Man vs Machine

As the Bahrain GP stands cancelled and the Formula 1 season is postponed for the first time in 21st century, I hear that the Bahrain economy would have to absorb a loss of estimated $100mn due to this decision and it might spurt equally severe repercussions for the Formula 1 teams and committees alike. But even with such alarming figures/discussions circumventing the sports world, I can’t stop but notice the awe-inspiring similarities between a human being and a formula 1 race car.

Both need proper fuel (weight and type) to propel properly
We all know that F1 racing cars can’t run on kerosene, they need a special high octane gas to make them fly on the race track. A follower of F1 would also tell you how it’s important to not fill tank till the brink and why it’s important to in F1 to leave a little in fuel tanks (in order to lower the car weight). In the same fashion the human body can’t just carry-on on a low fat, high fiber diet forever. And being over-weight or under-weight can cause problems.

Communication and roles

Another one received as an email forward. Communication is an essential ingredient of any Business Analysis process. Here is an excellent example of how it changes as we move up the Org hierarchy. A good scenario & role based communication example. Interesting read!



Engineer to Team Leader:
"We can't do this proposed project. It will involve a major design change and no one in our team knows the design of this system. And above that, no body in our company knows the formulation in which this application has been written. So even if somebody wants to work on it, they can't. If you ask my personal opinion, the company should never take these types of projects."


Team Leader to Project Manager:
"This project will involve a design change. Currently, we don't have any staff that has experience in this type of work. Also, the language is unfamiliar to us, so we will have to arrange for some training if we take this project. In my personal opinion, we are not ready to take on a project of this nature."

Project Manager to General Manager:
"This project involves a design change in the system and we don't have much experience in that area. Also, not many people in our company are appropriately trained for it. In my personal opinion, we might be able to do the project but we would need more time than usual to complete it."


General Manager to Vice President:
"This project involves design re-engineering. We have some people who have worked in this area and others who know the implementation language. So they can train other people. In my personal opinion we should take this project, but with caution."


Vice President to CEO:
"This project will demonstrate to the industry our capabilities in re-modelling the design of a complete legacy system. We have all the necessary skills and people to execute this project successfully. Some people have already given in house training in this area to other staff members. In my personal opinion, we should not let this project slip by us under any circumstances."


CEO to Client:
"This is the type of project in which our company specializes. We have executed many projects of the same nature for many large clients. Trust me when I say that we are the most competent firm in the industry for doing this kind of work. It is my personal opinion that we can execute this project successfully and well within the given time frame.

Bangalored ... oops.. Bengaluru'ed yet again..

..Life is so full of surprises; you can never say you have seen enough or are done with something. I thought of never visiting Bangalore again and here I was.. back in Bangalore…oops…Bengaluru yet again, after almost three years. A lot has changed about the city and a lot hasn't. During my short stay of 3 weeks here are a few changes that were noticeable:

1. The condition of roads is much better now. A lot of new fly overs, underpasses have been built, the roads have been widened, and the Hosur road elevated roadlink is now complete. A lot has been done in the span of less than 3 years to the credit of the administration. But it still didn't seem good enough, the traffic situation seems a tad better but probably roads have been stretched to their limits and maybe it's time for alternate means of transport.

2. Heard that a new metro (Namma Metro) is coming up soon. They recently had a test run on one of the routes. The sooner it comes, the better it would be for Bengaluru. The good news is that the bus fleet seems to have been replaced and you can see some shiny new buses on the roads. The highlight being the Bangalore International Airport (BIAL) service, the buses are beautiful, comfortable, the staff polite and the fares seem to be reasonable for the distance and service. But since the roads are already bursting at their seams I believe Bangaluru seriously needs a well connected metro/light rail system dearly.

3. Visited the new Bangalore International Airport for the first time – it’s much better than before but nothing great. But one good thing that it has done to the city is that it has given it more space to expand between the main city and airport. You can see a lot construction going on both sides of the road enroute the airport.

A Signage in Koramangla for Taco Bell.

4. Tens of new malls and cineplexes have cropped up all over the city but irrespective of which one I visited, each one was crowded to the limit with hardly any space to lay your foot on as if bearing a testimony to the booming economy that India is. Many US brands like Staples, Ikea, Taco Bell have opened shop in the city recently. There might be many more but these are the ones I came across.

