• Welcome to the Dark Site

    The story of the day has been Cuil (pronounced Cool), a new search engine. So, what was so special about this that everyone sat up and took notice? Well, for starters, it has to do with the starters. (okay, bad one) – ex-google personnel. In addition, it boasts of indexing 120 billion pages, a semi-semantic approach to search (understands connection between words and will help throw up better results thanks to better page ranking) and it does not store IP addresses. While I’m not averse to doing a complete review, I think there are those who are better qualified for that, this one is quite a sharp and comprehensive piece, and has amazing links too. And this, is a riot!! 🙂

    All I’ll say is that the number of indexed pages is not exactly the benefit I’m looking for as a user, the relevance of the results is. And when a search engine learns to beat Google on that, and consistently, we’ll talk. I tried various searches on Cuil, and while the display is arguably better (since it shows more details and lets me know if thats the page I was looking for), the results, unfortunately are no match for Google. I liked the energy saving (?) black touch though, visually, puts it bang opposite Google’s white. 🙂

    On a sidenote, if you’re interested in looking at cluster based search engines, give Clusty a spin, and do me a favour, check out the others in this list too, and we can compare notes 🙂

    Also, I’d like to think that a one-up on search is also not enough to be a google killer. Google is so entrenched in the way we operate these days, that even starting a mindshare battle would be an uphill climb.

    Meanwhile, Google has also been poking its nose in Wikipedia territory, with the launch of Knol. Though its been said that its more similar to Squidoo, the broad territory remains the same. But unlike wikipedia, where there is one entry per subject and users add/delete/edit, there can be several ‘Knol’ s on each subject, and creators can earn revenue, courtesy Ad Sense. The final authority for accepting changes on his Knol rests with the creator.

    I, for one, shall stay with wikipedia, because Google these days is overwhelming me, and making me quite afraid of its monopolistic potential on the web. Imagine the kind of grip they would have over users, when say, it decides to throw Knol results above wikipedia results. Decides to put knol widgets inside orkut, blogger, youtube, lively and so on? All of them with relevant Ad Sense banners, which help users to make money. Yes, there might be better products out there in each of those verticals I’ve mentioned, but who can challenge them on an integrated bouquet?

    In such a scenario, Google may not be able to resist the temptations of the Dark Side.

    until next time, don’t be evil 😉

  • Mocha

    And, at long last, we finally landed up at Mocha on Lavelle Road. Keep going down Lavelle Road (from MG Road) and this is about 50 m after the Walton/Lavelle/Vittal Mallya junction, just before Java City. We got in by about 7.45, and the place was already fairly crowded. We sat indoors, but there’re also some very good outdoor seating options.

    Disclaimer: There’s a bit of anarchy in the ordering sequence.  At this place, we order the shake first, and then decide what to eat. It has nothing to do with The Joker. Blame it on the chocolate.:)

    So, we first ordered a Dutch truffle cake shake. The menu said it was a chocolate shake so sinful you might want to go for a confession. I confess they were right. The quality and the quantity. It must be said that we arrived on this particular choice after much debate all thanks to the exhaustive options available.

    To fill up the rest of our collective tummies, we ordered a Country Roast Chicken Panino and a Blackened Balti Chicken Crustini. The former is wildfire roasted chicken and slaw served with fresh basil presto, and the latter is chicken and peppers cooked in balti spice. While we were slightly concerned about Balti, it turned out to be just fine. 🙂 However, we found that these two, while not lacking in taste or flavours, we e not sufficient to leave us satiated. So, again, afer much debate, we decided against having dessert (thanks to familiarity with the humongous portions that are served here) and ordered one more snack – Pollo con Aioli, which is marinated chicken with Aioli. No, we had no clue on who (er, what) Aioli was. 🙂 It tasted a bit like corn, and a bit like the soggy peanuts we sometimes have, but overall was a bit bland. The saving grace was the sauce they gave with it. On hindsight, we really should’ve been gluttonous and gone for that ‘That Chocolate Thing’. For now, all we’re left with is its description – rich gooey flourless chocolate cake layered with dark chocolate ganache served with chocolate ice cream. Sigh, next time, definitely.

