Santosh Maharshi’s Blog on the users of the screen - Screensumer & Screensumerism

Track The Indian Blogosphere on Indimeme.com
Pranav does a nice review of Indimeme.com. I was waiting for service like this - a indian version of technorati/techmeme would give a great boost to blogosphere. Provided all the bloggers embrace it and it does become a gateway. It needs to be the part of the loop and not just an open entry point. Other thing, I feel is that this headlines and the sub- headlines are given the equal importance, which sort of defeats the purpose of quick scan and meme tracking # <0>

ContentSutra's first look at In.com
It is indeed a big thing that the Web 18 guys are attempting to enter in the 'portal and aggreaetor' market. Closed beta and can't comment much.# <0>

WebUpvan showcases the best designed Indian Web 2.0 Sites.

WebYantra: "Webupvan is a web gallery for the best designed Indian websites. Built on the line of the international design watering holes like CssGalleries, CssVault, CssElite, CssHeaven etc, WebUpvan aims to showcase and promote websites that can serve as an example to other Indian web developers. In a country that can safely be described as “design challenged“, surely this is a laudable effort. Webupvan is the initiative of Amit Mandaliya, a web designer and flash developer."

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Flytxt delivers usable mobile marketing technology for marketers to run sophisticated campaigns themselves.

Got to know about this company on IndiaWeb@Ning group and they have done some cool things:

• 1st CRM campaign with Smash Hits
• 1st on-pack campaign with Cadbury “Txt ‘n’ Win”
• 1st text to screen campaign with Channel 5
• 1st short code donation campaign for Comic Relief
• 1st point collection campaign for Coke “Text to collect”
• 1st large-scale couponing campaign with Orange
• 1st book publishing campaign with Harper Collins
• 1st US magazine publishing campaign with Time Inc.

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Messenger TV comes to India - Now you can watch videos available on MSN Videos (India) with you friends and buddies through Windows Live Messenger

How to enable Messenger TV in Live Messenger:

1. In Internet Expolorer go to Tools > Internet Options > General > Languages : Change your language to English(India) [en-IN]
2. Go to MessengerTV’s India page and follow the steps to add MessengerTV Agent as your buddy in Live Messenger.
3. Sign-in to Windows Live Messenger and start chatting with a friend you would like to watch videos with. Double click on your friends’ name and open the chat window.
4. Click on the ‘Activities’ menu button on the toolbar above the chat window. Select ‘Messenger TV’ to send an invite to your friend.
5. Start sharing loads of great MSN videos!

What all things you can watch with your friends:

All the cool stuff that MSN Video - India has :). Video clips available across the channels like News, Entertainment, Music, Lifestyle, Specials and Sports.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Shah Rukh Khan unflustered at Aamir's blog dog comment

SRK is a genius, he chose to concentrate on conquering bollywood and now the entire entertainment industry instead of replying to frustrated souls : Commenting on the whole episode, Shah Rukh said: "Earlier people used to name their children after famous people. Somebody naming a dog after a known person is a new beginning in that direction. I don't have a copyright over this name if used non-commercially."

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Rajni's 20 avatars in 'Kuselan' song

Superstar Rajnikant would, reportedly, appear in 20 different get-ups for a song sung by Daler Mehndi, Sadhana Sargam, and Chitra in his latest film 'Kuselan'. Tough fight for Kamal's 10 avatars in Dasavatharam. But audience doesn't mind they are crazy for both of them.

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Cafestocks.com is another attempt at social investing..

Participation and gathering the wisdom of crowd will be the key for the success for recommending stocks and investing. This is indeed a cool idea and best luck guys if you can involve some really brainy market guys in this. Not people like me, who even fail and mutual funds investing. The time would have been more appropriate in the bull market, since the market is bearish, users may be little apprehensive at taking recommendation. In bull markets any tip is a tipping point.

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Gaadi.com - car portal 2.0.

Need some time to figure out how it is different from Carwale.com. And to tell you the truth, I open my eyes on Mouthshut.com. How did this guy get a pure domain name like Gaadi.com :)

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Murali Gopi on Moral Policing & Celebrities.

Peeping Toms that we are, we love to watch without being watched :). Our nation ranks high in corruption and in moral policing too - that's called "Masala Society.". Mallika Sherwant has not even shown the fraction of the stuff that some of the hot babes in 70s and 80s have shown. She is just one of the best examples of a celebrity with a great PR IQ. She won't even manage to be at the 100th position in "Skin Show Hall of Fame". Hmmm... Not even Rakhi Sawant for that matter. But they are most successful in managing the media and the publicity. In film industry you need to be in news and that's what these babes are good at.

