This is my last post on this blog. Radio Userland has served me well since I started blogging in 2003. I will post more details on the transition, at my new blog - for now I just wanted to make this announcement, and provide the new url and feeds.

New Blog URL - http://dinamehta.com/
Subscribe via RSS 2.0 - http://dinamehta.com/feed/
Subscribe via Atom - http://dinamehta.com/feed/atom/
Comments feed - http://dinamehta.com/feed/atom/

The new blog will also be called Conversations with Dina - it's just a new blogging platform - but the same old blog! I do hope you continue reading and feeding it. 

My old blog will be archived at its old url (http://radio.weblogs.com/0121664/) and I will keep the archives going. Stuart, who has worked out the platform for Conversations with Dina on Wordpress has done some neato hacks - one that I love a lot is that the search function will not just search the new blog archives, but also my old Radio blog archives. And he has managed to transfer some of my posts over too. That's so cool!!! Lots more needs doing there ... and that will emerge I'm sure.

12:26:59 PM    comment []  trackback []

While on mobile phones, just last month, I got the cover for my Nokia 7610 changed - my three year old white cover was badly bruised. I was in Delhi and went to a small shop which had all the latest models of phones. That's where I got a good look at the N73. I also looked at the N93 - it is a very clunky phone.

And a bonus offer for me - he wanted to buy back my phone which is now almost three years old for Rs.6000 (approx 135 USD). Not bad .. I should have taken him up on it - little did I know I'd get the N73 so soon!

12:43:20 AM    comment []  trackback []

...... isn't so bad.  Not when you get a brand new cell phone - the Nokia N73!  :):):) (apologies Jabberwock, but I can't help feeling like a smiley person).  

Here's a detailed review by  Ken Camp, with some drawbacks highlighted.

And I love the tagline in the N73 ad - "the future of photography is connected" - it clearly re-positions cell phones... ooops digicams.  Smart!

Technorati Tags: N73, Nokia N73, Mobile Phones, Digicams, Cell Phones, Positioning,, Marketing

10:01:07 PM    comment []  trackback []

Interesting ... YouTube plans to go mobile by the end of 2007. While you can upload videos via a mobile phone, this will allow you to view videos on-the-go. Mobile TV :)

I wonder what the mobile carriers feel about this. As a user I see it as a simple equation ... I pay for access to the internet ... what I choose to do with this access is my business and not theirs!

Update .. I just found this neat piece by Paul Whitaker called The quagmire of YouTube mobile which sets out scenarios for YouTube mobile!

Tags:YouTube, mobile TV, mobile phones,cell phones

7:25:51 PM    comment []  trackback []

"A new report from the firm says the portion of low-cost handsets with basic cameras is high enough that, during the next 10 years, "hundreds of millions" of Chinese and Indians not only will have their first phone experience via a wireless handset, but also their first camera experience." TelecomWeb.

This is so true .. it is amazing how often you see youngsters particularly taking quick pictures with their cam phones and sending them to friends via SMS and bluetooth. Stuart, in a series of observations on India, shares his experiences observing camera phone usage in India:

"Now imagine a world where no one growing up had a camera. Where photos were taken at a wedding, relegated to studio shots for the rich, or Bollywood snaps appearing in the press. In a gross generalization, photography in India was 50 or 60 years behind the rest of the world until the mobile phone arrived."

"....Each time I frequent one I'm always seeing people taking pictures. They pass the phone around. They take them with each other's phones. They display a real delight of just discovering photography and they just keep on snapping. Camera phones will impact society differently here. There was no progression from a camera. The mobile phone for many, is their first camera. They never learned to shoot with film or the constraints and expense of film. They never looked through a viewfinder. Photography for them starts on a device that is better at shorter distances. They are learning photography in a digital age. As a result India is about to experience an outpouring of imagery."

Tags: camera phones, india, mobile phones

7:54:42 AM    comment []  trackback []

A great transformation story - For India's Traditional Fishermen, Cellphones Deliver a Sea Change.- by Kevin Sullivan at the Washington Post. [link via Bala Pitchandi]

Two excerpts:

New Balance of Power

Rajan said the dealers don't necessarily like the new balance of power, but they are paying better prices to him and thousands of other fishermen who work this lush stretch of coastline. "They are forced to give us more money because there is competition," said Rajan, who estimated that his income has at least tripled to an average of $150 a month since 2000, when cellphones began booming in India. He said he is providing for his family in ways that his fisherman father never could, including a house with electricity and a television."

"Rajan's phone rang a half-dozen times in a half-hour, with calls from dealers in different ports, buyers and other boat captains. Rajan talked quickly and kept hauling. When most of the net was in, the crew used small nets to scoop the fish from the water and dump them into the 45-foot open boat that is towed behind the Andavan.

