Monday, December 28, 2009

4 Steps To Mending A Broken Heart


Do you ever wonder why it hurts so much when love is lost?

The art of romance is to give your heart without fear. When it breaks, you become lost with only pieces that remain. It’s a journey of rediscovery and reassembly, as your hands bleed with each piece.


To mend a broken heart is a process of healing, while emotional wounds are akin to physical. Some say it’s best to keep busy, but at the end, the hurt remains. Rid the poisons that linger, instead of using a temporary fix. It’s about standing tall, even when the world crumbles before your eyes.

Step One

Cut all forms of communication. It gives a sense of connection, and getting over requires its removal.

Rid yourself from physical memories, items that were significant.

Take drastic measures because you have to be ruthless in determination. Make it an instinct by doing what’s necessary without involving your mind with consequences that don’t exist.

This is disownment. If the phone rings, hang up. If again, do the same. No matter how many times, hang up, or even better, block. Block all known e-mail addresses as well. If you receive e-mails from another account, delete them immediately, emptying the trash altogether and so on. This also goes for online communities. If they come through snail mail, burn without opening.

You have to take action without giving yourself the chance to think.

Step Two

Think logically. Instead of listening to your heart, listen to your mind. Find reasons and make the choice to believe them. Write them down.

Deny yourself the hope that lingers with the logical reasons you’ve found and listed. Use them to refocus your hopes.

Stop trying. Choose, because choices are set in stone. There’s a lot less room to back out.

Time helps nothing. It only provides opportunities to prioritize. What we choose to do with it makes all the difference.

Step Three

If you’re unable to eat or sleep, acknowledge the difference between inability and unwillingness. Force yourself to take care of basic needs.

Take food as you would medication. If you’re eating too much, portion meals and get rid of junk. If you can’t sleep, close your eyes. If you’re not concentrating, think later.

Don’t give yourself the luxury of self-pity.

Step Four

Let yourself cry. Understand it’s simply another way to express feelings and emotions that overflow. Do anything possible to express yourself, through tears, writing, music, etc. Remember the importance of faith.

Remember that crying isn’t a sign of weakness. Letting your heart out is a crucial step. Why not hurt once and for all and be done with it, instead of continuously?

Talk to friends and family. Allow them to be your support system. There’s no shame in asking for help.

Provide yourself the unreturned love. However much it hurts, you’ll always remain your own best friend. It’s your responsibility to take initiative.

With getting over someone, you have to be real. Freedom is to continue without focusing on the past. We can neither erase nor avoid the inevitable sorrow. It’s a part of life. We must endure no matter how impossible it seems. Walk through to become a stronger person.

Never let the pain exist in vain. That someone is the reason you’re in pain, but it still doesn’t take away your responsibility. You’re worth every effort. Deal with it, not because you can or should, but that you have to.

Realize that even if you’re seemingly denied of it, closure comes from within. When you free yourself from the boundaries of relying on external sources, then and only then will you become more. To understand what it means to believe in yourself, acknowledging that you’re capable.

It’s hard, but possibility outweighs the impossible. It’s about doing whatever it takes, being resourceful with everything you have; the strength and courage you conjure. Love yourself more because the choice is always yours.

Reader, how did you mend your broken heart?

Friday, December 18, 2009

Assamese Cuisine


Assamese food is mainly based on rice and fish. For dessert, or for those with a sweet tooth, there is a wide range in "pithas" (cakes).

Rice is the staple diet in Assam and is eaten in various forms throughout the day. The Assamese eat a huge variety of rice-based breakfast cereals with milk, yoghurt or thick creamakhoi (puffed rice), chira (chura), muri, komal chaul (a specially processed rice which doesn’t require cooking but just an hour’s soak in cold water) and hurum to name but a few. Normally jaggery or sugar is added but for those who prefer savoury items, salt can be added. Also there are the various kinds of pitha that are prepared from rice powder.

Authentic Assamese cuisine is bland and yet very delicious. Very little oil is used and practically no spices. All Assamese people are non-vegetarian. Chicken is taboo in orthodox families and there are some, who may not eat meat. But it’s difficult to find anyone who does not eat fish and duck’s eggs. Mustard oil is used for cooking and occasionally clarified butter or ghee.

NORTH EAST INDIA: WHY ARE WE SO NEGLECTED?


Good evening friendss  !!!!!!!

