Ever received a weird message from one of your friends mentionning some bizzare malfunction of your instant messenging service business plan or claiming to have uploaded pics of you poledancing with a lobster?
That's a hoax.
Here are three patterns you can learn about, so next time, I swear, you don't fall for it.

1) Facebook/Twitter/Yahoo!/YourDog/BBM is going to shut down

I you have used an IM service for more than a couple of month, you have already seen this one.

How it usually looks like:

• The big boss of your favorite IM service woke up this morning and decided to commit corporate suicide
• He took the decision to close/charge for it's star service because it's not making enough money/their servers are full/they are fed up of being rich
• Unless everybody forwards the message they are reading right now

Ask youself:

The smallest number for an IM service I know of is about 33 million users worldwide, and that's BBM. , Twitter must be around 200 million now, Yahoo! has around 250 million users, Live Messenger more than 300 million and Facebook 500 million.

All these service have more users than many countries have inhabitants.
We're not all supposed to know about these numbers, but look around you, isn't literaly everybody you know already using them?
Why would they close the gold mine? Wouldn't such a decision make the news, be documented?

Oh and yes, why would the CEO of Big Fat Internet Company bother sending you an...IM for something that important, instead of caling a press conference and making it a headline on the first page of their website?

Because it never happened, the CEO/Message/Broadcast/Cake is a lie.

What if you do what they say?

Someone, at one point, will come to your office with a fully loaded chicken launcher and chase you around untill you collapse.
Seriously, chain messages are pointless and everybody will end up hating you for relaying them.

What to do?

Don't forward, and tell the contact who forwarded the hoax to try and think about it for two minutes. And to never do that ever again. Ever.Again.

2) Hey is that you in that terrible picture/video ?

This one is a bit trickier. It usually comes via a legit contact, is not a broadcast and provides you a link to check what terrible deeds you have been immortalized doing. Man these blackouts are annoying.

How it looks like:

• A contact has tagged/seen you in a photo/video
• What you did is often either terrible or wonderful, or both
• The links points to a website you never use, or worse, it's a shortened URL full of crunchy garble

Ask yourself:

What have you been doing lately? Do you really pass out that often that you don't remember who takes your pic and puts them on totally unknown websites hidden behing completely incomprehensible urls?

If week long hangovers are not your favorite hobby, there are hudge chances that message is a scam.

What if you do what they say?

You're in for a whole lot of trouble. Sometimes these links are just there to attract visitors to badly coded, ugly ad-ridden website about poultry dating and the likes.
Most of the time, a virus is patiently waiting for your click to turn your computer into a scam broadcasting zombie machine.

What to do?

Do not, under any circumstance, click on the link.
Copy-paste the message and send it to your contact, followed by the questions "Did you just send me that?" and, to be extra sure, a more personal question such as "How many Swiss cheese can I ingest before turning into a dafodil?".

You'll know wether the answer make sense. If not, your contact is infected already, advise her to use a better anti-virus and to stop clicking on random links.

3) Just a random link

I won't develop here, the scams use the same methods as the photo/video links, they are just too lazy to ellaborate: A legit contact sends you a random URL without any other information.

The consequences are the same, you'll end up infected or redirected to avianDating.info

Again, same method, check with your contact: Did she really send you that?

Bonus advices:

Just because I'm a good guy, here are some bonus tips when in doubt:

• Never give away your password, websites never ask for it
• Never give away any sensitive information (bank account number, phone number...)
• If you believe the contact is legit, use the phone
• Never forward a message when you're asked to
• Use common sense (would your mother send you a link containing " \/iag|2a" ?)

Hope it helped. Forward this blogpost to 400 of your contacts or your dog will get his car stolen.

 

 

 

Your Twitter timeline is a bloody mess? You've created lists but it doesn't matter?
The probability is that you are both using Twitter to look for information to share and to keep in touch with some friends.
The probability is, now your timeline is gorged with non-sequitur quotes and repeated bad marketing attempts, that you failed.
Like I did.

So what now? It's time to unfollow everybody, yessir, and re-follow the Tweeps you really bear in your little heart.

