KISS has nothing to do with romance

It's a design principle. And it applies to all forms of communication.

Politicians know it by instinct.

There's a reason why campaign slogans are widely understood.

The simpler the expression, the better its chances of cutting through clutter.

The trick is to make an impact while stating the obvious in a non-obvious way

You can discuss nuances with one person. Or with a small group. The moment this happens with a full house, there will be arguments and flash points.

Lawyers like to control the flow of questions in courts.

They only want Yes or No answers from a witness.

Then, they can establish exactly what they want the jury to think.

The moment a witness gives long answers, the lawyer's carefully constructed 'simple' story will fall apart.

The jury gets bored and stops listening.

So mass media campaigns in advertising tell you simple things. They know your attention is hard to get. And once they do, the message has to be crisp, and hopefully memorable.

Remember a complex brand tag line? It's hard to recall the ones that billions of dollars have been spent on over decades. 

You may remember Nike but how many others can you recall offhand?

So the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is the only way for a brand to go.

It also means that the message becomes vague and applicable to several situations.

Coke's Open Happiness or McDonald's I'm Lovin It are not meant to be literary masterpieces.

And they'll fail if they try to be nuanced.

When you're addressing a large base of customers, keep the promise simple. But that's easier said than done!

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Where is Elon Musk right now?

You can check ElonJet on Twitter. It has nearly 400K followers (and growing rapidly) and tells you exactly in the world where Elon Musk is. Or at least where his private jet is.

We all face privacy issues but our power to do anything about it is limited.

But Elon Musk having the same problems is hard to believe.

The circumstances are unusual, to say the least. A young teenager, Jack Sweeney built a tracker for ElonJet. It tracks where Elon Musk's private jet goes, non-stop. And that's got the billionaire worried.

First, he tried to reason with the youngster, directly having a private conversation with him on Twitter.

He asked him how much he made on the accounts of private jets he tracked. It was a trifling $20 a month. So, Musk offered him $5000 to take the account down. Telling him he didn't want 'crazies' to know where he was.

But Sweeney thinks he can get a lot more out of Musk and he's holding out for a minimum of $50,000 so that it takes him through college!

The morality of what he's doing is certainly suspect. For Elon Musk it's more than an inconvenience. He does not want anyone to know all the places he travels to. That's like phone metadata, which reveals a lot more than people think.

The tracker is not easy to build and took ingenious work. So, being a billionaire will not eliminate privacy problems - and for them, the problems are outsized as well.

Stalkers are more than a nuisance.

However this ends up, it is humbling for a billionaire to be negotiating with a 19-year-old and telling him to lay off.

Privacy problems bite harder than people think.

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Advantage Recruiters or Advantage Candidates?

They are a bit like bankers.

Chasing people to give out loans when they don't need them.

But the moment a person is desperately seeking a job, recruiters can disappear like wisps of smoke. They fall silent and multiple calls, messages and pleas for time are ignored.

A software engineer has penned a perceptive piece on how to handle recruiters, even when you're not looking to change jobs.

Like the old saying goes - Make friends when you don't need them.

You may not know if the recruiter is serious or trust-worthy. But they are links in a chain that helps you get across career bridges.

Expanding your recruiter network helps you just as much as it helps them.

The key is not to look desperate or distant. When you create the impression of a person who ghosts companies, a distinct chill develops around a profile.

Recruiters and companies, like candidates, hate to be played. The difference is that they make little notes against candidates they have met or interviewed. And that comes back to haunt people when it's most inconvenient.

It may be a transactional world today, but there are still people who command a premium and make a switch when they please. They are dependable and take the time to build and maintain relationships.

It takes a surprisingly little amount of time, especially the professional ones where you don't have to be in touch every week or month.

The long-term game is the one to play. You don't want your career to go like a Diwali rocket.

Fast ascent, sparkles and then a descent into darkness.

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Watson takes a sabbatical

When it first appeared, Watson from IBM was touted as one of the earliest advancements in AI.

For everything from cancer diagnosis to scenario planning from companies, Watson was the next big thing.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way.

IBM is selling off the assets to private equity to prevent further losses.

While AI is seen as the future, the business models that work are neither easy to evolve or guaranteed to succeed.

IBM may simply have been too early to market, or the connecting links for market traction are still to evolve.

If telemedicine makes headway over the next few years, remote doctors may look for help on a quick diagnosis with a database like the one Watson built.

There are several instances where a technology remained in limbo before it got to prime time use

Including mRNA, which was one of the reasons a vaccine could be developed in months rather than years.

But the origin of the idea goes back a few decades.

There's a tendency to make this about failure rather than advancement. Recognising that the idea needs more time and someone in the future with a new perspective.

The world loves instant solutions and breakthroughs. But the scene on inventions is nuanced and incremental.

