Coca-Cola “Happiness Truck” takes place in Rio de Janeiro and is a twist on the original idea, which showed a Coke machine that spit out free Cokes, flowers, balloon animals, pizza and submarine sandwich at a college cafeteria. This time around, a special truck dispenses free Cokes as well as a beach toy, a surfboard, sunglasses, beach chairs, t-shirts and soccer balls.
I have a successful friend who owns an international multi-million business with offices in many parts of the world.
We had lunch together some time ago in a western European capital (sorry for being discreet about details, he is a very low profile person because of the industry he is involved in) and during our chat, he confessed to me that he does not believe in smartphones and email communications.
Definitely his companies and team members are using them, but he has the most simple mobile phone you can ever imagine and he is not an old guy, he can absorb technology easily.
He bluntly said that the simple phone he has in his pocket can make most of his business and close most of his deals without being annoyed with a smartphone and endless ping-pong emails. He still believes that human communication is very important no matter how much technology will ease our lives with gadgets and tools and sometimes a simple phone call can solve a big problem.
Personally I prefer emails, because i can keep records of facts and things said and I try to use the phone less and less.
I bought my first domain name in 1995 or 1996, cannot remember that, but clearly remember paying $200- for it and it was bought thru Data Management (ISP in Lebanon). After a while I moved to Network Solution and some other registrars like 123domains and CheapNames and ended up with my domains spread between Netsol, Dotster, Godaddy and Bluerazor.
At the beginning, I was not interested buying a domain for my first name or last name, actually I never even thought about it and when I did, it was too late to get its dot-com.
I ended up having krikor.info for my blog and lately I offered myself krikor.me / krikor.co / krikor.us and for my last name I have ohannessian.info which is also used by some of my family members for email addresses.
Where krikor.com and krikor.net are owned by a guy living in the US. I tried to contact him since many years and asked if he is interested in selling krikor.com since the domain is sleeping and not used, but I never got an answer, even a negative one.
There is a 3rd company competing with us getting krikor domains, it is a German company krikor.de and they have registered so far .org / .mobi / .eu / .asia / .at / .biz
krikor.co.uk : owned by V. Tchelbakian.
krikor.fr: owned by Krikor Kouchian, a French musician.
krikor.nl: owned by Krikor Momdjian, a Dutch painter.
krikor.com.br: owned by Dikran Topjian
Some available generic krikor domains: .cc / .tv / .ca / .ws / .es / .it / .am / .fm / .nu / .tel
I guess you have been to a hypermarket at least once in your life since these big stores existed and the first time you stepped in, surely you were amazed by the surface size, the displays, the offerings and how huge the store is, you looked both ways and you could not see where it ends. But maybe soon and in my opinion, this will be a memory because I think the supermarkets and mainly hypermarkets surfaces in Europe will shrink more and more.
So you might be wondering why?
Many people might say that French are rude and arrogant, but when it comes to retail distribution, no one can deny that they are the kings of retail distribution (in french: la grande distribution) and they are the trend setters in this sector. in Europe they are the leaders and all the others follow.
Having said this, we should not forget other major European players such as Tesco (United Kingdom) and Metro Group (Germany).
During my career path, I had the chance to explore this French style of doing business when I was a buyer for Monoprix in Lebanon and wherever you go, no matter in which country, it is known that buyers are arrogant, not sure if this is linked to the French thing mentioned previously but I can easily say that it was a hell of an experience I had.
Lately I have been monitoring the French retail distribution scene more and very closely because of a dedicated project and during my last trip to France, I had this feeling that surfaces of hypermarkets will start shrinking because of the specialized stores growth.
Hypermarkets are big, they can vary from 3,000m² up to 25,000m², which means the operational cost is huge and with bad economies the average basket is down. Previously this difference was compensated from the non-food categories which is not the case anymore nowadays, even the problem is touching some of the food categories. Therefore very soon supermarkets and hypermarkets, will skip lots of categories and focus more on food and fight for more margins and discounts.
New store types were and are emerging more and more, taking away the small categories from the hypermarkets and turning them into more specialized store types, giving more focused experience and offering wider selection for the consumers.
The below table will show you the alternatives of some hypermarket categories.
TV channels, we have many in Lebanon, but unfortunately, you cannot watch any of them in a continuous mode because of their grids or their “political” views which are divided to the extreme.
Personally I don’t care neither about politics, nor about the colors of the parties these channels are supporting.
Hopefully none of my Lebanese blog readers, will analyze the top tv channels logos and the way they were listed, I have done it randomly.
Unfortunately the grids are mostly focused on 3 major types, political talk shows on the top of the list, then dubbed Turkish/Mexican series and shows with stupid anchors telling stupid jokes and laughing stupidly (ok, i like jokes, but i will not spend 2 hours in front of the tv for this)
What is missing in Lebanon in my opinion is business/financial/marketing/consumerism/brands/technology/you name it/ … focused channels. OK maybe we cannot afford a full channel for these, but what about a weekly 1 or 2 hours show covering such topics?
I must admit that there is one channel doing this, which is MTV Lebanon, but this is happening at the end of their prime time news, monday to friday and only for 5 minutes (more or less), including a few seconds spot for the sponsor. And at some point, you can barely understand what the anchor is saying, because of the speed the words are coming out of their mouth, lack of time and limited air time.
I am also convinced that if any Lebanese channel goes in this direction, this will also bring them lots of money from the brands. I am not a tv experienced person, but surely there are ways to optimize such show(s) and offer a big chunk of business oriented viewers what they deserve.