I have some easy steps for you:

1. Tell everyone you are cleaning up and starting from zero. You don't hate them, you just need to get rid of all the bots, you were a victim of your own eagerness to make friends and followed too many accounts, people forced you at gunpoint, you're saving the trees...
2. Do that a day or two before you actually press the big red nuke button, some people don't tweet everyday and might be surprised if it happens too fast. Who wouldn't?
   
3. Make a new list with people you will re-follow. Unfollowing them will not delete them from the list. A good way to do so is to check your mentions and private messages, it will give you a good hint about who dialogs with you the most.
4. Once you're sure you really, really want to do it, go to http://www.unfollowall.com/
5. Enter your ID, Password, validate and check your account.
   
6. If your 'following' counter is not showing zero yet, go back to Unfollowall.com and repeat/refres.
7. Time to re-follow everybody in that new list you created.
8. As a couple of extra steps I'd recommend to create some special lists such as "Info only" and "real people" or "nice dialog"  and keep these strictly separated. If you are using a tool such as hootsuite or tweetdeck, it's pricelessly handy.

Notice that you will inevitably experience a drop in your followers, since all the accounts using automated mutual follow will also unfollow you. But then again, you're in there for a reason that doesn't include pleasing the bots. Be tough!

Wishing you a happy reboot!

So, the iPad is out.

One of the first questions coming to my mind : how good is the soft keyboard.
Answer: not good enough so there is no need for an optional keyboard/docking system.

It made me think. Handhelds are now in more or less everybody's life, and are sometimes said to increase productivity.
While receiving and composing emails on the go is for sure an improvement, bringing it to the next level would mean editing document without getting the curly thumb syndrome.

And, sorry to say, there is nothing better then a real keyboard to be productive or simply do more stuff, here is why:

1. 10 fingers typing

Nothing can beat typing with all of your fingers. The learning curve is pretty fast, and professional typists can achieve speeds above one hundred and twenty words per minute. A Blackberry keyboard won't usually allow you to go over sixty five for a very skilled user.
You can see how fast you can go here, it's a cool test, try comparing with your thumb typing skills.

2. Comfort

That one is easy. Lots of big keys and space to rest your hands. Nothing can beat that, ever.

3. Keys

Yes, it seems easy, logical and whatnot, but a clear delimitation between the keys helps the fingers keep on striking the right spots, take a closer look at the "F" and "J" keys on your own keyboard.

4. Keyboard shortcut

A keyboard shortcut takes no more time than typing two letters or three letters in a row. Many users, on all operating systems, are used to shortcut. Undo, redo, cut, paste, open, close, save and exit... at least. When working on a text document, shortcuts are also available for bold, italics, underlined and more.
Nice gestures are now available, notably on Apple products, but I doubt they can all help you to navigate and format a text as quickly as shortcuts.

5. Hotkeys

Keyboards... have space, a lot of space, and usually twelve function key that can act a hotkeys anyway. The best example I can find is the MacBook Pro keyboard, where the functions keys double with systems hotkeys for screen brightness, volume and so on.

6. Gaming

I'm not talking about Mafia Wars here. Take WoW, Command and Conquer, any first person shooter (all the descendants of "Doom" and "Quake")  and ask the players if they want to drop their mouse+keyboard combination. Then run.

Just for fun, here is what a pro gaming keyboard may look like:

7. Stock food

Well that's not properly speaking an advantage and it could be the perfect place for an ants colony to dwell in, I have seen it happening in a MacBook. But hey, that's still a story to tell.

Are our thumbs doomed?

No, not really. At least not always.

Editing documents won't happen in the bus, and more rarely (though it does happen) in a taxi. If you want to carry a brain heaving editing task outside your office, you may as well do it in a cafe, where you have some more space for these little monsters down there.

The bluetooth folding keyboard is my favorite because of the hard finish, you can feel the key response, it's important to me (laugh, I hear you).
Here is a version compatible with Symbian S60, Poket PC/Smartphone under Windows mobile and Palm OS:

Ok, it looks taken straight out from a Terry Gilliam's movie, but Oh So Practical.

I know who you are.