I Would like to share some of my opinions on North East India & trying to put some argumentative weight on the real life prosperity of the region, uplifting of the standard of living in rural north east. I want to discuss some points that may help the policy makers to reduce the conflicting tensions those prevail in these areas for the last two decades that had almost crippled the state's development.


Other than these issues I would like to jolt down my opinions regarding contemporary issues. But the primary focus of this blog would be North East and it’s over all growth to contribute more actively in the socio-political uplift of the country. There is one more issue, the issue of insurgency which is really important enough to be presented in this platform to generate some awareness about the issues of insurgency that prevailed in these portion of India over a couple of decades now. The oldest insurgency in these areas could be traced back to the periods of British Raj in the hill area of the Nagaland. When Nagaland was annexed into the British Empire, Nagas vehemently protested against imperialism, but British Government played a dirty trick, they planned to divide Nagaland to suppress the Naga Uprising. Soon, Nagaland was divided into three parts, and a part was merged with Burma. The territory division was an old ploy of British imperialism around the world, like they did to Korean peninsula. When Assam was divided and seven distinct states were created in the line of ethnicity, the seed of insurgency was already sowed.
Chronic deprivation of basic amenities is an issue that acts as a hotbed for the birth of insurgency. Although, Assam is rich in mineral but yet the standard of living did not rise appreciably. The poorer sections of these areas are continuing their BPL status. A fully developed, business competitive market economy is a dream that must be fulfilled at any cost. We the North-eastern Indians can not afford to be backward in a world of wireless connectivity.
Key area where investment as well as solid planning are required is basic infrastructure segment like power, road connectivity, surface transportation system. Northeast is connected to the rest of India through a narrow piece of land known as “Siliguri corridor”. If for any reason like natural calamities or terrorist attack, the road gets blocked, the entire region would become cut off from rest of India.
From the security aspects also it is very risky to connect a region of strategic importance like Arunachal Pradesh through a corridor that can be easily blocked.
Bikramjit

Sunday, November 22, 2009

The Rise & Fall Of India’s Youth Icon – Orkut




It was year 2005 and Orkut was becoming a sensation in modern India. It was spreading virally. The Orkut phenomenon was more viral than almost any word of mouth epidemic I have seen (in India). Yes, even Twitter’s fast growth in India is no way near to the way Orkut grew. It was almost like one fine morning you wake up and you find all your friends (and family) addicted to a piece of Web App called Orkut. Orkut captured the imagination of India youth to such a extent that it was
awarded The MTV Youth Icon for the year 2007. Orkut won the award inspite of competing with likes of Abhishek Bachchan, Rang De Basanti& Multimedia Cell Phones.

Orkut - MTV Youth Icon 2007
On reflecting back I think Orkut’s popularity in India was because of one or more of the following reasons.
1). Orkut had a very low entry-barrier. It was dead simple. Unlike
Myspace, hi5 (and ‘n’ number of other social networks) Orkut had very less features making it more user friendly, less complicated.
2). For a majority of Indians Orkut was their 1st social network. Orkut made Indians discover social networking along with its addictive nature (more about “the nature of social networking” in future post).
3). It had very good (or cool) look and feel and Indian users almost considered it as a bench mark in both design and quality because it was endorsed by Google.

Orkut India
4). Orkut made online contact management a cake walk. Integration with GMail (Google contacts) made it even simpler. Note- Part of the reason Yahoo! Mail fell of its knees in India
5). Orkut Album became a default photo sharing hub. The semi-public nature of Orkut album was perfect for Indians. Note – Part of the reason
Flickr never took off in India
6). Scraps emerged as a new messaging protocol. Scrapping someone was more appealing than sending a short E-Mail (considering the user was ready to trade off the privacy and was not available for chat).

Orkut == (YOU)th
7). Orkut Communities emerged as powerful Forums to discuses and debate (although I never found Orkut communities useful). Just a note -India Community on Orkut has around 1 million members with a rather hyper active Forum.






On reflecting back I think Orkut’s popularity in India was because of one or more of the following reasons.
1). Orkut had a very low entry-barrier. It was dead simple. Unlike
Myspace, hi5 (and ‘n’ number of other social networks) Orkut had very less features making it more user friendly, less complicated.
2). For a majority of Indians Orkut was their 1st social network. Orkut made Indians discover social networking along with its addictive nature (more about “the nature of social networking” in future post).
3). It had very good (or cool) look and feel and Indian users almost considered it as a bench mark in both design and quality because it was endorsed by Google.

