Social Network.

Wisdom of Crowds.

These are few buzzwords that have become obsolete because of their overuse. Welcome to isolation.

Isolator , a social  personal network anti-network for pure fun. The creator of Isolator will answer no more questions other than those found on their faq page.

There are more than 1000+ social network sites and applications available on the web and you can not easily differentiate between them. Here’s is a megalist of social networks and social web applications available on the web. Yep, you can download it as a spreadsheet.

But, on a serious note, do you know how many people on the internet actively uses at least one social network?

You will be in a shock to know this – just under 7% of all the internet traffic goes to social networks.

Looks like we are living in a bubble, huh? Come on people, join us – dont get left behind.

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If you do online shopping, then without spending another penny, you can donate a percentage of your spendings to a charity. Confused? Usually, the affiliate marketers and publishers get a percentage for every referral they make to such online stores. Giveness springs from the same concept but they help to direct such commissions (affiliate sales) to charity programs.

Giveness is a social network for philanthropists who love shopping. When you buy something from online stores such as Amazon or eBay, via Giveness, they donate a percentage of their earnings to a charity of your  choice directly.

Giveness lists a big basket of about 134 online charities ranging from Children of Rural Africa to Sustainable Harvest International. When you sign up to Giveness, you can choose your favourite charities, before you do shopping. When the online stores send the commissions, all 100% of the money is sent to the charities. Now, you would have had a double joy as your shopping has not only fulfilled your need, but also some percentage of your spendings went to fulfill some higher cause.

Apart from this, Giveness is all about social networking, you will find people who are interested in common things. You can have a personal page, share things, chat or message friends. They should be good souls as they believe they can make a positive difference in this world by doing a small bit for the world.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell a thing. You can also start a charity fund. You can define a purpose – it could be a global problem or it could be even a neighbourhood’s issue. You can organize a charity and start your social service.

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In the last few months, facebook is the fastest growing social network on the web.

Touchgraph has developed a facebook application that allows you to visualize your facebook friends network.

You can browse through your friends shared photos, follow their network through tags and browse the common friends interactively.

You need a latest java plugin and you can run the application from Touchgraph facebook site.

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Imagine if your personal information can find way into the computer screens of baddies, the consequences will be unimaginable. Am I scaring you? Not at all. Just follow some news items.

Who has the responsibility for protecting you online? The answer is not a firewall program or your ISP. You should protect your privacy – You are responsible for your online safety.

What you can do to protect your privacy?

1. Use nicknames only.

2. Create an email-id to sign-up for newsletters / social networks.

3. Check if an E-business site is Verisign secure (Click on the logo and verify it).

4. Post only thumbnail photos.

5. Never tell your personal information. E.g. Real date of birth.

6. Don’t tell everything (share your personal problems) about yourself to an online friend. Wait until you gain some trust.

7. Do not think everyone is good.

8. When someone asks for your postal address, ask why?

9. If someone is offering free money, then there is something wrong.

10. Do not blog your personal details.

from Geek And Poke’s Future of Web by Oliver Widder

Related Readings:
EFF’s Top 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy – very exhaustive, lists some online tools and services that help you to protect your privacy.

CDT’s online guide to online privacy: Top Ten Ways to Protect Privacy Online

Get safe Online – an expert blog that has excellent blog posts, tips and resources on being safe online.

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How do you get the perfect job that pays you plenty and has all the right perks and things you always wanted to have? Getting the perfect job is an art, that is why most of us settle in ‘some job’ to pay off our mortgages, constantly whining about our jobs thinking, ‘one day we would land in the perfect job’.

We have to agree that few people are smart enough and good in this art and always seem to land in the perfect job all the time. How do they do it? I have compiled these notes from my own experience of job search in the last few months (I got a job a month ago). These tips are based on my experience with Australian industry, and I am certainly guarantee that this approach will work in any country. If you follow these steps, you too will land in a perfect job.

1. What are the things that matter to you?
Spending time with yourself is the essential because, you need find out (ask yourself) about the things you like, the things you hate, your priorities in life and values that matter to you.

If you understand yourself first, you will find the kind of job that you like and hate. This is one crucial step that will make you a huge difference. Do not go to a job because, you like the salary. If you do not really like the job, after very few months, you will get pissed off by your job.

So, find your values and priorities in life. If you are unsure of what your priorities and values are, then grab this book, “What colour is your Parachute?” from a local library or a shop. The initial chapters of the book will guide you to identify your personality traits and the jobs that most likely will interest you.

2. Do you know which your perfect job is?
To get a perfect job, you need to define the perfect job by your own standards is. A perfect job according to my standards will be a completely boring job for you, because, we are two different, unique individuals. Before you begin your job search, answer the following questions. Write down the answers in a notebook.

