Twitter Status: @ahmedbilal shhh! don't let out the secret!
17April2008
Posted by Aditya under: Cricket; Indian Premier League.
Minutes after a “short, sharp and sweet” opening ceremony on Friday to launch the inaugural edition of the Twenty20 tournament, the organisers are planning to switch off all lights at the Chinnaswamy Stadium before the first match between Dravid’s Bangalore Royal Challengers, the hosts, and Ganguly’s Kolkata Knight Riders, the visitors, which begins at 20.00 local time. “Then, the spotlights will come on, and focus on the two skippers as they walk out for the toss,” Charu Sharma, the Royal Challengers’ chief executive, told Cricinfo.[source]
Yes, that’s the kind of drama the IPL is going to experience. A bit much don’t you think? Turning off the lights eh? Better let the crowd know that it’s pre-planned. Else, they might mistake it for a power cut.
There will be some more IPL posts over the next month. Trust me, I wanted to write about other stuff too, but there still are a few thoughts on Lalit Modi and his cronies’ handling of things that have been eating my brain for the past few days. So hang on tight.
Since the league is now almost underway, let me make my affiliations known to every one: I support the Chennai Super Kings — what with me being Tamil and liking Chennai in general.
I am one of the new contributors on the wildly popular Desipundit. For those who haven't heard of DP, it's a filter blog for the best of the desi blogosphere. So you can catch me, there, linking to posts from desi bloggers I find interesting. I hope, I manage to contribute there on a regular basis. (0)
12April2008
Posted by Aditya under: Indian Premier League.
With the ongoing wrangling between the Indian Premier League and the media — with sections of the media threatening to boycott the league entirely — I happened to stumble across a similar incident concerning the American National Football League. Apparently they had placed limits on other sites showing online footage of their content in order to protect the NFL’s own “internet business interests”; most insane of their rules was that only a maximum of 45 seconds of NFL footage could be shown per day online.
The Houston Chronicle made a hilarious video showing how silly such a restriction can be:
8April2008
Posted by Aditya under: Cricket; Indian Premier League; Social Media; Twenty20.
Pardon me for the highly cricket-centric nature of posts in the blog so far, but, I assure you, this post is hardly about cricket as you will find out.
I promised, in an earlier post, that I would give a detailed overview of the IPL from an internet marketing standpoint. In that article I listed out the eight franchises and gave a very brief overview of their respective site designs. I also pointed out that Mumbai Indians didn’t have a website. Newsflash: they still don’t have one, to my knowledge. Unless one considers this to be their official site. (It’s the second result on Google for the keyword “Mumbai Indians”. So the domain squatter(?) might stand to gain quite a bit of dough from Mr Ambani.) I also pointed out how pitiful it was to see the lack of any updates on the official IPL site; so much money and they couldn’t find anyone to update a few lines.
Read the rest of this entry »
1April2008
Posted by Aditya under: Google.
I think Google’s April Fool thingy is getting far too lame than it used to be. This time it’s GMail Custom Time.
Ever wish you could go back in time and send that crucial email that could have changed everything — if only it hadn’t slipped your mind? Gmail can now help you with those missed deadlines, missed birthdays and missed opportunities.
‘Cmon guys, time you either made things more believable (or plausible) or at least actually launched a product, like you did with GMail. These things won’t cut it anymore.
Update: Oh well, I retract some of what I said, there are a lot more April Fool pranks this time than before. Here’s the whole list.
31March2008
Posted by Aditya under: Cricket; Indian Premier League.
I have been looking at websites of IPL franchises more out of curiosity, in terms of their awareness of the online market, than for just cricket related information. At the time of writing, Mumbai Indians, and Punjab Kings didn’t have websites. I will update this page if I do find websites of the remaining teams. I have brief reviews based on my first impressions of these sites, but I will, perhaps, write a more detailed post on what I think of the overall picture later.