Moral Cops : Long time back I had seen one documentary on our very own Doordarshan. There was this interview of some poor villagers in Orissa and in one house they wanted to interview a mother and her young daughter, but they never faced the camera together - because they had just one Saree. Many years have passed, but this picture must have not changed, why ?... b'cos the moral police handles sexy stuff only. Mind it!!!

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QuickOnlineTips informs about Microsoft WorldWide Telescope Explores the Universe # <0>

Well in India this may not be 'The News' - Blasts rip Jaipur: 80 dead, 150 injured. As an Indian, this is one of the choices that I have for dying. I escaped one in Mumbai, but my turn can be anytime. # <0>

WSJ: Indian Print Media Offer Upside Despite Surging Newsprint Costs. Well as the economy is growing and new participants are adding up in the shoppers list - this trend is here to stay. Couple of years back, India only had few business and political magazines. Now there are magazines on career, auto, personal finance, lifestyle, travel, health and almost all the international brands are now launching their Indian versions. These magazine don't come cheap, almost all the magazines come in the range of Rs.50 to Rs.100 but people are buying it for the aspirational value. Other magazine which are weekly or bi-monthly have lesser pages but the monthly cost of the magazine would come to same - but they are mostly personal finance and business magazines and provide current and updated information and more towards DIY & Useful stuff. Niche Print magazines have found their readership with all the classes of Indias - Successful, Aspirers & Strivers. And the happy hours are not going to end up soon. Another reason for Mr. Bush to complain about the India Middle Class, rise of Print Media and cutting down of Trees. # <0>

Took a long time to realize but finally - HT : The regulator kicked-off the process by releasing a consultation paper on relaxing restrictive provisions of internet telephony. “The fruits of technological advancements must reach common masses and to that extent regulations must be flexible. If Internet telephony within the country to PSTN/PLMN (landline/mobile) is permitted to Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Indian subscribers may gain from technological advancement, fuelling competition in the telecom sector, resulting in services at affordable price and with better quality,”# <0>

Track.in conducted a online Poll and publishes the verdict from 156 votes. 44% of the voters felt that Indian broadband connections are expensive and Track.in explores why ?# <0>

Pluggd.in informs : "Barcamp Delhi’s 4th edition has been announced and is scheduled for May 17th @ Amity Audi, Noida. The event has a little commercial + reality TV touch in the name of BugTale"# <0>

Pluggd.in reviews TraveloBuddies an interesting startup that aims to build a community around travelers.# <0>

Josh Bancroft is starting to hate the term social media. I too feel like John, that it’s the most overused and abused term these days. Well, then as an Internet Professional with 11 years of experience, can I attempt to define it myself. At least I can try.

John, Steve, Robert & others ….please correct me if I am wrong. I will spam you on twitter when I am ready with my post

Definition of Social. (Oxford)

Social a. 1) Living in an organized community; of society or it’s organization.

Definition of Society (Oxford)

Society n. organized community; system of living in this; people of the higher social classes; mixing with other people; group organized for a common purpose.

Definition of Media (Oxford)

Media  see medium, - n.pl. the ~, newspapers and broadcasting as conveying information to the public.

What is Social ?

Anything associated with a group of people can be termed social. So the traditional producers of the mainstream media are not outside the scope of society. Though we like to blame the politicians and media for everything, they are the part of the very society that we live in. With that scope anything would be social media. Wait a minutre….

No, sorry !!! that can’t be. Because there are two ’social’ words in this world, when scientists and anthropologists use it, it becomes a technical word and everyone is in it. But when a man on the street uses it in his (any form of ) expression, it means ’social’ but ’social’ which has ‘me’ in it or ‘people like me’ in it.

What is Media ?

Media is produced by two types of people Professionals & Amateurs. The sleepy MSM guys have always worried about ‘the generation’ or ‘the creation’ of the media, but have conveniently forgotten ‘the platform’. The harmless looking wordpress, drupal, wikimedia and so many others online platforms are the real social culprits. But also remember… anything amateur is not social and anything social is not amateur.

Now lets look at the definition of Social Media @ wikipedia:

Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning, as people share their stories, and understandings.

Sorry to say this is not the definition of Social Media. By this term even any form of Online Community can be termed as a Social Media. Any user generated content is not equal to social media. And if this is the definition of social media then anything and everything is a social media.

• Is publishing agent like wordpress - a social media ? By the above definition it is.
• If I produce random ‘Lorem Ipsums’ on my blog - is it a social media - By above definition it is.
• If there are no visitors to my blog, have a started becoming social or am I the part of social media - by above definition it is.
• Are sites like Digg or Delicious mean social media, By above definition it is.

