The Tata Indicom Network: For most part of my usage, the connection has been good. MOST is the keyword there. Let me explain why. Probably the best part about it being the speed at which internet is accessible through the phone and the fast access to emails that I have. Now while it works, which for 90% of the time it does, it is great. However the remaining 10% time when it doesn’t, you are out of options. It simply wont work and the pathetic bit is that if you have landline and others from Tata Indicom, all go down at the same time. I would imagine a company of its stature having a better network than this. There were days when it did not work at all and there is nothing you can do about it and it has been quite a nuisance for us. I moved over from Airtel and I am not too happy about it as my former provider did not seem to have any such issues. Call drops are pretty high and you can actually see the undulating signals which are very annoying when you have urgent calls to make.

Lets Talk About The Blackberry 8830 Handset: If you have wanted to own a blackberry like I did, till recently there was not a better option. With the advent of the Blackberry BOLD that is set to change. For those like me , who don’t care much about taking pictures ( Camera Phones) and who are more importantly into phones for calls and emails, Blackberry 8830 is very good. Pretty robust I would say as it has slipped a couple of times from my hand and not a scratch on it. I do keep it in its cover though. It resembles in sturdiness to one of those nokia’s I would say. The only concern is with the roller/mouse which tends to get jammed at times. Once it does, all you can do is keep trying to rotate it a couple of times applying extra force to be able to get things going again. Quite a pain to be honest when that happens but personally the comfort otherwise outclasses the pain this causes. The call quality is excellent as long as the network is good. The processor speed is good for working with images, documents and emails. All in all, I would recommend it to anyone looking to buy it.

Now Lets Get To The Tata Indicom Service: All I can say is that you cant teach an old dog new tricks. These guys should really and I mean really get some sort of coaching in terms of accountability and customer service. Most of your calls when made to the customer service will make you wait at least 15-20 minutes, and mind you that’s just an optimistic time span. There have been instances when I completed my dinner with phone on speaker mode and still had to hear the recording say I need to have patience. Well my friend, its not patience I lack but personnel you lack in manning your support. Numerous incidents of the sort which leave a real sour taste in a users experience.

The Last Straw Which Broke The Camel’s Back: Now mind you, I am an avid Tata supporter which is having to say this. If you read my last experience you would have noted that I was all for giving them a chance to get things straightened as I certainly know that the top rung is amazing there.  What happened yesterday however was not only frustrating but down right HUMILIATING.

All my payments have always been made on time and I have a couple phones and generally make cheque payments. For my payments which were due 26^th August, 2009  my secretary had made the payments by the 20^th of the month. On 26^th that is yesterday I receive a call from Tata Indicom saying that my cheques had bounced because they were not signed. I guess that does happen at times when you have so many to sign. What I fail to understand though is how they accepted those cheques at the Tata Indicom TVH and also sent it to the bank without any processing. It must have passed through several hands and noone ever noticed an unsigned cheque. WOW! I was like, not a problem I will have it sent immediately. They said that there person is on his way and if I can make the payment it would be good. I was like that will be great.

The personnel came in and I made the payments in office itself. This was around 1 pm. Around 2 pm I realized that my phones were not working. All of them. The weird thing this time was that the voice said that I did not have the privilege to be making calls. I was like “WHY?”. For an hour or two I believed this was another of those glitches that happens but when  after hours it did not resolve I called up customer service. The guy tells me that my account has been suspended because of the bounced cheque. I explained him of what had happened and how I had made payments in the afternoon itself. He simply said “ I am sorry, but I cannot do anything about it and line will only be cleared once payment is received”

I hate swearing but in this case: WTF! A premium service provider which cares not a dime about its clients. With a spotless payment record and with due date for payment being yesterday, they give grace time, my connection was disconnected just cause of an unsigned cheque which was too evident a mistake. All this and I am not even past the due date of payment. Even hypothetically speaking, no one would send an unsigned cheque if he is a planning to evade. They seem to follow the logic “Guilty until proven innocent” which is certainly not the way to treat clients. Its 27^th today and I am still awaiting the connection to be restored.

