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Fonetwish lets you access Facebook on your Mobile Phone Without Internet or a Data Plan in India for Rs 1 per day, unlimited

Do you have an old mobile phone, like the Nokia 1100, that has no browser and can do little more than make phone calls? Or are you stuck in some remote place where there’s no Internet or no other form of data (EGDE/GPRS/3G) connectivity is available?

Not a problem. You can still use your Facebook account in India by dialing *325# (or *fbk#) from your mobile phone – this service requires no data plan or Internet and it will even work on phones of the Stone Age. Here’s a quick tour:

Use Facebook without the Data Plan

Facebook India has partnered with Fonetwish to bring Facebook on every mobile phone without requiring any apps or even the Internet.

You dial the *325# number, then enter your Facebook username and password and you are in. You can then send number based commands to access various features of Facebook, chat with friends who are online, add new people to your friends list, and more.

I played with the service for some time and it was a nice experience overall. If there were a Unix-like shell interface for Facebook, it would be much similar. Fonetwish says that this service is currently available for Airtel, Aircel, Idea and Tata Docomo users in India.

It may be too much work to read your Facebook news feed stories one by one but this is a good option to quickly update your Facebook status or for chatting with friends who are online. The price is reasonable too – you just have pay a subscription fee of 1.00 per day for unlimited usage.

via Use Facebook on your Mobile Without Internet or a Data Plan.

Whatever perception you have about Delhi Traffic police, there is an attempt by authority to connect with netizens and Facebook is the chosen platform for the same.

Delhi traffic police has launched a FB page which within few weeks of the launched has garnered 2,900 fans.

What is interesting to note about the FB page is that most of the official replies are same as what you get in the real world, i.e. ‘we will look into this and get back to you’; though getting a reply from Delhi traffic police is in itself a big achievement for most of us.

There are a few useful notes/data that Delhi traffic police has shared, for instance, accident analysis, but beyond that we certainly hope that this is not an eyewash attempt for CWG (Common Wealth Games).

Given that CWG is just around the corner, Delhi needs to build a solid image of a friendly place and FB route is surely an interesting strategy (to display their ‘openness’/friendliness).

And we certainly certainly hope that cops have attended {refreshed} 101 of politeness courses for CWG.

Related posts:

1. Top Social Media Traffic Sources for India – Facebook, Digg, SU and Twitter
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3. Facebook Driving More Traffic to Yahoo than Google [Power to Social Media]

For Google, IPL’s YouTube partnership is so important that they have started promoting a specially created page for IPL.

Worldwide, Google has promoted a few products (like Droid) on the homepage, but I believe this is the first time, Google India is promoting a landing page from Google.co.in.

The special landing page created for IPL 2010 is nothing but a major attempt to promote the IPL’s YouTube channel [read: Google India/Youtube Grabs 2 years Exclusive Web Rights to IPL].

Interestingly, the video (as of writing this post) is about SRK watching the IPL match – talks of Google making a tectonic shift from being a technology company to a ‘media’ company.

Also see: Watch IPL – III on Youtube for Free [Live Streaming]

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Few years back, Gmail had an April fool prank ‘Gmail Paper’ that offered users to send email via traditional postal service.

Indian postal department has taken a leaf out of the prank and has launched ePost Corporate Service that enables companies to send business emails through the internet across the country.

In order to use the service, corporates need to open up a business account with the postal department (which is free of cost) and then send emails to postal department which will print the email and deliver them to the address.

The service has been soft-launched in Kerala on January 1, and will be extended to the rest of the country later.

Department of Posts will offer complete solution – right from printing, packaging, post printing and delivery; and has setup two printing facilities in Delhi and Kolkata.

The companies would need to provide data for their business mails. The postal department would do the programming and prepare the layout, print, package and deliver the product (postal department will charge Rs 6 per page of email).

The mails could include credit card statements, mobile phone bills and other marketing related information.

Great initiative that will enable companies to reach out to areas where even the courier service do not have a presence in.

At the face of it, the service might seem to be a ‘funny thing to do’, but it does solve a real problem statement. Moreover, given that Internet penetration hasn’t reached the rural India, what’s your take on this service?

