Social Media Marketing

TechBrandsMeetup Event from Techdivine Creative Services

The 2nd TechBrandsMeetUP Event was held on June 12, 2011 in Mumbai at Techdivine Creative Services.

Participants from across 10 Industries (Banking, HR, IT, Telecom, Infrastructure, Media, IPR, Finance, Advertising, Industrial) shared wonderful insights into the current updates from their industry, use of Technology integrated social tools from their organizations, their expectations, concerns, cross sharing of ideas and more.

The event kicked off with our Founder & CEO Mr.Ananth, addressing the professionals with a brief “About us – Techdivine Creative Services” & Highlights of the first TechBrandsMeetUP event.

Each participant was introduced with the Industry they belonged to and the discussions followed.

Each Industry’s customer was present during the event, the reason being, each one of us makes use of one or the other products from across Industries on a day to day basis, whether on a B2B platform or a B2C medium. So as soon as Industry professionals shared their insights and concerns, we took an immediate customer view on the same and got their feedback and responses. Then we shared with the concerned participant the probable solutions that the new age media tools could provide based on our earlier marketing, social media & viral campaigns across Industries and countries.

Within the first hour of the event, the whole place was abuzz with ideas and suggestions from end users of Industries and with feedback that added value to the participants.

Few key highlights from the event as follows:

-          Banking: Of the various updates and news shared, One of the prime concerns expressed was shams happening online due to intentional misrepresentation by fraudsters to lure innocent prospects into their fraudulent activities.  Not only did every other participant express their valuable thoughts on it, but there were some innovative techniques and process which we too shared from our end to have control over the same using technology integrated Social tools to Monitor Brands and activities online. One of the key examples shared from our end, was protecting both, the consumers & brands by using strategic, organized & controlled approach similar to our ROADMAP strategy and the Social Media Influence (SMI) tool integrated with Blogs and Social Bookmarking to have a much stronger control over the same. The idea of monitoring with strong analytics and at the same time using social networking power to keep people informed was very well accepted by the participants.

-          Media: With Blockbuster movies like Pirates, Batman, Avatar making royal splash across online sites, very less needed to be shared on the power of digital marketing tools for TV shows, media channels and Movies. What were discussed was some innovative tools that each participant had experienced online for different movies on sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc. Obviously the prime concern or pain area discussed was piracy of movies and music online. To which a major vote unanimously screamed to the ideas used by many producers today to simultaneously launch their movies online too on sites like Youtube etc at an extremely marginal cost. This eventually will not only lead to a major drop in piracy online, but also give users to discuss, share and comment on the movies real-time. We also shared some powerful insights into using the social media digital tools to empower audiences with latest happenings across the world in just a matter of seconds and bringing help and hope together to those who need it at great pace to further empower media.

-          Telecom: Telecom seems to be slowly getting into the digital media space. What was observed was, even though many sites and brands seem to have already adopted powerhouse tools like Facebook, Twitter etc optimally to showcase their engaging tools, interesting offers, surprise contests etc for users, most of these brands do not have a strong back-up team to live upto their promises online especially for after sales services, customer grievances etc. Some of the brands that were mentioned during this discussion were Dell, Vodafone, Tata, Airtel wherein corporate professionals expressed their views on the number of times they have opted for a switch of brands because the Brands did not resolve their grievances on time. What was also observed as a cause for switching loyalty other than having a poor back-up team was that, in certain cases, the Brands were not able to tap the user grievances due to a poor planning of tracking brand mentions or failing to revert back on time. The very important point to note here was, majority of the irate users who switched Brands due to major grievances were those who had been loyal to those specific brands the longest. What we suggested here again was empowering the Brands or Companies with a stronger Brand monitoring tool but with lesser advertising assurances and more on time delivery of services to reaffirm their lost faith across customers. Core being, resolving an Irate customers issues not only assures the brand of a happy customer but a powerful and loyal brand ambassador for life.

