Today all of us have profiles on almost every popular networking tool be it social like facebook, orkut, blogger, wordpress or professional like linkedin, Xing etc. The problem is every time you open a new a/c, you have to duplicate all your personal, professional information on every single site. Not only that .... you also need to find and import all your buddies from one network to another, get all your snaps moved, your calendar, applications, activities etc etc. its just hell of a pain for no good and may even take several days before you actually start utilizing it fully. And then soon theres gonna be another tool on the block and bang you gotta move everything all over again :( this just goes on and on.
Thankfully there is a concept called "Distributed Social Networking" which is picking up pretty well and will solve such issues. The idea is to use already published information and achieve interoprability between multiple sites/applications. They use microformats, standard APIs and common protocols underneath to achieve this. Some of the tools can also be used as plug-ins. For instance, DiSo-project are building plug-ins that can be added to your wordpress wchich will then serve as your central platform to manage your distributed content. Of course with interoperability there will be new set of issues :) but hopefully things will be ironed out in some time.
So for instance if you have an a/c with X site and want to add friends from Y site and assuming both X and Y support common protocols (microformats), you should be able do it easily or if you want to import your flickr stream into your page (this actually works today as well in many networking sites but not using microformats) or even you can add your own activities, streams from your a/c on X to your new a/c on Y. There are lot of things you can do with these, i dont want to duplicate the information ;)
Check out the references for more detailed insight.
References:
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/portable_social_networks_building_blocks_of_a_social_web/
http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/video_on_distributed_social_network
-signing off
ameyas7
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Saturday, September 13, 2008
my_Phone - just modded ....
been really looooong since i last blogged. topic this time is .... modding. dun really wanna write another techie blog. not that i dislike 'em, they are good and contain pretty useful information but just dun wanna mix it with my blogroll :)
read the DISCLAIMER section at the bottom before you read this entry.
it all satrted when i was trying to install Yahoo ! Go 3. its a really cool j2me application with whole bunch of widgets, yahoo mails, maps bla bla bla .... so desperately wanted this, fortunately / unfortunately i got an error saying you need software higher than R1JC001 or something. after googling for a while, came across this tech blog which opened doors for me to the whole new world of modding.
initially it looked pretty complex and risky ... indeed it is, for beginners. but once you go through couple of tutorials, you have decent knowledge to take the first step. of course it is a "risky" business. flashing could actually screw up your phone royally (for those of you who don't know what flashing is .... flashing is a process by which you write some data to EEPROM im sure u must've read this in your CS books but now is the time to do it ;) and in the process, you would loose existing data if any). but this is the risk that makes you feel good when you do it successfully :)
fortunately fair amount of firmwares, patches, packs are floating around for k790i (and alike) and then i have been using this phone for almost 2 yrs now, so was willing to take the risk ;) and hell yeah ... it pays off. you can completely customize your phone just the way you want it. you can upgrade your phone's firmware, audio drivers, camera drivers, menu icons, menu layout and the list goes on. i burned the walkman's drivers to my phone, it worked well but ain't that great. i mean i can see the loudness has improved but nothing noticeable when it comes to the quality of sound. it will only work within the limits of the hardware :) of course you can modd the hardware too but lets leave that to the real pros ;) as far as camera is concerned there is no need to get rid of cybershot drivers and put custom drivers... well you certainly can do it but it already is one of the best. i also changed the menu icons. k790i has a very good display quality but if you are bored of the same old stuff, you can put your own. this is not same as the "theme" thing. a theme only modifies the background, foreground and style but not the layout, icons not even menu text. if you want to put your own menu icons, you will need 12 or 24 images for each menu item in selected/unselected state and then you write them to phone's file system. in fact the SE system was sooo impressive that the menu is xml driven and all you need to do is put your image's name/path in the xml. if you spend time understanding the menu structure, the layout, you can customize your entire menu. and beilieve me customizing menus are like simplest thing and completely follows WYSIWYM pattern. you can even have flash-based menus, wallpapers etc. you can get skins for your music player. the best part was to patch the firmware with an elfpack. SE phones (k790i) can be patched to run elfs which are popular in the *nix world. once your phone supports elf, you can run elves on it. not all elves work on all phones but you still have a support for additional format :) you can give a complete makeover to your phone.
