When I heard the news this morning, like every body else I was shocked. That is perhaps an understatement. I was dumbfounded. This can not be! The King can not be dead. Living in East Africa, I was about 12 or 13 when I first saw the Thriller Video. It was the first music video I had seen and the amazing story line, the music, the props, the effects and the makeup all blew me away. I even participated in a high school musical program, in a version of Thriller, as one of the zombies.

Over the years I, like millions of others listened to Michael Jackson’s music. When my daughter came of age and was listening to music and all, I was proud to talk about Michael and recount my experience with Michael’s music.

As Michael turned from a great pop icon to a circus act, I still kept faith and believed that one day this would all turn around and Michael Jackson would show us his musical genius. When I heard of his return to the music scene and his proposed 50 tour deal in the UK, I was really excited.

But Michael Jackson is now dead and I guess he has left behind a legacy of greatness as well as a history of personal troubles and eccentricity. I would like to pay a tribute to the greatness.

He was, is and will be the King of Pop. I hope his soul rests in peace.

On Friday I had called in the first thing in the morning to upgrade my current iPhone 2G to the brand new iPhone 3Gs. Even thought it took me 50 minutes waiting on the phone, the actual upgrade part after the agent came online was pretty fast. Especially because I had the old 2G version and my contract actually ends this month.

When I un-boxed the new iPhone 3Gs, I really did not know how to proceed. How do I activate this new iPhone? What happens to the old one? How can I convert that into a pay as you go so that my daughter Nikki can use it?

The box did not contain any instructions on this process. The carrier website did not have any info either and I was surprised to see that Apple website did not have any thing too. I had to call the carrier customer support. The agent told me take the sim card out of the old one and insert it into the new one. The new iPhone box came with an implement (called the SIM ejector) that I had to use. The old and then new iPhones have a small hole next to the ear phone jack point that you would need to insert the ejector and out pops the SIM slot.

After that it was smooth sailing and activation took less than 5 mins!

The new iPhone 3Gs is quite awesome! It is slightly smaller than then old 2G version and quite lighter too. When Apple said the “s” in iPhone 3Gs for for “speed”, they are not kidding. The new iPhone is quite fast. The apps are faster, the screen are faster, the sync is faster…every thing is faster.

The single more important feature for me was the video and I proceed to test it out! It was sweet! The quality of the video is awesome. I shot a couple of videos and uploaded them directly to YourTube from the iPhone 3Gs. It was a blast. The quality was awesome and the speed of upload was phenomenal too.

So, that is all for now. Before I pop in any more exclamation marks or use the word “awesome”, I will stop and get back to playing with my new iPhone 3Gs.

The host would place the sake cup in a saucer of some kind. He/she would then start pouring sake into the cup up to the brim and continue pouring till it overflows and start spilling into the saucer and only stops when the saucer is filled to the brim and ready to overflow.

The meaning behind the gesture is to show the generosity of the host and to express their gratitude for your presence. What an idea! Translated into the business arena, Brands show customer service beyond what is expected. Much more than what is expected.

This led me to analyze the kind of customer service my companies were offering (both online and offline). I looked into one specific online business that I am running (an online logo design company) and what we are doing in terms of meeting or exceeding the expectations of the customers. I was a little disappointed to find that we are perhaps meeting (barely) the expectations and the brand promise that we had started out with. In some instances, we were actually slightly behind.

Why? It is not for the lack of passion or dedication. I realized it was due to the price cutting and “cheapest service around” kind of business model that we were stuck in. When you charge so low for a professional service, it is quite hard to go beyond the brand promise and provide truly outstanding customer service. It is hard to make those calls before a project begins to see if there is any thing else the client might want to share with the design team. It is hard to call the client and find out their reaction to the initial design concepts presented. It is difficult to follow up after a project is complete and find out if the client had any issues with the files, or perhaps needed some assistance in using the new logo etc.