-          Infrastructure & Industrial: In both the cases the participants from respective industries expressed what was currently being used by the Companies to connect with internal employees and prospects / customers, wherein the most popular tool seemed to be Blogs. Reason that seemed to echo across was that more than having an option to reach out to the company CEO or Business head as shared by the HR teams of their respective organizations by using direct internal mail service, the idea of having a Blog wherein the Top Exes of the company shared “whats happening now” in terms of company achievements, new additions, changes if any, events etc using blogs was a much better and interactive option for the employees to stay connected. Why? As it was easier to reply back, comment, suggest on corporate blogs than to write a direct email to the seniors in the organization. Here what was found to at times pull down the participation in companies by employees, was lacking interest due to not fully understanding the use of blogging or how to blog etc. So we shared some insights on the power of Blogs and what we could achieve for few of our clients in terms of internal and external reach with a power packed SEO and a strong sense of interactivity using new age widgets and tools with the blog.

-          IT: Forums seemed to be extremely popular for IT pros to post queries and to get quick responses from users online. The only problem noted was it had limited know-how for professionals from other fields and thus poses a limitation to be popular across. The high side was the power of forums echoed with timely and at times even spontaneous solutions to problems irrespective of the company they belonged to and the place they worked from. Also, due to many IT pros already familiar with the benefits, this seemed to be a major need across IT industries who have not already implemented it in their organization. Some key points shared by the professionals were also that, unless made mandatory for their future career growth, very small percentage seemed to be making actual use of the in-house Knowledge resources (KR) available. Another concern noted by companies or seniors in the Management with respect to IT professionals was the huge time spent on online social sites by employees even after blocking net access via company resources either through Mobile phones or by using data cards.  Our views on this is very simple, engaging employees or team, peers to use KR and conduct weekly in-house contests using blog/forums or even facebook (for internal employees Only) and encouraging them to use these tools more by value adding it as incentives rather than a compulsion.

-          Intellectual Property Rights (IPR): The power of IPR was shared with one and all by the participant specialized from this industry. Examples and key points in terms of disadvantages of not having a Trademark or a Patent or Copyrights for your original works was put forth and the need for a ™ © ® etc was felt to only get more intense with so much of content being shared for free online. The core concern would be eventually to have protection for all your content and safeguard your intellectual properties. What was asked to the crowd was, what they wanted to know more to which they responded, that ‘they wanted to know what they could afford not to know about IPR’ for their brand, ideas or designs. Eventually, every professional from each Industry shared their ideas to make IPR branding itself a popular search online and promoting it to not only create awareness but encouraging users to have their brands and concepts protected. The bottom-line being, “whats Yours needs to be Yours.” We shared some key ideas of integrating Social Media Marketing platforms and mobile apps to create larger reach and awareness across corporate by using platforms like Linkedin, the power of SEO through social bookmarking and blogs etc for creating awareness for this Industry.

-          HR: Those in Human Resources (HR) have always been pro-people for obvious reasons. It was clear by the ideas and experiences shared by the concerned participant from HR industry that Online is not only a powerful medium but something that everyone willingly wants to be part of, especially on sites like Facebook and Twitter. The key idea is to find a controlled process to bring people together to share their concerns, growth strategies with their peers, superiors etc so as to be able to put a tab on the oldest concern of organizations which is employee attrition. Here we came up with some key solutions that would not only reduce attritions but also encourage employees referrals for job openings in the company using the digital media tools regularly, optimally and appropriately.

We then shared some interesting concepts, tools, productivity apps and showcased the following:

-       The power of the age old Search Engine Optimization (SEO) empowered with today’s technology tools in the field of PR today and what it could for Brands and industries across when used for more than just a page ranking process. It could help companies win  corporate battles online, reach messages across nations in a controlled and spam-free fashion, help companies generate actual leads used with the right mix of tools online.

-       QR code was discussed and with the increase in use of smart-phones globally, the participants had a fun time scanning a sample QR code generated from our end. Once they got a rush out of it, they shared some innovative ideas of how it could help keep customers engaged for Industries like Retail, Fashion, Restaurants, Education while adding lots of fun and value add for the Brands too.

