Android fragmentation? Don't get me started!

I've been playing around with Android development lately and it's been a fairly "interesting" ride so far. Well, apart from the horror that programming in Java is (I'll leave that rant for a separate post).

One extremely frustrating facet of designing an app for the Android platform is the plethora of devices with varying screen sizes out there. Coming from a web background, where you pick a minimum screen resolution and get going, it's a rude shock. Android's own guide on supporting multiple screens recommends having four (!) versions of bitmap resources (pictures).

I did a quick survey on Flipkart for the screen sizes & resolutions of all Android phones under Rs 18,000, which I'm assuming would be the top sellers in India. Here's the data (the first column is the screen resolution in pixels, the second column is the diagonal length of the screen in inches, and the third column is the number of handsets available in that particular combination):

So, while designing for Android, you have the mental overhead of thinking about more than 12 screen size & resolution combinations. That's right -- more than twelve. Contrast that with iPhone, where it's just two, I think -- one for normal displays and one for retina displays. Contrast that with the web, where, till some time back, you had to basically pick between designing for a minimum of 800x600 or 1024x768.

Based on the screen classification proposed by Android, even if this number can be brought do half, that would leave us with more than 6 possible outcomes! I haven't even started looking at supporting multiple API versions (2.2, 2.3, 3.0, 4.0, etc.) and multiple device capabilities (scroll wheel, D-pad, etc. etc.) I'm afraid I'll give-up even before I reach that point!

Is there any report out there which segments: (a) the amount spent on the Android market &  (b) the in-app advertising revenue, by the handset capability / screen size / etc? I'm sure app developers would be willing to pay for it, to save themselves the time spent on handsets generating a few hundred rupees, at best.

Interesting outdoor advertising & signage

I really love Blackberry Playbook's outdoor campaign. They're all over the airports and communication at each spot has been designed according to the context. I spotted this sign at the Delhi airport departure terminal - as soon as you walk out from the plane, into the terminal. Brilliant message for the context!

The message reads - "That laptop bag. Heavy, isn't it?"

Close on its heels was this outdoor ad by Google. Bang above the luggage conveyor belt. The baggage that Google is referring to is the tech infrastructure required to keep your business running. Lose it & move to hosted Google apps. Brilliant, yet again! Unless you've actually lost your bags - either case, hard to forget this ad :-)

"Some baggage is worth losing" - An ad by Google for its hosted business solutions

This outdoor spot by Gorbatschow Vodka is as bizarre as they come. What was the brand/marketing manager thinking? "Pole dancer by night. Mother by day. Whoever you are, be pure." Seriously?

"Pole dancer by night. Mother by day" - WTF!

This one was spotted at Laxmi Nagar, Delhi. "Good Looks Beauty Parlour. A Female Stoppage" 'Nuff said!

"A Female Stoppage" 

And this one take the cake. From the Lucknow airport. I've been to many airports in India, but have never, ever come across this sign anywhere else! "Please don't put your kids on baggage conveyor" Imagine what a shock the baggage handlers on the other side must be getting :) It happens only in UP!

"Papa, papa - jhoola ghumao!"

Meru Cabs Mobile Booking Website - Review

Meru Cabs and DotAhead, Goa have done it yet again - wowed me with another offering from their stables. This time it's a pretty kickass mobile optimised version of their awesomely kickass online booking website. They've done it the right way and haven't jumped onto the Android/Blackberry/iOS app bandwagon. Seriously, not every brand needs to have an app.

The mobile site is optimised only for basic WAP phones. There is no special treatment for smartphones or touch phones, which can use the same basic phone interface. I think it's a good strategy to test the waters and see where the usage is coming from, before investing more into product development.

Visit www.merucabs.com from your mobile browser or to automatically get served the mobile version of the site. The auto-detection worked for native Nokia browser as well as Opera Mini. (You can also visit www.merucabs.com/m from your desktop browser to view the mobile version). Here's what the first page looks like:

Google +1 vs Google Reader "Like" - Competing features?

• Google Reader had the "like" feature since July, 2009. Why didn't they release a widget for blogs to showcase the like count on each post? This widget would've also given  a way to users not on Google Reader to showcase their appreciation for a blog post.
• When Google finally released +1 they didn't integrate it with the Google Reader like count. So, now there are multiple ways for users on the Google ecosystem to like/recommend a piece of content. Why?

