“XYZ is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application…”

“…possibly the best radio station in Singapore.”

“…probably the best Indian curry that you could ever have!”

A new clan of pseudo-claims.

What are claims? (Not the insurance types, and definitely not the legal ones). For the non-branding junta, claims are what the word means. Marketers make claims for their brands based on the product performance, efficacy, credentialing by third party, external certification, internal R&D etc. Look around you and you’ll see claims everywhere (“Toothpaste most used by dentists themselves“, “Reduces dandruff by up to 100% and prevents hair fall“, “Best satisfaction guaranteed or your money back“, “Certified by American Health Association“, “Fights 7 signs of aging” and so on and so forth). I will not call out the brands and their associated claims, but you get the idea.

What is catching my attention is the slow movement of claim history towards more and more murky claims and pseudo-claims. ‘No product is better than X‘ translates to ‘X is as good as any other’. ‘Possibly the best‘ and ‘Definitely superior performance‘ always crack me up. Possibly? Superior? Superior to what? Your own performance 2 months ago, possibly.

And the opening claim is absolutely hilarious. ‘Almost certainly‘!!! How certain are we? Almost? But then, can’t blame the brands nowadays. Especially Web brands have their positions and superiority challenged on a daily basis. So no point wasting time, energy and resources to go for the superiority claim (one has to research into the details, do massive surveys and involves agencies to say that one is the best product / brand / service in the industry). So one would rather use a murky claim that supports and emphasizes the goodwill that Web brand has.

Like I used to say before; such great insights one gets only on my blog. Possibly the best branding blog you’ve never read.

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Michael Jackson. What a genius, what a voice, what a career. I am not particularly fond of pop music (of the Boyband-girlband variety) but this man is something else. He has been an inspiration in composition, voice, performance, and sheer creativity. And he turns 50 today. A tribute is due.

From the time of the famous Jackson 5, who were the biggest names in Motown in their early teens, Michael was something special. I remember the first time I saw his video when he was about 8 years old: in complete control of the stage, and more importantly, of his voice, and the crowd as well. Such energy, and the voice too powerful to ignore. A voice that overpowers the wonderful accompanying instruments and voices of his brothers. He was the star, clearly.

Quincy Jones and ‘Off the Wall’ happened, followed by ‘Thriller‘. My oh my. What an album. Multi-platinum, multi million selling, multi-Grammy winning and whatnot. Every song is a fricking lesson in song arrangement, voice modulation, instrumentation, bass lines and clarity. And then the ‘Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever‘ TV special happened where he first performed his Moonwalk. And the rest was not just history; it was Michael fever everywhere. And then, to follow it up with Bad, Dangerous and HIStory. How much great music one has to have within himself to come up with albums like that.

I have a lot of personal favorites: Lyrics arrangement and Van Halen’s guitar in Beat it; the rhythm pattern in Jam (the first English song I ever heard); powerful chorus in the live version of The Way You Make Me Feel; beatboxing in Stranger in Moscow; Liberian Girl, Invincible, Bad, Billie Jean, Earth Song, They don’t really care about us; and I’m not even talking about any of the videos. Just the bleddy songs. Unbelieveable!

Almost all his songs are genius material; hence no point listing all of them. He is a true legend, in the sense that he has been the material of public paranoia many times over; has been inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (twice); 13 Grammy awards, 13 number one singles, 750 million albums sold worldwide; the Moonwalk, the Crotch Grab all becoming parts of the repertoire of many budding dancers world over.

Sheer Musical Genius.

But there’s one thing I would like to say to Michael.

Stop whatever the fuck you are doing. Sleeping with children, dangling your baby from your balcony, painting your face, drafting skin from your ass onto your chin; Stop all that for fuck’s sake.

And get back to making your music. That’s your only emancipation. That’ll save you from yourself.

[Pic courtesy: Yahoo.]

Update: And he dies before he hits 51. What a shame! What a loss to music! How I wished he would re-discover himself. He was almost on his way back to stardom, with his new tour. And then, history loses the true superstar. Sigh. I am really pissed at fate for once. He deserved another chance.