By 3 p.m., the open boat was loaded with fish and the Andavan turned toward port, an hour away. Standing on the deck soaked with sweat, Rajan started returning phone calls. He dialed the number of the wholesale agent at his home port, who offered about $13 for each 110-pound box of fish -- about 12 cents a pound.

Rajan agreed to the deal. He said if his load had been bigger and it had been earlier in the day, he would have called around to check prices at other ports. But he said for a smallish load late in the day, the first price offered was fair. And he said the dealer was forced to offer a decent price, knowing that Rajan could still go elsewhere. As insurance, Rajan returned the call of the other dealer who had called him, just to keep good relations for another day.

Rajan said that without his phone, his catch might have gone to waste. Because he called ahead to the port, buyers there knew that he was coming, what kind of fish he had and the size of his catch. In the past, Rajan said, he would sometimes arrive at port late in the day only to find that all the buyers had gone home, unaware that another boat was coming. His catch would go unsold, and he and his crew would go unpaid."

8:14:19 AM    comment []  trackback []

So finally mobile operators in India wake up to the power and the money-spinning potential of blogging and social networking.

The Economic Times this morning has an article - 'Now, mobile phones invade the blogosphere' with service opearators like Reliance and Idea Cellular offering up moblogging sites.

9:33:05 AM    comment []  trackback []

I discovered and enjoyed a series of qualitative user research reports by Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase, who takes some amazing photographs and blogs them with observations at Future Perfect. [link via Chetan Kunte via Adaptive Path]

Interesting to read about informal repair cultures in India and China ..

"What sets these locations apart from cities in more 'emerged' markets? Aside from the scale of what's on sale there is a thriving market for device repair services ranging from swapping out components to re-soldering circuit boards to reflashing phones in a language of your choice , naturally. Repairs are often carried out with little more than a screwdriver, a toothbrush (for cleaning contact points) the right knowledge and a flat surface to work on. Repair manuals (which appear to be reverse engineered) are available, written in Hindi, English and Chinese and can even be subscribed to, but there is little evidence of them being actively used. Instead many of the repairers rely on informal social networks to share knowledge on common faults, and repair techniques. It's often easier to peer over the shoulder of a neighbour than open the manual itself. Delhi has the distinction of also offering a wide variety of mobile phone repair courses at training institutes such as Britco and Bridco turning out a steady flow of mobile phone repair engineers. To round off the ecosystem wholesalers' offer all the tools required to set up and run a repair business from individual components and circuit board schematics to screwdrivers and software installers."

"We noted that textually non-literate users of public call offices often took a scrap of paper with a phone number scrawled on it to the owner and asked them to dial the number. This system is open to errors caused by inaccuracy, either because the number was not clearly transcribed, or simply because the paper on which the number was written was worn and faded from being carried.

User interface designers often talk about the user's mental model of a system, and how it maps to the reality of how a device actually functions. It is typical for designers to use metaphors such as the 'desktop' or 'soft keys' to support the building of an accurate model. Textually non-literate users will not have access to textual cues, so their mental model may well be poor. Whilst a poor mental model is not a problem within a limited range of (rote learned) tasks, if and when errors occur users may adopt the wrong strategies to correct the problem. Designers use a myriad of audio, visual and textual cues to support the user's understanding of how the mobile phone works. Literate persons are able to quickly absorb (and subsequently ignore) this textual information and apply the knowledge in practice. A positive outcome reinforces their understanding of how the system works and helps build an accurate mental model. Textually non-literate people are required to make assumptions for the textual prompts based on how the device responds to their actions. A plausibly positive result is sufficient to believe that is how the system works regardless of how well it maps to the actual system."

9:16:24 AM    comment []  trackback []

Economic Times reports that Indian Railways has plans to make ticketing via SMS available to its customers:

10:21:16 PM    comment []  trackback []

This is the last in the series of Cultural Insights for doing business in India. Just wanted to say these observations are based on learnings over 18 years of doing qualitative research in India. It's interesting to see how some things have changed, while others remain constant, over generations.