Am I missing something obvious here? What do you think?

 

Huawei IDEOS - Review by a first time Android user

One fine day I received this email from the good fellows at Avian Media asking me if I'd like to review the recently launched Huawei IDEOS. As you can guess, I agreed. They sent me an IDEOS handset, I played with it for a good 2-3 weeks, and here's the review. But, first, a couple of quick clarifications:

• I think it's very hard reviewing an Android phone. You don't really know whether you're reviewing the phone or the Android platform. As a first time user of an Android phone, I don't really know which parts of the Android OS/UI are it's inherent traits and which parts are controlled by the phone manufacturer. Given the fact that Android is open and assuming that the manufacturer would have control over all aspects of the OS/UI, I'll state my opinions as a whole towards the phone, and not split between the hardware & the OS/UI.
• I did NOT use this handset as my primary phone. I had taken it along with me on my Thailand trip where, although it had a Thai SIM, calls were infrequent. It was used frequently for surfing the net over WiFi, checking emails, Google Maps + GPS, & tons of Angry Birds :-)

Phuket / Krabi / Thailand Weather in May, 2011

My wife & I got back from an 11 day trip to Phuket & Krabi. We were there from 14th May to 25th May, 2011.

We were skeptical of having to stay indoors for most of the trip due to the rainy weather forecast. We were surprised to find mostly hot & sunny days all throughout our trip. If I remember correctly, it was partly cloudy on two days (no or very little rain) and there was only one day with heavy rains. A couple of days it rained in the night, but most of the days it was hot & sunny - perfect weather for beach bumming & island hopping.

Thailand is very beautiful in the rains.Unless you're hell bent on catching some sun and lazing around on the beach, hire a car and go for a long drive if it gets cloudy. The roads and the lush greenery are just brilliant when it's wet!

You can get more information on the current weather in Phuket at the Phuket Weather Blog.

Back to school from Thailand

Back from a long-ish (11 day) trip to Thailand. Didn't want to come back only :( Thinking of going to office tomorrow feels like going back to school after 10weeks of summer vacations!

Gotta write some SEO'd posts about my travel tales now...

Brand bidding as a PR tool: Learnings from CCAvenue hack

Following up on my previous post about the CCAvenue hacking incident & learnings from it, I'm really, really surprised that CCAvenue has not started bidding on it's own brand terms.

There's a lot that has already been said about bidding on one's own brand terms in the regular course of things and I'm not about to go into it here. You can read some opinions about it here & here. This post focuses on why you should be bidding on your brand terms during critical public situations.

As of 11 May, 2011, a Google search on "ccavenue hacked" results in a bunch of links from other blogs & news sites, which talk about their take on the incident.

If CCAvenue were bidding on terms like "ccavenue hacked", etc. they would easily have the opportunity to place the official response right on top of the search results page. With a few rupees per-click they could ensure that users hear of the official response first. The fact that their official response sucks, is a different matter altogether.


BP seems to have done this during the Deepwater Horizon Oilspill incident. They were bidding aggressively on keywords like "oil spill", "deepwater", "gulf of mexico", etc. The ads took users to a section on their website detailing the official response and updates on the damage control process. Read more about the BP Oil Spill Google ads here. However, they seem to have gotten a fair bit of backlash -  [1] [2] - for spending time in online reputation management instead of fixing the damn problem. But that's mostly because oil companies don't have a good reputation to begin with. I would presume that that's not the case with CCAvenue.

PS: I'm not sure what the search volume for the CCAvenue-hack related keywords would be. I'm itching to put out an ad and see how many clicks I can get on this. Screw it, let's do it!

Two must-have features in Google Blogger & Reader

Two features that I wish Google Blogger & Reader had:

1. Google Reader should show me ONE consolidated news item if it appears multiple times in my news feed. For example if a particular post has been shared by one or more of my friends and/or is also part of my news feed it should show up just once. Bonus feature would be to display each user's note/comment in a usable fashion.
2. Google Blogger should have the ability to reply to a comment via email. While you can be notified via email with every comment to a particular post, you can't simply hit the reply button and continue the discussion. Pull up your socks Google, it has been ages since Facebook released this feature for all comment threads on its platform.

What do you think?

Aside, if you haven't already read why I think Google Blogger + Reader can beat the shit out of Twitter, do it now. I mean now!