Bottom line to this is, you simply cannot rely on there service at all. Thankfully, I had my Airtel service continued which kept me going in my hour of need. For those planning to use Tata Indicom, you might consider keeping an alternate phone number just in case. Oh and yes, don’t make Tata Indicom the primary contact number as you might just be out of reach too often.

PS :  For those wanting to read what i previously written of Tata Indicom, read

Tata Indicom – Blackberry 8830 Service Review

Wordpress Vs Joomla

It is about time that bloggers and webmasters alike should be aware of the various terminologies associated with Content Management Systems. Wordpress and Joomla! are both examples of commonly used content management software yet I find that many a times people are not fully aware of the. People just keep surfing through innumerable websites with no clue about which is the right one for them. Go through the paragraphs that follow before deciding on any of one of the above CMS:

While Joomla! has been in existence for quite some time, Wordpress is of a pretty recent origin. Joomla! Is basically a fork of Mambo. It has really picked up some serious heat in so far as the WAR OF THE CMS is concerned. The new entrant Wordpress has managed to acquire the topmost position in the world of blogging software whereas Joomla! remains at the top for content management systems.

Given here are some pros and cons of using Wordpress

1. Simplicity – this does not require the skill of an expert since it can be easily installed by anybody. It is quite easy as it does not require any modifications.
2. Affordability – Wordpress is suitable for smaller firms and non profit making organizations as it is affordable and requires least maintenance.
3. User friendly – it applications are not very complex which is make it a useful tool for website creators who wish to create a website that can gives a definite shape to their thoughts. It is so easy to understand that even the elderly, who may not be very technically, sound with latest techniques, can easily use it without much of a problem.
4. Blogging Utility – Wordpress is an excellent means for blogging as the the whole process can be carried out in a sequential manner.
5. Versatile – This content management tool though often used in the form of a blog has the additional benefit of being versatile. It can also be employed for creating a website that assists in management of documents within the business.
6. Developer Non-friendly – though wordpress serves to be a very functional tool for creating a general website but it fails to give desired results in the field of online shopping websites and other specialized forms of websites.
7. Lack of customization – most of the developers have complains with regard to wordpress as it does not allow any kind of customization. The customizations available to Wordpress are more from the design and look perspective then from the functional side.
8. Difficulty in Upgrading – upgrades can be too complicated and time consuming.

Some pros and cons of Joomla:

1. Designer friendly – Joomla is a software tool that helps designers in creating awesome websites.
2. Customization – It is serves to be an instrumental tool for developers and administrators because of it ability to manage modifications and web development on a large scale. It allows modifications without bringing any changes to original code by
3. Lack of flexibility and no ACL in the core platform– As of Joomla 1.5.10, it does miss out on a very critical component for development and that is the Access Control List (ACL). It is a much anticipated feature of J1.6 which is in development and hopefully that will really pull things together for Joomla!

Thus it is difficult to pass any judgment as to which software system is the best as each have their advantages and disadvantages. It is the matter of one’s choice keeping in mind the nature of content, its user friendliness and the time for development of the website.

Page rank sculpting is a process of minimizing the job of search engines like Google, where only relevant and sales prospective links of a website are displayed on a search result page. A website may contain anywhere from 20 pages to 1000s of pages. Assuming the site has information that the user requires based on the keywords he uses for his search, it becomes a very long drawn process of Google trying to pick a user specific link from the infinite pages a website contains. This is where Page rank sculpting could be made use.  As a result the flow from a website could be sculpted by only allowing customer relevant page links to flow through the Google search that are automatically page ranked, high.

It is not every web designer’s cup of tea to be an expert at page rank sculpting. As the name suggests- Page rank sculpting, one could justify this technique only when he knows the knack of carefully sculpting out those pages in the website that you would want Google to rank in its search engine index. How is this exactly done? In order to have your website successfully page rank sculpted, your SEO consultant needs to invest a lot of time understanding closely the factors that would enhance the popularity of the site, ultimately launching a new horizon to its success. The no-follow tool is used to clearly discriminate less powerful pages from the other for Google, leading it to picking up the link juice that are highly prospective from the customer point of view. In this process it should be taken care that the page rank sculpting doesn’t fissure out into relevant pages. This could have a disastrous or rather a very contradictory effect. Page rank sculpting is no child’s play and is not something that every Optimizer is actually good at. Ensuring the following things will give you smooth and prosperous outcomes from a page rank sculpting that you do for your online business.

