Dinesh.com - Logos and More

New Delhi Commonwealth Games 2010 Logo Design

The 2010 Commonwealth Games are scheduled to be held in New Delhi, India between 3 October and 14 October 2010. I happened to stumble upon the logo and wanted to find the meaning behind the various elements in the logo. You can clearly see that the logo is inspired by the Chakra.

The Chakra is the national symbol of freedom, unity and power and is also found on the Indian Flag. The Chakra spiralling upwards apparently depicts the growth of India into a proud, vibrant nation. As the Chakra emerges, you can also see the the elements in the Chakra turn into people, which I suppose represents everyone involved in the games from the athletes, organizers and the host nation. The games also are going to promote a "Green" theme which may be why the Chakra ends in green. The entire logo also appears to be in the shape of a torch and flame (it may be my imagination).

The bottom of the logo has a tagline of "Come out and play" which is an invitation to everyone to get involved and participate to the best of their abilities in the true spirit of the games. Also at the bottom of the logo, you can find a three-pointed structure which is the logo of the Commonwealth Games Foundation (CGF) also known as the Bar and the 'W'. The three points of the "W" stand for Humanity, Equality and Destiny. The CGF logo strives to express the core values of the Commonwealth itself, which seeks to unify humanity, promote equality and give all athletes a chance to realise their destiny at the Commonwealth Games.

The color palette for Games 2010 logo bring together two of the idiosyncratic colors of the Commonwealth Games Emblem. Some of the colors widely used in the Commonwealth Games 2010 logo are:

Green: The tint that represents verve, vigor and energy also symbolize the fact that CWG 2010 will be the foremost Green Games. With high-spirits the color motivates to move in a forward direction, encountering every challenge and conquering obstacles with vivacity and zest.

Purple: Merging the unwavering and soothing facets of blue with the magical features of pink, this color gratifies the desire for encouragement, while adding a tinge of ambiguity and thrill.

Red, Yellow & Blue: Symbolizing the 'Trinity of Values', these three Commonwealth Games colors coalesce compassion (Red), endorsing parity (Blue) and providing various prospects to the sportspersons to comprehend their fates (Yellow).

Pink: This color has been used in the CWG color palette to include a component of revelation and opulence to the Games logo. The color truly symbolizes the magnificent beauty of India and its enthusiastic crowd.

Overall I like the logo and it has an Indian touch to it. It may be too big with the tag line and everything else but the core logo is really pretty.

Also see the Bangalore Airport Logo

New Orleans Saints Logo - Design and History

The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Saints play in the South Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). They won the SuperBowl in the 2009-2010 season for their first ever Super Bowl victory.

The New Orleans Saints logo is a fleur-de-lis or a stylized lily (in French, fleur means flower, and lis means lily). The fleur-de-lis is a symbol of the City of New Orleans and of France's Bourbon monarchy. New Orleans was under French rule thus its connection with French term. An older logo was black in color.

The Saints' logo and uniforms have basically remained the same since the club debuted in 1967. The team's logo is primary gold while its uniform design consists of gold helmets, gold pants, and either black or white jerseys.

Bollywood Movies on your IPhone with Netflix

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.

Netflix Hindi/NetFlix Bollywood Movies

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.

Indian Foods Guide

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.

You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter

Adsense Tip 5 - Blend vs Contrast

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.

Happy Tuning.