think about "checking out" instead of "checking in"

Popularity of social sites has been making us obsessive compulsive share everything maniac.  We all know please who have to broadcast to the world by "checking in" via foursquare/gowalla (oh well)/facebook places and then cross post it to twitter/facebook/google+ etc, all the time. This cross posting of the checkin activity to twitter makes it very public. just try searching for 4sq on twitter.

Everytime  a "checkin" is broadcasted to the world, in addition to  telling everyone where you are, it also tells the world where you are  NOT i.e. your house. You might already be sharing the  location of your house via unkowingly geotagging the pics/tweets etc. Sites like PleaseRobme are  popular for raising awareness on this issue.

I do understand the urge to share. Winning mayorships, badges, points can be addictive. Moreover foursquare and shopkick have been experimenting by making the checkins earn real dollars by giving coupons/discounts.

Here is my attempt to making checking a little  "safer" :

1.  Check out instead of checking in :  Unless  your friends use your foursquare feed to run into you, checking out of a place is usually safer than checking in without loosing any functionality. You still get your mayorships, badges, points etc without revealing the estimated time you will be at the exact location. eg. your checkin at a movie theatre/restaurant ties you to the location for a few hours vs checking out

2. Dont cross post your checkins via twitter/facebook etc. Believe me there is nothing more irritating seeing the twitter feed full of crap like that. It makes your checkins a little less public

3.  Think about making your checkins private.  this ensures your location is available to your "friends" and not anyone at internet.

Reenable your kids locked google accounts.

Google does not allow any new accounts for kids under 13. If you have managed to get an account for them  perviously (say email) , and they try to activate any of the other services (say youtube or g+) google will ask for a birthdate, entering it will immediately lock the google account itself ( thus locking them out of all services). They site

Under our policies, Google doesn't allow users who are under the age of 13 to have Google Accounts, unless they are using Google Apps for Education accounts through their school. This is similar to a lot of online services, as it's very complicated for many providers to offer better solutions for children that meet the relevant regulations. It's not as simple as just asking a parent for consent to let their child have an account -- there are associated implications for data and privacy involved.

One of the reason for google to this is Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Its important to note that Yahoo does provide a way for kids to have accounts via the Yahoo Family Plan.

Once Google locks the account, the only way to unlock the account is by proving your kids age by one of the following ways

• Credit card verification
• Uploading a scanned govt issued ID
• Snail mailing a copy  govt issued ID

If your kid does not meet the age requirements obviously none of these are going to help. I did find myself in this situation when I tried to sign up my 7 yr old son to his youtube account so he can post videos that I encouraged him to create.

I decided to give credit card verification a try. I put in my age and name and credit card details and like magic my kids account was unlocked.  So looks like the credit card that is needed for verification need not be in the kids name! BTW google will charge $0.30 for this trouble. It was well worth it compared with the trama my son was going through for loosing his email & blog accounts.

So how do you use your "likes" "favorites" "+1" "digs" etc.

The social apps today want us to  “interact” with them by encouraging us  to click on a button labelled “dig”, “+1”, “like” “favorite” etc.

Clicking on them is beneficial to at least 2 of the 3 parties involved.

Poster :
   - It increases his/her “social influence”
   - It validates the “social graph”
   - “Retweeting/Reposting” can increase the traffic which could lead to increasing ad revenue
   - Provides ego boost

Service Provider
    - Helps profile the person interacting based on context information of the link/post
    - Marketing the social profile to its consumer or targeting ads/marketing campaign/research etc
    - Helps profile the poster by examining the social network
    - Help gauge the social acceptance of the topics/things discussed in the post

Clicker
    Its kinda hard to come up with the reasons on how clicking on “like”/+1/favorite helps the clicker. here is what I could come up with
    - Makes him/her socially relevant
    - Might “believe” in getting profiled in order to see more relevant ads etc.