- what is the nature of job you would like (independent or team, technical or managerial)
- write an ideal job description of your perfect job (look for some job advertisements in your own field – pick the right things from several ads and compile you own job ad)
- get down to salary, perks and other details
- set your limits (minimum salary, perks, willing to move to another city, working environment)

Also, having a picture of a perfect job, will allow you to check if you are responding to an appropriate job advertisement.

3. Show me your CV/Resume
If you are concerned with the different terms and worry about misusing them, either read the CV, Resume or Biodata definitions or follow the job advertisement you are responding to. Deliver what they need.

Ok, you have found out what you like and ideal job that you want now is the time to write your magical CV. A CV or Curriculum Vitae is the first contact your employer will make with you. You need to put in all your energy to make the document ‘smart’. It is just like a ‘tv commercial’ that draws attention and makes you to act.

Write your CV matching with your ideal job description. We need to check your CV with your friends or job consultants (also supply them the idea job description) that if your CV reflects the qualities and skills needed by the ideal job – they will find out the flaws. We overlook such flaws, since we wrote the CV thinking ‘Isn’t that obvious?’. Nothing is obvious until you explicitly write in your CV.

4. Do you sell apples or oranges?
If you are sending pre-prepared job applications (CV + cover letter) to respond to the job ads, stop doing that. Probably that’s why you are not getting beyond the point in your job search.

Australian employers specifically want you to address how you fit for a job and they need to see your responses in your cover letter or in a separate document. I recommend using a ‘responses to the selection criteria’ document along with your cover letter and CV. Your cover letter should answer why you are applying for the job and include pointers to your CV and the ‘responses to the selection criteria’ document.

a. Start with the job advertisement – study what the employer is looking for.

b. Always respond to the advertisement – Double-check if your CV completely convinces that it fits the job ad, if not add the extra information. Note down the selection criteria and essential qualities that you need to address.

c. Illustrate your qualities with examples – illustrate where you previously used a skill or trait (that is required for the current job). If you are applying for the first job, then feel free to include relevant examples from your family, sports or social achievements.

d. Write your ‘responses to selection criteria’ in STAR style – most employers read your response looking for these details.
- Situation that you encounter e.g. angry customer
- Task assigned e.g. attend to the angry customer’s need
- Action taken e.g. solved the problem / issue
- Results achieved e.g. the angry customer came home happy

I have done this mistake (of sending a common CV and cover letter) in my initial days of job search, when I wanted to respond at least 10 job ads in a day and I didn’t have time to write a different job application to each of them separately. It’s not that difficult to do this at all, if you follow this trick.

I have a master word document, in which I have compiled all my “responses to selection criteria”, and whenever I have to write a job application, I copy and paste ‘the relevant response’ from it. If I need to write a new response to a specific job ad, I write it and then copy it and paste it in the master document of “responses to selection criteria”. As you apply for more and more jobs, the time to prepare the application drastically reduces. You can make a custom-application in few minutes.

When you employers are looking for apples, don’t send the brochures of your oranges, however sweet they might be.

5. Did you get the call for an interview?
This is not an action item for you. This is a check point. If you have done all the above steps fairly well, you must receive a call from your employer. If you have not heard from the employer, there can be two possibilities, either the employer have found better applications or your application is not considered appropriate. But, if you have applied for 10 different jobs (each with a specific, custom-made job application), and never heard from your employers, then seriously some thing is wrong – go back to the drawing board.

Study what could have went wrong; often your job consultant will know the ‘behind-the-scenes story’. Ask your job consultant why your application was not short listed, find the true reason. If the mistake is not in your part (you are not in the right city, your expected salary is too big, better candidates were applied), move on.

Always wait for feedback (even no responses from the employer) such as this. In my initial week of job search, I sent 10 job applications (3 custom-made and 7 common CV + cover letter), out of which I had got only three rejection letters. No phone calls at all. I went and met a career consultant with my CV and cover letters and the job ads that I had applied for. He pointed out my mistakes, and suggested me to improve the layout of my CV (content was good). It didn’t cost me anything, I had sincerely asked him how to improve my next job application and he helped me.

If you continue applying for jobs (and getting no responses), with the same job application, then the job consultants will black list you and may report any email from you as a spam (not kidding).

That’s too much of information on one day. I will take a break here. I will return with tips on attending personal, phone interviews, how to answer questions, what questions you should ask your interviewer and how can you tell if you have got the job or not (before they tell you).

If something is not clear, ask me.

Stay tuned!

