Google has tried and tried again to plunge into the social media business to get a scope of it highly lucrative and viral reach but has withdrawn most of its products after the much enthusiasm with which it was launched was never met. Google Wave was withdrawn from the product line and so is Buzz being turned down in a few weeks time.

Google does have to understand that FaceBook has already done its trial and error thing and understands the user’s needs from its age and learn from the trends set by such a successful venture, from its pros and cons, rather then build from scratch and then keep people waiting for the most needed features yet to come. The wait turning tiring and the enthusiasm fading out.

What Google simply lacks is its integrity with existing social networking media. Google+ would have rocked if it were to have feeds from twitter and facebook, from multiple accounts off-course. Better and tighter privacy options and since Google+ does not allow profile pages for Businesses and in turn has launched pages, they should have focused on allowing people to reserve their brands in the URL rather then having to ask then to remember some funky digits.

I recently plunged into the pages thing to get pages reserved for the organizations I am associated with and then kept wondering as to how I could add other contributors and admins to those pages on Google+. At the end of the day I realized they are still working on it. Its quite simple, can’t they learn from FaceBook that this is supposed to be a basic function for a page that represents an organization or a business entity or does Google+ seem to have a single employee, LOL.

The entire game about so many people running into, what I would call, an immature network, is the mere fact that googleplus accounts tend to get listed on google’s search engine faster then a facebook one, but what about other search engines like Bing. Let’s face it Google is still number one and synonymous when it comes to Search Engines.

It needs a lot of patience to educate people on new tools and time is scarce when it comes to the speed of the Internet, so lets wait and watch what how rapidly Google+ makes its way to into the Social Media.

As for the short URL I did manage to get an easy to remember URL for all my Google+ pages as well as my profile.

http://gplus.to/ekhwan
http://gplus.to/attalim
http://gplus.to/hitechuae

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A greater ‘hole in the wall’ you cannot imagine. A small fading sign on the top saying “Cellphoon reapars” barely visible through the street vendors crowding the Juhu Market in Mumbai. On my way to buy a new Blackberry, my innate sense of adventure made me stop my car and investigate. A shop not more than 6 feet by 6 feet. Grimy and uncleaned.
‘Can you fix a Blackberry ?”
‘Of course, show me”
”How old are you” ‘Sixteen’
Bullshit. He was no more than 10. Not handing my precious blackberry to a 10 year old in unwashed and torn T shirt and pyjamas! At least if I buy a new one, they would extract the data for me. Something I have been meaning to do for a year now.
‘What’s wrong with it?”
‘Well, the roller track ball does not respond. It’s kind of stuck and I cannot operate it”
He grabs it from my hand and looks at it
“You should wash your hands. Many customers have same problem. Roller ball get greasy and dirty, then no working’
Look who was telling me to wash my hands. He probably has not bathed for 10 days, I leaned out to snatch my useless blackberry back..
” You come back in one hour and I fix it’.
I am not leaving all my precious data in this unwashed kid’s hands for an hour. No way.
“Who will fix it?”
‘Big brother’
‘How big is ‘big brother?’
‘big …. Umm ..thirty’
Then suddenly big brother walks in. 30 ??? He is no more than 19.
‘What problem?’ He says grabbing the phone from my greasy hand into his greasier hand. Obviously not trained in etiquette by an upmarket retail store manager.
‘Normal blackberry problem. I replace with original part now. You must wash your hand before you use this’. What is this about me washing my hands suddenly??
19 year old big brother rummages through a dubious drawer full of junk and fishes out a spare roller ball packed in cheap cellophane wrapper. Original part? I doubt it.  But by now I am in the lap of the real India and there is no escape as he fishes out a couple of screwdrivers and sets about opening my Blackberry.
“How long will this take?”
”Six minutes”
This I have to see. After spending the whole morning trying to find a Blackberry service centre and getting vague answers about sending the phone in for an assessment that might take a week, I settle down next to his grubby cramped work space. At least I am going to be able to watch all my stored data vanish into virtual space. People crowd around to see what’s happening. I am not breathing easy anyway. I tell myself this is an adventure and literally have to stop myself grabbing my precious Blackberry back and making a quick escape. But in exactly six minutes this kid handed my Blackberry back. He had changed the part and cleaned and serviced the whole phone. Taken it apart, and put it together. As I turned the phone on there was a horrific 2 minutes where the phone would not come on. I looked at him with such hostility that he stepped back.
‘you have more than thousand phone numbers ?”
‘yes’.
‘backed up?’
‘no’
‘Must back up. I do it for you. Never open phone before backing up’
‘You tell me that now?’
But then the phone came on and my data was still there. Everyone watching laughed and clapped. This was becoming a show. A six minute show. I asked him how much.
‘500 rupees’ He ventured uncertainly. People around watched in glee expecting a negotiation.
That’s $10 dollars as against the Rs 30,000 ($ 600) I was about to spend on a new Blackberry or a couple of weeks without my phone. I looked suitably shocked at his ‘high price’ but calmly paid him. Much to the disappointment of the expectant crowd
‘do you have an I-Phone ? Even the new ‘4D one ?
‘no, why”
‘I break the code for you and load any ‘app’ or film you want. I give you 10 film on your memory stick on this one, and change every week for small fee’
I went home having discovered the true entrepreneurship that lies at what we call the ‘bottom of the pyramid’. Some may call it piracy, which of course it is, but what can you say about two uneducated and untrained brothers aged 10 and 19 that set up a ‘hole in the wall’ shop and can fix any technology that the greatest technologists in the world can throw at them. I smiled at the future of our country. If only we could learn to harness this potential.
‘Please wash your hands before use’ were his last words to me. Now I am feeling seriously unclean.

