Logic2Go

The simplest way of knowing when your marketing is getting it right is the exact moment when the phones start ringing (or emails start coming in from prospective clients). Incoming sales leads are the direct result of and the much sought-after marketing nirvana.

However, this is also the time for the dreaded “too big net” effect. Due to the sudden deluge of calls, there is a tendency to drop the ball on some of the leads.

How the hell does a salesperson do this? I mean, isn’t the salesperson’s goal to answer every email and respond to every call?

You wish. I wish, too. And no one is to blame. I miss out on leads all the time. Some leads just slip past the “unread items” of my inbox all the time.

The only real solution for this is to seriously, religiously, regularly enter incoming leads into your company’s CRM. It can be Microsoft Excel, SugarCRM, Basecamp or anything else. Just getting every lead entered into some sort of electronic system HELPS!

This takes diligent practice and constantly reminding oneself that “yes, data entry sucks! But you’ve got to do it. No two ways about.

Heck for the super lazy, atleast write down the leads and details about the phone conversations and pass them along to an assistant in the office who can then type it out into your CRM.

I’m a Microsoft fanboy. People who know me, know that.

However, let me tell you about stuff that has happened to me over the last week …

Outlook did something stupid last week…
I could not see the “content/body” of my emails. Just the “from address” and “subject line”. I could not see the “body” of the emails in the preview pane or when I just double-clicked it to open it. ONLY when I clicked on Reply or Forward would the actual body of the email show up in the “quoted” text area. So the data was still there. Just not being displayed in one view but was shown in another.

Not a very nice way to read emails, you will agree.

While all this was going on, I somehow got hooked on to gmail (Thanks, Mangu!) with their feature for 3rd part email inboxes (basically, I could use gmail as a web-based Outlook and read my company emails in there!)

It has been so effortless and smooth, that I have not bothered to open Outlook in the last 4 days. I use Gmail, GCalendar (which I sync with my Nokia E63) and other Google stuff!
I also have had my sights on an Android phone for a few months now.

I am still using Windows Live Writer to write this blog post. Win 7 as my primary OS. Office 2010 as my favourite application suite.

What does this mean? Microsoft needs to make more killer products that WORK for the average user. Anything they make that is not simply 100% great, will move people away from them.

Also, this mean that it is *not* difficult to make easy to use products with the right features. Especially for a large organisation that supposedly hires very “smart” people.

Here’s one way …

A cousin of mine didn’t get (or maybe “didn’t want”) a cellphone while he was so young. So he never bothered to push his parents for one over the years.

Then, over this summer, he started borrowing his mom’s cellphone to send text messages. When the bill came, it was high enough that his parents decided he needed a cellphone of his own with a mobile-plan to match his needs.
How many theories does this prove:
1) That is how you make a business case.
2) The power of the network effect. Even when you don’t care about something, enough of your peers have/use it that you need to start using it too.
3) It is always easier to prove the ROI with hard facts/numbers (in this case, the bill)
In his own, SMS version of the story …

strtd textin wid mums cell…and d bill amt roktd to d skies..so dey brought me a cell

LMAO.

This has been in the back of my mind for a while now, ever since I started reading about how cool Palm’s new WebOS is. Then followed by their hardware design (that Pre slider is awesome). Then followed by stories of how sloppy their hardware build quality was and finally about how difficult it has been for Palm to get to move from CDMA from GSM (jair-broken or not, have you SEEN a Palm WebOS device in India yet?).

And today’s editorial on engadget about Palm and HTC as possible merger or acquisition target (acquired by HTC, that is) just hits the right spot.

Some interesting points that I hadn’t considered on my own are addressed:
1) Palm has a decent patent portfolio put in place long before the iPhone was a figment of Steve Jobs’ imagination. So Apple can go around a sue everyone, but daren’t touch Palm (or whoever acquires Palm’s patent portfolio)

2) HTC itself needs an OS of it’s own.
Samsung and HTC (ok, Motorola too) seem to amongst the few large phone manufacturers that do not have a stable OS to call their own. Between Win 6.5, Win 7 and Android , HTC is getting thrown around by the OS owners.

My take on it…
Even if an acquisition of merger does not fully happen, the least these two companies should do is LICENSE the WebOS and related technologies for HTC devices to depend on.
I know, it still leaves HTC running an OS that it does not fully own. But licensing it from a Palm, that is desperate for profits and marketshare is a smarter move (more desperate = less aggressive) than depending on entrenched companies that are less willing to consider HTC’s requirements.

An outcome I would like…
Get me a WebOS device and a decent App Store for use in India.

We have been working over the last few months to get a simple RFID Tags and Reader catalog/catalogue up and running.

