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The ‘Missed Call’ game…

We all must have played the missed call game at some point. Ok let me clarify. What I refer to a ‘missed calls’ in this post are not genuinely missed calls, but calls which are made to someone deliberately and with a confidence that the other party wouldn’t receive them. A missed call is usually one or two rings at max. Why would one do that? Hmmm.. I can think of the following by observing people around me:

  • To play! Yes, I know people play this missed call game for fun.
  • To convey something without spending a penny. Some people actually use this very effectively. One missed call means ‘I am fine’, two could mean ‘call me’, three could mean……
  • It is a very popular means to pass on your number to someone. Well saves money and saves effort so why not use it?
  • To tease someone or to disturb someone (please don’t do this).
  • To show someone how many times you remember him/her in a day!!
  • Of course when you run out of balance and just have enough to be able to call. You give missed calls in anticipation that the receiver would call you back.
  • Oh I just remembered one more. When you dial a number, hit the call button and then immediately realize that you have dialled the wrong number, or you have dialled the wrong person.

Alright. I think these are enough examples some of which perfectly justify those missed calls. You can, of course, find many others. My aim is not to list down all possible reasons for missed calls on this earth.

I have recently come across a breed of people who use this as a cost cutting measure in their organization!! 95% of missed calls on my mobile are from those people. And I only share a professional relation with them. They would just give a call and ensure it doesn’t ring more than twice most of the times. It takes at least 3 rings to even take the mobile out of your pocket. So anything under 3 rings is a missed call. They know that I would call them back as I usually have a habit of wrapping a few things up in time (note that I said a ‘few’ things. I am sluggish at a lot of ‘other’ things).

Fortunately we are living in times where phone calls have become dirt cheap. Unless you run a call center, telephone calls are going to be  insignificant to other operating expenses. Why create a bad impression trying to save a few hundred bucks? While you do save a few bucks, you lose your reputation. I would prefer losing a few bucks rather than losing a billion dollar reputation.

There are tons of other ways to save communication costs. For instance use of instant messengers like gtalk or yahoo. Or use Skype, gtalk etc. for crystal clear voice calls. And all this comes free. You just need to bear a nominal fixed internet cost. So just be informed and innovative rather than resorting to the ‘missed call’ game in your profession!

Synchronized | Calendar | Outlook <-> Google <-> Mobile

Synchronized!

Synchronized!

For a long time I was using Outlook to track my meetings and tasks using the default calendar.  Then I started using the Google calendar as well, mostly to track personal items. And then some birthdays and reminders on my mobile. While all this worked, there were obvious limitations:

  1. I couldn’t access all my calendar items at one place.
  2. The only thing I always had access to was my Mobile.

So the goal was to at least have everything on my Mobile, irrespective of where they were created. Of course the wish was to have all three synchronized.

The task was 10 times easier than it sounds. The fact that the Outlook and the Mobile calendar were localized to the devices (the laptop and the mobile), I just needed a hinge to link the two.  And as always, Google came to the rescue.

Outlook <-> Google

Google have released the Google Calendar Sync which performs a two way sync between Outlook and a Google calendar. It installs in seconds and synchronizes in seconds as well.  So one step conquered !

Google <-> Mobile

Now I needed to sync my Google online calendar with the Mobile. Since I have a Nokia E series which supports Mail for Exchange it was quite a easy task. Thanks to this link for the additional help.

Note that you can actually synchronize other stuff like contacts etc. using Mail for Exchange. But I need to organize my contacts first, which I am too lazy to do now. May be next time.

We’ll that was just one of the numerous solutions which exist. Following are some additional links which will help achieve the same on a wide variety/platform of Mobiles:

Another useful article for the entire process:

How to Automatically Sync Your Contacts & Calendar Between a Nokia Phone, iPhone, Gmail and Outlook / Mac iCalendar / Address Book on multiple computers

There are tons of other options available. Just Google!

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Is blogging dying?

If you go through the archives on my blog,  you will notice that there are a couple of instances where I haven’t written for an entire month or so. I thought that I am one of the *few* turning sluggish at times. However, I was shocked to know that 95% of the blogs which are tracked on technorati, a blog search engine, have not been updated in the last 120 days!

So what is the reason? Well primarily it is the same old human tendency I guess. We start a lot of things enthusiastically  but do not take them forward with the same passion. It dies out with time.  However, Facebook and Twitter too seem to be eating away into the blogging space.

Wanna read more about this? Read this:

“The log  tail of blogging is dying.”

3

Web personality

Just to clarify before we proceed, the title of the post can explain:

  • Personality ‘on’ the web
  • Personality ‘of’ web

I am going to talk about the second one, i.e. personality ‘of’ the web.

We all use some or the other social networking sites. In fact we now use multiple social networking sites to connect to each other. Let’s take examples:

  • LinkedIn: <Professional>: As we all know, LinkedIn was always meant to be a professional networking portal. If you are caught browsing LinkedIn at your workplace? Ah, everyone will look with due respect. It is so professional.
  • Facebook: <Decent and Sober>: Well, I am not sure if Facebook had a pre-determined character, but to me it has always given an impression of a decently designed portal. It looks neat and to some extent, professional. If you are caught browsing Facebook at your workplace? Well you may not get the same respect as LinkedIn, but no regrets. It’ll still be acceptable.
  • Orkut:<Kiddish and Sidey>: While Orkut is more popular in India, I’ve always found it sidey and kiddish. So what if you are caught browsing Orkut at your workplace? Ah, I can bet, it is embarrassing. You tend either close it or switch to a different window/application. Don’t you?

So 3 different applications built on the same concept have radically different personalities. While some were deliberately made with such personalities, some got their personalities from usage over the years.

We can similarly look at portals targetting other stuff. For example, I find Cleartrip a very clean travel portal, whereas, MakeMyTrip looks so cluttered and clumsy.

What about Twitter? What personality would you associate with it? Hmmmm… Whatever it is, it is impressive. It has already made a big impact.

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