Theft on the web and Brand awareness

Recently I found The Markup Dude changed his portfolio design. Then I came to know that someone (a front-end developer from 2006) stolen the design and put it on his portfolio. This worried Deb (the dude) and he changes his portfolio design. See this image for the original and copycat.



Deb tried to put that design off from that site. So he emailed that guy and some of his clients about this theft. And it worked! That guy changed his portfolio design. So it became a winning story for Deb.

Now come to the second part - the brand awareness. Your design is popular, this means you have the potential for a brand. A in case of Deb, his design is already featured in many css and design showsites (I coin showsites = showcases + websites). That guy who copied it must have got this from any of those showsites. This implies that the design is good and popular. When I think about markupdue.com, that particular design comes into my mind and when I think about The Mobile Store, that red color poly-bag comes into my mind.

There are few blogs who provide their theme for free download, so that admirers of that blog design can use this on their blogs (wordpress or blogger). This helps them to build their brand. Anyways, the design of your website affects your brand in a big way. So what do you think about the "Worry of Deb on design theft"? Does anyone can share the brand value or add more importance to the it by coping the design? Anywhere on the web you will see any bird, do you think about twitter? And what comes to your mind, when you see a whale (of course failed!)?

Marketing Lessons from IPL

IPL fever is on again. And this brings many organic search visitors to the posts I made last year. Well this is not the lesson I am going to tell!

When you want to know a players name, where will you look at? As the trend of designing a sports jersey says, look at the back of the player, below his neck and above the jersey number. But while watching IPL matched today, I was looking at that area for the players name, but I only able to see the sponsors' name/logo. Not just one team, all 4 teams have the same design. And the name of the player goes down to the jersey number.

Have a look at a photo of last year IPL and notice where is the players' name written.




Now look at the some photos collected today and find players' name.















It's all about visibility. We all are habituated to look at one place. So when we look at that place, we can see the name/logo of the sponsoring company. So this makes that name/logo more visible. The problem is that in the TV screen the name of the player not visible always.

What lesson we can learn from it?
When we design a website, we can use this idea. Now don't follow the trend. Figure out where people used to look from years and put the stuff there, which you want to be get more attention.

Images are taken from Times of India Cricket - IPL

Watch IPL Live as seen on SET MAX

Here you can watch IPL match live as seen on set max.

IPL Live by Justin TV

Watch IPL match live by Justin TV

YouTube helped to verify phone number

The world knows YouTube as a video sharing website. But the title of this post says something different. Sounds interesting?

One of my friend need to verify his phone number for a website registration process. And the verification process was quite different. You will get a call on your phone from the website and after receiving the call you need to press # key confirming that you were expecting that call. Then you need to speak a number (one digit at a time) shown the website. Remember, you need to speak the number (you don't have to type the number) and the IVR will recognize the number from your voice and match the number with the number shown on the website.

Day 1, Take 1
First call came and we made a mistake by not speaking the number, instead we typed the number. And it was obvious that it should be failed.

Day 1, Take 2
This time I spoke the number one by one. And the IVRS said it's incorrect. There were three chances in that call to spoke the number. I ended up with failed verification.

Day 1, Take 3
The same story as take 2. Now we have used maximum number of attempts for the day.

Day 2, Take 1
A new day and new beginning. Before the verification process, we discussed a bit on this. I said it may the problem with my accent. (I had the youtube idea on the mind.) This time my friend said he will speak the number. So now he tried to speak that number and ended with the failed verification result.

Day 2, Take 2
Now I forced on the youtube idea. The idea was simple, there is an option for audio preview of the comment you want to post. So my idea was to put the number (each digit separated by space/comma/newline, so that it'll read it one digit at a time) in the text area and click on the audio preview button. While doing this, we need to keep the mic of phone near the computer speaker. But the the audio preview was bit fast than we expected, so a little worry was in my mind. However we tried it and get success to verify the phone number.

My friend says that I got an intelligent brain inside, but I give the credit to YouTube.