CCAvenue hack: What can developers & businesses learn?

If you haven't already read about the alleged hacking of CCAvenue, here's the gist:

1. Hacker, calling himself d3hydr8, posts complete schema of CCAvenue's DB on a mailing list. The post also contains the contents of 'admn_users' table, which include username & passwords in plain text.
2. Story is covered all over the interwebs - MediaNama coverage, Pluggd coverage
3. CEO, Vishwas Patel "patently" denies that this happened.

Developers should read this

Here's what developers can learn about how to safely store passwords:

Is the iMint loyalty card worth it?

A couple of years ago I got a free iMint card because of my ICICI Bank debit card. I never bothered with it apart from getting mildly irritated with iMint spam in my inbox every week. Last week I got yet another iMint spam - "Redeem your i-mint points & get 100 BONUS i-mint points" - and I wondered, how desparate could they get!

I decided to dig deeper.

How to announce an acquisition to customers?

Learn from Wufoo.

It's very rare that an email notifying you about a merger/acquisition makes you smile. Makes you care. Does a good job of explaining what's going on. And does all of this in plain English, not corporate-speak.

That's quite a lot for an email to achieve. But that's exactly what this email from Wufoo did.

Meru Cabs Online Booking Website - A Review

I'm a big fan of Meru Cabs. Always on time [1], well maintained fleets of cars, and appropriately priced.

My only grouse had been with waiting (for eternity) to speak with someone in their call center to make a booking. Well, with the recent launch of online bookings on the Meru Cabs website, even that seems to have been solved.

A big shoutout to my friends at DotAhead, Goa for solving this beautifully.

What's good

The home page is where all the action happens - as it ideally should, for a website focusing on transactions. No mugshots of founders & investors welcoming you to the "Meru family". No corporate-speak about our "fleet of cars", "since 2002", yada yada. Get your booking. And get out. Simple. Here's what the home page looks like:

8 types of bad creative critics

I hope I'm none of them. Or better yet - have evolved through each of them already :-)

[Via Indigo Consulting, which is originally via SkydeCartoons.com as indicated on the image]

How can Google beat Twitter at the social game?

Quick answer - Embrace blogs & RSS feeds.
Long answer follows...

Twitter is a micro-blog

The numero uno use-case on Twitter is that users publish content (opinions, links, etc.) and broadcast it to whoever wants to listen. (The content, for some unknown reason, is limited to 140 chars.)

There is a well established & easy way to publish content online – hosted blogging platforms. There is a well documented & well supported open standard for broadcasting one's content – RSS feeds. No wonder Twitter was called a micro-blogging platform when it started out.

Google's ITA acquisition: Impact on Indian OTAs?

Google has just announced on it's blog that it's ITA acquisition had been cleared by the US Department of Justice. Given that Google drives significant amount of traffic to the OTAs, this is big news for the market.

Even though it could take a while for Google to integrate & roll-out a travel search product in India, this is significant for the Indian players here as well - Cleartrip, MakeMyTrip, and Yatra.

How could this possibly affect the Indian OTAs?

At Goa, priorities are straightforward

Pehle duvva, aur fir daaroo. Nothing in between.

[Spotted at a beach shack at Ozran beach, Goa]

Main ZINDO balm hui...

...darling tere liye!

Move over Zandu balm, the new & improved Zindo balm is here :)

[Spotted at a general store in Goa.]

I'm sure you would've seen your share of candies & chocolates, which look same-same, but different. 'Much' instead of 'Munch'. 'Ecloors' instead of 'Eclairs'. 'Beamer' instead of 'Boomer'.

How does this work? How much extra money would the retailer be making to agree to such scams?

Who says offline advertising can't be contextual?

Spotted at a Delhi Metro station - bang opposite an escalator exit. Brilliant use of tying context with a campaign message.

Does copy with character work in India?

There's something to be said about products which have a certain character to them. The first example that comes to mind is MailChimp though they seem to have distanced their monkey quite a bit these days. Another set of opinionated products are from the  37Signals stable, but they don't try to dress them up in a character, in my opinion.

I was surprised to find FeedBurner, now a Google product still holding on to their quirkiness. I love how their their main navigation reads: Analyze, Optimize, Publicize, Monetize, Troubleshootize

The "Troubleshootize" page carries forward the character and gives a fun spin to the standard FAQs.

