Perspectives

I dont know if it is such a great deal, but I think people are going to have a tough time changing all those science books all over the world. Spreading a word about this is tough as well. I am sure there are many people out there who wont know there was a 10th planet in our solar system briefly and then again got chucked out.

Pluto, we love you and we are sorry for the discrimination. It seems like it was always inevitable.

Only when I read about astronomy does my childhood dreams and fantasies of our universe spring and bloom in my mind. It is unfair that I am sitting and writing code. But, I guess the world is unfair.

Does anybody have a good impression on these things called Toolbars that you install (or gets installed in a few cases) on browsers? Or is it just me who gets irritated with these things so much?

I am only going to comment about Yahoo! Toolbar, but I am guessing these things apply to Google Toolbar (or any other that is out there) too.

• Firstly, I never asked for the toolbar. Apparently, if you keep clicking “next-next” as you install Messenger, the Toolbar gets installed without you realising it.
• I am about to click on some link on a page that I am in, and with this silly touch pad on my laptop, I click Y! personals and end up there.
• Cool, I came back and I decide to customize so that even if I mistakenly click it, I end up going to Flickr or mail than Pets or personals. I spend some time customizing it.
• Now, I realise they have eaten my valuable real estate. I say, big deal, it is just a little bit.
• Ok, now that I have it, I am thinking what was the last thing I ever did on it ?

Search ? Nopes, I am way to used to searching from “Firefox’s” search-box and I am even used to ctrl-k start typing. Am not gonna change that.

Myweb? Nopes, I use delicious sometimes and myweb sometimes and I find the bookmarklets (which I already have) more convienient.

Flickr ? Nopes, ctrl-K + “fl..” + down arrow + enter is faster. ( I visit flickr so many times that all I really have to do are three key storkes, much faster than fiddling with my mouse/touchpad)

YME ? Nopes, All that button really does is to call my YME I just installed.

My Yahoo! ? Sorry, bloglines

Mail ? Same as flickr.

Antispy? You kidding me rite?

Answers? I still dont understand why this is such a popular service to begin with.

Shopping ? Not useful in India. Even in the US, I go to amazon.

Ok, essentially, this is the point:

Let the bolder guy (amongst GYM – If you read Om Malik, you know what I am talking about – ) come up with a toolbar that I can customize to really incorporate the things I mentioned. Just because you pushed Y! Shopping on my toolbar is not why I am going to use it. And when there was no toolbar, I was still using Flickr.

Shouldnt the Yahoo! Toolbar really be a Toolbar than being a Yahoo! bar ? What do you think ?

Update: There is a picture to this blog. I didnt see it my bloglines. IF you didnt either, catch it here
Here is a classic example of why I think adsense is not the panacea for all advertising problems. As long as you dont consider the tone of the subject in discussion, you will probably end up irritating the end user than help him find something useful.

Another proposition I have is, as people get more and more used to text ads, they will stop clicking it. How many people really care about the advts on traditional media anymore? The more you see them, the less effective it is. My hypothesis is, more and more sites will start delivering text ads and they will looked upon similar to the banner ads on the web or ads on traditional media.

The point I am making is, the success of an ad channel is not replicable. Similar to how you can not remake a box office hit movie with the same storyline (they do this all the time in India) and expect it to topple box office again. Novelty is the mantra of the day.