Choosing the Right Chart Type

Just found this great flowchart on choosing the right flow chart for displaying your data.

Check out the complete flowchart here.

Indian Politicians Starts Advertising on Internet

It looks like Indian Politicians are following their US counterparts and recognizing the power of Internet. Here is a recent Advertising I saw on the Internet:

I think next thing to follow will be Facebook Groups and Pages.

Best Steve Jobs’s Keynotes

Apple announced recently that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Further, it looks like Steve Jobs is not going to deliver this year’s Macworld keynote.

It is the end of an era. Lot of people look up to these keynotes and love the way Steve Jobs presents new Apple products. Here are some of his popular keynotes:

1983: Apple Sales Event

This video also has the famous Apple Ad which was ran during SuperBowl 1984.

1997: Macworld Expo

Steve Job came back to Apple and joined the Apple Board. He also introduced partnership with Microsoft.

1998: Macworld

Steve introduces iMac

1999: Macworld Expo

Steve introduces iBook

2001: Apple Music Event

Steve introduces iPod. Notice how the whole place is different from all the other keynotes and the missing audience enthusiasm (as compared to other keynotes).

2007: Macworld Expo

iPhone is introduced.

Google enables Search Wiki in India

Just noticed it this morning that Google has enabled its Search Wiki feature in India.

Release Day?

It looks like it is some sort of release day today (I mean yesterday). Some of the big releases I noticed this morning:

• Google Reader with a new User Interface (I like the old one though, may be I will get used to it)
• Facebook launched Facebook Connect (similar to OpenID)
• Google Friend Connect is now open to all websites.
• WordPress 2.7 released. The admin UI is completely changed. Here are all the features released in this new release (I hope they have made it faster now !!).

Entrepreneur Pitchbook from Canaan Partners

Good resource for entrepreneurs looking for pitching to VCs (Canaan Partners in particular):

Is Google Analytics Showing Wrong Data?

I was analyzing the site traffic for LifeMojo with Google Analytics when I saw couple of things wrong:

• Traffic from Referral Sites: Google reported a lot of traffic coming from a particular site. When I checked the landing page for all this traffic, I found it to be completely wrong. There was only a single link on that site pointing to LifeMojo, but the landing page was the page not even accessible to the users coming from there.
• Traffic counted under wrong dates: I noticed that Google is counting the traffic coming today on the website to the last date. I don’t know if this is a problem caused by Google because of different timezone, but I have set the timezone for LifeMojo to be IST on Google Analytics. May be Google doesn’t respect timezones much.

Apart from these, Google Analytics also does not show the correct “Average time spent on Site” because Google Analytics is the last thing to load on the page and user may click on some other link by then.

I guess it is better not to rely fully on Google Analytics to give you the exact analytics. May be it is time I install awstats to analyze the apache logs.

Getting Ideas Across Visually

Video is the best way to get your idea across, and if you make that video interesting with the help of some visuals made from Paper, Pencil and hand motion, you are sure to attract the attention of your audience. Just look at the introduction video on Criterion Collection done by Jason Polan and you will know what I am talking about.

Also, check out some of the cool videos done by CommonCraft. Here is the one explaining RSS in Plain English.

When should you launch your Product?

There is always a lot of debate on when should a startup launch their product. Should it be launched after it has been made perfect with all the features added and it is fully tested with all bugs removed ? or, should it be launched as soon as you have something working which customers can start using (there  might be still many features missing and the product might have lots of bugs).

I believe that it is best to launch as early as possible because it lets you test your product and your assumptions quickly. This will enable you to know whether customers really need your product or not before you spent more time on improving it. If the customers are not using your product then you get an early signal to either shift to a new product or rethink on the product strategy.

Here is what some industry people say about product launch:

• Sunil Bharti Mittal: In his interview with Wharton, he said:
  

  Our theory was: If you’re caught between speed and perfection, always choose speed, and perfection will follow. You never wait for perfect positioning, because in business you don’t have the time; especially if you’re small, you can’t do it.

  And the large companies took their own time. They were months behind us, and that made us pick up a market niche for ourselves, which in turn made us big.

• Guy Kawasaki: Don’t worry, be crappy:
  

  Don’t worry, be crappy. An innovator doesn’t worry about shipping an innovative product with elements of crappiness if it’s truly innovative. The first permutation of a innovation is seldom perfect–Macintosh, for example, didn’t have software (thanks to me), a hard disk (it wouldn’t matter with no software anyway), slots, and color. If a company waits–for example, the engineers convince management to add more features–until everything is perfect, it will never ship, and the market will pass it by.

• Dharmesh Shah: In his latest talk at “Business of Software”, he said:
  

  if you are not embarrassed by your first product launch then you are too late to launch it.

Review of LifeMojo on WATBlog

Rajiv Dingra from WATBlog has published a review of my startup LifeMojo as part of their Saturday startup review.

The product is a comprehensive product when it comes to health and lifestyle management. The features which really catch your attention are the ability to set goals, track weight and manage your health by managing your eating habits and exercise. The product also provides a lot of in depth content into nutrition, health tips etc.

Another killer feature is analyze me which is a health and body mass index analysis tool based on your height and weight. This adds to the motivation especially for those who are not fit to get fit.

Check out the complete review here.