The Facebook Drama

Most of us are familiar with facebook and use it very often in our day to day lifes

I am going to write a sad experience of mine with this great social networking website.

I am very addictive user of facebook I post messages to my friends regularly,write on their walls and poke em often.
If thats not enough I share all my experiences from the net on facebook by the share tool they have introduced.

I regularly update my photos and notes.

Now what happened one night was that i was uploading pictures for a new album.The Upload was successfull, only thing which was to be done was to publish it.

I click the publish link and bammm I am logged out of facebook. This doesnt stops me I try to login again but I fail it says incorrect password or email id.

Hmm now what do I do i ask for a reset password request with that done I wait for the mail to come which usually comes in a minute or two.

Waited for 15 minutes still no mail.

Thinking something might have gone wrong I reset my password again but to no help.

Now am afraid If I got disabled or deactivated or worse deleted from facebook.
Which is a nightmare scenario cause you wouldnt want all the stuff on your account to vanish right away.

So I ask My roommate to check for my profile and see if i am still there.

Shocking news I am not there. I cant be searched or found on facebook...

I got angry and sad at the same moment.

After 5 minutes of that bloody rage i figured out i cannot stay without it. And Thought what if my account has been just deactivated and would be reactivated if i sign up again

So like a newbie I goto facebook and sign up for a new account with the same email address as that of the old account.

Now what happened was disturbing I thought my old profile would come back but no it made a whole new account (wtf)

Something really went wrong here.
Well with everything done from my part i decided to get help from facebook
while i was searching for the right email addresses to mail to them.

One Of my friends on the new facebook profile posted me a message why need of a new account your already on my friend list and i say wtf impossible how can that be.

I search myself from the new account and there i am still there with all the stuff as I left. I send a friendship request to my self and get a email notification to it too.
Which meant that my account was active but it was using the same email address.

So Now I log out of my new facebook profile thinking it would magically disappear and when i login back my old account would be presented to me.
But that didnt happen

Googled for other users with same problems and came across getsatisfaction.com and i wasnt the only one with this problems there were countless others too.

I made a list of email addresses of facebook support which was as follows:

abuse+dt17u8y@facebook.com;
comment-info-rt@facebook.com;
info@facebook.com;
abuse+dupdx6x@facebook.com;
affiliations@facebook.com;
login@facebook.com;
privacy@facebook.com;
disabled@facebook.com;
appeals+nr83181@facebook.com;
appeals-comment@facebook.com
warning@facebook.com
abuse@facebook.com
customerservice@facebook.com
admin@facebook.com
administration@facebook.com

mailed to all of them explaining them my detailed situation and giving them links to both the profiles and agreeing to disable my new account as it is against facebook policies to hold two account.

since all this happened on friday night.
I simply got an automated response from the facebook side.

I didnt knew what was going to happen.
I mailed them again and again precisely three four times with my original id and linked id.

Saturday went no response
Sunday went no response
Depressed with what was happening I closed my new account thinking if it would help in gaining my old account back.
But no use it was still the same.

I read a lot of stuff on getsatisfaction.com and came to know that facebook doesnt actually deletes your stuff it keeps it just that it cannot be accesed this is because of some laws and their terms of service.

If this was the case I had some hope that my account wasnt deleted.

On Monday I get a mail from Homer saying that my account is now active and working and apologising for the inconvinience.
I was soo glad to get that mail.

After getting my account back the first thing I did was made back of everything on my facebook
Notes
Photos easy way is to use facepad in firefox as an addon it downloads all the albums by one click

Then came the question of backing up my 2000+ friends how do I do that I cannot export my facebook friends to a csv file.

So there is a facebook app FriendsCSV it backs up the names of your friends and mails it to you.

After going through this I realized that our social networking identities are not completely our own and its better if we have a back up plan for exiting it.


Anyway This was just my experience I got my account back where as some people couldnt sad for em.

All this was a big drama for me but who cares am facebooking again :D

Sony Launches 5 New W-Series Cyber-shots

Sony’s Cyber-shot W-Series has gained a new look for 2008, with five new cameras that team HD image quality with easy-to-use features. Available in a choice of colors, the new W-Series boasts clean lines and contemporary looks. Inside the all-aluminum case, all five models come with the latest Sony technology.

