to in my previous post, "Where'd all the mallrats go?"

You go New York Times:

The Times is making a recent habit of highlighting Google's questionable behavior and the future it might hold for us. Consider for a moment the wording of this headline: "Hiding in Plain Sight, Google Seeks More Power" Interesting piece as well, always a bonus :)

For the overambitious types:

Assuming you've read this far, perhaps you have the attention span to read this piece on the old "Content is King" debate from Digital TX. And no, I haven't finished it yet either..

Advertising dorks everywhere, rejoice!

Seriously, could these guys embarrass themselves more?? Ok, fine, so they're big ballers in the world of advertising but do they really need to argue about nothing at all? Well, I guess so, I mean, I did read it. Doesn't mean I thought it was good. If anything it just made the point that both of them neglected to make: Great advertising and great product experiences are intertwined. Now, can't we all just get along?

That's it for now..

Tags: advertising, google, media content, innovative advertising, consumer socialization

Buzzworthy advertising, but mediocre execution

An interesting email reached my inbox the other day from FullTilt Poker, where I sometimes play online poker. It's purpose was to promote FullTilt ads, with the subject line, "Check out the ads we couldn't pay them to run.."

Check them out for yourself

Now, I can see why they couldn't get mainstream media to show these ads, but the thing that I'm left wondering is why they don't do a bit better job of promoting the viral aspects of this advertising. They're funny, controversial and from the company's perspective, they'd like to get them out there right? Why then, is the "Email a friend" only at the top and a bit too generic in title? Wouldn't it be better to say something like "Share these with a friend" or "Test your friend's poker face" - something a bit more telling in intent. Additionally, they should have an input box for email addresses already available, with your cursor in it, making it more natural to share.

Finally, what I'd really like to see these guys do is to embed a link that was clickable at the end of the video and upload it to YouTube , Yahoo! Video and others. If you go check those two sources out, for example, you'll find the videos, but it appears that they're uploaded by others. I think in this scenario, Full Tilt should have proactively posted the videos and enable the ads to actually be actionable ads, in addition to being entertainment to be shared.

Just my $.02

Tags: full tilt poker, viral marketing, funny advertising

You don't own your brand - part I

This is probably going to become a multi-post series, but this story from the WSJ (apologies if it's behind the pay wall) reminded me of this belief I have: WSJ.com - Mixing Diet Coke and Mentos Makes a Gusher of Publicity. A brand isn't just yours. It's your consumers'. It's the people with knowledge of you, those who want to talk about you, to bash you, to praise you, to improve you. It's your partners', your suppliers' and your employees'. Companies are going to understand this in varying degrees and with varying speed, but those who get it sooner, rather than later, will benefit from that knowledge. Share your brand and learn from all of the other owners instead of trying to ignore their influence.

If you didn't get to read the article, it basically is discussing the viral growth in videos depicting the chemical reaction of Mentos and Diet Coke. Apparently, this combo results in a rather explosive spray of the soda and people have been experimenting with recording that and posting it online. Perhaps the most elaborate one is below, from a site called Eepybird.com:

What's the value of an MBA?

The New York Times has an interesting piece called " Was Earning That Harvard M.B.A. Worth It?"  that talks about following some HBS grads throughout their careers and determining their paths. Regardless of whether or not you believe in the business school path, I think this is worth the read just to see the various paths that the students took after graduating.

While they all seem to have substantial and important careers, I also wonder how far they could have gotten with their own effort and 2 more years of time. I was a bit disappointed to not see that really addressed by the article, since in my mind, the opportunity costs of time and money are really key to the decision about going back to school for many people. I know that I've struggled with it myself and have always come down on the side of the opportunity costs outweighing the benefits I'd receive. It's a subjective judgement still, but it seems like one that a journalist investigating business school would quickly determine to be particularly relevant. What other angles could someone take on this topic?

Talk to the customers..

From PaidContent comes this coverage of teens speaking at the Content 2.0 conference: @ Content 2.0: Living, Breathing Teenagers! Hurrah! | paidContent.org.

Now, lots of people will discount this and say "psshaw, they're hardly average users" etc but that's all crap. These are kids who are eloquent, yes and perhaps a bit more savvy than others. But big deal. There are some key points here though, that are important to take away:

- They're tech junkies and they know it. They think about how their products do and don't work for them.
- They're discriminating, even in the face of "everyone" doing it. They still make tradeoffs on what they use.
- They require compelling reasons to use something. Or they'll stop.

The last point, for me, is key. OR, they'll stop. They verbalize that. They can tell us why they'll stop. Why aren't we asking them more?!?!

argh.