"You see my five fingers(pause)but somebody can see the five gaps between my fingers(long pause)but ordinarily you will not the gaps you will see five fingers(pause) but the gaps are more real - fingers may come and go, gaps will remain.

Between sounds of music, there are gaps of silence(long pause)The authentic music consists not of sounds but of the gaps- sounds come and go those gaps remain(long pause) and music can make you aware of those gaps more beautifully than anything else(long pause)Hence I have to say that music comes next to silence."

I have done away with punctuations completely mostly and just gone with pauses as I heard them. You can also listen to the original audio recording here- Five Fingers- track 6. I was hoping to upload the file here but haven't heard back on a mail seeking permission that I wrote to the Osho International Foundation a few days ago.

More about the art of listening, here I need to visit :).

I haven't been listening to as much FM, as I used to, but have been tracking some general trends etc.

Still predominantly about music (and proudly so, it would appear); some new programming and attempts to differentiate - however, one station starts something new, another follows super quickly (weekly countdowns being a case in point); new favourites are emerging - on my radar are Hits 95 (the most interactive in my opinion), AIR FM Rainbow (old fav), Fever 104 (am I the only one who also addresses it as "Ek so chaar bhukhar!?" :) - this one sounds great, am told they have invested in great equipment) and better believe it - Radio One!

Red FM - Radio Mirchi battle has turned 'Red-Hot', with Mirchi rolling out an extensive "Media planners are asses..." campaign - have they been losing ad. share?

I was thinking about putting up another FM Radio Poll here, but then decided to open a thread and ask readers to contribute with comments. That we can cover stations from across the country and comments can any day capture more than a poll.

Hope too that some from the stations would join in too to share thoughts, announcements and plans.

We are all waiting to hear...

More radio posts here!

Simple then? Actually far from it...my first messaging assignment proved to be tougher than anything I had done until then. It is still very rigorous mentally and even physically :) - This Sunday I spent close to 4 hours+ on round 2 of the probe process, along with the core team of a technology event we are helping craft messaging right now. We are beginning to warm up after a few significant breakthroughs. But, I like it -sometimes bordering towards obsession- looking at messages that brands, corporates are sending out. Do they make sense? How believable are they? Are they any different from what their competition is saying?

Looking at organizations/ brands we often we find that there is a perceptible gap between ‘who they are, what they do’ and who they say ‘they are and what they do’. This usually happens because in any organization or business, there are many things to be said to many stakeholders and it is easy to get lost in the woods.

(What about organizational preparedness – is there a gap between what we say we do and what we ‘really’ do, in terms of our ability to deliver?)

The problem is then compounded when the message travels externally and is often interpreted differently by the stakeholders than intended. Therefore, what they understand, say about/ do about these organizations or brands may be totally different and will therefore not deliver optimal impact on desired opinion, behavior and reputation.

Powerful, differentiated & strategic messaging is, therefore, the perhaps most critical part of the communication process for any organization or brand - leading to strategic planning and outreach.

Over time, I have seen that given extensive involvement of the top management and the senior leadership team, the exercise often allows us a unique view of the differentiated path that the organization has chosen and has the potential to cross over from the realms of communication to an organization's preparedness for meeting stakeholder expectations (that it may fall short upon today), thus delivering long term shift and impact.

Question I am asking is, how many messages will BBC put on the site in say, an hour, but then do users really stay on? Or they keep coming and going like I did just now, so there's a new audience after each few messages.

We are looking for these inputs:

1. Name
2. Location
3. Your profession
4. Blog URL
5. Subjects your blog is focused on
6. Traffic statistics for last 3 months - mention tool/s used; geographical; demographic data that you may have available;number of email subscribers etc.
7. Page Rank
8. Present advertising you feature
9. Advertising regarding any products/ services/ subjects that you would NOT like featured on your blog
10. Anything else you may want to share (about 100 words)

Thanks and looking forward to hear from you.

Please note that this is not:
1. A pay-per-post offer and wouldn't infringe upon your editorial integrity


2. Writing in to us doesn't necessarily 'include' you into the panel or guarantee any advertising

It seems so long ago, but since these had come in a few days ago and a couple of people had requested, here are a few picture memories from the Blogworks Social Media Workshop in New Delhi.

What workshop :)? Details here:

1. Post Event Summary
2. Event Details

Thanks.

Books I was gifted this birthday ( + lots of other things I love - music, fragrance, plants)

Left to Right:
1. The Encyclopedia of Horses & Ponies - Tamsin Pickeral


2. In spite of the Gods: The strange rise of modern India - Edward Luce


3. The Age of Kali - William Dalrymple

Excellent I would say.

It is the age of sharing, providers are trying to help users unleash the power of content, both fresh and archival, by providing friendly platforms...
The first one to do so was Slideshare, of which I have always been a great fan, and joining in is Scribd - an online directory where anyone can upload. Its embeddable PDF player allows users to publish and view documents in your web browser.