Tips for using Page Rank Sculpting on your website :

1. Keep in mind to incorporate sculpting when the site is under construction itself as it saves you a lot of time and money.
2. A single pointed effort is the basic and primary ingredient this technique demands as any small aspect overlooked could reverse the effects.
3. Sculpting with various tools like META no index tags, robots.txt file or javascript could make page rank sculpting more effective.
4. Be aware of not leaking this strategy onto relevant pages as the very purpose of page rank sculpting goes down the drain.
5. Have a clear and organized plan before you begin with page rank sculpting your website. This makes things simpler and gives you a clear checklist to compare your work with.

Get the connoisseurs in the industry to play with this wonderful tool of page rank sculpting for you in order to see optimized results in the form of a successfully progressing online business.
Note : It has been much debated since  Google and other Search Engines adopted the NoFollow tag , you can read about it at Page Rank Sculpting – An anamoly In Google’s Policy?

Now lets look closer at “Cloaking”, a very well known Black Hat SEO technique which is banned by google and other search engines as well.

How Google defines cloaking in its webmaster is as  “Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines. Serving up different results based on user agent may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from the Google index”…

Did you read that carefully?? I sure hope you did.

Answer this then : Does not Page Rank Sculpting using “NOFOLLOW” come very close in premise to “CLOAKING” ?

Well, I am sure google has its best intentions in defining the “Nofollow” tag as it will definitely increase the quality of the links in its database if used properly. However, as they say, “Every tool can be made a weapon”  and in the same light, “nofollow” does provide the power to actually legitimately use cloaking.

People across the internet have had there own views and ways of explaining what they perceive from this anamoly in google’s policy.

My Understanding : I personally feel that google needs to probably change the definition of “Cloaking” to make it more specific. What we see here is basically the fact that google would consider a website being cloaked if, and only if the content provided to the search engine is not provided to the user as well, and the vice versa not applying. So primarily a set of pages can be made viewable to the search engine from a larger set of pages visible to the users. However the set viewable to the search engines should not be hid from the users and that in my opinion should be termed as “cloaking” in the webmasters documentation.

Why this makes sense : Cheating a search engine would by definition mean serving content to it which is not viewable by the Users of the site. However there can always be content on the website for the users which bears no particular interest from the search engine’s point of view. We already have the robot.txt and other mechanisms for doing the same and “nofollow” will just be another addon to the arsenal.

Though Page Rank Sculpting is a neat little way to squeeze the extra bit in the right direction, I would recommend going for it once your link building campaign has reached a threshold which cannot be breached without significant effort.

Conclusion : Google can always review there webmaster documentation to make it more specific , however I do not see how Page Rank Sculpting using Nofollow tags be considered anywhere close to deception.

Lets take a look at why should you choose PHP?

1. Ease Of Development: With relative ease of development for basic to medium sized websites ,it is a direct way of reducing cost of development for your project. The vast availability of quality individuals is definitely something to keep in mind as well.

2. Open Source: Having been built for Linux,Apache it is a free package and hence the cost of hosting your website will be significantly reduced.At the end the CBR( Cost Benefit Ratio) is what we all look for.

3. Light On the Servers: Websites built using PHP are much faster then its counterparts as PHP is very lightweight( well not in lbs or kg’s though) and does not take much processing power away.

4. Huge Development Community: The community is very active and hence you will never have to worry about support in terms of development teams or otherwise.

5. Most of the highly acclaimed Content Management Systems,Website Applications,E-Commerce Solutions are built on PHP. So well,if you choose any of them ,you are automatically voting for PHP (at times unknowingly).

The thoughts above are primarily from a non technical perspective and as such the technical jargon has been left out. I am sure I could have missed out a few issues and I would definitely want the community of PHP users to tell me if i did.

First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all the members of our SEO/SEM team at Astute Visions, as we have moved our PR from 0 to 3 in this update.

Page Rank itself has been a very debated issue all over the internet with various factions having there own ideas and tales to tell regarding what they consider as correct. All said , it is commonly accepted that PR is not the only measure used by google for deciding its SERP ranks,though it could be one of the many. What we do know is that it does prove to be a metric so far as link maturity is concerned and for those interested in it, monetization of links as well.