-    Foursquare & its uses as an end user, for travelers, for those visiting new cities, country for the first time, for Marketing professionals, for Brands etc and we had few participants who checked in at out Office location to try out the apps too. It was fun, interactive and at the same time, everyone was eager to now check-in at foursquare special locations and try out the new app.

-       Using Gmail and its new features like labels, account filters etc and syncing it with your mobile phones for quicker response time with better time management.

-      Safety measures for Kids, teens while using social sites online – A must read for parents

-      Mobile security tools to keep spam, cookies, virus as far away as possible (Join us on Facebook for Regular Updates Click Here)

-      Search Engine Optimization for Your Website and basic guides

-      Best Corporate Purchases of Technology Products (Acer, Apple & Samsung Took the lead)

-      Internet browsers, the best and most popular (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox & Opera won the top three spots)

-      Productive Apps for iphones (Join us on Facebook for Regular Updates Click Here)

-      Resourceful Apps for Your Mobile and Desktop (Join us on Facebook for Regular Updates Click Here)

-      Fun, interactive and useful Apps for Your Android

-      Blackberry Apps, whats new and whats a must-have (Join us on Facebook for Regular Updates Click Here)

-   Other topics that were discussed were Gamification, Social Tools like Posterous and integrating it with Your FBML and Facebook Feeds on your website, social media quotient analysis, measuring ROI on Marketing campaigns, In-depth tracking and analysis with new age media tools etc.

Finally, the TechBrandsMeetUP concluded with a discussion on the latest buzz all around, the power of IPV6.

Ironically, during our YourSMQ Social Media Quotient Logo Launch event in March 2010 too, we discussed this as a matter of prime concern. Only, this time, we had a larger crowd already aware of the same.

Thank you all for your support and a special thanks to all the participants for making it so special & interactive! Looking forward to making the Third TechBrandsMeetUP Event a much bigger success on a larger scale with a target of at least 20 Industries participating in it!

Catch few of the Event Pictures with us on Our Facebook Page ~ Click here

Feel free to share your comments on the Highlights shared above, Queries, suggestions if any with us here. You can also directly write to us at ‘socialmedia@techdivine.com‘

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Thank You for your time!

Social Media Team

Techdivine Creative Service (Your very own Social Media Marketing & digital Interactive agency)

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Techdivine Creative Services celebrates its 250 Plus Posts – Thank You All

Dear Readers,

We at Techdivine Creative Services would like to Thank All Our Dear Authors & Readers for making this Blog a Corporate Success and a powerful medium for Brands, Products & Services to reach across globally.

We are today 15 Authors Strong with over 250 Blog Posts and with over 10,000 Readers across 14 Countries.

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Your SMQ – Social Media Team

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Our mission:

To enhance customer brand & equity value by using our “ROADMAP” strategy under our “Your SMQ (Social Media Quotient)” process.

With our rich experiences of implementing various online marketing campaigns of Viral marketing, Social media monitoring, Creative writing, integrating Mobile with new age media, Blogging & SEO services across industries of Banking, Finance, IT, Educational, Industrial, Hospitality, FMCG, Art & Creative agencies, Trading & Broking, Retail etc. we have today added great value to both the brand value of our esteemed clients and constantly addressed the needs of the consumer on time.

Mobile Integrated Social Media Marketing & Monitoring campaigns for Your Brand from Us!

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What our unique service of “integrating Social Media campaigns & the new age Mobile marketing” does for you as a Brand:

• It gives you a much larger reach
• Adds tremendous product positioning across countries
• Integrates your service across multiple platforms with control
• Adding the ease & access of Mobile Phones to your marketing campaigns
• Measuring your ROI beyond metrics
• Constantly monitoring & improvising this new age campaign with creative marketing
• Measuring social media quotient based on not just presence but enhanced equity value
• Ensuring target marketing across the right demographics
• Advantage of our experiences across varied industries customized for your campaigns

The most important aspect of this model is its constantly innovating process by being a part of this amazing social conversation prism.

