Category: Idea Economy

Recruiting a Boss. Applications anyone?

Today, I logged onto my dreamhost account after ages (read few months). It has more than 20 domains that I have booked over the years. These include saurabhgarg.com, cyntax.in, the entire DIY line, madewith, klpd, ODID, offbeat etc. Each domain corresponds to an idea that I had wanted to work on. And each domain corresponds to an idea that I did not work on. Am not too sure if any idea was a winner per se but the sad part is that I did not even try. And to put things in perspective, there are ideas that I dont have a domain for but they are idling in my dropbox, desktop and evernote. (Side note to self – work on consolidating all the information and put in place a information management plan.)

Apart from everything else, this long list is a painful reminder of the fact that I suck at execution. I may take pride in my ability to conjure ideas every minute of my waking time but I have realized that mere popping up of these light bulbs will not take me anywhere. Need to put pen to paper. Here is a quote. I dont know who said it. It just popped into my head, like all those ideas…

An idea, not executed, is not an idea!

Thus to qualify as an ideas person, I need to execute some idea and take it to completion. Over the next few weeks, I would be single mindedly focussed on execution. And I will put deadlines and tasks and goals in place and I will take one idea and take it to closure. Any idea. Even if its bad. Just to see if I have it in me to take an idea from beginning and finish it.

Another unrelated observation. One of my ex-employers told me once upon a time that I am brilliant employee to have and yet I would make a really bad owner. That time I dismissed it as yet another pep talk to get me to work harder. Now, the writing on the wall looks so much clearer. I now know what he meant.

But being the stubborn and overconfident fuck I am, I refuse to yield till I give things one more shot. This time till 31 Mar 13. However to help me expedite things, I want to recruit someone, to be my boss. Someone who constantly nudges me and forces me to do. And like all recruitment offers, I can put some kind of compensation on the table. Can telecommute and just need to give about 5 minutes of your time, everyday. Apart from compensation and awesome working hours, perks include, boasting rights, if I manage to do something. Any takers? Application shall be considered with strictest of confidence.

Thats it for the time being. Over to you, Execution.

Sixth Sense !

Just saw this video on TED featuring Pattie Mae and Pranav mistry of MIT Media Lab. She introduced a wearable device that can present meta information (that already exists) anywhere anytime (assuming the phone supports Internet connection) just by looking at it. Few applications that they showed include looking at your boarding card to know your flight status, clicking pictures, reading book reviews from Amazon by just looking at the barcode, knowing about a person by just looking at his face.

They use basic technology tools – a camera, a mirror, a rechargeable battery, pointers and a cellphone (for communication) to bring to life possibilities that bring the entire world literally on your finger tips. In the team’s words, SixthSense is

a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

Its more than QR Codes, Microsoft Surface, iPhone, a digital personal assistant. All put together. Wish it comes to life soon. And this is what I can the New New Thing.

Links
Project SixthSense homepage
TED Talk

Branding 101 for Digital Brands

In this post I shall talk about brands as I understand them and as they are applicable to digital brands. Please note that this list is still in beta and will evolve with time. Your feedback would be really appreciated.

This is required because we need to stop looking at startups as just startups but serious businesses where branding plays a vital role. Often, the way you look at the business makes a lot of difference to way you work.

Coming to the point, I think there are three principles. Utility, Emotional Connect and Relationship that goes beyond just one product.

A: Utility

  • Customers never talk about a brand they are going to use. They talk about the action they will perform. What problem does the brand solves?
    • I need to book and air ticket. I will use Cleartrip.
    • I need to upload slides and show them to friends. Let me use Slideshare.
  • The brands that can make themselves synonymous to utility invariable become the leaders.
    • Can you Google the data on number of Internet users in India?
    • Can you Slideshare your presentation please?
  • The utility could be functional, mechanical, emotional, psychological or any of those –al things.
    • Using Twitter helps me stay in touch with friends on the go.
    • I use FB because the elite Internet users in India are on FB.

B: Emotional Connect

  • A customer will use a brand that he can associate himself with.
    • I like Apple products because they stand for innovation, user interface and simplicity.
    • Google stands for open culture. I am an open source evangelist and hence I will use and promote Google initiatives.
  • If possible, the association with the brand should elevate the status of the user.
    • Google could have invited everyone when they launched Gmail. Limited invite was a way to get traction. All limited launches are like that.
    • Alltop gave away batches like “featured on alltop”. People displayed these batches because it was a way to show off that you belonged to the best of the category (as rated by alltop).

