Google English? Unexecuted Google's April Fool Prank?

Observe this image carefully (click to enlarge if you don't see enough details)

You can note a few points here:

1. Address of the page is www.orkut.com, not www.google.com.
2. Google logo has "English" as its subscript.

Now a little bit of flashback. About two weeks ago, on March 27th at 5:59 PM to be exact, I opened Orkut. But to my surprise, Google opened instead of Orkut! I tried refreshing for about two three minutes and the same thing happened again and again. I immediately captured a screenshot, which is what you just saw above. Orkut came back to normalcy soon after that.

Google is well known for April Fool pranks. It might have been one of their ideas, which was taken back. But I don't have any information on anything called Google English, so I can't say much about it.

UPDATE: I've been able to find that the mentioned webpage is having the IP Address 64.233.169.104. I will try to get more information about this.

Airtel Customer (Don't) Care: As useless as ever

When does a person get frustrated to the core? Probably when he badly needs some help and no one around is ready to assist. Airtel Customer Care is one such call centre which is determined enough to put you in such a hopeless situation.

I do have reason to be spilling my anguish here about Airtel's customer care service. There are many incidents which clearly indicate that Airtel is much interested in cheating its customers.

Incident #1: Connection not deactivated
My friend, who had an Airtel corporate connection in Bangalore, got transferred to Hyderabad. Since he didn't need this postpaid connection any more, he filled an application to cancel the connection and asked me get it deactivated. I went to their office (none of their executives, who come running to give you a new connection, would come to take the disconnection form) around January 20th and gave the application form. They took the application along with the outstanding amount and stated that the connection will be deactivated within two working days. However, after about 20 days, a bill was sent for that connection. When I called the customer care, they told that the application itself hasn't been received! So I gave the bill number of the outstanding amount which I had payed and also told details about the office where I had given the application. They also gave a complaint number and assured the same thing: the connection will be deactivated within two working days. Then again, as usual, I got the bill for the month of February in March. I called the customer care again and censured them about the issue. Again the ready reply came: it will surely be deactivated within 48 hours. I am still waiting for the disconnection of that SIM.

Incident #2: Security Deposit not returned
Another colleague of my friend, who was also transferred to Hyderabad, had given an application to deactivate. But the Airtel people didn't deactivate it and in the next month, they deducted security deposit of Rs. 300/- and deactivated. As he is not insane to come to Bangalore by spending more than Rs. 300/- to get Rs. 300/- back, the money will permanently be with Airtel.

Incident #3: SIM Deactivated because of failed address verification
Airtel address verifiers are not Pizza boys to always find the correct address within half an hour. But don't be under the impression that they will try their level best to find the place. Airtel will simply deactivate your SIM giving failed address verification as the reason. If you call customer care you'll get the ready answer again: Sorry for inconvenience sir. Our person will come today evening and verify your address. This happened with my colleague just three days back and after calling customer care and getting the before said answer every day, today the concerned person came to our office, and gave the report as house address is verified. He told that the SIM will be reactivated by today evening, but you know, I have my doubts!

This is not the end of the list. There are many more similar experiences. According to Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), Airtel is having maximum subscriber base in Karnataka. If it's customer care service is so useless here itself, I can't help but feel sorry for the Airtel customers in other places.

One more point to be noted is, it is not only Airtel which follows such a nasty purview with the customers. Apparently Hutch (now Vodafone) and other operators also do the same thing. Sometimes I feel as though having a mobile phone itself is a sin. What is the need of these helplines if they can't even resolve even simplest of the requests raised by the user, let alone extreme technical issues. In my opinion, such call centres should be referred as Customer Don't Cares instead of Customer Cares. They seem to know that the best service is no service. What do you think?

Bannerghatta National Park

Staying at home during weekends is one of the things I hate the most. I meet friends or go for shopping or jaunt around various places in and around Bengalooru (Bangalore). Incidentally, it happens that my roommate and friends are also like-minded, which makes us explore many different places around Bengalooru. Bannerghatta National Park is the first place we chose to mark the beginning of our expedition. Situated at a distance of 22 km from Bengalooru and covering about 25,000 acres of hilly region, Bannerghatta National Park is an important National Park in India one must not fail to visit if you visit Karnataka.