Write to us to know – How this “Mobile-Technology-Integrated-SMM Campaign” can Add Great Value for your Brand. Write to us here:

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Have a wonderful reach ahead!

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Tweet with me @ananthv9

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Techdivine Creative Services
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Lots for the Consumer & More for your Brand

3 Years of Blogging from Creative Writers Blog: 199 Posts & 1120 Comments: Thank You Dear Readers & Dear Authors!

This is our 200th Post today:

As we would have loved to add a special touch to this 200th Post, we have one of our very celebrated writers from the Young Talents Zone, Mr.Aditya K, to add his experience again in beautiful words. To make this more special, we requested Mr.Aditya to share two of his most recent learning experiences and he did.

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Reconnect: Part 1:

Young Intach

ReConnect’s First Expedition

The five members of Mumbai’s first Heritage Club, ReConnect, and our mentor Mrs. Gaynor strolled over to the main gate of the school, intently waiting for the Jeep that would drive us through our first expedition. We all hopped in, sorting out our stationery while the car rolled through the dug-up roads of Juhu, heading directly for Bandra. We crossed archaic buildings like the Mithibhai College, the coarse waters of the Juhu beach, the Talao Lake, St. Joseph Convent from 1803, St. Peters Church, St. Stephens Church and finally our destination, Mt. Mary. Mount Mary was a basilica, meaning it contained relics of a great person. This basilica is extremely famous in Mumbai, and has a huge fair in September to celebrate the birthday of Mary.

The members of ReConnect marched to the entrance of the basilica, where we noticed the heavy Portuguese influence on the construction. We noticed the silence of each footstep rebounding off the high arches that formed the dazzling ceiling, intense with bright designs like the walls which portrayed the life of Jesus in vivid colours. The tall statue of Mary stood amidst vibrant flowers looking down on the benches.

After noting down facts, we leaped back into the vehicle in awe. We rode into St. Andrews, where we got a jolt to find graves dating back to 1908, piled out in the entrance like paving stones.

After taking down& closely observing the features of the church, we rode back to school.

Going on this one trip has increased my knowledge on the heritage of Mumbai and the history behind it by acres. It has been a great learning experience.

Love Mumbai!

Thank you

Aditya K

Reconnect: Part2:

Five heartbeats boomed across the MPH as the remaining students of the audience marched in. Could they hear these heartbeats? The five of us who were crouched backstage could definitely hear them. We waited in anticipation for Mr. Craig to finally announce us on to stage.

We five members of the ReConnect (Heritage Club) were prepared to do a magnificent assembly with two grade 11 students. After everyone hushed down, the presentation started in full swing.

We were introduced one by one and the information began to be let out, little by little. Our topic for the assembly was World Mother Language Day, which takes place on February 21^st. Our main concerns were about languages going extinct and how to prevent that. Each of the members walked over to the spotlight and presented a given topic about Mother Languages.

My topic was the death of an 82 year old lady in the Andaman Islands. But it was not just the death of a human but also the death of the language Bo, of which she was the sole speaker. Now even languages are endangered; not just our animals. ReConnect revived and presented the numbers 1-10 in Bo. This was followed by every one of us presenting a short speech in our mother tongue.

The assembly ended with an intense debate about whether it is better to learn and preserve your Mother Tongue or the universal language, English. As it turned out, both of them are important, as you should communicate with everyone in a mutual language and maintain your mother tongue. I am certain that everyone left the assembly hall soaked with information!

However, this assembly was the second event of ReConnect that week- the first one will be remembered by most of the women staff in Middle School. Since it was International Women’s day on Monday (18^th March), we members of ReConnect went handing out roses to all the females we encountered in the school and received numerous You made my day!’s from them.

These events have made us in ReConnect more confident in approaching people, as well as given us more information.

Thank You.

Aditya K

School Ecole Mondiale

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Dear Friends,

This month marks our 3^rd Anniversary of the Creative Writers blog.