How I want to use the “like” button (just like I use the favorite button on twitter)

Today I get majority of my tech news via twitter and social news via Facebook. Most of the news items in both of my streams are interesting links to other websites/videos etc. Thus for me Facebook & twitter stream  largely define the slice of web I surf. The problem with both of them is that they are a non stop stream of information which is almost like drinking from a fire-hose. If I do not have the time to follow the link posted, chances are that the link along with the post will fade away from my stream within hours. The “half life” of a link shared in a social media is just a few hours.

Thus if I am trading my privacy by clicking on a link, I expect this in return :

I want the service provider to provide me with the history of all the links I have interacted with. Thus I can go back and preview them at leisure. Twitter does this already and I use it extensively, both on my macbook & my iPhone. I check twitter often and “favorite” the posts catch my eye and then later in the evening or week when I have time I read the linked post/watch the video what ever. This is not possible on Facebook unfortunately, so I use service like read it later. using a browser plugin makes it easy, but still is not seemless. Also as its not supported natively, and doesn’t work on my mobile phone where I do most of my facebooking.



Hopefully Facebook will see value in making it available to us and not just the paying customters!

Steve Jobs Apple Logo Pumpkin carving stencil

I wanted to pay tribute to Mr Jobs, by carving an halloween pumpkin in his honor. I googled around for a while, but could not find one. Thus I ended up creating my own. I took the Steve Memorial Apple logo, inverted the colors, and lightened the black, to save some printer ink . here is the original image

here is the stencil

Have a Elevator Pitch ready!

I had recently switched jobs. I traded the job at a big corporation for a one at a small company. I was very well established at my old job and never felt a need to prove myself or sell myself. This all changed as one usually starts at the ground floor at any new job.

At my new job I met new people everyday. It being a small company, I would run into executives quite often. We would exchange the normal courtesies and thats it. I realized much later that I had not used the “first impression” opportunity. If I had something worthwhile to say, they might mentally file me under “guy worth my time” folder, rather than “just another guy” folder.

Once I realized that, I realized to have something similar to an elevator pitch ready at all times. Elevator pitch is typically associated with startups trying to impress potential investors as captive audience for the duration of the elevator ride. A more generic form of elevator pitch is just having something sensible to say so that there person you are interacting with thinks that you are worth his time.

The elevator pitch in its “generic form” should not be construed as a sales pitch or ad ad of yourself. It is supposed to help once cause and not hurt (sales pitch/Ads can be turnoff). For me its basically the 3rd or a 4th sentence in an conversation with someone I am trying of impress, so that the conversation can last long enough for the person to remember me among scores of other people he would meet.

I think some folks are natural charmers or inherently good conversationalist. They don’t have to prepare themselves for stuff like this. I am not blessed with this natural charm and find it challenging. Thus the need to have some “preparation” in this area.

I think one does need to have a list of relevant open ended questions or just a list of cool ideas to form the basis for conversation if an opportunity presented itself. eg. What does I say if I ran into Steve Jobs at an apple store ? ok. well that is highly unlikely to happen, but still can be very though provoking. I more realistic scenario, specially in a small to midsize company is what should I talk about If I find myself standing next to the CEO, or VP of engineering.

And if the homework is well done, I might find myself seeking them at gatherings, rather than trying to steer myself away.. just because I don’t know what to say!

also, I think having talking points might help in general social settings outside work too. specially those with some sort of social anxiety.

Job Hunting tips

I spent this spring/summer looking for a job. Some of my friends have been asking about my experience. That prompted this blog post. Here are a few things that helped me after I came back to the job market after 13 years.

• Googling myself I am sure most potential employers google the potential candidates before interviewing. Thus I wanted to make sure the google gave the image consistent with my resume. This helped:

  • Having my linked-in profile upto date.
  • Having a twitter feed which reflected the areas I am interested in. Following professionally relevant people. retweeting relevant tweets, generating new tweets
  • Having a blog with original content, blogging about professionally relevant topics. I use blogspot
  • Having a professional profileat google profiles, about.me etc which linking to all my web presence sites. This makes it easy for folks who what to learn more about me. I included this link in my resume
  • I use facebook for personal use and made my facebook profile private.
  • commenting/interacting on the relevant forums, blogs on the websites.

