Perspectives

This is a big surprise for me. The 2007 zeitgeist list for India (Fast rising queries) has just one English word which is not already a Google product in the top five:

01. Orkut
02. YouTube
03. Gmail
04. Map
05. Google

And what it is? “Map”!? So, what does this tell you? Maybe there is a big market for “Maps” and my gut feel has been wrong all along..hmm..But I still cant believe it is map. Not facebook. not iphone. Not javascript. But map. Not “Google maps”, Not “Yahoo Maps”, but “Map”. Interesting.

If you are curious..the six to ten are these. Not sure how zapak managed to jump in there:

06. Indian Railways
07. Yahoo Mail
08. Technology
09. Yahoo
10. Zapak

So, You may have heard about the first result in youtube for the search query “India”. It is called “India driving”, a candid potrait on what happens on Indian roads. One of my friends has even come to a conclusion that Indians dont have the disciplined driving gene in us. Even if you forget the bad PR that such a video could do to the country ( and it’s tourism), it is still necessary that we figure out a way to fix this problem just so that we reach our homes safely.

A little while ago, Siddharth was talking to me about traffic violations and an idea he had about creating a wall of shame and possibly also enable people to say sorry. And then he stumbled upon Traffic Violators.

Although the idea is novel and I have to congratulate Abhishek Kant for the initiative, the website needs to come a long way before it can really make a change.

For the most part, the people who report the violation probably want to remain anonymous. As much as I want better driving conditions, I would rather not get fire from someone else. I dont understand why I have to create a login to report a violation. If you are going to trace me back, I guess, I would not even report in the first place. Also, Login/Register is a big fallout. When it comes to “citizen initiatives” you have to make it as easy and compelling as possible.

There are about four violations as of now in a corner of the page. If the site is about violations, should that occupy center stage? Also, it is unclear what happens once I report. Do you give an opportunity for the owner to come back and say sorry? What about “cabs” driven by employed people? Most of the “travels” vehicles have a “Do I drive bad” sticker stuck somewhere on the car. Shouldnt it be possible to report that too? Other related information such as what is the kind of vehicle and what is the kind of violation is worth reporting as well. How will the information get disseminated? The more places you are able to see it, the better. I am probably talking about an API or a widget.

Anyways, Cheers! to Abhishek and all others involved and drive safe. Please dont Honk.

And you wont even notice it. Well, I guess, that was the idea. It is magical how they all have managed to pull this one through. I mean, everything that worked in Flex works exactly the same way in JS? Makes us wanna think, that they initially used flash for the wrong thing, or they had other feature rich ideas initially which they never managed to roll out.

But, I think this is a good way forward. It takes a lot less time to load for sure. ( Still not very ideal, takes about 8 Secs from a good broadband in India). It will begin to work on those Airport Computers that dont have flash installed. The Yahoo Maps Ajax API will start to get some of these benefits. It will begin to grow faster and cooler.

But having said all of that, It still has some distance to cover before I become it’s fan. Starting from reducing the number of text boxes to removing unnecessary links like “save to my web”.

Kudos to the technical for achieving something close to a marvel. Writing this kind of Javascript and CSS is a painstaking effort for sure.

Google Local India Sticker
Originally uploaded by shivku.

I was at a watch repair shop at BDA, Complex in Bangalore and I was surprised to see a Google marker stuck on one of the side walls of the small shop. On Closer analysis, It revealed itself as a “Google India Local Maps” sticker that Google possibly has shipped it over to these guys.

So, did the shop owner marked himself on the map (Using My maps) and got the sticker shipped? Very unlikely. I dont think he has used email, let alone maps online. I also tried searching for “Clock repair” and could not find anything useful. Infact, I could not find “BDA complex” in Koramangala, Let alone the “clock work shop” inside it.

So, that just means someone came over and distributed these stickers? That is cheap.

Having said that, the idea rocks. First, They have gone really local. This is as random a shop as it can get. Not the kinds you will find even on yellow pages. Second, this is free physical contextual advertising. Not many people are online in India yet, and not many non-internet ( Newspapers or TV) ads are contextual. Now, things in the physical world that you can relate to on the internet which is (also) contextual, well..that is a killer combo. Precisely what made me come back home and search for “clock works” near my house in Google maps.