Part 4. Technology Perspectives

• Technology adoption doesn't always follow trends in the West
• India is leapfrogging the PC stage - cell phones are becoming our gateway to the internet
• From no cameras to cam phones - digital cameras are being squeezed out
  
• 4.5 million cell phones are added every month, 95 million subscribers in March 2006, 200 million projected in 2010; landlines a little over 50 million
• Most turn off power to hardware when not in use to save electricity, and avoid power surges due to fluctuations. Less of an 'always on' perspective in India.
• Belief that cost of technology is dropping - so no point planning purchase in advance.
• Little DIY - cheap service is available
• Assembled goods and second hand goods are freely available from the grey market

• Upgrading is not a natural habit - the average consumer is not tech savvy, and technology products are usually used until they break. (Exception being cell phones, esp.among youngsters as they can be a status symbol).
• Upgrading often needs to be driven by buy-back/replacement schemes offered by
• Choice of brand and model often made by price/discounts/deals
• Celebrity endorsements rampant for tech products - playing on image and low role of product or features

• Trend towards 'all-in-one' gadgets - e.g. cell phone + camera + mp3 player. PCs play multiple roles, for instance as the household DVD player, communication medium, gaming system, etc.
• Trend towards laptops which is the fastest growing segment - costs dropping, mobility, status associations are key drivers.

The complete series:

Part 1. Culture of Business, Service and Consumption
Part 2. Attitude towards Rules and Regulations
Part 3. Value for Money Equations
Part 4. Technology Perspectives

Many thanks - to all those who have commented and linked to this series of posts - I love the conversations around these issues - keep them coming - and I will add my two-cents shortly!

5:37:35 PM    comment []  trackback []

I found this neat site that compiles statistics on India, called NeonCarrot:

5:49:46 PM    comment []  trackback []

All things Web 2.0 - a huge huge list of Web 2.0 applications running into hundreds.They are categorized under:

Audio, Blog2Pod, Blogging, Bookmarking, Browser, Calender, Chat, Collaboration, Collect, Comix, Communication, Community, CRM, Debase, Design, Dictionary, Ecommerce, Economy, Elearning, Email, Filesharing, Financials, Fun, Gambling, Games, Hosting, Identity, Images, Imaging, Jobs, Knowledge, Lists, Mapping, Marketing, Memo, Multimedia, News, Office, OS, Outlook, Personal Manufacturing, Polls, Porn, Portals, Powerpoint, Projects, Publishing, Read, RSS, Scheduling, Search, Software, Stats, Tagging, Task Manager, Text, Text2Speech, Time Management, Track&Trace, Video, Voice2Mail, Voicemail, Web2Feed, WiFi, Wiki, Wishlist, Word, Write.

Wow... I am humbled ... I knew of less than 50% of these. [link via gapingvoid]

12:10:43 AM    comment []  trackback []

Thought I'd share some great blog posts and papers I had bookmarked and finally got down to reading:
 
Rashmi Sinha has some really good essays on Tagging.  She has a whole category dedicated to this area, and I found the following posts particularly useful:
-  A cognitive analysis of tagging (or how the lower cognitive cost of tagging makes it popular)
-  A Social Analysis of Tagging (or how tagging transforms the solitary browsing experience into a social one)
- "Tagging: From Personal to Social" - a powerpoint presentation here.

Some good tips in An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in Enterprise by Suw Charman.  She suggests that its key to identify users "who would clearly benefit from the new software, helping them to understand how it could help, and progressing their usage so that they can realise those benefits". I still struggle with tryig to figure out how we can enable the lowering of perceived risks in using such technologies. 

Doc Searls introduces the concept of the Intention Economy turning on its head the Attention Economy conversation that focusses more on the 'seller'.  He says:

"The Intention Economy grows around buyers, not sellers. It leverages the simple fact that buyers are the first source of money, and that they come ready-made. You don't need advertising to make them.

The Intention Economy is about markets, not marketing. You don't need marketing to make Intention Markets.

The Intention Economy is built around truly open markets, not a collection of silos. In The Intention Economy, customers don't have to fly from silo to silo, like a bees from flower to flower, collecting deal info (and unavoidable hype) like so much pollen. In The Intention Economy, the buyer notifies the market of the intent to buy, and sellers compete for the buyer's purchase. Simple as that.

The Intention Economy is built around more than transactions. Conversations matter. So do relationships. So do reputation, authority and respect. Those virtues, however, are earned by sellers (as well as buyers) and not just "branded" by sellers on the minds of buyers like the symbols of ranchers burned on the hides of cattle.

In The Intention Economy, a car rental customer should be able to say to the car rental market, "I'll be skiing in Park City from March 20-25. I want to rent a 4-wheel drive SUV. I belong to Avis Wizard, Budget FastBreak and Hertz 1 Club. I don't want to pay up front for gas or get any insurance. What can any of you companies do for me?" — and have the sellers compete for the buyer's business."

7:46:37 PM    comment []  trackback []

Two sets of interesting figures that caught my eye:

From i4d online :

According to a survey conducted by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) there are estimated 4.6 million Internet users who are banking online now, and this number is expected to grow to 16 million plus by 2007-08.

