It’s size that changes the experience

We know that in the government, possibly because of the size, the right hand often doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

Are are the rest of us better?

Do large, profitable and professionally-run organisations offer a smoother experience than the silos of a bureaucracy. 

Here’s my experience of the Airtel web site that makes me wonder.

 

Retrieving an MMS from the web

It started with the following message from AirTel:

There is an MMS message for you. at http://www.airtel.in/mms/ Your Passcode is: c6s8**

Okay, I knew these were pictures sent by a friend, so I followed the url.

Oops:

The requested URL /mms/ was not found on this server.

---

IBM_HTTP_Server Server at www.airtel.in Port 80

 

Activating MMS on the phone

Maybe the url had changed. We know it happens.  So I look around and find this:

Getting Started
You'll need a compatible mobile phone to send and receive picture messages. To Activate MMS, send "MMS ACTIVE" to 121. Requires MMS enabled handsets. If your friends don't have a picture messaging phone, you can still send them a picture message. They'll receive a text message asking them to go to a web address where they'll be able to enjoy your message online.

:: Airtel :: Postpaid Mobile - Mail & Messaging Services.

 

All right, I send the SMS to 121 requesting activation of MMS, but get this response:

Welcome to My Airtel. Make a selection
1-For Billing
2-For Payments
3-For Bill Plan
4-For Do Not Disturb
5-For Help

Great!

 

Trying something else

 

So I give up on MMS, but continue to look around and discover something different but useful:

Access via PC

Access Airtel Msgr via your PC or Laptop:Instant chat with friends with any mobile number in India. Airtel Messenger on your PC offers many reasons for you to get hooked on. Foremost, it lets you send messages to any Airtel mobile number in India , for free. GET CRACKING, MAN!

Download NOW!
Click here to download AirTel Msgr.

:: Airtel :: Postpaid Mobile - Mail & Messaging Services.

 

OH, but “download AirTel Msgr” link brought in a completely useless zipped folder called mysites! :-(

 

 

Technorati tags: government, organisation size, AirTel, website, service

A “must have” feature from Gmail Labs

You known that Gmail has powerful search built into it.

But after you’ve crafted that perfect query, do you throw it away? Not any more!

You can use an experimental feature in the new Gmail Labs to save the query for as long as you want. It is called “Quick Links” and is extremely easy to use.

How to enable Quick Links

• Click on settings from within your Gmail account.
• Select the last tab on the setting page, called “Labs”. It’s been placed there a few weeks ago.

• Enable Quick Links from a list of dozen or so feature that are currently available. 

Voilà! A Quick Links panel is now added to the left column in your Gmail account. It’s below the panel called Labels.

In this panel, you can place a shortcut to whatever view, search results or individual message you are viewing.

 

Technorati tags: Productivity, Gmail, tips & tricks

Organise your life without lifting a finger!

There are two kinds of people: those who can--and do--maintain an organiser, and others who can't because of a genetic disability. I've been a long-suffering specimen of the second type.

No leather-bound volume with name embossed in gold could ever persuade me to fill more than three pages of appointments or other details. The Lotus organiser, MS Outlook or Google Calendar didn't help either.

Reason? The organisers help organise things, which is an extra step to doing things.

I couldn't make an appointment and remember to it look up in a leather binder. And while the electronic versions offer an alarm, one still has to key in the appointment.

But as you can guess, I've overcome my incapacity. Consider this:

My secretary schedules a meeting, after checking with your office, and it magically appears on my phone. Without GPRS and on my basic Nokia N72.

How?

She creates the appointment in her own Google Calendar and invites me to the meeting. You could do that too, if you knew my email address.

The rest happens automatically, if you set up things as I explain below.

You need Google Calendar (free with Gmail or an independent Google Account) and MS Outlook to make it work.

Download and install the following software:

1. Google Sync
2. Nokia PC Suite

Both are easy to set up. Just follow the instructions.

Fill in your Gmail address and password and Set Google Sync for a two-way sync as shown:

 

 

Now Google Sync runs silently in the notification area to keep MS Outlook and Google Calendar synchronized.

