iPhone is the hottest desirable gizmo at this point of time. As per AppleInsider (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2415), Apple is going to make 47% – 49% margin on each iPhone sold.

So, if you are not in a big hurry, waiting for a few months might save you some bucks. With so much of margins available, Apple will definitely try to push iPhone hard to gain some marketshare of the fiercely competitive mobile phone market. They will do this sonner as they are already a late entrant and it has to cover a lot of ground to be considered as a serious competition for established mobile phone companies like Nokia, Motorola and Sony Erricson.

Being a second mover will also give you inputs from the early adopters, making your purchase risk free. Good things come to people who wait (well a little cheaper).

Art knows no barrier. I came across this fantastic gallery from Saxton Freymann.

Gallery URL – http://www.rit.edu/~ksh8863/saxtonfreymann.html

Saxton Freymann creates this human-like figures out of fruits and vegetables. He creates emotions from the natural wrinkles of the fruits. It is worth a look.

I am staying at the executive housing of ISB – Hyderabad today. It is managed by Sarovar Park Plaza (http://www.sarovarparkplaza.com/). The room is great and the service is impeccable.

But what caught my fancy is a small plaque on the work desk (photograph included).

It reads – “FORGOT SOMETHING? If you have forgotten any essential toiletry item, please contact Housekeeping. We will be pleased to deliver with our compliments. Shaving cream, disposable razor, comb, toothbrush or toothpaste”

I feel that this kind of approach has two fold benefits –

It increases the perceived value of the service. You are consciously requesting the toiletry and you feel obliged towards the hotel when you get them. In case these items are present by default, you take it for granted. The hotel is also getting an extra opportunity to serve you and deliver 'experience', which does matter a lot when you compare service providers.

It makes you feel that the hotel cares about you! – even if you do not want to use the toiletry. So they are creating a positive image in minds of its customers without spending a dime or invesiting any effort. It cannot get better than this.

The bottomline is – Communication (of value) and customer contact (to deliver positive experience) creates lasting, high value relationship.

Recently, I finished reading "The Fourth Estate" by Jeffrey Archer.

It was a nice read – a bit long though. At some places it becomes boring.

The overall storyline is interesting. What is more interesting is its simmilarity to real life media tycoons Rupert Murdoch and Maxwell. There are too many simmilarities to ignore and it looks like the real story has been spiced up and censored wherever required to give it a look of a fiction novel.

Murdoch like Townsend, was born to aristocrat family in Australia and they moved on to United Kingdom and then to USA to conquer the media empire. On the other hand Armstrong like Maxwell followed the trail from war torn Germany to the British army and both ended up in United Kingdom and then in USA to fight the penultimate battle with his arch rival. The incidence of misappropriation of pension funds brings the fiction and real life drama a step closer. However the climax is the way the novel describes the death of Armstrong which is very simmilar to that of Maxwell.

I found it more interesting as I read this book after I saw biography coverage about Maxwell on History Channel (most probably).

Worth a read!

Abhishek

I feel this is a usability flaw in Gmail's "Mark as read" contextual menu item.

For all the contextual actions, once the action is done, the checkbox status is turned back to default – i.e. not-checked.

However when you "Mark as read", the mails remain marked i.e. checked, even after the action has taken place. This means the user has to manually un-check all the mails before he takes another action. Thus he is always at a risk of taking wrong action on the un-intentionally checked mails.

I think, once the "Mark as read" or "Mark as unread" is done, the checkbox status of the mails should be turned back to the default. This will provide users a predictable and expected system which is consistent with other options of simmilar nature.

Abhishek

A signage as critical as this has been done more in "style" than keeping quick – common understanding in mind.

This is a signage at the main gate of the hospital. It is trying to show two arrows – one towards, the Emergency / Blood Bank / Service Block and the another one pointing towards Main Lobby / OPD / Admissions.

Now, if you have a closer look, or have a common man take a at-a-glance look (the best a person will do if he is rushing in someone for an emergency), you will find that this signage can create a lot of confusion –

1. The department names are not segregated and one might read it like "Emergency Blood Bank" instead of "Emergency" & "Blood Bank"

2. The most important pointer is merged with the common and not-so-urgent ones, which dilutes the purpose. The most important ones are "OPD" and "Emergency", which should get maximum exposure.