Why is it difficult? Because, at least in some industries and for small businesses, it costs money to offer outstanding customer service. It takes time and effort to make calls to clients when you really don’t have to or are not expected to. You need some one passionate and capable to be handling this kind of communication with your customers. Some one who would be expensive to retain. You can not simply outsource this kind of superior customer service.

So I thought, would our clients appreciate such customer service even if it means spending a bit more than than the competition? Or should we sacrifice our already meager profit margins and offer this kind of customer service and generosity from our pocket? Tough question. So I have decided to run an experiment. I will introduce a new package in our logo design service which will be a lot more expensive compared to the other packages and provide the highest level customer service that any one can offer in this industry category. Of course the next question would be weather the potential clients would be able to appreciate what they would get by going for the expensive option. Towards that end, I will have to work out a way to communicate this message and see if there are any takers and what the results would be like.

Book mark this page for more updates on this topic as I conduct my experiment. I would also invite you to share your own experiences and this topic and offer any insights.

The Boleyn sisters, younger, plainer Mary (Scarlett Johansson), and (infamous) older, captivating Anne (Natalie Portman)—the one who lost her head—are caught in a web of family duty set forth by their ambitious father, Sir Thomas (Mark Rylance, who starred in Angels And Insects) and his brother, (their) paternal uncle Norfolk (David Morrissey, who starred in The Reaping).

Because King Henry and his bride, Katherine of Aragon (Ana Torrent), are having marital problems related to her not being able to produce a son/heir, The Boleyn men scheme to get one of their own in bed with the King. Anne is thrust into the King’s arms, but her forward advances are dismissed, and Mary turns out to be the sister who catches the King’s, eventually becoming his mistress. This sets Anne on a bender of revenge and seduction, which soon tears apart her family and the Royal family, all in one fell swoop.

Portman (Closer, Garden State, The Star Wars franchise) plays Anne deftly, straddling the line between hateful and sympathetic adeptly. Johansson (The prestige, Match Point, In Good Company, Lost In Translation) brings depth to the periphery role of “the other” Boleyn. Bana (Munich, Hulk, Black Hawk Down) seems made for the role of Henry VIII, and plays both a seductive villain and a royal leader well.

Kristin Scott Thomas (Gosford Park, Up At The Villa) plays the Boleyn mother, Lady Elizabeth, and Jim Sturgess (Across The Universe) plays the girls’ brother, George. The film also stars Juno Temple and Benedict Cumberbatch, both of whom starred in Atonement.

The film is presented in anamorphic 1.85:1 transfer, with audio in Dolby Digital 5.1, optional French and Spanish audio tracks, and English, French and Spanish subtitles. Extras include feature-length audio commentary with director Justin Chadwick; 12 deleted/extended scenes; “Members of the Court: Character Biographies,” which looks at Anne, Mary and George Boleyn, King Henry and Katherine, and the Duke of Norfolk in historical context, and features interviews with each actor, as well as writer Peter Morgan, novelist Philippa Gregory and producer Alison Owen. There are also three featurettes: the first, “To Be a Lady,” features interviews with cast, historians, and includes Kristen Scott Thomas; the second, “Translating History to Screen,” interviews Chadwick on how he bridged the gap between the book and the film; and the third, “Camera Tests,” shows Chadwick working with different techniques to capture the look he wanted to create.

The film is rated PG-13 “for mature thematic elements, sexual content and some violent images.”

While this film is not to be taken literally, it does raise plenty of interesting questions and explain enough Royal history to both teach and entertain. Fans of historical fiction, Portman, Bana or period pieces in general should find something to like about The Other Boleyn Girl.

I give The Other Boleyn Girl 4 stars out of 5 stars.

I am moving more towards tweeting industry related news, interesting posts and useful resources that I could share with my followers. To make this process more solid, today, I spend some time trying to automate the system using tool such as TwitterFeed, Twollow, TwitterKarma, TweetLater etc.

I am also trying to organize my sources of content that I will access for my tweets and blog posts. I think I have made a lot of progress. I will write another post soon outlining the various steps I have taken to enhance my social media participation and the results of these efforts. In the image above you can see my twitter account status as of today. I want to see how many followers I would have in a month’s time and also try and assess if I am making any more from Twitter at all.

