This month I will focus on a few of the popular coffee company logos such as Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, Lavazza among others. I am hoping to see if I can find some common themes across these logos.
The first and most important thing you will have to do is determine the keywords you are tuning your website for. The trick here is to determine what your potential users are likely to search for. Also remember, do not try and tune for generic keywords because there will be a ton of other sites who have already tuned for it. Lets take an example. Lets say you have an Indian Restaurant called Banjara Palace in Bangalore. The first instinct may be to tune for "Banjara Palace" or "Indian Restaurant". Anyone who already knows your name is not your target audience, although its important to tune for your name as well. Even if you get in the top list for Indian Restaurant, whats the point, someone in Japan who searches finds you will probably never come to Malleshwaram for lunch.
Do you own a website, blog, business related to India, then you can get a free listing in the Dinesh.com Indian web directory. This directory has over 5000 listings at this point and a lot of the sections show up in the rankings on Google.
To submit your site, navigate to the proper category and add your listing. The listing will be approved or rejected in about a week. If you site is not related to India or does not meet my standards, it will be rejected. If you find that your site needs a new category, please add it in the description and I will consider it.
Do not submit any "Work At Home" or "Money Making Related Sites"
Technology has moved ahead significantly in the few years since Netflix started delivering DVDs through the mail. A few years ago they introduced the streaming service allowing users to see videos on their computers. Over time, the on-demand library has not only grown significantly but is also available on numerous devices such as the PS3, Wii and Blu-Ray DVD players. Now comes the latest device to support the streaming...the iPhone.
When the service was announced for the iPhone, I was very thrilled because it meant I could watch a movie any time, any place. This comes in useful on trips when I am sitting at the airport or for my son when we are driving. The streaming service works over 3G or Wi-Fi. I have tried it over both and the quality (depending on your 3G Service) is excellent.
The application itself is still version one and needs improvement (especially in Genres Navigation) but it still provides a lot of good functionality such as
Ability to view/add to your existing On-Demand Queue
Ability to pause and resume your movie.
Given the small resolution of the screen, the quality of the picture is very clear.
The search function is good if you know what you want but if you are browsing then its a little difficult to find something.
Regarding the Bollywood collection, while its still small (about 75 movies), they have many of the latest movies showing up within a few weeks of the official releases. Some of the popular Bollywood films available are Dostana, Rajneeti, Kaminey, Chak De India, Swades etc.
An update to my posts on Netflix vs Blockbuster. I have switched back to Netflix as I considered the service to be far better. The main reasons were
The queues were virtually never back-logged. Especially with new movies, they are always available unlike what I saw in Blockbuster
Netflix has a distribution center in Santa Ana which is very close to where I live and so I always got movies very quickly.
Netflix also has a good selection of Hindi movies or Bollywood movies which I watch very often. The movies take a little bit of time to show up on Netflix (maybe 2-4 weeks) but the choice is good. The only thing
I do not like about the Netflix Indian movie section is that one cannot sort by release date making if difficult to find the latest movies.
The new user interface in Netflix where the description of the movies shows up in a pop-up is very good.
Aug 2010 Update -
Its been a while since I wrote this article and things have drastically changed since then. Netflix has clearly dominated the battle. Its stock price is soaring and Blockbuster is facing bankruptcy and has started shutting down many of its stores. Here are some key changes
- Netflix's Streaming service has also improved significantly during the time. They have a lot more to offer through their streaming service. They also offering the streaming service on numerous devices that include not in the Roku Box but also many Blu-Ray DVD players, the PS3, Wii and now also on the iPhone.
- Their selection of Bollywood movies through the streaming service is also pretty good. I have seen many new movies such as Kaminey, Dostana and Rajneeti within a few weeks of theatrical release.
- Their searching and sorting features have also become better.
- RedBox which offers DVD for $1 at your local grocery store, 7-11 etc is planning on offering a streaming service. Lets see how that works out.
We have launched our food site, Indian Foods Guide , two years ago dedicated to the best food on the planet, Indian Food. The site was created with the idea of promoting Indian food around the world. Over the last two years we have made a lot of great progress with this site and it is now a good reference for Indian food, grocery stores and restaurants. The site has a number of sections in it but the primary ones are
Indian Recipes - We curently haveover 500 Indian recipes on the site. The recipes are categorised and easy to search based onkey ingredients, cuisine type etc. We have over 50 of the recipes in video format.
