Category Archives: websites

Re-activating gmail on Blackberry after setting up 2-step verification for Google

After reading this viral post, ‘How Apple and Amazon’s security flaws led to my epic hacking’ I decided to set up 2-step verification for my Google Account for good. If you are reading this, chances are you already know what 2-step verification for Google is and if you don’t, read this.

If you have integrated your gmail on Blackberry, after having set up that 2-step verification your mails will stop working on your phone.  Here’s what you need to do to fix it

Option 1: While you are on https://accounts.google.com/SmsAuthConfig, click on Blackberry link (on right) in the Mobile application section

On clicking Blackberry, you’ll see this

I couldn’t get to use this method as the authenticator link didn’t open on my phone, so in search of an alternate I discovered another way out(option 2)

Option 2: Open https://accounts.google.com/IssuedAuthSubTokens and generate password from here (You can use any name you want, say my BB)

After clicking generate password, you’ll see the application password. In another tab open the website for your blackberry internet service provider (https://airtel.blackberry.com in my case). While editing the email id, it will ask for gmail password. Once you validate that, it will again present you a screen to validate your gmail password.

Now instead of inputting your gmail password again here, you need to input the application password that was generated doing the step mentioned above (copy paste the generated password and click ok).  This should work just fine

 

Why Web Startups Need To Think small

I’ve been a fan of 37signals ever since I first used Basecamp during my stint at Slideshare in 2007 and later while working on Kwippy. What’s also special about 37signals is that not only they build great products that make money, they are also doing a fabulous job at sharing their experiences and learnings with the community using Social Media long before it was a buzz word. If you haven’t done it already, you should checkout their blog where they talk about design, business and other things.

Sometime back I happened to listen to this talk given by DHH on ‘Making money online’. Despite a cheesy sounding title the talk is a great primer for web entrepreneurs  starting up or thinking of starting up. DHH touches upon a great point when he says

The odds of you in here making the next Facebook or YouTube or MySpace are tiny, the odds of you just actually just creating a product that few people will like and pay more for, not that shabby.

It’s kinda like reverse terror alerts, the probability of something like this happening, like the probability of you being crashed in the plane, tiny, but the fear you have of it or the desire you have to be the next Facebook, Huge, because it’s been broadcasted over and over again, you are being brainwashed

DHH further goes down to put forward the maths behind making a million dollars in an year by having  2000 customers and charging them 40$/month. Adding decent  conversion rate(5%) to the equation it would take about 40,000 signed up users to get 2000 paid customers. Taking it down one more level to make 200,000$ a year you would need just 400 customers at 40$/month.

The number of problems/niches one can attack trying to get this many customers are a lot, but not surprisingly we still find most web start-ups aiming at building the next Facebook or YouTube. Its not uncommon to find entrepreneurs by the dozen running after VCs and Angels to raise money for the next big thing on the internet despite the fact that most of them can get their venture started without too much money. One of the primary reason for this is the fact that raising million dollars for building(or the mere thought of) a global product that might be used by millions is SEXY however building a web product that’s being used by a few hundred or thousand users while making you some money isn’t.
This frenzy is fueled by media and consumers alike and the entrepreneurs(esp first timers) get unknowingly drawn into this trap and the next thing you know is everyone trying to make it big without even trying to taste success in building a smaller yet useful product.

While I won’t discourage anyone from taking big shots right from the start, I strongly feel its a lot better(and practical) to solve a small problem first before going for the bigger one.

Designing Notification Emails: What you can learn from Friendfeed and others

Email notifications for various actions(like new friend request, new follower) play an important role in getting a user back to the site and making them perform an action (accept/deny or follow back). Also, given the huge size of various social networks and thinking of these emails as a customer touch point it’s helpful to have a nicely designed notification email template. I’ve written a couple of posts on the same earlier too.

In this post I’ll try to compare the notification email by various popular platforms for the basic action of getting a new friend,follower, subscriber etc and see whose doing what and what could they do to make things better.

1) Twitter:


Format: HTML; Display Pic: Included; Call to Action: Visit profile; Direct Action: Block

This template is mostly good enough to decide if a user wants to follow back another user of not but by having a direct follow button would have helped.

2) Slideshare


Format: HTML; Display Pic: Not Included; Call to Action: Visit profileDirect Action: None

This template is plain and simple but it doesn’t have a display pic for new follower and it doesn’t have a direct button for an action. Also, it has two links which point to the same page, which isn’t the best thing .

3) LinkedIn

Format: HTML; Display Pic: Not Included; Call to Action: View InvitationDirect Action: Accept Invitation.

