Month: November 2008

  • Bom Bahia

    I recently read a book on Bombay by Pinki Virani, and have promptly classified it under my all time favourites list. The book, by sheer virtue of tone and content, appealed to me, but on a personal level, it gave me some answers on my quite recently acquired unfavourable stance on Mumbai. Since this is a subject of my chat ‘wars’ with many Mumbai friends, let me say that this is a very considered personal view, and based on subjective experiences. And like subjective experiences go, it may have led to creation or reinforcing of stereotypes that may have further colored my view of the city. So, don’t mind. 🙂

    I used to love Bombay. Right from the 2.5 days of train journey that took me there. The two months of stay there were enjoyed – Shivaji Park was a common destination across the years, the other location shifted from Anushakti Nagar (BARC Township) to Peddar Road to Malabar Hill. I still remember the second hand comics store in Anushakti nagar – Spiderman, Superman, Batman etc – the entities that captured my imagination in my school days, I have bought quite a few from there; the long walks around Shivaji Park, and the temple which gave away those white sugary balls 🙂 ; the hunt for fancy ‘name slip stickers’, which would adorn my school books and draw envious stares from my classmates in Cochin, who couldn’t get it there; the eagerly awaited trips to Akbarallys; the South indian hotel (Anand/Arya Bhavan) in Matunga whose waiters my sis later scandalised by asking for Maggi noodles, and finally, the ‘oh, its over’ feeling when we started the journey home, from VT.

    Yes, Bombay of those days remains a sweet memory. My last 2 month stay was in 1993, when it was still Bombay. Barring occasional 1-2 day trips, we stopped seeing each other since then, and somewhere down the line i started to cringe when I had to make official trips to the city. I dont know if its Mumbai that spoiled the affectionate awe that I had for Bombay, but maybe that’s just romanticism.

    Cities change, as do people. I am tolerant of pride, whether it be in people or cities, my irritation starts when pride turns to arrogance. Arrogance that brings with it an unhealthy disrespect for anything that’s not associated with the city. Yes, every city is special, but that does not mean it should take away from other cities… they are special in their own way. And that goes for people too.

    When a person like me, whose only associations with the city are from the holidays spent there, can feel a change, i can imagine, how, at least some Bombayites feel about the transformation their city has undergone. The author says a lot with just the title – ‘Once was Bombay’. I agree.

    until next time, just some city zen…. 🙂

  • Dido and Social Media – Rock On !!

    At the very outset, let me state that Dido doesn’t have to do anything spectacular for her to be special to me. She can just keep crooning her stuff, and I’ll keep going back for more. So why am i trippin’ now? Because, for her latest album, ‘Safe Trip Home‘, she’s got a social media angle.

    The album is interesting for the simple reason that it consists of different songs picturised on different cities of the world, among them Mumbai !! The song is “Lets do the things we normally do”, and is directed by Siddarth Sikand. And who does it star? Our very own Rock On girl Debbie – Shahana Goswani, as a taxi driver.

    Having a Facebook page is good, but is almost a given these days, but this one gets very social on the site itself. Once you hear the song, you can choose a mood from a (color) palette. I felt wise :), and was asked to share my reasons. It then takes you to the map, and tells you where other people who felt similar to you have headed to. It’s a wonderful way of manifesting the theme of the album/site – “Create a journey through film and music” (though the Facebook page mentions ‘a journey through fil, music and feeling’)

    According to marktd, “Over the last month, Londoners might have noticed a number of cryptic posters around tube stations. The posters end by asking the viewer to google terms like ‘Lady Landfill’ or ‘Mother lay-by’ – essentially a range of words linked to the songs on ‘Safe Trip Home’, the album.”I thought it was a wonderful way of using ground level promotions to build curiosity and traction for a web property.

    until next time, I’m trippin on this!!