Indian Restaurants - We have over 17,000 restaurants from around the world. We are in the process of adding additional restaurants everyday. We have also added photographs of the restaurants, their menus and other information on our site. The site is growing rapidly as we add new restaurants, reviews, photographs on a regular basis.
Indian Grocery Stores - We have over 3000 Indian Grocery Stores from over 20 countries over the world and we are also constantly adding new stores on a regular basis.
We think this is one of the best restaurant and grocery guide for Indians. Please help us by telling us about new stores and also reviewing the existing stores and restaurants that you frequent.
To blend or contrast that is the question!! Based on what I have read from a few blogs, there are mixed recommendations on whether to blend your ads with the content on your site or to contrast it. By blending, you make your ads seem like they are part of the content while contrasting makes them stand out. Its hard to say which method works and probably depends a lot on how your content is structured.
Dinesh.com is primarily a blog and information site and most of my users spend time reading something and I have found that the blending method works best over the contrast method. This is probably because when someone is reading something they typically do not want to get distracted from what they are reading. I have managed to use the blend technique in the following way.
Blend Background, Text and Hyperlink Colors - My website uses black text, black hyperlinks and white backgrounds and so I have made my ads use the same color scheme. I have met with some success in leaving the hyperlinks in blue and thats something you can experiment with on your site.
Blend the fonts (family and size) - In order to give a seamless experience, its important to blend the fonts of your site and Adsense to give that seamless experience. Adsense currently supports Times, Verdana and Arial. I find Verdana the best for my type of Blog website and I have gone ahead and used the same font family and font size for my ads as well as my blog.
Blend the reading layout - Most websites have left and right navigations/sections that read from top to bottom and the main content pane that reads left to right. I have tried to keep my ads to follow the same reading pattern. With most Google Ads getting the left to right is rather difficult because their ads formats run top to bottom. The new 728 x 90 format released in July 2010 somewhat achieves the left to right and I have seen good increase in click-through rates.
Blend close to main reading content - The closer/deeply integrated the ad with your content, I think you have a better shot of improving CTR.
Blending ads with your content is not against the policies of Google Adsense, unless you do something that Google prohibits. As usual, I recommend making the change and seeing the results 1-week before and after the change to determine the impact.
When Google came up with their text ads, they were very successful because users seemed to click through at a higher rates over image ads. It was my belief that text ads would get a higher click through rate thereby increasing my earnings. In many of my ad settings, I had gone with text only ads but had to reconsider the setting based on the following email I got from the Adsense team.
Our system analyzed your domain, dinesh.com, and found that you’re not opted-in to image ads on at least 50% of the pages of your site. For example, we’ve found that your 160x600 ad unit on dinesh.com/history_of_logos/worlds_best_brands_and_logos.html is only opted-in to text ads. We recommend that you opt-in to image ads for all of your AdSense ad units.
We've found that our publishers who show both image and text ads are able to earn higher revenues. Opting into text and image ads increases competition among the ads competing to appear on your site, as both text and rich media ads (image, flash and video) will compete in the ad auction. We will then automatically display the ads which will yield the highest earnings for you.
I did change the setting and what I found was that with the image/text setting, my click through rate dropped a bit but my ECPM went up thereby my earnings went up. I would strongly recommend experimenting with this setting.
Observe data for a week before and for a week after the change and make a decision. Each site is unique so you may get different results.
Our system analyzed your domain, dinesh.com, and found that you’re not opted-in to image ads on at least 50% of the pages of your site. For example, we’ve found that your 160x600 ad unit on dinesh.com/history_of_logos/worlds_best_brands_and_logos.html is only opted-in to text ads. We recommend that you opt-in to image ads for all of your AdSense ad units.
We've found that our publishers who show both image and text ads are able to earn higher revenues. Opting into text and image ads increases competition among the ads competing to appear on your site, as both text and rich media ads (image, flash and video) will compete in the ad auction. We will then automatically display the ads which will yield the highest earnings for you.
The Tour de France is an annual bicycle race held in in France and nearby countries. First staged in 1903, the race covers more than 3,600 kilometres and lasts three weeks. As the best known and most prestigious of cycling's three "Grand Tours", the Tour de France attracts riders and teams from around the world. The race is broken into day-long segments, called stages. Individual times to finish each stage are aggregated to determine the overall winner at the end of the race. The rider with the lowest aggregate time at the end of each day wears a yellow jersey. The course changes every year, but the race has always finished in Paris.
