blog.ChaitanyaSagar.com

It’s the best thing to happen to me. I am not a voracious reader. But I like to learn by listening to others. Podcasts have become a new and predominant source of learning for me. But it is still new for many in India. A podcast is audio posted on the web- of conferences, interviews, academic classes, or tutorials. Most podcasts are informal, not so professionally produced. An occasional barking of a dog or ringing of a cell phone are acceptable. Just like in our day-to-day conversations. Such informality means lower costs because you don’t need professional equipment to produce it and more people can podcast. If you have a computer with a microphone or just a handheld device that can record, you are ready to podcast.

The cost of podcasting classes to a university, which conducts classes anyway, is near zero. But what is the benefit to a student who does not have access to such school? She can sit at home and listen to classes she so desperately wants to attend. It makes a difference between having a life you want and none. This has great implications for countries like India where quality education is scarce. Podcasts help you replicate high quality classes in every corner of the country - often with no cost at all because someone has already produced them elsewhere.

Podcasts can time shift events for you. You can listen to classes or conferences you missed when you want to. If you commute for a couple of hours, you can shift them to your commute time, making it productive. Not just that, you can also ‘geo-shift’ events. If you can’t be in Delhi at a TiE event, you can listen to them when it’s podcasted. But a podcast can’t let you press flesh. You can’t meet new people or meet other friends who attended the event. So can you not join the alumni associations of the university you heard lessons from. But that’s ok. If you can acquire competency, network will follow.

There is every kind of podcast if you have patience to search for it. You can learn Investing, English, Biology, Music, Cooking, Entrepreneurship or whatever you are interested in. Learning is on the net is democratized, again. We are living through great times.

A few good podcasts:

1. Marketing Voices

2. Churchillclub.org

3.  Stanford Tech Ventures Program podcasts

4. Business English Pod

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Internet disrupted advertising industry the most among all industries. Online advertising has both strong proponents-the marketers, the entrepreneurs and the evangelists—and opponents, those who resent being marketed to and hate ads. While advertisers want to move closer to their goals, end-users resist the drop in the quality of their experience. Entrepreneurs/website owners should focus on good end-user experience and aspire to be invited into people’s lives. Such experience depends, in part, on user psychology, ad placement and type (banner, floating, sidebar etc.).

People don’t like advertisements. TiVo, and ad-shielding browser plugins are examples of products that allow you reduce ads in your content. To add to that, our brain has a built-in ad-blocker. It programs us to ignore ads. If you visited Yahoo! Finance recently, you will probably not remember most of the banner and right-hand column display ads.

But, people are willing to read ads if they are looking for something and the ad helps them reach their goal and reduce their search cost or time. More than 40% of all online ad spend is on search advertising. And it’s growing faster than display and other forms of online advertising. A general purpose observation is that people are willing to look at ads if it helps them in some way–choose the right product (Search Engine Marketing), stay in touch with something (opt-in email), or laugh (Amul’s ads, Apple’s The PC guy and the Mac).

We can create good user experience if we interlace the above with some insights about how users read web pages. Take a look at the 2:1:1 Grid I uploaded. On the horizontal axis, I divided the screen into three parts. The first 50%, next 25% and the last 25% (2:1:1). Of this, the first 50% is important. It catches a user’s attention the moment a page loads. Of this, Block A is the most prominent. Google is smart in putting its logo here. Block B is next as the visitors eyes drop to that area after Block A. To provide a good user experience, I recommend not to give away Blocks A or B for advertising. Similarly, I also recommend not to use left side bar unless your site is very structured from user navigation perspective. E.g. check out wsj.com. It uses a side navigation bar because the newspaper is structured and various sections like Markets/International etc. You could move from homepage to say, Markets page directly without having to navigate sequentially. Also, notice that WSJ advertised only below the navigation bar. In most computer/laptop screens, this ad appears below what is visible on the screen area. The page looks better without the ad, enhancing user experience. If you do not use left navigation bar, then I suggest you start your content right from the left most part of the page. E.g. Google has put content right from the start. If you have a blog, not many themes display your posts from the left-most part of the page. (e.g. this blog’s theme leaves some gap.)

The second and the third sections (25% each) are good candidates for ads, specially the last one. The middle section can be used both to advertise and to increase white space. The bottom of the page can be used for ads.

