4shared.com

4shared.com is a file-sharing web site which offers 10 GB of free space. You can download as well as upload software, music, videos, games and books. Unlike many other similar sites 4shared.com allows only legal and non-pornographic materials. It supports most popular document, music, video, image and zip file formats. There is a 2048 MB size limitation per file.

If you have a heavier file, you can split it into smaller parts and upload them separately using the multi-upload feature. After you register, you get virtual drive space, in which you can create folder and subfolders. Files can be arranged in folders and subfolders using a simple interface.

Another fiasco on social media

Recently McDonald's invited its patrons to tweet on two topics (hashtags) on Twitter: #MeetTheFarmers and #McDStories.

The idea was perhaps to generate feel-good stories about eating French fries and deep-fried burgers, but McDonald's lost grip on the plot soon after it tweeted.  

#McDStories emerged quickly as a target for people unhappy with what McDonald's was dishing out. “One time I walked into McDonalds (sic) and I could smell Type 2 diabetes floating in the air and I threw up,” tweeted one. "I havent been to McDonalds in years, because Id rather eat my own diarrhoea (sic),” tweeted another. Sensing blood, others rushed and McDonald's was soon hosting an anti-junk food crusade on its Twitter account.

McDonald's pulled out #McDStories, but not before discovering that  social media was a gun, which fired at both ends, a lesson which has been appreciated by several other MNCs as well.

Two years ago, Green Peace launched a campaign against Nestle for contributing to the deforestation of Indonesian forests, the world’s only habitat of orangutans, to extract palm oil. Nestle got YouTube to delete a Green Peace video, which showed an orangutan finger coming out of a Kit Kat wrapper. The video promptly went viral on Vimeo. Nestle tried to fend off the angry environmentalists but ultimately had to commit to switch to sustainable palm oil supplies by 2015.

Soon after that Nestle got into another dispute with its Facebook followers, who were using its ‘altered version of its logos’. As even this controversy got out of hand, Nestle had to retract
its threat to delete posts with altered logos and even apologise for rude
behaviour.

Countless other MNCs have tried to master social media with similar success. Many experts blame the dogmatic approach of these companies for their PR disasters. But the problem is more fundamental. These companies have always worked to generate quarterly profits to their share holders, without worrying much about how they were messing up with the environment or the larger interest of their customers. The protests against the corporate malpractices were usually limited to certain geographies and to elements, which could have been passed off as the radical fringe.

But with the rise of social media protests spread across countries in just a few hours. It may take just one disgruntled employee or customer to launch a full scale war.  Like individuals, companies also have lost their privacy. Unless they change their DNA and genuinely balance corporate with social interests, they will continue to have tense ties with social media.

Bluestacks
»BlueStacks App Player lets you run your favourite Android apps full-screen on any Windows PC or tablet. It comes pre-loaded with 10 top apps. You can download more using the BlueStacks Cloud Connect mobile app from the Android Market. This is an alpha version of the software. www.bluestacks.com/download.html

Connectify
»Turn your Windows laptop into a secure Wi-Fi hotspot to share the Internet with other devices and friends for free. You can also give a name to your hotspot and set a password. Download it for free or buy a professionally version for a price. www.connectify.me

Badongo
»Badongo is a free file hosting site that enables you to upload an unlimited amount of files, photos, video and music, to send to friends, family and colleagues. www.badongo.com

Publish yourself

»Internet has got a nutcracker-like hold on book publishers. It is forcing a shift from paper to e-books, which shaves off margins and fuels piracy. It is now prodding many writers to self-publish their books and find readers on their own.

For long, self-publishing was seen as the last gasp of the failed writers. Not anymore. The year 2011 may well go down as the year self-publishing came of age. In the Kindle 100 top selling ebooks of 2011, there were 18 self-published titles.

Many self-published writers are selling thousands of copies of their e-books and making a small fortune. Most notable among them is Amanda Hocking, a Minnesota-based fiction writer, who had a shoebox filled with rejection slips sent by paper publishers. She was so broke she did not have $ 300 to attend an event in Chicago. To raise this money she turned to self-publishing and in 20 months made a neat $2.5 million and emerged as the face of the new sunrise industry.

As in any industry for every star, who is born, there are countless many toiling for the elusive success. So competition is heating up here as well and the average price of  self-published books, along with ebooks in general, is plunging, says Piotr Kowalczyk, an analyst.

People, who buy self-published titles, are obviously price sensitive; they do not always go by the media reviews and are willing to take a leap of faith. Mainstream writers, publishers and media may not take them seriously, but the early experience shows they are in good number to support the self publishing phenomena.

Blogger Amit Agarwal recently gave a few tips for budding self-publishers in WSJ. There are popular web sites such as Kindle store, iBookstore, NOOK and Sony Reader, where you can announce your arrival.

