Here is a very interesting story (may be stupid story) for you to think about. Today one of my friend called me and said he was cheated online. He paid $60 for a horoscope report from www.aboutastro.com and he did not get it.  My first reaction was “What the …!!! sixty dollars for an useless report?”. I asked him whether he read any reviews before going for the deal? “Well. No!” was his answer.

Ok!! before writing what exactly happened let me share you one of my experience with online reviews. I own a compaq presario v3225au laptop and before buying this I read reviews about this model for atleast 2 months. I also made sure I was not wastin my money by enquiring about this product with others who own it. Once I was happy with my selection I ordered the laptop and so far I am more than happy with its performance.

Now back to the horoscope story. My friend. who is fond of these astrology stuff, decided to get a paid report about his future from aboutastro.com. He tried out their free report and found it true. So he paid them 60$ for a detailed report and he is still waiting for the report.  He showed me some of the email from an astrologer named Jenna and it ws pretty interesting. All emails were written as if she was his guardian angel and wants him to realise where he was heading (no wonder he fell for it ).

I thought I will give it a try myself. I signed up for a free report. but this time I gave my emil ID as shobankr+aa@gmail.com. Gmail is very intelligent in delivering all emails to this ID to my original ID shobankr@gmail.com Guess what even before I received my free horoscope report. I started receiving emails from doctors all around the world giving me tips to increase my ***** size . these guys were also ready to send free viagara to me. And to add more flavour I also won a lottery of 60,000 pounds from UK national lottery.

I checked the header of all these emails and guess what they were all addressed to shobankr+aa@gmail.com. These guys sold my email ID.

I was 100% sure that aboutastro was nothing but a site owned by a bunch of few idiots who want to earn some quick money.

I did a whois check up for this site and more interesting stuff turned up. The site is registered to some address in France. Did I tell you that these guys had their HO at United States?

Last I did a quick google search for “Jenna horoscope fraud” and landed in a very interesting discussion about this scam!

Atleast I am happy that my friend was not alone

So next time, before making an online deal, make sure you know about the product completely. Oh! BTW did you read about my experience with Indiatimes shopping ?

Watch this funny video about a techie’s life in Technopark.

Source : http://amvizone.com/

If you are in India, you should have noticed that some of the ATMs do not have securities in front of them. SBI and SBT bank ATMs are good examples. But do you know why they dont employee security officials? Just take a look at the pictures below. This was taken at around 8:00 PM

This is HDFC bank ATM security.

There are many anti iphone videos and articles in the Internet. Here is one of the best. India is busy getting ready for the arrival of the iphone but do you really think its worth buying it? Think again! There are very nice(really useful) and cool looking phones in the market other than iphone.

<>!*”#
^”`$$-
!*=@$_
%*<>~4
&[]../
|{,,SYSTEM HALTED

For you somewhat cybernetically challenged, it goes something like this (using the proper cyber-names):

Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,

Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,

Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,

Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,

Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,

Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH

Source: http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~ddd/poem.htm

Ok! for sometime lets stop all those tech tutorials and learn something useful Do you know how to open a beer bottle with a paper or a lighter or at least a belt buckle?? No??? This post is for you!

Eric wrote an interesting tutorial about opening beer bottles .. of course when you dont have the opener with you .. Check it out here.

Couldnt resist posting this

Ever faced with an alert box like this?

“Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters and Cannot Repeat Any of Your Previous 30689 Passwords”

Check this out

I saw this video on Kenney’s Blog. Watch this video by few Technopark employees.

Its been long time since I wrote the last post. I was on holidays. Travelled more than 1000 kms and back in Trivandrum. More than 150 emails in my office and more than 1000+ unread items in my Google reader.

Here is something for you to laugh!!! I Love Sachin!!