I believe it is now ready with some simple content and products and should be show-cased to a smaller audience to see how it looks and compares to other such websites on the Internet.

You can check the RFID Tags and Readers Shop and browse through the various items on display.

We have a section on RFID tags for various applications:

UHF RFID Tags are used for long distance reading on pallets, cartons and vehicles.
HF RFID Tags are used for jewellery inventory, access control and attendance tracking.

Also, there is a section on RFID Readers (fixed as well as handheld):
UHF RFID Readers are used with UHF Tags and for long range reading and are usually TCP/IP (LAN) based.
HF RFID Readers. are used with HF Tags and usually are USB, Bluetooth or Serial (RS232)

I am still thinking of removing the section titled “by manufacturer” and changing it to “by application/solution area” and put in items such as “car tracking”, “retail inventory”, etc, etc.

What do you think?

I have been using Windows Live Mesh software on my personal laptops (Windows 7 and Windows XP) and on Surabhi’s laptop (Windows Vista) for a few months now.

It is a wonderful software that allows you to do some interesting stuff in a very user friendly manner.

1) Share a file and it is immediately available on all other computers and in an online account at once.
2) Set permissions to ensure only files you want to, are shared
3) Share different files/folders with different people.
4) Works seamlessly in the background. You just know it works.

Live Mesh is a part of 3 new products from Microsoft: Live Mesh, SkyDrive and Live Sync.
To know the differences between the three, check Amit’s blog.

This compares very favourable with other services such as box.net and dropbox.

However, it is a little disheartening to see that none of the popular commercial blogs such as techcrunch or engadget give it any coverage to speak of. I mean, not liking Microsoft is one thing, but actively ignoring new and good products that can help thousands of customers just because they are made by Microsoft is plain biased.

(Sure they have a few articles, but seriously, compared to other/similar companies?)

Case in point, my 2002 model ThinkPad X31 survives after years of drops and falls. And thats the story with many other T20’s from earlier.

But all newer thinkpads (even from 3 years ago) are breaking apart like cheapo Dell or HP units.

Post-Lenovo the ThinkPad brand is just a marketing label not a product-quality seal.

Proof: Writing this post on my ThinkPad x31 after a drop from the bed to the floor just few minutes ago. The WinXP was on sleep. I just flipped the screen open and it works without a hitch.

I have used Symbian as my phone OS for a while, not because of the OS itself, but because of the hardware it supports.

First it was the Sony Ericsson, then some Nokia’s. I need a full keyboard, and aside from the Blackberries, Nokia’s have the best keyboard (E-series).

But over the last few months, the complete lack of new application support for the Symbian OS platform is scarce at best.

I mean, even Facebook and Twitter do NOT have a decent Symbian application for the E-series (arguably Nokia’s bestselling mass-market devices). This lack of support from developers is a huge death-knell for this platform.

I have an E63, which I completely love, when it comes to keyboard and general hardware specs. But when it comes to actual applications, I look lovingly at Sid’s Android or Umang’s iPhone andthe hundreds of cool apps they download and ’show-off’ reguarly.

My requirements in a phone:
1) Physical QWERTY keyboard is a MUST-HAVE
2) Keyboard in normal portrait mode
3) Touchscreen is optional. Don’t care either way.
4) A huge, well support, application library

Is this too much to ask? And what are my options?

It’s still early morning, as I’m sitting for tea (and biscuits, of course) and the cook/cleaner is cleaning the house.

Thanks to being close to St. Josephs (Indians) and Cottons, we are within hearing distance of the morning assembly.
As usual, they start the music for the national anthem, and as usual, I stand up to sing it.
And then, from the corner of my eye, I see the cook standing at attention too and singing it.
No one asked him. No one asked me.

Democracy is a wonderful thing. Especially when we choose it out of our own free will.

I remember dozens of term papers, final essays and project reports I had to write and work on during high school and college.

They took up lots of hours, editing, formatting and re-proofing. Making sure you adhere to the prescribed formats (seriously, if it asked for double-spacing and you did it differently, you lost some valuable % marks)

Then, you had to ensure it was bound correctly (spiral for some professors, book-style for others).

All this, was usually done till late in the evening or till dawn of the morning it was due for submission.

Finally, of course, if it wasn’t submitted on-time, you ended up with having all this hardwork not being accepted at all.

Today, years after graduating, I still have my own version of this. And they are called TENDERS.

Unfrackingly similar in terms of requirements (each page has to be signed, with company seal AND full name and phone number handwritten- on a 170 page document)!!!

The same your-life-hangs-in-the-balance paper.
The college ones helped you graduate.
The tenders help you survive as a company.

The more things change, the more they remain the same (quoted/translated from Karr’s French original)