This is the most irritating StumbleUpon bug I have come across. What makes it really irritating is that none of the toolbar updates have gotten rid of it.

I have a habit of tagging pages which I see and like. That’s why I have the tag search box enabled there. And most of the time, it works like a charm.

And then out of the blue, something goes wrong, and after typing the tags in - in this case, SEO, google, search - this message pops up.

It tells me in great detail that I should type in some tags in the text box above. What the…? That is what I was trying to do.

The only way to get the tag text box working again is to close the browser and start again.

I really wish I knew why this stupid error keeps popping up.

It is being expected that India will allocate spectrum for next generation wireless networks as planned earlier. Union Minister of Communications and IT A Raja has been quoted as saying that successful bidders would be allocated the spectrum by the end of January after holding an auction. It is being said that the decision is likely to affect all leading telecom operators.

The government might go ahead and charge a fee of 1-2 per cent of mobile operators’ revenue for using additional airwaves and is also likely to levy a one-time charge for spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz. India expects to earn around Rs 50 billion in revenues annually from a higher spectrum fee to be levied on mobile telecom.

Last August, the government had outlined guidelines for a global auction of radio spectrum for 3G and 4G) wireless services, from which it hoped to raise up to Rs 400 billion. By January next, the Chennai circle and India’s north eastern region will see third-generation telecom networks open up.While BSNL would roll out 3G services in these regions, the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL), with operations in Delhi and Mumbai, will roll out 3G services in these two metros by December. This would make 3G available in most parts of the country, and will b followed up by launch of the services to other regions later on

The two state-owned operators have been allocated spectrum, with one block released to MTNL in the Delhi and Mumbai circles, while another block set aside for BSNL for the rest of the country. According to sources, MTNL and BSNL have both been given 2×5MHz in the 2.1GHz band.

This is the first version of its local mapping service for India and the main features have been developed by the Microsoft India Development Centre (MSIDC) based in Hyderabad.

It has been said that Microsoft has, over the past couple of years, made huge investments into research and development for Live Search. It had also acquired global resources and introduced several new features to make it work without a hassle. According to Microsoft India, the feature would also offer users access to business listings across 29 Indian cities and access to highway networks to 20,000 cities and towns. Users can now search for geographical information, places of general interest and business listings both on the PC and mobile.

Live Search Maps will be accessible on the PC and the mobile, thus ensuring that users get the information they need anytime. The feature will be available at http://m.live.co.in too, the company said.

The company has said that this is the first version of Live Search Maps for India. This, in fact, means that Microsoft will continue to introduce new features and improvements in the near future.

With the new Live Search Maps, uses can access addresses, roads, localities, landmarks, detailed street maps and places of general interest such as monuments, restaurants, hotels and other places of interest across nine Indian cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur.

These apart, the business listings across 29 major Indian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Agra, Allahabad, Amritsar, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Kochi, Coimbatore, Jaipur, Jalandhar, Kanpur, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mangalore, Nagpur, Nashik, Patiala, Patna, Rajkot, Surat, Vadodara and Vishakapatnam. Basic geographical information on the national road network of India across 20,000 cities and towns will also be available.

Microsoft India said that the Live Search Maps for India has as its key components street maps, location search, business listing search, routing or directions for navigation and options for users to print, share collections through email, blogs on Windows Live.

The company plans to add new features such as landmark-based driving directions, collections search, options for enterprise customers and developer community to create custom mash-ups, along with satellite imagery and related features for India and important cities. Powered by the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform, the new feature draws information through multiple local vendor partners like NavTeq and uses government-approved data after he took a gamble on unconventional movies. Kapoor bounced back and now after

The company has rolled out unlimited free wireless access for iPhone users.

This means that AT&T customers who own an Apple iPhone can have WiFi access on their devices. Customers have confirmed this saying that they have started receiving text messages from the company saying that free access is now possible.

The company has also directed customers to a page on the AT&T website, which links users to instructions for enabling the free access. The whole process involves entering the iPhone’s phone number and then waiting for an activation text message.

This is AT&T’s first big announcement in this regard, though it had earlier prepared itself to launch free access for iPhone users. Reports said that last May, the company had said that it was planning to unveil free WiFi access on iPhones. Though this info was posted on its website, however the company decided to delete it in a matter of a few hours.

The telecom company currently runs boasts of as many as 20,000 Wi-Fi spots at various shops, book stalls and other locations across the US. However, it is not known whether iPhone owners would be able to use the carrier’s hot spots. It has been clarified by the company that with Wi-Fi being a real differentiator for AT&T, the company wants to make it available to as many customers as possible.

