Man Uses One SarcMark® Too Many, Is Sacked

Rob Goodwin got the bitter aftertaste of cutting edge technology, when he used one SarcMark® too many. Rob, who was frustrated that his boss did not get sarcasm, was excited by the news of standardized emoticon for sarcasm — the ‘SarcMarks®’, and being an early adapter, decided to use it in his emails to this boss, Don.

“I was really excited by this technology. Finally, I thought, I could get these nitwits in the upper management to understand that I’m being sarcastic”

Rob had got two consecutive pay-cuts, because Don, who had hard time spotting sarcasm, had take his words — that he was ‘obscenely’ well paid — at face value.

“When I saw the SarcMarks® in his mail, I wondered what the hell are those? Not a single sentence in his mail was without those funny marks. For a moment I thought his mail client has been popping in some non-standard characters in the mail. Then I asked Ashok, and he told me about SarcMarks®. Now I get it! The #$%%$ has been talking to me sarcastically, all these years. I mean, all these years he’s telling me he’s happy with me, and think of me as a‘great boss, and a kind human being, and that he adores his work: all of it was just plain old sarcasm!”,  Don told KBNN when contacted.

Did his termination letter have any SarcMarcs®, in return?

“That never occurred to me!” said Don.

Was he afraid to use the cutting edge technology, after this incident, we asked Rob.

“Not really. I mean, I sure know now why they call it bleeding edge technology, but hey, at least I got the idiot to finally see some light at his own expense”, said Rob, who purportedlypurchased the SarcMarks® using Don’s technology budget.

Will he still use SarcMarks® in the future?

“I hope not. I mean, I hope I won’t be working with people who are that dimwitted, ever again. But then you never know!”

Three Million Social Media Experts Waiting for Someone to Listen to them

KBNN Technology Special

Close to a three million (as of last counting) self-acclaimed Social Media Experts (SMEs) are waiting for someone to listen to them for once, reports KBIN (KandaBatata Information Network).

“It’s quite disheartening!”, said Andrew T who tweets under the id websocial2M, “I have spent hours and hours analyzing this phenomenon of social media, from every conceivable angle, but the moment I publish my findings, I have these thousands of people coming and commenting on it. I mean, some of these are fresh out of school kids who don’t know the SM of social media! No pun intended… And yet that doesn’t stop them from questioning my well reasoned hypothesis”

Image via Wikipedia

Andrew T is not alone.

More and more SMEs are finding it difficult to tell anyone their opinion on the future of Social Media, without getting earfuls of opinions in return. The common complain coming from these SMEs is this:

“Everyone wants to have a say! No one wants to listen”

Shasha, another SME whose twitter profile says “Social Media Guru, Serial Social Entrepreneur, Loving Wife, and Mother of three”, agrees:

“I have co-founded twelve social media startups in last four years, and yet, I am routinely contradicted by people whose only credentials, if you can call them that, are singing up for a hundred social media sites. I mean, what do they know about social media?”

Rvind, questions people like Shasha when he says: “Social Media is about consumers, not about creators. Certainly not about people who have a string of failed startups as their only credentials. Maybe their startups failed because they didn’t know anything about social media: they never used it the way I do, on an everyday basis. They won’t be able to count the number of services I’m using actively, because by the time they count, I’d have registered to a new one!”

But these schisms apart, the whole SME community is unanimous about the lack of genuine ‘followers’, who’ll take their expert opinion unquestioningly.

“No one wants to follow the experts”, laments Maneesh from Singapore, “everyone wants to add their two cents to every discussion. I mean, save your frigging two cents! The rate at which you’re throwing them, you’ll be penniless in no time”, he added mixing metaphors with currencies.

Will some web 1.0 kind of hierarchy help?

“Don’t quote me on this”, said an SME, who didn’t want to be attributed, “but I think we need some of that. When we pushed for social media, I don’t think anyone seriously bargained for a world where you’re same as anyone else. Right now, the single biggest problem of web 2.0 is lack of authority”

But won’t that be an anathema to the concept of Web 2.0? Expert opinion is divided.

Tired of being misquoted, Tharoor to stop speaking truth in public

Tired of being misquoted by the mainstream media, and being subjected to ‘unjust’ ridicule because of it from the internet community, Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs, has vowed never to speak truth in public.

“It’s ridiculous, how the mainstream media in India misquotes anything that I say. It’s like they are talking to some other Shashi Tharoor. I’m sick and tired of the misquotes”

Angry Tharoor

The Minister recently was embroiled in another controversy, when he was quoting someone else but was quoted as quoting himself, instead.

