After years of using red carpet metaphors, we finally made it to the red carpet. Well sort of. Monsoon partnered with Motion Picture Television Fund and Variety Magazine to create the official touch-trivia application for the Oscars. We are totally psyched about launching this at the Oscars this weekend!

The application lets you spin a virtual orb and answer Oscar worthy trivia questions. HP will be giving away trivia participants some amazing prizes including TV’s, laptops, cameras and free Oscar morning kits.

And while the blue Pandorians may end up mourning their loss to The Hurt Locker, we’ll be celebrating…..because at the end of the day, it’s not really about who took the Oscar home, it’s about which consulting firm made it to the red carpet!

Special thanks to Kevin and John for helping with the install and sharing this video!

At Monsoon, we may never be able to rap like the pantless knights but, we still like to think of ourselves as hardcore apple fanboys. We own 3 generations of every Apple product, camp overnight for new product launches and celebrate popcorn-hour each time Steve Jobs gives his keynote.

With every piece of digital loveliness made by Apple, being a part of this brand and culture fits right into our techno-chic lifestyle and gives us endless gratification. But the ultimate high for us is to see our work on Apple products. We’ve been developing applications for the iPhone for quite some time but we recently had the opportunity to work on an app with another one of our favorite partners, South By Southwest. SXSW brings together some of the world’s most creative artists, speakers and entrepreneurs and my business partner Sandeep has previously had the opportunity to captivate audiences with interactive panels on Outsourcing.

There is no other conference that fosters creative growth and networking opportunities the way South by does. Which is why we’re so excited to announce SXSW® Play, the official media discovery app for the SXSW 2010 Music, Film, and Interactive conferences. The app features a wealth of rich media from musicians, films, and interactive panels that will be featured at the festival in Austin, TX from March 12-21. With this app at your fingertips, you’ll never be bored in line again!

Features of the application:

You can download the free application from the Appstore and find out if you’re an Apple fanboy here.

Monsoon partnered with the NBA and HP to create a touch app that allows you to customize an avatar and create your NBA alter ego. As huge basketball fans (tragically, Warriors fans), we are really excited to announce this application. Let’s face it: this is the closest a group of Indian guys will ever get to the NBA!

The app can be seen during jam session week at HP’s digital playground from Thursday through Sunday (Feb 11- Feb 14) at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Texas.

Here’s a sneak preview and we’ll share more pictures and videos next week.

Seth Godin writes about products that should strive to be loved vs. those that should strive to be less annoying:

The goal is to create a product that people love. If people love it, they’ll forgive a lot. They’ll talk about it. They’ll promote it. They’ll come back. They’ll be less price sensitive. They’ll bring their friends. They’ll work with you to make it better.

If you can’t do that, though, perhaps you can make your service or product less annoying.

There are things about offshore development that people love.  Price. 24 hour work cycles.  Great service. However, most of the time, they leverage offshore development out of necessity: due to budget limitations or aggressive development goals.  Although we believe they should, most of our clients don’t love offshore development.  They simply do it because it works.  

This shouldn’t be surprising.  It is almost always easier to love a service when it’s sitting next to you than when it’s thousands of miles away, sleeping while you are awake.   Offshore development companies should focus on being less annoying:

Think of the pretty ordinary things you do or places you go. Could they be less annoying? What if the marketers there spent time and money to eliminate annoying? No, it’s not the sort of big time stuff that leads to love, but they’re probably not going to get to love anyway. I’m not going to love my dry cleaner or the post office. But if they made them less annoying, I’d spend more money and go more often. Face it, you use Fedex because it’s less annoying than the post office, not because you love them.

At Monsoon, we’ve spent almost a decade ramping up US project management, leveraging online tools, and streamlining communication to the point where we are as minimally annoying as possible.  Does that mean there aren’t things that people love about our service?  No.  We’ve built strategic expertise.  We’ve set up systems that are, in many ways, more efficient than our onshore counterparts.  And, we’re nice people.  

But mainly, we strive to get our customers their projects delivered on time.  We stay up late so that they get to sleep.  We respond to feedback quickly to take advantage of time differences.  In short, we do whatever we can to limit annoyance.  

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(full disclosure: hp is a client)

So, HP proved that Apple isn’t the only one who can sell computers based on more than price.  Can Dell do the same?

This month’s Harper’s Magazine states that there are now over 30,000 British and US IT professionals living in India.

Crazy.

One of the few areas where Indian IT often fails to provide a competitive advantage is design. Subjective and highly specific, design is difficult to price and dilutes quickly when scaled.

Also, general Indian aesthetics often lead to earthy tones and cluttered interfaces (though this is changing - witness the simplifying of the Times of India website and of course, the many talented Indian designers beginning to gain international recognition).

Another disadvantage for India is that the evolution of cutting edge design is an urban phenomenon, that centers on a fast-paced group of NY/SF/London (etc.) design houses. The eager desi photoshop-jockey usually can’t compete with the capuccino-sipping, black-cashmere-sweater-wearing, buzzword-making, fashion-show-attending glamour-exuding New York designer.

Unless of course, the desi photoshop jockey meditates regularly and gets his/her nourishment by staring at the sun. Smita Narang taps the ancient Hindu “science of direction” to create websites that take the user “to the destination of peace, prosperity and happiness”.

Wired thought it would be entertaining to ask Smita for her thoughts on the geek iBible, slashdot. I think it might be entertaining to ask other designers for their thoughts on Smita’s website…sorry, Smita, but I’m not really feeling the vastu. And, I worry about the dubious effects these types of claims have on the Indian design industry. Perhaps ancient science does have a lot to offer to web design - I just hope that this isn’t Atkins for the web, desi style. Get more thoughts from Patrix or see Slashdot comments around WebVastu.

Some pictures from our first day at OutsourceWorld.

Chinese exhibitors from LongTop Group - they thought Doubtsourcing was an appropriate name for our blog.

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It’s the modus operandi for offshore IT marketers. Spam marketing.

I probably get 30 or so email messages offering offshore IT services every week.

Other ways to enjoy some friendly outsourcing spam:

• Post a programming job to Craigslist
• Open a blog posting about outsourcing to comments. (although our readership isn’t big enough for even spammers yet).
• Start a discussion forum about IT.

Sure, it’s annoying.  But, is it even successful?

I understand how Viagra spam makes money. Given a lot of the content available online, the Internet is a good place to market Viagra.

But, who buys IT services based on spam messages?  How do you build trust with a vendor who is looking for 300,000 new customers, all at the same time?