The Tour De France Logo in my mind, is quite brilliant. If you don't observe closely, it will seem like a poorly designed logo with some funny font but if you watch it carefully, you will see the beauty of the design (not everyone may agree). The key aspects are described below.
1. The O, U and the R along with the Yellow circle are in the shape of a cyclist riding a cycle.
2. The Yellow circle helps complete the circle but also represents the "Yellow" in the "Yellow Jersey" which is handed to the leader at the end of each day.
If you don't see the cycle in the logo the first time, it may seem like a logo with some clumsy fonts but once you see the cycle, it seems rather brilliant.
In 2010, one of the biggest news stories was the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill which happened in the Gulf of Mexico. The spill started in April, 2010 due to the blow out of an oil well. The blowout was leaking oil at the rate of 500K-4 million gallons/day and is an environmental disaster with massive damage to the environment in the Gulf of Mexico. BP has so far made several attempts to plug the leak with limited success.
This incident sparked a huge outcry from the world especially the environmental organizations such as Green Peace. They organized a Logo Parody Contest and some of the popular logos are shown below.
One of my pet peeves is around the use of seat belts. The bottom line is that seat belts saves lives and I was fortunate enough to have 1st hand experience where a seat belt saved my father's life. In 1990, there was a plane crash of an Airbus A320 in Bangalore, when an Indian Airlines, crashed into a swamp just as it approached the runway. The plane caught fire and roughly 100 of the 130 people on board died. My father was in that flight and survived that crash. The seat belt saved his life, although he was bruised when he hit hit face and legs with the seat in front.
I really find it strange when people refuse to wear seat belts especially for situations belows
- This is such a common trend in India where many people remove their seat belts, moments after the plane touches the ground. This is one of the most dangerous
times because if the plane hits the brakes, you will get tossed. Also, where are you going? Can you not wait till the plane stops? Is the seat belt so uncomfortable?
- Another trend is to remove the seat belt the moment the "Wear Seat Belts" sign is taken off. There are cases where the plane can hit air pockets and drop several meters if if you are not wearing your belts, you can get tossed up and hit your head among other things.
- Another common practice is for people sitting in the back seat not to wear seats. I don't understand why? If there is an accident at 70 miles an hour, you will be in great danger. Why is it OK to not wear seat belts at the back? It should be the law.
- Not wearing helmets or seat belts for short distances. Many people think, "Oh, I am just going to the next street...what can happen"? .....well you never know.
If you are still not convinced, take a look at this video and do it for the ones who care for you.
The Indian Premier League (also known as the "DLF Indian Premier League"), is a Twenty20 cricket competition created by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and sanctioned by the International Cricket Council. The first edition of the Indian Premier League starts on 18 April 2008. The IPL consists of 8 teams
Bangalore Royal Challengers
Chennai Super Kings
Hyderabad Deccan Chargers
Delhi DareDevils
Kings XI Punjab
Kolkata Knight Riders
Rajasthan Royals
Mumbai Indians
The IPL logo consists of three pieces
- Batsman hitting a attacking stroke to represent the game of cricket. The swish of the ball moving attempts to signify that the game is fast moving and more exciting.
- The pyramid logo of DLF Universal Limited. DLF, is India's largest real estate developer based in New Delhi, India. DLF Universal secured exclusive rights to the Indian Premier League title sponsorship worth INR 200 crore (over US$50 million) for five years.
- The text "Indian Premier League" written in blue, probably to represent India's colours.
Overall, I am quite disappointed in the logo. Firstly it lacks any color and originality. I think the logo could have been more colorful. Secondly, plugging in DLF's logo in the logo is a poor attempt to please the sponsor.
The logos of the partipating teams are a lot more colorful and original and the IPL logo pales in comparison even more.
The 2010 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament involves 65 schools playing in a single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball. The event began on March 16, 2010 and will conclude with the championship game on April 5 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana. The event will also be the first Final Four at Lucas Oil Stadium; the RCA Dome and Market Square Arena hosted past Final Fours when the event was held in Indianapolis.
This event is also popularly refererred to as March Madness.
The Logo for the event is shown above and the following are some of the key elements in the logo.
The logo is pretty simple and contains the event name and location - NCAA 2010 Final Four Indianapolis
The logo has the orange basketball color.
The skyline shown has the Lucas Oil Stadium which is the location of the event and the Indianapolis skyline as well.
