The last 3 months has been yet another roller-coaster ride with only a few things looking positive, results of which I would probably know in a couple of weeks. In the moments of lowness,a.r.rahman’s compositions come to the rescue, but a couple of interesting events happened recently which also put me on a high…

I have always believed that if you need something really really badly, sooner or later, you would get it. With my cellphone picked at Bangalore railway station and my iPod losing it’s life, there was no way I could listen to those rahman’s tunes on my travel – and I used to travel a *lot*!

Just as it would sound like a tamil movie’s script, a month later, I got this beautiful mp3 player from Arun along with Inbound Marketing book from Balaji – a book that is a *must-read* for anyone starting up, which is not available in India! It came to be as a biggg surprise and was really touched given the fact that both the guys didn’t have a full-time job, but still decided to get something! I almost never get out without the MP3 player in my pocket, my mobile comes only next.

The second incident was even more dramatic! I was just flipping through the initial pages of the book ‘Viral Loop‘ at Odyssey. The first 10 pages just caught me on and I just didn’t want to leave without the book – a battle between mind [which always thinks about money] & conscience ensued and I came out not buying it. The 1st 10 pages dealt with an interesting story of hotornot, and I tweeted saying “Checkout hotornot.com” [PS: There is no reference to the book in the tweet]

In what would NOT even happen in Tamil cinema, that very night Rashmi shipped the book to my place!! Would you believe it? She had no clue whether I read the book (or) if I even knew that such a book existed! I am still yet to come out of the surprise/shock, there is a height to co-incidence also right? I so wanted the book in the afternoon and 2 days later I am reading it. Thank you soooo much!

Whenever I talk to someone about some of my genuine friends, these guys have always been there in the list – no, I am not saying because they got me a gift , honestly I have mentioned their names everytime I talk about genuine buddies [you can even ask my mom!]. The beautiful thing about these events was that there was no special occasion associated with the gift, not my birthday, not a new year, absolutely nothing at all – and to still remember me and send something is absolutely wonderful!

For now [and forever] my love and linux troubleshooting is always there for you guys . With respect to gifts, just wait for a little more time, I will be making money soon . Thank you soo much!

I am a big fan of Drew Houston, founder of dropbox and here he (along with Xobni) tells their startup story. Very insightful and must-read for product/technology based startups!

I mailed Drew on whether his presentation was applicable only to US startups [obviously not expecting a reply back, since I am used to people not getting back to me ] – but thoroughly, totally surprised, he got back to me!! saying….

And definitely needs to be agreed! It’s a great feeling when someone whom you regard as a source of inspiration takes some time off [even a couple of minutes] to get back to you!

The importance of a sign-up (or) login page is often underestimated. A recent survey indicates that having the text ‘Sign up‘ instead of Register increases the conversion by over 20% ! – isn’t that amazing?

• The old ways of signing-up are slowly getting deprecated, users want to try the product before they sign-up. Instead of Sign-up -> Try the product, users want to follow ‘Try the product -> like it? -> signup‘
• I already have to remember so many e-mail/password combinations, don’t want one more! – this might also be an apprehension amongst a lot of users. Fear not, for the introduction of openId, Facebook/twitter connect, etc. has made life simpler to so many people – the user can use the same credentials to login. Infact the popularity of these services is rising so much, that a few companies are making money by providing a way just to plug this to your site
• Some websites totally eliminate the concept of sign-up! Kudos – collect user data only if you need it. For eg: redbus doesn’t have a register/signup form – you possibly can’t do anything but book tickets
• Ok, you are hell bent on having a sign-up form – please don’t ask for my birthdate, gender (unless you are a dating site ofcourse!), my sister’s name, etc. Keep it simple with just 3 things – e-mail, password, confirm password
• Geeky world: Most of the designers/coders live in a geeky world! When the form contains e-mail, password – a lot of users think you want the password of their e-mail address! It’s quirky, yes! but come out of the geeky world, a lot of them are like that! You could consider renaming it as New password
• Activation e-mail: This is a common practice among a lot of websites where they send an e-mail to confirm whether you are really *you*. The user needs to come back to his mail account, click on that long lousy activation link, and then login again! (few websites provide your *password* also in the activation mail – atrocious!) This is an unnecessary hop – what you could do, is to set a cookie for 24 hours and log him in for that session.

The bottom-line being to make users use your product with minimum hassles. If your product sucks, it’s a different problem, but atleast let people use it Like most of my earlier posts, I have made all the mistakes above, but wait till the end of this month – we are reincarnating