Zoom.us Got a Head-starter

It’s an era of mass adaptation of online channels. It’s the spill over effect of Corona pandemic, and now we are let me no choice, but to adapt.

One tool that’s popular for online meeting is Zoom. This application got a first-mover advantage over other biggies over meeting sharing and it’s the first name that comes to our mind when we thing of Online Meeting. However, can this business stay on their initial head-start? How long can they leverage this position in the market.

Come to the Party, Google, Facebook, Cisco, Webex
In business circles, Webex or Cisco all were the go-to name for daily online chat and video conferencing. But, somehow, all of them missed the chunk of consumer market. The common man, the freelancer, small biz and NGO’s.

It’s like Tesla getting ahead of the pack in electric cars. And now, the Chicago motor companies, European, Japanese have a long way to catch with the Tesla’s reach in technology.

Markets are Competitive as Ever

Few lessons for everyone:
1. Keep eyes open for smaller innovations and trends. We never know someone from Benz or Toyota might have send an internal memo about the adaptation of electric cars and technology. However, it got buried over the current work. Even the board might have rejected the idea of spending money for a division.

What a costly mistake!

James Hadley Chase 2020

Time to Revisit Chase

I’m not sure when I started reading Chase. Probably, during late teens. Did any friend at that time passed a book for reading? Or did I pick a copy from the NSS Library near Karamana? I’m not absolutely sure of all that as my memory around that time is as grayed as my hair.

Strictly For Cash

Another Goodbye

Unexpected Goodbyes

I stay in a small lane with houses on both the sides. As we enter the lane, there are few houses which are relatively empty, and few are occupied by a senior citizens.

Recently, during the height of lockdown as I walked to my mom’s house, I saw few people walking down further away from the house. It was unusual to see people outside due to lockdown. They all were going down, to a part of the road which I wasn’t unfamiliar. And, then I saw this poster which is now the norm when people die.

When I told my mom, she said that she used to see this priest going past our house and these days he wasn’t seen. Probably, he was sick. He must be my age or younger.

I just happened to think how much we know the people who are living in and around my house. Who are these people? What do they do for living? What are their joys? What are their pains?

We all have become too inward to know all these nor we have the chance to have a heart- to-heart conversation. Also, this parting made me revisit an earlier goodbye in our locality.

Get Lucky Sisters

In this pandemic season, all major newspapers has shredded extra fluff pages. It was a result of downsizing the cost, keeping bare essentials. Most news carried on the front pages are the gloomy news of infection, direstraits faced by people, biz and how govt is coming with it’s own plan to overcome this crisis.

In short, it’s all dull, scary and depressing news on the cover story. As a person, who stopped newspaper subscription I have little to worry about the news headlines. However, I browse through the newspaper whenever I get a chance – be it at my Mom’s place or when I visit SIB branch at Kumarapuram.

And in such times, it’s often refreshing to see a pic like this on the front page. Probably, b’cos I like anything related to fishing or that I like to see sisters doing something different.

Random Acts of Kindness by MILMA and Others Delivery Apps

Two years back when Kerala was hit by floods, I thought of the same concept. I think I had pened it down, but I don’t remember which was that post. However, now the same concept has surfaced in a new avatar.

Earlier I had thought that it would be great help if Amazon or such online delivery sites had an option to gift necessary products to the needy. For example, from blankets to pre-packed food.

Karma at the Time of Corona
Now we are in the midst of this pandemic. It’s still not clear if we can contain the spread by May 3rd or we need more time to zero the hot spots and to isolate the disparate attacks.

One of the unseen problem people of India face is money. Most people in India depend on daily or monthly salary to push that month’s expense. Now that the supply of funds is cut, there’s unimaginable pain and worry for a big majority of people.

How Can People Help others – Can Milma Facilitate it?

One thing I liked about Milma is the their new milk delivery app – AM Needs. I had heard about it before the lockdown phase. At that time, I had the habit of buying milk from a near by shop. So, with social distancing plan, we opted AM Needs to buy milk and vegetables. And, all things were delivered to us on time.