Orkut India
4). Orkut made online contact management a cake walk. Integration with GMail (Google contacts) made it even simpler. Note- Part of the reason Yahoo! Mail fell of its knees in India
5). Orkut Album became a default photo sharing hub. The semi-public nature of Orkut album was perfect for Indians. Note – Part of the reason
Flickr never took off in India
6). Scraps emerged as a new messaging protocol. Scrapping someone was more appealing than sending a short E-Mail (considering the user was ready to trade off the privacy and was not available for chat).

Orkut == (YOU)th
7). Orkut Communities emerged as powerful Forums to discuses and debate (although I never found Orkut communities useful). Just a note -India Community on Orkut has around 1 million members with a rather hyper active Forum.
Few other trends of the Orkut Era
1). Integrated nature of Orkut and GMail killed Yahoo! Mail in India. Yahoo! Mail which not too long back was default E-Mail address of Indians was now replaced by Gmail.
2). Then as Gmail became popular the integration of Google Chat with GMail killed Yahoo! Messenger.
3). Although rest of the world was busy uploading their latest photos on Flickr, Indians preferred Orkut Album. Y? Because unlike Flickr, Orkut Album was semi-public in nature with privacy options. Indians would never have been comfortable making their online album 100% open to public gaze. Orkut Album never left any room for Flickr.
So, Yahoo! was more or less fading out of the Indian tech scene by 2008.




Statutory Warning : You might not like what I am about to write.
It is year 2009 and Orkut sucks, it is boring, it is monotonous, it is has way too less features with not many apps, it is buggy (no donuts for you!),

Orkut is buggy
it is does not facilitate sharing, no vanity URL hence no public profile, Orkut communities still sucks, scraps are dead (scraps? wtf? I tweet now!), no blog widgets, obviously I cannot search and monitor real time data on Orkut unlike
Facebook (and Twitter) and it is does not help me drive traffic to TechDusts (I know I am a selfish brat! but the fact remains that Twitter and Facebook alone helps bringing hundreds if not thousands of visitors to TechDusts everyday).
Times have changed and the world is quickly moving towards the next generation of social networks where scrapping is not as cool as updating your status message every hour. The problem with Orkut is that after a certain point of time it did not evolve. Unlike Facebook, Orkut never embraced real time sharing (like Twittter), Apps (I know Orkut has App but in no way are they comparable to Facebook) and host of other innovative feature like fan page, public profile etc. Orkut did not realize that people are done with making friends and would get bored if they not served with new functionality. Sorry to say Indian’s ex – youth icon who earlier was at the centre stage of my online life now serves as my birthday reminder boy. I never thought this would happen. I only log into Orkut to get updated with upcoming birthdays of my friends.

Orkut's Fluctuating Traffic in India Vs Facebook's Steady Growth

Facebook Ranked 4 (above Orkut) in India

Social Network Map
People in India might get offended with what I have written but the reality is – In a span of one year Orkut has lost a huge share in India. It is losing heavily in Brazil and the rest of the World has almost abandoned it.

Snap shot of New Orkut
I was very pleased to see a makeover of Orkut a couple of days back. You didn’t notice? It is invite only (as of now) and you might get over it in a couple of months when it is fully functional. Have a look at the snapshot to get an idea of what it is.
It looks a lot like Facebook. Can’t really say whether this make over will help Orkut regain it users who have already
migrated to Facebook. Orkut needs to act fast or it might become a not so dominant second player in India, after Facebook of course.
P.S- Check out the interactive Map of social networking at the bottom of the post. For similar post on social networks you might want to subscribe to our
RSS Feed or E-Mail News Letter. Bookmark it on delicious for future reference.
World Map of Social Networks (June 2009)

var postBookmarkSaveCallback; function g(id) { return document.getElementById(id); } function submitBookmark() { new Ajax.Request('/manyeyes/bookmarks', {asynchronous:true, evalScripts:true, parameters:serializeBookmarkForm(postBookmarkSaveCallback)}) } function createBookmark(callback) { postBookmarkSaveCallback = callback; setValues(submitBookmark); } function serializeBookmarkForm(callback) { return Form.serialize($('new_bookmark_form'))+"&callback="+callback; }
//

IBM legal view data 22 comments
Image Credit
get widgetminimize
CrunchBase Information on Orkut
Orkut

Company:
Google
Website:
orkut.com
Orkut is a social networking service owned and operated by
Google.
Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competing social networks like
Facebook and MySpace, it is one… Learn More
Information provided by
CrunchBase
get widgetminimize
CrunchBase Information on Facebook
Facebook

