The president’s phone

Techcrunch has come out with a killer article on Obama’s blackberry.

To be very frank, I never thought it created much of a fuzz anyways. But, then again one could track the exact location of the president, maybe hack into the emails, get some satellite ‘ping’ on the phone, get access to the calls made by the man etc. etc.. On the other hand there is the need to be super efficient, save time, schedule work and a serious blackberry addiction to worry about.

Solution would be to get to manufacture one phone with proper encryptions – un-hackable to use the word. Only the president could use the phone. Voice Recognition and finger print recognitions are nice. But there still could be a chance of bypassing them. Use DNA recognition if you can. Military security systems could also be employed on the phone – for the satellites. One very cool way of doing things would be to duplicate the position of the president. Create maybe 2456 replicas of Barack’s position across the globe. There would still be a risk of 1/2456 of finding his exact position though. If he appears on TV live in say Calcutta, one could be sure that he is not in say Moscow.

Good time to refer movies for ideas. Even Rajni movies for that sake.

Obama in pictures – neat collection

The smoke is clearing. Now we got pictures.

Check out some really cool Obama pictures picked from Flickr by some dudes at Time here.

Looks like our dude (Obama) can really leverage his pop even post elections. what next – Obama theme parties with all forms of drugs, legalization of marijuana (its pop too), high speed internet across the world, blackberry in the white house, head start for small businesses (biggies might get boot if they still loot), “Politics is in”?????

WHAT?

Politics and Advertising

1. Political parties get go ahead for using FM radio for their campaigns from the Election Commission
2. Professional national level ad agencies pitches for accounts of BJP, Congress and such rich parties
3. Barack Obama proves a point using mass media and the internet in the U.S.

Quite a noteworthy trend of politics moving out of the lower strata. It wouldn’t be far when the IT and BPO crowd could be discussing politics aside the latest movie to catch. I think this is a very neat move.

Mass Media could have a lot of restrictions on political advertisements – remember cigarettes, alcohol and such? However, it should be interesting on the web. With some good agencies and neat creatives backed with experienced media professionals, we could be looking at Search ads, display ads and social media action with Sonia Gandhi or a Lalu Yadav. Wonder what conversions these guys could be having.

Personally, I have never bothered much about a party or elections. I have not voted also. However, the recession and hard times as these could have us looking at the political administration for some hope.

Pre US election chart – the world view

I stumbled on this graphic on Presentation Zen blog by Garr Reynolds. This one is from late October and we sure have a lot of reason to rejoice.

Pre election trends - US 2008

I have heard the following comments on Obama’s victory from people offline. BTW I keep mostly to myself and a very close circle of people. You may not actually see me around much!

1. Obama is a product of Hollywood. He is Will Smith.
2. The “Black Guy”. My man! Full power
3. He is Denzel Washington (this is mine. Watch American Gangster. You will get what I mean)
4. There is a shift in power happening all around the globe. Obama is the representation of the same. The powerful will get kicked. The powerless will emerge as a much more evolved and smarter group. Beware!
5. Internet will take over the world one day. The medium decides a lot of things from now on. The keywords – Obama, twitter, blogs, Youtube, recession, online advertising spending blues, Mayan Calender, Next election on November 6 2012, Doomsday projection on December 21 2012. I got my “balls in mouth” fear now.
6. Obama might kick start the Kalyug miseries all around culminating in the Doomsday a few days after he steps down from power – Scary shit!!!
7. The power shift example – Yang steps down from Yahoo! Yahoo is still number 1 in the world. Google is still second.

Yahoo is still number 1

My advice – Keep to the basics. The time will come when one need to omit all the un-necessary. Train yourself for identification!

Mu ha ha ha ha!!!

Election blues – (post election blues)

Found this cartoon from Gaping void. Damn cool stuff!

When will such things happen in India? People with degrees waiting to vote?

Obama – u got work!

Is impossible to miss out Obama on the net these days. People got enough and more work for him these days. Huge optimism and fresh air after 8 years. Neat!

A lot works on the assumption that US reflects the entire mood of the world. Sitting half way across the globe, that sounds dangerous and dull. Sad but true! Credits, outsourcing, globalization and a whole bunch of smart kids in colleges dreaming U.S. (scene was so when I graduated in 2005).

The situation is similar to President Kalam sometime back. Kalam used to take a set of “Answer the following Questions” wherever he visited – schools, financial institutions, R&D centers etc. Our man sure had some questions, answers and a lot of fans. Obama is Level 2.

I was going through a few of these lists recently. Interesting reads they are.

1. Green Energy – Go green, cut down the oil consumption, solar, wind, alternate sources is the mantra everywhere. Alternate is cool. Obama himself is alternative. A definite go ahead.

2. Fair trade? Hell no! We want Free trade! – Bollywood sure would be glad to hear that. No more troubles in getting your slick cars to the Mumbai traffic jams.

3. Cut the taxes – well just cut them 100% – If you don’t have the money, why bother paying? How will the government make its money then – look beyond taxes. The pro-poor Obama is being looked upon to cut taxes majorly. Senior citizens get an onus.

4. Healthcare – If health is lost, something is lost!
Get a healthy United States first. Think about ruling the world next!

5. Jobs – US lost a lot of jobs to India – ha ha suckers! Now they want some jobs back. India would not like to lose the jobs herself. Got ideas, Mr. Obama?

6. Internet – Social Media got you into power. What are you going to give back to the medium. Are we looking at some infrastructure with lightning speeds across the globe. Obama could use this infrastructure to spread his message. Sounds a little like Jesus a couple of millenia back. But, if this man could prove the power of a concept which was doubted, there is nothing wrong in expecting a few miracles more. If only Obama could give me Youtube videos which starts running just like TV at Vellayani, Trivandrum, Kerala, India!

7. Recession Proofing – Are the stocks gonna look up again. I had invested some money in Feb 2008. I am FUBAR (Fucked up beyond repair)

8. Iraq, Iran – Get the nukes pacified without using your bombs, planes and more lives

9. Affordable oil – I am a complete novice in economics of oil. If only some mojo could be done to unscrew the scene, then I would get myself a new car!

Stop – look – go

Stop look go

Take a look at a few events off late-

1. Barack Obama claims to haev done wonders using Social Media
2. Everything fails – including the growth of online advertisements

What is the real story here? How come Barack Obama kick ass using the internet and others just seem to fade away at the same time? The problem might be with execution of the medium. Use the traffic signal theory here.

STOP – LOOK – GO!

It might just help. Blind investments and lack of innovation can screw things badly. Maybe people are not just smart enough as they seem. Maybe!