For some couple of days I was noticing the rising inflow of Litchis in the fruit market. But all those litchis are not fully ripe as indicated by their pale and yellowish-red colour. Eventhough I thought them to be sweet enough as their sales seems to be robust.

When I got up today morning, I saw many parrots perching on trees in the garden. At first I thought their presence is because of the mangoes. But next moment, I recalled that my mother had already planned to pluck all the raw mangoes for preparing pickle. So these birds must have came to test the sweet litchis. I immediately went ahead and plucked a litchi fruit from (Read the rest of this story.)

Today morning, I returned back from Nainital. On the way my thoughts went to a minor accident in the Naini Lake of Nainital reported in the leading local newspapers Amar Ujala & Dainik Jagran yesterday. A family of four from Karol Bagh, New Delhi was enjoying boating in the Naini Lake just like other tourists were. Suddenly the water started coming into their boat from its bottom and it started sinking. Initially, the boatsman evacuated some mugs of water but told that it is normal and you need not worry about this! But the boat eventually got drowned!!!

Fortunately all the souls were saved by some army personnels who were coincidently boating nearby. But at the end of it, the boatsman was arrested for being (Read the rest of this story.)

Today, Economic Times’ Brand Equity released the findings of its “India’s Most Trusted Brands 2007” survey. The top 100 list is mostly populated by FMCG products and some medicinal products sold over the counter (without any prescription from any physician). The list starts with Colgate as the top brand and moves down with Vicks, Lux, Nokia, Britannia, Dettol, Lifebuoy, Pepsodent, Pond’s and Tata Tea forming the Top Ten.

What is revealing here is that most of the consumers are occupied with brands of products having as trivial a use as cleansing of teeth (Read the rest of this story.)

Well, I was away for a few days on my birthday for a visit to Shree Badrinathji …the most important of the four shrines of Char Dham Yatra in Uttarakhand.

After returning from the Shrine, I am feeling very light and cleanse in my thoughts, actions and daily routines. My mindset has got some sort of a makeover.

So, I decided to do some makeover for my blog as well. And here it is in its new look with a changed theme. I have upgraded the Word Press to the recently released 2.2 version. I have also added a “Subscribe to followup Comments” Link for the convenience of frequent Commenters. I have also installed (Read the rest of this story.)

These days I see several companies giving their established brand names to their new launches to gain immediate market identity & thus a good market share very quickly. But as the old adage goes, the trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit. Similarly, brands need time for nourishing them to make them strong. But today’s marketeers have perhaps forgotten this time tested fact. Companies today are eager to establish their new products and services faster than before. Hence they are committing the sin of Brand Extension. I don’t know what they are thinking.

Richa Arora, general manager, Britannia was recently quoted as saying (Read the rest of this story.)

Dynamic pricing of Air Fares has created a lot of confusion about purchasing and budgeting Air Tickets. To ease it, yesterday a website was launched which claims to predict Air Fares seven days in advance with guaranteed 75% of accuracy. That means, this website will pay your extra charges in case your fare exceeds its predictions. Thats an added offer convincing about its reliability of its predictions. These kind of services will give some kind of relief to comprehend dynamic pricing of today’s market. Lets see how it functions. Log in at Fare Cast and see for yourself.

Three weeks back, I was applauding the Govt. plans of providing free Internet services in India [Free Internet In India]. But unfortunately this plan might remain only a distant dream as the pied piper of Union Telecom Ministry Mr. Dayanidhi Maran has recently (Read the rest of this story.)

Last week one of the leading media house in Dehradun viz. Dainik Jagaran gave its name to a small traffic intersection point near its printing press. The traffic joint on Saharanpur Road near New Sabzi Mandi, Niranjanpur was named as “Jagaran Chowk” in the presence of political dignitaries. The inauguration was done by no other than the State Chief Minister Shri B. C. Khanduri. The efforts of the Dainik Jagaran for lending a helping hand to the local traffic police in disciplining and managing the traffic through this was admired by one and all.

But the point to be noted here is that what Dainik Jagaran has done to organise the traffic? It has (Read the rest of this story.)

Yesterday when MSN relaunched its flagship web-based email brand of Hotmail, I was reminded of the earlier days of Internet era. Hotmail was created in 1996 and taken over by Microsoft in 1998. When I accessed the internet first time, the vey first website I opened was Hotmail and I loved the brand as it was the only one where I could get my free email address. I got my first email id at hotmail in 1998 and was very content with its features. But over time, I started facing many problems like its slow & inaccessible servers, frequent down times, meagre storage space of only 2 MB (free) and compulsory login condition for once every month to sustain that account were some of the features which compelled me to look for other options. I migrated to Yahoo Mail and later on to Google Mail after its launch in 2004. Since this (Read the rest of this story.)