And the PC Suite keeps Outlook synchronized with the N72, with just a double click on the rightmost icon shown below (also found in the notification area):

The other two icons in the screen capture above are Bluetooth and Nokia PC Suite, identifying from right to left.

If you don't have Bluetooth on your desktop or laptop, you can connect the N72 with a cable that came in the box.

About Nokia PC Suite in general, from their web site:

Nokia PC Suite is a free PC software product that allows you to connect your Nokia device to a PC and access mobile content as if the device and the PC were one.

Nokia Europe - Nokia PC Suite - Support

 

What could be your reason for not being organised now?

 

Technorati tags: scheduler, productivity, tips & tricks, lifehack, Nokia, N72, Google Calendar, Nokia PC Suite

Tried EVERY SEO trick and failed? Read Jonathan Morrow

There is a technique to making your reader follow the words effortlessly.

If they read, they also comment, subscribe or link. After that what you've learnt in SEO school may prove useful.

Getting them to read is the key. And it works like this:

Google would always find you and send a few visitors. But visitors don't automatically become readers. You've to entice them to read. If they read, they feel a little compulsion to act. For instance, some of them might give you a link.

But it's not for us to worry about links and how they convert to PageRank. It's for Google to worry about their technology and to send visitors to pages that people read. We can trust them to keep tweaking their methods and find content that people like to read.

Read Jonathan Morrow for content, and you'd learn something useful. But study his method to entice you to read on, and you've cracked the code!

Try Jon's latest post on Copyblogger. You may want to think how you'd treat this subject before reading the piece.

Your writer's muse is like a puppy. It needs care and discipline and if you treat it well it will be your best friend for many years to come.

read more | digg Jon's story

 

Technorati tags: visitor, links, comments, Google, PageRank, SEO

When all information might reside on your iPod?

To the prediction that all content in the world would easily fit inside an iPod by 2020, Amit Agarwal asks a relevant question:

Interesting but if these Google-iPod predictions happen to come true, we would definitely need something like a Google Mini Search Appliance for our Apple iPods.

Source: Google: All Content In This World Will Soon Be in Your iPod | Digital Inspiration Technology Guide

But wait a second. Are we taking of all content of the year 2020? Can we even estimate how much content that might be?

Yes, cost of storage has dropped dramatically, but many other technologies have seen similar improvements that could cause a content explosion. Network speed, for instance.

Or take cameras and video recorders in cell phones. What might be the impact of streaming high-definition video produced continually by every cell phone? And the impact of inexpensive bandwidth to store all of it online?

Yes, much of the content so produced may be pointless, but would that deter us?

We may actually never need much storage on an iPod, no matter how many functions we can think of fitting into it today. The memory required may be no more than what's needed to operate a cache for the ever connected iPod of 2020.

 

Technorati tags: iPod, storage, prediction, future, technology, advancement, content

The menace of chain mail

Did you receive the warning that:

• Some erasers contain formaldehyde?
• Most major brands of lipstick contain dangerous levels of lead?

No?

Surely somebody tipped you off about Microsoft and AOL coming together to give away thousands of dollars?

How do you deal with these forwards?

I've tried pointing out obvious errors in the story with a link to snopes.com, or other sites debunking urban legends. Mostly it doesn't help. Some cheerfully say oops, and send another forward within the next hour. Others remonstrate that they were only trying to he helpful.

It doesn't occur to the decent, and otherwise intelligent folks, that they jeopardize their own and their friends' email addresses, while wasting everyone's time, attention and patience.

I wish Google--because they are the best, but also other email providers--would add the following functionality to their email:

1. Trap email with dozens of addresses in the body or the headers at the sender's end, warn him or her of the danger and offer to strip out the addresses. (Facility to strip out email addresses from forwards would be useful otherwise too.)
2. Block suspicious messages (like they do with attachments) at the source,inform the sender that the story could be a hoax, provide links to verify the facts, and suggest that the message could embarrass the sender.
3. Let people elect to have their email address removed from suspect chain mail messages, before these are sent out. Of course, this can work only if the sending and receiving address are with the same email provider, or across co-operating providers.

Meanwhile, please, somebody suggest what to do.