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No, they are not the BIG Pro, A-list bloggers. They are like you and me, our nice, friendly next-door-bloggers, they often produce a stunning post that you wish you had written. Here’s a collection of such 25 top blog posts in five categories that are most-read by their readers. We can all learn something from each of these posts.

1. Utility Posts: You post something useful for everyone (blogger), if your post is convincing, readers will celebrate it. Do not think any topic is known to everyone. There are billions of people who still wants to know what a blog is. Keep your language simple, show them in a clear, concise steps.

Top 5 Steps for Choosing a Blog Theme – Meg is renowned for posting such easy-to-understand, jargon-free, illustrative articles at her blog Dipping into the Blog Pond. I would suggest her to make a “popular page” showing such posts.

Reframing: The sweetest idea for content ideas – Andrew addressed a most pressing issue faced by every blogger in this post. How do we develop ideas for blog posts, to create unique yet, special content which no one else can do.

Should you eat that – Tara, a nutrition student publishes the recipes she tries and the tips on our dietary, eating habits. The blog title Should you eat that reflects the utility for you – to help you to choose your food wisely. If you are looking for recipes, you should bookmark the blog Cook almost anything.

How To Replace the Color Wheel in Your Samsung DLP Television and Save $400 – You don’t need to go looking for such Do-IT-Yourself posts somewhere. Write your own experience how you overcome an issue, a tip that you have developed to solve a problem. That’s all the world is looking for – write from your own experience. This post published by Scott received 594 comments and has excellent photographs to illustrate every step he talks about.

How I stopped a bandwidth thief – Swollen pickles wrote a series of excellent posts to stop a person who stole the bandwidth by direct hot-linking of images. It teaches a lesson to the evil-doers and to you on how to handle if you are in such situation.

2. Surprise Posts: Surprise posts grab your attention at once. You know you want to click and see what’s in there (they are referred as click-baits). You can make that happen with catchy, cheeky titles or opening sentences.

Rate My Ass – The title itself surprises you to know the content.

Amazing Upside Down House – The weird stories such as these are powerful crowd pullers.

Avoid Risk, Sure. Then Die! – Richard wrote a book, “Punk Marketing“, which is based on the mantra that, if you are afraid of risks, then you sure, are ready to die.

And now for an important announcement from the Prime Minister – Lizbee’s picture blog post has a real signature of the Prime Minister of Australia in it.

Australia’s Bizarre Sporting Fortunes – Knowing most of Australians love sports and like reading about them, Mark would never need another better topic other than this.

3. Popular-by-Demand Posts: Every one wants to know your success story (even if there is a pun) or a miserable failure and wants to get inspired or get a good laugh. These posts are always popular among readers, if only you do not disappoint them in delivery.

Snoskred made 5 million dollars online – How much money you could have made if the “spam marketers” were really very generous in their dealings? On a serious note, this post is an eye-opener.

How to grow your blog by over 2000 per cent in one month! – If you are a blogger, you know what it means to grow by 200%, let alone adding another 1800%. Alister who calls himself as “Blogologist” (Did I say that correctly?), posts the techniques he used to get more readership, more links and more comments.

13 signs that someone you know may have an eating disorder – A list of any sort is sure enough to attract your readers. Aussie mum posts a list of signs to check if you or any one you know might have an eating disorder.

Vinyl Beauties post series from Vanessa shows the vintage collection of vinyl records (music album) she presents the cover images in the series. Eye-catching.

How to Turn 300 Contacts Into 3.3 Million: My LinkedIn Network – Des at Thinking Home business talked on how you could develop your social network at a phenomenal rate.

4. Breezy Posts: They are lengthier but compelling enough to keep your attention till the very end of the post. A travel diary, a personal experience, book / restaurant review or just tips from your own life would form this category.

Relaxing weekend ingredients – Jaycee lists the essential ingredients for a successful, soothing weekend at her blog Semantically Driven.

How To Do A Mini Debrief With Traumatized Friends – Megan talks about dealing with a tough situation where most of us would keep silent.

Adelaide to Darwin Backpacking Road Trip Overview – Neerav often writes about his trips (backpackers reviews, travel tips) around Australia (I would like to travel around Australia as well). His travel diary is fascinating as well as informative.

B is for Boracay -It’s all about fantastic beach and real good time!

Personal post about Long Distance Relationships – A short post on her thoughts but I liked it instantly.

5. Analytical Posts: Start with a burning question and provide convincing arguments and you get a successful blog post. You can compare two services or even produce a list of ten best things.

Why Do Blogs Fail? – Dan at The Wrong Advices analyses the reasons behind why bloggers loose interest and close their blogs one-fine-day.

Why Most People Fail at AdSense – Lisa tells her ‘Hodgepodge theory’ on Adsense.

