story of a Hacker!

Few month’s back I hacked a Gmail account and a Facebook account associated with it.  It was my first hacking. And the account I hacked was not in use. I belonged to a girl whom I don’t know at all. I believe it was never logged on after opening the account. I changed their passwords as other hackers does.  I set a password which I don’t use normally. I was very much excited about successfully hacking a account.

I was having a busy time during that time. So I couldn’t log on in the hacked account in few days. Soon I forgot about the hacked account. Today I remembered about hacked account. I tried to log in but I failed. I forgot the password I set. More importantly I forgot the mail address and account details of the hacked account. Then I realized I forgot how to hack the accounts. 😛 It’s damn funny. Looks like I’m a terrible hacker and my memory is getting weak day by day. 🙂 Anyway, I didn’t want to harm anybody and I believe no harm was done. As I mentioned earlier, the account was not in use. It rally doesn’t matter whether its password is changed or not. I am sure it’s true owner will not use the account ever.

At the end I declare that I’m not a professional or any kind of hacker. I hacked the account by chance. I don’t know how to hack and please don’t ask me to hack accounts for you. Also I declare that I don’t have any intention to be hacker or continue hacking activity. And I suggest you to undertake strong security measures for your Facebook and mail accounts.  Cheers!!!

In love with Bank Notes

I was searching on Google for an Image of 1000 Taka note. I was planning to post the image in Facebook and tag all my friends as symbolic Eid Salami. I indeed found the image. I hardly doubt Google can’t find anything. After clicking on the first search result, Google took me to a website called “The International Bank Note Society”.

I never heard of this society but the website claims that it was founded on 1961. Objectives of this society are to promote, stimulate, and advance the study and knowledge of worldwide banknotes and paper currencies.I found the site interesting. So I kept exploring the site. I saw their ‘Hall of Flame‘ members with their contributions. Members of IBNS are basically collectors and those who have interest on paper notes. Also this society publishes journal on paper notes on a regular basis.

Few moments later I found that every year this society elects a bank note as “note of the year”. It uploads the image of winning bank note with other nominated bank notes. Then I moved to the notice section only to find that someone lost a good number of bank notes from his collection. A link was there to show the image of lost notes. I followed the link and reached in a Facebook Album.  Lots of bank note image were there. I started to see one by one. As i was going through the images, I was getting more and more interested. All the images have different  colors, size and design. Most of the notes includes a photo of that country’s leader. Among the notes there were some rare notes.

Though it took me a while to watch each image, i become thrilled. I remembered that once I had the hobby of collecting coins of different country. Though my coin collection was very small but I had some 70/80 years old coin and coins from different countries. But unfortunately I lots them all. But watching the bank notes, I fell in love with bank notes. So from now on, I will collect different bank notes from different country. It’s my new hobby. Only problem of his hobby is that it is expensive.

by the way, if you want to know more about the bank note society, you can always visit the International Bank Note Society.

Captive advertisement strategy of mobile operators

Advertisement is the language of marketing efforts. Marketers use this language to communicate with their target market. And here comes the concept of exposure, when you talk about advertisement. Exposure  of particular advertisement occurs when anyone encounters with that advertisement. The more encounter the more exposure for that advertisement. Marketers want to increase their advertisement exposure as much as possible. Captive advertising is the most popular concept to ensure advertisements’ exposure to desired target  markets.  Captive advertising is advertising that one cannot escape from. From the name you can understand that target markets are held captive when they are exposed to the advertisements.

For example, Ads on golf carts are inescapable while golfing, short of walking the whole game. Ads on grocery store carts are inescapable since the carts are necessary for the majority of shoppers, and will be seen on other carts regardless of whether or not you have one. Ads of Hotels and restaurants on Magazines given in Airways. When you are on plane you may have nothing to do. So you have to read those magazines and you will be exposed to  hotel advertisements when you do so.