  • Change 2.0

    The world, or at least most of it, has been applauding the success of Obama’s social media strategy, stating it as one of the big pillars of his victory, and rightfully so. A look at his homepage would tell you that he is very well connected to the social media scene – ‘Obama Everywhere’. ‘Organise Locally’ (my.barackobama.com) and “Welcome Hillary supporters. Get involved” are two things that impressed me much, the signs of a man who knows wants to carry people along. StartUp Meme has a post on the Facebook stats of Obama’s activities. Obama has 4 times as many supporters as McCain on Facebook.

    Meanwhile, in the case of blogs, 500 million blog posts for Obama vs 150 million for McCain. The ratio is almost 4:1 again. On MySpace, 844,927  friends for Obama compared to McCain’s 219,404. On Twitter, Obama 118,107, John McCain’s Twitter followers amount to 4942.(all data courtesy RWW, and Trendrr) On an aside, Trendrr seems to be a neat service, will use it more, and post.

    And for those who thought that this brilliant use of social media was a campaign stunt (as many brands tend to), Obama has launched Change.gov. (via Mashable), where he is attempting to have conversations, right from asking people to share their election stories and their vision for America, to outlining his own agenda. The two properties of the social web I find most appealing – transparency, and the wisdom of crowds.

    But social media, after all is a tool. Yes, a tool which can take the brand to great heights, but only if it has a strong product/brand at its foundation. And there lies the brilliance of brand Obama. Adage has a great article by Al Ries on the attributes that made Obama’s campaign a colossal hit – Simplicity (of the keyword – change), Consistency (create and maintain the positioning of ‘change’ agent, so that the word is associated with him more than others), Relevance (forcing the competitors to fight on your comfort ground). I was also very impressed with this article on afaqs by Vijay Sankaran, which gave 10 lessons that marketers could learn from Obama. Excellent lessons all, i especially liked the one about relinquishing control.

    The brand was so strong that several of my friends became fans of Obama on Facebook. On election day, I saw a photo of college kids in bangalore wearing Obama tees, and carrying Obama placards.

    As a person in India, the real benefits that Obama can get me are not much, but in addition to becoming America’s messiah, he might have also become social media’s messiah, and virtually, nothing could make me happier than a web 2.0 champion who happens to be the President of America. Yes, Obama, we can!!!!

    until next time, i hope change is a constant

    PS. For those reading this, make a start, join ‘Connected Indians‘. Hopefully we can change India too.

  • Via Milano

    ..and as part of our Italian/Continental weekend dinner festival, we thought we’d knock off Via Milano from the places in Koramangala we haven’t been to.

    Via Milano is just off the Sony World Junction, when coming from the Indiranagar side, take a left at the junction (after Lifestyle), and then take a U -turn, since this is on the same side as Sony. There’s valet parking, and i guess enough parking for 2 wheelers. Or you can be like us – park in Lifestyle, window shop a bit and then walk to Via Milano. 🙂

    Via Milano is on the 3rd floor, and would give a spectacular view of the Ring Road. I am guessing, because in spite of several pleas, they refused to give me window side seating, even the corner one occupied by Mrs and Mr.Invisible Man throughout our meal, since I believe they reserved it. The cynic in me (and the wife, no she’s not a cynic) claim its the tee+cargoes+unshaven look that puts me at the receiving end of such treatment. I don’t see why, if there’s no dress code, and I can pay.

    Anyway, the ambience is quite nice, and I liked the erotic female anatomy illustrations that they’ve hung on the walls. The staff is quite courteous. So they said no to my window seat request with a smiling face. Oh, okay, I shall try not to be mean. They did give us the welcome wet napkin and a bread basket. Thank You.

    They serve alcohol, and have an elaborate menu just for that. Though there seems to be a lot of starter options, there are only 2 soups. Since we preferred a thick one, we asked for a Crema di lenticchie, stracci di pasta integrale, olio d’ oliva all’ aroma di porcini. Haha, don’t worry they have an English explanation too, for us genteel desis. That’s green lentil soup (dont let me catch you muttering daal!!) with home made whole wheat pasta, olive oil, porcini, mushrooms. They also give you olive oil, chilli oil and one more ( i think balsam oil?) in ‘Borosil’ test tubes. Though i was reminded of my science lab experiences, i tried the chilly oil and it did add to the soup’s flavour.