5. A lot of new eating places have opened now. Most of them are chains with multiple branches throughout the city. They are a little expensive and the quality is not uniform. Paying Rs.125 for a thali (full serving) is common place and considered nominal but the size and the number of dishes is not uniform. One place though which surprised and delighted me was Khandani Rajdhani, they have several branches serving Rajasthani food with thalis ranging from Rs 125-325. But the service is very good although you may have to wait for up to an hour at most branches (they are immensely popular). It's unlimited all you can eat food with good service from smiling servers that is the USP of the place. Thanks Prady for introducing me to this Gem :)

6. Another good thing I noticed is the presence of lot of mobile services (not the cell phone) including mobile saloons, mobile car services, mobile pet care. In a city where getting out is tough and time consuming because of the traffic, these services will reach you at your place and provide the service you need. And people are being innovative; a certain city mall drops you home via a shuttle service if you shop with them :). These are smart moves by people who understand that customers are willing to pay a little extra in case you save them time and travel.

These are some of the things that I found interesting, positive and that caught my eye. A lot of things are still unchanged but I decided to concentrate at the brighter side :). And I am never saying never for visiting Bangalore again as I am sure it will call me again to continue the love-hate relationship I have with the city, but I hope it is long enough before I do that.

Marketing Concepts Made Simple

Got this as an email forward and found it interesting enough to be shared with you all. As with all the forwards not sure where this originated but it's a good read.


A Professor at one of the MBA colleges was explaining marketing concepts to the Students:

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. "Marry me!"
- That's Direct Marketing

You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says: "He's very rich. Marry him."
-That's Advertising

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day, you call and say: "Hi, I'm very rich. "Marry me"
- That's Telemarketing


You're at a party and see gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a drink, you open the door (of the car)for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her ride and then say: "By the way, I'm rich. Will you "Marry Me?"
- That's Public Relations

You're at a party and see gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says: "You are very rich!
Can you marry me?"
- That's Brand Recognition

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" She gives you a nice hard slap on your face.
- That's Customer Feedback

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" And she introduces you to her husband.
- That's demand and supply gap

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say anything, another person come and tell her: "I'm rich. Will you marry me?" and she goes with him -
-That's competition eating into your market share

You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say: "I'm rich, Marry me!" your wife arrives.
- That's restriction for entering new markets

SOA for Dummies: Introduction to SOA

Varun Sharma, who is an IBM Certified SOA Architect and a dear friend wanted to share his experiences and learnings on SOA. He would be doing a series of posts on the emerging trends and best practices in the field. The aim is to explain SOA in simple and easy to understand language so that you can reap maximum benefits out of it.


Introduction to SOA

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)… is it a fad or reality? Well for me it’s neither… for me it’s just an opportunity. An opportunity to build leaner meaner organizational architecture, an opportunity to add news dimensions to your existing business, an opportunity to learn from mistakes committed in past (ERP/CRM) and multiply the ROI on forthcoming business & IT investments, an opportunity to dissolve the barriers within companies and also barriers separating companies from vendors/suppliers, an opportunity to explore the unexplored.


SOA is everywhere… hey I don’t mean SOA is God. But if you look closely, SOA is indeed everywhere on this planet. May that be a restaurant or a bank or even a retail shop, SOA is present everywhere. A bicycle would be the simplest example of SOA from the real world. Each component of a cycle is a self-contained unit which when combined with other components produces a forward motion. In essence tires, the steering rod, the brake line, the spokes within the tire’s rim, the chain, the two gears one in each tire combine with each other to produce a blissful motion. These individual components can be considered as services and the motion of cycle can be considered as a function or a process which resulted from pre-defined services. That’s how bicycle is an example of SOA.

What does this above analogy tell you about SOA?? (NOTE: I am taking top-down approach to explore this topic) It implies that SOA is not a framework, design pattern, coding standard or an architecture BUT it’s simply a concept. SOA is a concept of using autonomous, reusable, discoverable and stateless services which in turn combine (choreograph or orchestrate) to produce the desired/expected result. The same components with or without other components can be used to formulate a new business function. Going back to our previous analogy, we could imagine making a unicycle from all the components used in making a bicycle, we could also think on lines of making a mechanism of making a hand paddled tricycle for physically handicapped people. So you see, the components more or less remain the same (autonomous yet reusable) but the function they offer after different compositions can vary.