need a kick-start?
gather all possible data such as platform, software version etc about your phone. go through forums (there are dozens of em) understand what you can do and what you can't before you actually begin. you will then need to download couple of tools likfe FAR manager, SEToolLite, XS++ etc. backup your GDFS using these tools. in fact back up everything you can. i lost all my contacts as i forgot to back up my data. :( you will need to hunt for firmwares for your phones depending on your platform and CID#. you can then burn the main firmware and filesystem. once you have successfully burned the firmware, first thing you might want to do is delete the data account, wap profiles etc. and put your own as im not sure how they might reflect in your bills ;) and then from here it all depends on what you want to customize, apply patches etc.
and last but not the least. finally i got the Yahoo! Go app working. its simply awesome. Yahoo rocks. anytime.
DISCLAIMER: Do not try this unless you know what you are doing. flashing can seriously damage your phone's hardware. some of the operations can not be undone while some can be. some operations can make your phone unusable and you may not be able to recover it. your phone's warranty gets void when you debrand your phone. try this at your own risk. this blog entry was written only to make you aware of such possibilities and to share knowledge. any damage/loss caused will solely be the responsibility of the owner.
- signing off
ameyas7
read the DISCLAIMER section at the bottom before you read this entry.
it all satrted when i was trying to install Yahoo ! Go 3. its a really cool j2me application with whole bunch of widgets, yahoo mails, maps bla bla bla .... so desperately wanted this, fortunately / unfortunately i got an error saying you need software higher than R1JC001 or something. after googling for a while, came across this tech blog which opened doors for me to the whole new world of modding.
initially it looked pretty complex and risky ... indeed it is, for beginners. but once you go through couple of tutorials, you have decent knowledge to take the first step. of course it is a "risky" business. flashing could actually screw up your phone royally (for those of you who don't know what flashing is .... flashing is a process by which you write some data to EEPROM im sure u must've read this in your CS books but now is the time to do it ;) and in the process, you would loose existing data if any). but this is the risk that makes you feel good when you do it successfully :)
fortunately fair amount of firmwares, patches, packs are floating around for k790i (and alike) and then i have been using this phone for almost 2 yrs now, so was willing to take the risk ;) and hell yeah ... it pays off. you can completely customize your phone just the way you want it. you can upgrade your phone's firmware, audio drivers, camera drivers, menu icons, menu layout and the list goes on. i burned the walkman's drivers to my phone, it worked well but ain't that great. i mean i can see the loudness has improved but nothing noticeable when it comes to the quality of sound. it will only work within the limits of the hardware :) of course you can modd the hardware too but lets leave that to the real pros ;) as far as camera is concerned there is no need to get rid of cybershot drivers and put custom drivers... well you certainly can do it but it already is one of the best. i also changed the menu icons. k790i has a very good display quality but if you are bored of the same old stuff, you can put your own. this is not same as the "theme" thing. a theme only modifies the background, foreground and style but not the layout, icons not even menu text. if you want to put your own menu icons, you will need 12 or 24 images for each menu item in selected/unselected state and then you write them to phone's file system. in fact the SE system was sooo impressive that the menu is xml driven and all you need to do is put your image's name/path in the xml. if you spend time understanding the menu structure, the layout, you can customize your entire menu. and beilieve me customizing menus are like simplest thing and completely follows WYSIWYM pattern. you can even have flash-based menus, wallpapers etc. you can get skins for your music player. the best part was to patch the firmware with an elfpack. SE phones (k790i) can be patched to run elfs which are popular in the *nix world. once your phone supports elf, you can run elves on it. not all elves work on all phones but you still have a support for additional format :) you can give a complete makeover to your phone.
need a kick-start?
gather all possible data such as platform, software version etc about your phone. go through forums (there are dozens of em) understand what you can do and what you can't before you actually begin. you will then need to download couple of tools likfe FAR manager, SEToolLite, XS++ etc. backup your GDFS using these tools. in fact back up everything you can. i lost all my contacts as i forgot to back up my data. :( you will need to hunt for firmwares for your phones depending on your platform and CID#. you can then burn the main firmware and filesystem. once you have successfully burned the firmware, first thing you might want to do is delete the data account, wap profiles etc. and put your own as im not sure how they might reflect in your bills ;) and then from here it all depends on what you want to customize, apply patches etc.
and last but not the least. finally i got the Yahoo! Go app working. its simply awesome. Yahoo rocks. anytime.