As per the deal, it is believed that Netflix would provide its online DVD rental service subscribers and as many as 800,000 broadband-connected Tivo subscribers access to streaming movies and TV episodes from Netflix’s Watch Instantly service to TVs. And this will come free of charge. Several thousand US households have been chosen by digital video recorder TiVo and Netflix for initiating a test of the new capability.

Watch Instantly is a web streaming service, which boasts of a library of more than 12,000 movies and TV episodes. This service is offered free to its more than 8 million subscribers. It is expected that the new service will be available in the whole of the US in early December.

The new initiative is seen as Netflix’s strategy to figure out the right business model, and get their content on as many platforms as available. Industry sources said that the company is moving aggressively to extend that streaming service from the PC to TV.  It has enough and ore competition on ths fron t from majors such as Apple Inc and Amazon.com.

It may be recalled that Netflix had recently inked a deal with Samsung Electronics’s Blu-ray DVD devices to play video streamed from Netflix. Likewise, a similar deal with Blu-ray DVD player maker LG Electronics was also reached. Besides, the company has agreements to stream movies to Microsoft Corp’s Xbox 360 videogame consoles and to a $100 set-top box made by Roku Inc, said reports.

Besides, the other new partner, TiVo, has already launched new add-on features to help differentiate its DVRs from that of cable and satellite TV providers. These add-ons allow users to rent videos from Amazon and watch them on TVs. They also enable users to watch online videos from Google’s YouTube on their TV sets.

Zaibatsu banned!

Zaibatsu is the latest top Digger to be banned. Funnily enough, he was not banned for the normal crime these days - using scripts to automatically digg, shout, manage friends etc. He was banned because he submitted a pic of someone he thought was a beautiful female Digger, and the owner of the site redirected the URL to another page where products were being sold.

Not his fault at all, as we can see. But Digg went ahead and banned him. He was a good contributor to Digg from the beginning. There is a chance that he would get his account back, I think. Losing him is bad PR.

Fools banned for using scripts

I have no sympathy for the people who were banned by Digg because they were using scripts. Scripts were against TOS. End of story. If you wanted to be safe, you would not use them - not even the simple Greasemonkey scripts for digging your friends’ submissions directly from the Friends’ Submissions page. That is as non-spammy as it gets. I had with 3 months back, and when the first rumors of scripts being trouble surfaced, I deleted it. Seems a lot of others did not. Even much more dangerous scripts.

For example, there are active Diggers who I have added on my IM. Top guys. When I digg their stories regularly, they add me back. Don’t Digg them, and they vanish from my IM list. Digg a few, and they are back. Don’t digg, and they vanish. Script? I think so.

Then there are the ones who unfriend me, friend me again, unfriend me again - sure sign of a script.

Basic screw-up with Digg

I am all for submitting good stories - but when a good story gets 50 diggs and it cannot reach the front page later all on its own, you are asking me to spend much more than a reasonable time on Digg digging my friends, networking, checking shouts…

Who really can afford to spend the time needed to play by the rules and become a succesful Digger?

A professional Digger is who.

For an active student, or someone in a well-paying corporate job, Digg is impossible to succeed in. Why? If you are an employee or employer, you spend close to 9 hours working and commuting, sometimes more. Then in a weekday, you have perhaps 4-5 hours of time available. How many can afford to keep 2 or 3 hours of that time for Digg? Especially if you have a girlfriend / wife / kids?

Impossible.

An honest Digg user would reach home, log into Digg, digg the stories he like on the front page, read most of them, digg upcoming stories, read the good ones, check for shouts and digg the ones you like, check friends submissions and digg the ones you like and then look in the big sites for some good story to submit. Then spend a few minutes letting a few friends know about his new submission.

That is easily 3-4 hours. Tough for someone who has a life. Easy for a professional digger who can do this all day.

Er… unless, you have some scripts to help you with all that!

The good Digger I mentioned above will get probably 50 diggs on his stories over a period of time. He will get nowhere near the front page without 150 or more. Often more.

End of story, Digg. You are a professional’s playground, and the only thing that matters is how well nd how long they fool ya.

Digg Front Page - Just what is it?

Now, we know Diggers don’t like blogs. With full justification, of course. Nowadays, if you look at the Digg front page, you see nothing but big media stories. New York Times, CNN etc, or the top blogs on the Net. Gizmodo, autoblog, engadget, arstechnica…

Now there are a lot of blogs which fall a rung below those ones. Sometimes with better articles, better scoops, better pics or better insights.

Digg’s, and Diggers’ negativity towards upcoming quality blogs and small sites mean that the front page of Digg resembles Google News - from 6 hours past, often 24 hours past.

More productive to just go to Google or Yahoo News, right? Or just go to Huffingtonpost, or Autoblog, or NY Times directly.

