Take a look at these screen-shots. Notice the language used, spelling mistakes and of course the URL for the page which seeks all information. Over-look that bit and you’ve as good as jumped into a well with little rescue.

I clicked the OnlineHDFC.html link – Now I think I shouldn’t have. [Please click on images for full sizes]

and then the capture page which wanted me to share all the personal details possible

May I request all my blog readers to please be wary of such emails which are out ‘phishing‘ for personal details like bank account numbers, online login and ATM pins etc.

So here’s a quick guide on how to be a good ‘facebooker’ and it will probably even get you more popular in your network.

Photos – We love them but let’s also respect them.
When your friends let you click photos it’s because they know you respect their privacy. So make sure not all goes online, especially the ones you wouldn’t like somebody to get embarrassed about. There is always email to share it with a few selected friends.

Just because you loved your holiday spot doesn’t mean you can torture your network to see a 100+ photos. Select a few best which gives your friends a good idea of the fun time you had. At least spare them the over-exposed blurry shots. Trust me, they’ll appreciate that very much.

Add a personal touch to your photo uploads. A description line telling where you are, why you clicked this photo or describing a random object always helps people connect more. Should get you more comments too.

Status updates – Quality matters, not quantity.
Status updates every 1 hour don’t make your profile interesting. Besides when your friends login, they only see your latest one. So ideally you should wait about 12 hours before you make yet another status update.

And think twice before you make that update. It not only talks about your state of mind but also draws a personality picture. And you surely don’t want that one to be messed up.

Original content – nothing beats that.
If you’re the creative sorts who generates original content like a music piece, poetry or a painting go ahead and upload. It will get you more views and comments than all those email forwards going around the place.

If you’ve got a flickr photo album, a twitter account or a bookshelf at shelfari – connect it to Facebook. Will make your timeline a lot more interesting.

Avoid the ‘Select All’ button.
Took a fun quiz? Your farm just got bigger? GREAT. But is everyone on your network interested? Always make sure you are not clicking the ‘Select All’ button for just about everything you come across. Filtering helps and avoids annoying everyone on your list.

And last but not the least remember whatever you share on Facebook is probably being seen by all those people you’ve given access too. And some people have good memory so don’t put up something you would be sorry about later.

• TED talk on turning the Internet into a 6th sense – like the Tom Cruise kind of stuff from Minority Report.
• Nokia E75 – the yet to be launched new mobile phone. I want! I want! But at Rs.25,000 I think the price is a barrier.
• Two crazy videos on Youtube for your weekend entertainment. Blast Drum Line & Robert Murain performs at Dance Season 4.
• Fmylife – Seriously, you’ve got to be reading this only because you have totally nothing or don’t want to read any of your regular sites/blogs.
• I think twitter is a rather powerful tool among the many social networking applications out there. Here’s an interesting interview with Evan Williams, CEO Twitter.

Have a great weekend!

Image Courtesy: ~Athena

In October I applied for the WLAN Broadband Internet service from Reliance Communications. After many weeks of waiting the little dish finally arrived but failed to pick up a signal at my house and we gave up. Post this, I had no conversation with the call centre and actually even forgot to call them to ask for the refund of Rs.500 which I paid during registration. I knew it was going to be an endless battle and was hoping I would make the phone call in my free time to go around the circles before I can pin down somebody responsible to hand over the cheque. But I DIDN’T make the call.

I guess I was running through a patch of good luck. Last Wednesday afternoon I actually received the refund cheque from the Reliance Communication Infrastructure office without having made a single phone call to their office.

Anyway’s, guess after all the bashing that it’s been getting I thought this little effort should be noticed and appreciated. Thank you Reliance.

1. You can’t add new users. (This is a big problem).
2. Messages are shown max up to the last 24 hours – this is a problem because you can’t view your old Direct Messages and Replies.
3. You can’t make any favorites.

I hope the developers have these on their Wish List for the next release. Till then I’ll tweet away.

Cranes.Everywhere

Little happenings from a place called Dubai

Chiragh, welcome to the blogosphere and all the best for your journey. Hope to see some great stuff around Cranes.Everywhere. Cheers!

I like it …

• It’s blazing fast. Yes, pages load really really fast.
• The recent bookmarks/most visited websites displayed on the default home page is useful.
• Maximum screen space by doing away with the Menu at the top.

But yet not there …

• The Google Toolbar is missing – I miss the direct image/news search options and also the ability to access my Google bookmarks directly from the toolbar. Keyword highlight also doesn’t happen.
• The forward and backward button does not let me jump pages. You know that little arrow which gives you a quick view of pages to jump to.
• Add-ons for Evernote & deli.ciou.us yet not there.

So Chrome has great potential to be my browser of choice but it’s yet got to power up on features to become the default.

A good viral activity which creates curiosity and is done in a very interesting and interactive manner.

What’s Wordle?
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.
[From the website]

Wordle for my blog

And from what’s shown here I believe it tracks some of the very recent posts and is not a deep-level analysis which usually Tag Clouds should be doing. But what’s interesting is the lovely designs in which the clouds are generated and you get options on the layout, orientation and colors.

1. Running a company blog is more than just yet another marketing and PR activity. Everybody has to be responsible for what’s being put online and to respond to consumer reactions.
2. Internet is the most easily accessible Customer Complaint box, so be sure you have a “active” team to take care of those disappointments popping up there.
3. Customer complaints often lead to better product development. So is that team listening to the what’s being talked online?
4. It’s amazing what can come out of customer suggestions – Dell customers said they preferred more environmental friendly packaging material. Such things rarely come out in customer satisfaction surveys.

And let’s remember just because you have a blog which talks to people it doesn’t mean it’s going to be all good. You gotta “listen” to the negative reactions and quickly solve customer problems before they become top listings on websites like digg and StumbleUpon.