Website:
facebook.com
Location:
Palo Alto, California, United States
Founded:
February 1, 2004
Funding:
$716M
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 300 million users.
Facebook was founded by
Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard… Learn More
Information provided by
CrunchBase
get widgetminimize
CrunchBase Information on Twitter
Twitter

Website:
twitter.com
Location:
San Francisco, California, United States
Founded:
March 21, 2006
Funding:
$155M
Twitter, founded by
Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006

Statutory Warning : You might not like what I am about to write.
It is year 2009 and Orkut sucks, it is boring, it is monotonous, it is has way too less features with not many apps, it is buggy (no donuts for you!),

Orkut is buggy
it is does not facilitate sharing, no vanity URL hence no public profile, Orkut communities still sucks, scraps are dead (scraps? wtf? I tweet now!), no blog widgets, obviously I cannot search and monitor real time data on Orkut unlike
Facebook (and Twitter) and it is does not help me drive traffic to TechDusts (I know I am a selfish brat! but the fact remains that Twitter and Facebook alone helps bringing hundreds if not thousands of visitors to TechDusts everyday).
Times have changed and the world is quickly moving towards the next generation of social networks where scrapping is not as cool as updating your status message every hour. The problem with Orkut is that after a certain point of time it did not evolve. Unlike Facebook, Orkut never embraced real time sharing (like Twittter), Apps (I know Orkut has App but in no way are they comparable to Facebook) and host of other innovative feature like fan page, public profile etc. Orkut did not realize that people are done with making friends and would get bored if they not served with new functionality. Sorry to say Indian’s ex – youth icon who earlier was at the centre stage of my online life now serves as my birthday reminder boy. I never thought this would happen. I only log into Orkut to get updated with upcoming birthdays of my friends.

Orkut's Fluctuating Traffic in India Vs Facebook's Steady Growth

Facebook Ranked 4 (above Orkut) in India

Social Network Map
People in India might get offended with what I have written but the reality is – In a span of one year Orkut has lost a huge share in India. It is losing heavily in Brazil and the rest of the World has almost abandoned it.

Snap shot of New Orkut
I was very pleased to see a makeover of Orkut a couple of days back. You didn’t notice? It is invite only (as of now) and you might get over it in a couple of months when it is fully functional. Have a look at the snapshot to get an idea of what it is.
It looks a lot like Facebook. Can’t really say whether this make over will help Orkut regain it users who have already
migrated to Facebook. Orkut needs to act fast or it might become a not so dominant second player in India, after Facebook of course.
P.S- Check out the interactive Map of social networking at the bottom of the post. For similar post on social networks you might want to subscribe to our
RSS Feed or E-Mail News Letter. Bookmark it on delicious for future reference.
World Map of Social Networks (June 2009)

var postBookmarkSaveCallback; function g(id) { return document.getElementById(id); } function submitBookmark() { new Ajax.Request('/manyeyes/bookmarks', {asynchronous:true, evalScripts:true, parameters:serializeBookmarkForm(postBookmarkSaveCallback)}) } function createBookmark(callback) { postBookmarkSaveCallback = callback; setValues(submitBookmark); } function serializeBookmarkForm(callback) { return Form.serialize($('new_bookmark_form'))+"&callback="+callback; }
//

IBM legal view data 22 comments
Image Credit
get widgetminimize
CrunchBase Information on Orkut
Orkut

Company:
Google
Website:
orkut.com
Orkut is a social networking service owned and operated by
Google.
Although Orkut is less popular in the United States than competing social networks like
Facebook and MySpace, it is one… Learn More
Information provided by
CrunchBase
get widgetminimize
CrunchBase Information on Facebook
Facebook

Website:
facebook.com
Location:
Palo Alto, California, United States
Founded:
February 1, 2004
Funding:
$716M
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 300 million users.
Facebook was founded by
Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard… Learn More
Information provided by
CrunchBase
get widgetminimize
CrunchBase Information on Twitter
Twitter

more ........

Friday, November 20, 2009

Download Google Chrome OS Source Code (Updates With Videos)


Google seems to have some big plans lined up for today. Some time back Google announced about their Chrome OS event and just moments ago Matt Cutts has revealed about the Chrome OS Source Code. Go ahead and browse the source code from HERE or better still read the detailed guide HERE and then download it.

You can also watch the web cast of the Google Chrome OS event HERE .