It's stop, start, regress, advance and then forward again.

But that's not a great media narrative. That has to be in black and white. Success or failure.

Nothing in between. 

Watson is not done by any means. The work will make a comeback at the appropriate juncture.

But that's a tale for a different time.

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Google to slow web crawls?

The largest search company is testing limits.

Given the resources required to crawl over a billion websites, it's planning to cut down the frequency. 

The crawl rates are likely to change. They will be targeted and layered in future.

News websites are the ones with the most frequent changes in content. They update practically every few minutes, given the speed with which news rolls in.

However, for a large proportion of websites, who update once a week or even less, there's no point in frequent crawling.

Even on regularly updated sites, there are sections which stay the same for a long time - the Investor and contact page, for instance.

And company sites using the web more as a business card rather than true interaction and business generation points don't need to be frequently crawled.

It's a bit like the watchman going on the rounds in warehouses. Nothing changes 99.99% of the time.

Refresh crawls, which is the jargon used to describe repeat Googlebot visits could slow down - both in periodicity and depth.

That brings up new dynamics for SEO. If Google crawls websites less frequently, will rankings down the line stay steady for longer?

And will it get harder to get to the top? How will this affect ranking overall over time? Questions to which answers will only emerge in future.

When web crawl patterns change, other subtle changes are sure to follow. And the ripples could affect content generation, marketing and SEO strategies.

It's a clear sign that virtual speed lanes are not infinite highways!

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The keys to family kingdoms

On the face of it, keys open locks.

But go a little deeper and you'll see how they operate at several levels.

Whoever keeps the keys to the family's treasures holds the power.

It may be something as trivial as clothes or as weighty as family heirlooms locked away beyond the prying eyes of domestic help.

No wonder it is fodder for so much prime time TV in India. A genre all by itself. The mother-in-law, daughter-in-law wars.

Some of these scripts are as hackneyed as they come, and the same ones have been recycled for decades with only the actors in the roles changing.

Even the scheming and the dialogues could overlap - but they still keep generations glued to it for hours.

At the core is control over a bunch of keys. Though in situations where nuclear families have taken over, old equations change.

There can be only one custodian. In households where there is a division of power, this becomes a bitterly contested space.

It's a reflection of the way issues persist. And while a certain section of urban dwellers may think this is ancient history, it is present tense in small towns where the transition is underway in halting phases.

All one has to do is flip the remote at prime time to any entertainment channel in multiple languages. It won't take more than a couple of minutes to figure out what the plot lines revolve around.

The costumes, decor and the language in the homes will change. But a bunch of keys is still the bone of contention.

It's not the Lord of the Rings. It's the Lady with the Keys!

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He's known as 'Lipstick Brother' in China

In a pandemic, Li Jiaqi, sold $1.9 billion in goods on the first day of Alibaba’s annual shopping festival in August 2020

He tries on various makeup products on his show, ranging from brands from top companies including Sheshiedo Co lotions and Apple Air pods - though there's no make up connection there!

It's not as if he has an unusual format. 

The sales are more than what some profitable retail chains in the US would sell in an entire year.

He earned fame by starting off with 'lipstick marathons' - applying several brands of lipstick over several hours. Naturally, he's a Guinness Record holder for applying the largest number of lipstick options in 30 seconds!

Starting off in sales at a L'Oréal store, he developed his own unique style of describing beauty products. That lead to his trying out livestreams which got progressively popular, and he built up a huge following.

For the moment, he seems to have escaped the government's drive against 'effeminate men' The sheer volume of sales he generates on a single day is hard to replicate.

As dialog writers in Indian films have known for long, a single popular catchphrase becomes legendary and builds recognition.

Li's catchphrase is 'OMG sisters, buy this!' Now, that may not be seen as particularly creative but there's no doubt that it works.

On average, he makes about $10-20 million per month.

Making a personal connection with millions of women

And leaving a trail of luscious, glowing and smiling lips.

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Which billion-dollar pool should you play in?

If you haven't heard of Anker, you will.

They started out making chargers for mobile phones.

Now, that's not a market entrepreneurs would enter instinctively. But Steven Yang, the founder and CEO saw the long-term potential of a fragmented market that would grow steadily over time.

Apple has now stopped including chargers with new phones. So has Samsung. And the EU has mandated USB-C chargers as a standard. That expands the market for third party chargers exponentially.

Anker has excelled at increasing charging power while reducing the size. They bet on Gallium Nitride which keeps the size small and multiple devices can be charged at the same time.

And they identified the pool they would play in.

Not in mobile phones, which is close to $500 billion annually and the largest product market.

The next is laptops and PCs, which is a $200 billion market.

Then come the tablets which are at $60-70 billion annually.

Followed by smart watches and headphones which make up a growing $40 billion market

So, the markets diminish to 10% of the size of the biggest ones in just a few steps.