    For the main course, there’s pasta, antipasta and pizza. Both of us decided to go for pasta. So I ordered a Tortelloni di pollo, funghi, crema, erba cipollina (chicken filled tortelloni, mushrooms, fresh cream and chives) and the wife ordered a Penne con sear fish, pomodoro, capperi, olive, melanzane, semi di finocchio alla siciliana (penne sicilian style with sear fish, tomato sauce, capers, black olives, eggplant and fennel seeds) The food was good, no qualms in admitting that. The slight sour cream and mushrooms in the chicken dish complement each other very well, the tortelloni is so soft it almost melts in your mouth. And it shattered the bland expectations I had, in a very nice way. The fish was also made well, and had a dominant tomato flavour, though it was not spicy.

    There were quite a few dessert and coffee options, but the window affair irritated me enough to skip it. In fact that was the single thing that spoiled the entire experience, and made us feel ‘cold’ towards the place. But you should drop in at least once, because the food is diferent, and tasty, it does ‘excite your senses’ (their tagline) and in spite of the ‘falling over each other service reserved for foreigners’ that i detest, the service is pleasant.

    All of the above cost us just less than Rs.1000, inclusive of tax. No mineral water included, since you can pick that up from Spar (Lifestyle). 🙂 A lil cheap, but I’ve had enough of being fleeced over a Rs.13 bottle of mineral water, all over Bangalore’s eating joints!!

    via Milano, No.607, Asha Plaza, 3rd floor, 80 ft Peripheral road, Koramangala, Bangalore – 560034 Ph. 41309997/4

    Menu and Photos at Zomato

  • Social Aggregation – Birds of the same feather…

    I installed Flock quite sometime back, and even used it for a few days. I was quite impressed with the social aggregation, and the sheer number of sharing sites it was tying together on a browser. Flock has recently released version 2 of the browser, though the Beta was launched back in June. The major updates are MySpace integration and Media RSS accessibility, a standard developed by Yahoo that syndicates rich content like photos and videos. (via Tech Crunch)

    However, it puzzles me that I am still unable to figure out why I didn’t stick with it. Though adding all the services- from blogs to photo sharing to status updating services is a tedious exercise, it’s something I managed to do. Its load time is greater than others,but I doubt that’s the reason. After having thought about it, I figured out a few other possible reasons

    • the sheer lethargy of changing the preferred browser, especially since there are a few plugins in Firefox that have made life much easier. (but i just read that most of them should work in Flock. Yes, it has the Awesome Bar too, something that has proven to be extremely useful)
    • the existence of a web/ desktop client based service like Friendfeed which does a fair bit of social aggregation
    • a browser plugin like Yoono which does roughly the same job as above

    While I am now a fairly good user of Friendfeed, I haven’t used Yoono much.  But I did read a couple of days back that Yoono has announced support for IE and is adding Imeem and MySpace.  It is also adding an interesting shopping widget soon.

    Anyway, as if all these weren’t enough, I also read recently about the launch of Sobees, a social desktop aggregator. Both Flock and Sobees have a very useful picture uploading feature.Its interesting the social aggregation wars being fought on several platforms – browser, desktop, browser plugin, web.

    Meanwhile, there are other browsers popping up. Mac users can check out Cruz, a multi pane social browser, about which I read here. There is some work happening on Mozilla’s Minefield.

    So now, i am wondering what will work for me – Flock 2.0, or the combination of Firefox and the Yoono plugin? With Chrome’s awesome speed, only one of the above alternatives will survive. Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that Chrome and FF don’t really take to each other. Invariably FF develops problems when Chrome is run simultaneously. Anyone else having the same issue?

    until next time, browse