• Networking I also joined and regularly attended the local user group meetings (Java, Html, Startup in my case). This helps in networking and also remaining uptodate with current topics, this also helps immensely in the interviews. The local user groups is also a great place to get job leads. I found www.meetup.com a great place to learn about groups relevant to me.

• Mailing Lists Apart from usual job search sites, there are locally relevant mailing lists that helps in getting local job leads eg. In denver area Rocky Mountain Internet User group-RMIUG is great for finding tech jobs. boulder.me for start ups in boulder area.

• Research Sites like Glassdoor.com are a great resource for researching companies, salaries, job titles etc. I found that doing a quick search there for the company/job title and salary check, helps me make my applications more potent & relevant and saves me time by weeding out misfits.

• Resume tips A few things that I found useful in preparing my resume

  • Adapting the resume for the job. This doesn’t mean misrepresenting. It just means highlighting skills that are relevant. Resumes are scanned by bots, and HR probably scans a huge load of resumes every day. Crafting a resume to be relevant helps them and makes it easier to get an interview call
  • I found including an 4-5 line objective that summarizes and makes a strong case for the job helps a lot. This means its not canned, but customized for the job application
  • Talking to the recruiter before submitting the resume gives a huge edge. Quite a few companies go through recruiters, HR from most big companies are also your friends. Most of them were open to talking to me, answering my questions and helped me a lot in preparing the resume to be relevant for the job.
  • I included the link from main web presence site (about me). This site points to all the web presences (linked in, twitter, blogpost etc)
  • I took away trivial tools, outdated tools, irrelevant skills from the resume. I feel this helps in cutting down the bloat and making resume sharp
  • I Included soft skills, specially if the position demands its. Most senior level positions do
  • I made it a point include a few lines describing my specific contribution to each project on the resume. In order to keep resume short, I excluded irrelevant projects.

• Interview tips. Some things that I found useful during the interview

  • researching the company, its web site etc, before the interview
  • googing/linked in checking the folks that will be interviewing me, asking the recuriter for names etc ( most of them give me the name of the interviewers)
  • Reading puzzles books eg : http://www.amazon.com/Would-Move-Mount-Microsofts-Puzzle/dp/0316919160, puzzles for programmers, programming interviews exposed
  • I found having an list of questions to ask the interviews also helps. Having a relevant question is a great way to differentiate myself from the bunch
  • Being relaxed, using interviewers first name, using “us” vs “you” etc helps
  • Googling for interview questions usually asked at the interview by that specific company.

Hope this is helpful. what did I miss ? I am eagar to find out how you landed your job and your tips for the same !

What is cell phone hacking

Cell phone hacking has been in the news lately. I was interested in knowing what the heck were they talking about. here is what I found. It should be more accurate to call “Voicemail hacking on the cellphone”. The idea is that someone is able to get into your voicemail box and listen to your voicemail messages. It can be easy in some cases. Following are some of the common ways of doing it. None of these hacks are unquie to cell phones, they will work against landline too.

1. Most cell phone providers have a fixed default pin for voicemail system. Most users never change the default. So the hack goes like this. you place two simultaneous call to your victim. One of them will go into the voicemail. you press ‘*’ to get to the voicemailbox. Try the default passwords. if the user has not changed the default you are in.

2. Most users use easy to guess pin. 1234, 4321 etc. hack is same as “1” above.

3. Calling the voicemailbox from the associated number by default, doesnt ask for passwd. Its easy to spoof the calling number to be whatever you want. So attacker will spoof his number to be same as the victims and call his number.

4. Brute force : victims number were obtained through bribes, the voicemailbox number can similarly be obtained. 4 digit pin offers a really easy brute force crack, specially via automated diallers!

So how to protect ?

1. Make pins required
2. Do not leave voicemails around. delete them
3. Use something like google voice (there are other providers with similar service), which allows to have electronic copies of your voicemail. delete the original. Its easy to replace the default voicemail to a different provider.