C: Relationship extending beyond single product

  • The relationship should start with one product and when the company launches more products, I should be aspiring to buy them too. This is very important for creating sustainable businesses that go beyond one time relationship.
    • My relationship with Apple started with an Ipod. I have already bought a MacBook and have pre-ordered the iPhone.
    • I started using Google as a search engine. Then I started using groups. Then it was Gmail. And then calendar. The list continues.

Which one of the three things are valid about your brand? If it does only one, how can it do other things?

Please give your feedback to me at saurabh.garg+digitalbrands@gmail.com

Cubescape – Create your own pixelcraft.


Every once in a while comes something that brings that Wow feeling. Cubescape is one such thing. I stumbled onto it from a friends’ blog and moment I saw it and worked on it, I was WOW.

The idea is simple. It gives you a two dimensional grid and you can drop tiny cubes on that grid. You can change the color. You can delete the cubes and then everything else is left to your imagination. Once you are done, you can save the creation and then can edit it later. Sweet and simple.

This is a link to my creation. I can see myself wasting a lot of time on this.

Reminds me of PointOfView – one of my favorite games on a Mac. I think I have a fetish with cubes and pixel art.

Fake Characters

Inspired by work done by Phonethics, I also thought I would create some characters. And some lives. Here is the first draft.

Koncious Kapoor

KK is our typical metrosexual Indian. He belongs to a very small time in UP and his is the first family to have stepped out of their town. They hence have an elevated status amongst their peers. Kconcious Kapoor has studied in a boarding school and although he has a modernish outlook towards life, he is still conscious of his background and upbringing. Like any typical young Indian, he wants to get rich quick, become famous and is really scared of facing an audience.

Khoob Bai

Everyone knows that KB is 35ish, claims to be 25ish, looks 30ish and is 45ish in real. She does everything including cleaning utensils, scrubbing floors, acting as the informal communication channel between young lovers, delivering gossip and obviously peeping on personal affairs of her employers. She knows more secrets than the FBI, CIA, RAW, The Mossad, MI6 and KGB combined. And she keeps dropping hints about her (in)famous access to information. She promises her loyalty to everyone but she is loyal to only one thing – money.

Totaram Sharma

better known as Sharma Ji in his colony and Sharma Babu in his office. He is a struggling middle aged government employee who has been a clerk since last 30 years and has seen two salary hikes and one promotion. He is a perpetual landmark on his office canvas. All the kids in his colony hate him for his never ending cribbing about noise and ruckus that these kids make. He has two teenaged daughters that add to his agony in life. He is also known for speaking for hours without making any sense at all.

Toofan Kumar

is in a perpetual state of hurry. He is rushing for something or the other. He even talks as fast as he walks. Folklore has it that he was last seen relaxing when he was standing in the visa queue to US of A. He thinks that world today is full of opportunists and he needs to do something about it. He feels very passionately about all the popular social causes and actively participates in debates around these. Motive is not to save trees or prevent child abuse but to pave a road for his political dreams. And of course the visa was rejected.

Happy Singh

is a typical surd. Happy go lucky, content and hungry – all three at the same time. Thanks to his beard, no one knows where his smile begins and ends. Or if he is smiling at all. He is on the heavier side and has an insatiable appetite. Every time he sees a cow, goat, chicken or any other animal of edible quality, his hunger pangs strike him. He is still single with no immediate plans or chances either. His family lives in Ludhiana and thus he has all the money he needs to live comfortably without working.

This has potential to become a huge business by itself. Not on the lines of what Phonethics is doing but something else. Keep watching.

List of Google’s April Fool’s Day pranks

Google’s April Fool’s Day pranks is an awesome way to get free PR. Google creates a small application around search and then they release on the Internet. And all this is done with as much fan-fare and secrecy as an actual product.

They have played a lot if interesting pranks over the years and no wonder the entire world waits and watches what they would do this year. What is amazing is that even though people expect them to do things on 1st April, they still manage to come up with something that can surprise the world.

Lessons for companies? Start small things like April Fool’s Day pranks that can grow bigger with time and people will actually look forward to reading about it. And all these things count in the end. Especially for a small and a growing company.

List of Google April Fool’s Day pranks over the years
1. gDay with MATE
2. Google Romance
3. Virgin and Google’s Virgile
4. Gmail Paper
5. Google Mentalplex
6. PigeonRank
7. GoogleGulp
8. Google TISP

Did I miss something?

Crossposted