@dvocable

I often met people who say they are very active online and in the social media space. They silently listen and read. They  know a lot of things, about who is doing what, and what new thing has happened, etc. etc. but  they do not  blog or have active profiles where they share stuff back to the social media community.

So when I ran into one such person recently, the conversation took on an interesting  turn when I gave an example of the torrent communities.  In these communities/ sites where you can share and access various multimedia, you will see that there are seeders and leechers.  Seeders are those who are sharing files from their systems and thus actively contributing to the community while leechers are those who are just downloading. If there are more leechers than seeders, the community wouldn’t be fun anymore.

Likewise in the social media space, can we dare ask ourselves? Are we seeders or leechers?

Once upon a time not so long ago, DivShare used to be my best file sharing service, beating Box.net and all the others in terms of features, usability, interface, or space. DivShare doesn’t limit your file uploads to 10 MB like Box.net does on its free account. It provides you with a big 5GB space. Its features such as the AJAX search and fast multiple file upload tool are wonderful. The service was even nominated for Webware 100.

Not anymore. Why am I saying that? Read on.

Apparently the company is running sort of funds or whatever and are doing all it can to get ad revenues and get the free users to turn premium. I understand every business needs funds and DivShare is no different. But whatever they are doing now, they are becoming a little too much for my liking at least and not what I would like my (trustworthy and solid) file storage site to be like.

For instance, now when you log in to DivShare, their premium account rates and super discount charts greet you instead of your dashboard. When you do a ‘No Thanks’ and continue to your account, everything seems fine and looks the same as before. But wait until you send a file to your friends and this is what they will see when they open the file link.

This is a page full of ads and looks no better than a spam site. Just imagine you are sending that link to a client or a business partner and this is what they see, along with two pop-up ads. Not only that, when you click on the download link, you are taken to a new page , again full of ads, and asked to be waited for 15 seconds before getting redirected to the final download page.

What also made me lose complete faith in DivShare is that they have recently made their services unavailable in 12 Asian countries. Reason: “the online advertising market in China and Southeast Asia is much weaker than in other parts of the world”. This is bad news not only for the DivShare users there but also means that you cannot send files to people in those countries. Thankfully Indian companies still advertise in the site and the service is still active here. But I don’t know for how long.

I don’t mind paying for their premium account but when there are so many services providing the same services free of cost, it’d be a bit silly to find a service provider who asks you to pay up.

By the way, I don’t work for any other file sharing service providing company. This is genuine consumer dissatisfaction.

There have been many Greasemonkey scripts and Firefox addons that do the job of adding pictures and links on Gmail signatures. As you know Gmail, on its own, doesn’t support the use of html and pictures in its email signatures in order to prevent misuses. So these scripts and addons have been the favorite lot of many who wanted to spice up their emails a bit. However since the new version of Gmail debuted, many of them have ceased to work.

But luckily here is one script called Gmail HTML Signatures that still works. It not only adds pictures and links on your signatures but also enable float. In other words, when you are replying to an email, your signature will be visible just below your message and not after the copy of the original email embedded in your reply. See screenshot of a signature below.

For newbies, please note that you first need to install the Greasemonkey addon on your Firefox browser and  then this script. After you have installed the script, when you open your compose editor, you will see that just after the ‘From:’ section, you will see a link called ‘Create Signature’ . When you open that link, you will see a window where you need to add the html code of whatever signature you have created.

If you don’t know how to create a html and want a quick solution, you can use a free online WYSIWYG editor like this one at Real Graphics. Create your signature, format it well, add the font colors and the picture. When you are through, click the toggle (< >) button and copy the html code from there.

Remember if you using pictures, be sure to fill the  description of the picture in the ‘Alternate Text’ in the upload window. Whatever you fill there will come out in the alt=”…” section of the html code. For example: alt=”StumbleUpon”.

This will ensure that the image description is shown whenever your email recipient can’t receive html emails. Just like in the screenshot above.

My wife got me into a contact dance workshop today, organised by Choreotheque. And as reluctant as I was to participate, I couldn’t escape it.