3. The shape of the signage is improper and confusing. It should have been cut out in form of two seperage and big arrows, clearly marked in seperate colors, and pointed exactly in the direction of the department. (The OPD is currently pointing towards the parking lot – I can say this because I have been there several times).

4. For visitors, it is not important to know the location of the "Service Block" and hence it is consuming valuable real-estate

5. The board should be illuminated for cleared viewing during night

I hope to see these changes soon

Abhishek

Recently, I saw a funny metaphor for "Gift-Voucher" when I visited Shoppers Stop in City Center.

It is a poor example of using a graphics / icon to symbolize a concept. The graphic of a "hanger" gives no reason to relate it to a "gift" or a "redeemable voucher" or both. At least it is not evident to a normal human being. I think something traditional (like a gift box or picture of vouchers) with a touch of modern graphics would have done much better.

I doubt this signage is getting them any mileage.

Abhishek

Eoghan McCabe has covered some good conversion tips in his blog post – User Interface Simplicity Gone Wrong.

He has explained how website conversion rate can shoot up if the contact forms are simple and to-the-point. Everyone is in a hurry and people hate filling in long forms. Web site visitors are impatient and one should not expect them to fill in long forms. They get frustrated very easily and messages like "Zip code has been left blank. Kindly provide the same and re-submit the form" can simply put them off! They are doing a favor to you by getting in touch with you and not the other way round. I have been a strong advocate of a simple form, so that the initial contact can be made without much effort in few seconds.

I have been using the simple contact form for few years now and I have experienced the jump in conversion since then

However, I would additionally suggest that -

1. Include couple of contact fields as well like Name, Email, Project Details (Phone number is optional as many people may not like to disclose their phone number to an unknown person)

2. Include a link to the privacy policy or at least make the visitor feel safe enough that his information will not be sold out!

3. Put this contact form in every page of the website

4. When a contact form has been filled and submitted, a feedback must be generated in form of a "Thank you message". This make the user confident that his action has yielded a positive result.

5. DO NOT put a "Reset" button below the form. I have seen countless websites where they have a stupid "Reset" button which gets pressed by a person-in-a-hurry and results in wiping out the entire effort of filling up the form.

6. Set a "tab" preference in the correct order, so that when a user presses "tab" after filling in one field, he is taken to the next field. the sequence must be correct and end with the "Submit" button.

It do a lot of good to your website and conversion!

Abhishek

Yesterday, I was attending an interactive session with Mr. Vinod Dham (Yes! the same guy who invented Pentium chip and Flash memory).

It started with a nice inspiring story – How Vinod accidentally stumbled into engineering and ended up building the fastest processor in his time. He shared with us – How he got into his second career as a management expert and further diversified into venture capital business, which needs a totally different skill set and mind frame compared to a pro engineer.

During the entire informal discussion he held with various TiE – Kolkata members and IIM – Kolkata students, he shared his insights about the IT industry and role / challenges India seem to play in this new evolving eco-system.

He quoted a businessman whom he met during his visit to Chennai few years back:

"Revenue is Vanity, Profit is Sanity, Cash-in-pocket is Reality"

The emphasis was on building profitable business, keeping the fundamentals in mind and making sure that the business should generate positive cash flow and profits to stay in business. Many companies forget this fundamental law in the blind run to "make it big".

Business starts sinking when-
- market valuation takes a priority over the value that you are adding to the consumers
- turnover starts taking a priority over profitability
- projection/paperwork starts taking priority over cash-in-hand

It reminded me the most influencial interactive session I had with Mr. Ajai Chowdhury, Co-Founder of HCL Infosystems (again in a TiE event) where he emphasized on the importance of being street-smart and how cash flow defines the destiny of the business more than anything else.

His tip, always help me keep things in check. I hope it does the same for the aspirants of the renewed dotcom craze!

Take care.

I recently got a caricature done by Simon Ellinas. It rocks What do you think?
I highly recommend his service. Is is a real pro!

 

 

My relationship with the Provident Fund Office dates back to 2004, when I went ahead to get my company and employees registered under the Employee Provident Fund Scheme in order to get them the much desired social security.

But what I saw there, shattered my faith in the department. Rampant corruption, mismanaged departments, pathetic work culture and carelessly kept documents formed the common view. I decided that I must post some pictures of this department at some point of time. On a recent visit, I took some pictures using my mobile camera for you to enjoy –

Do you really think they can help someone with pension and/or timely resolution of issues this way?