Hi There, You!

As college brings out all abilities, including incapability. There was one person in my college Rajneesh who didn't want to fit into any specific mold. He has started a website recently : Hi There, You!

Hi There, You! is a place where procrastination meets witty anonymous posts composed of choice words. All your need is a bit of dry humor and you are good to go.

Go forth, check it out and spill the beans.

'Like' Us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/HiThereU
Twitter: www.twitter.com/HiThere_You

Why Do I like "Hi There, You!"

-Most obvious reason, It is started by my friend.

- I love sarcasm, dry humor and wit.

- Its a great idea and all great ideas are amplified when others build on them.

- Since its anonymous, there is no censorship, ownership, regulation and control of property on our ideas.

- But Don't Pay no attention to “fancy advertising” of mine that conflict with your “common sense,” and check these theories that are driven by shear gut feeling.

Ten Issues - 7

1- How America Can Rise Again : The simplest measure of whether a culture is dominant is whether outsiders want to be part of it Any great nation can be judged on two parameters : continued openness to immigration, and a continued concentration of universities that people around the world want to attend.

2- (Hi)Story, Truth and Nation: South Africa is facing the process of developing a new identity for itself and its people, and to deal with its past. Jyoti Mistry looks at the meaning of nations and the nation state in examining this process of creation of a national identity. Story-telling, history and memory play vital parts, particularly in South Africa, in building this "whole". In a story that has no end in sight, she looks at how a country is dealing with its past and stepping into its future.

3- A virtual counter-revolution: The internet has been a great unifier of people, companies and online networks. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it. The future of the internet is looking bleak;

4- Power, privilege, corruption, hypocrisy : There is nothing to be proud of India's ranking in the Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index 2009. The country ranked low also in the Bribe Payers Index among emerging economic giants.

5- The Economics of Monogamy and Polygyny : Overview of the the economics surrounding marriage institutions by professor Marina Adshade who teaches a popular undergraduate course called "Economics of Sex and Love," in which students apply the analytical and statistical tools available to economists to examine human sexuality.

6- Creating scientific culture : The first step towards an African culture of science is to make science relevant to local people, says development expert Oyeniyi Akande.

7-Loving the enemy: Al qaeda version of west - 9/11 organizer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed exploited his trial to remind the court of its own human rights obligations, while Osama bin Laden's video statements include appeals to religious pluralism. Al-Qaeda's use of liberal categories is central to its rhetoric on war and justice, writes Faisal Devji.

8- Language, Poetry, and Singularity: A joint Arab-Jewish identity seems an impossibility given the current political situation in the Middle East. And yet it was a reality, exemplified by Arabic-speaking Jews and their writers. In his extensive essay Reuven Snir investigates the complex history of Arab Jews.

9- Fellows Friday with Sunita Nadhamuni: Water and sanitation are among the most crucial issues facing India today, Sunita Nadhamuni notes in her interview with TED. But while these problems are daunting, Sunita says India’s many innovations in managing water can teach the rest of the world a thing or two.

10- An Open Letter to Manmohan Singh : Not everyone is happy with the working of our appointed prime minister due to his apathy towards corruption and the issue becomes large as an IAS officer wrote an open letter in Livemint journal - The government has lost all credibility with the people, and the buck stops with Manmohan Singh;

Quotes:

“The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion” - Henry Steele Commager

"Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies Government." - B. R. Ambedkar

The Buddha said: ‘If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way.’

Ten Issues - 5

1- Who pays the price for paid news? : In mid-June, the Election Commission of India directed Chief Electoral Officers of all states and Union Territories to enforce the law against "paid news" during elections. The institutionalised racket has been running into hundreds of crores of rupees. Ammu Joseph brings you up to speed.

2- Lokayukta stand on illegal Bellary mining has put Government of Karnataka in trouble. Santosh Hegde, the Lokayukta (ombudsman) for Karnataka gives first hand account to Tehelka Magazine.

3- Why you must read this censored chapter: Raman Kirpal reports, When the truth about the flouting of tribal rights in the Red Corridor struck home, the government dropped a whole chunk of damning material from a report it had itself commissioned.

4- Living with the Enemy: Applying the ideas of Holocaust survivor Jean Améry to present day Rwanda, our author argues that reconciliation after genocide is just another form of torture.

5- How Goldman gambled on starvation: Speculators set up a casino where the chips were the stomachs of millions. What does it say about our system that we can so casually inflict so much pain?

6- Why You Shouldn’t Leave the Web to the Web Guys : Here are a few simple rules that will help you get the most out of your web development and digital strategy.