How to be generous with AM Needs

One thing a user can do is buy an additional 1 ltr of milk or so and get it delivered to someone needy in the neighborhood or someone who is going through a difficult time. This is a an act of generosity and it needs a willing heart. However,most time we don’t think about it. We focus on our purchase and it’s done.

What about a Prompt ( to Donate) during checkout?

There are two options for MILMA.

One is that Milma can use their network and create a big list of needy households who would require milk or veggies. It could be widows with kids, daily wage earners who are now immobile, migrant workers, or old and poor people who are living on rations and handouts.

And, then at the time of checkout, a customer can select a donor or the quantity to donate. Minimum could be kept as a liter of milk. Imagine, this prompt at the checkout can be trigger for someone to think of helping people who are going through a difficult phase.

Secondly, a user can create a list of donors in their account. At the time of purchase, the user can select one or more donor to give milk or essentials. In an instant, Milma AM App takes care of donating the items along with the main order.

Make it Easy to Achieve Good Karma

I’m sure many of such things are used in other apps. It’s similar to asking for donation of money for flood or covid at the checkout. However, I feel giving a physical things is better than just asking for money.



Better Protection against Corona Virus

Protective Gear in a Pandemic

Don’t know if it’s a coincidence. I was thinking of a similar thing – a light-weight glass bubble kind of stuff which can be worn like a helmet. The purpose is to act as a shield against any viral infection.

Inc.com carried the same concept which I had in mind – light weight transparent helmet with has in-built oxygen supply, speaker and microphone, etc.

Face Mask – Don’t provide complete protection
I
f lockdown continues, we should start thinking of a long-term solution to get back to our vocation. The current method of using a face mask has many limitation and its susceptible to contamination. A bubble shaped transparent helmet is more secure and safe. It will let wearer to freely travel, do work and enjoy social life without fear of virus thing.

Disinfecting Kiosks – Is it effective?
Another protective method to disinfect people is using high-powered sanitizing spray. Many offices have made it mandatory for employees to pass through the kiosk before entering office area. I was thinking the same will be common place in apartments complexes, theater, religious workshop places and even houses.

Places where bubble shaped glass helmet will be useful.

1. Check out counter staff at stores
2. Bank customer care staff
3. Ticket inspectors in trains or bus
4. Nurses and doctors, lab technicians
5. Saloon ( Hair dressers)
6. Delivery boys

Bubble Glass Protection
This idea look may sound crazy now, but who know we’ll soon be walking around like astronauts or like the sea divers ( Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea).


Btw, it’s an idea for start-ups in India. Shhh, China is listening.

Random Lines

Headlights cutting through the dark
A cool wind found its way in through a narrow slice of open window and whipped the driver’s shaggy hair into a minor frenzy.
Story structures that’s so pervasive, people harbor and project it onto the arc of a faint career well in advance.

Let ideas sift, settle and reconfigure

Adhering to the write-every-day adage.

My bank account is so threadbare that if it were a pair of underwear, somebody would’ve been right to tell me to throw it away months ago.

Psychological traps, cages, built in pettiness

(brands) parroting ignorant influencers or faulty evidence.”

A single film is just a stone in the mosaic of collective memory. One stone is not enough to affect the color, meaning or quality of the whole. But when more and more stones are added into the mosaic, it eventually changes.

Digging up your ‘graveyard of knowledge’ can help elicit new ideas and insights that could contribute to major breakthroughs in marketing and optimization.

As well as a panoply of meat from other animals, including bats and snakes

But like where do I go more to dive down this rabbit hole of, I’m wanting to understand this on a deeper level.

Obliviousness is a talent they have cultivated well.

The neighbors bring food and comfort and kinship; there’s the feeling in town that we’re all in this together.

Nobody wants to believe that they stand on the blade between sanity and madness.

The neighbors bring food and comfort and kinship; there’s the feeling in town that we’re all in this together.

Nobody wants to believe that they stand on the blade between sanity and madness.


From YouTube music comments- What Caught my eye!