While Linkedin has a direct action button they don’t have any detail about the user in question. Here again a picture or some more description will be helpful.

4) FriendFeed:

Format: HTML; Display Pic: Included; Call to Action: NoneDirect Action: Subscribe back

Friendfeed has by far the best designed email notification template in which they have the display pic, last few updates and just one link to get direct action(subscribe back) from the user

5) Facebook:


Format: HTML; Display Pic: Included; Call to Action: Visit request Direct Action: Accept Request.

Facebook has changed it’s notification from the older one (active till 14th september 09). While they have definitely gone the Friendfeed way, the name  of direct action button is Login which doesn’t kinda look right.

Format: Text; Display Pic: Not Included; Call to Action: View RequestDirect Action: None

6) Orkut:


Format: HTML; Display Pic: Included; Call to Action: Visit profile and Visit friends pageDirect Action: None

Orkut too like slideshare has two links to the user’s profile and a third link which reads ‘visit friends page’ but it takes you to a separate ‘add friends’ page ala facebook.  Also there is no direct call to action here too.

While there could be reasons for not having a direct action button for Facebook and  Orkut(because they need to group friends into categories for example) some sites like Slideshare and Twitter can easily pick this.{Tip 1}

Having two links to the same profile page is definitely not wise and needs to be taken care off {Tip 2}. Other tips like having some profile info and a display picture can help {Tip 3} in a direct call to action(button etc) {Tip 4} if there is.

As you might have noticed eventually every notification email has moved to HTML format as it has more options like better looks and including a direct action call. {Tip 5}

What do you think about these email notifications?

Want to download a file from Scribd? Upload one – Part II

A couple months back I wrote about an interesting(weird?) feature of Scribd that asked me to upload a file in order to let me download another. I wasn’t the only one who found this ridiculous (read comments) and obviously it didn’t go down well with some of us. I happened to run into that feature (which I had almost forgot) again while trying to download one of the featured documents from the site. Here’s what I got after clicking the download link

scribd_presentations need an audience

Oh, so instead of a boring textual message we now have a graphic trying to convince us that in the benefit of community we should upload more presentations. I like most other users(presummably) on the internet didn’t let this deviate it from the goal I started with and clicked “Maybe Later” but folks at Scribd were equally adamant in not letting anyone download something from their servers without getting anything in return (who needs Attention, Engagement etc?) so I got this

scribd_subscribe or continue to download

Right, So if I am not uploading a file I might as well follow(or subscribe) to some people which Scribd feels match my needs(or their’s ?). For a second I can understand the upload presentations prompt, but prompting users to SUBSCRIBE to other users when all they really want is to download a goddamn presentation ?

O Scribd, what were you thinking ?

Apparently there’s another graphic that one gets to see while attempting to download a presentation

scribd_giving back to the community

Thankfully unlike last time Scribd has not only made it optional(maybe later) to upload a presentation before getting to download, they also tell you that you won’t be prompted to upload once you’ve uploaded two presentations or more.

scribd dont worry

(Footer of those upload prompts)

As mentioned in last post I don’t think that forcing users like this works well. Not only does it irritates users it also leads(or might lead) to people submitting random garbage just to get around the needless hurdles like these.

What do you think about these prompts?

Is there a win-win solution for such situations (for both site owners and users) ?

Slideshare Listens and Acts: Makes changes to notification email

Among many notifications mails like  Facebook comments and Twitter followers  that I got today one was from Slideshare informing of a new follwer. I was about to delete it almost as soon as it opened/loaded but then something caught my eye. Something had changed.  Here’s what the email looked like on 10th August when I took this screenshot.

follower email old

I had written about the use of both terms(follower and contact) in this email and how it isn’t the best thing to be done here.  In two days since I wrote that blog post, things have changed and I assume that post of mine might have been one of the reasons behind the change in email template which now looks like this
new format for follower email

The usage of term follow/follower/following is consistent now in all the three instances. Also, the profile url is now hidden under ‘here’, unlike being posted in open which is a good thing as it saves space and looks neat.

All in all good change, thumbs up Slideshare !!

Slideshare were you really listening ? 🙂

update: Slideshare acknowledged listening to the post I wrote

slideshare tweet

Add your mobile number for Gmail’s password recovery

If you know it already, good, but if you don’t, here’s the thing

Now you can also add your mobile number as one of the password recovery mechanisms for Gmail

gmailaccountrecovery1

So now there’s another option to retreive your Gmail password and what’s cool about this is that you don’t need to depend on your seconday email anymore  . I think this should make life a simple in case someone looses their Gmail password.