Coming back to Zaibatsu, bad deal, man. But they will probably give it back to you. And you will go back to the good work, and all will be normal with Digg. Normal is pretty bad, though.

The few guides I managed to find on the Net about how to move wordpress blogs to a new server were too scary. Backups of databases, copying folders, recreating stuff on the new server, setting up all plugins and options… maddening stuff. Several times, I thought about backing off and sticking to the current web hosting service.

But I have found a way! Well, some smart people have found the way to do this easily and well. I thought I should use this opoprtunity to point them out to anyone who has been faced with the same problem.

This works only if you have cPanel as your web hosting control panel on both the servers. if you don’t, sorry. You have to do it the hard way in that case.

If all you have is a WP blog on a domain, just ask the host first. They may just give you a full backup which you can hand over to the new host. Ask, ask!

All hope is not for those who want to move entire websites or WordPress blogs without cPanel, though. A friend of mine is about to write a blog post on how to do it using SSH and maybe 5 mins per blog. That would give you the answers.

if you have cPanel - in layman’s terms - you just have to take a full backup of your site using Cpanel. You can take a full backup of your entire account, choose one of the several options, get the backup to the new server, and restore the entire account, including your files, images, WordPress or other blogs, even emails!

Let me not attempt to explain how to transfer your WP blog or domain or account to another web server in detail here. I am abound to mess it up.

So here are the people who would give you step by step instructions in their blogs on how to easily effect the transfer using cPanel. On we go!

1.Justin-Cook.com guide to moving domains / accounts / sites using cPanel. This is what I plan to follow. Hopefully it would work well. It is the best-explained guide I have seen so far. Great work, Justin.

2. cPanel.net help files. Basic, but still useful for effectiung succesful website transfers. Scroll down to Transfers in the left frame and read up.

3. Looks almost like a copy of Justin Cook’s guide. But read up. Domain transfer using cPanel is so easy and save so much of your time that you should not complain if I ask you to read one more article. Please read. You will feel more confident when you actually have to do it.

4. One more. This is ultra short. Maybe this is what you need.

4. Your new web host may do it for you. Ask them. HostGator does it. Many others do. You may not need to worry at all.

5. If your worry is about Wordpress transferring well, worry about something else. WP transfer is not what matters, its an account transfer using cPanel. This is much easier, and your WP would get transfered when your account gets transferred. Easier this way.

I am a top stumbler - a Top Stumbler is, according to StumbleUpon, someone who contributes a lot to SU, through his discoveries, reviews, thumbs ups and tags. I do a lot of that, it is easy as I am always on the Net for work, and it is easy to open a tab where I keep stumbling and reviewing. That does not make me an expert on SU - or a super networker. There are people with 100 times more powerful accounts in SU.

But it makes me someone who uses SU a lot. Therefore, I see a lot of these guys below:

The Idiot Fan

My biggest issue is the number of fans. I have almost a thousand fans! That is no small number. In theory, it means that a lot of people like what I discover and stumble, and would like to follow my stumbles using the StumbleUpon toolbar. In practise, it means that people see my avatar in the top stumblers list, come to my profile and add me as a friend. They think that it would be great somehow to add a Top Stumbler as a friend, and he / she would add you back. Not so. But they keep doing that.

Now, I would add anyone back as a mutual friend, if I know they really like my stumbles. How do I know that?

I keep checking back on my discoveries and pages liked to see who all have thumbed up what I liked. If I don’t see your avatar among people who have liked what I liked, then how does that make you my fan or friend? Being my fan means SU would send my stumbles to people who use the toolbar, they would like my stumbles, and thumb them up too. So a fan or friend should like what I do. If you never ever thumb what I stumble, why are you my fan? Why join a political party and never vote?

SU Spammers

These are the fools who will send you messages that go: “hi, I have been checking / following your stumbles and I really think our interests match. Hope you will add me as a friend / check out this site of mine”.

Checking or following my blog? I can always check back to your profile. And I see you have never ever done that. Not a single thumbs up from you on any of my discoveries. Why, yout total stumbles are probably 20 or 100, the amount I stumble in an hour!

The spammer idiot thinks that you would add him back, check his website, thumb it up… I don’t know. Trust me, never gonna happen.

Bikini babes

Yea, that super-sexy blonde bombshell is certainly you, I believe that.

Someone told me this is pink-hat-SEO. Get you to visit them by showing you the pic of a girl in a bikini, legs, bums, big boobies or whatever.

Waste of time, I think.

I know there are a few who just like to have a pic of a girl in a bikini in their avatar. Fair enough.

But when I see you messaging me, then it won’t fool me. Bikini or nude, I would check your blog to see how active you are.