Now let’s take a quick look at the definition of SOA for technology enthusiasts & analysts; In order to derive a proper definition I would take help of SOA Reference Architecture as depicted below (NOTE: SOA Reference Architecture has been taken as a datum for this write-up for the simple reason that the SOA Suites built by both IBM and Oracle are based on the SOA Reference Architecture). This is how an enterprise built upon a SOA Architecture would look like. The layers should ideally be demarked as depicted below.

Source: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ar-archtemp/


The Operational layer would have all the packaged and custom applications hosted, along with software development kits and other infrastructural components. The Service Component layer represents the business component layer. This layer represents all the individual business components with integrate to form a whole web application. The Service layer represents the place holder for all the services that represent the encapsulated and wrapped Service/Business components in the referenced layer below. The services in this layer are atomic and autonomous and are often represented by web services (WSDL & XML are the backbone of web services), however the same services when referenced in the Business Process layer they represent a complete business function. The services in the Business Process layer are choreographed to formulate desired business function and achieve the targeted result (this is mostly achieved by using BPEL). Now the same business process formulated above is exposed to the end customer in the Consumer Layer. The consumer action triggers the business process which is built on referential integration on top of other layers and thus leads to utilization of business components using a web service defined inside a business process.


Now based on the above description of layer within most popular SOA Architecture we can say that; “SOA is an architecture approach for defining, linking, and integrating reusable business services that have clear boundaries and are self-contained with their own functionalities. Within this type of architecture, you can orchestrate the business services in business processes.”

To increase flexibility, the company has to look at its business as a collection of interconnected functions, discrete processes and services, such as check customer credit or authenticate user, and then decide which of those functions are core or differentiating, and which can be streamlined or even outsourced. If the company can mix and match these functions at will or on the fly, in response to changing business conditions, the company will have a tremendous competitive advantage in the marketplace. It is a powerful idea. But to achieve this degree of flexibility in the business operations, the company will need an equally flexible IT environment. It needs a service-oriented architecture (SOA).

It is very likely that business transactions will be significantly easier with an SOA. SOA is an approach for building distributed systems and achieving enterprise integration by delivering application functionality as services to either end-user applications or other services. An SOA could be the difference between the success and failure of the next:
· Department, intra-company, or inter-company merger
· Acquisition
· Divestiture
· Product or service rollout
· Business partner, customer, or supplier addition
· Geographical expansion
· Competitive onslaught

We would love your feedback on the post. Do you Agree? Disagree? Find it useful? Do let us know.

Textbook Buyback Service From Amazon

Amazon.com seems to have started their own textbook buyback service. Not exactly sure when they started it but I was not aware till this morning when I received this email:



Though I was not exactly in a mood to sell one of my most prized possessions (Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik), I was intrigued by the email and decided to explore further.

The process looks pretty simple. You search the books using ISBN, title or author, print a shipping label, package and send it across and get an Amazon gift card in return.

But I also wanted to check if there are other players in the market that provide the same service and guess what - there are lots of them. So how do you make sure that Amazon is offering the best price. With a little research I found bigwords.com which compares the buyback prices for quite a few buyback merchants. It seems that Amazon offers a pretty decent price as compared to other players.

You can use this service if you want to earn some money while disposing off your old books or you can make use of a book swapping service to get a new book in return. Either ways it's a win-win :)

Basic Steps to Setup a Formal Meeting

Conducting meetings is an essential function of a Business Analyst’s job profile. These meetings usually involve large groups of people from different teams at different locations and often unknown to the Business Analyst. Getting such a group together and sharing/extracting relevant information is an achievement if done in the right way but can lead to embarrassment if done incorrectly. Here are some tips from my personal experience that would help you setup a good meeting. Please note that I would be covering only meeting setup and would be leaving out the ‘during’ the meeting and post meeting steps for some other time.


1. Invitees
For a meeting that involves multiple groups it is important that all the groups have the right representation. It is important to invite the right players/stakeholders for a meeting. It would be a good idea to prepare a group wise list for all attendees and review it with somebody who is familiar with all the groups before sending the invite. That ways, situations like business people invited to a IT meeting and vice versa can be avoided.