Stirs all the memories i thought i had lost…days gone and forgotten. Sad. Time is not a friend…

Looks like they cranked up the studio AC halfway through the song.

At one time along time ago I could relate to this song.

Memories. ..momma said there would be days like this

All sad memories. Nothing good ever comes when you’re torn between two lovers.

Mary MacGregor’s voice and the way she sang it always brings me back to a place and a time gone by, that has a magical charm to the days of love that still is so evergreen till this day.

My teenage years listening to this great song while fixing my hair in my bedroom mirror

oming of age song….. just starting to date boys…. what a fabulous time in philadelphia…. haven’t seen anything like it since….. her song is part of my life….

Somewhere over the Rainbow

A month back I discoverd this song and I kept it playing on the loop. And then I searched for more details about the singer Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwoʻole.

It’s also strange that we move from one song to another, day by day, week by week. Of course there are few songs which sticks for a long time.

This post is to remind me to visit this lyrical beauty.

Importing Files from Blogger to WP

Imported All my Journals

From the time I started blogging, I have started and opened more than a dozen blogs. Most blogs were pockets of topics, which began as an outburst of thoughts. So, just like sudden burst on the blogging world, it also fizzled out due to neglect.

New Blog on WordPress – epiphany

Now that I have started with the new blog, I imported all the relevant blogs it to WordPress. All of this done in the hope that I will frequently update this blog and make it my companion – the spot to share my momentary thoughts and feelings.

Convert Milk to Milk Related Products – Value Addition

Corona Virus is a mother of all disruptions for all business. Call it a wake-up call to a new world. As for our personal life, it has unplugged many joys and everyday comforts from our lifes.

One example of disruption heard from the local news was about the slump in the demand of milk by MILMA. With excess litters of milk in hand, MILMA was running helter-skelter to find a taker. And to make things worse, Tamil Nadu was not willing to take our excess milk and process it into milk powder. Later with political influence Milma managed to get TN to accept the milk. Why all this trouble!

Also, in another related news, many small milk producers where throwing away milk on the road as a protest against MILMA for not taking their produce. What a waste!

While this Corona virus lockdown was totally unexpected, there were few things this disruption should teach many business, especially the milk supplying and distribution firms like MILMA.

Few things which came to my mind.

1. Instead of depending on other state for converting milk to milk powder, Kerala should have factories to do the same. If we can start a big factory, then smaller units ( Private or run by MILMA) should be in operation to convert milk into milk powder or other products from milk.

2. Give training to local producers to convert milk into ghee/curd/paneer/condensed milk/milkpowder/butter, etc. This sort of knowledge transfer at grass root level will help them to covert their excess milk supply to something which can be sold later.

3. Create training videos, posters, articles and upload them on the website

4. Each collection centre should double as a training centre.

5. Make posters on how to milk cow in the right way. Tips on how to increase the production of milk. All these tips can be posted on social media.

6. Create Whatsapp group in each community so that tips, video material could be shared with them. Also grievances could be heard.

7. Each collection centre should act as the data collection centre, which will collect the contact information of each seller ( Name, phone#, address). This will help MILMA to contact them with newsletter, new training material, etc. Also a column on the size of milk produced or supplied by each person. This way, a person in the central office will have the data on the big suppliers, and region wise data of supplies.

8. One thing lockdown has brougt in was the disruption of supply chain for many produce and packed goods. For instance, I called many shops for Amul Fresh Cream. None of the shops had a packed which was required for making and teaching cakes online.

In this lockown situation, if Milma had fresh cream, it could have easily supplied and sold its stock to all the stores. It would be a windfall profits for Milma from such Supply Chain disruptions! Also, Unsalted butter available was from Milky Mist. Where is Milma?

I’m not sure, what’s the reason behind Milma, not making packed milk like Goodlife from Nandini, Fresh Cream like the one made by Amul, or set curd ( big bucket), Condensed Milk, etc.

All this info in a mobile app will help the management team to view instantly the places with excess supply, or places with shortage, etc.