During this update, there is a very interesting observation that has come to my notice.

Date : 05.04.2009 – One of the domains that I own, www.jamshedpurbiz.com , which is a site presently under development and with very little content and absolutely no SEO done to it and presumably no links pointing to it, has moved from PR0 to PR4 within this update. Exciting , isnt it?? I wasnt checking on the PR but since we were planning to revive the project and get things going , I happened to check the site after like 2 month. What a surprise !

While not much can be read into it, it does lay serious questions as to how Google assigns its Page Rank to a website and what is the relevance it holds.

Call it a miracle, a April Fool Joke pulled on me  or an early Birthday gift given to me by google, it sure is something that is strange and out of place as far as happenings are concerned.

Be it an online business or an offline business, marketing your products or services is the diciest thing. At times in spite of the fact that you have a very well designed and developed website that is even properly search engine optimized, you probably haven’t seen a phenomenal increase in sales. Are you pondering over how best you could reach out to people on this World Wide Web? Did you know the best or rather the most natural marketing strategy is the ‘word of mouth’. When people are actually experiencing the effects of your products or services, nothing can actually stop them from talking about it, be it good or bad. On the Internet you will find umpteen ways of reaching customers or vice versa through the social media-marketing tool. The number of social networking sites or for that matter even social bookmarking sites are the actual hubs for interaction with customers. Now let us look at the different ways in which this is achieved.

1. Proclaim, who you are: If you’ve heard of sites like Myspace, you will find profiles of people with descriptions of what they do, what they like, so on and so forth. If you have a product online, nothing could be a better option than mentioning in a line or two, saying you deal in the same. Through this social media marketing technique you could also include a link to your online web page that could give interested people a destination to what they are looking for. This way by proclaiming that you deal in certain products or services, you broaden your prospect of sales.
2. Get to know what people want: Online users who have similar interest normally discuss and give opinions on open forums and in groups. Some commonly found groups are the MSN groups, the Google groups and the Yahoo groups. You will notice that people love interacting and sharing their opinions on certain products and services. One could easily hunt out the relevant forums and participate. Similarly an online businessman could enter such groups or forums and respond to the questions people have about what he or she deals in. This effective method of social media marketing where one can get a direct feedback from a customer about his/her products or services will indeed result in improvisation if required or at least root out gaps by educating people on the usage of relevant products or services.
3. Social Bookmarking: A lot of social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us, blummy or Furl help customers to bookmark their favorite sites. This way the customer gets to interact with you and many others passing by get to know of these book marked links that lead to your very own website. Social bookmarking is considered a very effective social media marketing tool.
4. Take the initiative: As a provider, take the initiative to speak to your customers directly on what they think about your products or services. This may need some skilled tactics where you get a customers opinion without pushing yourself too much on them. It is important that the provider doesn’t sound like he is marketing his product. Respect your customers as you take valuable feedbacks from them through your interaction on sites like Myspace.

A pleasant interaction between a provider and customer that is knowledge filled, interesting and genuine is sure a positive sign as far as promoting your business is concerned. The increased popularity of the social networking sites is a clear indication that people learn and acquire a lot with sharing, thus giving scope for a natural process of social media marketing.

Blackberry 8830 And Tata Indicom Reviewed

We are all very acquainted with the Tata Brand Name , which in India is synonymous with the line from Mr. Ratan Tata – “A promise is a promise” . One would expect that Tata Indicom ( a Tata group company) would have similar ethics.

It is a pretty long review I have written here which only goes to show my level of frustration and then surprise that ensued with the experience. I shall provide the latest engagement I had with them and which happens to be  the third experience i have had with Tata Indicom in the last 6 months . How it turned out is something you can decide for yourself at the end of the read.

I had before this experience gifted my father a Blackberry from Tata Indicom . The experience was soured by the fact that it took 5 visits and 2 weeks for the personnel at Tata Indicom to resolve the issues.