I can see people brushing off virtual dust from old documents and sharing them with the world. Not only documents, the site takes Word (.doc), PDF (.pdf), text (.txt), PowerPoint (.ppt), Excel (.xls), Postscript (.ps), or LIT (.lit) files.

Features allow users to add tags, titles, embed content into other web pages & blogs etc. An interesting feature is, Slurping, which allows users to directly import content from other websites.

Oops, but what I do we have here, someone else has uploaded MY presentation (kidding, for now)...

We have a collaborative experiment on at Blogworks...

Together with my colleagues help, I am hoping we can scan and reach out more interesting developments from what I have started to term, the fastest running animal on the planet, Social media:

SpockThis one came via Namita, who first read about this on Googlerz:
- This yet-to-be opened for 'public at large' people search engine is already making waves - thanks also to the fact that they have managed to secure series A funding to the tune of $7M from Clearstone and Opus Capital Ventures.

Driven by the logic that 30% of all internet search is people related (celebrity searches are constantly leading search numbers). We are yet to get our request approved but believe, from what we have read that it works well, for searches for people ranging from very popular to even lesser known who have some web presence...

Post search, Spock sorts out duplication, based on identical or similar names, gives the person a permanent profile page, auto tagged based on information collected from blogs, wikipedia, social networks etc. These can then be claimed by users, who can add/ edit the tags.

Currently, the spock websiteallows users to leave a request for invitation to test the beta version.

And while, you, like us, wait for the invite to get approved, read more here.

Google introduces polls in Orkut Community

Google's social networking site Orkut has introduced polls in its communities. Any member of a community (not necessarily the moderator) can now initiate a poll. The credible part is that while the poll can be deleted by the creator member or the moderator, the contents of the poll itself cannot be edited.

Click below to read Freaktitude.com, a technology blog that details how the Orkut poll works. Click here.

Although Orkut has come under heavy scrutiny with media and government agencies, a poll tool such as this can be a boon to research freaks! However, ensuring that a real person is polling might remain a question mark!

Top 10 Largest Social Bookmarking Sites March 2007
Here are the top 10 largest social bookmarking sites ranked by a combination of Compete and Quantcast data.

Even as many (most) of the strategic initiatives on the social media strategy, we crafted a couple of months ago for our client,StyleKandy.com, which gives an insider’s view and buzz on the fashion and lifestyle scene, await a few enablements, her team has gone ahead and uploaded some cool slide-shows on Slideshare from the recently concluded Lakme Fashion Week and others. They keep partnering many of these top-line fashion and lifestyle events from time-to-time...

1. Hottest Trends at LFW
2. Hottest Parties
3. Backstage ;)

1. This one's from the Salsa India Festival held in Mumbai - after all our new mantra for Stylekandy- Life's in Fashion! - is as much about 'Life' as it is about 'Fashion'! Cheers!

1. Technorati is today tracking 70 million weblogs
2. About 120,00 new weblogs each day, but also 3000-7000 splogs (fake or spam blogs) being created every day
3. 1.5 million posting a day - spikes in post during significant world crises, which is expected as blog posts reflect and capture developments around us
4. 22 blogs among the top 100 - up from 12 in the prior quarter, shows growing acceptance and popularity.

   The report also validates something that we have been speaking about regarding growing credibility and latent consumption of blogs through search results:
   
   "the audience is less and less likely to distinguish a blog from, say, nytimes.com -- for a growing base of users, these are all sites for news, information, entertainment, gossip, etc. and not a “blog” or a 'MSM site' "

Even as many marketers get their first taste of social media by uploading a video on YouTube or sharing product shots on Flickr, the conversation has reached another level...

Last year Coke's 'The Real Thing' tagline took another meaning, post the Coke+Mentos Videos on YouTube. and in this piece my friend Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing Blog talks about experiences that Tom Daly, Coca Cola Global Interactive Marketing, shared at the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association, AiMA, meeting last week.

The post captures 2 video strategies described by Tom:

1. Poetry in Motion Challenge - objects around us can move in extraordinary & beautiful ways...
2. Holiday Wishcast with YouTube - holidays are about sharing happiness with friends and family. Send a video and broadcast your holiday wishes.

And Toby shares 7 Lessons Learned about Branding 2.0: The New Online Community(See her story for details):

1. This is Complex - It’s complex and it carries risk


2. Fish Where the Fish Are - Stop trying to get them into your pool first. The prize isn’t the Prize. The Experience is the Prize


3. Users Love to Watch Our Ads - More than they hate advertising

Given ahead are a few slides from a talk that I presented recently - won't write much text as I think the slides tell the story.

1. We used to hope we got the demographics/ psychographics right, now customers are forming camps
2. Krishna mastered the art of speaking to each, while speaking to many...
3. How did you make your last purchase decision? Buying a movie ticket; selecting the new car; deciding on the school for your child; new job; anything... traces of this?

Let me know what you think! Read on...

Is that the case in your browser window too? While we are already trying to work upon the problem, it would help to know which browser and version you are using + your screen settings. Do leave a comment or email. Thanks in advance.