DISCLAIMER: Do not try this unless you know what you are doing. flashing can seriously damage your phone's hardware. some of the operations can not be undone while some can be. some operations can make your phone unusable and you may not be able to recover it. your phone's warranty gets void when you debrand your phone. try this at your own risk. this blog entry was written only to make you aware of such possibilities and to share knowledge. any damage/loss caused will solely be the responsibility of the owner.
- signing off
ameyas7
Sunday, May 11, 2008
May 10th, 2008 .... Pangea day
HistoryIn 2006, filmmaker Jehane Noujaim won the TED Prize, an annual award granted at the TED Conference. She was granted $100,000, and more important, a wish to change the world. Her wish was to create a day in which the world came together through film. Pangea Day grew out of that wish. Watch Jehane Noujaim’s 2006 acceptance speech now.
The Pangea Day Mission & Purpose
Pangea Day is a global event bringing the world together through film. Why? In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it's easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that – to help people see themselves in others – through the power of film. [source: official website]
The whole theme was to inspire a global community to keep aside the differences we have created and work towards the betterment of the human community in general.
It was an awesome show and I was really fortunate enough to tune into it (accidentally) at the right time. The show started at 18:00 GMT (11:30 PM IST) on May 10, 2008, locations in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro were linked for a live program of powerful films, live music, and visionary speakers. The entire program was broadcasted – in seven languages – to millions of people worldwide through the internet, television, and mobile phones. The show went for almost 4 longgg hours (although I could watch it only till 02:30 AM). It mainly featured short films on various themes right from human emotions to borders and some other social issues. Each film was pretty unique. It was all soo perfect. I bet they must've hard time evaluating entries. Between these films, they had arranged interviews, musical performances etc. In fact, the whole show was so nicely organized and well co-ordinated I must say.
It was an international competition which got about 2500 submissions from over one hundred countries. Out of these 24 films were chosen to be featured in this event. The films were chosen based on their ability to inspire, transform, and allow us see the world through another person's eyes. Details on the Pangea Day films can be viewed here. The program also included a number of exceptional speakers and musical performers. Queen Noor of Jordan, CNN's Christiane Amanpour, musician/activist Bob Geldof, and Iranian rock phenom Hypernova are among those taking part.
During one of the interviews, they showcased a website http://www.wefeelfine.org/ This system simply crawls blog entries all over the world every 10 minutes and collects sentences begining with "i feel" or "i am feeling" and gathers all the related data like gender, location information etc they can even get the weather information based on the location and time. The application basically is based on the particle system where single particle represents one entry. The system also decodes the sentence and comes out with not just with a type of feeling(happy, angry, depressed etc), it even tries to judge the degree of the feelings. Based on this data they have written an applet depicts this information in the visual form. So the combination of colors, shapes, transparency and size represent the type, degree of the feelings. The concept was similar to tag clouds. You can even click on the particle to see the actual text entry behnid it or even a photograph (if it has one). The system also exposes its API under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike license So if you want to integrate this system into your system or website, you can use the API subject to license terms and conditions.
If you beilieve in OneEarth, then you would have loved this show. If you missed it, you can catch some of the action at their official website here and last but not least, if you feel inspired, do check out the events and how to take part section here.
- signing off
Pangea Day is a global event bringing the world together through film. Why? In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it's easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that – to help people see themselves in others – through the power of film. [source: official website]
The whole theme was to inspire a global community to keep aside the differences we have created and work towards the betterment of the human community in general.
It was an awesome show and I was really fortunate enough to tune into it (accidentally) at the right time. The show started at 18:00 GMT (11:30 PM IST) on May 10, 2008, locations in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro were linked for a live program of powerful films, live music, and visionary speakers. The entire program was broadcasted – in seven languages – to millions of people worldwide through the internet, television, and mobile phones. The show went for almost 4 longgg hours (although I could watch it only till 02:30 AM). It mainly featured short films on various themes right from human emotions to borders and some other social issues. Each film was pretty unique. It was all soo perfect. I bet they must've hard time evaluating entries. Between these films, they had arranged interviews, musical performances etc. In fact, the whole show was so nicely organized and well co-ordinated I must say.
