Inspiring Creativity. That’s what came to me in that moment. Barry McGee, hailing from the Mission district, of San Francisco (a city, I dearly love) showed us the depth of his work. Below are some pictures from the exhibit, don’t mind the low quality images of an iPhone camera.

This is Colossal epitomizes ‘creation.’ Few days ago I spotted a music video – RUARRI JOSEPH: Till The Luck Runs Dry.

Creation is a natural instinct that we are born with. And to me – to create is to live. All we need to do is see the waves that wash away our work on the sad as an empty canvas – waiting for our ideas.

One of the books I’ve made is called “Two Cents.” I’ve taken a GapingVoid-ish approach to things. It has a character, lets call him Fred for now (other name suggestions are welcome), who exhibits very limited emotions – which might just give away the lack of drawing skills on my part, at least on that app!

Fred’s epiphanies are just a manifestation of what he goes through in his daily life and what he learns from them.

These drawings aren’t artistic and they are not meant to be. You can also check out my drawings here.

It feels good to be back!

I saw this ad pop up on my Facebook feed the other day. It was from Adweek. Interesting teaser campaign, but here’s the thing: teasers are meant to create curiosity, get people talking, but this commercial makes them angry.

Now don’t get me wrong. If you look at the whole campaign, you might like it, I know I do. But the teaser just has “______ Deserve To Die.” Their website has the full advertising which makes it clear that the campaign is for Lung Cancer Alliance. Good ideas like these are crap when there is no context. With today’s generation being so much into their gadgets, everybody has less time. And an incomplete teaser like this will only get a reaction out of them, not a response.

That too, a negative one.

Couple of days ago, Microsoft launched it’s answer to the iPad – Microsoft Surface.

Tech specs seem fine, the tablets seems well designed. With an inbuilt stand and a smart cover /magnetic keyboard, this product seems intriguing at the surface.

Now the iPad is a great product and predominantly used for reading books, gaming, browsing the web, etc. When it comes to word processing jobs, typing on glass isn’t that pleasant. Even though, there are so many ipad covers and cases available that come with keyboards, I see a gap. A gap, that netbooks couldn’t really fill with their bad processors and bad performance, Microsoft Surface might just be useful here.

The smart cover plus magnetic keyboard that comes with the Microsoft Surface is probably the best element of the launch. There is skepticism over the Windows 8 OS, but it has never stopped Microsoft from selling their operating system in the past.

We just have to wait until the product hits the market.

Poor judgement on part of the live tweet-er. ASUS received social media backlash. End of story.

Consumers around the world are constantly listening and will respond to what their favorite brands are saying over the Internet. It only takes a few to start the fire and the sheer number of participants adds the fuel. But most of this fire will die out or  has already died out. People do understand that they can’t blame the whole company and their years of effort in providing us great quality products just because of one tweet. Just like that one godforsaken tweet, the backlash is a reaction not a response.

Check out the storify Mashable created:

I spotted this commercial few weeks ago and have been seeing it again and again. This got me interested in where IE stands in today’s browser market. Now it’s important to understand that browser market shares are subject to change on a daily basis. However, from a big picture perspective, Chrome, Firefox and to some extent Safari are kicking IE’s ass.

Being a marketing nut, I’ll refer to something Peter Drucker once said:

“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

Innovation is the fodder that feeds the marketing beast. Businesses, to stay relevant, need to keep innovating. Apps need to keep coming out with updates, automobile companies need to come out with newer models, restaurants need to refresh their menus and artists need to create more stuff.

IE didn’t stop innovating. They just got complacent and lazy. By the time they realized the capabilities of Firefox and Chrome, it was too late.  The likes of Chrome and Firefox made users realize what was wrong with Microsoft’s browser. IE has received a lot of bad rep over the years and according to me has lost its marketability.

In the minds of an average Internet user the likes of Apple and Google have become ‘cooler’ brands than Microsoft; and fewer users are intentionally using IE. Today it comes bundled with your Windows operating system. It has transformed from being a consumer centric browser to a more business centric browser. More businesses have IE as their default extranet browser of choice. This is an interesting strategy, but I am no sure if it will make people use IE for stuff that doesn’t require it.

If only Facebook worked exclusively on IE.

I saw these ads on Adweek the other day.

My gripe?

It makes John look lonely and pathetic.

Many of you might have already seen this video. It came out yesterday and I saw it on Mashable. The story here is not how your email reaches its destination, nobody cares about that as long as it’s received by the person you sent it to. The story is about Google’s efforts to minimize the impact on our environment. They also have a cool website explaining soap hive achieve this.

The video starts with email, moves to data centers, talks about green energy, goes back to email. This video bugs me – mostly because of how disconnected it is.

Mind you, the website for this project is very informative and has many short videos and photos to give the user an idea on how stuff works.

But this video just bothers me. Just saying.