But there are a lot of $3-5 billion dollar pools which will grow in future.

That's a great way to understand where the company's strengths lie.

And the options available there are truly widespread.

Plus the realisation that the company's structure is built to generate revenue from the smaller growing pools, not the monolithic ones.

That's the kind of clarity that helps companies and decide where they can play their best game and succeed.

It gives Anker pole status in the smaller categories - and that is a great place to be.

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In a goldrush, sell mats

Yoga is getting traction worldwide.

From recommendations by doctors to expensive Yoga studios, it is growing exponentially not just in the US but China and Australia as well.

One of the biggest signs of it becoming a worldwide phenomenon is the number of variations that have been invented.

Superstar gurus wanted their auras to glow brighter and establish their own gravy train of followers.

Like Starbucks has multiple flavours, there's now Kundalini, Hatha Yoga, Restorative Yoga and the controversial Bikram Yoga which has even got its own scandalous Netflix special.

When a movement becomes a gold rush, there's another indicator of success.

The growth of accessories like Yoga mats.

They come in a striking array of colours, materials including thermoplastic elastomers, apart from the basic woven grass mats.

But that does not align with upscale settings.

So, the mats have evolved as well to meet the luxury needs of patrons, who don't want to rest their finely toned bodies on commonplace mats.

As a result, the accessories market in Yoga is taking off faster than the search for salvation.

Like Gucci and YSL totes being carried around, there needs to be a category appropriate brand to flash your Yoga credentials.

And brands have understood that this can be milked for a couple of decades, at least.

The Yoga mat market is projected to grow to $17 billion worldwide by 2025.

Even while proponents and disciples stretch, swivel and contort gracefully, it becomes another thing to talk about on the cocktail and fitness circuit.

The flavour of Yoga, the pedigree of the teacher and the branch of Yoga being practiced.

The pursuit of calm has become a mint!

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Or Korean, for that matter. Or even Russian.

The evolution of subtitles and dubbing in films is going in unpredictable directions.

Streaming services are running into problems with respect to dubbing and generating subtitles in multiple languages.

One runaway hit can change equations.

The Squid Game on Netflix was watched worldwide by audiences who didn't know a word of Korean. But Netflix found another fascinating detail hidden in the data.

People preferred the dubbed version of the film in their local language instead of subtitles. Makes sense because for some, subtitles are a distraction.

The problem is how this can be achieved.

Here comes AI to the rescue. A company called Veritone has access to petabytes of data from media libraries. That is being used to create a synthetic version of a familiar voice speaking a different language, keeping the same tone and emotion.

Nvidia is developing the technology to move lips of the characters to match the audio.

Right now, it is being used in short duration projects like advertisements to get the technology going and iron out the creases.

But in a few years or a decade, we'll probably have actors whose versions of their hits will have them speaking foreign languages as well.

Even if they don't have a clue as to what they're saying.

The translators and subtitling industries may become collateral damage,

But imagine stars who are truly cross border, speaking any language with perfect intonation and emotion.

Now that could create the first global superstar!

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Rethinking QWERTY

It has resisted everything.

The so-called 'inefficient' placement of keys was the original design mapped to make typing slow. Created specifically so that they keys did not jam up in the manual typewriter.

Fast forward to the computer and innumerable placement options have been tried without success.

Keyboard design has remained, or at least imitates the original layout of keys.

The T9 that briefly dominated mobile phones in the early days of cell phones did not lead to a long-term change.

Even the 'soft' version on smartphones stays true to the original.

Why has this layout triumphed? One of the reasons is that early laptops may not have wanted to change a design people were familiar with.

Navigating a new paradigm was complex enough.

That's why Chara Corder is a complete rejection of the original keypad layout.

Like a gaming keyboard, each of your finger’s rest on a set of keys. It is supposed to make typing stupendously faster, once you master the basics.

The switches detect finger movement in 3D rather than along a single dimension.

It also looks completely unlike any keyboard you've seen so far.

Each of the keys can be programmed to operate four or more functions.

It looks fiendishly complex but apparently has found a sizeable audience willing to take the time to master it.

And once you do, they promise that you can type as fast as you can think.

It has been breaking all kinds of speed records. Sites like Monkeytype have banned Chara Chord because the speeds are completely off the charts.

Maybe QWERTY has finally met its match.

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The shark discovers a whale of an opportunity

Mark Cuban is recognized more for his appearances on Shark Tank rather than his ownership of Dallas Mavericks, a major baseball team.

But his latest venture could impact more than sport.

He's waded into an area where health, politics and policy intersect.

Setting up an online pharmacy for generics.

The high prices of medicines in the US is an intractable problem. People with chronic conditions end up paying a fortune every month, just to get by.

There are currently about 100 drugs on the website and the price differences are revealing. 

