Hello people... how do you do?

Any publicity is good publicity, so I am back with a small news:

All those operating out of Chennai are welcomed to read Today’s issue of ERGO, a THE HINDU group publication. Page 4 of today’s issue carries a report I had sent them, about a talk given by Dr. Stephen Crocker.

If you can’t grab offline version, try the online version here

http://www.goergo.in/?p=219
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Seeing one's name in print is a thrilling experience. After I took up blogging hardly sent anything to print media..should do that more often...
Thanks

Losing interest in MS

From today it will be my 7th Year in MS. But instead of feeling bonded to it strongly I feel I am drifting away from it. Probably I would reduce my exposure to MS in the days to come.

In this post I am writing what I am feeling/observing of late. Please note that all these are personal notes and not intended to blame MS management or its esteemed members. You may accept or reject them. Please use your discretion.

I enjoy writing and any platform which encourages me to write and gives me readership, I’ll be more than happy to grab it. My attachment with MS was intact so far because I used to get a decent number of comments within first few hours of publishing a new review/post. However this trend has reversed of late and I feel I am not able to retain my readers at MS. I did a quick introspection to list the possible causes:

1 I am not spending quality time in MS. In the initial days it was only reviews-now we have diary posts, photos, SMS updates and so on. The quantity of contents has increased several times but no efficient mechanism exists to pick the quality one out of these. Finding it practically impossible to cope up with so many new entries. Once in a while I visit the profiles of people in my trusted circle and read what they have written recently. Even there, not finding enough time to read all the contents and contribute by means of commenting. So since I am not encouraging other members by means of comments and all, probably others have also decided to reduce their visit to my contents.

2 Its natural that MS management expects me to remain loyal to the site and contribute exclusively. But having my own identity at my blog, I don’t have a serious motive to write exclusively here. Writing same contents at both places will be duplication of efforts, though I did that so far because I had some decent readership in MS. With the diminishing number of comments, the efforts might not be worth it. Writing the same content at my blog too (which competes and beats MS at search engines) or leaving my blog URL naturally irks MS management, but everything I write is my intellectual property, so I can’t abstain from leaving a mark.

3 I seriously feel quality has taken a back seat at MS. Some members stay on front page 24 by 7 uploading a new photo or publishing a diary post every few minutes. 99% of the time these contents are freely lifted from elsewhere in internet, with no permission or not even a credit to original writer/photographer. Recent investment made by MS on their infrastructure is being drained by these sourced contents which seriously do not add much value. Do not mean to say all posts are bad, but good posts often get lost in the sea of contents. When I visit MS with a limited amount of time to spare, I am finding it difficult to pick few good posts which would be worth my time. I do not intend to fight a quantity war here.

4 May be there is a dip in my quality of writing. No one directly told me so, but maybe I should withdraw and try to analyze the situation from this angle. Given that same content is driving higher number of comment at my blog these days, I see a lesser probability though.

5 Had some distant hope that one day we might be able to exchange our MS points to something physical. That hope has dwindled now. While I contribute to MS ad revenue there’s absolutely nothing I get in return. I am yet to get my return tickets I won 18 months ago.

6. The good number of comments I used to get was the only thing that was holding me back. May be I am failing to keep up with the exectations of the readers hence unable to command much comments. With that motivation gone, I feel I’ll better invest my energy elsewhere. May be I’ll peep in once a while to have a look what’s going on, but posting new contents will be rare from now on, except when I feel highly compelled to write here.

Thanks to all of you who have been regularly reading, commenting and encouraging me all these days. Sorry I couldn’t reciprocate effectively. Thanks to MS, thanks all.

If you’re offended for making above remarks on your favorite site, please excuse me.

Best wishes,

Nidhi

Recently I realized, that it’s not only humans, even facebook applications are struggling to recognize the gender associated with my name. Many think Shrinidhi is a female name and address me as Miss Shrinidhi or Mrs Hande… Others who are not sure either avoid gender specific references in the communications or reluctantly ask how I should be addressed.

Problem is, my name defies a naming pattern traditionally followed in India.

