• Wake up call

    He liked watching her sleep. She looked so much at peace now, wrapped up in that something-like-a-shawl thing. But he’d have to wake her now, to tell her that he’d finally cracked a puzzle. Now he knew why reality shows worked. People would rather watch someone sleeping than the movie for which they paid Rs.200.

    until next time, in reality….

  • Fresco’s

    Fresco’s gets very close to a chocaholic’s version of heaven, so we make up excuses to go there, even though its on Cunningham Road, and not so close to home. Its on Cunningham Road, within 100m of entering it, a couple of buildings after the Foodworld (?), and its not visible from the road. But there’s lots of parking available outside and some space inside too.

    Fresco’s is a semi-outdoor kind of space, quite cosy and is always buzzing during dinner time (at least weekends, when we go). And this time was no exception. So you might want to reserve before going. We didn’t and were asked to wait for a few minutes. Fair, but what was quite dumb was giving us a seating that was uncovered, especially when there were intermittent showers happening all through the day. So we asked for a different table. We should have taken this as a premonition. We didn’t, since we’d never been given any reason to complain from our previous visits.

    It took us quite sometime and a reminder to get hold of a menu card. And though it took a long while for our soup to be created, the Chicken and Coriander soup we ordered was excellent and succeeded in putting our fears to rest..to an extent. It comes a close second to the soup at Tangerine I’d written about earlier.

    For the main course, we ordered a couple of sizzlers, a Chicken Parmigiana and a Chicken Cordon Blue (Bleu, i thought ?), chose the latter by voting out a Parsi Chicken 🙂 We’d chosen the rice option for the former and pasta for the latter, and they succeded in reversing that. I got them to give us Rice for the Parmigiana, but didn’t insist on the pasta. I was too hungry!!

    The Parmigiana is chicken breast with herbs, crumb fried served with pomadoro sauce and Parmesan cheese grattinated. The wife says it tasted a bit like pizza, and was reasonably good. The Cordon blue  is chicken salami and cheese wrapped with chicken breast, grilled, and topped with mushroom and concasse. It was good in patches, burnt at some places, but perfectly well made in others. The rice was good too, wonder if the pasta would’ve been better. And both were sizzling hot, good for a rainy night if only they had been done well.

    The dessert choice here is always difficult, and there is always a lot of heartburn when we can’t test out new talent 🙂 We chose the Chocolate Demise, and as always didn’t have any reason to complain.

    The experience can be summed up best with the bill we got for all the above – Rs. 911. The service this time was extremely poor, and except for the soup and the dessert, the food was only reasonably good. I think a visit now would happen only when desserts warrant, and only for that.

    Hatworks Boulevard, 32, cunningham Road, Ph: 41327551/5

  • The Stage of Conversation

    Branded networks, that’s what the new property from Nautanki.tv (read the comments section) YouTopia is going to be. (via agencyfaqs). Update –  This is going to be called spaces, and is still under development.

    The rationale is that since brands, especially in a nascent market like India,  may not want to invest in the infrastructure thats required for social networks, YouTopia would provide the same for individuals and brands to create their own networks with “necessary tools or applications like instant messenger, forum and facility to upload and share videos or photos while configuring their social network”, in return for an annual subscription fee (in the case of brands).

    Reminds me of Ning, though in this case, they have said that the brand can choose an independent url (so is that unlike Ning where it has to be say, nautanki.ning.com). Also, there will be an ad network, which will operate on a revenue sharing basis between Nautanki and the owners.(?) (I don’t know whether Ning has a revenue sharing mechanism) And, does the last but one paragraph in the afaqs article mean an API? Hmm

    Now the question I’d like to ask is, while (apparently) every brand manager wants a Gang of Girls, is creating a social network the way to go about it, or is it more important to maintain a conversation with the consumers? The argument I have is the same as the one i had for the online communities vs groups -on -social networks post. If the conversation is already happening at a social network, isn’t it better to be a part of the conversation there and be a facilitator? Would a brand have enough meat to pull the audience to a place where it will be the only ‘attraction’, and will they be able to maintain the interest for long. A Facebook group/ page, for example, already offers most of the stuff mentioned above, and I’m sure more features will be added. People have a certain comfort level with twitter conversations, would a brand specific network be able to recreate that? Multi Brand Outlet or Exclusive Showroom?