Deciding to go to Bannerghatta, we aggregated some information about it. We learnt that Bannerghtta National Park remains closed on Tuesday. One can go either by BMTC buses or by private vehicle. Since there are a lot of buses at regular intervals to Bannerghatta from Majestic, BMTC is preferable. On a fine Saturday morning of 24th November 2007, we left home at 8 in the morning and reached Bannerghatta at about 10:15. We had to stand in a queue to get tickets for the safari and the zoo. Since we had gone during weekends, we had to pay a little extra for the tickets.

We started off with the safari. Meshed vehicles of the forest department do a good job of taking you to various parts of the Bannerghatta Biological Park (BBP) amidst a myriad of wild animals like lions, tigers etc. roaming freely in the dense forest terrain. You might even get a feeling of being inside a bone in zoo and all the animals coming and visiting you from outside. Those 45 minutes were truly memorable!

After finishing our safari, we proceeded to the zoo where many other not-so-wild animals and birds are kept. It was an exhaustive collection. Later we moved to aquarium. Maintenance of the aquarium is good. Delighted by the diverse and colourful birds and fishes, we went ahead to the Reptile Park.

We had no idea that there are so many types of reptiles! I didn't know the names of most of the reptiles except snakes and crocodiles etc. We came to know why Bannerghatta is so famous for its Reptile Park. We literally got exhausted by the end of it.

It was already past 2 O'clock in the afternoon and it was time for lunch. So we thought of having food. There are shops and hotels just outside the National Park. We had a nice lunch. Our visit wasn't over since we hadn't visited the Butterfly Park yet.

We took tickets to the Butterfly Park. Butterfly Park is is a kind of unique zoo I have ever seen. It's the first of its kind in India. It's a doom shaped closed space in which various class of butterflies are maintained. Informative paintings are drawn on the walls of museum adjacent to the park. You can learn almost everything about the butterflies in that museum. If you are still curious, you can even watch a video show which gives more in-depth information about these idyllic species.

There are many other places if you want to trek. But we were really, really exhausted. So we decided to come back. All in all, it was an unforgettable outing. If you are bored of the intricacies of the city life and if you badly need to experience the diversity in flora and fauna of the nature without traveling too far, then Bannerghatta is the right place you should consider going to.

UPDATE:
My friends have asked for a few more details, which I thought are worth mentioning here (Some points are already mentioned in the article, but I've listed them here again for the sake of completeness):

• BMTC bus service to Bannerghatta is very good. BMTC also provides Volvo (A/C) buses.
• You need to pay a nominal fee if you want to take photographs in the Bannerghatta National Park as well as in the Butterfly Park.
• Entrance and photography tickets are separate for the Zoo/Safari and the Butterfly Park.
• Entrance fees are a more on weekends and holidays.
  
• You get chats and cold drinks inside the zoo as well as outside the entrance.
• On Tuesdays, Bannerghatta National Park remains closed.
  

How to stop or reduce Spam Emails

One can be as happy as he wants. But the same statement may not apply to Internet users, thanks to spam emails. Although there is no foolproof way to stop spams, we can reduce the amount of spams by being a bit careful.

The first thing before attacking is to understand the enemy and its strength. What is spam? We may call it junk mail, spam or whatever else you fancy, its property remains to be the same: it's unsolicited and it's useless. Most often than not, spams get generated from bots, viruses and automated mailing lists. In the rare cases, they are also caused my human users which, quite often, happen to be the most irritating kind of spam generators. It is observed that around 80% of the email messages exchanged are spams!. How disgusting!!

Take, for example, an incident which happened recently. One of my friends sent a mail to a large number of recepients. But one of those recepients was not an intended person. That person used Reply All and asked my friend to remove him from his mailing list. Well, you can guess what happened. All of us got the reply email which was intended only for my friend. Thankfully the chapter ended there itself. To get a hint of what can happen in such cases, see how to look stupid.

What is the solution for this? It's simple: We have to be in the right mind and know when to use Reply and when to use Reply All. As a rule of thumb, we should NEVER use Reply All unless we are 100% sure about what we are doing.

