Quote of the day

What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes! - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Podcasts: The new media form with commercial prospects

With the increasing popularity of podcasts, advertisers are considering these as viable avenues to promote their products and brand. The prime benefit is better impact on audience as Ads are reaching to a target class and it leverages on audiences’ loyalty and trust to the podcast.

Following are some of the most downloaded podcasts in my list. Two of these have already started generating tangible revenues. Others such as Financial Times and The Economists podcasts may not be directly generating revenue (directly) however these are for sure helping to attract new customers and retaining the existing ones in case they want to take a short credit crunch break  

Information Technology (IT)

• Security Now (with Steve Gibson) – Weekly (Getting plenty of sponsership, from companies including Ford, Audible, Winamp, Cachefly etc.)

Language

• Business English Pod – Weekly (Promotes paid content through the podcast)
• 6 Minutes English (BBC world service) – Weekly

News (General):

• Newspod (BBC world service) – Daily (weekdays)

Finance:

• Wake up to Money! (BBC Radio 5) – Daily (weekdays)
• Banking Weekly (Financial Times)
• The Economist

Quote of the day:
You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do. - Olin Miller

Technorati Tags: BBC,Financial Times,Podcasts,Economist,Steve Gibson,Security Now,BEP

Rise of iTunes, Fall of HMV

It’s sad that HMV is financially struggling to survive. However, its difficult to digest why any music store require so many high street showrooms.

• its not clothing business where people need to come and try
• its not furniture business where real look and feel maters and online catalogues don't give you comfort
• its not technology or automobile business where you need to showcase latest gadgets and models

In case of Music people don’t need an in-store trial or demo. They already know what they are buying, through TV or FM.

Instead of wasting money on high street stores what HMV should be doing is

• invest on innovation for anti-piracy technologies (don’t place reliance on ISPs for anti-piracy, they will never risk their unlimited download revenues for your benefit) 
• Make Content cheaper (Netflix, Lovefilm, Moser Baer, rajshri.com are great examples)
• THINK ONLINE!
• Very few people want MUSIC, same old way (in CD format), for them join with coffee shops, libraries, Airports, Art galleries, Museums and have CD stores in their premise and share the cost.

Anyways in UK, Council Libraries are struggling after austerity cuts. This is a great opportunity to join them and run CD store/Waterstone from the same premise, share the cost and give heavy discounts on HMV products. A win-win for both. 

The NEXT iDesign for PCs and Laptops

Think of a laptop (or PC) similar to Nintendo DS design. On top you have a normal LED monitor (or may be 3D monitor) and at bottom instead of having a keyboard you have a touchscreen that can be used as a mouse pad, keyboard, handwriting recognition notebook, piano keyboard for apps similar to GarageBand and whatever else you can think of.

Benefits:

• You are not restricted to just a noisy and heavy keyboard. change it as per your application. for example a hand written to-do list or letter to someone you love , piano, drawing board, fingerprint reader for your next palmistry application, a document scanner and what not
• Already there are desktops with touch screen monitors, however personally i prefer less touching on monitor (so that i don't need to sit close to monitor and affect my eyesight). My preference is more touching, and multi touching on keyboard and mouse pad.
• So far we have seen just the beginning of touch applications. Touch apps have a long way to go from here and am sure touch keypads will increase the momentum

 

What’s  NEXT+1?

     Just a PC monitor with kinnect sort of  sensor. Sensor projects the hologram image of keypad on your desk. A projection on lap would be uneven and may be no laptop version for this design or a laptop that can be used only on even surfaces such as desk

I recall i have seen images of projected keyboards somewhere on Google, hence for sure someone out there is working on this concept. My best wishes and hope to see these new designs soon in the market….before ipads takeover half the PC market share!    

Windows Live Writer

Great news for bloggers that Microsoft has now embedded blogging client into their new Windows Live Essential suite…..I hope it will be less pain than the web based blogging clients that blogspot and wordpress have and it will motivate people who left blogging and moved to tweeting to return.

Happy Blogging!