“It’s crazy”, he said, “I can’t even quote anyone now, without the quote being attributed to me. I’ve decided enough is enough. From now on, I won’t speak a word of truth in public, lest it be misquoted!”

How does he plan to be an External Affairs Minister, if he doesn’t speak truth in public?

“Are you kidding me? Has any Minister for External Affairs ever spoken truth in public?” he asked the KBNN reporter.

When asked if he is speaking the truth this time he shrugged.

“I will answer only if you promise to misquote me”, he said.

Does his party support his decision?

“The Congress party has always stood by me, even when I was speaking the truth”, he said, “there is no reason why they should have any issues now that I’m refusing to speak the truth. I am not breaking any party Code of Conduct”

The Congress spokesperson has refused to comment on this latest development.

Chetan Bhagat to write a book on Gandhigiri to avenge injustice of Three Idiots

Image via Wikipedia

Chetan Bhagat, the author of Five Point Someone, hugely successful novel about Three IITian Idiots, has decided to write a book on Gandhigiri, to avenge the injustice done to him by “those responsible for stealing the story of Five Points Someone without giving fair credits”.

“I don’t want to name names”, said an unusually philosophical Bhagat in an exclusive interview to KBNN, “yet anyone who has his eyes and ears open for the last few days should know who I am talking about”

Bhagat has been at loggerheads with ‘those’ people, over story credits, or lack of them, for Three Idiots. The movie is allegedly based on Bhagat’s Five Point Someone, although it’s not clear how much percentage of the story is inspired from the book. Industry watchers have been divided in their opinions.

“It’s about 2 to 5 per cent”, claimed an industry source closer to Vidu Vinod Chopra, the producer of the movie. “There are three protagonists, and one female lead, that’s where the similarity ends”

However, rival sources claimed the the movie is approximately 98.8% based on the book.

The viewer consensus is somewhere in between. The Indian twitter community is engaged in giving justice to @chetan_bhagat, however, by now they must have moved to a new real-time justice trend.

Bhagat, in the meanwhile, is refusing to take the injustice lying down.

The truth is on my side

“I do not care about the money or the publicity”, he told KBNN, “but the truth has to come out. I thought a lot about how I could make them accept their mistake. I almost gave up, but then I got inspired by Lage Raho, and decided to fight with Gandhigiri. I am not an activist. I’m a writer. So I said to myself: Chetan, fight by writing a book”

The book, whose rights have already been bought by a leading international publisher for an undisclosed (rumored to be an Indian record) amount, deals with a the subject of how a writer is exploited by the Bollywood machine, and how he fights back using gandhigiri. The main protagonist of the movie, a writer (loosely based on Bhagat), is not given fair credit for the story that’s based on his novel, uses ‘get well soon’ cards as his main weapon. A radio jockey who later falls in love with him, helps him by popularizing his cause on air. The internet community comes to the writers aid and sends lots of e-roses to Facebook account of the producer, director and leading actor in the movie. Flooded with all those e-roses, the Bollowood guys realize their mistake, and release new prints of the movies, with name of the author and his photograph flashed even before the opening credits”

But wouldn’t this be lifting of the story of Lage Raho?

“One can say it’s  loosely based on Lage Raho”, agrees Bhagat, “but all the situations, dialogs, and names are original. I’d say it’s about 2-5% based on the movie”

The ‘people responsible for the injustice’ were not available for comment.

Social Media Guru e-publishes his book on Social Media

Dave Greene, Social media guru (or Guru2.0 as he likes people calling him), has published the first edition (the 2.0 edition) of his book on social media explosion. The book will be available as an ebook, and right now it contains the table of contents.

“I’ve applied agile methodology for writing this book”, he explains, on his Facebook page.

The book, which will deal with issues such as effective management of your web-social life, productivity in the time of social media, and so on, has been in writing for last two years.

“Every time I think of diving deep into one of my chapters, I get a new idea”, he said. “I add the idea into my todo lists maintained on nine different sites — I’m still evaluating the best one — and use a pull.it social aggregator’s — I’m a pre-beta tester there — intelligent pull technology to consolidate, de-dup, and re-contextualize the todo lists, which I auto-push to four different semantic document generators to come up with cognition-oriented book outline. I publish the outline on my blog, posterous, tumblr, and then consolidate the comments/feedback using backtype, whose xml feed is again monitored by the pull.it aggregator”

“It’s been a hectic research”, he adds.

The table of contents runs close to 200 screens, as of the writing of this report. The rest of the book is full of article stubs that will be written with a single-handled collaboration, using a google wave that’s private, and editable by only Dave.

“It’s amazing, how collaborative tools increase your efficiency when there is no one to disturb you!” he said, talking to KBNN reporter.