 

Technorati tags: chain mail, urban legends, wish list

There's no customer loyalty in net shopping

I had been a regular customer at rediff.com, mostly buying books from them.

One evening about four years ago, I couldn't log into the site. But I wanted a book, so I logged onto Fabmall.com (now indiaplaza.in) and bought it there.

In years that followed, I never went back to rediff, because Fabmall was equally easy to use. I joined the Fabmall book club (nice discounts) and did all my shopping there.

That was till last Sunday, when at 6 pm I tried Indiaplaza, and their server was down. I typed rediff.com in the address bar, loss of discount not withstanding.

This time Rediff didn't ask if I was registered with them, only for an email ID. They accepted the payment by credit card, without fuss and sent a mail, creating an account in the process.

My book was delivered yesterday.

I should have been happy with the whole experience, except that I also received a mail shortly before the book was delivered:

You should receive your order between 29 Jun, 2007 and 03 Jul, 2007.

The mail provided a tracking number and a link, but this number was declared invalid at the Courier's site!

Hmm. This makes me want to declare the rules of business for net merchants who expect me to shop with them:

1. Ensure no glitch. 99% uptime is not good enough.
   
   Know what the best in the business can achieve and go for it. If there's a break down, say so on the main page, give an estimate of when you would be back and ask the customer to leave their email address, so you can get back.
   
   
2. Eight days in advance isn't customer delight.
   
   It shows that your information is unreliable. That the tracking number fails even as the package is being delivered only reinforces this impression.
   
   
3. Promising eight days later is wrong.
   
   Your business has an expected response time that your competitor sets and your customer knows. Promising less, even if you can meet this expectation isn't the best strategy.

 

Technorati tags: service level, internet shopping

Google must be doing something right

Of course, or GOOG won't be where it is today!

Apparently, everyone has discovered by now that there's money in the Long Tail. How much better is Google compared to its competitors in exploiting this opportunity?

I looked at the traffic to this blog (which sits firmly at the far, thin end of the tail) to determine Google's performance in this area.

Here's the breakup by source of visitors that reached Making Sense via search engines in last 30 days: 

Google Search	74.2%
Google Image Search	21.5%
Google BlogSearch	1.4%
Microsoft Live Search	1.4%
AOL Search	1.0%
Technorati	0.5%

Startling, isn't it?

 

Technorati tags: Long Tail, search, Google, search engines

Windows Live Writer Beta 2 - new capabilities

Windows Live Writer Beta 2 has now been released with some very useful enhancements. It would make sense for most users to upgrade.

Here's my list of what is nice:

1. It highlights spelling mistakes as you type. Reduces risk of publishing without checking spellings.
   
2. You can add categories, or blogger labels.
   (Just click on the line below the main message window and your list of categories is presented. Check any that apply!)
   
3. It allows you to add tables.
   You could do them earlier too, but had to create tables in FrontPage or some other HTML editor and paste the the resulting HTML code.
   
   Now it's easy to handle tables directly!
   

   	You could even do a layout with tables! Wenpics on Flickr.com

To download and to get more detailed information you could visit:

Writer Zone: Windows Live Writer Beta 2 Now Available

 

BTW, while Beta 2 installs over the older version of Live Writer, it may be best to add the Weblog account afresh. Categories (labels) only started to function when I did so :-)

 

Technorati tags: WLW, Live Writer, blogger labels, categories, new features

What does Technorati rank really mean?

Lately I had been thinking about my blogging experience of less than a year. 

Starting September 2006, I saw the Technorati rank of this blog climb from over a million to within a whisker of 200,000, in a few weeks. Since then it has dropped below 500,000 and isn't holding!

Beginner's luck? Perhaps, because I never did anything to push up the rank, either then or now.

I have, however, been posting steadily. Does it therefore mean that my blog has become less popular with more content?

Well, there are more subscribers and casual visitors now, but their numbers being embarrassingly small, I can't make any definitive claims.

Technorati ranking system is flawed in many ways. For example, it fails to count lots of links. Yet is a good indicator because it presumably miscounts for everyone, so the ranks are fair.