You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. At times you have serious doubts whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.

Or not.
The sentence you just read is the most obvious example of what is called the Forer's effect (a.k.a. Barnum effect), it means nothing in particular, refers to mostly anybody in general, and everybody can relate to it due to it's vagueness. These statements are mostly used in astrology, cold reading, and any for of, excuse my French, utter marketing bullshit you can find around the web.

Consider this paragraph

Interested in social marketing? Make up to 1000 bucks per week with our cutting edge new system!

Out-the-box thinking and user centered dashboard designed by our specialists are the two component of the system that will allow you to make up to a thousand bucks per week, increasing your traffic and assuring you a high CTR for your PPC campaigns thanks to viral buzzword strategies.

Watch our free introductory video here  [the video shows very motivated, well off people talking about this method]
Take a look at this free case study [link to a free case studies quoting percentages and numbers int the hundred of thousand range]

Order now and receive a free complementary booklet! Over 400.000 happy marketers already!

Here I can list 7 instances of downright fallacy (a.k.a. bullshit)

1. Forer's effect
   "Interested in social marketing?" : Duh, I wouldn't be reading it, you posted it on my SNS marketing blog.

2. Weasel Word
   "Make up to 1000 bucks": Up to? It means it starts from 0.001, right?

3. Illusory Correlation
   "Watch our free introductory video here": So, the dudes look well off. It doesn't mean they got wealthy by using their own method, does it?

4. Gambler's Fallacy
   "Take a look at this free case study": Even if this case study is related, what tells me it will work for me?

5. Ignorance of Regression Toward the Means
   "Viral": Viral is creativity+good content+LUCK. It worked before, it's not sure it can work every time.

6. Bandwagon effect
   "400.000 happy marketers": Happy of what? They have a lot of reasons to be happy... But they are a lot, right? That's also a nice instance of Forer's effect

7. Jargon/Obfuscation
   And here we go!

• Cutting Edge: Overused, the edge of what, what technology are we talking about?
• New: New compared to what? You mean it's never done before, ever? All the bits of the product? Wow!
• Out-the-Box: Overused, trying to substitute for "original" when it means "horizontal thinking" and the latter is hard!
• User Centered: Really? I thought it was animal centered!
• Specialist: Specialist of what? Any reference?
• Traffic: Google bots also make good traffic. I want money.
• CTR/PPC: Acronyms make you appear clever. Or so you think. For me, it's obfuscation.
• Buzzword: Same as "viral", you can try your best, but there is no guarantee.
• Strategies: A strategy apply to a single case, your offer is a package. Thanks for thinking I'm dumb.
• Free: There is no free meal. Ever.

And the ultimate conclusion

If you can make so much money, so fast, why would you need to sell me your method for a ridiculous price and use all this jargon? Google doesn't use jargon.

'If You Have Something You Don't Want Anyone To Know, Maybe You Shouldn't Be Doing It' - Eric Schmidt, Google CEO - December 3, 2009

You see the problem here, yes? Let me rephrase:

'If there is someone whom doesn't want you do do something, maybe you shouldn't be doing it"

I have been writing long and large in this post about how your private things should stay private, and how the Internet could, in a worst case scenario, turn into the global version of that small town in the mountain where everybody know you've been holding hands with Suzie's sister's best friend (who's got an uncle in England).
There are several solutions to this problem. Some are scarier than the current situation (online unique and certified identity, thus legal right to privacy), some are simply utopias (free open web where everybody is nice and caring), and giving the whole world the middle finger is just too childish.

So, what do you do to protect your real identity online?

1) Use a persona

2) Hide your face

3) Phone number, address? Forget!

4) Split your professional and private life

5) Several emails are good too

6) These privacy settings, use them!

 

7) Are you sure you want to reveal your location?

8) Chose your friends.

I don't exactly follow all these advices; I'm not a privacy freak and I actually let some information leak just to know how far they can go.
With a little bit of whit, you can find out where I work (good luck), you know how I look, now try finding me and tell me what you found out. I'll treat you for a drink.

Meanwhile I'll be lurking on /b/.

Dear you all whom I love,

Is it me being blind or what?