When asked if he plans to publish it in paper format, Dave snickered at the idea. “Offline publishing is the thing of the past. It is not suited to the kind of dynamic writing that I do. I mean those who don’t own a Kindle are hardly the kind of readership that I’m looking for”

Dave is upbeat about a 3.0 edition with a more exhaustive table of contents, in an year’s time.

“That’s definitely doable, with all the social tech that I’m using”

Self professed twitteratti meets himself in an impromptu tweetup

A self professed twitterati called for an impromptu tweetup, but decided to meet himself instead, as no one turned up.

“This is the power of web 2.0″, he said, talking to KBNN reporter. “Each and every one of us is a virtual celebrity, with a virtual fan club”

How was the experience?

“Fantastic. Web 2.0 is really about you. Err. Me, actually. But you know what I mean? You are the most important person in your web 2.0 experience, and you should meet yourself every now and then, just to be in touch with yourself”, he added. “In the online world, it’s so much more difficult to meet yourself. All this while I’ve been following unknown people, or unknown people have been following me, but have I met myself? So this tweetup was an excellent idea for such impromptu meeting with myself”

But did he really think he was a twitter elite?

“You, from the old media school, will never understand it, will you?” he retorted. “Everyone is a celebrity here. Everyone is an elite”

But wouldn’t the follower count matter?

“Not in the real virtual world, although some poseurs seem to harp on it. In virtual world you can’t tell a difference between a bot and a human, so, naturally, all such metrics are by definition invalid there”

But surely, if no one turns up to meet you, you have no real or virtual fans …

“That’s a gross non-sequitur. All it proves is that I’m my biggest fan. And that’s quintessentially web 2.0″

A man with a million followers doesn’t know where he’s leading them

A man, who boasts of a million twitter followers, recently confessed that he has no idea where he is leading them.

“It’s stressful”, the twitterer said, when promised absolute anonymity, “Every day I wake up, I wonder: do I know where I’m taking all these guys? I find it hard to sleep at night, thinking of this tweet or that, that I posted. In fact, I cannot remember the last time that I tweeted”, he confessed.

How does he have so many followers then?

“A lot of them are bots. But there are ways to increase your followers”

When asked, why did he want the followers in the first place, he looked baffled.

“But why else would one tweet?” he asked.

From the unpublished archives

KBNN has been struggling to find new news as its sole reporter (until recently) has been on vacation.

While it’s recent recruit [here was his first investigative piece] learns the ropes, and all that, we’re fishing in our archives, for news we did not find fit to print at the time it happened. [Ed. Which basically meant, we were lazy enough never to print]

Interview with Bhada Badhao

Mr.  Bhada Badhao, the leader of one of Pune’s fifty odd Auto Rickshaw Unions, was interviewed recently by KandaBatata reporter. Mr. Badhao, who is known for his outspoken and candid interviews, talks about the recently concluded strike, its aftermath, and the eventful lives of the Pune’s Rickshaw drivers.

KBI: Mr. Badhao, tell us a bit about yourself.

BB: I’m not important.

KBI: Okay, tell us about your union.

BB: It’s not my union. I’m union’s humble servant.

KBI: Um. Okay, tell us about the recent strike. There was a strong resentment in the public about the strike. Don’t you think, Sir, that it is justified?

BB: The resentment is manufactured by the media.

KBI: Hmmm. But with the Petrol prices down so much, shouldn’t the meter be rationalized?

BB: How is the price of petrol related to the Rickshaw meter?

KBI: Errr. What do you mean?

BB: Show me one guy in my union who uses Petrol. Have you checked prices of Kerosene, recently? It almost looks like we’ll have to start using Petrol, after all these years.

KBI: Hmmm. That gets me to my next question. Why the reluctance to move to CNG? Is it only the availability of filling stations that is the issue?

BB: This only shows the ignorance of media about the whole issue. Has any auto-rickshaw driver ever complained about the lack of availability of Kerosene filling pumps? The rickshaw drivers are very resourceful people.

KBI: So what is the problem?

BB: What problem?

KBI: So you’re saying you’re ready to use Kerosene, err, I mean CNG?

BB: Who am I?

KBI: I mean Sir, your union… the union you serve.

BB: You’ll have to ask the union, that.

KBI: So what, in your opinion, is the real reason for the strike?

BB: I thought you guys in media will know at least this much. The government is controlling Kerosene supply, so that they force us to use CNG, which, we all know, to be the inferior fuel. I mean, if aeroplanes can fly with Kerosene, why not autos? It’s all conspiracy between big business and political nexus. But we won’t give up.

KBI: But you did call off the strike.

