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Statutory Warning: Cell phone use while driving is injurious to health

I have been reading a lot on the law of cell phone usage while driving. As I whizz past cars and vice versa I see every third person either talking over the phone, and probably every 10 th person doing something else on the phone. The more I think about this the more it makes me wonder that do we really need law for this? Why do people not realize that when they lose focus while driving they are not just putting their life in danger but of several other people around them? I strongly think that phone manufacturers like cigarette and alcohol manufacturers should start having a warning message running on all their ads saying : Cell phone use while driving is dangerous . The statistics clearly reveal that this matter needs extreme caution by young drivers as the under20 age group had the highest percentage of distracted drivers; 16% of drivers under 20 years old involved in fatal crashes were distracted while driving . An analogy to cigarette smoking is that smokers die much earlier t
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Paperless Mark"e"ting and crowdsourcing

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I had written about the power of one liners on my previous blog and had ended it with how it someday will start benefiting B2B marketing as much as it would B2C today. But I thought that it certainly is worthwhile discussing how this power has been utilized currently, and will gradually be advanced in the B2C space. For product vendors as well as service providers launch of new services or products happen every other day in some region or the other and hence the need to create awareness and gather feedback is vital! Consumer goods manufacturers and retailers can easily gather feedback through the increase in footfalls and through reviews at the malls directly and they do it, but think of the reach and efforts and investments they have to put in to gather this data, with the global tastes and choices of the end consumers as much as the increase in changing expectations from the customers it's important to transmit different forms of communication in different region. Also look at t
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80/20 can the ratio change now

Pareto's principle or the 80/20 thumb rule has undoubtedly been the driving factor for most of the business and personal decisions of one's life, and there's no doubt that adopting this principle people and corporates have achieved a lot. I have learnt, seen, read and experienced this myself and feel that the rule has somehow gained such a lot of substance over years that businesses today without any confrontations have adopted this for their growth. But what sometimes bothers me is that why is this globally recognized model not being challenged, not because it has to be challenged but because I feel that there is a lot of business sense to really find means of increasing the 20% component of this principle. Look at it like this - it's said that 20% of the customers get 80% of your business that means these 20 % of the people have enough purchasing capital and need to being able to consume 80% of your business, but does that mean that it's only these 20% who have th
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Companies that defi"e"d the online sales model

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While "Apple" the big computer and i-tune giant has never really shunned away from innovation and coming up with some of the most coveted products in last few years, it's becoming more and more difficult to call it's name as just one product wonder. Starting from Mac they have come a long way where the i-phones and i-tunes are doing wonder in the cellular phone market. They lead and the rest of the world follow in any new technology they decide to incorporate into their products. I would have loved to write more about the range of apple products and how each and every of those products in their own way have really changed the market outlook towards that product segment altogether, but to do justice to the Title I would rather shift to the core. While Apple has never really entered into price wars and most of their home and business laptops and PCs are sold at the same price in the retail market or online, but the innovation that they have really brought is by not rely
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Strat"e"gic Acquisitions

Acquisitions are very easy to look at and talk about especially if one talks and hears about the success stories. Though it's not easy to decide until at least 4-5 years of an acquisition about the true outcome - before either it starts showing some continuous benefits(revenues) or it collapses after a quick growth, and the third and desired option is that it becomes a visionary fitment into the organization and it doesn't just grow because of the acquisition but also gains market value and respect. There are certain parameters for an acquisition to be successful , these parameters not necessarily are ingredients of a magic potion, but they certainly are worth looking into while I do a necropsy of some of the acquisitions that have happened in the last 10 years I'll try to highlight some of those points and map them with what went wrong and what were the success factors: Fitment into the business for improvising the business model - " e-bay's purchase of bill
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Power of on"e" liners

Who could have imagined in 2006 that the 140 characters that twitter assumes are just sufficient to build an ecosystem will become talk of the town today and it will not just influence social behavior, but also various business initiatives! Today with millions of registered users on platforms like Twitter, myspace and other social networks emulating the model to not let go the immediate connect and impact which sites like Twitter have created. Facebook , Orkut, gmail chat, linkedin and all other social network sites today let people quote what's in their mind and this one development according to me was the next best advancement in networking. Being able to be in a community and chat, write on wall and scrap was started by social networking sites but being able to interact on every moment of life or at times on just a teatime session, walk round the street with Ralph (the dog) or a trip to Smokey's creates so much buzz around you in the community that with these status me
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"e"volution

Ever evolving, changing and adapting world - keeping away from blogging hasn't stopped the thought process. While I was keeping myself busy into work it was exciting one day when I got a facebook invitation from my father; it was very interesting to watch this and how the Baby boomers too are gradually trying to get into the Gen V world and the late entry into the online space is not stopping them from taking a plunge in it. I had a series of blogs on some of those most famous web spaces and how they will be evolving their business models. One of them was on where Linked in could be headed to , and am sure it wasn't just me who had foreseen that - but recession has really made some of my expectations (I don't want to be called a braggart by calling them predictions) come true: Increased the presence of Social networking and making them the 4 th most popular online activity ahead of personal mail The entire world except for most of the countries in Africa have presence fr
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