S-Fun is… funADs on the move!

She explained to me what wild nights really mean… one sultry afternoon in Connaught Place. I had a short and a rather revealing conversation with a teenage friend of mine as I sat munching my favourite Tuna Sub in CP.

‘Why do you guys say all the time that you’re having fun,’ I asked, ‘ and all that I ever see most of you do is pore into your mobile handsets.’

‘Yes, we do um… like to be with our smartphones,’ she replied, shooing away the ancient term ‘mobile handset’ with a grimace and an obvious tut-tut! ‘Every smartphone needs a smart connection and that is one combo I cannot do without, at least for now.’

She went on to show me her new Samsung Galaxy Y Duos that was able to have two SIMs, which was a boon to her, as she explained, ‘Dual SIMs help me keep one for net on my mobile and the other for just talking. And I also like the ‘Y’ here which means young.’

‘That’s reason enough for me too to go out and buy one,’ I said with a smile, ‘and then I’ll be connected to youth all the time.’

‘Sounds good. And I too keep the fun quotient up, I have with me the pug that jogs!’

I looked around in panic as I repeated, ‘Pug that jogs?’

‘I mean my vodafone connection. As I said, if the mobile is good and the connection is great, I can have fun to the max!’

I took her phone in my hands and in a matter of just a few minutes she had told me that it had a 3MP camera, ran Android v2.3 (the so well-known Gingerbread operating system) on an 832 MHz processor. ‘I can shoot videos at 24 fps too,’ she seemed quite knowledgeable and excited as she told me all this, and then added, ‘I type using swype, listen to songs, and send poems to my friends.’

‘Ah! Now that sounds fun,’ I said, ‘any new poem you sent to your friends recently?’

‘Sure,’ she replied and then deftly using a single hand she reached the right page on the browser in her phone and showed me her Facebook update.

I read the poem. Reread it. The words were lovely and yet somehow I had this uncanny feeling that I had read them somewhere.

The lines that were there in front of me were:

WILD nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury! 

‘Aren’t these lines by Emily Dickinson just lovely?’ she crooned, and went on as I was lost in the lines, ‘and during the nights I have my phone, my net, and I go really wild!’

‘Wild?’ I repeated a bit incredulously, ‘yes, that seems so err… exciting!’

‘And it is. This is what fun is all about. Sharing all that you love doing is what fun is.’

And I concluded that the S-gen or the smart generation knows that having access to a good mobile means a lot of fun… and if your mobile connection is net-ready, the fun quotient is doubled!! No wonder the S-gen also love to be called the S-fun peeps (and this is the new-age term for ‘people’ for the yet uninitiated!). So I took the next logical step and went out and bought a Samsung Galaxy Y Duos for myself… for much less than even ten thousand. ‘Fun does seem to be starting at a less price,’ I thought, ‘so many other smart phones are costing a bomb these days and if I can have almost the same fun with this one, well why not!’

I decided to follow my teenager friend to the hilt and went ahead and activated my smartphone with ‘the pug that jogs’… and then spent a few minutes thinking of how I might like to begin my fun-time with the internet on my mobile!

Setting up the phone to connect me to my Facebook page was a breeze and I also went ahead and set all the other online platforms that I am fond of… my twitterverse cannot be far away from me, my foursquare friends would want to know where I am, and anything interesting must immediately be there on my tumblr page or be pinned to my pinterest page or shared on my YouTube channel! Yes, I was now ready to have fun on the internet!

‘Games,’ I thought to myself and mumbled, ‘No, games aren’t so interesting ever since Facebook decided to do away with my all-time favourite Word Twist. After all, that was the only game I was able to remain ahead of everyone… always.’

‘Ahead?’ This was a stranger standing right next to me and watching me intently, ‘Better move ahead to a less crowded place unless you want to be shooed by the footpath vendor whose pricey space you’re standing on.’ I realised that CP corridors were actually a high business zone and yes, I must move to a better place.

Games were ruled out, social media updates were anyway a necessity for me, searching for Emily Dickinson’s poetry and passing the lines off as my own creative impulse was hardly my idea of wild fun… and there I was walking with slow deliberate steps in the Lutyen-created corridors of CP thinking of how a Galaxy Y and a blazing internet on my mobile could sublimate into my idea of fun! ‘Because anyway, fun it is,’ I told myself, ‘this enigma called internet becomes deadly fun when you mate it with a not-at-all-expensive smartphone.’

I then did what I always do when I am in a fix. I called my wife. ‘I’m in a fix,’ I began, and continued despite her exclamations and interruptions that had urgency embossed all over, ‘I’ve bought a smartphone and I have internet coursing through its veins now. I want to know why the teenagers and youngsters say that they are having fun with this combination.’

‘Another of your brilliant socio-tech experiments,’ my wife’s sigh was only too apparent, but she continued, ‘You’re already having a lot of creative fun on the internet on the desktop at home.’