It was an international competition which got about 2500 submissions from over one hundred countries. Out of these 24 films were chosen to be featured in this event. The films were chosen based on their ability to inspire, transform, and allow us see the world through another person's eyes. Details on the Pangea Day films can be viewed here. The program also included a number of exceptional speakers and musical performers. Queen Noor of Jordan, CNN's Christiane Amanpour, musician/activist Bob Geldof, and Iranian rock phenom Hypernova are among those taking part.
During one of the interviews, they showcased a website http://www.wefeelfine.org/ This system simply crawls blog entries all over the world every 10 minutes and collects sentences begining with "i feel" or "i am feeling" and gathers all the related data like gender, location information etc they can even get the weather information based on the location and time. The application basically is based on the particle system where single particle represents one entry. The system also decodes the sentence and comes out with not just with a type of feeling(happy, angry, depressed etc), it even tries to judge the degree of the feelings. Based on this data they have written an applet depicts this information in the visual form. So the combination of colors, shapes, transparency and size represent the type, degree of the feelings. The concept was similar to tag clouds. You can even click on the particle to see the actual text entry behnid it or even a photograph (if it has one). The system also exposes its API under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike license So if you want to integrate this system into your system or website, you can use the API subject to license terms and conditions.
If you beilieve in OneEarth, then you would have loved this show. If you missed it, you can catch some of the action at their official website here and last but not least, if you feel inspired, do check out the events and how to take part section here.
- signing off
ameyas7
Sunday, April 20, 2008
blogathon ..... constructive blogging ....
ahhh its been two longggg months since i last blogged :) looks like i have become less active or is it the silence before some kind of a storm ;) ... lol. just kidding. i have been occupied with lotsa stuff these days. attending weddings, engagements n parties. march, april were quite eventful and lets not get into detailed list of events now.
oh btw if u blog as well, here's a treat for u .... blogathon. just few days back i got a mail from Tarun regarding this event . the very first thing that came to my mind that maybe this is not my type of event. i prefer to blog when i like and on topics that i like but when i actually saw the event details, the topics were quite interesting. now this is certainly one of the (though not the only) constructive uses of blogging. as a matter of fact, i was thinking on similar lines that there should be an official blogroll on ideas, suggestions to improve upon such things .... life in general. however not only it is difficult but it is practically impossible to go through sooo many entries and actually compile all the results. it would be nice to see the results (or just entrieof this blogathon.
initially this sounded like a marathon where everyone can run in any direction they want (as you cant really control the thoughts but thats the beauty of it .... isnt it? ). it can be a great opportunity to get ideas from diverse set of people this could virtually include anyone and everyone across the globe. so it would really be exciting to see the blog entries.
well if time permits, i would certainly try to have my "dream run" (it is for novice users who'd probably just run few kms. not the full length marathon) this year and a full one maybe next year.
oh btw if u blog as well, here's a treat for u .... blogathon. just few days back i got a mail from Tarun regarding this event . the very first thing that came to my mind that maybe this is not my type of event. i prefer to blog when i like and on topics that i like but when i actually saw the event details, the topics were quite interesting. now this is certainly one of the (though not the only) constructive uses of blogging. as a matter of fact, i was thinking on similar lines that there should be an official blogroll on ideas, suggestions to improve upon such things .... life in general. however not only it is difficult but it is practically impossible to go through sooo many entries and actually compile all the results. it would be nice to see the results (or just entrieof this blogathon.
initially this sounded like a marathon where everyone can run in any direction they want (as you cant really control the thoughts but thats the beauty of it .... isnt it? ). it can be a great opportunity to get ideas from diverse set of people this could virtually include anyone and everyone across the globe. so it would really be exciting to see the blog entries.
well if time permits, i would certainly try to have my "dream run" (it is for novice users who'd probably just run few kms. not the full length marathon) this year and a full one maybe next year.
- signing off
ameyas7
Monday, February 18, 2008
love i$ in the air ....
