Branding

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 5/19/2013 1:45:00 AM

'Reading the purveyors emotional commerce and the brands that fit the bill - had to check out the True&Co quiz to see if it would make me feel warm and fuzzy like the author said it would. Maybe I am not the target customer segment or age group because I was not able to see anything more than the obvious cuteness. Conversion by way of registration to the site certainly did not happen. I heard about the Abercrombie business from J a few days ago - her friends have been talking abo(...)'

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Waze

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 5/10/2013 1:52:00 AM

'Reading this story prompted me to download Waze and check it out. We have a long drive coming up this weekend and I am looking forward to using it.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the density of social activity in my sleepy little neck of the woods. Like the author says "I didn't think enough people would take the time to enter information about things like traffic or speed traps into Waze to make it useful, but I was wrong."There were nearly a hundred different reports on t(...)'

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Excuses

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 5/9/2013 1:39:00 AM

'Client I was meeting with today is in his late 50s and the father of a college senior. He was bemoaning the state of math education in grade school and beyond and how in his field of work, there is almost no local talent to be found. The issue of education being dumbed down to cater to the lowest common denominator came up and how his son did not study Algebra until 9th grade and struggled in physics because calculus was taught way too late. He talked about how both teachers and stu(...)'

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Forcing Social Consumption

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 3/17/2013 3:38:00 PM

'Google has made disappointing its customers a matter of routine. I have previously written on this blog about how their search is not serving me or my clients well. Now they have gone and decided to kill their one web asset that actually made a lot of sense - Google Reader. I spend a disproportionate amount of my time on Google Reader every day. While it may not be perfect, it did meet my needs for many years and I had grown attached to it. Just like that they served an interstitia(...)'

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Silver Bullet

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 3/3/2013 2:15:00 AM

'For the past few weeks I have been working with a client to solve a losely defined problem. As is often the case, the symptoms of process and technology malaises manifest themseleves in deeply uncomfortable ways. What is seen to be "the problem" is  not what needs solving - but that is a difficult message to communicate and have understood. What we have here is a customer experience (and perception) issue. The operations folk are following the playbook faithfully and (...)'

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Overshare

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 2/24/2013 3:33:00 AM

'While parking outside the B&N in my neigborhood, the car next to me caught my attention. On the back seat window was pasted a 3-D ultrasound image in full color. I am assuming it is the baby they are going to have in a few months. So exposed and vulnerable floating in fluid, strung by a chord - the unborn child. At what point did this most private and precious image that soon to be parents share with those closest to them (if that), become public property ? I felt a ru(...)'

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Overcompensating

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 2/22/2013 2:26:00 AM

'This article about A.A Milne's estrangement from his son is a cautionary note on the perils of being too perfect a parent. The simple beauty of Milne's stories revolving around Christopher Robin would suggest incredible harmony between father and child - the kind we may all aspire to have with our children. While the reason for the drift between the two is Christopher Robin turning "bitterly resentful" of his father's fame and living under his giant shadow, may not apply to mos(...)'

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End Point

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 2/20/2013 2:58:00 AM

'The topic of online dating has inexhaustible potential. This articleattempts to reach that elusive end point. In a sweeping commentary that touches on the socio-economics of online dating, the technology that enables it and what it means for the future of relationships, the author does not leave much out. However, he is not able to tie the many threads of this topic into a cohesive conclusion. Early on, he talks about what online dating companies are trying to create, namely "the (...)'

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Mediocrity

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 2/16/2013 4:41:00 PM

'A conversation I often have with J is about mediocrity - and how it can be a fair amount of effort to make it through life being mediocre. I encourage her to find her passion and work to excel in it - a much harder thing to do than being lulled into a false sense of comfort by natural abilities. In my experience, mediocrity is the place where talent and passion meets lack of directed effort. So easy to assume when you have natural gifts, success will take care of itself an(...)'

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Post Dead

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 1/26/2013 9:40:00 PM

'Each time I read about yet another new thing to turn a dead person's ashes into,  I wonder about the pace of innovation and it is means for death itself. Right now, a dead a dozen options. Depending on who is making the decisions, a dead person may not be able to just be gone without drama  - have their ashes scattered the old fashioned way or be buried. They may end up as a paper weight in their loved ones office or be hanging on a wall as a portrait - all of the ide(...)'