These are the websites of the other teams though:
Rajasthan Royals They have a decent website which is functional at the moment with scope for future expansion into merchandising and tapping the mobile market. A decent website that looks upon Shane Warne as their mascot.
Bangalore Royal Challengers I find Vijay Mallya’s face at the splash screen a little creepy. Why can’t he stay at the background for once? Even the Knightriders don’t have SRK in their splash screen. Again, a decent enough site that looks a little colourful, but I don’t like the Red and Yellow combination.
Kolkata Knight Riders SRK seems to have a good idea of the market pulse. If their website is any judge, he’s got things right and seems very serious about this venture. He will dream big no doubt. (Full disclosure: I’m not a big fan of SRK’s acting) His website has a rather decent theme song too. I however, highly doubt if his heavy flash oriented web site would allow low bandwidth sites to get full value, but props to his tech staff. Great Bong had his take on Kolkata Knight Riders but it looked like he was trying hard to sound funny, which is rather quite unlike GB.
Delhi Daredevils They just have a splash screen with some jarring 5 second electric guitar riff, on loop.
Deccan Chargers An average website, but I don’t get why these IPL teams find the need to seek inspiration from American teams (in this case, the San Diego Chargers). The PHL had better team names. Deccan Chargers also think they are ‘The Unstoppables’. We’ll see how true that is. Their press releases also include a headline ‘DC unleashes war cry’. Even being owned by an English Daily cannot stop such gems from being published on websites.
Chennai Super Kings I like their site. Really love it. It eschews the flash-heavy nature of Kolkata Knight Riders while not having your run of the mill design. Unlike Bangalore, where the ego-maniacal Vijay Mallya sticks his head in the splash screen, they have Dhoni at the forefront; the intentions are consistent with what they had to say during the auction, that Dhoni is their most important player, given his popularity and brand value, apart from being the captain of the national one-day (and T20) side.
It’s a shame that Mumbai doesn’t even have a website. So much for being owned by RIL. And Punjab Kings? Apparently Preity Zinta isn’t learning much from SRK’s marketing blitz.
Update: Kings XI Punjab now have a website, and so do Mumbai Indians.
And finally, a word on the official IPL website: it’s a disgrace. So much money and they couldn’t come up with staff who could update the site beyond their latest update, which is dated to 20th of February. But more on that later.
29March2008
Posted by Aditya under: Uncategorized.
I’ve just upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.5. So this post comes from the sparkly new admin interface. I am test driving this — it helps that the site is only being read by me (presumably), so the background tweaks are possible without too much worry; that and the fact that there isn’t too much content on this site to worry about losing stuff.
My first impressions are not exactly first impressions in the true sense, as I have seen Matt’s screencast of RC2 and the gallery feature was rather impressive. However, the light blue interface does take time getting used to. The entire backend will take time to get used to, though.
Amit Varma makes a guest appearance on Cricinfo, defending the Indian Premier League. Unsurprisingly, he brings his pet concepts on free market economics into it. Not that I am strongly opposed to the ideology, but most of his articles, lately, have tended to relapse into free market economic stupor that I am starting to tire, a bit. But again, as he would say, I have the freedom of choice to read them or not, don't I? (0)
12March2008
Posted by Aditya under: Links.
Hi this is my first proper post, although the site is far from complete, in terms of design and other associated bells and whistles. I should get things reasonably functional soon. Till then I’ll let you feast on some interesting links:
- Berbatov shows excellent technique as he volleys one past the ‘keeper. Pity he plays for the spuds. Oh, and Spurs lost — despite dominating. Business as usual, I’d reckon.
- Peter Roebuck — ‘India’s Hour‘. The article, while being predominantly good, does fall into the trap that Western writers tend to fall in at times. Roebuck, to his credit, gets it spot on — but for the part where he had to highlight Dhoni’s and Ishant’s modest background for their success. I don’t get why Dhoni’s success is being attributed to his small town roots.