AMD's move will reduce prices?

AMD is taking a gamble by trying to move up the market in grabbing the major share in the sluggish PC market. AMD's USP is Lower price + Performance against Intel's high priced and brand equity. The PC market is on the saturation curve and its high time some one comes and shake up the curve to get it move up slowly. AMD going in for its own branded PC may be the right way to start penetrating the market and getting noticed. AMD has a great product, has the attractive pricing...its promotion and distribution seems to be the only problem. The only way to shake up the market is to find an alternative operating system and move away from microsoft as each microsoft product adds up a fortune on those systems. But getting a new OS off means fighting against the network externalities enjoyed by microsoft. AMD has solved one part of the problem by squeezing in the price and bringing it a tad down. I had come across one service where the operating system was a stripped down one and all those additional applications were hosted on a remote server and was into some sort of pay per use. I still dont understand why all these damn desktops and laptops come loaded with so many applications which suck up the Ram. The only way to reduce money and make these price elastic consumer turn heads is to make computers similar to TVs and go in for revenue in opening up various e-commerce fronts like movie downloads, internet shopping et al. Thats the only way any price penetrator can take the PC market by storm. It must be similar to mobile phones thing ... give the set at a subsidy and make money on subscriptions in such a way that the subsidy is taken care of and the profit margin is on par with the company's objective. Its high time these computer manufacturers get a way to project computers as a simple but great gadget which is affordable. Atlast if only those people think like me :D

E-ticket

E-tickets are seen as convenience and is seen as a saver from the issuer viewpoint. But i see it as a pain , the airline company or the travel agency sends out a simple email that contains the e-ticket with details and this inexpensive way helps them squeeze on dollars and cents which is very much needed in this existing competitive domain. But look this by getting into the shoes of the consumer. Its a PAIN when you need to run around looking for a computer connected to the printer. Look at the cost involved ... cost of paper + cost of cartridge ink + cost of electricity + cost of time involved in being a computer literate. if you dont have access to a computer .. you may need to head out to kinkos and print it out. Now add the gasoline cost to it :D

But wont it be good if there is some sort of vending machine near the airport where you just go there and enter your PNR number and swipe your credit card and Voilà .....you get a kind of strip generated with the details as in ATM machine. There will be a transaction cost of $2 per e-ticket which solves everything. Now it would be interesting to see if anyone from the airline or travel agency read this and implement this one...may be move one more step and hire me :D

Are Humans Products too?

I have the Marketing exam tomorrow and i was going through the product life cycle and was wondering if humans are treated as objects? Just a primer.... A product life cycle begins in the introductory stage where its just released and various advertisements, ,promotions, smart distribution is performed to push the product onto its growth phase. After a while, the product moves towards its maturity stage and finally on decline where all sorts of support systems are gradually pulled out...eventually letting the product line or product model to die. Now carefully evaluate what happens to humans? I can see that it follow a typical classic theoretical theory behind product life cycle.

When one is born, there is so much planning and excitement and slowly you start to plan and prepare yourself to market to the school and to the society to accept you into its fold. You need to prove that you have a competitive advantage and move on with the life, then learn the tricks of trade and market yourself to find a job, to find a bride, to stay on "successful" path...as you reach the maturity level, panic buttons are pushed around to ensure that you dont get to rot in your decline phase. As the decline occurs you are retired off and left to be on the mercy of pension or at the mercy of your kids or dear ones. Now the kids evaluate you and if they think that you are a liability they dont hesitate to act as management in eliminating the product...eliminating as in packing you off to old age homes or abandoned.

What a shame that humans are visualized as products and commodities...now this puts an interesting question as to whether we are the resulting failures of our own smart strategies? I just dont understand as to why aging people become liabilities? why arent they given any attention, what happens to all their life experiences and their intelligence? is it all about money? For a moment i am scared of seeing my own fate in few years soon :D

My New App

I dont expect my work to be anything path breaking or expect to be a millionaire, its just a small tool to help universities and small business people to save on printer cartridges. Any small save translates to huge savings across the planet and helps reduce the carbon footprint. Anyways here is the summary....