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If you’re active on social networking sites like Orkut, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the likes you will be familiar with mails of following type:
abc has added you to his trusted circle... ABC is now following you on twitter!
XYZ has approved your friend request
123@gmail.com has confirmed his/her subscription to your blog
So and so wishes to connect you through LinkedIn
Whenever someone shows interest in you by some means (friendship request, subscription to blogs, following on twitter, fans and ACs and so on) corresponding social networking sites promptly inform you about the same via mail. But almost all sites do not care to inform you of a lost contact. That is, if someone stops following you on twitter or terminates friendship with you on orkut or chooses to end his subscription to your blog, you usually do not get an alert. (Feedblitz is an exception)

Why so? Why are the sites hiding negative aspects? It’s very crucial for me to know if some people have chosen to discontinue their subscription to my blog or stop following me on twitter or have decided to remove me from their list of friends. Exit interviews are very important and it is very critical to understand why I lost a customer (or a friend or a fan or a reader, as the case may be) It is very difficult to keep a track of it manually. Social networking sites and utilities should have a provision to conduct kind of simple exit interview (like asking the reason why you’ve opted to discontinue) and promptly pass the feedback to the user. If I get an update for what reason a particular person took that decision I can introspect and analyze where I can improve. If the move was due to my fault I can extend an apology and make efforts to ensure that such things won’t repeat. If networking sites don’t facilitate this side of the coin their service remains incomplete.

Do you agree?

If you’re in the field of IT you must be familiar with the term Transaction Integrity, which is basically ensuring that an online activity is either 100% successful or completely declined. If that sounds confusing, here’s a simple example-you might have tried online money transfer-Supposed you are transferring Rs 10000 to a friend-have you ever faced a situation that only 5000 is transferred and rest 5000 is not? That can’t be. Its either entire 10000 is moved successfully or the transaction is declined and all 10k remains in your account. (Well, there’ll be cases where money is debited from one account but not credited to another account-such money gets moved to suspense account and will be returned to rightful owner after manual intervention)

Having said that, our banking systems are capable of transferring millions of rupees in fraction of a second. Whether it is Rs 100 or Rs 100 Crores, transaction happens at once, in one go, within a second.

So what?

In almost all movies which involve money transfers, what they show is something strangely different. They show a flash animation which shows a countdown of Money. Suppose the bad guy is looting $ 1 billion from a bank account, the animation starts with $ 1000,000,000 and counts downward all the way to $ 0 after few minutes(may be within which the hero is supposed to do something to stop this robbery) , followed by a big blinking text that transfer complete.

That looks funny to me.

Also check my other diaries and photos if time permits

I've launched a photo blog-
http://photos.enidhi.net

Pls visit if time permits. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Aim to add new photos every alternate day...

Nidhi

This one is supposed to be a joke and you’re expected to laugh at the end. Implementation of this strategy at your own risk.

I’ve invested in some 40 odd companies (just a thousand or so each-no big amount, and my portfolio is in deep red now). As the financial year ended recently, few of these companies have sent dividend warrants to their esteemed customers like me. While I am wondering why other companies haven’t sent any dividend, most of them have sent me their annual reports, which are thick and heavy books explaining companies operations, profit and loses, assets and liabilities and so on…

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Hi.

Yet another feature for you.

If you’re lazy to read my posts, I can read out my posts for you-

visit www.enidhi.net and look for the player in top right corner.

Let me read out my contents to you while you might be busy working out/cooking/cleaning/ or some other activity.

Dont strain your eyes reading from monitor-let your ears take over

Nidhi.

This is a follow up post to my recent review of imint review scheme. (Which in an unusual phenomenon attracted more comments at my blog than in MS, within initial few hours of publishing) If I update that post now none of you will notice, so publishing as a separate diary post.

Major update on iMint card: iMint customer care never bothered to respond to my mails but an escalation through ICICI Bank helped. My complaint was that my ICICI credit card reward points are not reflecting in my iMint statement. I escalated this through ICICI Bank and Dennis from iMint called me from Bangalore. After discussing with him I learnt that the points were being sent to a separate iMint number which was created for me when I applied for ICICI credit card. I already had an iMint card as ICICI Account holder, mapped to my ICICI debit card usage, which was different from the card mapped to credit card. So Dennis offered to map my credit card to my old iMint card and transfer the points to this card. That was good. He also explained that now they are allowing online redemption and I need not waste money call customer care. That is a good relief.

Feeling bit comfortable that they cared to call and resolve the issue. Many of you must be feeling similar issues-spare a moment to escalate through proper channels and get it fixed.

nidhi

Trying my hands on a poem for the first time…Nothing personal in this.

Read and tell me if this looks hopeless/average/bad/acceptabl
e… whatever…

---Poem Start---

I should have kept my cool

But now I feel like a fool

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