You might have seen a lot of spam apps flooding your news feeds lately. More popular a site becomes, it is going to attract a lot of spammers. Same has happened with facebook. There are lot of spam apps out that do nothing but flood the users page with self-advertising posts.

I found out one and thought about reporting it to Facebook but was amused when I saw the subcategories of spam they had in their report spam form.

techyoyo.com

Are you serious Facebook? Credible threat of violence, Self- Harm, Graphic Violence, Theft or vandalism and Drug Use don’t come under Spam.

As I was unable to choose the subcategory, I couldn’t report the app.

Nice way to fight spam. The only way a service can reduce the amount of spam is by making it easy for users to report spam like in Google, youtube and social bookmarking sites like reddit and digg.

WordPress has a great anti-comment spam plugin askimet. It is quite effective against most spam.

But these days I have noticed spammers going in stealth mode.  Initially they would just write crap comment usually lot of random character filled with links. It was easy to track.

For egs. For the post Chrome is finally in top 3 worldwide and in US, overtakes Safari I got the following comment

Tournament favourites Brazil have been knocked out by Netherlands 2-1 after being 1-0 up at half-time.
Twitter has been flooded by the tweets and it is currently down approximately 10 seconds after the final whistle.
I am lucky to be able to tweet just before that.
“Netherland wins…in the semis…. sorry Brazil“

Writing is an art but with so many people writing there are some points that you should know to gain and keep those readers.

Be clear about your idea

You must be able to explain your story verbally in few minutes. If you take more time than what is required then it means that you are still unclear about the idea. You must have a clear vision so as to make an impression upon the readers. Exception, is of course breaking news articles. There are several mind mapping softwares to help you.

Map it out

Your article shouldn’t be an anti-climax unless you want it to be. Make a draft and chalk out what points should come in which order. You shouldn’t be giving out the main essence of your story at the beginning and then stuffing the rest of the article with just relevant words. If your article has supporting pictures and videos then it becomes very important that you arrange them in proper order and also explain them to keep your readers interested.

Get the basics down first

Make sure you have all the correct and relevant information at hand. If you are writing a review about a restaurant, make sure that you have their correct phone number, address and other such information. When you blog about an event make sure you verify the facts. Even big news and blog site have fallen prey to hoaxes. If you make a mistake, point it out immediately in that article itself on the top. Editing you article even after it is published helps a lot.

Make it relevant so readers connect

Give relevant details. If you have lot of international readers don’t give examples or use puns or humours that they won’t understand.

Keep it simple

Your language should be simple unless you are writing for English majors. Most people like to receive information quickly without much effort. It is more prominent online. Use words that your readers would be accustomed to in your niche. egs. Terms used in Finance would be different from Fashion. The English that you used  should be search that your reader would not have to Google it to know its meaning.

Keep the pace

It is important for long articles. Be to the point throughout. Don’t spread out good points and stuff words and paragraphs in between to make your article long. People might just close the tab or click and leave your site.

I saw this while Googling. It shows the meta-data about the site, ie. what is visible to Google and other search engine bots.

Either it is a poor SEO or Gizmodo has been hacked.

Facebook has plans to launch a webmail like Gmail, yahoo mail, etc codenamed Project Titan according to Michael Arrington of Techcrunch.  Facebook can launch email addresses with the use of the usernames/vanity url chosen by its users. Like mine is facebook.com/arunkamath (You can add me as a friend) will be arunkamath@facebook.com.

It will be great for sharing links, videos, images and other leisurely fun stuff. However, I cannot trust Facebook to use its mail for anything other than sharing cool stuffs from internet.

Many people are now hooked on to facebook. so, it is obvious that they might like to chat with friends. However, Facebook chat is the worst tech product from a big company after, maybe,  Ie6. YOu just can’t have a conversation using it.  I am sure most of your conversation would be limited to HIs and Byes.

What’s more, with email attached with facebook will help agencies in tracking you down with ease. It would be a disaster in countries like China(I don’t know whether people can access FB in China).