The range is topped by the 10.1 megapixel Cyber-shot W170 that sports an extra-large, bright 2.7-inch Clear Photo LCD. There’s also a Carl Zeiss wide angle lens with 5x optical zoom. Thanks to its minimum focal length of 28mm (35mm equivalent), zooming out to wide angle lets you squeeze in more of landscapes and group photos without cropping the subject.

The W170 now features Intelligent Scene Recognition that takes the guesswork out of selecting the right camera settings in a range of common shooting situations. In Advanced mode, the camera takes two shots – one with standard automatic settings and the other with optimized settings – allowing you to pick your favorite. Other key features include Smile Shutter, Face Detection and Super Steady Shot optical image stabilization for clearer low-light shooting.

With a resolution of 8.1 effective megapixels, the W150 has the same 2.7-inch Clear Photo LCD as the flagship W170. It also features a 5x zoom Carl Zeiss wide-angle lens, plus Smile Shutter, Face Detection, Super Steady Shot, and Intelligent Scene Recognition.

The W130 also boasts 8.1 effective megapixel resolution, along with Smile Shutter, Face Detection, Super SteadyShot and a 4x Carl Zeiss optical zoom lens. The W120 shares similar specifications but with a resolution of 7.2 effective megapixels.

The entry-level W110 offers 7.2 effective megapixel resolution plus 4x optical zoom, Smile Shutter and Face Detection.

The W120 will be available for about $200 in pink, blue, black and silver in March 2008. The W130 will be offered in pink, black and silver for about $230 the same month. The W150 model will hit retail in sophisticated champagne, red, black and silver for about $250 in April. The DSC-W170 model will also be available around the same time in the same colors for about $300.

Sony Introduces Cyber-shot T300

Sony has launched the 10.1 megapixel Cyber-shot T300. This digicam boasts the Sony Bionz image processing engine that improves the speed and accuracy of autofocus, exposure control, white balance, color adjustment and other functions. It also boosts sensitivity to a maximum ISO 3200 for successful low-noise shots without flash indoors or in dim lighting conditions.

Improved Face Detection technology can now distinguish automatically between children and adults, adjusting exposure, skin tone and red-eye reduction for great portraits with quick subject tracking.

For even more fun when you’re shooting, Smile Shutter waits until the subject smiles before automatically firing the shutter. It’s great for capturing relaxed portraits of young children who won’t always smile on demand. Used in conjunction with Face Detection, it can be primed to fire the shutter when either a child or adult smiles.

In a Cyber-shot first, the T300 now features Intelligent Scene Recognition that takes the guesswork out of selecting the right camera settings in a range of common shooting situations. In Advanced mode, the camera takes two shots – one with standard automatic settings and the other with optimized settings – so you can pick your favorite.

Other features include the large, widescreen 3.5-inch Clear Photo LCD Plus touchscreen. There’s also a high quality Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens with a powerful 5x zoom range that brings distant subjects closer.

The DSC-T300 camera replaces the DSC-T200 model, and is expected to be available in March. It will ship in red, black and silver finishes, and retail for about $400.

IIT Techfest 2008: Geekiness Galore

So Techfest 2008 came, rocked, and went. If you had any geekiness in you, here's where you should have let it loose. We experienced firsthand what it feels like to see what geeks are made of. It true Tech2 fashion, we bring you some glimpses of the technology festival.

We went around checking out some of the cool competitions, spoke to some participants, and even grilled some of them.

Students of GCET

Wings, an RC (remote controlled) glider competition, happened to attract quite a lot of curiosity. The rules were simple – build your own plane, then show if it can fly, or glide rather. Interestingly, we learnt 55 (out of 150) participants tried to smuggle ready-made RC planes without any luck.

Lazy Bird

We spoke to some of the guys who made it through the eliminations (none from Mumbai though), and trust me, some serious planning was involved. Some, like the boys from GCET (G.H. Patel College of Engineering and Technology), Gujarat, managed to complete the plane in three days, some like the duo behind the set of wings that came first called "Lazy Bird", underwent months of sleepless nights.

According to Chintan Modi and Gaurang, M.Tech students from NITK, Surathkal in Karnataka, they used Gyros to tackle gusty wind that made the plane to maintain a length of flight of 25.4 seconds. Cool, huh? Well, there is something cooler than this.