Creative Writing

The journey began with the first publication and the Times of India interview and coverage of the coffee table poetry book “Expressions“, but it was only by end 2008 that we got an idea to get other writers too to add their ideas, experiences and stories and share them in such a large platform.

As the readers and comments kept increasing, with more inputs, critique, suggestions from all of you, we added interactivity, free registrations for comments, Premium memberships and so on to the creative writer blog.

Today, we proudly stand at 183 –Posts, 973 Comments with 11 Authors and scores of Categories under varied subjects of “Technology, Career, Education, Gadgets, Life, Passion, People, Marketing, Online Media, Art, Legends, Freebies, Social Media Marketing……..”

We sincerely THANK all our dear readers and of course our wonderful authors who have contributed their time and skills to us and have been a part of the Creative Writing family.

Hope you have enjoyed a good read. It will only get better!

Feel free to write to us with any suggestions, comments or your views on the same.

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Below are the stats to the Top 30 Posts from all time:

Top Posts for all days “March 2007 to March 2010”

All Time – March 2007 – March 2010

Title                                                                                                                                        Views

1. Coffee – A case to begin all cases (2123 Views)
2. Why So seriousssah……. (493 Views)
3. SHOLAY in Facebook Style (388 Views)
4. Google wave – Part 2: Adding & tagging Attachments (331 Views)
5. My Trip to Aurangabad- The City Of Gates (112 Views)
6. Of Forbes India’s 100 Richest: Top 10 picks from our readers (197 Views)
7. IIM Indore my blog: The Life at IIM I (187 Views)
8. Online Creative Writing Contest for Students is HERE! (183 Views)
9. Charlie Chaplin (179 Views)
10. Married but to caste and religion (175 Views)
11. Twitter & Facebook: Why SNS? (174 Views)
12. Pulau Tioman, The great journey ( 170 Views)
13. IIM Indore – IRIS Break Free – Klueless Game (169 Views)
14. ET Awards 2009: For Corporate Excellence (158 Views)
15. ‘Kudos’ to an amazing artist “Kseniya Simonova” (157 Views)
16. Standard Chartered 2010 MUMBAI Marathon (155 Views)
17. Touching a million lives, but only ONLINE (154 Views)
18. A Southie’s Life Rocks (or is it on the rocks) (154 Views)
19. Transitions in Life (152 Views)
20. BLINKX: Video Search engine: Don’t “blinkx” anymore (153 Views)
21. 26/11: Mumbai Terror Attack – Saluting the real heroes (152 Views)
22. Warli Art India: UK Art Council: A journey, for Art’s sake! (152 Views)
23. Google Wave is here (150 Views)
24. Le Tour de France 2009 (145 Views)
25. Social Media Marketing for your business: Unleash….. (143 Views)
26. Working Women & Parenting (142 Views)
27. Social Media Marketing (SMM) – From root level, Why it will work? (141 Views)
28. The Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2010: My Dream Run (138 Views)
29. Save Indian HOCKEY!!!!! (135 Views)
30. The Adventurous Land and the half blood Man: Having the Elixir (135 Views)

Most Popular Tags with us:

Life

Online Marketing

Marketing Services

Emotions

People

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Quotient

Hope

Career

And yes, our Blog has always been Mobile ready!

Happy reading!

Admin

TECHDIVINE Creative Services

Social Media, Design Services & Creative Writing

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I am 26 years old as a result of which I am one of the lucky few who has seen a world devoid of cell phones, Facebook & computers in the very early years of my life.

I was also one of the lucky few to have experienced independence from these pseudo fundamentals of today.

Now I am not saying these are totally bad and that I despise their existence .But having a completely computer oriented job and have been at my desk for almost 12 hours these past few days (including some huge holidays) I do question its existence and the level of its necessity.

Does it really make life simpler?

Hasn’t the pressure to perform increased with the mere existence of these “TOOLS”?

Efficiency has increased and so have the expectations. The way of working has definitely changed. Work is expected to be completed instantaneously, hence deadlines are closer.