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Send Email Via Post- Indian Post Office Launches ePost Corporate Service

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Google India has attempted interesting things over the last few months – right from Internet Bus Project to the apptitude challenge and even launching an aggressive print/billboard campaign for it’s sms search service.

And now, Google is advertising search in city supplements,as spottedby Vibhushan.

VIbhushan shares some of his perspective on Google’s print media campaign

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I saw a quarter-page advertisement from Google in ‘Nagpur Times’ (city supplement of Nagpur edition of The Times of India). It had a message “Take off to exciting destinations. Keep your airfare on ground.” and asked readers to search on internet to find cheap airfares and hotels. It has a screen shot of Google search box with query “Cheap tickets Goa”.

I was amazed on seeing direct print advertising from Google, and wanted to Tweet about it, so I checked online edition of TOI, but sadly TOI does not have Nagpur edition online. I checked city supplements from other cities to see if this is nationwide campaign from Google, but could find only this ad in Ahmedabad city supplement (of the cities edition available online). However the tag line there was different. In Ahmedabad city edition, the ad carried message “How to remove the excess weight from your airfare”. And the search query in this ad was “Cheap tickets Kerala”.

My observations on these are:

· Advertisement is about searching on internet, and not on Google. Looks like Google believes that if anyone from these tier II cities (in terms of internet penetration) search on internet, it will be on Google only!

· While the message in Nagpur is about cheaper airfares, that in Ahmedabad is about reducing the baggage weight. Also the destination in the search query change per city. Google has some smart brains designing these campaigns J

· What makes Google go into print advertisement in India, that too in such a targeted fashion that it has different communication message in different cities? Google has often said that for it to grow in emerging markets like India, it will have to grow the market; and may be it believes cities like Nagpur and Ahmedabad offer the right promise for them

· And lastly, when Google believes that it makes sense in advertising about their services in a city like Nagpur, our own desi Time of India thinks otherwise, and does not care to have Nagpur edition online (wonder what extra cost they will incur to have all their editions online!)

Google has never advertised itself, especially on any of the mass media channels. The TVC for Chrome browser in Japan created quite a buzz about Google selling itself on mass medium. It would be interesting to see if this shift towards advertising on mass media is a temporary one or if Google has some totally different plans for Indian market.

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What’s your take on these campaigns? Should other Internet companies take a leaf out of Google’s campaign (and stop wasting money in senseless campaigns)

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Google goes offline – Launches Print Campaigns to Promote Search

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The Indian govt. has donned Talibani hat and is gearing up to control Internet and information disseminated in the upcoming IT bill.

The last updated IT bill was passed in 2008 and the latest changes sounds like an attempt to control information.

Here are a few points from the amendment:

• The Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India shall designate and notify in official Gazette, an officer of the Central Government, not below the rank of a Joint Secretary, for issuing directions for blocking for access by the public any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource
• The designated officer may by order direct any Agency of the Government or intermediaries to block for access by the public any information or part thereof generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource for any of the reasons specified in sub-section (1) of section 69A of the Act.
• Any person may send their complaint to the concerned Organisation for blocking of access by the public any information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in any computer resource.
• In the event of approval of the Request by the Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India, under Rule (14) and Rule (15), the Designated Officer will direct the Intermediaries to block the offending information generated, transmitted, received, stored or hosted in their computer resource for public access within the time limit specified in the direction.

The missing link in the entire process is provision for one to contest the decision. Designated officers have all the right to block what they feel violates the rule.

Reasons to block (if you violate the following):

• Interest of sovereignty or integrity of India
• Defence of India
• Security of the State
• Friendly relations with foreign States
• Public order
• For preventing incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence relating to above

New Agency – Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT)

Govt. is planning to start a CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) which shall function as the trusted referral agency for cyber users in India for responding to cyber security incidents and will assist cyber users in the country in implementing measures to reduce the risk of cyber security incidents.

Essentially, CERT can ask service providers to share any data it wants!

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Before things get on to you and your site, you can mail your views to Dr. Gulshan Rai at grai@mit.gov.in

More details here

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Govt. can block websites (and you cannot contest the decision) – IT Act Bill

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