The difference is as much as 90%. For a month's supply of Imatinib, the branded drug costs almost $10,000 dollars. He is supplying it for less than $50.

Now that puts him into a major confrontation with the whole ecosystem.

The patients are all going to be on his side because it directly impacts their lives and well-being.

And by cutting out insurance companies from the mix, he's removed one of the key pillars that govern the healthcare business models.

The battle could redefine how the entire health industry works.

There are billions, if not trillions of dollars at stake. And if the drug companies and hospitals are impacted, there will be repercussions.

Mark Cuban knows what he's letting himself in for. He's opted to go against companies with deep pockets who will see this as an existential threat.

Until now, there hasn't been a coordinated effort to cut prices across the spectrum. The loyalty of patients is guaranteed.

The US pharmaceutical market is the largest in the world at nearly $500 billion. And that's what Mark Cuban is taking a hacksaw to.

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It started off as a way of getting paralyzed people to walk.

Now, it has evolved into military, healthcare and industrial solutions.

The basic idea is to enhance human capacity for walking, carrying weights or doing repetitive tasks.

The Exoskeleton will probably transform more industries in future than robotics alone.

The number of applications being simultaneously worked on is staggering.

Helping soldiers manage everything from long tiring treks over harsh terrain to reducing joint strains and fatigue.

The same holds true in warehouses and manufacturing lines where the exoskeletons help workers lift massive weights on the assembly line, or manage delicate tasks which require limbs to be held aloft for long.

It reduces back strain by providing support even while the person is standing straight.

Robotics built into the suit work in tandem with the wearer and the result is fewer industrial accidents and prevention of long-term damage to muscles.

It's early days but there is a definite advantage to making people superhuman rather than have robots develop human capabilities.

That difference in perspective is helping to change what assembly lines look like and function - the idea is to make people manage working heavy tools and at dangerous heights easier.

Over time, as costs drop, they will become a common sight at manufacturing facilities worldwide.

Right now, the costs are quite high because the solutions are in an early stage of development.

But looking ahead, in everything from helping paralyzed people get around to long army marches and building new efficiencies on assembly lines, exoskeletons will become commonplace.

Wearable skeletons are the idea we didn't know we needed.

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Corporate bonds you can eat

Paul & Mike make chocolates. World-class stuff.

Their chocolate concoctions win prizes at global competitions.

They have also demonstrated their ability to think differently when it comes to raising money.

Anyone who has ordered online from them in the past would have got a message asking whether they wanted to subscribe to 'chocolate bonds'

The offer is this.

Any customer (up to the first 500) can invest Rs. 5000 in the company. In return, they will get chocolates worth Rs. 6500 over one year.

Basically, the interest component is paid out in extra chocolates.

This will be in force for one year from the date of investment. Since the chocolates cost anywhere from Rs.250 to Rs 375 for a single slab, it means that customers can order what they like for Rs.6500, not including shipping costs and taxes.

They have also been upfront about the way the money will be used - to fund the upgradation of their facilities.

Now, this is a way of ensuring loyalty with an upfront payment - and for customers who are sold on the brand, an investment in pleasure.

The company gets the funding practically for free. The payout is only in the product itself and that means their profit margins may only have to take a small hit. For a short while on a fraction of the customer base.

Paul & Mike have also tied up supplies to these customers for the next 12 months. Now that's called predictable sales figures. And while it is small at the moment, they can go on to increase this over time.

From the comments on the site, it looks like their customers are well and truly sold on the idea.

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The simple brilliance of Wordle

The man who created the game is Josh Wardle.

So, there's a bit of serendipity right there, apart from the fact that 'word' in the name already lets you know what you're getting into.

There are numerous word games on the net. So why did this one take off spectacularly?

Here are a few pointers.

First of all, five letter words are easy but not super easy. The UI is crisp. Six rows of five squares, with the keyboard at the bottom.

The second are the rules. You guess full words, not one letter at a time. You know the difference between letters in the target word and the ones that are wrongly placed.

And the ones that are not there in the word at all. Progress is measurable.

Plus, the same colours are reflected on the keyboard, visually helping you focus on guessing options.

The third is rationing. There's only one game a day. Scarcity creates habit, not overload.

The fourth is sharing - the people who have guessed the word in 3 tries want the world to know - without spoiling the fun for others.

The grid is a great way to evoke intrigue and show off. Hordes of people have been drawn into the game because they wanted to know what these green graphic squares meant. And once they arrived at the site, they would certainly attempt it at least once.

The fifth is that it is free. But that's the least important aspect of the game. Wordle would not have succeeded without thinking through the entire experience of gameplay.

Once you get into it, you're guaranteed to spend a few minutes every day.

Attention alternates between frustration and triumph - and that's the cherry on the sundae!

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