A very small incident that happened a while back made me realise my dependency on them. My friend and I were shopping leisurely along Colaba causeway. When time came to go home we tried to contact her driver on the cell phone, which as it turned out was OFF. Oh MY GOD was our reaction.

We started roaming up and down the causeway searching for the driver asking ourselves one question.

I actually cannot believe I asked myself this: “How did people search cars when there were no cell phones”? This is what my routine machine centric workaholic life had brought me to. Anyways we did find him half an hour later and he had not realised that his cell phone was off.

There is also a small Facebook incident I would like to add here. My little cousin was told by my aunt to wish all his friends for Christmas, since vacations were going on and he wouldn’t be meeting them until new years. “I will post on their wall on Facebook”, came the prompt reply.

It is then that I realised that these things are completely a part of their lives (like TV was for us) and they have no idea how to function without them.

People who are on each others Facebook list may not even acknowledge when they meet each other in person. Facebook has become like the modern diary which stores information of people who may have spoken to each other even once .Now the difference between this and the good old telephone handbook is that this modern magic diary gives updates of everybody in the phonebook.

I am equally hooked onto Facebook, seeing people’s photos and commenting on their status etc and it is a great place for entrepreneurial activities.

But as pointed out by someone, don’t these “THINGS” make us too aware of everything and overly cautious? Aren’t we too scared of taking the smallest possible risks in anything and everything?

Another friend of mine who is going through the “arrange marriage” set up, uses Facebook to find out more information about the alliances found by her parents. But sometimes the information may be a tad bit too much is all I am saying.

Opinions may be formed based on information which maybe totally unnecessary, thus resulting in harsh or incorrect judgements. Having such tools at your disposal I guess it is very difficult not to make use of them and being judgemental is just spontaneous.

Well let me admit here that, I do the research for her most of the time.

Ok now after sharing all my views and giving “GYAAN” about the good old days , I guess this article just stemmed out of the fact that I am overworked  and so its confession time for me .

I cannot live without my cell phone, I feel I need to have Facebook account (I mean how can it not be there, it’s like a phone number), and my computer is one of my most priced possessions.

So, enjoy everything in life but just don’t let it replace human feelings and contact and of course “Never question the good things in life”

Thank you for your time.

See you again soon.

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“So when something seems worse

Just hang in there

Listen patiently, for this tick will pass

The next swing may be the one

Making life the perfect merry-go -round …”

- Karishma

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Image Source: ANV Clicks

Why Speed Reading?

Information, today, is pure POWER in our hands.

With so much of data out there, both online and offline we have reached a point in our lives what we can term as “information overload“.

Speed reading technique helps one to read with discipline a lot faster with good retention.

For whom?

This is very helpful for both children and adults.

It’s thus a great resource and technique for school goers, college students or working students.

How did I come across this technique?

It was purely a desperate need for me.

There was a time when I had to keep up with my studies in my management school, had to establish understanding simultaneously of the company product policies and guidelines where I was also doing my internship, plus I was habituated to reading a novel just to keep my head from spinning and to soothe my brain, with a good book at the end of the day.

I just wanted it all!

Simply put, the idea in my head was not just to clear the exams and get the job for the day done, but to understand and implement what I had learned in my class and put it to practical use at work.

This needed a good understanding of what I was reading & also good retention. This was something that most of us would face or would have faced at times.

What happened?

I cracked and I just couldn’t, it was……… It was well, pure “information overload” for me.

That’s when I came across this technique of “Speed ‘Quality’ Reading” and it helped me a lot.

So, I thought I would share some simple techniques that you may find useful even in your routine.

What does speed reading do?

Many a things; “TIME is Money”

• To start with, you can learn to read specific & important part of information more quickly.
• You may also get a better understanding of it with a disciplined practice.
• It helps one to even learn foreign languages quickly
• Today for anything and everything we just Google it online for work, fun & for learning, this technique will help us get the information quicker and only that which is practically useful.