Why StumbleUpon is a better than Digg for promoting your blog posts – This is one of my favourite post where I compared at the stickiness of readers visiting from two giant social network sites.

Why Is Firefox Still Way Behind Internet Explorer? – Everyone hates George Bush. Any Australian whom I speak to hates John Howard. But, they get elected all the time. Everyone seems to love Firefox, but? I would recommend a serious discussion such as this one would be open to your readers. You can ask your readers to tell their reasons then, you can write a round-up of posts.

NO WATER, NO FUTURE AUSTRALIA – Jules shares her wise words on the Melbourne Water’s ‘Your water, Your future’ (now changed as Our water, our future) campaign and tips on changing the strategy to voluntarily involve people in environmental activism. Here’s Your water, your say group.

25 posts from 25 bloggers, now you know why the readers liked them all. Now is the time for you to speak, what type of blog posts you enjoy writing and why? Comment on.

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At 43 things, you say, “What you want to do?”

At WAYN, they ask, “Where are you now?”

Now, I propose a new idea for another web service. Answer a simple question, “Who are you?”

Huh, you don’t say a thing. Let your friends say all about you. Let your friends add tags (sort of one-word testimonials) on you saying, ‘sexy’, ‘brave’, ‘good guy’, ‘SOB’, ‘BS’ or whatever. Part this idea is inspired by the movie “Citizen Kane”. What if we sit back and ask our friends to describe us. We can borrow a dictionary of adjectives; let the users tag their friends. We need not develop this as a web service (enough of existing social networks), this service can be developed as a facebook application.

Ok, you heard this idea from me. But, I no nothing about programming or APIs (I know there are geeks out there, come on!). I can give more details on this idea, we can develop a cool widget.

Wants to get famous, Precious?

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Google reader allows you to make certain things public (the feeds that you can share with others), and google offers those rss items on a public page as this one, Thiru’s shared items (sorry, you are not supposed to monetize those feeds, ok?

Google can build a social network around such shared RSS feeds by us and they can put together a Digg like site. They have not done it yet. Here’s where Feedrer is coming in.

Feedrer is a social network where you can add friends, and see what others are reading currently. Now, you can get a list of mini-feeds that your friends have subscribed. If you like a friend’s feed then, you can subscribe to them with a click.

Feedrer is a start-up and they are working on the site to add more features. What they can do is to add a front page showing, “most liked feeds”, “most read feeds” to use the wisdom of the crowd to bring the best feeds on top.

What are the benefits of joining Feedrer?
If you are looking to publicize your blog’s RSS feed, or find new readers for your blog then, these tips are for you.

1) If you have a blog, then you can get a RSS feed at the free Feedburner service (Google’s) and register it with feedrer. Make friends at feedrer, generously subscribe to their feeds. Since the people in the community are already loving RSS feeds, they would subscribe to your RSS feeds. The feeds are mini-feeds, so, readers need to visit your blog (more page visits) to read them. So, you win all the way.

2) One of my SEO friend at gridpro tipped me that every links from feedrer is considered by search engines as Google /Yahoo as one way, inbound web links. So, if you have 10 friends subscribing to your blog’s feed, you are going to get 10 links. When you pubish 10 posts , the links are going to be 10 by 10 = 100. Can’t get my head around this, I have to confirm this myself.

Update: To gain access to Feedrer (currenty in beta), you need to enter an invitation code “INVITEME” at the registration form (Thanks Anand, for pointing me). Enjoy!

There you go, another start up, social network, web 2.0.

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WAYN (an acronym for Where Are You Now?) is a location-based social network for world tourists and people who like travelling. You can find plenty of travel stories, tips from people who have visited a place and it could be very useful for you to plan your next trip to that place. When you create a profile at WAYN, you will be asked to fill out your interests and you can start posting the location you are visiting. You can then search for other travellers, and link them to their profiles as friends.

There are plenty of options to interact with other WAYN users using email, discussion forums, eCards, SMS and WAYN instant messaging. WAYN helps you to find friends when you are travelling (you are not alone). When you are not travelling, you will automatically get notifications when other WAYN users are visiting your place (based on the home city given by you in your profile), so you can make international friends.

You will be presented with fellow WAYN users, who are visiting the same place (or region) as you. You can message them; interact with them – just like any other social network. You can organize a party or tour by inviting your fellow travellers.

One thing you need to look for carefully is that when you signup, WAYN provides an option to import your address book from Hotmail, GMail or Yahoo to send invites to all your contacts in Address book. There is an option provided below – "Skip the Step" – to avoid such auto notifications. So, use it to avoid automatic invites going (on your behalf) to your friends who may find it annoying.

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