Wordpress rocks. In extendability (widgets, plugins, that too all free and open source); in design (beautiful free themes, wonderful CMS capabilities, magazine styles, et al); and in ease of use. Just for starters, the plugins I use on my website (which are listed by using another plugin!):

There are 76 plugins used: 35 active plugins and 41 inactive plugins.

Active Plugins

  About Me widget 2.1
» Samuel Devol & John BouAntoun (url)
Adds an “About Me” widget to your sidebar.

  Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button .9.9.4
» Add to Any (url)
Help readers share, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service. [Settings]

  Advanced Category Excluder 1.4.3
» DjZoNe (url)
This plugin helps you to manage your content, RSS feeds, sidebar widgets, and fine tune where you want to display your posts, pages, links, link categories, or hide.

  Advanced Category Excluder Widgets 1.4.3
» DjZoNe (url)
This plugin one basic widgetsm that support exclusion

  Akismet 2.2.7
» Matt Mullenweg (url)
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.

  All in One SEO Pack 1.4.6.13
» Michael Torbert (url)
Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog.

  Audio player 1.2.3
» Martin Laine (url)
Highly configurable single track mp3 player.

  Configurable Tag Cloud 4.5
» Keith Solomon (url)
A tag cloud plugin for Wordpress 2.3 to give you more flexibility with the styling of your tag cloud.

  Configure SMTP 2.7
» Scott Reilly (url)
Configure SMTP mailing in WordPress, including support for sending e-mail via SSL/TLS (such as GMail).

  Contact Form 7 2.3
» Takayuki Miyoshi (url)
Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible.

  Exclude Pages from Navigation 1.9
» Simon Wheatley (url)
Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. IMPORTANT NOTE: This will remove the pages from any “consumer” side page listings, which may not be limited to your page navigation listings.

  Feed Statistics 1.3.1
» Christopher Finke (url)
Compiles statistics about who is reading your blog via an RSS feed and what they’re reading.

  FireStats 1.3.6-stable
» Omry Yadan (url)
Statistics plugin for WordPress.

  flickrRSS 4.0
» Dave Kellam (url)
Allows you to integrate the photos from a flickr rss feed into your site.

  Google Adsense widget 1.0
» Otto (url)
Like the Text widget, but specifically for Google Adsense blocks. Up to 4 instances of this widget may exist (since Google only allows 3 ads and one link block on a page). Heavily derived from the Text widget code included with the widget plugin by Automattic, Inc.

  Google Reader widget 1.8
» James Wilson (url)
Adds a sidebar widget to show your latest shared stories.

  Google Reader widget 0.1
» Miguel Ibero (url)
Adds a widget with the links to the stories shared or starred or of a certain tag of a google reader

  Gravatars 2.6
» Scott Merrill (url)
This plugin provides an administrative interface to control default gravatar options. Registered users can also (optionally) define local gravatar images that will override their gravatar.com default. Copyright 2005 Scott Merrill; Licensed under the terms of the GPL.

  Page Links To 2.3
» Mark Jaquith (url)
Allows you to point WordPress pages or posts to a URL of your choosing. Good for setting up navigational links to non-WP sections of your site or to off-site resources.

  Post-Plugin Library 2.6.2.1
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins. Make sure you have the latest version of this plugin.

  Previous Posts widget 1.0
» James Carppe (url)
A more customizable version of the built-in Recent Posts widget.

  Random Redirect 1.1
» Matt Mullenweg (url)
Allows you to create a link to yourblog.example.com/?random which will redirect someone to a random post on your blog, in a StumbleUpon-like fashion. You can also specific in the URL `random_post_type` or `random_cat_id`.

  Recent Comments 2.1.1 beta
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Displays a list of posts most recently commented. Instructions and help online.

  Recent Posts 2.6.2.0
» Rob Marsh, SJ (url)
Displays a highly configurable list of the most recent posts. Instructions and help online. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed.