Definition of Social Media.

Remember two things the definition should not just include the wide scope of ’social’ but also the limited scope of the ‘media’

"Social Media is an alternative to mainstream media powered by public through social participation and interaction to produce content in various traditional & evolving forms and/or formats." - Santosh Maharshi’s very private definition (not yet socially accepted)

Now many of you won’t agree with me, so please feel free to discuss and dissect my definition. Let’s try to find a meaning. Why ? Because what’s the use of defining at all when you can put everything from twitter, to faebook, to wikipedia to youtube all on the same ’social media’ table.

I have even tried to apply my definition to some of the categories :

• Online Answers - it’s an online knowledge community not social media. But still it gives threat to ‘Ask The Experts’ columns in newspapers
• Social Bookmarks - Not a Social Media - it’s social bookmarking service and act only as the distributor.
• Blog - When I am talking about my life and my friends, it’s personal and not a substitute of media . Only when I start entertaining or informing people and start getting visitors on my site then it becomes social media. So by my definition, a blog with no visitor is not yet social and not yet social media.
• Micro Blogging - Sorry it’s not a social media it’s a social media distributor and opinion agent. It’s like a cafe where you discuss today’s top stories.
• Social Networks - Social Network are a big platform threat to Media, it’s trying to become everything - it’s a cafe where you can publish and discuss both. So if you are just friending, it’s not a social media but when you are friending, entertaining and informing - it’s a social media
• Wikipedia - Yes it’s a social media. It has not just replaced the traditional encyclopedia publishing but it’s also a valid alternative source of information for dictionaries, newspapers, magazines and various other publication. No other web venture has displaced so many traditional publishers (/media)
• Online Video Sharing - Yes it’s a social media. You get entertained and informed that too socially. But guess what, if your newspaper starts publishing all the stories in video format - is it a social media - NO. When you start publishing all your recorded TV episodes, is it a social media NO.

Now I am really dissecting ‘online video sharing site’, let’s have a look. And I need just two more examples…

• Online Video Sharing site - without any social features (comments, forward this, tags, email this, etc, etc) -Open to public for posting. It is still Social Media if it informs or entertains as it would be a valid alternative to mainstream media
• Online video sharing site - with all the social features (comments, forward this, tags, email this, et, etc) - but only journalists can post their videos. Sorry this is not a social media site

Open Request To All :

You may be mad at me due to usage of ‘alternative to mainstream media’ or not being able to include Twitter, Digg or any forum or any blog or in the ’social media’ circuit. But I have used the stricter version on purpose, otherwise what’s the use of defining something which is anything a definition of social media which cannot be distinguished from others. At the same time I admit, this may not be 100% perfect, so please challenge my (limited) wisdom and thrash it like anything. I would be more than happy and open to modify, so that I also have the clarity and smartly answer this question when I am asked to.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Video on animal cruelty and what happens on farms

Popularity: 17% [?]

Animal Welfare Board of India discovered puppy in Vodaphone Ad, may be someone at AWBI started doing Ramdev Baba’s kapalbhati and had a instant niravana and the indriyas started working after 10 years of latency. These puppy is the most telecom friendly puppy I have seen, see the extreme loyalty he carries - must be carrying the same number throughout the orange-huth-voda transition.

Ramadoss is unhappy with SRK & Big (Old) B that they are a bad influence on society as they smoke and drink on screen. May be Ramadoss Sir, you should start attending Rajyasabha and Loksabha, you will have a different view then.

Indian Medical Association is endorsing Tropicana - These guys are working for a cause please don’t say anything to them. They need to take care of their brothers - Doctors and Pharma companies. If you are not on a sugar rush how the hell would you get obesity, diabetes and plenty of other diseases. Do you know how expensive the medical education is or how difficult is to run a pharma company.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Imagine! Kenya sings for India

Popularity: 21% [?]

Ani S writes this interesting story of how he still remembers the handwritten letters from the parents and ponders what is he leaving behind for his kids.

Remembering the times- when not so long ago - we were kids, and the postman used to drop that blue inland letter from Baba to Papa. Or that postcard that Maama write to Ma on Rakhi with the Money order. I still remember reading thru them - again and again. Though i rarely met Baba - we lived so far off - but i knew him through his letters. Even after so many years, i still remember how he used to start his letters lovingly addressing his son. And when the new years used to come - our homes used to be full of those cards - handmade, or otherwise. As years have passed, when I have my kids - these things seem something like history. In an age of mobiles and mails - and low tariffs of airtimes for both local and international calls - i guess we all have stopped writing letters - or even writing for that matter.