However, there'd be a strong incentive to game any such system, and bloggers do seeks links using every conceivable trick. Is that good or bad?

I think it's wonderful because it forces all of us to think about meaning of rank, the best way to measure it and newer ways to exploit the system. In the ecosystem that is the blogosphere, blogs and ranking systems, thus compete with each other and evolve.

There can be no better way forward!

Today I came across an experiment on Dosh Dosh's website, whose result would be very interesting to watch:

Technorati link count rankings are a source of social prestige in the blogosphere and are often the pride or despair of many bloggers. Unlike Technorati Top 100 Most Linked To blogs, which has a high barrier of entry, the Technorati Top 100 Most Favorited is a list that is much easier to break into.

Source: Dosh Dosh’s Ultimate Technorati Favorites Exchange: An Interactive Experiment

Happy experimenting and best of luck!

 

Update:

Amit Agarwal writes that Technorati Favorites is not Worth it Anymore. It's led to an interesting conversation on his blog. 

Perhaps, Technorati could provide users a negative vote too (as on Reddit or Digg). Thus any blog that's got an unfair rank simply by gaming the system wouldn't sustain the advantage very long.

 

Technorati tags: Technorati, rank, popularity, link, link love, favorite

Developing IT Strategy

One perk of this new job is that you meet distinguished experts in their areas. For example, through the Gartner programmes.

Recently John Roberts delivered a thought (and discussion) provoking talk to a handful of managers around here.

 

John P. Roberts
Research VP and Distinguished Analyst

Gartner Australasia Pty. Limited
Melbourne, Australia

Source: www.gartner.com

He suggested a model to assess strategic maturity within the organization. (To fix the current co-ordinates before undertaking the journey.) And he showed how to develop an IT strategy that supports the business one.

This brought to my mind thoughts I had upon joining this office a few days ago: the biggest challenge here would be to keep business, rather than technology focus.

However, John asked a rhetorical question that sent me down a path entirely different from where he was pointing. He asked if we ever stopped to think of the impact that email made to our business?

Do we need to do that? I don't think so.

In An Introduction to Mathematics (1948), Alfred North Whitehead wrote, "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."

We don't need to evaluate for ourselves what's in widespread use. We needn't examine (ab initio) the technology solutions that similar businesses have adopted and which seems to be working for them(called learning from business cases).

It's putting faith in the same Darwin's law of natural selection that created the most complex IT application that we know: the human genome!

Yes, the fittest would survive. And sure, we can increase our survival chances by adopting the sensible approach that Roberts advocated. Just that there are limits to what needs to be examined.

Now let me circulate a questionnaire among my colleagues to locate where we stand today (assess strategic maturity within the organisation).

 

Technorati tags: governance, IT strategy, metrics, business focus

Pay Attention to the Anchor Text in your Links

Alex Bamo writes about doing an Instant SEO With Anchor Text.

Even if it didn't do anything for Google rankings, paying attention to the anchor text is important because it greatly improves the experience for human readers.

So much easier to decide if you wish to follow the links above than to know what to do with this!

 

Technorati tags: Anchor Text, SEO, reader experience

Hindi transliteration facility in Blogger

Amit Agarwal (Digital Inspiration) points out a new feature in Blogger:

An exciting development for bloggers in India who like to blog in mother tongue Hindi but are more comfortable typing English. The new English-Hindi transliteration feature inside Blogger will let you type blog posts in Hindi using English Keyboards.

For sometime now I've been looking for such a transliteration tool. Not for blogging, but as a convenient way to create small texts in Hindi.

Difficulty in using (learning) the Hindi keyboard, has so far deterred me from using Hindi anywhere at all. This handicap has been particularly galling because Hindi is my mother tongue. Yes, quillpad and Hindi Kalam have been around, but they didn't work too well for me.

I tried the new option and it worked exactly as Amit said it would, but here are some lessons:

1. Won't work in Firefox, unless you switch on support for complex scripts (Windows XP). Not too difficult to do, but you may need to locate the original CD's.
2. Works like a breeze in Explorer (without the need to switch on support for complex scripts).
3. You can create text in Blogger and paste into MS Word for further use. I'd had problems doing this with other tools.