If you are active, you could wear a bikini or even Stumble naked, and I won’t care.

Psycho Thumb Downers

Suspect in his late teens. Will thumb down stuff because

• he got bullied at school
• girlfriend refused oral sex
• cop broke his skateboard
• does not like certain colors

Yea, say he does not like red; he would thumb down a site with a picture of red sky on Mars because he does not like red. Psycho.

Then he would thumb down a story which actually supports their point of view because someone quoted in the story opposed their point of view. It matters not to the Psycho Thumb Downer that the story thoroughly refutes and demolishes what that guy said. “Something I do not like appears in this story as a point of view, THUMB DOWN, BUWAHAHA” describes the philosophy of the Psycho SU user.

Read the effing story, dumb ass. Or better still, join Digg. They love you there. Reddit is too smart for you.

The Maniac Send To user

The send-to button is there to send stories to users. Fine. But how many do you send? The Maniac Send To user would send his site every morning, afternoon and night to you.

Now remember, the maniac can do this because he is already my friend. He is not without a brain, he knows his SU. Except for one thing: SU can track what you send. So if you are all the time sending your own blog posts, SU obviously knows you are marketing your own site - and will probably discount the stumbles on your blog.

Also, say I thumb your post every day. That is a pattern. Obviously, I would blindly thumb anything you send me. It is certain that any half-baked algo (yes, even Google’s algo!) would be able to catch it and discount it.

Why bother, man? Why waste my thumb-up by devaluing it - asking me vote your blog daily? Send it to me once a week, and you probably will actually gain a lot. In fact, if you send your blog posts only occasionally, the thumbs ups you get will remain valuable and send even more traffic.

Who is the least harmful of the above?

The SU bikini girl! She at least shows you pics of boobies.

Hey, no offense

And now to the honest SU user who still doesn’t have a clue. You are like me when I started. I mean, the Idiot But Will Learn category of user. Don’t worry, this is normal.

You are here for fun, or profit. Both are fine by me. SU rewards you with friends, brilliant stories to see and read, and even traffic to your blog or site, if you just take it easy.

Initially stumble a lot with the toolbar, learn the ins and outs, search SU or Google for some guides on SU, and make friends. Make friends here means you find some people you like, religiously check their discoveries and liked pages, thumb them if you like them - and just continue.

The more pages you stumble, the more credible you will become in SU - and you would make friends naturally.

Promoting your page on Day One, on the other hand, is the beginning of a big waste of time.

Today when I opened my mailbox, I was greeted with an official-sounding email from Punjab National Bank. Now, I don’t have a Punjab National Bank account! So I was in no danger. It was obviously spam, or a phishing attempt. When I opened the mail, this is what I saw:

UNAUTHORIZED NETBANKING ACCESS ON YOUR ACCOUNT
Important Message
In the last few weeks our security team has observed some login attempts in your Internet Banking Account from Various Blacklisted IP Addresses ,therefore been blocked to prevent further unauthorized access for your safety. Therefore, we have decided to put you on an extra verification process to insure your identity and your IP Address for your safety and for your Internet Banking Account.
Click On link for Retail/Personal NetBanking Access https://retail.onlinepnb.com/update.jsp
Click On link for Corporate/Business NetBanking Access https://corporate.onlinepnb.com/verify.jsp
Important

Please update your records on or before 48 hours failure to update your records will result in a temporary hold on your funds.
Copyright © 2008 Punjab National Bank

Note, those URLs look fine, but they are actually not linked to the PNB site, but to a phishing site. Click on them, and you are taken to a site that looks exactly like the Punjab National Bank site. The page asks you to key in your account number, username and password. Key it in, and you may lose your money forever.

The crooks attempting this would have sent this email to a massive number of people, hoping that a very small percentage of them would be PNB account holders, and some of them would fall for this.

So this is a warning to all internet banking / net banking users in India. Double check every mail that looks like it is from your bank. Check the actual URL of the links given by hovering your mouse over the link, and looking at the URL in the browser status bar.

Banks normally never send a mail saying that your account access would be disabled. If any such mails come to you, assume it is a phishing attempt first.

Today it is an attempt on PNB online banking users, tomorrow it might happen to users of other banks.

If you really think the email is genuine, call up the bank’s call center and talk to them to verify if it really is.

You can never be too cautious on the Net.

Either the Digg Recommendation Engine is on crack, or the submitters are!

Do Diggers have a life? 4 people submitting the same story in the space of a minute.

Just imagine them at their keybooards, eyes darting between windows, continuously refreshing their RSS reader to see if there is something FP-worthy that pops up! And then, a flurry of fingers and panicked breathing, they all submit the same story to Digg - from different parts of the world, for all you know.