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Tribal Project

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 1/11/2013 8:47:00 PM

'Interesting article on single parenting and I specially liked this part about another kind of family in which to raise a childMy 8-year-old son and I live in a shared flat with three other adults, a journalist and two doctors. We are like a family, just that we haven chosen each other because we like each other rather than because we are connected by bloodline. My flatmates teach my son skills that I don't have: One plays chess with him, the other piano, the next one soccer. By (...)'

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Highlighted Flaws

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 1/11/2013 7:53:00 PM

'Who knew mending broken things could be an art form. Looking at these pictures made me think about flaws and the act of highlighting them to stand out confidently; if that translates to things more intangible than pottery. In relationships, fracture points are often around flaws - the others' or your own. And each time there is an argument or misunderstanding, the fractures grow uglier and there is lesser incentive to mend because the end product will look so badly blemished. Comes (...)'

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Role Models

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 1/10/2013 3:00:00 PM

'Like the author of this article, I am always looking for a desi women born and raised in America who can be positive role models for J. Recently, we became acquainted with Ms T who along with having an impressive set of accomplishments at age twenty, is also a very down to earth young lady. She is driven by things she is passionate about and has taken a non-traditional path to achieving her dreams. It was a pleasure talking with her and I was eager to introduce J to her because Ms T(...)'

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Vignettes from Sea - Clustering and Aggregation

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 1/9/2013 3:31:00 PM

'I have by now seen the all of my desi brethren traveling with me. It is about Day Four and as I had predicted we have not exchanged any smiles or pleasantries with each other. A desi woman alone on cruise with her minor daughter is an outrage even by the low Class C standards that no self respecting desi would want to dignify with their acknowledgement. But what is life without the outliers - the desi that falls outside the established cluster - happily there are some of those too. (...)'

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Learning from J

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 1/8/2013 11:00:00 AM

'While J was in elementary school, I often used her to review my presentations for work. If she got about half of what I was trying to communicate, we were in good order. If not, it was back to the drawing board to simplify. Keeping material at third grade level is something I take quite seriously and J had been a very useful sidekick. Sadly, J is eleven now and in middle school. Quickly, she has outgrown her usefulness as my helper and turned into a critic. I learn things from (...)'

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Change with Time

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 1/7/2013 1:30:00 PM

'Reading this article, made me think of a couple of friends from childhood and youth. No one who knew them would guess how they would change over time. They seem to fit the profile :But when asked to predict what their personalities and tastes would be like in 10 years, people of all ages consistently played down the potential changes ahead. A- One of three daughters of an army colonel and his stay at home wife. She was a firebrand - the standard bearer for her other sisters(...)'

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Set Free

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 1/6/2013 3:46:00 PM

'DB's friend M was visiting us last evening. He has an adult son and is recently divorced. From decades of being married, having a home and responsibilities that go with being in a family, he is suddenly alone - free and with more options in life than he ever had before. While he is enjoying his new found freedom, he misses the comfort of familiar things. He is a musician and an artist, so he is able to channel his time and energy into passions that had been neglected for years in fa(...)'

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Desire and Drift

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 1/5/2013 2:27:00 PM

'; Lines from two poems on love and desire made me think about how impossible it is to know your desire and now easy it is to drift from it. These from Carl Sandburg's At a Window But leave me a little love,  A voice to speak to me in the day end,  A hand to touch me in the dark room Breaking the long loneliness.  and these from A.R. Ammon's Continuity   I've pressed so far away from my desire that if you asked me what I want I would, accepting the(...)'

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Vignettes from Sea - Sun, Islands, Palm

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 1/4/2013 1:47:00 PM

'The pastel colored buildings, the toasty sun, warm breeze, the smell of conch fritters frying in hot oil, honking cars, colorfully painted taxis, loud music and the languid flow of life around me take me back to the home of my childhood.  Traffic is fairly chaotic but we are able to walk through intersections, in and alleys back to the main street. Policemen are controlling traffic the good old fashioned way using their arms and a shrill whistle. I tell J this is a little like (...)'

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Vignettes from Sea- Entranced Youth, Mirthless Mom

Author : Heartcrossings      Blog : Heartcrossings      Date : 1/3/2013 10:27:00 AM

'Dinnertime on Day One after a full day of being at sea. J and I have scoped out the potential options for dinner and made our choice. Turns out that desis think alike even if they belong to entirely different classes. When we arrive to be seated, we are handed a pager and asked to hang around in the neighboring bar area for about thirty minutes. So J and I walk over to said bar to find a cluster of Class B desis occupying several couches waiting to be seated just like us. They (...)'

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