Being Insouciant...

Source - The Economist

Sales of American newspapers keep falling

MORE bad news for America's newspaper industry. In the six months to the end of September, daily circulation fell by 10.1% to 30.4m compared with the same period in 2008. All of the top 20 papers have seen their circulation plunge, with the exception of the Wall Street Journal. 

1 -  The population is turning more and more online. 

Penetration of Internet in USA is at a staggering 74% of entire population. Figure for India would be in single digits. 


2 -  It is a very urbanized nation, with 81% of the population residing in cities and suburbs as of mid-2005 (the worldwide urban rate was 49%)
Newspapers generally find devout readers at suburbs where people have luxury of time


3 - Habit change 
US now wakes up to latest friend request on Facebook or Twitter.No more people wake up and read USA Today with coffee - they pick up blackberry or Apple to check their emails while smelling the coffee


4 - "Social Revolution" - 
Its kind of "Reverse Globalization". People are getting more social. With so many interesting tools to stay connected with the friends, families, etc, meaning for "news" is now changed.

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Hey guys...here are 5 quick, small but very useful tips for Google Wave users...based out on my 1st day expedition on  it -

Tip 1. Profile picture 

In case your profile pic is not visible to others - check out if you have filled out your Google profile or not - http://www.google.com/profiles

Google Wave is picking up your information from there!

Tip 2.  Editing a blip as other is typing

There is a drop down arrow in the time stamp - just click and you are ready to edit it on the go.


Tip 3 Embedding widgets or apps

Google has still not allowed us to import a lot of things like twitter feeds, but there are many neat apps and bots built inside -



There are many more like Sudoku, Conference, Video chat, etc - these can be done by first installing them and clicking to run them...

Here is how to Install them -

3a) When you joined Wave - you would have got 2 messages - one would be for extensions - go to that wave and install the gadget of your choice



3b) Create a new wave and you would notice new tabs for the new apps


Tip 4 Adding friends to a new wave


Go to create a new wave - then click on the small + button shown in 2 in the pic and then select the friends from the drop down menu




Tip no. 5 Enable search (like Twitter) to ensure you dont miss any wave on that topic.


You can create a search term and save it like on Twitter - and then you want to see which Wave Buddy used that term or to follow conversation on that topic - just click on the "searches" and the topic to follow it all!


Thats all as of now...please do share your comments or any more tips on this...

Happy riding on Google wave :)))

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This is how my Google Wave looks right now!...Please note @Animeshpathak's  response :))

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Destination branding is something which is very important today in the globalized world -it helps in attracting tourists, also in investments ...and anyways who does not like to see finely landscaped, green fields, beautiful people in beautiful places...right? WRONG!

Anyways before I introduce you on "What not do in commercial / viral marketing for destination branding...here is a look at my fav campaigns on "what to do" :) -

Some of my favorite campaigns are -

1. India's Incredible Campaign

What is brilliant about this campaign is the portraying of the same age old story - tourist comes to visit a country and goes around...but never has the emotional appeal as visible and as addictive as in this campaign....




2. Malaysia's Truly Asia





But here is the twist - I read a news today about Denmark's attempt to attract tourists by viral marketing and going a step too far ...here read this -

Denmark's official tourism agency, has removed a promotional video from its YouTube site after criticism. The film, shot in video-diary style, purports to be the work of a Danish woman with a baby: she says that the child is the result of a one-night stand with a foreign visitor and that she hopes the father will see the video and contact her. (Source - The Economist)

This is simply outrageous - no visitor would like to come for a one night stand and then meet a girl and father a son!...ridiculous!

Look at the video and let me know what you think of it :)

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Guys, today I am in a little preachy mood - I want to tell all of you to avoid one small BIG mistake lot of you make while chatting / talking with other people!

How many times have you said - "And, what else is happening in your life" or "What else is happening in life?" , or in Hindi - "Aur bata, kya chal raha hai?" 


If the answer is "quite often" - then I would like to urge you all to please shun this habit - this may subtley result in people shunning you as a bad communicator!

Psychologically, people while conversion, like to be put up at ease and not confronted. And this small question puts every person in exactly that. Te person might be in stress / frustated, about to end his/ her life but does not want to tell you, so is pissed at your asking - "So, what else?" 


And Beware, if you use this sentence in front of a girl you are trying to woo - this sentence could be the end of it all! This also might mean, that since you are such a bore, you can' think. Your girl might just paint you as a person incapable of having interesting conversation.

Now, here is a quick solution if you suffer from this problem -

Try to be personal when you are conversing with the guy. Try to think of some personal things like...

1. To a frined when you are meeting him after years - 
Oh Boy!, I still remember the day we had when we went in that party...remember?


2. To an office colleague whom you helped in finding a job for his brother -
How is your brother, is he happy in his new job?

3. When out on a first date -
Hey, you should wear this red color often, makes you look really smart!

Please don't ask "How is Life?" Again! - no body wants to answer that question, seriously!


Photo courtesy - Gettyimages.com

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Beware guys!

I never click on "Send Invitations To Your Friends" click on any site. I just cant trust to share the password of my email with any thing - living or non-living but I trusted Facebook. And boy, I was so wrong!.

It seems Facebook sends mail to all the people in my address book - which happens to be a few hundred. And I have been getting "ABCDEF has accepted your invitation to add as friend on Facebook" ever since. Even people whom I don't intend to network but must have sent some mail years ago has got this mail!. How Bloody Stupid!

Please spare yourself with this embarrassment and don't do this mistake ever ...even with Facebook!

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I still remember when as a small boy, I used to play chess with my father and brother. I obviously used to lose a lot but still used to maintain a small note of no. of games, played, won and then lost. Guess I have always had this habit of keeping track of every little detail. And then I grew up, and had the fight for IIT, and then completely forgot about Chess.

But somehow, at the back of my mind, even while I was dancing away in IT BHU, or working on projects in MICA, I wanted to play chess again. Could never do. But things changed.

In the recent trip to Shimla, I bought this wooden classic chess and things have never been the same again. Thank God, that I have a tolerant wife like Aakriti who not only is okay with me being addicted to it, but is actually got addicted to chess even more than I am.

So these days, we can not survive util and unless, we have played at least 2 games of chess or studied about some or the other moves of Casparaov or one of the classic matches of all times (courtesy - chess.com)

Do you play chess? wanna play?

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