iPhone in India ??

uummmm.. well, just got a mail from Vodafone, confirming the launch of iPhone in India on the 22nd of August. 

I had pre-booked the phone through their website, and hence this reminder.. 

Read the mail below, for more info on the much awaited iPhone in India.

Hello Aditi,

Thank you for registering for your Apple iPhone 3G™ with us.

We are delighted to announce that the iPhone 3G will be available in India from August 22, 2008 It will be available in 8GB & 16GB models, priced at Rs 31,000 and Rs 36,100 respectively.

Be the first to get the iPhone

We have received a large number of registrations. As there are limited stocks, make sure that you get yours first, by paying an advance of Rs 10,000 to confirm your booking.

Where can you make this advance payment?

The iPhone 3G will be available at select Vodafone Stores. All you need to do is drop in at any select Vodafone Store between August 20 and 21 and make the advance payment by cash or credit card. Don´t forget to show the iPhone booking SMS, which you would have received from us, when you visit the Vodafone Store to pay the advance. To find a Vodafone Store near you, click here

Get an appointment now. No queues for you.

Once you pay the advance, we will immediately give you an appointment date and time, starting August 22 when you can come and experience a full demonstration and collect your iPhone, all ready to use with your contacts and settings, by paying the balance amount.

Hurry! Limited stocks.

Remember, the sooner you confirm your booking, the earlier you´ll get your iPhone. We have limited stocks and it will be on first come, first serve basis.

Happy to help 

If you have any queries, log on to www.vodafone.in/iphone or call Vodafone Care on 111 (toll free) and we´ll be happy to help.

Hurry and be one of the first to make the iPhone 3G your own.

Regards

Laxmi Bhan
VP - Customer Service

A Lil bit of free promo from my end.. 
I have called off the purchase for now, cus the phone doesn't seem worth the price.. 

Nonetheless, congratulations to you to make the decision of makin the purchase. Do send in the reviews.. :)

.... Protagonize ...

Some things are really too good.. for example my Feed Reader.. :-D
This dude introduced me to a new site - Protagonize...

Protagonize is a collaborative Social Network, build on the concept of Choose your own Adventure, the series of books.

You start a story and someone else finishes it.

With a built-in story tracker, you can track the stories you like and the ones written by you. Its heavily interactive and allows users to Comment and Build on your stories. The site also has features like ratings, RSS, book-shelf style interface, tags to content, categories, segregated content and a lot of other useful features.

I'm already hooked on to it..
And here's the link to my profile on Protagonize...
And the link to my latest addition to a story..

Cheers
- Protagonizin Adi

Duct Tape Marketing

Have been following John Jantsch's blog for quite sometime now.. it is called the Duct Tape Marketing..

amazingly well written posts.. and very very interesting..
You would want to come back and read up the latest on his blog..

The last post, was something about the Thanksgiving drive and Live Blogging.. where he shares this amazing amazing thought about how people show different emotions on different things.. He specifically talks about laughing and giggling..

Quoting from the post:
"I wonder how many people visit our web sites, read our sales copy and listen to our pitches and, effectively, laugh at different parts, and maybe not the parts we thought they would laugh or not at.

Test, test, test everything. It’s a amazing how different the same web page can appear to different people. Know what you want people to do when you make a point, create a web page, write a sales letter and then get some people together to see if they get it. You are probably too close to know what the funny parts are anymore."

and yes, i know how it is.. because I giggle at things, people don't find funny at all.. and well, its wierd to some extent.. but most of things I giggle at are actually funny :)

last notes, look thru his posts and lemme knw if it helps you too !

cheers

Aditi

Probiotic Yoghurt.... anyone ?

A big hoo - haa about the latest, so called Probiotic Yoghurt, in the market...

Ever wondered what that one little word "Probiotic" can do to the marketing campaign and what it actually means ??

Probiotic, is nothing but human-friendly bacteria, which these dairy companies promise to provide through their new and improved "Probiotic Yoghurt".

Millions of bacteria live in the human intestine. These are mostly benign and are supposed to aid in digestion and help in your overall health. These bacterial colonies get disturbed for all sorts of reasons. Antibiotics kill bacteria and they thus disturb the ecological balance in your intestine.

Probiotic supporters insist that it is necessary to restore that balance by taking probiotics. Different researchers have claimed that probiotics help not just in digestion, but in lowering cholesterol, blood pressure and also in fighting throat infections. Probiotics are also supposed to improve your general immunity.

However all these claims need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Now, yoghurt prepared at home contains good bacteria, though ofcourse not been tested for which strains of bacteria are present and whether they help in digestion. Anecdotal evidence points to yoghurts generally being helpful for digestion and that has been attributed to the bacteria present in them.

But when companies started mass-producing yoghurt, which would adhere to a certain standard and also have a long shelf life, I suspect they pretty well killed off the bacteria that naturally thrive in the yoghurt. Thus the claim of probiotic yoghurts is, in all probability, just the companies having figured out how to create standardised yoghurt with long shelf life without killing off the bacteria. And now they are going to town about its health benefits…

I am willing to be corrected on this theory of mine but so far the companies have been reasonably sparse with information on their probiotic yoghurts. From the ads, I can’t even make out which bacterial species is supposed to be present in Nestle’s probiotic yoghurt.

Taking one of these probiotic yoghurts is unlikely to hurt you but it is unlikely to do you much good either… you would be better off making yoghurt at home and taking it…

And the Brand Amul, apparently has plans of launching one of these in Gujarat soon. The promos are on and mostly, everyone knows about it by now, all thanks to the intelligent use of the word "Probiotic". The deal here is, marketed as a healthy food, it doesn't really have anything special in it, and the name is giving it all the publicity it needs..

and and and.. the yoghurt is still not available on the shelves.. which makes the junta demand for it all the more.. word of mouth and lack of availability is all that is going to work in the marketin of this lil thing..

Moms are already waitin to get their hands on the product, while Amul is waitin for more publicity to happen due to the lack of availability of the product..

am I buying it..
Nopes, my kitchen produce is better than a factory produce.. and more hygienic !

Big Brands & Facebook: Demographics, Case Studies & Best Practices

for all you mkting geeks, some interesting stuff i came across while browsing the internet..