Google announced about Chrome OS back in July and since then their have been a lot of speculations about Chrome OS. Now Google is ready to tell to the world about Chrome OS.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Windows 7 Was Inspired By Mac OS-X. Microsoft Employee Reveals In An Interview


Apple Fan boys- you can’t get bigger than this. Microsoft’s Partner Group Manager Simon Aldous has said on record in an interview with PCR that Windows 7 is inspired by its arch-rival Apple’s Mac. It was not new to us as Microsoft always tries to follow the footsteps of Apple but saying it openly is suicidal. I want to produce a snippet of what he really said

What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics. We’ve significantly improved the graphical user interface, but it’s built on that very stable core Vista technology, which is far more stable than the current Mac platform, for instance.

Was it a slip of tongue from Simon or is he planning to move into Apple? We all know that some of the features of Mac OS X have been taken by Windows 7 for instance Windows 7 taskbar and Mac OS Dock are alike (this is just one of them).

Microsoft has taken almost no time in disowning Simon and clearing the air. In the blog post titled how we really designed the look and feel of Windows 7 Microsoft says

An inaccurate quote has been floating internet the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was “borrowed” from Mac OS X. Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Millions of Facebook & Myspace Users Account Data Could Have Been Compromised & Even Stolen


Whatever I am about to write can scare the hell out of you. The top two social networks Facebook & MySpace were vulnerable to a security flaws that could have possibly allowed any one to gain access to (and steal) your whole account data. A Facebook developer Yvo Schaap came across a flash security flaw that allowed him to gain access to millions of accounts on Facebook and Myspace

Schaap says in his blog

“My solution allowed full access and control to the Facebook user account that accessed my application. Did I mention this would also be untraceable since exploit actions would happen from the users IP and own domain cookie?”

Schaap further explains how the hack worked. Putting it simply the “crossdomain.xml” file used for Flash applications was open to such manipulations that could lead a hacker to gain full access and control of millions of accounts on both Facebook and Myspace.

After carefully reading his blog and the explanation of his hack I boiled down that 2 kind of users were highly vulnerable to this hack.

1). Users that had “auto-login” enabled for their account.

2). Users that viewed a vulnerable Flash App.

Facebook looks a lot more vulnerable than Myspace. After Schaap’s explanation it comes out that manipulating Facebook’s “crossdomian.xml” is relatively easier than a much complicated Myspace one. You should read his post if you want to gain more insights into this amazing trick.

Thanks to Schaap, he immediately contacted Facebook and Myspace and according to him the problem has been fixed.

What is really disturbing here is –

1). What about the potential developers who were already knowing this hack and were not ethical enough to inform it to Facebook or MySpace? Considering that Facebook has some 300k + developers it is quite logically that people already knew about it and the vulnerability was exploited.

2). Old debate but – How safe is your data online? Earlier there have been issues with Twitter. Hacker broken in and gained access to user accounts. This one is even more disturbing. We share, save, upload all sorts of public and private data on Facebook & Myspace. Social Networks are not a fun thing anymore; lots of people use to for their day to day business.

I need a more responsible social network company.
URGENT & IMPORTANT: I would recommend you to go to Facebook and Myspace and change you password to avoid any further exploitation. Make sure you let your friends know about this and ask them specifically to change their account credentials. Send them a mail, tweet about this to your followers, share this on facebook, myspace , help it spread on Reddit or use one of the many share option at the bottom of the post.

250+ Facebook Groups Hijacked. Reason – To Raise Social Awareness


In my last post Reported about one of the vulnerabilities of Facebook being pointed out by a developer and there is one more coming this week but this time it is being highlighted in a subtle way. A group calling themselves as Control Your Info have hacked or taken over (as explained by the group itself) around 300 Facebook Groups by taking advantage of one of the major design flaw of Facebook. After hacking the Facebook group they are changing the name of the group to Control Your Info (and not any vulgar names). They have posted everything on their website about the way and their intention of doing this.

First of all what’s the flaw all about? Any Facebook user can create Facebook group and the person who created it becomes the admin of the group. If by any chance admin has left the group, anybody can take-over as the admin of the group and do whatever he/she wants to do with that group. Facebook doesn’t have the any sort of mechanism to automatically elect new admin from within the group. Take for example the most active member of the group can be made the new admin (my way of choosing admin). I am little bit skeptical on the capabilities of Facebook testers as this is the basic functionality or may be this is how Facebook intended to have this feature.