There are lots of methods:

I am giving below few simple steps that you can follow and scan through all that Social media sites, search engines and digital content available that would add value to you & assist you in making your lives richer, more interactive and resourceful.

7 Simple steps that could help you in “Speed Quality reading”:

Use this technique in quiet places to start with. Eventually with practice you will be able to quality speed read even amidst noise around

1. Skim through your book / content / text (Skimming is visually searching the sentences of a page for clues to meaning) – You can also look for Headlines, Titles, Sub titles, text with bold, italics, underlines etc in the page first and put them together. It helps you to get a gist of the text or content immediately.
2. Use the Meta guiding technique. Use your index finger or mouse pointer or a pen, in order for the eye to move faster along the length of a passage of text. This reading dynamics system centers     on moving one’s hand across the page in order to maintain eye focus on the words. It helps to read      without getting distracted.
3. Do not Read out aloud or sub-vocalize the words, instead associate with visuals. US Air force research shows you can recognize words in less than 5/100th of second while sounding it will consume more than twice that time.
4. Slowly, increase speed in which you move your hands / finger pen etc and adapt to the speed
5. Do not repeat and slowly learn to skip words like “as, and, it, then, if” etc
6. If you are reading online or on a computer, try highlighting the text and reading it as reading white text on a dark background is easier than the reverse.
7. Start with books / magazines where there are variations in fonts and types and then you can enter into textbook & other material reading slowly.

These are some really simple techniques that have helped me, hope you find it useful too.

Link to Test Speed Reading: Try it out, its fun! CLICK HERE

Do give us your comments, suggestions & views.

You can also write to us at:

techdivine@gmail.com or admin@techdivine.com

(Do not try this if you are reading a legal document )

Enjoy!

Happy reading.

Free Resource & Steps for Speed Reading Practice

speed reading

I recently read an article about the lavish, partying and rocking life of mallus and tam brams (Of course I am being sarcastic).

The mail was hilarious. It spoke of the heritage names and remorseful work timings and really sad social life’s that “we” southies, live as routine.

I would like to disagree to it. Probably all the mail needed was a good laugh but when I received the same mail with a comment saying, “It’s so true”. I kept contemplating & pondering over the comment. (Ya, I know I could have just quoted there “I kept thinking instead of pondering” but I had this sudden urge to use big words as most readers of this post at this time would be southies sitting in offices as the Gujus, Panjus and other baniyas would be busy planning the evening for the day & also I needed to show off. Oh come on, Vocabulary is all I got). Anyways, read on…..

I think life’s a lot different than a mere southie’s routine mockery. Its, well…..  hmmmmm… how do I put this, …….it’s complicated.

Yes, even for those tam brams & mallus who have at least till date not ended up with love marriages (southies love marriages, wonderful usually. They are mostly with the same caste, community, the “gotram” needs to be different, carefully chosen, selected, discussed, horoscopes matched & agreeable to both parties, parents, relatives, neighbors whose opinions are equally important as a background check would also have happened of the couples, ahem)

Why even bother calling it a love marriage mate? I think this whole process has taken more time than actual courting. So where’s the romance. Naaah!

Can’t blame the poor chap though. How often does he anyway get to claim having gotten to get someone fall in love with him or at least remotely agree to him. After all, he must also have taken pains and been patient & careful enough to get across his job profile, designation, job security, mutual funds investment, idea of his probable salary, his investment plan, housing loan amount etc & such other details to the fairer sex and then woo her. Wow! How did I forget, qualifications here. Ya. That too. Phew! So that’s about a year till that time. & yes, he is a double MBA / Masters… Again, why?

Also, the south indian girl realizes that this dude, can I call this male human neatly oiled hair category, a dude, please, please… please let me Thanks …. Well so as ammai, appa & other family members would also agree and she is also sure to be with someone who can and has a stable job (remember, Home loans, mutual funds & PF – I am sure she also must have noted down the possible savings he must be making annually after tax deductions). & wow, how did I also forget, the guy has to be 5’8” at least. Why? Just make the criteria 6feet then. What is it, an oomph factor!

