Checking the search rank

I was thinking it would be great if Google allowed to see the search rank for a specific site for a search term. This would make a lot of sense for retailers who want to see if their site is moving up in the rankings or not and it would also help bloggers see if the site is becoming more visible or not. Maybe there is already a tool out there that provides this basic service but I guess I will have to google it!!!

Process for innovations

Nottingham-Spirk, a company I had never heard of, has an interesting process for coming up with the next best seller product. The article is in the June 11, 2007 edition of Fortune (sorry, I cannot find it online).

They first start with brain-storming where the ideas are categorized from 'mild to wild'. Then they have a second meeting where everyone votes using three cards - wow, nice and who cares. The person who came up with the idea presents the idea and the voting is done at the same time. Any idea that ends up in a vote of 'wow' from everyone is a potential future best seller.

I really like this approach as everyone is free to come up with their ideas and also vote without any intimidation from the senior management present in the room. No wonder the company has had several successes like the Crest SpinBrush, SwivelStraight Christmas tree, etc.

Invest in a plane?

I recently read that you can get amazing returns if you buy or invest in a plane like a Boeing 737. The challenge is finding a plane to invest in. The airline industry looks like is booming again. I wonder if they are at a point where they will not only come out of bankruptcy but also be able to return the money that was 'loaned' to them by the Federal government.

Challenge with blogging

There is always something or the other to blog about. But I always tend to discuss it with someone instead of blogging it. I think the challenge is that the Blogger site is not really integrated with the other activities one usually performs during the day. It would be great if I could post material without coming to the site. For example, by using a MS Word plug-in. Or using something like ViaVoice.

The other challenge is definitely for bloggers like mine who do not have many readers. Once you have readers, I think you look forward to their comments as much as they look forward to your posts (hopefully). There are several ways to publicize your blog but I believe in organic and word-of-mouth growth. Hopefully I will be able to post good content here and that will automatically attract readers.

If it is an ideal world, that would happen. Let's wait and see...

HitForge

I read about this new site called HitForge that is focused on quickly building applications, giving them 12 months to succeed and if then if there is no success, kill them. Based on the article in Business 2.0, the company is investing $5 million in a 100 ideas and only needs to make 1 of them a success to recover the money. I think it will be successful. The model is somewhat similar to companies who have a team of talented developers to help build products and applications for other companies. In this case, the products and applications are being built for their own company instead of a third-party.

I wonder if they would need some ideas. I could help them with that for sure. Maybe there is a passive partner model here that can be supported.

Perception is everything

I recently read this news article that how brilliance goes unrecognized if not presented in the right environment. This happens to each one of us everyday of our lives. We have all heard the phrase - 'At the right time, at the right place', I would like to add 'with the right mind set' to that because without the right mind set nothing works.

Now can we make a tool to help with perception??

No pranks on April Fool's Day

April Fool's Day came and flew by and I did not play pranks on anyone. Another lost opportunity I would say :-)

Though Google TiSP was a neat prank. I wonder how many hits did they get. And if they have a way to figure out how many people they actually fooled (like if someone this page that means they really don't get the prank). Surprisingly there were no ads on the pages, that would have been interesting too to see how many got fooled and also made money for Google. Good to see they have their sense of humor intact.