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The steps are really making it hard for some people to remember multiple accounts and use them for different purposes and making the task of transition harder. I think google should find a solution to this as most of our attalim.net users have been transitioned except a few due to conflict. The weird thing about the whole game is that each google tool has its own way of looking at things, feedburner is different, adsense and adwords both work differently when it comes to account sign-in and so does webmaster tools central and analytics, while blogger has its own way around as well.

There is a lot of reading and helping tutorial on google but it took me almost an hour to figure out my problem with the adwords account, even then it was only solved by a support request to google and I must say they are fast.

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Recently I had been to India where you can get a 128 kbps broadband connection on your mobile phone with a limit of 2 MB per month for less then a 100 INR or say 2 USD. The connection would be off course over the 3G and can be used on a laptop provided your phone has the proper supports. The other mobile services are so cheap with a second wise pulse billing going down to a paisa per second, the Indian market is booming with so much competition around.

Back in the UAE the monopolistic trend prevails with not much competition to look at when it comes to the Telecom sector and it is far from being a consumer market. I happened to visit the Etisalat Main Branch in Sharjah for registering a few .ae domain names, which cannot be registered other wise, such as over the Internet. There were 12 counters with only 4 of them active and it took me about an hour to get the 2 out of the 3 domains registered. The remaining one was available when checked on the NIC and aeDA websites but could not be registered because of some technical problem in the Etisalat system. For which I had to go to customer service and report the matter so that it could be escalated to the IT Department, which took another hour just to be informed that it would be solved in 3 working days.

On returning home it was discovered that the sales lady over the counter had made a mistake while entering the email address of the Registrar of one of the domains. Therefore I called the NIC helpline to know that they could not help me and that I would have to visit an Etisalat branch physically or send down a fax for the problem to be solved in 3 working days. I chose the first option and visited the branch the next day. 12 counters and 7 of them working. It took me another hour to get the mistake corrected.

On asking about the domain for which I had raised a request, I was told that the issue was still pending to be resolved by the IT department, even after 24 hours. Such is the quality of customer service you get when there is no choice left.

A request for the reader not to mention the so called competitor Du which is not better. Look  at its twitter notification service which is dead since a few months and all you find @dutweets are excuses.