"Love For Techonology" was the tagline for BarcampPune4 which was held at ThoughtWorks pune on 16th Febuary 2008. it was conducted in high spirits. it was one of the well organized barcamps i have attended. found it better than the last BarCampMumbai .... not that it wasn't good but just that this was better. i have always appreciated all the volunteers putting their time efforts into this. kudos to these organizers (of all barcamps ever held :) )
well the day started with some jRuby stuff which was not all that great ... as the guy was going too much into details. could have been better if ppl start with generalized concepts first and then dive into the details. easy said than done ... maybe... i never gave any session @ barcamps so not sure what could be the reason why ppl touch upon details directly (considering that the audience would be from mixed backgrounds) .... maybe time constraint ... not sure .... anyways.
the next session was on how to be safe ... cyber safety topic by Rohit Srivastwa the same guy who is one of the core members at clubhack. he spoke about various attacks including MITM and ARP poisoning including some demos to crack some of the volunteer's passwords ;) it was good to play around with.
the next interesting session was a guy (nick) named "Sidu" from ThoughtWorks. he gave us an interesting talk on "Why Ruby" he started with general stuff @ Ruby ... very basic stuff ... easy to digest ... simple language ... and then some compare n constrasts with the existing platforms such as java, .Net etc. it was good enough. after that the most intneresting part (the lunch). it was good as well. not better than BarcampMumbai ... IIT though ;)
post lunch, i attended the "e-discovery" by Chetan Gupta he works at Symantec. he had given a talk in clubhack as well. after that i headed to "The danger of search engines & how to protect" by Diwakar Goel (he has co-authored the book titled "Google Hacking"). it was really kool stuff. some of it was from his book but some tricks were new for me as i have not read the book completely. after that it was more of hanging around with fella-campers, getting to know other ppl etc .... this is the best part about barcamps.
so the day ended on a good note. and then i was also fairly impressed with ThoughtWorks in general :) the infrastructure, culture, agile thingy bla bla bla.
photos can be found on flickr here and my bits of memories here. despite all these, im sure i ve missed lot of action @ other sessions. but i was full already ;)
keep up the good work guys.
theres another barcampmumbai coming up in march and so is OWASP on 1st of March. lets see i'd be attending OWASP for the first time so pretty excited. the only sad part is i have to skip my trip to mumbai whenever i attend conf @ pune. but then this was certainly worth it.
- signing off
ameyas7
Friday, February 08, 2008
shop online .... r we ready yet ????
technology has certainly made our lives simple. internet has made it even better. today we do so many things online in our day-to-day life. book tickets, pay bills, trade, banking, shopping just to name few. i know that one should not blame anybody based on one incident, but then this blog is to make you aware of such mishaps so that you can avoid them.
well this is my "personal" experience. on January 26th, 2008 i ordered a Onida Candy DVD Player from HomeShop18. payment was done by credit card (not cash on delivery .... on second thoughts, i seriously feel that this is the best option to make such transactions hassle free) . after placing the order, i just called the customer care to know the expected date of delivery and i was told that it will take 10 working days to get the order delivered but that is the max time estimate. i was also told that since your payment has already been done, you might get it early. 10 working days even if destination is metro like mumbai. man can you beilive that, i have received international couriers in much shorter time than this. i got a verification call on the following tuesday to verify my name, phone #, card details etc. i was pretty happy as i was expecting it in some time after verification. they have off on saturdays and sundays i.e. 5 days week. i perfectly understand the staff is just human like us all. but then there was nothing to be manufactured. all you need to do after verification is deliver the product by courier which should not take more than 3-4 days even with the worst kind of a courier. i am not sure where the product is shipped from but i beilive NOIDA being their main office, they might be shipping from there.
Day 3 - 8:
i am waiting for the product to arrive and at times checking with the customer care. on 5th Feb i logged in to my a/c and checked the order status which said "Normal Courier ( Shipped on Feb 4, 2008 ). ( 2140315123 ) "
Day 9: Thursday 7th, 2008
i called up the customer care again just to track the status and i was told that the product was shipped on "6th February 2008" but i will be getting before 10th working day. i ignored the mismatch in the date of shipment.