And the dashboard tries to pull a page out of Flickr's book with random welcome messages.

It's a bit sad that their integration with Blogger is not smooth & completely frictionless, but that's a different story altogether.

Something that I've always wondered is whether such quirky copy (or "copy with character", as I like to call it) works with the general Indian internet audience? Or should one play it safe and produce plain-vanilla "transactional copy." What do you think? Any Indian products with such character that you know about?

Angry Birds Released for a New Platform...

...Real life!

Spotted over a weekend at the Phoenix 'Mela' for a Nokia E-series
marketing event :-)

Will Firebug Be Issued a DMCA Takedown Notice?

So, will NYT start issuing DMCA take-down notices to the umpteen tools that enable you to "circumvent" the NY Times paywall? What about tools like Firebug & Chrome Developer Tools? Even they can enable someone to "circumvent" by hiding the layover DIV.

Work of a seasoned consultant!

And with such a brain-dead paywall implementation (it's just a standard HTML/DIV layover), would one really call it an effective control measure as expected by the DMCA Act:

No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
[...]
No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--
`(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

Apparently, NYT has spent $40-50 million on implementing this paywall. That's right, Rs 180-225 crore! Seriously WTF!

Flipkart Lite - A Review of Flipkart's Mobile Product

I just love what Flipkart has done in the online retail space. The breadth of their catalogue is great. Their pricing is transparent. Their shipping is free. And their delivery times are phenomenal. I don't remember buying a book from anywhere other than Flipkart in the past year.

They have a mobile optimised site too - one of the very few in the Indian market. Flipkart Lite allows you to search & order all product lines available on the desktop site, i.e. books, mobiles, movies, music, games, cameras, & computers. However, the only payment option available is cash-on-delivery (COD). Given that they're in a business that doesn't need immediate fulfillment, like flight tickets, it's makes sense to avoid the payment challenge on mobile.

The transaction process is fairly straightforward, barring a minor glitch here or there. The experience seems to be optimised for small-screen devices as is clear from how they're treating the search box & search results.

3 Reasons Why You Need Test Driven Development

Having been through the initial phase of a startup, I've been responsible for fairly large projects on impossible timelines. With ever-changing specs and the pressure to ship, we never really got the time to write any automated tests.

It's not something that I'm proud of.

I took the first opportunity to experiment with "Test Driven Development" (TDD) when the support contract with a vendor ran out and I had to fix a bug myself. Based on this experience here's why I think every project needs test driven development:

[Online advertising] Apollo Munich campaign on YouTube

A shout-out to the folks at Apollo Munich Health Insurance (and their agency) for coming up with this brilliant piece of online advertising - a medium otherwise fraught with extremely tactical, stale, and uninspiring creatives.

I recently came across the said ad while watching random videos on YouTube - killing time on a Sunday! Here's the ad placement:

And these are the key frames of the flash banner:

I wasn't planning on buying health insurance. I wasn't searching for health insurance. I was no where near any insurance product. However, the ad content was relevant to what I was doing - watching random videos on YouTube. That's what made me sit-up & take notice. And now I remember the brand which made this ad - Apollo Munich.

I'd love to know if the CTR on this particular creative was higher than the average YouTube sees on that placement. (I know - CTR is not the end-all of online advertising, but still...)

Do you know of any good (and original) examples of display advertising?

Is Domino's Pizza the favorite Indian festival food?

Seriously! Take a look at this...

While you were celebrating new year's, the rest of the country was busy ordering Domino's pizza! Facts for your perusal:

Hottest searches in India on 30-Dec-2010 (via Google) – No Domino's
Hottest searches in India on 31-Dec-2010 (via Google) – "Domino's India" on #13
Hottest searches in India on 01-Jan-2011 (via Google) – "Domino's India" on #13
Hottest searches in India on 02-Jan-2011 (via Google) – No Domino's

(That most of the country was also searching for SMS spam to send on New Year is a separate story!)

Now take a look at the weeks for which "Domino's" related searches have peaked – correlates pretty well with major Indian festivals.

A cursory glance at other fast food chains, like McDonald's, Pizza Hut, & KFC also reveals a peak around the new year. However, nothing seems to rock the Indian palette on a festival as Domino's pizza! I, too, had ordered Domino's pizza on Christmas eve last year. What about you? Hungry kya?