I didn’t get that many chances to write to my parents, as I was always with them. But sometimes when they used to go for a long vacation at our native place, we used to write to them. Our used to be a community letter where my elder brother used to start the letter, my sister in law used to write in between and I used to close with a short paragraph in the end. It used to be a blue inland letter available at 75ps, if I remember correctly. Otherwise, I have written lots of such letters to my other relatives and I remember writing on occassions like Diwali was used to be quite an affair.

Till some time ago we still used to send Diwali greeting cards to our relatives with some special personal message which was contextual to their lives and really enjoy it. Though my parents used to hunt for cards with more religious touch , I managed to convert them to cards created by NGO’s like HelpAge and Cry.

But I just realized after reading Ani’s post that I no longer do this and send a twitterish 140 charcter SMS, which is again just the foward of the best Diwali SMS that I receive from others.

But sometimes the warm is in the message and not the medium. I have moved to Bangalore but still call my old friends, neighbors and relatives from Bombay and I really love it when I can sing ‘Happy Birthday To You !!!" exactly at 12.01 am in the midnight and be the first one to wish my special and dear ones. The best moments of the life can be captured any where and memory can take any shape. I have some good ones captured and pixalized on my hard disk :). The handwritten warmth is taking a new form and shape over the emails, sms, instant messengers, photos, social networks and many many more things. You just need to pour your heart out on the keyboard.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Gerrit Visser on SmartMob talks about Robert Scobles keynote presentation at The NextWeb Conference where he talked about the user experience of social networks: Here is one user experience issue, friends divide and there is more on Robert Scobles blog:

“But when ICQ was launched, the experiences of people started to diverge. ICQ users with a hundred friends had a different experience than those with only two. With the new web, version 2.0, this diversion becomes more significant. Scoble proved this by showing versions of Google Reader, Twitter, Pownce, Friendfeed and Upcoming, one version with only one friend and the other one with Scoble’s famous collection of friends. 1000+ on Google Reader, 500 people on Upcoming, 3000 Powncers and over 17,000 Twitter contacts. So we got to witness two extremes here, one with no activity and the other version that was flooded by updates. Those are totally different user experiences, the consequence is the friend divide.

This same problem was experienced by me when I was working on a social network platform few years back.

Day 0 (W.r.t Users)

On the day 0 of the registration what should be the user experience like?. The recommendation engine can of course recommend certain people & features, but what if user chose to skip those. If the user provided some information at the time of registration it becomes easier for the SNS provider to recommend people, content or the features. But most of the times, users do not provide any information besides the user name and email ID and it would be a disaster if the SNS provider makes all the information mandatory for the registration.

Exposing random people, content and features doesn’t help. The success of the most successful SNSs can simply be attributed to ‘Invite Friends’ module.

On a detailed profile, the known people based on profile information such as home town, work city, interests, etc all form the discovery connectors and some times they are more important than the discovery itself.

Hand-Holding

In India, where more and more people are logging on to the Internet everyday, for the first time in life they will be straight away exposed to the Social Network. I am sure more than half of the SNS population in India doesn’t know what SNS means - they know it as Orkut and Facebook that’s it. For such users, launching yet another SNS with upload photos, upload videos, find friends doesn’t mean anything. You need to properly hand hold your users, what is the next step, what you can do here and why you should do it over here. I think LinkedIn does it best in terms of hand-holding the user. I also liked MySpace Tom who was my first friend there. It can be really scary if you don’t have any friends on Social Networks or places like Twitter, it feels like a terrified kid trying to cross the bussiest highway on the planet

Mimic / Imitation Effect

On any Social Networks, users copy each other and that’s how they influence each other and do some activity more compared to other activities available on the site. Users may not understand the real use of that activity initially but discover cool tools and features through this mimicing. For example, on Orkut they scrap or write testomonials on Facebook they poke each other, write on walls or send each other applications and widgets. But if there are no such tools or the unique twist on that social network, people tend to wander and get lost. It is very important for a newbie to know what others are doing or what’s popular on the system, jump into it and discover people or content through it.

Popularity: 49% [?]