Blunders that an employee commits

An employee is satiated with his/her work as it is in line with their needs and interests but due to the competitive nature of the market, the employee opts for a change because of many reasons. This could be a huge blunder if the opportunities attached with are not analyzed.

At the dawn of ones career mistakes do occur as there exists a factor called nervousness that disallows the person to remain calm. During the first interview the employee is unable to answer questions even if he/she knows the answer to it. Another mistake that a fresher does is duplicating another resume hence it is often found that students from same college have the same CV format. Also the job seekers forget to eliminate points that might not be valid for them. For example if you are replicating a CV ideally made for someone in the service industry, it might contain facts like height, weight, etc. But when you are applying for an administration job, these facts are not important.

Most employees change job for an increment but before making this decision one should compare the present work environment with the new. Even if the new job pays you more there are other things that one requires to continue working. One should avoid jumping at every opportunity. Every office has different work culture and adopting a new culture after being familiar with one particular culture for long is difficult.

The role you play at a new venture might be different and difficult from the previous one hence the decision should not be made in haste. Look for the opportunities to diversify when entering a new organization and have an optimistic attitude if the decision has been already made.



Bikramjit Dutta

“Human Resource”-A magazine for the discerning professional

www.humanresource.net.in

Power Of Blog: What A Blogger Can Do?


It is just a matter of one blog post that is changing the whole ecosystem around Social Networks and can go a long way in removing the scams presents in these social networks. It’s a fight of a blogger against the companies who scam on Social Networks like Facebook and Myspace and create a bad user experience. It’s a story of how a blogger may have instigated the process of replacing a CEO from her place. Bloggers are often criticized that they write things out of their limits and create controversy just to gain some traffic. I am not at all disagreeing with this point because there are always some bad elements in any setup but the whole community can’t be blamed for this. People some times over look that journalism is there to regulate things and act as a watch dog. It is there to help people differentiate between a good guy and a not so good guy.


Continue...........

News Corp. To Block Google. [Yawn...] Good News For Other Online Publishers


Rupert Murdoch, founder of News Corp. ,one of the largest media empire in the world has said in an interview with the Sky News Australia that they are planning to block Google from accessing its content. News Corp. owns newspapers as influential as The Wall Street Journal, New York Post etc to social network site Myspace.

Rupert said in the interview [video attached]

“The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it — steal our stories, we say they steal our stories — they just take them”

“That’s Google, that’s Microsoft, that’s Ask.com, a whole lot of people..…They shouldn’t have had it free all the time, and I think we’ve been asleep.”

LinkedIn Boards the Twitter Train

These days, it seems that everyone wants to be pals with Twitter, the microblogging phenom. On the morning of Oct. 21, Microsoft announced a deal for its Bing search engine to search for Twitter updates known as tweets. Just hours later, Google announced a similar deal.

Not to be left out, the professional online networking service LinkedIn on Nov. 10 is announcing its own integration with Twitter. Users of both services will be able to sync some or all of their tweets on Twitter and “network updates” on LinkedIn.

Specifically, users in LinkedIn will be able to check a “tweet this” box near their network update post to Twitter. And while on Twitter, they can add the hashtags “#in” or “#li” to their posts to appear on LinkedIn. Finally, a new app called Tweets will let users put their Twitter streams on their LinkedIn profiles.
here are the details in a blog post from Allen Blue, a LinkedIn cofounder and vice-president of product strategy:

I’m excited to announce that starting today, users can sync their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, allowing them to broadcast LinkedIn status updates on Twitter and vice versa. This allows you to amplify your professional activities on Twitter while keeping them organized and structured on LinkedIn. We think the two go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Watch Biz and Reid come to that inevitable conclusion in the video below!

LinkedIn has always been about your professional identity on the web. The many elements that make up your online professional brand range from your LinkedIn profile to the many professional conversations you’re a part of. Status has proved valuable to our users, from finding jobs to kick-start a global business enterprise.
Now you can amplify those messages by broadcasting them to your audience on Twitter.

How does LinkedIn work with Twitter?

It will take a few hours to roll out the feature to everyone (so be patient!), but with today's launch, we're making that two-way communication between your status updates and tweets a breeze to set up. Here's how it works:

1. On LinkedIn

Want to share a status message about an industry-specific article you’ve just read with a broader audience? Or how about letting people view your Twitter account name on your profile? Begin by joining your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts in just a few clicks. All you need to do is click the Twitter box under your Network Updates box on the homepage and follow a few simple steps.

Clicking through the setup process will allow you to specify the Twitter account that you’d like to sync and/or display on your LinkedIn profile.