That brings me to the type of ads. I gave my observations below:

- Left hand side bar ads will generally be in blocks A and B and so I do not recommend you allow ads in those areas. Ditto with banner ads.
- Floating ads (moves across the user’s screen or floats above the content) distract people.
- Expanding ads (changes size and which may alter the contents of the webpage) may block content that viewer is looking for. It has high distraction value. Expanding ads are better suited at the bottom of the page as the user would have read the contents of the page and may not bother even if it blocks the content.
- Pop-up, Pup-under (window is loaded or sent behind the current window so that the user does not see it until she closes one or more active windows), Trick-banner (looks like a dialog box with buttons. It simulates an error message or an alert) – all these have an element of tricking a user and reduce user’s experience. I don’t recommend these.
- Playing video and audio ads on click is better experience than auto playing them.
- People tend to skip interstitial ads (display of ads before requested content).
- For text ads, letting the background of the text ads merge with the background of the page gives a better experience than the ad having a different background or putting a box around an ad.
- Embedding (ads as) hyperlinks (to words not directly related), advertorials etc. also have a trick element.
- Some animation is ok. Too much animation or video (without audio) does not enhance user-experience. Somehow, slow moving animation gives a better experience than fast moving.
- Scrolling ads are better suited at the bottom of the page.

LinkedIn does advertising well. Even rich media ads blend so well into it’s website that many of its users don’t realize that it advertises. Such eye for quality user experience will help grow the core business of the website along with earning revenue from ads and higher traffic generated because of good user experience.

References:

1. Is Advertising Dead? Guy Kawasaki

2. The Rule of Thirds
3. Online Advertising
4. The decade in online advertising

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I used to blog at seshmics.blogspot.com. The blog you are reading is my new blog. But why a new blog? Specially when Google linked my name with my old blog?

It is because of the name. Not many could remember the ‘cool’ name I spent so much time choosing. I realized, keeping a name simple is more important than the cool quotient because people remember simple names.

But that only explains one part - that I wanted to change the name. Why should the name be my name? It can be a theme-based name based on what I want to write. Or, I could use my name. If you look at blogs which have theme based names, though have a stated purpose, they often write on topics other than the theme.  The second option gives you flexibility to write on topics that interest you without the theme restricting you. Guy Kawasaki’s blog is a case in point. His blog name is simple and easy to remember.  And you have the flexibility to write what you want. The reason is simple. We blog because we want to write about topics we are passionate about. And it is hard to articulate all the stuff you want to talk about in a small tag line where bloggers generally state what their blog is about. Why tell (or promise?) something and not stick to it? Keep it flexible.

So here it is.. a new blog and a new post. I have a better understanding of the challenges in writing a blog. There’s always a nagging feeling that you have got to write a new post because you want to write a new post every week. And sometimes, you run out of topics.  But I am hopeful. Let’s see if I can do it. Because I now think that writing blog does take time but it is in sync with my goals.

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The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
-Samuel Johnson

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I am researching on issues with current search engines. Something that you wanted to get from Google or other search engines and could not get. Please drop me a mail or leave a comment.

Cheers,
Chaitanya

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Guess what, originally uploaded by Chaitanya_Sagar.

Guess what this is.

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Nature from ISB, originally uploaded by Chaitanya_Sagar.

Nature time from ISB. June 30, 06.

Related:
Wild life on campus
Nature time from ISB

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Here’s what a cricket match I played a few days back taught me:

• A leader should perform and win respect: Before you can energize a team, you should first perform and show results. The team will then follow.
• Take lead. But get out of the way where you are weak: You should know yourself and strive for excellence in areas of strengths. But in areas where you are weak, you should get out of the way and let others take the lead. Others should see that you are doing this in the cause of the team.

• Give opportunities: People perform at different points. Even if a person performs poorly in one instance, they might do better some other time. Give them opportunities where they are likely to be successful and contribute to the team.

• Value portable skills: Some skills are portable; others are not. If you happen to decide who to pick for a job, pick the person who has relevant portable skills. Even at the cost of those who are successful in other areas but do not have those portable skills.

• Leadership goes to those who take the opportunity. Leadershipmay not be explicit. But subtlely, people accept your leadership if you show them that you are striving for the common goal.

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I enjoyed this video. Wonderful theme. Great background music. Awesome photography. Bharat Bala productions shot it and IBEF produced it.
Related:
Vande Mataram
Jan Gan Man

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