7- “10 Ways to Run a Banana State” ; Kopach, a columnist for the independent portal Okno.mk, published a list translated at Global Voice Online.

8- Size of the Public Domain : The basic take away from the analysis was the finding that, based on library catalogue data. A take on copyright issues.

9- Narayana Hrudayalaya: A Model for Accessible, Affordable Health Care.

10- The Narcissism of the Small Difference: In ethno-national conflicts, it really is the little things that tick people off. Check conclusion of article here only :

One of the great advantages possessed by Homo sapiens is the amazing lack of variation between its different "branches." Since we left Africa, we have diverged as a species hardly at all. If we were dogs, we would all be the same breed. We do not suffer from the enormous differences that separate other primates, let alone other mammals. As if to spite this huge natural gift, and to disfigure what could be our overwhelming solidarity, we manage to find excuses for chauvinism and racism on the most minor of occasions and then to make the most of them. This is why condemnation of bigotry and superstition is not just a moral question but a matter of survival.

Thought of Day : When an ordinary farmer unable to feed his family commits suicide, it is not even a footnote. When a model, no matter how faded, kills herself, it is in headlines on all television channels. That is corporate media for us.

Vichaar Shoonya + 5

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. [Part of Speech by Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910.]

1- Delhi's Commonwealth Games slave labour shame : CHILDREN are slaving away at work on building sites in New Delhi as the Indian capital struggles to get ready for this year's Commonwealth Games.

2- The Song That Is Irresistible: How the State Leads People to Their Own Destruction : Robert Higgs's Schlarbaum Award Acceptance Speech, delivered on October 12, 2007, at the Mises Institute's 25th Anniversary Celebration.

3- The Grandmaster Experiment : The queen is the most powerful piece on the chessboard. Yet in the ultra-elite ranks of chess, a woman who can hold her own is the rarest of creatures. How, then, did one family produce three of the most successful female chess champions ever?

4- Vanishing Wisdom : A report on water management in Uttarakhand where traditional systems do the disappearing act.

5- Microfinanace in Macro Mess : Corporate entry threatens the very idea on which microfinance institutions were set up. How will the dispossessed be affected.

6- Lilavati's Daughters: The Women Scientists of India

7- Deterring Internet Piracy : A burning debated between Cinephiles

8- How Harvard Gets its Best and Brightest : Sure, students work hard to get into this elite college. But so does the admissions committee.

9- Burma : The political Black Hole (pdf format)

10- The structure and silence of the cognitariat: Only a small "creative class" achieves the creativity and freedom attributed by stereotype to all knowledge workers, writes Christopher Newfield. Below this elite exist far more numerous "perma-temps", who are highly qualified yet interchangeable.

11- How to Create Ideas that Evolve.

Vichaar Shoonya +4

Everywhere in the country and in the world, people left their beloved homelands to try their luck in this cold, faraway place where all one had to do, was be willing to work. Mumbai is the prime example of city of migrants in India. And America is an example of a modern country found by immigrants only. In times of economic downturn, we forget the values on which the place was built and developed. The sociopolitical climate becomes increasingly destructive towards immigrants in these times as scapegoats are used to help alleviate frustration. We are all citizens of the world–there is no place in the world that we can go and not touch something created in another land, no place where there are not immigrants. In my views, history is made by wandering humans from one place to another for trade, war or to become part of greater civilization. Human is indeed yayaver by nature and settler by culture.

Few web links in mumbo-jumbo post for reading....

Copenhagen Diary : A report on Climate change by Sunita Narain.

A Celebration of Difference: Science and Democracy in India by Shiv Visvanathan

It's The Comedy, Idiots by Shiv Visvanathan

Every child learns differently by Hyderabad-based educator James Tooley

Internet Growth - Key Learning's in India

Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe

The Joy of Science and Excitement of Discovery (in the history of modern quantum mechanics)

The Six Mantras for Internet

This article is edited version of article produced at PFC. I am producing it without any permission. For original and detail version, click this:

This desire to keep things “exclusive” on the Internet beats me especially when it comes to a movie promo. The whole idea of promoting is to ensure as many people see it. There’s a false sense that their promos are so exclusive, the stars so saleable that people will start streaming into any site that is created. Here are the mantras of Internet and making your website popular:

1. The Internet is NOT a Private Property:

e-Commerce website was built was quite slick and much ahead of it’s time, featuring a downloadable software. Like every fantastic tool we had built ahead of time for the company, but no one had a clue hardly any usage of this website tool. After launch of the website, there was a certain spike in the number of customers using downloadable software. The initial adopters of the tool were so amazed they started talking about it on the various website, chats, message boards and forums. Then download links of the software started appearing on these forums, much to the disdain of company. They did not want this. They wanted the software to be downloaded ONLY from their site. They started demanding all such links be removed from the sites. They were forceful. They got what they wanted. And within a few weeks the number of hits on their site fell sharply. In short they had crushed themselves the chain reaction building towards promoting their very own product.