2. Subject
The subject should be concise but should be informative enough to indicate the purpose of the meeting. It is a good idea to mention the project and the action item of the meeting in the subject for example Retail Warehouse enhancement Project – FSD Review or Retail Warehouse project – Weekly team meeting etc. This will give a clear idea to the recipient if it is a relevant meeting for him or decide on the priority in case he has any conflicts.

3. Time and Location

Time and location are very crucial for any meeting more so in case of a large group. It is advised to send across the meeting invite at least 2 to 3 weeks in advance if it involves a large group. Once you have the list of attendees, make sure the meeting room that you reserve is big enough to accommodate everyone. It’s a good idea to put all the required attendees in ‘To’ field of the outlook meeting request and determine the meeting time based on the maximum available slots at a particular time. This would help avoid conflicts with other meetings and increase the attendance. Also the time slot for the meeting should be enough to cover the agenda of the meeting. It should neither be too long or too short.

4. Agenda
In the meeting invite the agenda of the meeting should be mentioned, so that the invitees have a clear idea on what all would be covered. It is recommended to breakdown the agenda into small bullet points which are easy to track.

5. Dial-in details
It is highly recommended to have dial in details for the people who cannot be physically present at the meeting.

6. Documents/Visual Aids
In case you would be using any documentation or presentation, either soft copies as attachments or links to them in case they are accessible at a shared location should be provided. It would be great if you can arrange a projector for your presentations but if that’s not possible you should have sufficient number of copies available with you at the start of the meeting.

New Business ideas and making them successful

Flowing Data is one of my favorite blogs on visualization of data. They have a flowchart for a Startup business cycle. I hope I am able to go through entire cycle myself one day....Dream on!!

Here is the Flow Chart (Coutesy: Flowing Data):

The Pursuit Of Happiness...

Well yet again it happened, what started as an innocuous chat went haywire and we got entangled into life, existence, happiness, spirituality et all and in the end left me with a question to ponder over as to what constitutes true happiness? What is the best and sure shot way to the pursuit of happiness? But first the chat :) :

Me: hi

MyDearFriend: hi, whassup??

Me: not much, u tell me?

MyDearFriend: m fine

Me: how is your work n all?

MyDearFriend: ok …how r things at ur end?

Me: Fine...u starting to explore some new area?

MyDearFriend: no

Me: or just sticking to what u currently doing?

MyDearFriend: m bored with life…m just reflecting and thinking how much is too much in life??

Me: ha ha ha.. its never too much dost…life goes on…

MyDearFriend: and is there anything beyond sex and money, marriage and profession?? Who we really are and what we really need in life?? Also why r we here??

Me: If you think that much you are getting into trouble…great thinkers have spent their entire lives looking for answers...we should not follow in that trapt..

MyDearFriend: I know same age old questions. Which disturbs every wise and rational Man...? lesser minds don’t go to that level.

Me: I would suggest breaking away from all this...you have a chance and the resources why don't u try ur hands at some new business... that will keep u busy also and may be u'll get answers to ur questions as well...if you think that much u’ll end up getting depressed only...you have XYZ’s business experience at your disposal… try something new

MyDearFriend: ab kissi cheez ki ichha nahin ho rahi life mein (I have no more desires left in life)

Me: woh coffee shop wale idea ka kya hua (What happened to that coffee shop idea?)

MyDearFriend: I donno why

Me: abey chup saale (Shut up a%*&^^*!!)

MyDearFriend: feeling dispassionate with life

Me: what’s your age?

MyDearFriend: 29

Me: then!! Consider your self a kid…

MyDearFriend: yeh bhi nahin pata ki yeh Meri sahi age hai ki nahin (Don’t even know if that’s my correct age)...I donno how many births I ve taken previously...and in what forms and how many further births I ve to see

Me: achhaa ek suggestion aur deta hun (OK…one more suggestion)....this might be helpful...

MyDearFriend: somehow feel like renouncing everything every thought, desire, need

Me: pickup a good camera...pick a good bike ...do a road trip...8-10 days...this might give u a new perspective

MyDearFriend: I don’t ve bike

Me: get one na

MyDearFriend: kuchh nhin badlega in sab cheezon se (Nothing will change with all these things)...the questions remains we r just moving in space and time

Me: Even the greatest thinkers have got enlightenment when they have broken the mould of their daily routine...I would say take a break…no harm in trying...