A headline at a post at ContentSutra, which is fast becoming my favourite resource on the digital media space in India, states that "CDMA Subscribers In India Touch 19 Million In February; GSM + CDMA = 82.21 Million As Of Today". More details here.

And this bit of news ... nothing like a bit of competition to spur better offerings and services .... "The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has today recommended number portability for mobile subscribers. This is expected to bring about more competition among the mobile operators since customers do not have to worry about changing their numbers as they move from one operator to the other." [via ContentSutra]

6:52:25 PM    comment []  trackback []

The Blank Noise Project has called for a Blog-a-thon :



"To recognize Women's Day, and as part of an effort to build a core constituency that is aware of the Blank Noise Project, we're organizing a blogathon for Tuesday, the 7th of March. Blank Noise is asking other bloggers to post about their experiences of sexual harassment - as a victim, perpetrator or bystander - at work, at home or in the public sphere. Or deal with the subject anyway you like. On International Women's Day, which is March 8th, it would be exciting to see the theme of harassment become audible on the Indian and diasporic blogosphere."

I remember many instances, as a teenager, way back in the 80's being 'harrassed' on the street and in public buses. At the time, I didn't know quite what to do about it ... it was almost embarrassing to mention it to friends or family, it seemed like such a personal 'attack', and in my growing awareness of my body at that age, it wasn't something I could share easily. Neither was it something I could 'prove' in any way, it was sometimes just that brush of a hand against your body, sometimes more blatant than that. I remember many times in a really crowded BEST bus where you're squashed among bodies, smelling armpits as you cling to the handle, when a hand would snake around my breasts and try and squeeze them. Or I'd feel a hard groin against my back. Though I hated it, I thought then, it was just part and parcel of travelling by bus. I didn't even realise then it was 'harrassment' of a kind.

Just the once, did I actually retaliate ...I will share that story on March 7th !

I'm happy to see a space that encourages people to talk about this, one that tells you that it is wrong, and inspires you that you CAN do something about it.

Images courtesy the Blank Noise Project

(And heh .. just came across this blog that's called Holla Back NYC - which asks people to send in pictures of street harrassers ... it even has a Holla Back Hall of Fame. Cam phones make it so easy to do! Its also a little scary ... )

Do spread the word for the Blog-a-thon ... and share your experiences ... and tag it with this code :

8:33:28 AM    comment []  trackback []

I'm watching this space .. it's not live yet, but seems to have potential.

"An internet blogging network that lets users create content and express opinion on well-known brands and products, is being supported by Honda (UK). The 2TalkAbout site will provide a trusted community-based environment for users with similar interests and tastes to share unbiased information. Honda is the first major brand to commit to the project.

Visitors to 2TalkAbout can publish their views, respond to what other people are saying on the community and gain unbiased opinion and information about particular products and services. The Honda-sponsored site (www.2TalkAbout.com/honda) is aimed at anyone with an interest in Honda cars - particularly the new Civic. Although the content will be completely independent from Honda, engineers will regularly log-on to contribute and respond to feedback, providing users with direct access to the brand." [More here.]

"The immense popularity of the show can be gauged from the fact that it helped Zee TV reach the No. 2 slot in the general entertainment channel (GEC) rating. In the last four-week period (between January 10, 2006 and January 27, 2006) ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2005’ scored a gross TRP of 3.53, which is higher than that of Sony’s ‘Indian Idol’ at a gross TRP of 3.31.

Said Kaul, “The reason for sustained growth and popularity is due to the fact that ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2005’ has its objective very clear and defined in terms of offering a platform to real, hardcore, top of the line playback voices and not creating marketing chipmunks. It is only because of this objective that ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa’ as a platform and ‘Challenge 2005’ as a series have given some of the best singers to the film and entertainment industry that it has today. ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2005’ is and will always remain a platform for nothing but the best playback singers.”

10:08:29 AM    comment []  trackback []

This report indicates good news for India - the government is working on a system whereby disaster alerts will be relayed through mobile phones in several Indian languages, and specially set up wireless public address system in their locality in less than one minute.

5:40:18 PM    comment []  trackback []

Day 2 - Digital Summit 2006.

Moderator: V Ramani, CEO, Mediaturf

• Naren Chandra, Head of Marketing, International Banking, ICICI Bank
• VL Srinivas, CEO, Maxus, Asia Pacific
• Kedar Sohoni, Director, Cross-tab
• Lloyd Mathias, Marketing Director, Motorola

• are marketers really interested in this medium?
• are traditional agencies equipped to handle online medium or are they masquerading as experts. Do we need experts? Why then are CMOs reverting to traditional agencies to handle their digital accounts?
• should traditional marketing companies have an additional CMO for their digital markets? will marketers be forced to build special digital marketing teams?
• do they realise that the internet can be a large research tool?