Why was the software not allowed to be downloaded from anywhere else on the internet? Nobody could have done anything with it except build the component they wanted to and press the order button which would inturn order the component at the client via the internet. Nothing else could be done with it actually and the tool was trademarked, so no competitor could even copy, modify and use it.

The problem lay in thought. Not in the product. The internet is a place to spread it out rather than have a place with tall fences around it. This is a major problem, Shifting the thought and understanding of the internet and how it can be used for gains. As soon as one understands that the Internet is a public arena and cannot be treated as a private property, the quicker, major companies have noticed the gains that follow. The shift in their understanding brings in a drastic change in action plans & strategies.

Everyone wants a “chain reaction”, “a buzz” for their product. That will never happen until your basic understanding of the internet shifts from “I own it” to “It is free for everyone to use”. Companies hesitate to allow their products for everyone to use with thinking "It is MINE", Ofcourse it is. But to get people to use your product, you can’t lock down the various promotions, news, items, materials etc. and treat EVEN THOSE as your private property online. You have to let these out and loosen them free on the Internet.

2. It is NOT “All for One” BUT “One for All” :

Each of these companies in Bollywood wants all Internet surfers to come to them (All for one). Unless and until you are a Google or MSN or Yahoo, you can’t expect (and it is almost criminal to think thus), that the world will come to your website to watch what you have to offer (All for One). The Internet is much more sophisticated and effortless for people to follow this line of thought.

Rather the flow of the product, information has to flow from inside out – to everyone out there on the Internet. The Internet is other words should be visualized as the “infinite”. Every web-surfer has developed and sunk into their own ways and methods of surfing the Internet and visiting the sites they want to. If in this environment you introduce the process of “forcing them” to come your site for the information you want to provide, rather than making it freely available at the sites of their convenience, you will lose them before you can say KaBoom. Every blog, site or community group has it’s hardcore fan base. Your “All for One” policy is a direct negative action to make them come to your site. in direct touch or even be able to identify their core audience.

It doesn’t work. Not in terms of hits. Which you “may” get, but in terms of actually being able to identify and forecast how your film’s sales via the Internet audience will be. Tragically statistics will never be discussed by your web developers and Flow and spread your information out. Restricting it only will result in barring your very probable targeted consumers.

3- Your website will never work like Instant Coffee:

Be ready with your website much before Product or event expected to release. Every company wanted the website to attract maximum visitors online, so everyone would come to know about his product/movie or event. Your website will get dismal hits and have no impact on the finacial profit however beautiful, flashy and truckloads of money you pour into it – if you are going live within less than a substantial time before release date of your product/ event.

How will you get web surfers to visit your site?
Perhaps by advertising, perhaps by putting banners on other websites, perhaps sending a media kit to the media to talk about it – Notice what has happened here – your focus has instantly shifted from your movie to promoting your website. Bad idea again!

Do you know that the maximum of movie website DO NOT have more than a 1000 total visitors! And even an average blogger worth his salt writing a few times a week gets a 1000 visitors within a few hours each day! And above all the blogger didn’t spend a dime to create his site!!!

It takes 3 – 5 weeks for a search engine crawlers to search and get your site on their radar. The crawls become less and less the less frequently your website is updated. The crawls become negligible once your movie has released and now you are not doing ANYTHING on the website.

Go to Google or Yahoo or any search engine of your preference. Type in the name of the movie. Click Enter.

Now watch the results. On what darn page of the search results does your website show up? And which are the sites which come up before you, specially those which get listed on pages one and two.

What does this mean? Even the search engines do not consider your website important rather they prefer those sites which have more material, more content, much more updates about YOUR movie.

So what does this mean? Where did we go wrong? Well, it means you are not aware or were not told by those building your website that you build your hits- you attract new people to your site primarily through search engines – for free! And that will never happen in a few weeks.

The internet should not be treated like Instant coffee – snap – you make it. snap. you have it. It’s a ridiculous misconception. The one question though nobody asks at such web site discussion meetings is HOW? How will people on the internet become AWARE of the website? Is it realistically possible to get a million or half a million people to come visit and interact instantly? A safe answer is no. Unless you are Digged a thousand times or someone has Stumbled Upon your site a few hundred times. (refer Digg, Stumble Upon on the Internet)…

4- The Fanboys are your best friends. If not, let your product/event R.I.P. :

A few years ago, a blogger in the USA mentioned something about a movie which was about to start production. It was a funny blog. A couple of other bloggers and websites picked it up. Then a few more bloggers picked that story up from those sites. It started a chain reaction. A few websites started a contest ‘What is the story of this movie?’. A few bloggers started a comic strip. A few sites even started contests like the Funniest comment on the movie for the week.