Day 10: Friday 8th, 2008
i am still waiting but the product has not arrived till 4:00 PM i called up the customer care and i was told that wait for EOD which is 6 PM . just few minutes after i hung up the phone with the customer care, i got a call from ONIDA's andheri office / shop and was told that i wil get it today evening.
finally the product arrived in the evening and to my surprise they had sent some other model. i got Onida DFX-5957 model. the HomeShop18 price difference between these two products is Rs 600. i called up the customer care again to raise the issue and i was told that the exchange procedure could take "10 working days" but then thats the "max time estimated". i was like #&*^$&*#&*^&$*^*$. after a very heated conversation, i was told that give us an hour's time and you will get a callback.
and as you might have already predicted i am still waiting for the call ....
lets see how many "working days" do they take to call back.
few points to learn (check-list before you check-out):
1) go for cash on delivery option whenever available
2) always read the terms before you place an order
3) if the discount is not more than 20%, it is really not worth taking the risk and then traditional shopping wins over online shopping as you get to see, feel the product, zero waiting time and many other advantages.
4) always prefer some reputed site .... actually i was sold by the name of "Network 18" but then i was wrong so this totally depends on how lucky u r ;) and homeshop18 has certainly failed the "test of trust" and to loose goodwill over a dvd player is far higher a price to pay.
5) if anything goes wrong, keep this URL handy National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (click here) and/ or Consumer Online Resource & Empowerment Center
6) always make sure that you can hold one person responsible for this. apparently these customer care services are useless as you cant really hold any one single individual accountable if things go wrong.
7) ensure that the order can be tracked to the finest level. i.e. right from time you place the order till the time you get the product.
the mystery still remains unsolved as if they had shipped the product by normal courier on 6th Feb (or 4th Feb god only knows), then howcome the product is delivered by onida office in andheri. i assume that the mistake lies with HomeShop18 as the bill and the product packaging clearly says that "Onida DFX-5957" which looks like they received wrong instructions. i am not sure whose mistake it is but i am certiainly suffering for no reason. frankly speaking i really dont want to waste a single moment thinking about it. well that does not mean i will accept the wrong product.
after all this, i really wonder what kind of procedure is followed at homeshop18 that takes "10 working days" to deliver a wrong product.
- signing off
ameyas7
well this is my "personal" experience. on January 26th, 2008 i ordered a Onida Candy DVD Player from HomeShop18. payment was done by credit card (not cash on delivery .... on second thoughts, i seriously feel that this is the best option to make such transactions hassle free) . after placing the order, i just called the customer care to know the expected date of delivery and i was told that it will take 10 working days to get the order delivered but that is the max time estimate. i was also told that since your payment has already been done, you might get it early. 10 working days even if destination is metro like mumbai. man can you beilive that, i have received international couriers in much shorter time than this. i got a verification call on the following tuesday to verify my name, phone #, card details etc. i was pretty happy as i was expecting it in some time after verification. they have off on saturdays and sundays i.e. 5 days week. i perfectly understand the staff is just human like us all. but then there was nothing to be manufactured. all you need to do after verification is deliver the product by courier which should not take more than 3-4 days even with the worst kind of a courier. i am not sure where the product is shipped from but i beilive NOIDA being their main office, they might be shipping from there.
Day 3 - 8:
i am waiting for the product to arrive and at times checking with the customer care. on 5th Feb i logged in to my a/c and checked the order status which said "Normal Courier ( Shipped on Feb 4, 2008 ). ( 2140315123 ) "
Day 9: Thursday 7th, 2008
i called up the customer care again just to track the status and i was told that the product was shipped on "6th February 2008" but i will be getting before 10th working day. i ignored the mismatch in the date of shipment.
Day 10: Friday 8th, 2008
i am still waiting but the product has not arrived till 4:00 PM i called up the customer care and i was told that wait for EOD which is 6 PM . just few minutes after i hung up the phone with the customer care, i got a call from ONIDA's andheri office / shop and was told that i wil get it today evening.
finally the product arrived in the evening and to my surprise they had sent some other model. i got Onida DFX-5957 model. the HomeShop18 price difference between these two products is Rs 600. i called up the customer care again to raise the issue and i was told that the exchange procedure could take "10 working days" but then thats the "max time estimated". i was like #&*^$&*#&*^&$*^*$. after a very heated conversation, i was told that give us an hour's time and you will get a callback.
and as you might have already predicted i am still waiting for the call ....
lets see how many "working days" do they take to call back.
few points to learn (check-list before you check-out):
1) go for cash on delivery option whenever available
2) always read the terms before you place an order
3) if the discount is not more than 20%, it is really not worth taking the risk and then traditional shopping wins over online shopping as you get to see, feel the product, zero waiting time and many other advantages.