Click on this to view the working

Opportunity/Problem Identification:
When you try to print out a webpage, the main problem is you need to print out those cartridge guzzling banners and images. You can print if you need it but what if you dont need those? Cut pasting the section you need into a word is another crap. Why does anyone want to do that extra stuff? why waste productive time in doing that extra work? This motivated me to look for ways to look for ways to print what one needs.

Features:
A simple toolbar that sits and helps you select what you want in a page and remove all the rest without disturbing the page layout.

Some more stuff to code and also hoping to build something that can help someone spread out the content by positioning them where they want to and then printing it out. Any reaction to this application? :D .... feel free to comment

Kingfisher Airlines

With due respect to Dr.Vijay Mallya....... my dissection and analysis is as follows

A flamboyant premium airline carrier with pleasing interiors and experience. The inside decked with a TV even on domestic segment and served by young models...errr air hostess. I liked the experience where they offer you a sort of a small bottled lemonade initially and serve you good refreshments after take off and goodies on landing. The goodies in the form of a complimentary carry kit, a pen and some brochure. Well planned so that as the customers carry these around, they act as free advertising agents in starting subliminal perception in others. What i liked the most is a sort of interactive type TV which will help you kill your time. At the end of the journey you are given sort of a survey sheet to give your feedback. Now this isnt good enough as if kingfisher isnt offering any freebies for taking this survey.

I would propose a sort of system where user can interactively put in their answers to certain questions asked on their TV, when they respond to these questions then kingfisher must give them a sort of gift hamper like say Rs 25 or 50 which can be redeemed on their next flight. Here this way kingfisher is getting the data for their marketing research or for customer service evaluation. This is rather priceless as that extra 50 bucks you throw in can only be encashed on their next journey which means they are compelled to travel again on kingfisher. Now if kingfisher is smart enough, they can bring in ads of hotels and other products in-flight where they can rake in ad money to cover up for their ever increasing fuel costs. Interactive ads and local content access like IPL cricket videos is the way to make money by inserting ads for in-flight service.

Customer service is the way to get in the head count, customer service in the form of location access to passengers or finding best possible accommodation and other services to customers could be a way to go as many on the move would like someone taking care of their stuff as they think of better things. A travel on Kingfisher could mean opening up of low cost or discounted offerings at boarding and lodging with alliance partner. Airlines are one of the channels that could be used to fill up hotel rooms.

Last but not the least, the official kingfisher website is a pain as it takes close to 30 seconds to load its 100% content, its loaded with so much of images and flash content that its bringing down the brand equity. Its really a shame that this one would dilute the value of kingfisher in the eyes of internet savvy customers. Too bad ahh that it takes a little bit of money and lot of commonsense to run an internet click model. So if Mallya could read this one, may be he can implement this humble request and offer me a job :D

India taken hostage by some morons

It causes deep pain and anguish seeing how india is slowly under the control of few morons, who are misusing their power just for their selfishness. Karunanidhi who has become old and was mad from his birth is using his short sightedness to promote his atheism by declaring that Sriram never existed and its a mythology. The indians in india have also become useless as they just listen and comment like me. If only i had the power to do something, i could have shut them down for good. Now if one watches what srilankans are doing, that is promoting Ramayan tourism by highlighting the places and they say that Ramayan was true and Ram did exist. Now you people decide what is true and which side to take.

Part1 ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8JUjRFnL88
Part2 ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_9dwgO_gds
Part3 ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj5nxjlGcS8
Part4 ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIHsZQkCsNs
Part5 ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilYDp7vFOuw

Then the recent supreme court judgement regarding the reservation quota for OBC. I mean what kind of a mockery is this? Its like say .... if any english newsreader is making money, the backward castes demand that they be made the newsreader but wont learn english :D I find it amusing to see how confused people are, one side Dr Manmohan singh tells that india is growing and yet to reach full potential, on other side Chidambaram says growth like 8% and other side they allocate things for backward castes, then do some stupid things for minorities. Its high time to switch allegiance to either support india till death by turning a blind eye or quit india enmass

Are we in a zoo?