Over a million sites and blogs were talking about the movie. And the producers had not yet spent a single dime on the marketing!!! A year later the movie released. One million fanboys converged to watch the movie in its opening weekend. Some found it real good B grade stuff. Some found it bad. Almost all agreed it wasn’t a classic, yet it was a real fun to go and watch it.

The movie was Snakes on a Plane. And it was successful purely because of the fanboys.
Which means the producers actually snipped the pipeline which was supplying them with customers and more potential ticket buyers. But at the end of it all, it was found that the hits on the producers’ created website was less than 3% of the fan’s site. few blogs being built by those who follow his work and who diligently are collecting every piece of information available online to plug it into their website. There is a lack of punch. But just a little bit of grease can set the wheels rolling. These are your messengers who will spread the word about your movie. These are the people who have websites or discussion boards or blogs, which are in turn visited by a few hundred to a million visitors each day. This is your dream. Connect with your fans. Identify your markets. Connect with them and inturn you will connect with each of the fans who visit those sites and over and over…

5. Your Website Developer is NOT your Web Strategy Advisor:

Your website developing company IS NOT the expert on planning your internet promotion strategy and neither is your marketing team who handles the traditional forms of marketing for your movie. There are many people I know (many on a personal level) working as CEOs, VPs, Brand Strategists, Marketing managers… that are so easily confused over this, having a quite common misconception that – the company building the website, for their brand or product, is the go-to-guy for receiving expertise on Internet promotions and marketing. web developer’s expertise lies in building the best website for you that suits your needs and demands. The developer should not, under any circumstance be handling the critical and foundational responsibility of building the internet marketing strategy. Website Development and Website Strategy are two entirely different things.

A developer builds a hundred odd websites a year. He is and should not be concerned over the success or failure of the website built (unless there is a technical coding angle to it). Whereas an Internet Marketing Specialist follows and track thousands of websites every single week, keeping tabs on new products and brands launched, the strategies behind them, their impact, trends, hits, demographics, identifying the core audience for each site amongst a million other data points.they can convince you to build a site with a million features even if at times there is be no need for all those features!
Your Internet strategy needs to be laid down BEFORE the shooting of the movie has even begun. NOT three weeks before the movie’s release. What Bollywood has not yet got a grip on is that the Internet can be a much cheaper form of creating a buzz for their movies in contrast to the costs for promotion on television and radio. The difference is, it requires time and a few people. And the time begins when the movie is being made, not after it is ready for release.

And that strategical plan is built for you by Internet Marketing Experts or Consultants, not the company that builds your website. Approach a Web Marketing guru much before you decide who will build your website. Not Vice versa.

6. It is not HOW MANY hits, but WHO hit YOU:

And that is the question you should ask yourself and your web team when they produce statistics of the number of hits of your new product’s website or images or stills or blogs. Does this number (of hits) means many people will come to your event or more product will be sold for sure? Does this mean you now have a sure base of X number of customers from online who will go for product/ event.

If your panel says yes, fire them immediately. Just mention “Thank You” behind the check you send me for giving you this valuable advise. What does it all mean?

It is not about the number of hits. But who! Your target – the concentrated base that will read about your movie, event or product and put money in it. The focus is to find your target audience wherever they may be for the movie you would like to promote to. Rather than play a lottery game on portals or sites which offer a high but diluted target, find where your concentrated base is. Those are the sites to go for.

Vichaar Shoonya + 2

On the profound truth which is a hybrid of reality and mythology, There's no one truth & On telling stories ;

What Have We Done to Democracy? - by Arundhati Roy

Does the Internet spread democracy? - by Evgeny Morozov

India’s Maoist dilemma: the case of Lalgarh by Aaradhana Jhunjhunwala

A Former Street Kid Sizes Up 'Slumdog Millionaire'

Rashmi Bansal's Talk at IIT-Kgp covered by a blogger.

Thought of the Day:
“You see with your eyes, you hear with the sense of your hearing, you feel with your sense of touch, and all these senses are nothing but functions of your mind which is nothing but a thought which in turn is just an idea… so if you close your eyes and go to sleep the world ceases to exist and when you wake up it comes back in different shapes and forms to every living being on the earth.” – Arthur Schopenhauer (The World As Will and Idea)