You can type your novel in Word and convert it to html, using an inbuilt option in the software. Then using Mobipocket Creator, a free tool, convert the html document to a Kindle file. Using ‘Kindle Previewer’ preview how your work looks in a Kindle e-reader. Then go to these sites and upload following the instructions, without forgetting to set a price for those, who want to take a leap of faith.

If you are waiting for your 15 minutes of fame, here is a web site for you. It has covers of several authentic-looking magazines. Upload your picture, choose a magazine to go with your mood and press the button. Bingo, a star is born. You can post it directly to your Facebook and Twitter accounts and give something to your friends to talk about. Visit www.magmypic.com

Fake Lords of Dharmaraja

A group of ‘Indian’ hackers calling themselves "The Lords of Dharmaraja" recently broke into government servers and released documents to show that New Delhi was running an elaborate hacking operation targeting US officials.

They made public, among other things, a memo supposedly written by India's Directorate General of Military Intelligence. The memo reveals mobile handset manufacturers, Apple, RIM, Nokia et al., creating a backdoor for Indian authorities to spy on their users.

Lords created a sensation; many rushed to club India with China as a cyber delinquent. ‘Forbes’ said the claims, if proved, were historic, as they would provide the first documented case of state-sponsored cyber espionage.

Several inconsistencies immediately surfaced, casting doubt on the claims. There are ten Indian security agencies with the power to launch technical surveillance. Military Intelligence is not one of them. The hackers also said they found Symantec source code in Indian government servers and made it public with much fanfare; the code turned out to be half-a-decade old, of only vintage value to any self-respecting hacker.

Security publication ‘Infosec’ published an interview with YamaTough, a spokesman of the Lords, who rambles through mutilated words. He says Lords attacked Indian government to force a pro-US tilt in the government!

Yama has a low opinion of Indian officials; after getting hacked they just traced the infected machines and changed passwords, which, however, continue to host the keylogging software inserted by hackers. According to him, Indian officials forward sensitive information to their free Yahoo mails for backups.  Not exactly the nerdy kind running a sophisticated cyber espionage operation, as alleged earlier. If he is right, their incompetence may be their best defence.

FBI is probing the surveillance charge on the US officials; but the Lords’ credibility is eroding. More than serving any patriotic cause, it is clear that hackers were trying to embarrass India.

There is a good chance that they are not even Indian. Though it is hard to say where they come from, there are some leads. The Twitter profile picture of the Lords initially had a Tibetan rendering of the Indian God of Death. The MI memo is a likely but an excellent fake, which mimics the torturous language used by Indian babus. Hackers are not known for their love of English language and the fabrication of the memo suggests the involvement of larger, possibly other government agencies, hostile to the growing Indian and US relationship. The mystery is slowly unravelling and it is no longer India’s Wikileak moment as it was initially thought to be.

Mobile fun and games

»Make your mobile device more fun to use with apps, wallpapers, ringtones, videos, books and games. Whatever your device, smart phone or tablet or ebook reader, there is something for everyone here. www.mobile9.com

India’s most popular offbeat videos

Indians like to watch either cricket or films on screen, be it TV or PC or mobile. But there is a smaller but rapidly expanding audience with a broader interest in life.

Here is a list of 2011’s five most popular online videos, which became a rage on You Tube, and had very little to do with films or cricket.     

1)   Flash Mobs stop busy people right on their tracks in streets and make them tap their feet. On November 29 at CST station, Mumbai, about 200 dancers, young and old, broke into a dance for a ‘Ranga De Basanti’ song, bringing the busy junction to a pleasant standstill. Bustling commuters - police men, old grannies, hawkers – made space for the dancers and joined in the fun. The video has been viewed over 2 million times.

2)   A well-dressed, well-built Sikh youth, Harvinder Singh, gave a taste of mob justice to heavy weight politician Sharad Pawar before the TV cameras. He also fended off counter attack by Pawar supporters on the spot and brandished his kirpan. His feat has been viewed over 300,000 times.  A brilliantly edited funny Kolaveri cover, inspired by the event, is a bigger hit, with over 1.5 million views.

3)   This will make you cry. A large group of children perform Jana Gana Mana in  a school. They are hearing impaired and hence, cannot listen to the melody that defines the ethos of this country. What they cannot hear or perhaps sing, they do it with their gestures. Their hands fly, palms fold, fingers circle and heads sway to provide a poignant   rendition of the national song. One country, so many different ways to be part of it! Viewed 1.1 million times.

4)   Opinions are divided on Shradhha Sharma's music talent. The 15-year-old Dehradun girl looks cute, has melody in voice and uploaded cover versions of a few Hindi hits. These videos, in a few months, have given her a following on Internet, which is usually enjoyed by hallowed Bollywood stars. Her videos have been viewed over 5.5 million times. The most popular ‘Teri Meri’ has pulled in 7,69,353 views.

5)   Sushil Kumar, a computer operator from East Champaran became the first contestant to win Rs 5 crore on KBC. The small-town feel-good story caught the attention of the nation. The video tracing his progress in the programme has been viewed over 2,37,711 times. DH