Upgrading an iPhone 3GS to iPhone 5

Reading Time: 3 minutes

I have had an Apple iPhone 3GS for nearly three years and its chief annoyance to me was the camera. Any excuse to upgrade to the iPhone 5. I missed the earliest order date so I was happy to wait the estimated two weeks. As luck would have it, Optus sent me an SMS to say I could collect it on the launch date of 21 September 2012.

I got to the store around 5 pm and there were about four people ahead of me, including people who hadn’t pre-ordered. So, at least in this store there wasn’t a shortage of some models. By contrast, the Millenia Mall in Orlando had hundreds of people waiting to buy their iPhone 4 on its launch date. We just happened to be watching the spectacle, content with our 3GS.

waiting
Only four people were ahead of me at Optus World, Werribee Plaza on 21 September 2012.

 

x
Much longer queue for the Apple 4 at The Millenia Mall, Orlando, FL Apple store on 24 June 2010.

 

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Content or discontent?

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Most Indians seem to pronounce content (as in the contents of this page) as कंटेंट .
What’s wrong with that?
In the rest of the world (except, perhaps the countries next to India), कंटेंट refers to contentment, as in “I am very content with my career”.
The correct pronunciation for (page) content is कॉन्टेंट .

Colleague

In a similar vein, colleague is pronounced as कॉल्लीग, not कलीग. (You don’t pronounce college as कलेज, do you? 🙂
 

SEO and what Kogan is doing right

Reading Time: 4 minutes

If you haven’t heard of the Kogan brand or its founder, Ruslan Kogan, you will, sooner or later. Ruslan describes himself as coming from a Housing Commission flat in Melbourne (welfare housing scheme). He is totally street smart and has made a name for himself in Australia and UK as an online purveyor of  electronics (and a furniture brand). I have heard him speak at a journo junket and on TV — he is always entertaining.

At the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PeSA) conference that just ended at the Gold Coast Convention Centre on Friday, Ruslan entertained the 600+ audience on Wednesday with the story of his business journey and some valuable tips that he had learnt.

Ash Nallawalla
I presented two sessions at PeSA12

Ruslan also gave his views on SEO and CRO agencies, which were interpreted by the audience in a couple of ways. The people at my table and I took them to mean, “Don’t worry about SEO; get your online business right. Offer a differentiator and provide a value-add.” I can’t recall his exact words, but they left an impression on some that SEO wasn’t at all important and that Ruslan didn’t care much for SEO. Continue reading

Are LinkedIn Groups of any value anymore?

Reading Time: 3 minutes

LinkedIn has thousands of discussion Groups, where actual discussion seems to be minimal. There was a time when a given topic had one or two groups, but now a popular topic will have hundreds of identical competitors. Anyone can create their own groups. Numerous small businesses (and some larger ones) have done this.

Why do people create LinkedIn Groups?

Most people in the workforce know that the Internet is a cheap way of reaching out to millions of people. At one extreme is the pastime of spamming those millions, but that’s the province of shady folks who go to great lengths to remain anonymous. At the respectable end, known as marketing, you need a large list of contacts, so you can promote your messages, being the owner of a discussion group.

So you create a LinkedIn group and call it, say, Internet Marketing, or E-Commerce, or Marketing Communications and so on. It doesn’t matter if someone else has a group with a similar name, but it cannot contain “LinkedIn”. If you’re into SEO, you have only 3143 other groups that appear to cover that topic.

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Twitter: Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!

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For nearly a week I could not get anything out of the Twitter website, i.e. http://twitter.com. I tried to click the links of people who were following me, but without fail, Twitter kept responding, “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!”. It didn’t matter if I tried the handles of some famous people — they all did not exist. An appeal to @twitter fell on deaf ears: Continue reading

Like that only

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Let’s look at instances of valid English that would not make sense outside India. Consider this dialogue in India:

Q. Why did you do that?
A. Like that only.
A. Just like that.

Even an Indian knows that the answer makes no sense, but lots of people continue to talk like that. What would happen in the West?

Q. Why did you do that?
A. No idea.
A. Search me.
A. I can’t explain it.
etc

There are many other possibilities. Some of them don’t make literal sense either.
Let’s look at examples of the shortage/abuse of articles in India, particularly Northern India. (By “articles”, I refer to grammar — “a” and “the” are indefinite and definite articles). See Wikipedia.

Wrong: He has gone to office.
Right: He has gone to the office.

Explanation: He has gone to one specific office.

Wrong: She is eating mango.
Right: She is eating a mango.

Explanation: She is eating one mango – some random mango.

Wrong (no other information is known): She is eating the mango.
Right (note emphasis): She is eating the mango.

Explanation: She is eating a specific mango, perhaps one that has some significance, e.g. it is the only one in a bunch injected with poison. (It happens in fiction!)

Wrong: She likes to eat the mangoes.
Right: She likes to eat mangoes.
Wrong: I am doing some time pass.
Right: I am killing time.

Explanation: Passing time has morphed to “time pass”, which is a nice turn of phrase, but makes you look uneducated when you say it outside India.
Sometimes, people forget their high school grammar lessons. This poor soul has given us an example of bad spelling, bad grammar and bad logic (source):

if we really wants to kill terrorism from root then we should take some actions on that places where we know that terrorist are feeded by people for terrorism.We should start form the KASAB sitting in the prison and having fledge service of prison these is the one who is responsible of taking innocent people’s life in mumbai terror attacks.

Punjabi beer can lead to tears

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At a function today, the emcee said, “Please bear with us while we wait for …” but it sounded like “Please beer with us …”
I have heard a few Punjabis pronounce “wear” as “weir”, so it seems that some misguided teacher has created this confusion among thousands of Punjabis. My guess is that when he was at school he missed the lesson where the difference between the pronunciation of “tear” (tear drops) and “tear” (rip apart) was pointed out.
So here it is.

  • Bear (sounds like bare) =  बेर/ਬੇਰ
  • Beer = बीअर/ਬੀਅਰ
  • Wear (sounds like ware) = वेर/ਵੇਰ
  • Tear (drop) = टीअर/ਟੀਆਰ
  • Tear (rip)  = टेर/ਟੇਰ

 

Yellow NZ is back with a bang

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Earlier today, Yellow (Pages) New Zealand tweeted:

Have you checked out the new http://www.yellow.co.nz website? More relevant search results, a fancy new design & improved page load speed!

I confess to not keeping up with the Yellow Pages scene since leaving Sensis some 18 months ago. I had mentioned Yellow NZ a couple of times here and used to know some people there. I check all my Twitter unfollowers and noticed @yellownz had dumped me (probably because I wasn’t following them).

Something about @yellownz’s Twitter timeline caught my eye:

Yellow NZ's Twitter streamIt seems that the Twitter account had been silent since 20 June and wasn’t particularly active before then. Continue reading

Does LinkedIn police its own rules?

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Unlike the majority of LinkedIn users, I pay for my account and I advertise there (as do my clients), so I have a lower tolerance to lax quality control within LinkedIn.

Fake Accounts

I used to belong to some SEO discussion groups (inside LinkedIn) when I noticed that Halle Berry was a participant, except that this was a blonde with the most implausible profile and a strong interest in SEO and techy topics (based on her group activity). I complained to LinkedIn customer service and they replied saying that they didn’t see anything amiss. This Halle is still an active account. Continue reading

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