    I understand that its debatable, but meanwhile, there are efforts on to sew the conversations happening on various platforms into one interface. So we have, in addition to Friendfeed, a browser – Flock, an add on to a browser – Minggl, and the last i heard a new entity – Combo (via Startup Meme), which attempts to do this through a web based dashboard and widgets. I hope they send me that invite soon, so i can do some test drives. 🙂

    Meanwhile, have you noticed a comment option in Facebook’s news feeds, quite like Friendfeed, i thought. And here’s something for you to go ogle. That was Aditi Govitrikar, now where’s that I’m feeling lucky button?

    until next time, scatter or gather?

  • Faith

    So, how did it all start off? An understanding that there was a higher power that controlled destinies and the world around beyond any level that a man could aspire or imagine ? A need to connect to this entity and lay out the easiest way to do so? A way of bringing together people and making them work towards a common goal? A physical platform to relate to the belief in a metaphyical entity? Perhaps, and perhaps not.
    Somewhere in between, came the ones who claimed to have gone much closer to the entity than their peers. And they formed the higher power through prisms that were based on their individual realities and expectations, and their peers, who at best, were a confused lot, followed. Faith became religion and from a thought, became a set of practices, and from us, we became us and them.

    And that makes me wonder whether He, any He, feels the need for religion. And brings me to an unintentionally hilarious but profound statement from an old Malayalam movie, where the character states, in all seriousness to a priest, ” In religion, and in sex, I don’t feel the need for middlemen” 🙂

    until next time, profundity or profanity?

  • Opacity

    Read two interesting posts, seemingly not very connected, but actually so. The first one was here, (don’t miss the article it has linked to either) and it talks about brands including an RTI clause in their charter, and anyone from a stakeholder (thats including consumers) to competition being able to demand answers from the company/brand and more importantly, being able to get it. I wonder though, how an RTI clause could co-exist with competitive advantage (brand strategies).

    The second post talks about Friendfeed being a great tool for brands since it aggregates the contents from blogs, microblogging platforms, photo sharing services, social bookmarking sites and most possible social media. The snag though is that a Facebook or an Orkut are not accommodated there, yet, and the crowds frequenting the two kinds of sites are not exactly duplicated.

    But yes, the connection between the two posts is transparency, and i feel that in india, we have a long way to go before we reach that state. That’s because more than a certain set of processes, we are talking about a philosophy here. In the first digital (mini) wave and its aftermath, when blogs became a corporate mantra, how many companies/brands took it seriously and how many have persisted? For a transparent system to get established and flourish, it needs to start with a strategy thats consumer centric, a strong rationale for why x strategy was chosen over y to achieve a certain strategic objective, the wisdom to understand that we are human, and plans can go wrong, inspite of having backup plans running from b to z, and most importantly the maturity to listen to feedback, accept responsibility and take criticism, but learn from it, fix it and get better.

    When i hear people ask for changes in communication strategy based on very subjective likes and dislikes (sorry, its not always purely subjective, i have also heard ‘my wife likes pink’ for a campaign theme color), and when i get this response from them when asked about consumer preferences, and when, on hearing that I blog, I am asked to write good about the brands I work with, irrespective of reality, and when FYI (F*** You Instead – courtesy ‘One Night at the Call centre) responsibility strategies are given more importance than the brand’s performance, and many many more such occurrences, it gives me enough reason to believe that transparency is a long way off.

    On an aside, I read here that apparently the blogosphere was abuzz today with the Vodafone ad for iPhone. Interestingly, I saw three tweets today basically asking why the Vodafone customer service couldn’t be manned by people who knew about iPhone. 🙂

    until next time, mind set