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Although we might be in the age where Education and Knowledge is freely available everywhere there is a jungle of unknown out there, and people can be misled or get lost in the junk of duplication and sometimes even blunders and Urban legends. We often see these useless junk mails forwarded to us in the form of making us aware, just to find out later that it was a prank and there is no reality attached to it.

Having lived in the virtual world for years, in the form of a passion and a profession, spending hours on the Internet daily, it is often felt that the flow of Information over the Internet needs to be controlled. But then if it is really controlled then we would forfeit the freedom and right to information as well as expression.

However, there is one thing that is often bothering when I surf the internet that people just for some odd and unknown reason to copy and paste material from one site to the other. The copy paste business or adventure just leads to the expansion in the number of pages the internet has rather then real information.

Recently I came across a community site, which is much bothered with its PR than the flow of information due to is commercial aspect, that, it has announced the launch of  articles on historical events and dates according to the Hijri Calender. The website Zeninfosys, has installed Drupal to take care of its copy/paste business from another authentic website of the community mazaraat.com

Looking at the above scenario, one can see no reason for such work and nor does it have any importance other then adding more pages to the internet. It is not only the breach of intellectual rights which at times some authors or owners do not bother about but it does make a difference.

The reason for such acts of plagiarism can only be traced back to commercial benefits where a person might look-up for PR and visitor hits. Certainly the internet has grown to be a larger media version then the Television nowadays with people spending more time in front of their PCs rather then the TV screen.

On the other hand if anyone just wants to enter the internet world and be known the better and more sincere way would be to put forward original words. Content and Information can never be original unless one is a mass researcher but the words in which they are presented can be unique and the way its felt by the reader can be a standout form for each person has a different style of writing or conveying the information that might be useful in the internet jungle.

Apart from that “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person who you originally are”, is a nice quote to fit the topic.

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I use twitter to mark some of the wonderful pieces of information that I read around and at time just stumble on while surfing the internet. To save the good information one can simply tweet it and/or mark it favorite and it can be found in the time line later. Twitter can be used to share and jot down immediately great ideas that pop-up at anytime and any place.

Another great thing about twitter is its sms notification service. I use it to keep in touch with my immediate family and keep them updated of what I AM exactly doing. Though sometimes my son does get annoyed by the number of sms/tweets I send him, he sure likes reading it.

Though most of my tweets are really those 71% mentioned above I find it useful for myself. After all one can know what the Big B is doing when he tweets at least.

Ever since I have added my twitter to the facebook account it has saved my a lot of time updating my facebook friends with new blog posts at least.

Twitter has done great wonders in several ways and those who master its use and are looking for some serious business can benefit from everything that the little tweety has to offer.

We have seen companies offer serious support to their customers on a regular basis using twitter and others post important and vital announcements to their followers who do really look forward to such information. Looking at the age of information and the way the internet has changed our perspective of getting the information we need, its not only twitter that is a jungle but every piece of existing data is. One just needs to learn how to use the available data and resources to suit our best needs. That is the reason why we are humans and not monkeys of the jungle.

There are these multinationals that sponsor large events to get a piece of public attention drawn by the media and spend a hefty amount of money on campaigns. Does it really work is the question. Say if Pepsi was to sponsor a huge international sporting event and roll their sleeves on promotional offers would that even matter to the Coke lover? It might hike Pepsi sales during the event but would it effect the loyalty of people towards other brands?

There are 2 things that are involved when sales are closed. The first thing is that, which draws the customer’s attention and the second, which makes him or her loyal and keep them returning back.

A cool blonde might be just enough to draw the prospect into a sales lead and close the deal but what makes them loyal is customer support. The kind of treatment one gives to the customer. Its like the old saying that goes, “treat a lady like a queen and she becomes surf”.

Advertisement for the sake of getting the glorified attention of the media begets the most needed attention to draw your clients so why not use it to raise the awareness of the support and services that the customers experience at your sales counter and from the customer support department. Using the media to promote the word of mouth of a customer is something that will endorse the brand. A brand recommended by commoners and not celebrities. Get a webcam and capture your customers’ testimonials and promote them as you go.