Please share your stories of trying to enhance your twitter experience.

Chris talks about how people on social media networks such as twitter or facebook tend to ignore their fans and their messages. People spend so much time getting fans and connections but it has become a fad. Numbers are important. In fact I have noticed on LinkedIn, where I have a profile and more than 1500 connections, people get links and connections for bragging rights rather than for any practical use. Most often broadcast the number of connections they have in their profile name.

The same is the case on Twitter. Most people just try and get as many followers as possible. Yes, granted, this could be a good way to broadcast spam marketing messages. But that is not what twitter or any of these social media networks are about. If you have 10,000 followers on twitter then it is safe to assume that you are not really following them but rather simply want to send out your messages. Like a one way street.

I think people should not focus on bragging rights to the number of followers/connections etc and focus more on using these networks in the way they were meant to be used. To grow relationships, to share and to network in the true sense.

The reason for this change was my resolve to write more on my personal blog going forward. I write at least 2-3 posts a day for my other business websites. But when it comes to my personal blog I tend to become lazy and ignore it.

When I ignore my blog I feel that I am losing an opportunity to share my thoughts with my friends, colleagues and any other who may be coming to this website to find out more about me. My writing on my design and brand related websites is more formal and professional. On my personal blog I want to keep it more personal. I want to write about the things that inspire me daily, things that annoy me or plain piss me off. I want to rant about the shoddy products that we buy every day or the poor customer service our local telephone company dishes out.

I have also decided to move my movie reviews back to my blog. For almost an year now I have been writing movie reviews over at my gadget blog. But I think it would be better if I focused that website on gadget reviews and talk about movies here.

A major hurdle for me to write every day on my blog was the fact that I believed I needed to write about some thing important or some thing that made sense etc. But yesterday I realized that a personal blog was about expressing oneself and not about being professional or politically correct or be terribly interesting.

So check back often and please do post comments.

But I find it quite difficult to write any thing meaningful about a logo case study. How much info should I divulge about my client? How much should I with hold? Should I talk about the motivation behind the design? Should I talk about messages?

Anyway, hopefully I will be able to post a daily logo at least on alternate days. Please share your thoughts if you are trying to do some thing similar.

Conversation is a two-way process. Before, only people in the media can launch attacks against companies. Today, everyday customers can start conversations with you through comments in your website and other popular social networks. Passionate and disgruntled customers are now empowered to make or break your image. And they don’t need to pay a dime to do whatever they want to do.

Being responsive is more critical than ever. It can be your advantage over big corporations. These guys have to deal with bureaucracies before issuing official statements. As small business owners, speed and flexibility are on your side. With a little help from your slick BlackBerry or iPhone, you can reply wherever, whenever.

A well-designed website backed by a superior content management platform is a big help in managing crisis and reaching out with your customer. You might remember that there were toy recalls last year from Mattel, the renowned makers of Barbie. Its website became the main mouthpiece in resolving issues and informing the public about safety.

In the market filled with customers longing for personal attention, how you respond can be a crucial element in building strong relationship. Who knows what 1 comment can do to your business.

Delivery is very important when you are using a selling script. In some cases, people who use scripts tend to sound robotic, making more damage than good to your business image.

Writing a marketing or selling script is one of the most useful things you can develop for your business, if done right. One way to make your selling script sound natural is to simulate actual conversations with your customer. Try to make your opening line interesting and brief. The first thing you need to accomplish is to grab their attention and establish rapport.

Don’t start by selling or promoting your brands to your prospects. Instead, try to find out what a particular client wants or needs before you start talking about what you can offer. Open-ended questions are great in gathering insights.

Well-prepared answers to objections and questions about your product or services can lead to good conversations. Aside from that, your selling script can help facilitate closing - an area where many entrepreneurs and even salespeople are weak. At the end of the day, you should achieve a specific objective - it can be appointment, leads, sales, or even vital business information.