BB: Yes. The kerosene supply in black market is back to normal.

KBI: And you’re happy about the new meter rates, I presume?

BB: Oh that. When is the last time you saw any rikshaw driver from Pune charge anyone by the meter? It’s just for headlines. You guys should know that well!

KBI: Thank you Sir. It was a privilege talking to you.

BB: Sure. Next time, get your facts right.

Post Script: The KBNN reporter has resigned from KBNN, and is planning to buy an auto-rikshaw. His exit interview with us mentions “better prospects” as the sole reason [Ed. We don't blame him]. We’re hiring.

Alerts Against Austerity

There is new buzz in various departments at the IIT these days. Excitement runs high and there is an obvious flurry of activities. And the group responsible for this is a relatively unknown yet powerful citizen’s group called POWL (Protect Our Way of Life). POWL has recently funded an undisclosed amount to a group of IIT research students to work on new scanner.

“We are very protective about the hard life of the common man in India. It has been the way of life for years and significant sacrifices have been made to get to where we are”, explains Flogol Pinto, Secretary of POWL’s Mumbai chapter.

So, what exactly caused POWL to fund this project?

“The recent austerity drive that the politicians have started severely affects our hard way of life”, explains Pinto. “This project is to ensure that we maintain the standards of a life that has been achieved after so many sacrifices. What we will see now is an increase in politicians travelling economy class, using trains and driving beside us in peak hours. This device basically helps the common man identify the location of a politician and make alternative arrangements.”

Is POWL, then against politicians saving money?

“Not at all, however, with this austerity drive, what they are doing is disrupting our way of life. They will end up bringing security risks and their bad discipline in our everyday life. Flights and trains will be delayed; traffic will come to a complete stand-still. As more politicians travel alongside the common man, they threaten the security of the common man. We believe there are other ways to save money, interfering in the common man’s life is not the way. We’d rather pay more taxes than allow their use of public transport.”

One source in IIT, on conditions of anonymity, told in an exclusive to KBNN that the scanner, code-named PALERT uses cutting edge technologies from genetic engineering and recent advents in telecommunication nano-technology to identify the presence of politicians within a kilometre. Initial tests have been successful in parts and the research team is working on extending the range of this device to upto three kilometres.

The devices are expected to cost an equivalent of $300, however, other POWL sources informed us that, if necessary, they would subsidise the cost to ensure that the device was affordable to the common man. POWL plans to release the devices in the open market by March 2010

The second phase of the project will use GPS and GPRS/3G technology to relay live information of politician movement in the country via the PALERT devices.

A Man Wakes Up To Find That His Name Is Unique After All

A Man Wakes Up To Find That His Name Is Unique After All:

Krasser Dawg, who likes to call himself Kresy Dawg, woke up in the middle of the night, after a virtual nightmare in which he saw his vanity url being taken away by someone else. On the fateful Friday night of June 12, Dawg was waiting — ready with his laptop and browser — for the stroke of midnight, along with millions of other internet users, for Facebook to unveil its vanity url feature. To his horror of horror, he dozed off at 11:59 PM, EDT, just a few seconds to the awaited moment.

“I cannot $%$$ believe it”, Dawg said later, talking to KB reporter. “I mean, I sat there for hours, unable to do anything else, waiting for that moment.  And just when it was seconds away, I dozed off. I was literally counting down seconds”, he added with a sheepish smile.

Could it because of all the stress?

“That’s not very common, but it’s not unheard of”, said Dr. Siddhartha Jain, a leading psychiatrist, who specializes in behaviorial effects of extreme mental stress. “Some human beings are known to have, what the psychologists call, the sleeping instinct. It’s a evolutionary freak of an instinct that helps certain organisms to deal with extreme mental stress. It’s triggered when brain detects unusually accelerating blood pressure, when it releases strong sedatives to avert an impending heart attack”.

Dawg woke up, at around 3 AM, drenched in sweat. He recalls a dream in which he typed what was do be his vanity url: http://facebook.com/Kresy.Dawg, and it took him to a Facebook profile of an African-American rap star. Fully awake then, he logged back into his laptop, and refreshed the pre-typed url, to check if his username was still available. It was.

“It was a mixed feeling”, he said. “I was a little relieved, and a little sad too. I mean sure, it’s great to get the vanity url, but what’s the #$$% fun, if there ain’t no competition?”

When told about the extreme stress theory, and that he could have had a heart attack, if it weren’t for the sleeping instinct, Dawg said that wasn’t so worried about that.

“No”, Dawg insisted, “I have already booked a legacy locker. I do not fear an offline death anymore”

Related News: Man sues a Hollywood star for stealing his vanity url.