यह टूल तो वकायी में आसान है! स्वयम प्रयोग कर के देखें!!

Seems to correctly guess the words, so it is probably dictionary assisted. That's wonderful for those who gave up writing Hindi but use the language competently as native speakers.

And what's more, you can create your Hindi text online, save it as draft and import into Window Live Writer! (Warning: You may have to neaten up the HTML a bit.)

Till we get good speech-to-text tools for Hindi, this would fill in the gap nicely.

 

Technorati tags: transliteration, Hindi, Blogger, WLW

Unconference on Wiki's being held in Chennai

It was in September 2006 at the BlogCamp in Chennai that I met lots of wonderful people and got introduced to the idea of blogging--and not to forget, the idea of an unconference.

The same team are now organizing WikiCamp on the 25th of February at Chennai. It should be an equally exciting event.

Can you believe that Jimmy Wales, yes the man himself, will be attending this event?

 

Technorati tags: WikiCamp

Is DRM such a good idea?

According to Steve Jobs, hardly 3% of the music on an average iPod has been purchased via iTunes and is, therefore, protected using Apple's FairPlay DRM technology.

He states that FairPlay was implemented because the big four (Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI), who control 70% of distribution rights for all music worldwide, required "Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied." He favours abolition of DRMs.

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.

Source: Apple - Thoughts on Music

Steve has once again hit the nail on the head. There is little use for DRM because it protects nothing that is worth protecting at the cost it entails.

If only each agency would be content with their fair share of revenues, based on the value of their contribution to the music industry, we can throw DRM out of the window.

If not, DRM would likely die a natural death. Some new startup would create a model that competes sans DRM and quickly become the new way.

Agency	Responsibility	Revenue stream
Artists	Bring in the audience	Concerts, endorsements and share in Internet advertising revenue.
Recording Studios	The equipment and facilities	Rent
Online stores, search engines, new services like YouTube	Promotion of artists and musical works	Advertising revenue
Music companies, online stores	Distribution	Advertising revenue, subscription price, purchase price, etc.

 

Technorati tags: DRM, Apple, music, studio, iTunes, iPod

Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes!

What is Web 2.0?

Oh no, not the whole discussion about collaboration, social networking, wiki's and folksonomies again!

Instead look at this awesome video on YouTube created and uploaded by Michael Wesch Assitant Professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University:

 

If you have more bandwidth, a higher quality version is available for download here: http://www.mediafire.com/?6duzg3zioyd.

The song is "There's Nothing Impossible" by Deus, available for free at http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/103/

Enjoy!!

Technorati tags: Web 2.0, ethnography, hypermedia, anthropology

Blogging in the style of Cubists

Just as it would be wrong to assume that Picasso loved ugly women by merely looking at some of his paintings, we must not assume that a weird blog says something obvious about the blogger.

Because a blogger and his (or her) blog are different.

A blog, like paintings or other art forms, is a creation that stands apart from the artist.

Cubism has been an influential movement in modern art. It's leading proponent being the famous painter Pablo Picasso.

The jagged shapes and flat figures of cubists are strange; and their devices, like the passage (things going into one another), stranger still.

It is difficult to understand or relate to them, but often these paintings do hold attention. Perhaps, for the reason that one cannot take all the information in at once.

To the knowledgeable, these paintings undoubtedly convey ideas and emotions that cannot be communicated otherwise.

There must also be bloggers experimenting with devices, perhaps subliminally, that are as strange as those of cubists.

Today they may be anonymous, but their inventions could create a future blogging movement.

I have a theory here about the likely existence of such blogs, but no specific examples. If you know any, please, leave a link in comments.

Technorati tags: blog, blogging, cubism

Use Foxmarks to Improve Productivity!

A little time organizing the bookmarks in your web browser is a great productivity booster, and ...

With time you grow so accustomed to your own unique placement of links that working on another machine destroys your rhythm. It could be as disorienting as working with an unfamiliar browser or waking up in a strange room.

If you feel the same way and use Firefox (why don't you, btw?), then you absolutely must try Foxmarks.