I just don’t get it, may be partly because I am not 5’8” but still. Why?

Why the criteria, at least “ “.

Is it like, if the calculatedly fallen in love couple get troubled by a dude, is this tall or taller guy gonna tap the tip of the other guys head before he succumbs down or faints (people who eat only curd rice, dosa & rasam chadham(rice) get bruised more easily, you see)

Anyway, it does not make any sense.

So the planned, arranged but loving couple say, the hell with love at first sight. We have taken into consideration all the factors that may or may not suit both of us. Now we will make this work, the girl says it with confidence. Yes, they are going to revolt and rebel, against … hmmm…. Against cruelty to animals. Lets not get offtrack, what else will they revolt to, how can they upset ammai & appa and family & friends and did I mention neighbours.

Little does she know that the tam bram / mallu dude might have even comp up with a probable percentage of risk involved in this relationship (he might just tell the statistics if pressurized, but I am sure he would have also made a pie chart of this analysis probably in SPSS software).

Anyways, with the money that both make, they can afford many such revolting romantic SRK movies on DVD at their 2/3 BHK homes that is of course only after both of them have finished reading their book / novel for the day (reading is very important for our cult, that shows we are educated and belong to a different class & category of people). Educated & class, I dun’t know, but different category…. Oh, I am so sure about that.

Ya, we southies need to have stacks of books at home from Crosswords & Strand book stall, nothing pirated. It has to be purchased for the original price. Hell, we even have hardback cover books. We don’t read it all, but those books are usually kept closest to the ‘Big glass’ door of the library at home for the world to see. What world, which girl is going to come to a southie dudes home first of all and even if she does, and the sweet dude shows off his massively huge and BIG, collection of books, trust me my friend, she is never coming back. So make sure & mark my words carefully, do not lend your books to her, she is never, ever coming back. Lets continue.

We have overgrown TV sets, but we make sure we put on our social networking sites status, “Don’t watch TV”, What? Why? Is it like a crime? I love watching TV & I grew up fine. Ahem! Let’s not get into the details here. Lets read on…

So now do you realize why these mails tickle our funny bones. ‘coz only the Truth shall finally set you FREE!

Also, did I forget to mention, unless we learn to accept ourselves how can we…. How can we…. How can we face god in the morning during sandhyavandanam…. J   Have fun

Yes, yes. My name runs over 50 letters…….. so I am not writing it. Vaise bhi, mera naam to suna hoga!

Do tell me your views…..

Animoto: Now Create YOUR OWN!

The next level in Video – Audio – Imaging Technology!

That’s right, Animoto which is based in New York City with an office in San Francisco has brains that have worked and produced shows for MTV, Comedy Central, & ABC and so much more.

What is it about:

This amazing web application, turns your images and soundtrack into stunning music videos in minutes. It analyzes the pictures, music etc provided and automatically generates a trailer like video.

How does it do it:

It’s engine analyzes users’ photos and music and takes into consideration music’s genre, rhythm, and tempo to generate a video that takes into the song’s nuances.

Wow! A thinking web application.

What’s more amazing is that the site claims no two videos are ever the same.

How did the idea originate:

The masterminds when were working in the film/TV industry, felt that there’s just a big gap between the quality of content you see on the web and the type of stuff that one sees on TV and in film.  So the founders of this unique innovation thought, why not narrate one’s pictures with text to tell a story. May be send a message to a loved one and create event invitations and so much of unlimited possibilities.

The Heart of Animoto today:

The heart of Animoto is its newly developed Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology that thinks like an actual director and editor. It analyzes and combines user-selected images and music with the same sophisticated post-production skills and techniques that are used in television & film.

As of August 2008, 250,000 users in over 200 countries have registered with Animoto.com with 4 million videos and 50 million views

It also have exclusive services for teachers who use it to bring presentations and lesson plans to life in a whole new way for their students.

So what are you waiting for, go and gear up! Create your own!

CREATE YOUR OWN VIDEOS

Let the rhythm take the web over!

Image Source:

ANIMOTO