This world seems to be a zoo and there are many kinds of strange creatures around. I still cant understand about living beings, especially the human kind. There are all kinds of characters and specimens, some of them get transformed into specimens at the right time and at right place. So that leads us to a situation as to whether an artificial intelligence creature could be created which could blend well with the existing ones. Well one can always create AI machines to mimic some but not all. The reason i call these humans as creatures is because of all these and much more reasons
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PATNA: Mob vigilantism has claimed another victim in Bihar. This time the victim was a vendor, who was lynched simply because he happened to be standing near a printing press.
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Delhi: For a society often seen to reflect a deeply ingrained bias for "fair skin", a Supreme Court ruling sentencing a man to two years in jail for driving his wife to suicide following taunts over her "dark" complexion will serve as both a warning and a mirror to its uglier traits.
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MUMBAI: A traumatized 92-year-old Laxmibai Laxmidas Paleja whispers in Gujarati: "Mane saroo thai javano shrap nai aap (Don't curse me by wishing me health). When I close my eyes to sleep I pray they may never open again." Her wrinkled face and back are battered with bruises, the wound on her hand is bleeding and her swollen eyes bloodshot. Paleja, who has been admitted to Harkisondas Hospital, was bundled into a taxi and dumped in her daughter's home at Opera House on April 1.
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AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat government has finally shown how much it cares for its girls. The man, GN Chaudhari, who was at the root of the rot in the DIET-PTC Patan, which culminated in the gangrape of a Dalit girl, was transferred from DIET Mehsana on Saturday — not because of the gangrape, but for allowing a casteist slur against Dalits to be published eight times in a chapter of a book edited by him!
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MUMBAI: Nineteen-year-old Gwendolyn Naronha, who allegedly hired two youths to throw acid on her 18-year-old boyfriend, attempted suicide by slashing her left wrist with a blade at her lawyer's chamber in Fort on Saturday morning.

There are many more things which goes on and will go on in the future. This kind of puts one in a thinking situation as to whether you must live a recluse life or find ways to solve these problems created by few morons

who is the winner? IPL or ICL - A detailed Analysis

Cricket has become a circus thanks to 20-20 and the audience have become monkeys watching too much of circus cricket. Lets do an analysis and see who gets what....

ICL started this concept of taking advantage of 20-20 and subash chandra being a shrewd businessman is taking advantage of the popularity of this format of cricket, so three cheers for his group. He is the clear winner as he own the Zee network and in a way he may use this cricket as a filler for his channel's time slots, thus raking in big time moolah. He hired key members like kapil and Dean jones thus making sure that cricket is run by right people who have played cricket before. This way he is making extra revenue by owning the teams as well as fixing price on the advertisement ...be it on the ground or on the television. So each time ICL makes a news headline, the Zee's name is in news thats great publicity. He hired key players who are on the verge of retirement or who have retired. That way he can peg the price down as its his advantage, then these experienced players are also benefited that they make money at the fag end of their life. This one is also giving ranji players or others who couldnt make it to national team a chance to rub shoulders with stalwarts and have a wonderful after life. So Zee is winner all the way as it owns the team, it paid less signing amounts, managed to fill its time slot on Zee network and as well as rake in advertisement money on matches & on the player clothes.

Now comes in BCCI's IPL, they are big time losers as they tried every trick to keep ICL away as they would get nothing from such a venture. So they started applying rules and regulations and the funny part is no one questioned. They denied key playgrounds for ICL, they forced other cricket boards to ban players who sign up with ICL. This happened for only reason that Sharad Pawar is a minister in union govt as well as CEO of BCCI with major clout in ICC. But they are also winners in a way that they can rake in money auctioning players, auctioning franchisee and on advertisements, they can also sell the exclusive rights to any channel and get big time money. But imagine if all these unlawful practices are removed, they wouldnt get a cent. So thats how the world is, its a dog eat dog world.