Instead of relying on others, another way to prevent such incidents is to be cautious enough not to disclose the email addresses to the recepients at all. It can be easily done by adding the addresses to BCC (Blind Courtesy Copy or Blind Carbon Copy) field instead of TO or CC fields. Unfortunately BCC field ranks top among the most obscure and unused standard feature of email!

The features discussed above are only for mails generated by humans. What about those spam emails which get generated by malwares and bots? Such spam emails are mainly the means for advertising products. More the number of recepients, more the number of customers. But how do they get the email ids? It's directly or indirectly by ourselves. We may have inadverently given our email ids to some website or it might have gone there by one of our friends. We need to be extra careful if we want to be at a distance from spams.

Also it is a good idea to remove the sender's information while forwarding an email to others. It not only protects your privacy, but also prevents any potential spammer to use the email addresses in the body of the mail to be used for unsolicited mailings.

Virtually there is no way to stop such emails if you are already receiving them. Precaution is better than cure is the mantra to be followed here. When we give out our email ids to some third party web sites, we need to be extra careful. Never give your email id to any unknown public mailing lists. You never know who shares your email id with spammers!

Another way to detect and filtering out spams is to give plus or minus addressing. You can use different tags for different mailing lists and if you start receiving spams, you can come to know who shared your email address with the spammers. Read more about spam control by plus addressing technique here.

Is that all? Not quite. One of the most common mistakes done by many people is to use their email addresses in their signatures. You may think that is going to make you more famous in the online world. But remember, for one genuine email you get by displaying your email id there, you start receiving hundreds of spams. Never ever make the mistake of putting email id in web pages, forums or social networking sites. Also, remember never to give away your friends' email ids to sites which ask you to invite them to join it. You may think you are being courteous to your friends by giving their email ids but, in reality, you are making them victims of spam emails.

Last but not the least, as a rule of thumb, don't forward any email message if it explicitly asks you to do so! Stopping spams may not be in our hands, but reducing them really is!

Additional Rules in Cricket

My friend got a mail like this:

After watching the test match, I feel some rules have to be incorporated by ICC to give the other teams a perfect clarification:

1. Ricky Ponting - (THE TRULY GENUINE CRICKETER OF THE CRICKET ERA AND WHOSE INTEGRITY SHOULD NOT BE DOUBTED) should be considered as the FOURTH UMPIRE. As per the new rules, FOURTH UMPIRE decision is final and will over ride any decisions taken by any other umpires. ON-FIELD umpires can seek the assistance of RICKY PONTING even if he is not on the field. This rule is to be made, so that every team should understand the importance of the FOURTH UMPIRE.


2. While AUSTRALIAN TEAM is bowling, If the ball flies anywhere close to the AUSTRALIAN FIELDER(WITHIN 5 metre distance), the batsman is to be considered OUT irrelevant of whether the catch was taken cleanly or grassed. Any decision for further clarification should be sought from the FOURTH UMPIRE. This is made to ensure that the cricket is played with SPORTIVE SPIRIT by all the teams.


3. While BATTING, AUSTRALIAN players will wait for the ON-FIELD UMPIRE decisions only (even if the catch goes to the FIFTH SLIP as the ball might not have touched the bat). Each AUSTRALIAN batsman has to be out FOUR TIMES (minimum) before he can return to the pavilion. In case of THE CRICKETER WITH INTEGRITY, this can be higher.


4. UMPIRES should consider a huge bonus if an AUSTRALIAN player scores a century. Any wrong decisions can be ignored as they will be paid huge bonus and will receive the backing of the AUSTRALIAN team and board.


5. All AUSTRALIAN players are eligible to keep commenting about all players on the field and the OPPONENT TEAM should never comment as they will be spoiling the spirit of the AUSTRALIAN team. Any comments made in any other language are to be considered as RACIALISM only.


6. MATCH REFEREE decisions will be taken purely on the AUSTRALIAN TEAM advices only. Player views from the other teams decisions will not be considered for hearing. MATCH REFEREES are to be given huge bonus if this rule is implemented.


7. NO VISITING TEAM should plan to win in AUSTRALIA. This is to ensure that the sportive spirit of CRICKET is maintained.


8. THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE: If any bowler gets RICKY PONTING - "THE UNDISPUTED CRICKETER WITH INTEGTIRY IN THE GAME OF CRICKET" more than twice in a series, he will be banned for the REST OF THE SERIES. This is to ensure that the best batsman/Captain will be played to break records and create history in the game of CRICKET.
   

These rules will clarify better to the all the teams VISITING AUSTRALIA.

Now it is upto you decide whether these rules are to be incorporated or not

Relations - Last or Lost?

"There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't".

Robert Benchley must be really witty to quote such a statement. When it comes to relations, there are two kinds of people: those who really understand the relations and those who get involved in such relations just as a time pass activity. In the former, the relations last, while in the latter, they are lost.

I remember a statement told by our teacher. A person tells his/her spouse: "Your children and my children are playing with our children". Do you think it's just a joke? When we understand this sentence properly and think deeply upon this matter, it becomes obvious that it is perfectly applicable, especially in Western countries. But the relation need not only be marriage. It can as well be any other relation, such as friendship.

Coming back to the categories, I am sure, we all have seen both kinds of people. The people whom we met right in our childhood days, who still make us feel "Oh! Life is so beautiful" whenever think of them. We don't have to be with them forever to get such a feeling. It's just their presence in our minds that make us comfortable, even in the most critical situations.

Let us not forget the other category. When they were in our life, no doubt they made that part of the life lively. But now? Do they really remember those days or was it just a time pass activity? Did they really mean it? People whom we met, with whom we interacted for quite a long time, with whom we shared everything - if they don't want to share a single moment with us now, then what are we supposed to understand?

It is not the absence of a friend that annoys, but it is the silence. As someone has said, making 100 friends each lasting for an year is not a great thing. But it is really appreciable to make even one friend who lasts for 100 years... What do you say?

A formidable process: Indian Postal Service

Last week, as a part of our general training, we were being introduced to Software Engineering, wherein we came across the three most important things which render a project successful. They are: people, process and technology. The instructor gave an example of how a formidable process can make the entire organization superior. He took an example of the Indian Postal Service (officially known as India Post), which, in spite of a lot of difficulties, has been giving a promising service for over 150 years. I think that example is extremely thought provoking, and that is the reason I'm jotting down this article.

Let us quickly review the conditions under which the Indian Postal Service is working:

• Letters can be sent to any place in India, from Ladakh to Kanyakumari, from East to West, from metros to remote villages and delivery is ensured.
  
• With 20+ official languages and 24 languages being spoken by more than a million people, the diversity itself is a serious problem for India Post. But there is no rule that instructs people to write address in a particular language; you can write a letter to Uttar Pradesh writing address in Kannada, and still it reaches.
• Address in any part of India (excepting a few regions) is messed up, with "near" and "Opp." taking most of the address lines and sometimes only name and city is mentioned (Yes, it's hard to believe, but I am not exaggerating. It happened with my father, in which only the surname and city was mentioned in the address). As against this, for the postal services of other countries, door number/street is compulsory.
  
• Most people sending letters will not know the PIN (Postal Index Number) of the destination or they won't write it. Even worse, they sometimes write wrong PINs, but the people in the Post Offices are generous enough to correct the PINs and send it to the correct recipient. Contracting this, postal services in many other countries require PIN or ZIP codes specified, or the post will not be delivered.
  

Had we ever thought about all these? This is not a era when someone discusses why a postal card or an inland letter is not reaching properly. With telephones and mobile phones becoming a necessity and the Internet being the medium of fast communication, no one bothers about the snail mail. Also, when it comes to the public services, India is considered to be a close competitor for the last position. But, as I said, the example of the Indian Postal Service instantly changed my mindset and made me think and rethink.

Apart from all those constraints mentioned before, the number of posts undelivered is just about 5 per million. Very close to Six Sigma quality. And all this happens with no written rule. Such a quality service is possible only due to a formidable process and equally eminent people working in India Post who adhere to this process. There are a very few other such systems in the world, which always provide their 100%, yet remain unnoticed... Shouldn't we be proud of such systems?