Monday, June 28, 2021
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Diwali celebration cum townhall @Noida office
9.9 Media Diwali celebration @ Noida
Monday, August 29, 2011
Facebook and Google plus: Compliment or Competition?
Social media started creating a big impact on our life. We all know as personal life's point of view, but major impact is now on professional side!
Promotion of brands through social media is become essential nowadays. Facebook has changed lots of things for world. Brands have their facebook fan pages to get brand loyalty and awareness.
Reports has shown that buying decision is made though "peer" consultation was 5 times more than an "advertisement". For example, if we have seen on our facebook screen that "Brand XYZ is one of the best service provider" and "Bob and 4 other friends like this", then you may also be interested in the button "like" for that brand. After liking, you will get daily updated of the brand in your wall and may be sometime in future you may use that product/service. If your first experience with that Brand XYZ was too good, then you will directly recommend to your "peers" and chain grows multi-fold.
India is number 3 in terms of facebook users and with the increasing numbers we may occupy number 1 spot also, but now we have a twist in this story! Google Plus. In just third week of launch number of users reached to 20 millions. The great part of this achievement is numbers of Indian users, we are at second spot. This is a great example of adaptation of new social media, almost created world record for fastest growing number of users on social media. There are many possible reasons, geeky early adopters, google trust, gmail users or people want to try something new. One reason is quiet obvious- number of gmail users. India's 62% email users are using gmail, that's a really big number. Google plus is easily attached with gmail, sync though Picasa and lots of combination will work in positive sense.
Let's come back to brand promotion on Google plus, companies already start exploring ways to use this medium. But till the end of July'11 Google plus is not yet revealed anything for alternate solution of facebook pages. But yes, like facebook or linkedIn ads, Google Plus ads will also play great role. We have to wait and watch next step of Google for fan pages/ community for Brand promotions.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Tug of War: Push mail vs. Pull mail
For the first stride, let us take a look at what happens when you access your email account from your PC: Every time your email client (whether it is Thunderbird or GMail's web interface) refreshes the email in your inbox, whether it is automatically after a set interval, or you refresh it manually, your computer will send a request to your mail provider's servers. The mail provider then checks for new mail and returns the same to you. This is pull mail, working pretty much like you expect the web to work.
All was hunky-dory in the world of email, until mobiles-dapper-enough-for-email came along. The steps above were followed on the earlier handsets, and they’d flaunt their GPRS capabilities and fetch mail on the go. But with constrictions of battery life and data charges, it was soon realized that the current system of email was not the most efficient for phones. Thus was born Push-mail.
Brought to the fore by RIM’s BlackBerry, this type of mail service eliminates the step where your device needs to send a request to the mail server to fetch mail. BlackBerry, for example, mediates between your mobile and the email provider. Theoretically, the ‘refresh’ done by you, is now done by the servers of the company – after all they're the one who know first when you get mail. If there is new mail, it is pushed onto your device. Now this is a very important ability: the ability to wake your phone up from stand-by. It is much like sending an SMS. Your phone doesn’t have to be ‘awake’ to receive it, thus, saving battery life. This was not the only reason for BlackBerry’s success though. It was also their proprietary encryption, protocols and near-real-time delivery of mails that made these phones indispensable for many businessmen.
Another way to do the same is using the IMAP IDLE feature of the IMAP protocol. To understand how it works, consider this: Suppose you want certain data from a server. You send a request and wait. If there is no response within a stipulated time, the session gets expired or the packets get lost. In IMAP IDLE, this waiting time is very long. So a message is sent to the server and the phone waits in idle mode while the push-service provider checks for mail at regular intervals. The main constriction of the change of IP or network of the user is solved here by sending a new IMAP IDLE request if the user hops onto another network. Although it is a more widespread alternative, it does not match the efficiency of BlackBerry because you need a constant connection with the server. This creates a problem when your mobile service provider times out idle connections after 5 minutes, hence reconnection and battery kill is required. However, if this doesn't bother you, then one advantage is that many IMAP IDLE based push-mail clients are free or come bundled with high-end phones. These include: Emose, Yahoo Push Mail, Google Sync etc. for all platforms. K-9 Mail and MailDroid for Android. OviMail and Nokia Messaging in Nokia also work on IMAP IDLE. These clients work with popular email services like GMail, Yahoo, and Microsoft Exchange servers.