Now comes the people who purchased franchisee from BBCI...the likes of shahrukh, priety etc. Anyways bollywood has lost its shine as evident from the fact that the movies are all sub-standard and they are using abusive dialogues, exposing etc to stay in the race. So it makes sense that some bollywood people have picked up stakes in this. So they are winner in a way. The players who have signed up for this one are also winners in a way that they are making extra money and having fun.

Next comes the advertisers for these matches, they are advertising or marketing their wares, what could be the better way to reach so many consumers if not this one? When your favourite players are playing, its natural that you sit up and watch, as u watch you are exposed to so many brands and their messages. So be it matches or serials or movies, the companies will advertise no matter what.

The sole losers are the people. First thing is they are having too much fun and doing too less work which means that the man hours of the country will go to hell, that means lower GDP....too much expenditure on electricity, food and shopping after watching all those advertisements. So am i wrong in this analysis?

Motorola + VideoCon = MotoCon?

Videocon the consumer electronic king in india is on the prowl to pounce on motorola's mobile-handset business. Dhoot run videocon is going a long way to get into another lucrative market where consumers in india dont mind splurging money on fancy hi-tech mobile handsets. If one sees the strategy of videocon, it all started with buying out obsolete technology in developed countries and started churning out affordable consumer electronics good and offering it to india's largest market segment - The Great Indian Middle class. Videocon's goods used to come cheap which meant if one is looking for the functioning aspect, the goods worked well but if and only if someone wanted to compromise on the quality. Slowly videocon started transforming its image from cheap borrowed technology to hi-tech one and it makes sense to go in for a kill when motorola is struggling in the handset business after apple brought out its slick model for rich and high end middle class in US, then nokia putting the punch on its face that motorola need to get back to its core electronic business as handset business doesnt have that much margin per set if you dont sell volumes. Now with videocon taking on this business, this would mean cheaper slick handsets affordable to middle class and low class as the mobile service is penetrating deep below. Mobile phones have moved towards consumer electronics as its no longer a gadget for techies.

Another mess - Culprit Humans

we have made enough mess as of now ... be it global warming, plastic menace, depleting non-renewal resources etc. There are a lot of man made problems and fewer man made marvelous technology. Lets start with gasoline, petroleum has been used and abused like anything before, each by-product of petroleum is utilized fully and the cost of this is global warming leading to unseasonal temperature changes, a threat to ocean resources and finally funding the middle east. Now there is a kind of alarm which is ringing and people are sitting up and thinking hard. It is mainly due to the fact that oil is a scarce commodity which translates to price gouging and results in increase in costs of anything and everything. So all these bunch of smart guys came up with ethanol, a hydrocarbon substitute which could be added in small quantities to gasoline to bring costs low. Does it bring costs low? i dont know but those ethanol pumps displays prices more or less equal to 100% gasoline. Now the major problem is ethanol produced from corn, all these farmers are sensing fortunes in growing corn and have an opportunity to become ethanol barons sooner or latter. Its a good thing that we are less dependent on petroleum as we grow renewable corn but the thing is as farmers grow more of corn than wheat or other things, there is a danger of compromising food stocks in favor of money obtained from corn based ethanol. This will be a grave problem unless government comes up and says that all ethanol could be produced from by-products of edible crops meaning you need to get the food out and the wastage after this must be the fodder for ethanol. So why cant people get into solar or human energy rather than on hydro carbons? Can they just invest in technology that can break bonds in plastics and convert them into hydrocarbons? why cant anyone think of technology to break down freely available water into hydrogen which can be a wonderful source of energy as its combustion with oxygen is water water and water. Pure water can become the solution to water scarcity.