2. On Twitter

As you travel across the web, you’ll often find articles or reports that would be useful to share with your LinkedIn connections. Now you can share from anywhere. As part of the setup process, you can choose to either send all your tweets or select tweets from Twitter back to LinkedIn as a status update.

If you pick the latter, don’t forget to add the #li or #in hashtag to every relevant tweet you’d like to send back to LinkedIn.

So go ahead and get started. Join your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts today to add a new dimension to your professional conversation.

Monday, November 2, 2009

In The Fight Between Facebook And Twitter, Which One’s The Mac And Which One’s The PC?


Facebook is much more than a social network. Twitter is much more than an information network or serendipity engine. Each represent a dashboard for your attention, a foundation for conversations and collaboration, and a matrix for your social graph and contextual relationships. In other words, Facebook and Twitter essentially represent the entrée to the future of the social Web as each strive to host, what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and others, refer to as our personal social operating system (OS).

What Windows is to PCs and OS X is to Macs, Facebook and Twitter are to our social architecture and enterprise. Certainly there’s a David and Goliath element here depending on which company you immediately view as Microsoft or Apple. However, Mac and Windows are simply operating systems, not networks per se, and that’s where the metaphor of an OS breaks down. Either way, there is the perception that there is a competition between Facebook and Twitter for your attention and your network.

Why? At the very least, Twitter and Facebook combine the elements of productivity and interactivity, combining a social OS, a global network, and a platform for open development.

The fabric of our online activity stems from a sophisticated social framework that facilitates the exchange of information and sustains professional, conversational, and contextual connections. Facebook and Twitter, like Windows and Mac, allow us to interact cross platform, while hosting dedicated applications that support our engagement, productivity, and communication.

As much attention as we pay to this mythical clash between Facebook and Twitter, the truth is that it’s not unprecedented to maintain identities in more than one ecosystem. For example, I use both Mac and Windows-based systems, I use both Facebook and Twitter. Yet according to new data from Hitwise, it appears that the epic battle between the two perceived leaders in Social Media is one-sided—or perhaps better stated, dominated.

As of October 2009, Facebook accounts for 6 percent of all U.S. Internet visits while Twitter represents only 0.14 percent. In fact, visits to Twitter.com peaked at .20 percent between June and July 2009 and has slowly lost attention in the interim, a point TechCrunch has noted as well. At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco recently, co-founder Evan Williams acknowledged the slowdown in traffic to Twitter.com in the U.S., for now, but he also stated that they are in the process of finalizing new features that will reverse the downward trend. Williams also reminded us Twitter continues to recognize growth in both mobile and abroad.

And, for those who take solace in the hope that traffic is migrating from Twitter.com to mobile clients, there is some truth to the theory. However, new visitors count for everything and Twitter needs to do a better job capturing new users and holding their interests after they register. The company needs to look further than its resident celebrities to attract and sustain traffic.

For the time being, regardless of numbers, Facebook and Twitter serve a purpose, and thus, remain the Mac and PC in the lives of many. And, until the day that I am forced or compelled to pledge allegiance to one or the other, I will continue to cultivate relationships across multiple landscapes and suggest that you do the same.

But which one’s the Mac and which one’s the PC?

How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider’s Confession


Last night we wrote about the lead generation scams within social gaming networks. This is a guest post by Dennis Yu, the CEO of BlitzLocal, a privately held 50 person advertising agency in Denver, Colorado, specializing in local search engine marketing for franchises and professional service firms via Google and Facebook. BlitzLocal is no longer in the business of spam, but they do specialize in Facebook advertising and are now using the platform they’ve developed to run campaigns for big brands and small businesses. Dennis writes a blog at dennis-yu.com

Did you know how Mark Zuckerberg supported Facebook in the early days, before he got venture funding? Casino ads. And how about those advertisers who were making over $100,000 a day selling Acai Berry and other weight loss products – they are friends of mine, pioneers of new advertising channels. You see those ads saying “Inbox (5). Nick, someone in San Francisco has a crush on you!” (with your name, profile picture, and city in the ad). I generated millions of dollars from these offers on Facebook – I am not proud of it, but it was very lucrative.

I will walk you through how these online scams work on Facebook and other social networks – the mechanics of how the money is made, some of the people involved, and who is actually clicking on ads. If you’re reading this article, there is a good chance that you are not the type of person actually clicking on these spam ads, but are you curious as to who actually is?

