It is a collection of funny road signs and ads I have been collecting on Indian highways over the past one year, with a bit of my own commentary thrown in. It is a high quality picture book, printed in all colour on 170 gsm art paper. It came off the press only two days back.

You can check it out for images and sample chapters at http://ajayjain.com/peep-peep-dont-sleep. Links to order the book can also be found here.

Happy to receive any orders for the same.

Do feel free to ping me at ajay@ajayjain.com or +91.99100 44476 for more info.

Q. How big is the online travel market in India to justify your expansion to this country? What does Sprice mean to this sector?
The Indian online travel market which is expected to cross US $ 2 billion mark by 2008 has changed the old paradigm, providing customer a sophisticated online retail and shopping experience, and simultaneously enabling access to fragmented travel supply market.

While the Internet has significantly reduced the cost of distribution for travel suppliers, finding the most suitable package including the best hotel to stay in at the best price has become more complex for the travellers. Sprice.com addresses these concerns by introducing a real-time deep search technology, which offers travellers up-to-date information from different travel suppliers on air fares, hotel rates and traveller reviewed hotels from India on a single interface. (more…)

If The World Could Vote - who would be the next president of the United States of America?

On November 4th 2008 the American people will choose a new president, a person who will become the most powerful person in the world, a person that will influence the whole world. Americans are debating, but it seems that almost every single person in the world has an opinion on who should become the next president of the United States.

To find out who would be the next president of the United States of America - if the world could vote, three guys in Iceland created a website, www.IfTheWorldCouldVote.com. On the site people get one vote for the next president of the United States. The results are then displayed where you can see how many from each country have voted, and who each country has voted for. (more…)

My take? Appetite for risk will be lowered, but funding will continue for good ideas. The tech industry has gone through some real bad phases all through, but we have seen new products and services being delivered without fail year on year. If you have a start-up in mind, bootstrapping may be a better idea to get the money out after you have taken it to a certain level. Of course, all predictions could haywire if the dirty stuff does not stop hitting the fan.

What do others think? Here are some thought leaders who shared their views with me: (more…)

Deane Barker, Content Management Practice Director at Blend Interactive:
“The biggest thing I want to see is the ability to have a centrally-located profile, and have all the social networking apps I’m involved with pull that data to populate my profile on that particular app.

There should be an XML spec or something that all networks share that describes a person. I can either publish this from my own site, or I can pick my favorite social networking app (LinkedIn?) that I want to be “authoritative” for me. Then I point all others to that, and they populate my profile with that information and keep it updated by pinging the profile every once in a while (or, when I update by authoritative profile, it can ping the other services to come get updates). (more…)

Being early days, PR and Bloggers have not yet got a total handle on how to engage with one another. For instance, bloggers are in the need of news and information which may be different from the what a newspaper would seek, but not always. This means PR has to send releases drafted differently, and arrange interaction with people who may not be the spokespersons in the traditional sense. The CEO or Marketing Head may not satisfy the blogger as much as the Product Manager who is more hands-on and will speak with greater passion and authority than even those higher up in the organization. Continue reading about this unique service

• Discussion forums: Simple discussion spaces for group managers and its members. (One can turn discussions off in their management control panel if they like.)
• Enhanced roster: Searchable list of group members.
• Digest emails: Daily or weekly digests of new discussion topics which members may choose to receive. (LinkedIn will be turning digests on for all current group members soon, and prompting them to set to their own preference.)
• Group home page: A private space for a group’s members on LinkedIn.

A LinkedIn release says, “We’re confident that these new features will spur communication, promote collaboration, and make your group more valuable to you and your members. We hope you can come by LinkedIn on Friday morning to check out the new functionality and get a group discussion going by posting a welcome message.”

The LinkedIn community is now being tapped by users for accessing faraway markets, landing dream jobs, raising capital, attracting the best of talent, building corporate brands and more. In fact, it has emerged as the single most important introduction for its members, who use this site to boost their personal brand. Their profile on the site serves as a virtual business card, and a dynamic CV too.

I met the site’s founder and chairman REID HOFFMAN in the latter’s office in the Bay Area in San Francisco, USA recently for an interview. Mr. Hoffman is rated as one of the most influential players in the Silicon Valley, for his record of investing in and setting up companies. A prolific Angel investor, he has invested in over 60 companies including Facebook, Digg, Technorati, Friendster, Ning, Tagged, Flixster and Flickr. When, and if, LinkedIn is sold, it could well be one of the biggest stories of the year with some estimates already valuing it far in excess of a billion dollars. Continue to read the interview

No one, however, predicted the emergence of new media where content, and by implication power, got democratized giving liberty and freedom of speech extended definitions. Blogs, user generated content, YouTube style videos, wikis, podcasts, social media and Internet radio and television have allowed individuals and start-ups to sidestep the Rupert Murdoch model of how media is owned and managed. The last half decade has seen consumers of news and entertainment getting a chance to play publisher, editor, journalist, entertainer and broadcaster themselves; some managed to find audiences of a size leaving the bigger corporations would give their left arm for.

For all the excitement so far, it is only the beginning; we have all tasted blood, it is time to go for the main course. The future is knocking on the doors; at the risk of playing soothsayer, here are some market, business and technology trends to watch out for. (more…)

Want to win five hundred rupees? Predict the television rating of the next test match between India and Australia. The qualifier: You need to be on the media planning team at Lintas to have access to the internal blog this contest is run on.

This is just one example of what you may call ‘Internal Communications 2.0’ – the tools of new media are now being employed by companies to enable its people to converse openly and freely. These work for start-ups and big companies alike and in situations where the workforce is under one roof or spread across many locations.

There are many platforms one can do these on, four of them being most commonplace for their respective advantages. (more…)