Date 20.03.2009 : I went to the Tata Indicom True Value Hub which is located in Bistupur , Jamshedpur to ask about the formalities of getting the Blackberry service.  Since mine , unlike my fathers was a new Indicom connection , i needed the update.  To my pleasant surprise , the cost of BlackBerry had dropped from Rs 27,000 to Rs 23,000 ( I got a dealers price : retail is still 24k) . I was asked to bring the document next time over and get handset as they did not have it with them. I paid some deposit and off i went.

Date 23.03.2009 :  Equipped with all documentation asked for , I reached at the TVH. Took about an hour to get all the papers in and finally have the handset in my hand.  Well, though i had the handset i was told it will take around 48 hours to activate the handset and get things going.

Date 26.03.2009 : I get a call from the Customer Support and she asks me to to provide the ESN number which was needed for activation. I provided that to her on the phone. I am told i need to come the next day and to bring the phone along for activation .

My thoughts, finally things are getting better at Tata Indicom

Date 27.03.2009 : On the third trip, 3 days after i had provided the documentation I was asked to come to the True Value hub for activation purpose. I called before leaving and reached the hub at the appointed hour. The saleswoman , Ms. Simmi Kumari asked me to wait while they activated the phone. 1 hour later i was told that i had given them the wrong ESN phone code( Wow ! I get blamed for doing there job   Can You Imagine ??? ). On asking her to provide me the reference as to where she had written it down , we came to know that the number noted was indeed correct ( luckily she had the paper where she had written it) and then she accepted that it was a mistake on their own part. I am very forgiving to people who accept there fault and so all i did was just smile. They said they would fix it soon and so i waited.

1 hours past I am told i will have to come back again later as it was not done yet. On my insistence the superior , Ms. Mana and her superior (I forget his name) requested me saying that by 04:00 pm I would receive the phone at my home.I was asked to deposit the phone and that i did , no receipts were provided.

I waited till 04:00 pm and then called on which i was put on hold twice for 6 minutes each and the phone disconnected. Finally Ms. Mana came to the phone and said they wanted some more time to find out what had happened. On asking for her senior’s contact number she said ” He is busy with lot of work. I am afraid , I cannot provide his contact number” which is strange ,as it was on his request that i had left the phone with them and it was he who had made the promise. She said she would call in 5 minutes and noone has called for next 2 days.

As you can very well imagine I was so bugged that i almost swore never to use a Tata Indicom product for the rest of my life. ” These scoundrels took people for a ride and treated there customers like junk ” is what i said to myself as i was  very annoyed at there lackadaisical approach.

Date : 28.03.2009 – I wrote to customer complaint and the response i got from them seemed like a cliche reply with absolutely no reference made to the behaviour of the people in charge and 4 days waiting period for me to find out where my handset is and what is being done about the problem.

What does one do????  Is there anything I can do to get heard from someone sane enough , within the company.  Then a thought came to my mind,  which i am sure most people having an issue would probably never think of.
Guess What !!!!!!!

Yes. I wrote an email to the Managing Director of Tata Indicom ( Mr. Anil Sardana). Got his email address  from undisclosed sources, of course

In the letter i mentioned the entire details of what i have been through for the last week and the hopelessness of the service i had received.

LETTER TO THE MANAGING DIRECTOR ( Mr. ANIL SARDANA)

Note : I have removed all email address’s from the  letter to preserve individual interests.

From: Rahul Kumar
To: Anil Sardana
Sent: Mon Mar 30 07:45:21 2009
Subject: Obscene treatment of Blackberry Service Request

Dear Mr Sardana,

I would like to bring to notice the unfair and absolutely ridiculous treatment of Blackberry Users by the Tata Indicom True Value Hub.( Bistupur Main Road Branch Jamshedpur)

My apologies for having to write a long episode but it was imperative that i brought forth to your notice the amount of harrassment i have been through due to my decision to stick to Tata Indicom. I will just have to say that i remember the words of the man who is known for his words, Mr. Ratan Tata,  ” A promise is a promise” and if not responded to , I am afraid i will have to question him about the same.

To bring to light the fact that this is the second instance of my dealing with Tata Indicom BlackBerry Service which has been dealt in a callous manner and which leaves a very bad experience for me to tell as far as service is concerned  at Tata Indicom.

The first was when i had bought a Blackberry for my father’s use , who is a senior Tata Motors employee. To his and mine utter dismay , it had taken 5 visits and more then 2 weeks of insistence on his part to retrieve the same.

