The Joy of Listening

Last month I was in Delhi for business and as always had several hours to kill before I took the 3am flight back to Hong Kong. I decided to shop for some books and dropped into a nearby Crossword. I saw Shammi Narang – TV news reader from Doordarshan era. I always remembered him for his recital of a legendary poem on Jhansi Ki Rani (written by Subhadra Kumari Chauhan). Shammi was reading from a book and soon I realised he was narrating one of Munshi Premchand’s story – Shatranj Ke Khiladi. It was the launch of a set of three audiobooks by Shammi Narang on Munshi Premchand’s stories.

I sat there for 30 odd mins and really enjoyed the Shammi’s reading. Its been ages since I listened to a story in any of the Indian languages. As a child my life was full of interesting stories – from grandparents, aunts, and of course language teachers. Today our lives are so busy that we’re no longer reading to kids & teenagers – certainly not much in Indian languages. We take the easy of option of placing them in front of TV so that we don’t have to spare time. Sad but true.

Listening to Shammi brought back many memories of listening. It made me feel very nostalgic and I walked out with the audiobooks.

Status Broadcast through Ping.fm

I seriously started using Ping.fm & I must say I’m finding it very useful. The status updates across my networks are quick – in fact Facebook & Twitter are super quick. There are some bugs – my Linkedin status is still not getting updated but I’m sure that will get sorted out shortly. What I like about Ping is its simplicity & multi-device/platform approach. I don’t necessary have to go to the website to do it. I can simply do the updates through emails, msgers or even my iPhone/Blackberry. I know it can be used for many more applications than just Status Updates but I’m yet to fully explore it.

FYI – .fm is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Federated States of Micronesia, a group of islands located in the Pacific Ocean. Just like .tv belonged to Tuvalu – another Pacific Ocean Island. Two small Pacific Ocean Islands controlling two most important media domains – TV & FM – interesting isn’t it?

Strong recommend to try Ping.fm

Everything n.0

I’m kind of tired of hearing progressive version numbers given to different aspects of marketing & technology – Content 1.0, Web 2.0, Media 3.0, TV 4.0, Print 5.0, Search 6.0… they keep cropping up in discussions, briefs, conferences, presentations etc. They’re used very loosely and most people who use these terms don’t even know the real meaning of it. Guess how many times I heard something n.0 this week? 28 times. Thats more than 7 times a day over last 4 days.

Who the hell cares about n.0? NO ONE. People (not consumers) care only about how a particular technology or application or content can make their lives better, entertain them better, connect them better and give them the information that they want. We (industry) keep throwing these jargons as it allows us to project expertise.