Recent Gawker news about how a bug in code resulted in messages being sent to wrong recipients. It reports that several text messages, some hilarious and some intimate, where received and read by wrong people. Just imagine this happens with FB mail. If your mail goes to wrong person, it wouldn’t take him more than a minute to trace you down.

I would trust Twitter mail more than Facebook’s as twitter has little information about it’s users except; of course, unless you tweeted it.

I have purchased two more domains TheGizmoBlog.com and ArunKamath.com. I am haven’t started blogging in those as yet due to exams and final year project.

However, I am planning to write about latest gizmos in TheGizmoBlog.com and  general day to day rants in ArunKamath.com .

Both of the above blogs are hosted free at Blogger. com unlike this one which is self-hosted wordpress blog.

Avatar is a big, big hit. Thanks to the superb visual effects that you can experience in 3D. The Aliens vs Humans fight has be shown in a spectacular fashion that even the harshest critics have forgiven James Cameroon for its predictable plot.

Korea Avatar 4D

Now, according to Variety, Koreans can watch it in 4D !!!!

The 4D screening uses more than 30 effects during the 3D film’s 162 minute run, including moving seats, smells of explosives, sprinkling water, laser lights and wind. Despite the much higher $15.80 ticket price (an average ticket costs $6.90), screenings are regularly sold out.

It also reports that

But 4D isn’t new to Koreans. The nation’s leading multiplex chain, CJ-CGV, began 4D shows last year in one 88-seat theater, with”Journey to the Center of the Earth.”

Whew! No wonder people say that the Koreans and the Japanese are way ahead than rest of the world in terms of technology.

Google has launched its own url shortening service Goo.gl. However, Google URL Shortener is currently available for Google products and not for broader consumer use.

There is, fortunately, a trick to get your blog url shortened using Goo.gl. You must use Feedburner for your feeds. Just go to your Feeds -> Publicize -> Socialize and add a twitter account. Whenever you write a new post in your blog, Feedburner will automatically tweet it with the url shortened using Goo.gl.

You can then just copy it from your twitter stream and share it with your friends.

Do you have any other trick? Please share it in the comments section.

Update: Here is the shortened version of this blog post – http://goo.gl/fb/crP6

Update: You can use this chrome extension to shorten urls using Goo.gl

Technology has been a boon, especially in the field of communication. We can speak to many without much effort. Want to tell your friend what you are doing or what you are feeling, just tweet or do a status update in Facebook and all your friends will come to know about it in a jiffy. We also use the old fashioned text message. However, due to the constraint of space we have learnt to use slang words and poorly formed sentences. This has resulted in deterioration of our language skills.

We are not able to spell, use correct words at correct time and frame correct sentences.What’s more your handwriting might have taken a beating.  The problem is severe if you are a programmer and spend most of the time in front of a computer.

Well there are several solutions to this problem. The first and the most important one is to write whenever possible. Read physical books whenever possible. Computers have replaced both these things, but the real way of reading and writing does improve your language skills. Read newspapers as they have editorial columns,etc. which are good source to improve your language. You might argue that the same paper is available online, but internet is mostly and automatically used by many to get information quickly but not to improve any language skills because it is the way most of us are ingrained.

When you write a blog or an important email, physically write it first and then type it. Use a physical thesaurus and a dictionary. It is because, as old people say, you might learn new words in an attempt to find one word as well as remember those words for later use.

If you have to type turn off the auto-spell check and then type. Check all the spellings and grammar yourself and then hit the spell-check button to verify.

There are many sites like reddit and slashdot where you can go and read good comments. These sites user are particular about the English and will not tolerate slang language. Users of Reddit write witty comments which are entertaining to read while improving your command over language.

Write proper sentences and words in forums. This is not possible in IRC,etc. But, try to write completely wherever possible.

The last thing is don’t google for a word. Use thesaurus or a dictionary to find that word. This is an interesting article about how Google is ruining our intelligence.

Give English exams that are available online, most of them are free. Play word based games. This will help you have command over the ‘Queen’s Language’.

One of my teacher had once said “Technology can be used only to learn technology based things. It can’t substitute the way we learn the real things”. Partly true.