Vishan Popat, a 13-year-old student of Navrachana school, Baroda, happened to be the youngest participant in Wings. Apart from building a plane, he also managed to put together a contraption he called the "Solar Updraft Tower". Snobbish, huh? Not really! It's a small plant that can make electricity, capable of making 0.5W/M2 of it, as part of another competition called "My Innovision".

Prison Break

And if you are wondering, yes, we also caught some cool robotics action in a competition called Prison Break. It's a bit strange to find a whole lot of people building machines that can propel themselves out of the prison box. But the gadgetry involved made us happy, so there!

Tech2 Gaming Zone

Maybe you should have junked that PS3 controller and come down to IIT. And hey, they had a Gaming Lounge too, with loads of games, multiplayer etc. Naturally, the Tech2 zone provided some live action on the PS3 and the Wii.

EA expects PS3 to outsell 360 in 2008

Wii to dominate console sales with Sony's flagship console cementing second place

Electronic Arts has released estimates of what it thinks will be the range of hardware sales in North America and Europe through 2008, and while the Wii unsurprisingly leads, it's the PlayStation 3 that will hold a strong second place.

That will, according to the estimates, be particularly true in Europe, where EA expects the PlayStation 3 to sell between 5 and 6 million units across the year, compared to just 1.5-2.5 million for the Xbox 360.

That means that while the company thinks the two will tie in North America on 4.5 to 5.5 million unit sales, the two sets of numbers combined give Sony's flagship console a compelling 3.5 million lead.

The report predicts the Nintendo Wii will win the year, with a combined total of between 12 and 14 million units sold, while the PlayStation 2 will continue on its long tail drop-off, shifting between 3.9 and 4.9 million units.

That yields a total home console sales estimate for the two regions of between 31.4 and 38.4 million units.

The report also gives estimates for the year's handheld sales as well, noting the company's belief that it expects the Nintendo DS to outsell the PlayStation Portable by over 2-to-1.

According to the numbers the DS should shift between 14 and 16 million units, while the PSP will sell around 6 to 8 million units, giving a combined handheld total for the year of between 20 and 24 million.

Combined console estimates for 2008 are as follows:

Nintendo Wii: 12-14 million
PlayStation 3: 9.5-11.5 million
Xbox 360: 6-8 million
PlayStation 2: 3.9-4.9 million

Combined handheld estimates for 2008 are as follows:

Nintendo DS: 14-16 million
PlayStation Portable: 6-8 million

WD Launches 320GB Passport Essential Drive

WD has introduced its new My Passport Essential Portable USB Drives. These new drives are redesigned to complement WD's popular My Book family of external drives and seek to introduce a sleek new form that feels good in hand and fits neatly in a pocket or purse.

The drives feature a glossy black finish and come with 320GB of space. Apart from just looking good, they have been equipped with WD’s Sync software, which allows consumers to take desktop content with them by simplifying the synchronization of essential personal files and Microsoft Outlook data on a PC.

"The newly designed My Passport Essential drives are the perfect travel-friendly storage device to hold the rich media content generated by higher resolution photos and HD videos and music," said Jim Welsh, vice president and general manager of WD's branded products group. "The desire to carry and keep digital files close at hand continues to grow, and this new drive offers a sleek and stylish solution with plenty of storage capacity for consumers on the move."

WD's My Passport Essential USB Drives are available now at select retail stores and from WD's online store. The price of the WD Passport Essential USB Drive 320GB is $199.99 (MSRP).

Sneak Peek at Windows Mobile 6.1

ou might have heard about Windows Mobile 7; and even seen some screenshots that were leaked a while ago. But let’s face it, it may well be a long time coming. In the meantime let's look at something a little more realistic – such as Windows 6.1. And Gizmodo, through the Portuguese tech forum PocketPT, seems to have some new information on what the next step might look like.

Image Source: PocketPT

One new feature is a Zoom function that will allow users to view an entire web page on the display screen. This could be useful for navigation to specific articles or portions on the page that may interest a user. Another feature will indicate how much space is consumed by applications. The latest version is expected to be able to load DOCX and SLSX formats. A new advanced 'Note' feature should allow users to draw and add voice recordings to each note.

Hopefully we’ll learn more at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress this year. Stay Tuned.