I've been using it to keep my office, home and laptop in perfect sync. It hasn't crashed the browser, lost my bookmarks or drawn attention to itself in any other way. (But do back up your bookmarks, because not everyone has been equally lucky.)

Here are the easy steps:

1. Log in to your primary machine, the one you use the most and on which you know your way around.
2. Spend a little time to neaten up and organize the bookmarks.
3. Back up your bookmarks. (Learn how to backup the bookmarks here.)
4. Download and install Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
5. Restart the browser. There would be a prompt to do so. (If you are doing something else in another tab or window, finish the work first.)
6. Open an account on the Foxcloud Server. (Don't worry, this part happens automatically. You only need to choose a username and password.)
7. Follow the prompts and your bookmarks would be copied to the Foxcloud server. Nothing else visibly changes.

On any machines that you need to synchronize now, follow essentially the same process, except the bit about opening a new account on Foxcloud. Instead, supply the original username and password. Foxmarks would merge any bookmarks on the new machine with those saved on the server and copy everything to the browser. Adjust as necessary and forget all about it.

You'd see the same set of bookmarks, identically placed on both (all of) your machines. Any changes you make at one place would appear at other places, before you notice the difference.

Now get productive!

 

Technorati tags: Firefox, Foxmarks, Foxcloud, productivity

Remote participation in Conferences

This morning the Global Voices 06 Summit got off in New Delhi.

I was hoping to join in person, but that didn't happen. Well conferences now have IRC channels, streaming broadcasts and all, so maybe I thought all is not lost!

But the experience hasn't been very exciting so far and someone else expressed similar thoughts on the IRC. (Likely Ethan Zuckerman, but one can never tell from the nick alone.)

*** jace [n=jace@203.122.30.194] has quit [Nick collision from services.]

*** jace_ is now known as jace

*** Rosario [n=cb7a1ec2@spike.law.harvard.edu] has joined #globalvoices

<i-ange> LUG - linux user groups

*** FrancoGG left #globalvoices []

*** Delal_ [n=chatzill@203.122.30.194] has joined #globalvoices

<Guest605> My son is damn good at writing, Jeremy. Do you mind giving me a blog site for kids where he can join in?

<ethanz__> someday, one of these conferences will go so smoothly I can actually participate in it... :-)

*** ethanz [n=ethanz@203.122.30.194] has quit [Read error: 110 (Connection timed out)]

How does one participate remotely and yet be reasonably in the loop? I find it difficult even when physically present at conferences, what with all the simultaneous sessions.

Perhaps, the best bet is that people live blog and use the official tag.

 

Technorati tags: gvdelhi2006

Micro Persuasion: The Underground Blogosphere

Steve Rubel has an interesting post on bloggers pitching their posts via email in the hope of getting a link.

The Underground Blogosphere is an intricate web of hundreds of thousands of emails that bloggers send to each other every day. In essence, they are "pitching" their latest posts in hopes of getting a link. Sometimes, bloggers are genuinely looking for good feedback, but more often than not all they are just looking for traffic.

Source: Micro Persuasion: The Underground Blogosphere

There are divergent and equally interesting viewpoints in the comments.

Here I want to share my own experience with emailing links:

1. I've done it exactly twice to bloggers, because I blogged about what they had written. (One linked and both responded via email. The one who did not link, and neither was expected to, responded again about a later post via email!)
2. Have also occasionally emailed links to people I know. Mostly these have been ignored, but not the mail itself! (Several attempts to interest my wife, for instance, have completely failed :-)

My point is that there are bloggers (who almost always also read blogs, at least in their own area of interest). And there are other "normal" people, who don't.

The former are interested in links to posts they want to read. So it is fair, if you send them a mail, but only if you genuinely think they would be interested. (There can be no chance of a link, if they aren't interested. And even future possibilities would be closed if your email is put on the blocked senders' list. So it is a self-limiting problem.)

Finally, I've found that most influential, widely read and respected professionals are extremely nice people. And unless provoked to the extreme, are gracious in their response. Steve is one of them.

There is no point in testing their limits. They know how to deal with spam.

Technorati tags: blogosphere, links, traffic, email