BlackBerry is for the elite (their cheapest phone is around Rs. 10,000) and not every phone supports IMAP IDLE. I mean to point out the Java-based mobiles and low to mid-end Nokia phones that the masses love. This is the reason why a common Indian man has probably never used, or even heard of push-mail. This is the reason why we penned down this article. It is not that survival is difficult without push-mail, but instant delivery of emails is bound to attract anyone who needs to check the inbox, due to bindings of profession or obsession. And it is only healthy that like every other technology, push-mail comes to the masses at reduced prices.
This has been accomplished to some extent by several providers of email-over-sms service, where a part of the mail is sent over SMS to your phone. This obviously supports each and every phone out there. It is probably as bare-bones as it can get. As far as push-mail over low end phones is considered, a much better alternative from our own backyard isBlacMail (available free for now), by a Bangalore-based startup, Fifth C Solutions. It is a variation that builds on the strengths of email-over-sms, while providing features like a graphical interface, address filters, and most of all – the much desired BlackBerry experience to the masses. That it uses the GSM channel to perform the task generally meant to be performed over the data/GPRS channel is also desirable (very similar to a recent project by HP Labs). It is in process to get a GPRS based version too that will take care of the attachments et al. We feel that a GPRS capable service, with initial push through GSM channel would be a winning mix, not just for the low-end phones. The provision of this service by BSNL (in Karnataka for now) shows that the people out there do want a taste of the cherry... oh, we mean, the berry!
Google updates Gmail service - adds visual, interface and accessibility tweaks
Even though the basic screen looks almost the same as it used to, Google hasn’t put in any new options – the engineers and designers have made minor tweaks here and there. The most noticeable change being the much used left-hand column now features Mail, Contacts and Tasks in a seperate pane of their own at the top. Compose mail, the only distinct link among the others is now a button, which has been moved down. The header size has been decreased, giving more space for the message part (about 16 pixels). Another change is the selection of messages (All, None, Read, etc) has been moved to a drop-down. The overall colour-scheme has also been revamped, giving it more of a web-app like polish.
Managing the new contacts list is like managing e-mails which involves adding, editing, deleting contacts which you can sort and group. In fact you can control how many contacts are displayed per page, along with your emails-per-page setting. You can also sort them by last name now, add custom fields (like 'team' if you're managing a sports league newsletter) and break down name fields into first, middle and last. Merging has been made easier via the 'more actions' panel, and all changes are now saved automatically rather than requiring you to enter an edit mode. Thankfully, there’s an undo option as well, in case you manage to delete all 729 contacts in one fell swoop.
Here are some new features mentioned below which have been listed on the Gmail Blog:
Keyboard shortcuts (go to Contacts and hit "?" for the full list)
Sort by last name (look under "More actions")
Custom labels for phone numbers and other fields
The ability to undo changes you've just made
Auto-saving the changes in contact management
Structured name fields, so you can adjust titles, suffixes, and other name components
A bigger, more prominent notes field
Flexibility to set number of contacts per page
Defraggler v1.21.209 [Download of the Day]
Defraggler comes from the same stable that has given us free software of the pedigree of CCleaner, software publishers Piriform. Defraggler is an easy-to-use, small (4MB) and portable utility that is a good replacement for Windows’ built-in defragmentation utility. The company behind this software claims that it uses the same defragmentation algorithm as the Windows’ default utility does, so it is completely safe. But one may wonder, why must I use this when it is no different?
The reason is the three precious features that Defraggler provides: It allows you to selectively defragment files and folders. This is a boon, as you can defragment the files/folders you use often, more frequently. Secondly, the tiny Defraggler provides the ‘quick defrag’ option, which reduces the lengthy defragmentation process by selectively defragging files. Thirdly, unlike the Windows’ utility, Defraggler allows you to pause the defragmentation midway, which is very useful, since the process is often lengthy.
It also provides the ability to tweak the settings of the defragmentation or quick defrag process, where you can selectively defragment the files of a certain size or type.
The utility also allows you to defrag free space! This ensures that any new files further added on the drive are not fragmented. You can also schedule defragmentation to take place at a fixed daily/weekly/monthly time.
It is impractical to provide the test times of defragmentation here, as it is dependent on N number of factors, from disk’s speed and size, to amount of fragmentation. Although the process is slow (especially when defragmenting for the first time), the option to pause when Defraggler is doing it is diamond.
You can download Defraggler here.
You can download other fragg-a-licious (whatever that means!) Download of the Day software here.