  Twitter for Wordpress 1.9.7
» Ricardo González (url)
Displays your public Twitter messages for all to read. Based on Pownce for Wordpress by Cavemonkey50.

  Twitter widget 1.5
» Sarah Isaacson (url)
Sidebar widget to display your Twitter timeline. The widget allows you to choose to display your twitter username in front of your updates. You can also choose whether to display the time before or after the twitter post.

  Wordpress Automatic Upgrade 1.2.5
» Keith Dsouza (url)
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions. Go to Wordpress Automatic Upgrade to upgrade your installation Thanks to Ronald Huereca for making the plugin run in automatic mode.

  WordPress Database Backup 2.2
» Austin Matzko (url)
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Manage → Backup to get started.

  WordPress XML Export 2.0
» Aaron Brazell (url)
This will generate a WordPress XML export for import into other WordPress blogs. Based on code provided in 2.1+ versions of WordPress and originally written by Matt Mullenweg.

  WP-PluginsUsed 1.00
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.

  WP-PostRatings 1.11
» Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan (url)
Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.

  WP Subdomains 0.6.9
» Alex Stansfield (url)
Setup your main categories, pages, and authors as subdomains and give them custom themes. Originally based on Subster Rejunevation.

  Yet Another Related Posts Plugin 2.0.4
» mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine) (url)
Returns a list of the related entries based on keyword matches, limited by a certain relatedness threshold. New and improved, version 2.0!

  Youtube Favorites Plugin/Widget 1.0
» Ozh (url)
Customizable display of your latest Youtube favorite videos. (quick readme & manual)

  YouTube widget 1.1
» James Wilson (url)
Adds a sidebar widget to show a YouTube video.

Most of these are wonderful in functionality and are easily customisable. Do check them out for using in your website. And if you are using anything other than Wordpress to run your blog, it’s time to change, I say. Download the Wordpress engine and host your own; or get a free blog at Wordpress.com.

Don’t know what to gift a dear friend for his / her birthday? Thinking of buying an expensive shirt / perfume / watch which might never be used?

How about spending exactly the same amount of money, and gifting a donation? How about using the money you would’ve spent for a momentary pleasure to sponsor a year’s education of an underprivileged child, lets say?

I am not going to exalt the merits of charity or advantages of doing good to the society. Some like to do it, some don’t care. People should be fine either way. But for those who like to contribute, and especially for those who have friends who would appreciate such a gesture, there is www.Giveindia.org.

Very simple in design, takes a minute to create an account, and you can choose different causes to donate; old people, children, education, upliftment, food, water, rehabilitation etc. Choose your cause, enter your amount, and gift the donation to someone dear. My favorite choice is Children’s Education; you can choose your favorite from the many options available.

How is this different from the thousand other charity websites out there? First of all, Giveindia is just a portal, a funnel or a filter that makes sure money reaches the right hands. It is also an NGO (or so I think) but it validates and verifies all NGOs associated and registered with it. And the abundance of choice and ease of transaction add to the experience.

Give it a try. Giveindia.

Pass on the word. Mail or share with the icons below.

One of the reasons I love fingerstyle guitar. One of the reasons I think genius can actually make an instrument come to life in a way that mere talent struggles to imagine. One of the reasons I discovered Chet Atkins and one of the reasons I own a TE thumb-pick even though I can’t even play basic chords on the guitar.

Discover Tommy Emmanuel. I present two videos here. Angelina, recorded from a Korean TV station, and Somewhere over the rainbow, again a live recording.

Angelina: Notice just one thing. How much he is in love with the instrument, how he caresses it, how he enjoys his song. The mix of melody, chords and harmonics are second to none.

Somewhere over the rainbow: Beautiful harmonics, speed and incredible life in a song played on just one instrument.

Yes, there are many fingerstyle guitarists who are really good. Many classical guitarists who are also brilliant. But this is the first of the geniuses that I discovered, so the first I will write about. Read more about him here. And yes, go listen to the rest of his videos on Youtube.