MyDearFriend: I m on break already

Me: No not at home… go on some trip alone for a few days

MyDearFriend: to Himalayas with saffron clothes, trishul and damru

Me: ha ha ha…not necessarily; it’s not about appearance it’s about ur mind

MyDearFriend: u know u don’t need to go anywhere...one needs to go within...settle deep in urself that is the real journey

Me: hmm

MyDearFriend: this whole world is projection of ur mind one needs to go within practice silence appreciate nature renounce desires practice detachment and perhaps continence what u say

Me: ladke u should think about these things when u are 60 is what I feel.Did u think like this when u were a kid? No...Right??

MyDearFriend: that’s why in first place I asked how much is too much

Me: because u were too occupied learning and exploring new things

MyDearFriend: at 60 u will say lets think about it at 80 at some point sooner or later u ll ve to drop everything

Me: then probably it’s too unimportant a topic to spend your valuable time

MyDearFriend: rightly said...earlier I was busy exploring and learning new things. But we never explored and learned to go within

Me: see neither do I know that I had a life before this nor do I know there will be one after this one? So I don’t worry so much about spirituality…

MyDearFriend: don’t u think this is a new thing I was talking to XYZ today. That the most strangest thing or person u ve ever met or seen is ur own mind it is so fickle, we can't trust it sometimes it likes something other times it hates same thing feelings emotions on which so called human life is based constantly change. I don’t say that one should not ve feelings emotions but relying on them is not wisdom and 2nd thing that i was saying to XYZ is everything is transient in this world even this body is what do u say? May be I ve lots of time to think these things? But at end u can't get rid of this questions even if u get rid it will be 4 even if u get rid it will be 4 sometime these questions will come to haunt you at some later stage of ur life

Me: Maybe they will I 'll cross the bridge when I reach the river

MyDearFriend: hmm...everybody needs to cross

Me: ladke I have a Meeting for which I need to prepare...but u have given me a good topic for my blog...maybe I 'll think over and write my opinion ....

Well call me an escapist if you like but I believe the more you think about life, spirituality etc the more trapped you get…it’s like a blackhole that sucks you in and there is no way out. Too many people have already spent their entire lives searching answers without getting anything back concrete, of course some like Gautam Budhha have succeeded and have paved the way for enlightenment. But if you are not happy with a situation and that is leading to these thoughts, then it only leads to depression. And I feel there is a certain time to do that and people my age are too young too inexperienced even to attempt that. When done at the right age it leads to self realization.

Even Bhagavad-Gita says human life is meant for self realization. And for that to happen the complete life is divided in 4 parts. Bhamchariya (celibate student), Grahastha (married life), Vanaprastha (detached life), Sanyasa (renounced stage). By following these 4 stages of life one is assured to be elevated to highest spiritual platform and at the end of the life person goes back to godhead, in the spiritual world. Well, in my opinion most people my age are in Brahmcharya or Grahastha stage and should reserve the detached or renounced stages for later life when they have successfully completed the Grahastha stage. Attempting detachment or renunciation before completing other stages is akin to trying to get to the 3rd and the 4th floor of a building before even climbing the first two - a near impossible situation and even if you try to jump too high you are bound to land flat on your face.

Now back to the pursuit of happiness, how do you find happiness? I believe if you are in a situation when you are not happy you should change something. Nobody is immune to depression or negative thoughts but what is important is how soon you break it. It’s like a cobweb the more you delay the more entangled you get.

I found this incredibly simple flowchart to attain perfect lifetime happiness.



Photo credit: FlowingData
The flowchart is little incomplete as an arrow from “Change Something” to “Are you happy?” would have completed it.

But alas, nothing is simple in this complicated world, so somebody decided to add more variables to it and look how complicated getting happiness looks.



Photo credit: FlowingData

And I believe that is how it is in the “real” world, it’s your perspective that decides how simple or complicated it is for you to attain happiness. I have known people who have limited means to sustain and yet go through their lives with a smile on their face. And there are others who are bestowed with all the luxuries in life and yet they crib and frown about everything. But the good thing is as humans we have an ultimate gift – the gift of “choice”- you can choose your happiness and as well as the method you want to employ to achieve it.

Let me know your thoughts, what you think defines true happiness and how we can achieve it??

