RSS in plain English – Commoncraft video

If you were still wondering what can RSS do?

Website? No! Facebook group? Yes!

I decided to do some marketing along with the bootstrapping of Weltan Butterfly. The idea is to keep a glamour factor running along – its costs nothing to be cool!

I had one dude who asked me “Website?”
Currently deciding to keep the website idea away and do my stuff on this Facebook Group instead.

Till then, keep the cool flowing…..

Logo Crowdsourcing – Weltan Butterfly

John Pathrose had made a logo for Weltan Butterfly over a cup of tea and Classic Milds.

So, what do you think?

Work starts off at Weltan Butterfly

Happened to do the first official thing on sunday. Mad excited about moving on from the “talk” phase to the “do” phase. Weltan Butterfly kicks the cocoon!

So what is it that exactly happened?

The idea was to try stuff on Youtube, but Facebook is one place which is too wide and too misunderstood. So, I sat down with Dale Bhagwagar (well known Bollywood PR) and decided to run him through things you can possibly try on Facebook. I was on for a ride!

The usual stuff was to be expected. Hurried through info page, hurried through Photos section and hugely forgotten video section – A Bollywood PR has loads and loads of rich media content, waiting to be consumed.

We started with his info page and a few hours, dry fruits, lots of tea and one car-servicing-guy-who-got-mildly-ragged later, I was sitting in front of the most well made Info page that I have ever seen. Do check http://www.facebook.com/dalebhagwagar for details.

Why should you be interested in seeing this profile?

1. This man is a genius when it comes to positioning and media manipulations
2. This man has a wide range of interests (personally and professionally). This one profile is an unlocking point to a large number of Facebook Fan pages and the like
3. This man is interested in connecting to like minded people (read people from media, movies and such)

Also happened to upload 150+ photos into his Facebook album – with celebrities, with students, with people in general etc. Wonderful place for surfing around. So, go ahead and add him. Lots coming in from that Facebook profile.

Let’s Dance – a good bollywood movie :-)

I happened to see a movie in style the day before the release.

This is “Let’s Dance”. A very cool movie based on dancing and zero star cast. A whole new set of people – which includes the actors, child actors, director and the producer, technically well made and mind blowing soundtrack (includes a lot of drum and bass, mid tempo dance music and a few glitches here and there).

Cool hip hop dance steps – check
Children dancing (spins, splits and all that) – check
Very groovy soundtrack – check
Amazing Hindi from an actor – check (Neil – the restaurant dude)
True mumbaiyya hindi from kids – check
Very cute lead actress – check
amazing visuals – check
Arrogant actor who has some human elements too – check

Lots of kissing, fondling and general steam on the screen – FAIL
Promotion and lots of money pumped to make the movie look good before it hits the screens – FAIL

So, go ahead. Give this one a chance. Hit the theatres for Let’s Dance. You wont be disappointed! Do check this Facebook group for details. Check out this blog for more details on Let’s Dance

How to subscribe

I see a surge in traffic on this blog off late. Thank you all! God Bless!

Now, the deal is I would like to keep this blog as is. Not buying a domain and transferring it. Neither am I planning to do an email subscription to the blog.

…. …

The coolest way to keep in touch with a blogger is to have an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication feed). For this purpose you need to have something called an RSS reader. I use Google Reader. This works in a very similar way like your Gmail and all you need is a Gmail id to subscribe to this blog.

If you have read till here, get yourself an account on Google Reader and click on a button which says “Add subscription” and type in www.kiranspillai.wordpress.com.

Every time I post a new one, it appears on your Google Reader as a “feed”. If you like me, please do it!

When do you matter

Seth Godin has come up with a list of things which says when you matter…

When you love the work you do and the people you do it with, you matter.
When you are so gracious and generous and aware that you think of other people before yourself, you matter.
When you leave the world a better place than you found it, you matter.
When you continue to raise the bar on what you do and how you do it, you matter.
When you teach and forgive and teach more before you rush to judge and demean, you matter.
When you touch the people in your life through your actions (and your words), you matter.
When kids grow up wanting to be you, you matter.
When you see the world as it is, but insist on making it more like it could be, you matter.
When you inspire a Nobel prize winner or a slum dweller, you matter.
When the room brightens when you walk in, you matter.
And when the legacy you leave behind lasts for hours, days or a lifetime, you matter.

Totally awesome! I am touched. I am convinced. Hail Seth!

Weltan Butterfly starts off

People – glad to say I am starting off a firm now. Calling it Weltan Butterfly.

Would be doing Social Media Consulting. Will work for food, clothing, shelter and money.

Fosters – Art of chilling – how it rocks

Lets get one thing straight – i dont drink even if the beer flows free on the house! (yup, i can do that)

So, a good friend of mine mails me on linked in saying “Indiblogger meet” and I got one keyword which said “Free beer”.

I lugged John’s laptop and took off to Pune. Twitter meet types with beer shouldn’t be a bad idea.

I was on for a surprise. A pool party with beautiful babes thrown in man! Awe-fu**in-some!

I am a man with a laptop who wants the least to be the geek. No, its cool to run XP but women hate laptops. But hello, now that the scene is on, lets be the cool geek! Straight clear questions were asked to the models if they blog which they happily answered in the negative.

DJ Lokesh and DJ Tally were told clearly to take care of John’s laptop and also to play good old reggae and jungle, which they happily did in the positive.

Was a lot of fun. I took a pirate hat called “Fosters Art of Chilling”. I am wearing my headphones right now. But I did go to a Tribal DDB farewell party wearing it and claimed to be an ex-Webchutney fellow. The bouncers liked the hat too. They told me so!

Take one more look at the models.

Oh BTW the Pune tweeters think social media can one day change the world! Cheers to them! But they surely missed the Marilyn Manson mix (Beautiful people). Man, that rocked my bald head off!

How to connect your society and the social media

I have been tripping major on social experiments.

Ever since late 2007 when I moved into online advertising, people all around are going major gaga over ’social media’. The Facebook way of doing your thing, the iphone way of seeing your thing and the Twitter way of saying your thing. A big huge bunch of keywords and people revolving around it.

Somehow, this strikes an idea that social media is a mirror of the society around you. 300+ friends on facebook is a sign that 300 people trusts you and you are somehow or the other responsible for these 300 people with the little things you say and you do. Just like everyone else, one may find himself / herself (i know) in sticky situations once in a while. This is the time when you could use some help from your friends and then come clean.

1. Try creating a sticky situation – could be one that existed before and you have not really come out 100% clean. There are chances that you might find yourself back in the situation if not checked / controlled.

2. Make use of your friends in an offline way – I tried SMS. Its good, its easy and no use of vocal chords.

3. Come online and push it – Use Facebook messages, email, Twitter, personal blog (I use this one) etc. to clean yourself out.

I see results in terms of numbers on the internet. I also see results in the form of an easy, quiet, non-sticky mind.

Definite winner!