In Bangladesh, captive advertisement strategy are mostly applied by mobile operators. To be more specific, Airtel and Banglalink applies this technique the most. This practice was started by Warid Telecom Bangladesh. Warid used to send two or three messages daily to its subscribers as a form of Direct message. After purchasing Warid Telecom, Bharti Airtel re-branded it as Airtel Bangladesh. Even after re-branding, Airtel kept on practicing captive advertisement strategy. Earlier it use to send two or three messages per day and now it sends more than 4 messages in a day. And now Banglalink have started using captive advertisement strategy and everyday it sends at least one message to its subscribers.

Though captive advertisement is very useful for mobile operators and  other marketers to create more exposure of their advertisement and promotion, it has always  been treated as irritation by the subscribers. As a subscriber of Both Airtel and Banglalink, let me share my experience of last few days. I woke up hearing my cell phone’s message alert tone instead of  the Alarm. I received two messages at noon, one at evening and another one when I was about to eat my dinner.

Airtel abusing the captive advertisement strategy. Marketing department of Airtel thinks they are achieving more exposure by sending more message to its subscribers. But they don’t consider that subscriber may ignore the messages when they are irritated. Thus their objective to get more exposure is not achieved.

One of the basic concept of marketing is to understand customers’ needs and demands. As a customer our need and demand to Airtel  is to stop  sending spam messages. But unfortunately mobile operators more specifically Airtel doesn’t understand that. I wish I could teach Airtel’s marketing department  personnel some basic marketing courses.

Redwan

Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone

Facebook is building a mobile phone, says a source who has knowledge of the project. Or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware. Which is exactly what Apple and everyone else does, too.

It was a little less than a year ago that we broke the news that Google was working on a phone of its own – which was eventually revealed as the Nexus One. It was about that time, says out source, that Facebook first became concerned about the increasing power of the iPhone and Android platforms. And that awesome Facebook apps for those phones may not be enough to counter a long term competitive threat.

Specifically, Facebook wants to integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of the phone. It can only do that if it controls the operating system.

Two high level Facebook employees – Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos – are said to be secretly working on the project, which is unknown even to most Facebook staff.

Both have deep operating system experience.

Hewitt helped create the Firefox browser and was working on Parakey before it was acquired by Facebook in 2007. Parakey, which never launched, was described as a “Web-based operating system.” Hewitt also created all of Facebook’s iPhone web apps and then native apps, but finally quit building for the iPhone in disgust late last year. But he knows operating systems and he knows mobile.

Papakipos also has a perfect background for this project. He was leading the Google Chrome OS project until June. He then quit and went to Facebook. Papakipos is considered a rockstar developer, and there are any number of jobs he’d be able to do at Facebook.

But that doesn’t answer the question of why he’d leave the Chrome OS project before it was finished. It would have taken something really interesting to lure him away. Something like a Facebook Phone, for example.

So what might this phone look and feel like? We don’t know yet. When will it be announced? Don’t know. But I’d speculate that it would be a lower end phone, something very affordable, that lets people fully integrate into their Facebook world. You call your friend’s name, not some ancient seven digit code, for example. I’d imagine Facebook wanting these things to get into as many hands as possible, so I’d expect a model at a less than $50 price. Pay your bill with Facebook Credits. Etc.

As for timing, the holiday season is always a good time to launch new products. But that may be too soon.

Or who knows, the whole project might get killed before it sees light. All we know for sure is that Hewitt and Papakipos are working on something very stealthy together. And we have a source that tells us that stealthy thing is a Facebook phone.

We’re also not discounting possible partnerships around this. Spotify was said to be working on a phone with INQ last year based on a shared investor, Li Ka-Shing. It turns out Li Ka-Shing is also a sizeable investor in Facebook. So an INQ/Facebook partnership on a phone certainly wouldn’t be a surprise.

[I’ve found this news on the net and wanted to share with others. So I just copy-pasted it in my blog. It was originally taken from here. (click here) ]