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Author: ashokkarania

  • NDTV Imagine’s Ramayan Ad

     

    NDTV Imagine has taken an different route to promote Ramayan. It has focussed on moral values of Ramayan and decided to promote it. It is targeting parents and their children. Children are a old favorite of advertisers. They know that parents will not compromise on product or service which benefits their children. 

    In case of TV, children already have their Cartoon Network, Hungama and POGO etc. For education, they have the option in form of Discovery, National Geographic, Animal Planet etc. For adults, there is already a clutter of mythological serials on the television. So why will they choose Ramayan over other mythologicals?

     

    In fact, often advertisers use children for non-children product categories as well. Children use their pester power against parents for these products and reward our marketers. In many families, children are influencers as well as decision makers. 

     

    How successful NDTV Imagine’s Ad will be? Its intentions are right. It is using the USP of Ramayan and positioning it as an alternative moral education. Will children oblige?

     

  • Indic Transliteration @ Google Labs Is Good

    Recently, I tried Google Labs’ Indic Transliteration for converting English to Hindi. The result was good. The tool also supports Tamil, Telugu, Malalayam and Kannada.

    Input Text : English

    hai pal pal badalte rishtey yahaan
    bante bigadte armaano ke jahaan
    jab hum aapko dil se yaad karenge
    jaane aap honge kahaan

    Output Text : Hindi

    है  पल  पल  बदलते  रिश्ते  यहाँ
    बनते  बिगड़ते  अरमानो  के  जहाँ
    जब  हम  आपको  दिल  से  याद  करेंगे
    जाने  आप  होंगे  कहाँ

    Expect other Indian languages like Gujarati to be added soon. Gujaratilexicon – Utkarsh Team is also working on Gujarati Transliteration.

  • Leadership : Defining Moments

    The Indian Parliament had a very important debate last week. The survival of the government was in question. The built up had usual suspense, controversies, charges of horse-trading, mud-slinging etc. In fact, the session itself had huge drama with some MPs bringing cash in the parliament and alleging foul play. Well, we were not surprised 🙂

    However, a few things stood out. We are all pleasantly surprised to see that there were some good discussions. Indian democracy is not dead. 

    An important surprise was rise of few individuals. One of the heroes of the session was Omar Abdullah. Omar Abdullah’s speech has changed the entire nation’s perception of him. It has put him in limelight as a leader to watch for. In his home state of Jammu & Kashmir, he is a hero. 

    Omar Abdullah said that it was an instinctive speech. He spoke from his heart. He touched upon controversial topics like Amarnath Issue, Gujarat Riots etc. He supported the trust vote. I am not commenting on the content of his speech. I am showcasing his leadership moment. 

    Omar’s start to the speech was exemplary. His managed to get the attention of all. It helped that his tone and style were different. 

    People loved his comment of the common enemies of poor. He struck a chord with the people at large. He knew that his audience was beyond the parliament house. He knew that India is a young nation with its  youth having access to Nokia, Facebook and TouTube. 

    Of course, he spoke of his political choices and hit back at his opponents. But he did it very cleverly. 

    His speech was short and to the point. No preaching. 

    He made a mark for himself on that day and was one of the important heroes of the session and recent politics. 

    But the Hero No. 1 is somebody else. Any guesses?

     

  • Randy Pausch Lives On – In Our Hearts!

    Randy Pausch died on Friday in South Virginia.

    Strangely, I was speaking about Randy with my friend on that friday. I gifted her ‘The Last Lecture’ book and was telling Randy’s extraordinary story. While I was describing his story, Randy was living his final moments. 

    Randy inspired millions of Indians through his ‘The Last Lecture’. Randy Pausch will live on – in our hearts!

    Related Items:

    Randy Pausch’s Lecture of Lifetime on A Blog Less Ordinary

    Randy Pausch’s Obit in USA Today

    The Lecture of Lifetime on Google Video

  • Ahmedabad Blasts : We Are Safe!

    Serial blasts rocked Ahmedabad today afternoon. We are all safe here. 

    Mobile phone networks are down. We will keep our friends and family posted. 

    Bangalore was attacked yesterday. Jaipur was attacked a few weeks back. Clearly, India is challenged. These are testing times. Need for courage, faith and lending a helping hand. Need for keeping humanity ahead of everything.  

    Read Blast Note on Rediff 

  • EZ 7Z : Quick Archiver

    EZ 7Z is a quick and easy tool for compressing and decompressing file formats on Mac OS X. I used it recently to open .7z files. 

    Highly recommended !

  • Book: Hot, Flat, And Crowded

     

    Thomas L Friedman, the celebrated author of ‘The World Is Flat’ is back with his new book : Hot, Flat and Crowded. The focus is on Environment. The focus is on how America can take leadership. I expect the books to cover energy issues, clean energy, rise of Chindia and demand of energy, change of American habits, global responsibility etc. 

    Thomasd Friedman has been campaigning about this for some time now. 

     

    Indeed, environment is the next in thing. It is the area that is often ignored in quest for development and comforts. America will need to provide leadership as it is the biggest consumer of energy. It will have to align and inspire developing nations. It is a tough task! However, this is an area where the entire mankind will have to think creatively. Expect more ‘back-to-village’ romantics, more ‘local food’ consumers!

     

     

  • Singh Is King!

    A picture is worth a thousand words. Mahendra Shah, the famous artist and cartoonist behind www.ameamericanamdavadi.com, has sent this picture.  It says it all!

  • Word ‘Sub-Prime’ Enters Oxford Dictionary

     

    Every year Oxford Dictionary adds new words to its corpus. Considering the global situation, it is no surprise that the new words this season include ‘Sub-Prime Mortgage’ and ‘Credit Crunch’.  

    The other new words include: 

    Gorilla – the dominant contender within a particular sphere or activity 

    Locavore – those who eat only locally grown or produced food 

    Freegans –  those who seek to retrieve and use discarded food and other goods 

    Vanity Sizing – assigning smaller sizes to clothing than is really the case to encourage sales 

    Slebs – CelebritiesFascinators – an item of ladies millinery 

    Muffin Top – a roll of fat visible above the top of a pair of women’s tight-fitting low-waisted trousers 

    Bragging Rights 

    Custard Creams  

    Read: New Entries In Oxford Dictionary 

  • Cool Site : Taggalaxy

     

    Taggalaxy is a cool site to view Flickr Images. It is a Flex App and throws up interesting results!

     
    RIAPedia says:

     
    Tag Galaxy is a 3D Flex application that allows visitors to browse Flickr by entering a starting tag. Once you enter a tag, you see the tag as a 3D planet-like object, with other related tags circulating the main object. Once you select a tag to explore further, clicking on it brings photos onto the 3D object and displays them for users to browse. You can spin the globe around to browse the photos. Its a bit hard to explain, so head over to the site and explore it yourself.