Due to our 25+ years of association with the Tata Group i decided to give them a second try while purchasing a Blackberry service for my own personal use.

I had applied for my Blackberry a couple days ago and after 2 visits ( first made to get the details and the second to provide the documentation as required along with the payment of Rs 23,000 as required for which i have the receipt) I was hoping that there would be no further hassles.

Phone No : **********

Date : 27.03.2008 : On the third trip, 3 days after i had provided the documentation I was asked to come to the hub for activation purpose. I called before leaving and reached the hub at the appointed hour. The saleswoman , Ms. Simmi Kumari asked me to wait while they activated the phone. 1 hour later i was told that i had given them the wrong phone code( She had asked me for this a day earlier over phone). On asking to her provide me the reference as to where she had written it down , we came to know that the number noted was indeed correct ( luckily she had the paper where she had written it) and said that it was a mistake on their own part. They said they would fix it soon and so i waited.

1 hours past I am told i will have to come back again later as it was not done yet. On my insistence the superior , Ms. Mana and her superior (Name not known) requested me saying that by 04:00 pm I would receive the phone at my home.I was asked to deposit the phone and that i did , no receipts were provided.

I waited till 04:00 pm and then called on which i was put on hold twice for 6 minutes each and the phone disconnected. Finally Ms. Mana came to the phone and said they wanted some more time to find out what had happened. On asking for her senior’s contact number she said ” He is busy with lot of work. I am afraid , I cannot provide his contact number” which is strange ,as it was on his request that i had left the phone with them and it was he who had made the promise. She said she would call in 5 minutes and noone has called since.

Date : 28.03.2009 – I wrote to customer complaint and the response i got them seemed like a cliche reply with absolutely no reference made to the behaviour of the people in charge and 4 days waiting period for me to find out where my handset is and what is being done about the problem. I have attached the response to the end of this email. It is unacceptable to me that this is the kind of service that comes along with a premium Blackberry connection.

I am utterly disappointed with the service , or rather the lack of it. No communication, an overbearing attitude and a complete lack of professionalism is what amazes me. I would like you to take a personal interest in this matter to understand that if “Tata Indicom” wishes to become the number one service provider in the country, there is a lot it leaves desired for.

Looking forward to your response.

regards,

Rahul Kumar

Astute Visions
Managing Director
Website Development and Internet Marketing Company
Office Phone : (0657) 6544594
Mobile : +919934181511
Email : XXXXXXXXXX

From: Anil Sardana

To: Rahul Kumar

Cc: Pradeep Dwivedi

Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 9:07 AM

Subject: Re: Obscene treatment of Blackberry Service Request

Dear Rahul

Thanks for the feedback. While I am traveling abroad, I am endorsing this mail to my senior colleague Mr Pradeep Dwivedi, who would ensure immediate corrective and preventive action.

Pradeep – after due corrections, please let me know names with shortfall in performance, for exemplary action!!

Pls keep me informed on ATR.

Regards

Anil Sardana
Sent from My Blackberry@Tata Indicom

Was i shocked ?? Yes , absolutely . I guess anyone would be.  The MD of a multi million $ company who is travelling abroad , whose sales representatives do not have the courtesy or the time to reply or correspond with me for days  and who made my play merry go round for days , replies to my email of duress within 2 hours . WOW !

The best is yet to come !!!!!!!!!!

I had the regional heads come over personally to my house with the blackberry the same afternoon of  30.03.2009. Not only was the phone activated, but they offered there sincere condolence on the issue.  The matter was taken care of  so professionally thereafter that it made me wonder whether i was dealing with the same company.

I received some 20 or so calls from various cells of  Tata Indicom in  the following days to ensure i had no problem with the service.

CONCLUSION :  At the end of this episode , all i can say is that the company is run by a thorough professional , Mr. Sardana of course.  His responsiveness definitely goes a long way in making sure I can bank upon Tata Indicom for my needs.  However , about the after sales service , it is still a big QUESTION MARK (?) .

I have written this and am posting it so that people  can actually take hint and no , not start emailing the MD ( wont be easy getting his email id anyways ) but do take things up with senior management of a company. Definitely helped me , and am sure will help others as well.