‘Hardly an experiment,’ I protested, ‘I’m just trying to see if I too can have fun with internet on my mobile.’

‘Yes, you can,’ she said in a matter-of-factly voice, ‘when you do something that you love doing, you discover fun in it. Now, can we talk later? I have an urgent meeting at the Directorate.’

Though nothing tangible was suggested, my wife had given me the greatest clue anyone can ever give anyone. Do what you love and you’ll have fun! Well, I love playing with lines… the ones that words decide to construct and the ones that can create a picture!

‘Bingo!’ I said aloud, ‘I am going to create advertisements for the print. Ads that try and sell the idea of having fun with the internet on your mobile! This sounded like a real fun-soaked idea and I walked faster to reach the nearest Costa Coffee outlet where I could sit and ideate.

A cappuccino ordered, I sat in a corner chair and began my fun sojourn! I gently tapped the Play Store on my android mobile, and without even the slightest hiccup I was transported into a world that was full of android apps… this is one world where fun is not just redefined but it is often created with nuances that the human experiences haven’t yet come across. Even browsing the pages of such a store is actually having more fun for me at times. I have done it many times on my desktop and have always envied those who carry this great power in their hands… well, I have that power now!

‘I have the power!’ I must have said this a bit aloud because a few of the patrons inside gave me a look of surprise.

‘Watching some He-man video on YouTube?’ said one rather sweet looking Aunty ji.

‘No,’ I replied hurriedly, concluding that she may want to suddenly watch the clip with me, ‘No, not really. I am working.’

‘You do seem to be having fun,’ she said and nothing more was exchanged.

Yes, I was actually having fun… without even having been anywhere near to my decided target. Anyway, I searched for the right drawing application, activated it… and found that even though the screen appeared small, I could make it bigger and even write with my finger. Watching the rough sketch of my drawing making sense was quite exciting. I desperately wanted that Aunty ji or anyone else to again look at me and ask, ‘May I see what you’ve done?’

But no one did that… sometimes fun and having fun remain a part of your existence and even this is quite alright, I can vouch for that! Let me share the first of those sketches here:

The fun that began with a sketch! Now this surely is S-fun...!!

No, I didn’t want to play with the mobile version of Photoshop, but I did open the browser and searched for the right pictures and images for my ads. I then went on and wrote the copy and the action phrase. The punch-line was already done and was in the sketch.

Well, the truth is that I got so interested in this activity that I went on and created two more ideations and made them look as if they were a part of a single print campaign.

All I did next was to share my sketches and my texts with myself on my Dropbox. This again was actually a breeze… as simple as a few sensuous taps on the capacitive screen of the Galaxy Y and the job was done!

‘One really learns how to tap well,’ I said to myself, and it must have been audible because this time it was my wife who replied, ‘See, I’m here. That’s the magic of Foursquare!’

I then remembered that I had updated my status on Foursquare too and my wife must’ve decided to catch me at Costa Coffee in CP… so I told her it was good that she was here. ‘And now, will you be so kind to tell me how these ad ideas have come up?’

She agreed that the ideas were worth an attempt and so we rushed home and I did complete the ads on photoshop.

My wife had, in the meanwhile been fiddling with the Galaxy Y and had been exploring the world on the net and she said, ‘Now I don’t mind you hijacking the desktop.’

‘Well, let’s connect the PC and the smartphone now. I want to transfer the images on the phone.’

‘Why? She asked, ‘you can share them from the desktop itself.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I want to see how much fun the internet on a mobile can be.’

‘Ah! I almost forgot your socio-tech experiment!’

We tried a lot of ways of transferring the images to the galaxy… from the Dropbox route to the Bluetooth pathway, from a simple mail attachment to a transfer through Kies… and we found that all were equally easy.

And then, for another time, I tapped and saw the ready ad-images on the Galaxy… they looked so wonderfully quaint! Even my wife purred, ‘Hey! The images are looking just purr-fect! I too want this phone.’

Internet is fun ads_ad one. S-fun needs a smartphone and a smart net service!

Internet is fun ads_ad two. S-fun needs a smartphone and a smart net service!

Internet is fun ads_ad three. S-fun needs a smartphone and a smart net service!

Well, I went on and used the internet on my mobile to share the images on the social networks… tweeted all my friends how I was having fun on the net… and quietly and on the sly, opened one online store and ordered another Galaxy Y for my wife.

And yes, as the title says…
S-fun is… funADs on the move!
Let me add…
S-fun is… doubled when you swype your blog post on the mobile and share it online with your wife!

Yes, S-fun is now the buzzword in our home.
What did you just ask? What is S-fun?
Well, how else would you call something that is smart?

All that you need for S-fun is a smart phone and a smart mobile connection with the net activated! This post is a part of the ‘Internet is fun‘ blogging contest on indiblogger. Contest is sponsored by Vodafone, that gives power to you!

Arvind Passey
18 May 2012