Some of you might say that we have CNBC-Arabia, but it is a fact that in the media/tv industry, Lebanese prevail by far, with all my respect to everybody and without any discrimination. IMO if any Lebanese tv channel take control of such a show, the difference can be told.
More over, CNBC-Arabia is focused on the Arab world, and you always have the feeling that 80-90% of their news is targeted towards the GCC and the rest is for other Middle Eastern and North African countries.
No matter at what time of the day you switch to CNBC-Arabia, they are talking about GCC.
Until we see a Lebanese dedicated business channel the CNBC/Bloomberg/FoxBusiness style, so dear Lebanese tv channels, start by giving us a weekly interesting show and i assure you that it will be a success and your viewers ratings will be satisfying.
Why would you use Quora over Convore or vice-versa?
I don’t think it’s an either-or. I’d add Namesake into this question too (Namesake has some advantages over Convore, but that’s for another question to answer).
But the two are VERY different, even if on the surface they look similar.
Let’s look at how they are different:
1. Quora is a knowledge repository. Convore is a chat room.
2. Quora’s design and mission affords long text. Convore affords short back and forth snippets of text.
3. Quora forces real names and real identities. Convore starts with your Facebook or Twitter identity, but lets you use a “handle” so it’s hard to figure out real people’s names.
4. Quora creates a feed of your activity (which is why I was fooled into thinking it was a next-generation blogging platform). Convore doesn’t have such a thing and even if it did it wouldn’t make sense because your participation in Convore is back-and-forth chat and one single bit of participation wouldn’t make sense out of context.
5. Quora is keeping a really interesting reputation score (and I theorize a lot more, too) about you. Convore is going to have a tough time doing that because let’s say I left a really great note in the middle of a multi-thousand message chat room. How would Convore know that it was great? There’s no way to signal to the system that it was.
6. Quora rewards great answers, which makes it defacto elitist. Convore lets everyone participate equally, unless you do something so egregious that you get kicked out.
7. Quora, because of its system that votes good answers up and bad answers down, will have a lot less noise. Convore will have the “Chat Room Problem” which is, the masses are asses and when you let them have equal billing you get a ton of noise. Just look at this one thread: https://convore.com/techcrunch/c… See all the noise in there compared to Quora?
8. Quora is better for “day after” conversations where Convore is better for “in the moment” conversations, thanks to its live chat.
9. Quora will have better SEO for your participation there than Convore will give you (because Convore won’t be able to separate out good answers from noise).So, for me it’s not use one over another. I’ll use both side-by-side.
That said, I think Quora has more value long term and I believe advertisers will want to put their messages onto Quora (and will be able to a lot better because of the deep content here) more than they will want to participate in Convore which will look messier and more chaotic (brands tend to avoid those places).
I would use Quora over Convore as Quora affords people time to consider, draft, re-word and then publish their answer.
I can only see this making for richer, more wisely considered and researched responses.
People who contribute well on Quora typically will read and reference other user responses (or part thereof) so you also still have a conversation of sorts.
I think where Convore (capability) will come into its own is when a group of people, perhaps those who are following a question already in Quora, want to discuss individually or a group specific aspects of responses that Quora’s wiki style approach is not ultimately suited for.
In short, I think they would work better together. I also thing Convore are hardly pitching themselves as a Quora competitor and are likely to look remarkably different in even just the next 3 – 4 months as they evolve.
Convore is more complementary than competitive to Quora. On Quora, the answers are meticulous curated while on Convore it’s more spontaneously written. If you take the discussion from Convore to write the Quora answer, you probably come up with a pretty darn good one.
“You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians.
Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future.
You probably did too; you just don’t recall it.
See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand.
But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that?
– Robert. R. McCamman
Read Full Blog Post: http://krix.me/hbYCrn
My blog, Krikor.info was featured in Communication Magazine, February 2011 issue.
Other featured blogs on the same page:
http://beirutspring.com – @beirutspring
http://migh.info – @migheille
http://plus961.com – @plus961
http://liveinleb.com
http://blogbaladi.com
If you would like to check the full page Blogosphere, click on the below picture.
Thank you to whomever picked my blog to appear in the magazine.
In my opinion ties are now very old fashion stuff to wear. I have around 30 of them in my closet and I wear a tie only when i am obliged to and feel so uncomfortable because no matter what, the tie will give you the feeling of being strangled thus not working or thinking properly and feeling itchy and scratchy all the time.
And when was the last time i bought a tie? I don’t really remember, but i do remember that i made sure buying them in 1 color and so classical, so i don’t need to worry about fashion trend.
Some people think that wearing a tie will give you extra positive look, which i think is totally wrong. Unfortunately as i said, sometimes i have to wear a tie during exhibition or very sensitive meetings, because i am asked too by my upper management and this dragged many times to long discussions about the issue.
I also don’t understand people wearing ties to a wedding during summer when it is +35° and sweating for 4-5 hours just because it is a wedding and they “should” wear a tie. I searched a lot but could not find a law or savoir-vivre rule saying that you are obliged to wear a tie to a meeting or a wedding ceremony.
Being comfortable in a meeting is a must. I am not saying people should wear bermudas and flipflops to an important meeting, but my point of view says that wearing a decent full suit with a shirt is enough no matter how important this meeting is.
On a more personal level, i prefer wearing the Jeff Bezos style (dark jeans, light blue shirt, dark blue blazer).