In June 2007, Facebook opened up their application developer platform so that anyone could build games on top of the social network. By having access to user data, game developers could instantly make engaging, viral games. Rate who is hottest among your friends, share quizzes, race cars, grow vegetables, and so forth – all with a click of a button. Users in one click gave the game permission to access their profile data and they didn’t think twice about it.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Facebook Director of Mobile Jed Stremel Resigns


Jed Stremel, Facebook’s Director of Mobile who has been with the company for four years, has resigned, according to a post on his Facebook profile. Stremel was charged with leading the company’s mobile strategy, and was previously involved in Business Development at Facebook.

Below is Stremel’s bio, taken from last year’s MobileBeat conference page.

Jed Stremel oversees Facebook’s mobile strategy transforming how individuals find and express information relevant to their life. Prior to Facebook, Jed played key partnership, business operations, and strategic roles at high-growth businesses. He spearheaded mobile initiatives for Yahoo! building the company’s efforts to empower seamless communications across SMS, WAP, Java, BREW, and other mobile technologies. At Tellme Jed managed distribution, promotion, and licensing relationships with leading online and telecommunications partners. Jed holds a law degree from Santa Clara University and a bachelor’s degree in economics and public policy from Duke University.

Other recent departures from Facebook include Josh Elman, who was Facebook’s Platform Program Manager and was deeply involved in the launch of Facebook Connect. Elman joined Twitter earlier this week as a product manager.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment.

Bye Bye Bluetooth


Come 2010 and no longer would you be using Bluetooth for short range file transfer. What’s coming from the WiFi Alliance is a really ground breaking stuff. WiFi Direct a new set of standards will turn your ‘WiFi gadget’ into an access point.

What does this mean?

In simple words you would no longer need a WiFi Router for a peer to peer file transfer. This means days of Bluetooth are numbered. This means very high speed peer to peer transfer (30 times faster than Bluetooth) with in a radius of 300 feet.

How will it work?

Any WiFi Device will be able to upgrade to WiFi Direct by a software upgrade and all new devices will be certified as ‘Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Wi-Fi Direct’.

WiFi Alliance consortium includes Intel, Cisco and Apple and almost all big players.

In a press release Wi-Fi Alliance executive director Edgar Figueroa said

“Wi-Fi Direct represents a leap forward for our industry. Wi-Fi users worldwide will benefit from a single-technology solution to transfer content and share applications quickly and easily among devices, even when a Wi-Fi access point isn’t available”

Bye Bye Bluetooth!

Lenovo rolls out PCs with Windows 7 OS

Bangalore: Coinciding with the global launch of Windows 7 by software giant Microsoft, leading computer maker Lenovo Thursday rolled out in the Indian market a new range of Think and Idea-branded PCs running on the new operating system.

"We are also introducing two new ThinkPad laptops with Windows 7 OS for the small-to-medium businesses (SMB) work. We are certifying Windows 7 PCs under the enhanced experience programme," Lenovo said in a statement released here.


With Windows 7, Lenovo computers and laptops will provide enhanced digital entertainment and personal productivity for consumers, SMB and large enterprise customers.

"Our engineers have been working with Microsoft for three years to jointly create a PC experience that is better, faster, more stable and secure," Lenovo chief operating officer Rory Read said.

Powered by Intel Core2Duo processors, Lenovo PCs and laptops offer a host of applications with 3G connectivity, WiFi (wireless fidelity), Ethernet and Bluetooth access.

"We have increased the resolution of cameras, added a microphone mute button and improved the digital microphone for clearer sounding conversations," Read said.

Global IT research and advisory firm Gartner, however, said Windows 7 launch would have minimal impact on PC shipments growth in the next two quarters as lower spending on technology following global recession would have a cascading effect on its sales.

"Though the PC industry fared marginally better than expected in the third quarter (July-September) of this calendar year (2009) with 81 million units sold worldwide, a 0.5 percent increase year-on-year, inventory adjustments around the Windows 7 launch could artificially affect shipment volumes during the fourth quarter," Gartner principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa said in a statement.

A recent study by the advisory firm has shown that release of operating systems do not drive the PC market.

"Window 7 adoption is not expected to ramp up until late 2010 though there could be a renewed interest in hardware upgrades from consumers and small business during the holiday season," Kitagawa noted.

After three consecutive quarters of year-on-year shipment declines, PC shipments in the U.S. totalled 17.8 million units in third quarter, a 3.9 percent increase from the same quarter of last year.