Its not the sales lead that makes a company grow and stand rather its the customer loyalty and demand that keeps it going and that is what exactly what kept us going as well. Customers are real people who make us stand apart from the competition.

Our bounce back after deciding on a closure was stopped not by customers, rather our friends.

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But what if there is no identity theft. What if there do exist people with similar names and surnames or even full names. There are these sites that provide digital signatures but it does not always work everywhere on the internet. How can one secure their identity particularly if a person is associated with several NAMES and BRANDS.

Recently I had to deal with a submission made by me on ezinearticles.com which was rejected by saying that I did not have exclusive rights to it. The reason why I was supposed to NOT have exclusive rights to a content was that the article Ramadan and Fasting was also posted on the hikmah.ekhwan.com blog under the name of Juzar Sh Yusuf bhai while the article submission was made under the name of Juzar Noorani

The way ezinearticles verifies the actual author of the article is weird and illogical. A same person can have a short name, a full name and even several brand names that belong to him not just associated.

While looking for a possible answer to the problem aroused by my experience with ezinearticles it did make me think and do some research of my own. There are several resources that can help with the entire issue of copyright and brand protection or whatever you might call it. The Creative Commons license is the best of all that needs to be published on your site or associated with your work. Another freebie is myfreecopyright.com which is an amazing service which provides unique digital fingerprints for blogs, podcasts, websites and even files. Another free tool which might be of interest is ud.com which provides a search on the availability of the names you would like to associate with on most common social media.

There might be several free tools out there that can help people deal with such issues and if anyone knows of such tools please feel free to leave a comment.

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The past month has been really busy for me with most of my time spent as the Masjid and a part to and fro to my home from the Masjid. A little rest and some spare time with the family. Ekhwan has been in the hosting business since many years now with a few large companies that have trusted us for the many years we have been in business, dophinheattransfer.com and ezwaretechnologies being the most oldest of them all.

Saying that Ekhwan has become a brand in the hosting business that many prefer for the truthful and sincere service and advise we offer to our clients. Our aim has always been to help our clients get the most out of their business.

The reason for all the above introduction is a disclaimer that recently came into my notice. A website called ekhwan group dot com. I have separated the words and spelt out the dot so as not to link to it. This website is NOT a part of Ekhwan and we are not associated to this website or company in any way, even if it is legitimate which we are not aware of.

Just a second note. I have much to write about and will continue as soon as I am back from the spiritual journey, fully revived.

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The competition has gripped so tightly on the industry that even the most reputed hosts begin to give away such offers. Value for money thinking has dropped so much in the industry that people start off with absurd plans thinking that at the end they would make some money in volume sales.

Logic does not agree with the concept of unlimited bandwidth or unlimited disk space. Even cloud computing would not be able to fully provide unlimited Hard drive (hdd) because there is a physical resource out there which has a limited capability to whatever extent. When we virtualize such resources we simply eliminate the possibility of being limited on resources and boast of with the word UNLIMITED.

There is no such thing as unlimited and there is no way for it logically either. A simple example that may be understood by the current monetary crises in the banking sector. The bubble grew larger, much immense and out of control for the human capability and blew off leading to a series of piled up collapses into the financial market. The reason behind such immense destruction was the creation of virtual money on the click of a button, built on limited physical resources.

The UNLIMITED resources may lure the buyer into grabbing a low cost service from even the most reputed client but it there is no profitability for the service provider they will finally lapse in the after sales service scenario.

Even one of the most powerful giants on the internet such as google count the amount of space there users are provided when they say 7349 and counting. There is no unlimited tag even if they say. You never need to delete another email from now.

If you are a person who wants their business truly maintained then go for the truth and not the unlimited myth. If you are unsure what is your requirement do read this article to determine your web hosting requirements.

The more precise you are about the needs of your companies website or even your personal needs the more easy it will be for you to determine your costs. Do not get lured into the unlimited bids and be practical even when you dream high for having an internet business like amazon, maybe.

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