When I read about "Social Media Strategies" and their stats, I see two kinds of astronomic numbers :

1. The ones related to SNS activities (A hellion member, and so forth and so on)
2. The ones related to how much money is spent on trying to get a slice of the fruitcake.

Question: Where can I see the silly huge amount of cash some real venture has done in profit related to their SNS campaigns?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a great Social Strategist of the new communication era, but I'd have my own startup right now, I'd seriously weight it.

First I'd ask myself if I really need to market anything online.

• Do my canned red beans really need to be getting social?
• Do my customers need to be more aware of that product?
• Is there really a canned red beans community I can target?
• What can I bring to the community if ever I find one?
• And oh yes, how long will it take to get famous, if ever? Time is money after all.

There are a plethora of business related articles around (Google search for "Make money online": 155,000,000, feel free to feel them.), and some of them are actually full of common sense, and even a bit beyond the obvious see here (Futurebuzz)  and here (The Relationship Economy).
But they often forget to ask this one question of who actually needs it.
And then they forget to ask themselves how much it's going to cost.
And then Google brags about his billions of dollars in adwords.

I'm not a marketing genius but some aspects of it just plain make sense. Would it be wrong to:

• Ask myself all the questions stated before
  
• Spend more time networking away from my desk than in front of my screen
• Invest the least possible in hardware and tools (the starter kit and the book, you know...)
  
• Base my campaign on free solutions (which work pretty well e.g. with SEO,  try googling "Danny-fr", "Dannyfr", "@Danny_fr","Brutal Opinions" see who comes first)
• Do something as basic as trying to sell my used laptop on Twitter and see what happens

Bah. These advices don't make money. By that I mean they don't bring money to @FastBucksOnlinePro.
Or I am so very wrong I am in denial.

In my next post, we're going to play a game with real money just to prove my point.

Stay tuned ! (and retweet, favorite, buzz, bookmark this post and call your first born after it ;) )

You shouldn't get near a keyboard during Week Ends. Week Ends are a time sanctuary dedicated to the self, the ego the you and your rest.
I call it the Tech Rehab, and it's easy to do :

Dont:

• Tweet
• Access your Facebook profile
• Browse from your phone
• Use this shiny new social app
• Share these uber cute pictures of whatever mangy pet you have
• Fantasize on Steeve Jobs

Do:

• Sleep
• Practice whatever OTHER hobby you have
• Do dangerous things in your garage
• Sleep
• Finally give this long lost friend the call he's been waiting for 3 1/2 years
• Get new underwear
• Sleep

The result?

• You'll actually feel you've left work for two days
• You won't try alt+F4 to stop your car
• You'll appreciate your job better, especially if you're in tech
• You'll gain followers on Twitter. Yes people like it, sometimes, when you're away

Well, that's my point of view only, but I do feel good, and it's Monday :D

The very first reason I like Follow Friday, is because it's, er... Friday. And I know that I'll get to please my friends and co-tweeps before going to tech-rehab week-end.
I'll blog later about tech-rehab week end and tell you why I need it, and maybe so do you. Not during this week end though.
Now the other thing that happen in Follow Fridays i like:

1. They begin with a cuppa somthin', usually instant coffee

2. My fellow tweeps have made lists of people to follow, they give them creative names such as "People-to-follow", and they refer to them, which is good, since I don't really like a cut-paste wall of nicknames without any explanation of why I should follow the person.

3. They FF one or two person at the time, giving their tweets some breathing space. Tweets without oxygen die fast.

4. They tell me -us- WHY I should follow the persons they FF. Usually a couple of well aimed adjectives and the topic they are orbiting, e.g: @Danny_Fr, handsome, brilliant, about tech.

5. Sometimes, they include the main languages used by the FF'd person in their comment. I find it nice, I don't read Greek very well.

6. I thank them when they FF me, to share the love, show the world I'm a nice dude who thanks people and prove the rest I'm not a bot.

Seriously, it changes from FF cluttering my timeline with walls of anonymous names I won't bother to click on.

Man, that's another list. I should stop.

Hope you liked it though, happy FF :)