5 Things Online Ads Should Not Do

Banner ads on the website are a great way of earning revenue in fact they are a blessing, especially for the non e-commerce sites. But some people just overdo it “killing the goose for the golden egg”. Here are five examples of such bad ads which can be used as perfect examples of what not to do. I wanted to cut and paste all these live examples but am curbing the temptation. I’ll not name any websites but these are all real life examples from well reputed websites and you may very well relate to them as you read on.

Don't intrude - Customer is the King!!

On one of the most visited and reputed News website in India, there pops up a banner ad on the homepage hiding the main headlines and that too just on page load, no clicks, no hovering required - it just shows up uninvited on the homepage as soon as it loads. How annoying?? How much effort does it take to realize that a visitor would come to a news website to check the latest headlines and not the latest banner ad. It is an excellent way of getting more impressions/views on the ad but an equally good way of leaving the visitors annoyed. Remember that the revenue from the ads is a byproduct of the content on the websites and users come to the website for content and not to give you impressions.

Learning: So make the ads less intrusive, keep them visible but separate from the content- which the core of your website. That will leave you happy customers and more revenue.

Keep it Consumer friendly

So this one is from a popular website which displays Cricket updates, I am a big fan of the cricket game and visit this website often to check the latest match scores. This, by the way, is a very nice website with very good and knowledgeable commentators who just don’t puke stats but actually tell them interestingly adding a personality of their own to the commentary. But here also somebody decided that they could get a lot of impressions and what better time to do that than during the IPL – Indian Premier League. So they placed the ad right over the score updates and placed other banner ad besides the site logo which hides the close button of the ad covering the score updates. The visitor is left with no option to close the banner ad and tries to click at the corner of the ad only to taken to a new page altogether. Very Very Frustrating!! It took me some time to figure out that if you scroll down the ad will move down with the scroll and then you can see the close button and close it. Why on earth do you want your users to go through all that pain? I was able to figure the way out the hard way yet decided to persist because I knew the content is good. But what about hundreds of new users who might be visiting your website for the first time, I bet they’ll leave in frustration never to come back again.

Learning: Don’t cramp too many ads into a small place, they won’t get you more revenue but only leave you frustrated users.

Give an Option to Opt-out
This is another example on yet another top news website. The ad in question is an excellent piece of creative work and I love it!! It’s sort of a green creeper/climber that grows leaf by leaf goes inside the computer screen tearing where the main news article is and then again appearing from another part of the article. Excellent graphic and extremely innovative but frankly I would have preferred it on a gaming website or on a website dealing with graphics, animations or something of that sort. But to have it on news website is a bad idea and then having it intrude on the content -the news article - is outrageous. Add to that that there is no ‘close’ button option so the visitor has to sit through the whole while - the graphic completes itself and disappears.

Learning: Give the visitors a break, respect their time. A user might have seen the ad before and he may not be interested in watching it again, give an option for him to skip it. And if the ads could be more contextual to the content on the website, nothing like it!!

Be persuasive, don't hound
Being persuasive is good but don’t hound the customer. This is related to a web hosting company’s ad. The ad first appeared on my own blog and I clicked it out of curiosity. I did what I wanted to do, checked for various webhosting options, their prices etc and then decided that I didn’t need one for now and came off the website. Every single day from that day onwards; the same ad hounds me on every third website I visit. It seems that when I visited that website it saved some kind of cookie on my browser and ever since then has been serving me customized ads (as they would like to believe!). Although this is just a guess, they might have used some other technique but what concerns me and puts me off is the constant hounding.

Learning: Remind the customer once a while maybe a month or a week but everyday is bit too much.

Appeal, don't shout

The last one is something you all might have faced, you are searching for a tutorial on advanced skills in Excel, you visit a link and suddenly you realize that a weight loss video has started playing automatically and what is worst that you didn’t have the mute on and you are in office and now everybody around you is staring at you . Video ads are great and provide a great opportunity to get the message across than static text ads but let the user be the judge if he is interested in your weight loss program. Why autoplay?? And even if you want to play the video, do some thing like what youtube does play the video without sound giving an option to the user to “Replay it with sound”. At least it would avoid the viewer some embarrassing moments.

Learning: Respect the user. Give him space and let him decide if he wants to view your ad or not.

Got some examples of annoying ads that you would like to share? Comments? Criticism?