When I went to drop her at the workshop venue, I had to wait and give her company till the workshop started. Then when it was starting, I was going to be the only one in the room not dancing. Then Anish, the dance instructor called out to me. So I thought what the hell, I should just play along for a while.

The workshop was on contact dance, a dance that fine tunes your senses and wakes up your ability to listen and respond to what is happening in the moment. What makes contact dance from other dance forms is that partners are often moving in and out of physical contact while rolling, spiraling, springing, and falling. The dancing is unpredictable and insipred by the physical and energetic contact the partners share.

We start off by ‘exploring our spaces’ which was something I have never experienced before. My space? I knew the hypothetic term but actually putting out my hands in air to explore my space was a different feel altogether. After this, you team up with your partner, join hands, and explore our space together, first you as the leader and then as a follower.

Then there was another session where we were made to roam around and sway while holding a pen using mine and my partner’s forefingers.  You and your partner need to press the pen from both ends with your fingers to prevent it from falling. And when you do that while you are having a sort of ballroom twist, then you need coordinate very well along with your partner.

We the had a number of exercises changing partners and between groups. The most important thing our instructor was repeating was that we need to keep our minds clear of any thoughts and concentrate on the movements. Work lessons?

The workshop quite refreshing, surprisingly, and I wondered where my tiredness was gone. Maybe it can teach us a bit of team work. Corporate HR folks who conduct a lot of innovative team plays for employees should give contact dance a go and see for themselves.

I was researching for an article for Mashable (where I write) on sites that let you share documents online like Scribd, Docstoc, Yudu Freedom, Issuu, and Calameo, when I saw an interesting piece of information on Docstoc. It says the documents you upload on Docstoc gets indexed by search engines and business can use this to their advantages by uploading relevant content with links going to their sites.

Remember how Wikipedia was being used by every PR agency in the world to upload their clients information until the site said they no longer want PR agencies to contribute. Wikipedia was also a target for webmasters as they could upload their content free of cost to the site and run links to their sites. Now the site has ‘no follow’ tags to make this practice redundant.

So with Wikipedia gone, is it the turn for the document sharing sites to be the next target for PR professionals and webmasters in their attempt to gain more visibility about their clients, brands, and sites. Let’s wait and watch.

Can our documents on Docstoc and other document sharing sites really get indexed by search engines? If that be so, I see that Docstoc is already a Page Rank 6 site. Can we get some real good juice from that? I plan to do an experiment and find that out soon. Will keep everyone updated.

After US, Microsoft is out to help Indian offices do a makeover through better usage of technology and office space. Head over to Make My Office.

If you are a office worker in India, all you need to do write a 200 word essay and upload a picture of your office. If you are the winner, you will get a makeover from Microsoft that will include software, tablet pc, printer, mobile phones, and the services of an interior designer to refurbish your office.

There will a panel of judges who will select 5 semi finalists from whom the winner will be chosen through an online and SMS vote.

A coverage of the US campaign is reported here.

I would say this might be a hit with all the SMEs and the SOHO segment. What do you say?

Hello Readers! Are you people there? What’s your feedback on the India PR Blog? If you have reading our writings for some time now, your feedback will be valuable to us.

So instead of brainstorming among ourselves, we thought we might have an open floor with the professionals in the Indian PR industry i.e. you and plus all other readers as well.

Do you like the topics we cover? What topics would you like us to cover? Do you like the style of writing? The feedback can be on everything – positive or negative.

We would appreciate if you leave your comments on the blog itself (on this post using the comment form below), in the spirit of blogging, instead of going the old email way. That way we can take discussions forward collaboratively.

So if you like/ dislike India PR Blog and (do not) appreciate the writings that have been coming to you, do drop in a note. That way one thing will be clear at least, someone is out there reading this blog :-)

Should we have a prize for the best feedback? Maybe we should. An all-India media list? An all-India celebrity list? A list of journalist profiles? An ebook of PR ideas for any client from any industry? Nah …Just kidding. We will announce the prize on the comments or do a follow-up to this post. What do you say?

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