4) always prefer some reputed site .... actually i was sold by the name of "Network 18" but then i was wrong so this totally depends on how lucky u r ;) and homeshop18 has certainly failed the "test of trust" and to loose goodwill over a dvd player is far higher a price to pay.
5) if anything goes wrong, keep this URL handy National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (click here) and/ or Consumer Online Resource & Empowerment Center
6) always make sure that you can hold one person responsible for this. apparently these customer care services are useless as you cant really hold any one single individual accountable if things go wrong.
7) ensure that the order can be tracked to the finest level. i.e. right from time you place the order till the time you get the product.
the mystery still remains unsolved as if they had shipped the product by normal courier on 6th Feb (or 4th Feb god only knows), then howcome the product is delivered by onida office in andheri. i assume that the mistake lies with HomeShop18 as the bill and the product packaging clearly says that "Onida DFX-5957" which looks like they received wrong instructions. i am not sure whose mistake it is but i am certiainly suffering for no reason. frankly speaking i really dont want to waste a single moment thinking about it. well that does not mean i will accept the wrong product.
after all this, i really wonder what kind of procedure is followed at homeshop18 that takes "10 working days" to deliver a wrong product.
- signing off
ameyas7
Friday, February 01, 2008
yahooooooooooo ....
MS offers $44.6 bn to takeover Yahoo! everyone is aware @ the big news by now.
well with respect to the current condition, the bid sounds pretty lucrative. but if you consider the potential, it would not be a good move to accept the offer.
with the script price currently at $ 27.90 the market cap is about $37 bn and just check out the stock price chart for about past 2 yrs and the picture is pretty clear that its only past few months (with just few hiccups last yr) particulary from november 2007 the stock started falling down without any support on the lower side. but again i feel that its just temporal. i mean come on .... everybody goes through some rough times, you dont sell out so easy .... would you? if the shareholders decide to encash the oppurtunity, then it will be very sad day. $31 per share is not that great a price. i am not sure why it is sooo well received. i understand that it is around 60+% premium but then looking at the previous records, it doesnt really sound that HIGH.
personally i would not like to see Yahoo takenover by MS. i know they are going through rough times and with the Terry Semel's resignation, this could be the best time to make an offer but i hope they choose to hang-in there. ye i am big fan of Yahoo :P fairly impressed with their developer network particularly with the YUI and will always be. Yahoo rocks! but of course this is just my opinion /analysis :P hehehe
so will it be Yahooo or will it be Boohoooo ... only time will tell you my friend!
- signing off
ameyas7
well with respect to the current condition, the bid sounds pretty lucrative. but if you consider the potential, it would not be a good move to accept the offer.
with the script price currently at $ 27.90 the market cap is about $37 bn and just check out the stock price chart for about past 2 yrs and the picture is pretty clear that its only past few months (with just few hiccups last yr) particulary from november 2007 the stock started falling down without any support on the lower side. but again i feel that its just temporal. i mean come on .... everybody goes through some rough times, you dont sell out so easy .... would you? if the shareholders decide to encash the oppurtunity, then it will be very sad day. $31 per share is not that great a price. i am not sure why it is sooo well received. i understand that it is around 60+% premium but then looking at the previous records, it doesnt really sound that HIGH.
personally i would not like to see Yahoo takenover by MS. i know they are going through rough times and with the Terry Semel's resignation, this could be the best time to make an offer but i hope they choose to hang-in there. ye i am big fan of Yahoo :P fairly impressed with their developer network particularly with the YUI and will always be. Yahoo rocks! but of course this is just my opinion /analysis :P hehehe
so will it be Yahooo or will it be Boohoooo ... only time will tell you my friend!
- signing off
ameyas7
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