    All of this cost us just below Rs.600. Thats one of the good things about Mocha. It allows you to sample a lot of things, and still leaves enough room and dough for chocolate 😉

    Mocha 080 65357111 , 080 65357222

    PS. You can also check out the review of the other Mocha in Bangalore, here.

    Menu and Photos at Zomato

  • Bang Allure

    She was tired of this place. Yesterday, an announcement about more power cuts. Great, no lights. And what was with the city today? Why was there such an eerie silence around? Great, no sound too. God, was some light and sound too much to ask for in a metro?  That was when the bomb exploded.

    until next time, careful what you wish for

  • Brand Manager 2.0

    Disclaimer: I promise to work on the 2.0 fetish -#7 here

    I’ve always been a fan of this thought – ‘the tyranny of the big idea‘. This is also a great read on the same subject. The one line take-out would be that in the presence of the big idea, smaller ideas which might have had the potential to make the brand more interesting would get lost. I can safely say that I’ve seen this happen, with smaller, but good ideas being thrown into the bin because of the lack of sync with the prevalent communication theme. While these posts are around a couple of years old, in a world where conversations are becoming more important, the relevance of the thought remains as much as before, in fact more important.

    So, continuing from yesterday’s post, ideas being non-commodities, it’d actually make more sense for brands to have the idea-buckets that the posts speak of. Which leads me to this post, which mentions that “a brand can, and should have more than one one proposition for itself.” For those who believe in the inflexibility of positioning, this would be difficult to swallow. But look at it this way, on any given day a technological or even an environmental change could deem your entire communication premise infeasible. Theory, huh? Okay, another perspective, what’s google to you? Search engine? Mail? IM? Office Tool? Communities? …. You get the picture? Meanwhile, the thing I’ve been wondering is, in this new way of brand diversification, how different should the different propositions of a brand be? Do they have to be related to each other so that the strengths of one can be used to help the other? Or can they be like Big Adda and Big FM and Big Flix, seemingly unrelated? And the last question, as audiences become more fragmented and individual niches become too small to monetise each separately, would it force brands to become aggregates of several similar niches along the long tail?

    Which brings me to the point of my post. What does all this do to my role – that of a brand manager. The very fact that I’ve got my brand being different things to different people means that my audiences are differentiated and there’s probably no single animal out there who I could define as the brand’s audience. Its more a zoo. It also means that I’ve keep myself abreast of the conversations and the needs of different sets of people. That makes me more of a communities manager. Is this the natural evolution of the brand manager. Wait, that’s not all, I also have a human angle to this. When you’re dealing with communities, it works best if you are part of the audience itself in terms of interests. It  lends credence, and thus, in a way, the line between professional and personal interests start blurring. Which perhaps is a great thing, as more and more people get to do what they’d like to do. But given the fact that we’re still dealing with businesses and individuals here, how exactly can processes be evolved in this scenario, where there is so much of the individual in the brands he deals with? Bluntly, what happens when the person leaves, or something like this happens?

    until next time, people management 2.0 😉

    PS. All ye bloggers, check this out, blogger accommodation (via Indianweb2)

  • The powers that be

    Decision making is something we try to be good at, maybe it has something to do with the little bit of a control freak we have in all of us. And we judge some as good decision makers, and some as bad, not pausing to think that the seemingly good or bad decisions can be reversed so quickly by a twist of fate. Of course, there are some who would refuse to attribute even a small iota of it to fate, but then that’s an age old argument, so I’d not want to get in there now.

    Meanwhile, though decisions affect any number of people from an individual to nations, depending on who takes them, I tend to believe that the control that we have been given seems to be reducing with each passing period. No, not as individuals, but as humanity in general.

    Reading mythology, Indian and otherwise is taking its toll on me 🙂 , so humour me. Every civilisation speaks of gifted individuals, and several of them who could cause epidemics, control the elements of nature, and change things in a way that would be inconceivable to us (that a human could do such things) Our mythology (which I believe to be history as opposed to myth) has a liberal splattering of sages who could give curses, heroes who could change the course of battles with a single weapon and so on.

    Stories, you say, but do you think that at some point of time, a higher power trusted humans enough to give them the liberty and the ability to do such things, and because of what we have done to ourselves, it has been taken away from us?

    until next time, fall from grace