Slashdot: How Social Networks May Kill Search as We Know It "Recently we discussed a startup that's blending social networking with traditional Web search. But now high geek Glenn Derene takes it one step further, pronouncing that our increasingly traceable online footprints will transform Google's dominant algorithm and open up the world of Web search for the 21st century. Speaking to a tuned-in VC guy and scoring a rare interview with Google's VP of search, Derene may have some meat behind his newly-coined term: 'faceboogle.' From the article: 'As we each carve out our individual niche on the Web, the logic of search may well flip inside out. Since we are essentially meta-tagging ourselves through our social networking memberships, shopping habits and surfing addictions, it's conceivable that the information could attempt to find us — the old concept of push media, but in a far more refined way.# <0>

Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty? Great article, you don't even need to own a cell phone to benefit from it

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• Usability or user experience - what's the difference?
• Usability Checklist Guidelines
• Simplicity According to Erik Burke
• Focus Groups vs. Usability Tests
• 14 Website Usability Guidelines That Keep them Coming Back for More
• Brand vs. Usability Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes
• The Blog Usability Checklist

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TreeHugger carries a nice post on Conspicuous Consumption, Conscious Consumption, and the Fulfillment Curve. I think you will agree that Screen Consumption is also one such consumption and it would make perfect sense if you think 'screen consumption' while reading this post. The consumption graph cited in the same post also draws out fulfillment levels Vs consumption and how to achieve balance by satisfying the comfort and without exceeding luxury and extravagance.# <1>

I think I am not the only one who is suffering from heavy screen consumption. Juraj on Slashdot posted a question today What Font Color Is Best For Eyes?

"What font color and what background is best for the eyes, when you work for a long time? I have found various contradictory recommendations and I wonder if you know about any medical studies on this topic."

Goombah99 recommends bearded fonts :). You can find some insightful and some really interesting recommendations in the comments section.

Popularity: 58% [?]

 

Photo credit : aslakr/flickr

Few days back I posted a question on linked in "How much screen do you consume " and received couple of interesting answers. I thank all the people on Linked In who shared their feedback and I am carrying forward that discussion on my blog now.

Julia Shacklock had a very interesting observation that two people at the same place can be in two completely different ‘virtual places’ using multiple screens. She also commented aon the requirement of having a single screen a single window to the world instead of going through or switching through multiple screens that we do now on a daily basis.

Screensumer & Virtual Worlds
Virtual worlds are not just the worlds where you take a different avatar or identity. Virtual worlds is anything that is taking up your time & attention so that you are more immersed and engaged in the screen through which you are consuming it and less engaged with what’s happening around. It happens all the time and it changes your perception of reference, context, reality, distance, relationships and many other human sensations and attributes.

For example, in a same room your wife is watching something interesting on TV and you are doing some serious work on your laptop. In this case, you are not attached with your physical environment or the person who is near to you. You and your emotions are more tuned to the screen that you are consuming. Since your wife is watching an interesting program she may like to share it with you and you may block that response with a frown. Also, if you are getting disturbed by the interference of the other screen - TV and want her to lower down the volume or such, your wife thinks you are a jerk and can’t enjoy simple things iun life and all you know is to be the slave to your laptop. You both are at the same place, same time but in the different virtual world. These virtual worlds of screensumers are the virtual worlds inside the real world.

Now, this is not a new phenomenon - we think over things and  we multitask and we overtask. Our engagement, feelings and expressions are not limited to our physical presence and the physical surroundings.

This is not new, but no other generation in the past was so immersed in the virtual worlds than we are now. The billions of virtual word can change not just the equations with your family and relationships but with the entire society.

Virtual worlds are not barriers to the real world relationships and transactions. They are enablers in fact. Social Networks, Mobile phones, Email, Video conferences and other types of screen based communication can bring people and societies more closer and together and people are already doing that. But as we have the couch potatoe syndrome for the over consumption of TV and we are seeing it’s effect on society. We are still unaware of the fact how our combined consumption of screen is impacting our senses, body and health.

The problem mostly happens with youngsters and blind followers of a particular trend. Early adopters, social influencers and professionals do it because of their attachment with that particular trend or technology. They have a cost to that consumption and also the gains. People don’t understand the priorities in their life and simply mimic the ‘media moguls’ and the ’super novas’ on the web. With millions on memes, trends and hypecycles on the screens these days, it’s very easy to lose focus in real life and spend the time, day, week, months, year and life in this massive matrixed hypermedia.

The other problem with hypermedia screens is that it is there are no real boundaries and everybody is in the state of denial that they are addicted to their screens and have an OCD towards their screens.

Popularity: 50% [?]

I couldn’t find the online version of the article but read two articles in TOI related to topics that I was thinking lately - Screensumer.

Time to master the digital distraction - To tackle the information overload, experts see a rising push to manage the new tech tools. And here is the quote from futurist Simeon Spearman.

When you see the demands we put on computers these days and how much they can process, you begin to understand just how much we’re being hit by all the time

The other TOI article I could locate on NYTimes - In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December. Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

Popularity: 55% [?]