Life Etc Etc

2016 has been a banner year for social media apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram each trumping the other with exciting innovations to wow their respective user bases. As someone who dabbles in mobile apps here are 5 trends which I believe will revolutionize the world we live in the years going forward. Btw, I hope you like salt because you can only take the trends below with a pinch (Nah! I believe you need a bucket) of salt.  1. Facebook Stars : Move away Film Stars as Facebook Stars take center stage. In cricket, an all-rounder is someone with career stats of more than 2000 runs, 100 wickets and 100 catches. Similarly, a Facebook Star is someone with more than 1000 friends, whose every update receives a minimum of 300 likes and 100 comments. Facebook Stars are the traffic constables of the social media world, when they post something everything stops and even people who are fast asleep wake up to respond. What talent! What power! Wha...

It’s been one crazy week and it's in weeks like this that you end up doing much more than what you plan for. This was the week when I finally got my hands on a brand new Samsung Galaxy Ace smart phone. Every purchase hinges on some factors and this being my first smart phone I did a fair bit of research to arrive at some of the essential features I wanted and some others which I could trade-off with. Without any further ado then some of the factors (features) I considered are as follows: 1. Touchscreen (capacitive vs resistive): Here's an excellent link about the pros and cons of each touchscreen but what made me go for a capacitive touch screen was the fact that it offers multi touch support and is not prone to get activated by just any object (such as a dust particle) which comes in contact with it. 2. Operating System (OS): There are several operating systems (Bada, Symbian, Android, IOS, Windows) to choose from but the best OS I figured was the one which could ...

Some cities give you the feeling of being on the cusp of technological evolution. I got that same feeling when I visited Bangalore (Bengaluru) recently. I saw quite a few Mahindra Revas (the first electric car of India), you don't see too many of them here in Hyderabad quite probably due to the lack of a well established dealer network. I caught a glimpse of the Bangalore Metro Rail project which reminded me very much of the Canada Line in Vancouver.  Then I saw something which quite frankly made me do the one thing that I usually don't like to do too often -- it made me Analyze . It all began when I decided to commute via a city bus from Electronic City (the place where all the IT companies are) to one of the prominent malls in town. I caught a bus but lo-behold I didn't get into an ordinary one I got into a A/C Volvo (Yes Volvo!!!) bus. Wait that's not what caught my eye. What caught my eye were the monitors (at the back of the head rests) which were star...

Digital Marketing according to Wikipedia is the promotion of brands using all forms of digital advertising channels to reach consumers. This now includes television, radio, internet, mobile and any other form of digital media. So digital marketing looks like the super class of internet marketing.  But would it still be called digital marketing if we use internet to market the products on the mobile? I am pretty much sure that nobody knows the answer to this question as the lines are being blurred everyday between digital, internet and e-marketing (which is supposed to differ from the other two because of its relation to e-commerce). There have been few major upheavals that have happened in the mobile marketing space over the past one year. Google acquired and integrated AdMob (the leader in mobile advertising for all platforms) with AdSense making it the undisputed leader in mobile phone marketing. Apple who was earlier planning to acquire AdMob launched its own iAd targeti...

The horrors of Auto Correct or "Damn you Auto Correct" is arguably the hottest topic that the blogging community has been talking about lately (other than say Movember). A lot has been said about the unintended humor invoked by the Auto Correct option on the mobile phones (an entire site http://damnyouautocorrect.com/ has been dedicated to this) so there is nothing really new that I can add. But here's an interesting observation gone are the days when people only knew about a product after they brought it. The power of word of mouth or viral marketing has altered people's perceptions about leading brands. While "Damn you Auto Correct" might not (at all) damage the reputation of mobile phone companies the same way that " United Breaks Guitars " did it very humorously points a flaw in the Auto Correct option which the mobile phones could do well to fix in the next models they release (before the option causes major unintended consequences). Thus ...

I have every reason to be motivated especially when it has been only a few days since I was part of something extraordinary. Without any further ado the event was the football game last Sunday featuring UBC Packers (MBA soccer team -> whom I always represent but occasionally play for). At the game’s halftime the UBC Packers were all but out trailing their seemingly indefatigable opponents by a whopping 5-1. The break gave time for reflection and spurned a metamorphosis that would have inspired a Hollywood movie. A super charged and motivated packers team took the field after the halftime and scored five goals in rapid succession and created more than half a dozen opportunities in the last few minutes before finally losing by a heartbreaking 7-6 (a perfect script for an Academy award winning film). If only soccer was like tennis with three sets, they beat us 5-1 in the first we beat them 5-2 in the second and given our (then) current form we would have inevitably won the match ...

Search engine optimization (SEO) has for a decade been the elixir for websites which have meandered aimlessly in internet anonymity. Manipulating the website content so as to appear on top of the search engine results appeared to be the most effective of way attracting the internet customers whose span of attention seemed to be decreasing with every passing hour. However no reign lasts forever and SEO’s supremacy over the destiny of websites was finally challenged by its distant similarly named (somewhat controversial) cousin Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Although SEM (initially known as the less than flattering Pay per click advertising) came into prominence at the same time as SEO it took a while before it could capture the attention of the website owners the same way as SEO did. The introduction of Google Adwords in 2003 really thrust SEM into spotlight and also made the search engines realize they could actually make money out of SEM. Today SEM has become the primary source ...