insideout

Happy Fool’s Day

Like every year this year too Fool’s Day was celebrated with a lot of enthusiasm. The only difference this year was that this time my primary targets were my twitter friends. But, as you know twitter has a reputation of having the most smart people on it, most of my tricks failed badly.

Nevertheless, I still had a good time cooking up these pranks. Here are the ones that I tried playing on with.

1. Akhil Bharatiya Vanar Sena (ABVS) protesting against Fool’s Day celebrations, calling it against Indian Culture.

This was the first story which I cooked up. I created a fake news paper clip using a fake clip generator site. As that pic was too easy to identify as fake, I took a pic from my mobile phone camera to make it look authentic and posted up on twitpic.

Some guys took a notice of this and retweeted it. Some people made fun of the guys protesting against such event and laughed at it. Though, no one caught it as fake, but it did not create much buzz either.

2. “Twitter now recognizes your password“.
I then tried reusing an old trick by tweeting that if you happen to type your password in a tweet it converts them to dots and doesn’t display it.

This one also caught some attention but I think it was too risky for any one to take a chance and give away the password trying it. Some of the smart tweeps also caught me on this one. In all, it failed without much life.

3. Next up was my idea for the twitter’s new Background and Theme copy commands. I tweeted that now it was now possible to copy someone’s theme/background by just sending a tweet in the format “COPYBG <username> or COPYTH <username>”. But this one also fell flat.

I was very disappointed when this one didn’t work. I thought that this would sound genuine and some tweeps might give it a try, but sadly enough, it wasn’t even noticed.

When this failed, I moved back and decided that this would be end to all the pranks for this year.But the way I am, couldnt take defeat so easily . I gave my final shot with the big story

4. “Ajmal Kasab found dead in Arthur Road prison“. I posted this as a RT from @ibnlive to make it sound authentic, and as expected, I soon got some quick responses, some rubbishing the news  and some with a fair amount of belief on it. To make this more effective, I added a fake snapshot of Kasab’s article from ibn’s site too.

This snapshot really got the heads turning . I had left a fair amount to scope for people to identify it as a fake (see Arthur Road spelling). Some smart people did identify this as a prank and spread the news. This probably was the most successful of the lot and got almost 200 hits in 15 mins.

So this was all I had in my box for this year. Taking a cue from this year’s performance, I’ve already started planning for next year. What am I planning? something bigger and smarter.. Beware.. I’m gonna get you..

Tags: April Fool, Fool's Day, Fun, Life, twitter

Barcamp mumbai – twitter meetup

Barcamp mumbai along with everything else was fun mostly because of the twiterrati I met there. I got a chance to meet and interact with a lot of tweeple, i had been following for so long. It was funny to realise how much we knew about each other without even meeting for even once. Twitter has been a great medium for me to find likeminded people, best ppl in their respective fields, the ones who know what they are talking about.

I’m sure each one of us develops an impression of the person through the tweets but a meeting in person gives a new dimension to all those tweets. Here is are my first impressions of the tweeple I met @ BCM4 :

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are meant to tickle the funny bone and should be taken in pure humor. No offense  to anyone is intended I really appreciate each of the following and have a high amount of respect for them.

@preshit : Gimme my gadgets and I am happy.. anything for frendz..

@shadez :  Happy go lucky. keep the faith.. play on..

@MysticDews : I wont speak out of turn.. I know where the world is heading  to and where I want to go.

@Asfaq : My way or highway.. i like you .. but Im not sure if it wud stay the same for long.. : )

@aDeSe : halfway between values and rebel. I love the game of life.. but the rules suck…

@dhempe : Mr. sincere .. life, frends, fun.. i am faithful to each one.

@punkpolkadots : im happy the way i am.. u mind?

@Netra : total control.. i demand respect.. and i work for it.

@UrmiRaj14 : Live life Queen size.

@aalaap : there are some things money cant buy, i have everything else..

@vivekk : Mr. niceguy.. sharing is the way to go.

@maharana : Its only a matter of time.. i would make it big.. really big..

@vipulmathur : okay guys.. say cheese…now hold it, forever .. its good to see the world smiling.

@unitechy :  Observation is my idea of fun.  no.. no.. no, I DO speak .. but I like to choose my audience.

I’ll keep adding to the list as and when I meet more tweeple..

Tags: barcampmumbai4, frendz, mumbai, tweetup, twitter

BarCamp Mumbai 4

Bar Camp Mumbai 4 happened on 4th and 5th OCT at SJM-SOM IIT. It was a two day event, full of fun and learining and while crowd was higher on the first day, I feel that the sessions were better on the day 2.

This time BarCamp was more oriented towards enterprenurship and startups. A lot of sessions covered different aspects of starting up a company.

Rajiv Dhingra of WATblog inspired the gathering with his own story of success while giving tips on how to break out of the regular herd. Anand Lunia from seedfund.in gave valueable insights on how to acquire Seed funding, what works, what doesnt. Bakshish Dutta from Sun offered help with their special plans for setting up the infrastructure for startups. Aditi gupta from CIIE gave tips on brand buiding for startups and some gyan on the incubation process. There were a few startups like  entrip.com, youcharades.com, housie app by socialwebfactory and m4mum.com who presented a demo of their products and shared their experiences. You can read about all the sessions on the official barcamp site barcampmumbai.org.

There were some impromptu presentations too. The one I liked the most was by Appu and Vipul on Social Photo sharing. They highlighted why photo sharing is important and how so many people all across the globe are getting benifitted by such photo sharing communities. The presentation they had put up was amazing. Both of them are photography fanatics themselves and have their photo streams on Flickr. Appu’s stream and Vipul’s stream.

Another session which interested me was on wireless security presented by Sheetal Joseph. She gave a little run down on how security on wireless networks is compromised and what measures one can take to ensure maximum security. A copy of the presentation is available at OWASP.

I met a lot of people and shared a lot of ideas. The gathering was a mixed crowed, students, enterprenurs, techies, bloggers, geeks, management people, etc. and everyone had something to share. It was a wonderful experience.. I hope I would present something in the next barcamp.

The regulars say that this time the turn out was pretty low and I realised that most people this time were the first timers like me. I cant speak about others but I’m sure I would be a regular from now on.

Check out barcampmumbai 4 pics at preshit’s photostream.

Tags: barcamp, barcampmumbai4, BCM, BCM4, mumbai bar camp