Forgot your password ? Go to password assistance page and enter your username/email. Google will sms/text you a code on your mobile which you can use to get back on track.

Here’s a test for the new work flow

Step 1:

password_assistance

Step 2:
reset_pwd

I just added my mobile number and went for the recovery option.  Contrary to what Google says, I haven’t received any sms, though I did get an email on my alternate email account. So for now we can’t say it this option is working for India but in any case the new feature/change sounds good(and safe) and I think we all should  go for it

LinkedIn and The New York Times Team up

In a recent development(or is it?), LinkedIn and The New York Times have joined hands for a tie up. I stumbled upon this while surfing NYT and a few clicks revealed how it works. Here’s the deal for you.

Linkedin members will have an option to be served customized headline feature on Business and Technology article pages of  NYTimes.com that’ll comprise five latest stories from NYT. For ex: someone working in biotechnology sector will be served latest news from that sector.

Here’s the story in a few pics

linkedin_nyttimes

via NYtimes.com

linkedin_nyt

via LinkedIn.com

Linkedin_Newyork Times

An article on NYT

linkedin_newyorktimes

on clicking “what’s this?” on the right side in

newyorktimes_linkedin

“five stories” based on my LinkedIn profile

Twitter upgrades follower, following pages

A random click on the my follower count link revealed that there has been a nice upgrade on the follower list page, a quick look around shows that following list page too have been similarly upgraded.

Here’s what the new follower and following pages look like

List View

list_view_followerspage1

Expanded View

expanded_view_followingpage

As you  can see, the expanded option is full of details about the person and also has a lot more actionable options. Previously there just used be two buttons follow/unfollow and block.

last_tweet_following

This section can be divided into two parts, the one on the left(shown above) now has the following details

1) Full Name
2) Location
3) Last Tweet(with Tweet Stamp)

The option to see persons last tweet is definitely a great add and is a bit helpful in deciding if the person is interesting or worth following(or blocking for that matter). A quick look at your followers page(for their last tweets) can sorta help you decide which one’s are worth following back.

The second part(on the right) looks like

not_following_me

These details are for a person who is not following me and I am not following them either. Therefore the options are limited to send him a reply(or mention as Twitter now calls it), start following them or block them.

While these are the options I get for someone who is following me but whom I am not following

following_me

Did you notice the extra option here to “Direct Message” the person ?

A neatly designed feature pack, lets to take a lot of action calls  from right there. This should definitely increase the usage for newly added features(here) i.e mention and direct message.

There’s another small update(if I am not mistaken) the URL for following page is now /following, it was /friends earlier.

Also, these changes are not just limited to your pages, these changes are for any/all list pages you view.

A few things that these changes imply

1) Neat and more usable design
2) Easy call for actions(@, dm etc)
3) Better spam detection(last tweet)

So, how do you find these new changes ?

SavitaBhabhi becomes IT Act 2008’s first BIG target

“Indian govt bans the innovative porn cartoon site savitabhabhi.com . Fuck you bureaucrats ! This ain’t China assholes !” – says a friend’s status on FB and that’s how I got to know about this latest interesting/controvertial development. A quick  Twitter search led me to this post on ContentSutra.

According to documents seen by contentSutra.com, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, has asked all Internet Service Providers to block the website in a communication dated 3 June

The Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA), a government agency under the Department of Information Technology, is the agency that is entrusted under the IT Act to block websites. N. Vijayaditya, of the CCA, confirmed the development. “There were several complaints against the site. We have taken action under the relevant sections of the IT Act and blocked the site,” he said. When asked if the agency will give a chance to the owners of the site to defend themselves, he said nobody has come forward so far with such a request. He said he could not say if the agency will pursue legal action against the operators of the website. – ContentSutra.com

The site started having accessibility issues with some ISP’s starting to ban it since 19th June and as per now it’s blocked by all major ISP’s. This would easily be one of the biggest censorship move in India and definitely a cause of worry for Indian netizens who were already apprehensive by the ammendments to the “IT Act 2008”.  While people are busy debating if it’s all right to ban the 85th most popular site in India, the guys behind it have started rallying to “Save Savita”. They’ve set up a blog at http://www.savesavita.com/ and are using it to gather support, crowdsource information( including how to access the site).  There’s an account on Twitter and on Facebook to connect with SB fans and raise their voice. It will be interesting to see what fate(or should I say Indian Govt) has in store for SavitaBhabhi and how the ammended “IT Act 2008” will affect us.

While I certainly don’t appreciate this censorship, what do you think about it ?

As mentioned at savesavita.com you can access the site using hidemyass.com

savitabbhabhi using hidemyass.com