Update: And the trend continues. Check out the huge spike in search volume for "dominos india" on Google Insights in the week of Holi (20-26 March, 2011)

"Frandship" requests - finally an explanation!

As a collective people, either we Indians are way ahead in the relationship curve or completely messed up! The top 5 "how to" queries via Google's India Zeitgeist are either highly insightful or very, very worrying!

• People want to impress girls first, then they think about improving their English. Wanting to make frandship with you, anyone?
• So people want to know how to get pregnant before they kiss. That explains the 1.3% population growth rate, twice that of China and higher than the world average.
• More people want to learn how to kiss before they impress the girl. An explanation for the rising crime rate against women?
• And reducing weight is at the very end of the relationship priority. Explains the omnipresence of pot-bellies around the nation.

There are more gems hidden there. What can you spot?

How a small change in link text led to 45% increase in customer re-engagements

The emails given below were sent to customers who hadn't been transacting on Cleartrip's site for a long time – potentially lost customers. We wanted to understand why they weren't transacting with us any more through a one question survey.

One of the emails received 45% more survey responses than the other. Can you guess which one?

One link-off read Spare a minute to let us know ».

The other, Answer one simple question & let us know »

Both the links reinforced the fact that the survey was short and would not take very long to complete. Yet, it was the second link text – "Answer one simple question & let us know" – which led to more responses.

That's right. One small change led to a 45% increase in lost customers re-engaging with our brand & giving us an opportunity to win them back.

Any theories as to why the second text performed better? Respond in the comments below.

The email salutation was personalized with the recipient's first name. The only difference in the email templates was the text of the link which led to a very short survey form - everything else was identical.

Contest design - Part 3 of Behind Cleartrip's My Purpose Microsite

Part 2 of this series told the story of how we iterated over the visual design of Cleartrip's My Purpose microsite. This part describes the design of the contest & user-flows.

What's in it for me?

Sharing holidays pics, party pics, and status updates on Facebook/Twitter has become part of a person's online identity. Because of the network effect – the (almost) omni-presence of one's friends on such networks – a person wants to share bits of his/her life online.

It would be naive to expect users to find such a value through our campaign microsite – in all of 4-weeks. We were asking users to share personal travel experiences with us, without giving them anything tangible or intangible in return.

We took an easy route to fill this gap – a contest.

Behind Cleartrip's My Purpose Microsite - Part 2

Part 1 of this series detailed the overall context of Cleartrip's TV campaign and the thought that went into outlining the online strategy for it. With just 12 days for the ads to go on-air we had to get our heads down and focus on execution – starting from the visual design of the microsite.

Visual & interaction design

Truth be told, no design process is linear. In a textbook world every process fits into a neat diagram like this.

In the real world, it's more like this.

Courtesy: The Anatomy of Web Design

Fresh off the block

And that's precisely what happened with this microsite. The brilliant chaps at Synapse, our digital agency based in Goa, got all charged-up. They spent the weekend working off a half-baked brief based around a bunch of ideas that we had been bouncing off each other.

One of the first mockups of the microsite looked something like this.

While it drew inspiration from the right products & tried to neatly package the ideas that we had bounced off each other, this approach didn't work for mainly two reasons:

Behind Cleartrip's My Purpose Microsite - Part 1

Inception

Online travel as a category is extremely cluttered. MakeMyTrip, Cleartrip, Yatra, Travelocity, TravelGuru, iXiGO, goIbibo, Aarzoo - the list just doesn't seem to end. Marketing communication for online travel is even more cluttered & undifferentiated. Each & every player is talking about essentially the same things - deals, cashbacks, & discounts. It's a race to the bottom to be the place for cheapest deals.

Given this competitive environment, Cleartrip wanted to go out with a fresh communication to break this clutter. We wanted to take a more "human" approach with our communication. Something that connects with customers at a level "higher" than prices & discounts.

With this background & brief, we called for agency pitches to create our TV commercial. I sat through all the pitches. Some were good. Some not so. But, the one that we finally went with, had a brilliant insight - every trip has a purpose. Think about it. Travel is more about meeting your relatives, going for your honeymoon, or clinching that business deal than it's about the price you bought the ticket for. As a travel service provider, we enable our customers to fulfill an actual purpose. To quote Hrush from the Cleartrip blog: