Technology – Page 19

Acer’s Special Promo Offers For This Valentine’s Day

February 11, 2011 by Raj Agrawal Leave a Comment

Offers ranging from vouchers for movie tickets, lunch buffets and gifts from Reebok.

Acer, the world’s third largest technology giant has introduced an attractive end customer scheme to celebrate Valentine’s Day this season. With its special promo -“Acer Love Machine Offer”, the consumer can now charm their valentine with free couple tickets to their favourite movies or a gift voucher to an extravagant lunch buffet at a fine dining restaurant or a Reebok gift voucher. The offer will be valid from 11th February – 28th February 2011 targeting its end consumers. Customers can avail this offer on purchase of an Acer Aspire notebook only available at selected stores across India.

Acer has launched several end consumer schemes and this Acer Love Machine offer too will benefit its users. Customers can choose from the multiple options available to keep impressing their valentine.

Option #1: In Keep the Love alive: Customers can opt for a movie card of 12 Months validity, which entitles them to get 2 free movie tickets every month for 12 Months! worth Rs. 2400/- valid between Monday – Friday covering 70 cities across India.

Option#2: Romance in Style: Customer can avail 2 x (movie + lunch buffet) voucher and treat their loved ones to movie as well as lunch buffet in a fine dine restaurant worth Rs. 2400/-.

Option#3: Gift wrap your love: Customers can opt for a Reebok gift voucher worth Rs. 1500/-and redeem it for a merchandise of their choice at Rebook retail outlets.

Customers can now surprise their valentine with any of the above options. To avail this offer, a customer needs to follow three simple steps – purchase an Acer Aspire notebook, register on the Acer website and the gift vouchers will be delivered as per the consumer’s preference in minimum two weeks time.

We at Acer have a clear understanding of the mindset of our consumers, especially the youth and we are extremely confident that this offer will be immensely popular among them during this season. We have always taken an extra step to tailor our end customer offerings to suit the preferences and needs of the key consumer segments. said Mr. S Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India.

This season too, Acer has introduced an enticing offer for its end consumers. Apart from offering the consumer the satisfaction of owning a world-class product from a global brand, Acer has lent its consumers the reason to celebrate the special moments in their life. Keep impressing your valentine as you purchase an Acer Aspire Notebook and let the celebration continue.

* Terms and conditions apply.

Why facebook will never have a dislike button

February 9, 2011 by Raj Agrawal 4 Comments

Facebook survives because of its efforts to improve the quality of relationships and interactivity among users. This is bound by a very fragile thread and can be easily damaged with stupid features like a “dislike button”. Here is what I think.

facebook-dislike-button — Image credit: TechDigest

Facebook has been successful mainly because of its ability to connect people and suggest users to make relations possible, even with strangers.

What makes a social network really “the best” is the way it handles and promotes conversations, and hence establishing relationship among users.

What makes a dislike button really inappropriate? Well, let’s face it. Facebook doesn’t trust its users. The chances of a dislike button being misused are very high. Internet trolls, haters, accidental dislikes, pay-to-dislike-a-post, etceteras are only a handful of examples how the button can be abused. This will discourage conversations among users.

If you like something on a social network, you can choose to like/ up-vote it. If you don’t agree with something, you can simply write in a comment expressing your disagreement. If more people agree with your disagreement, they’re likely to put a like on your comment. This get’s a conversation going and opinions are shared. Conversations make a social network SOCIAL.

Introducing one sloppy feature like a dislike button can quickly destroy the integrity of Facebook. It would be asocial.

If Bing is copying Google, then Yahoo is copying Google too!

February 6, 2011 by Raj Agrawal 2 Comments

Lets not forget the recent revelation of yet another idea stealing attempt by Microsoft also applies to Yahoo.

Not very recently, Yahoo! and Microsoft entered into a deal where Microsoft’s Bing will be the search engine for all Yahoo! websites. This deal has been agreed to continue for 10 years from the date. Now, very recently Google accused Bing of copying their search results, Microsoft rubbished this claim and in response, Google backed their claim with valid statements. Bing was busted. Google thinks of one possibility being that Microsoft has been monitoring the user behaviour and modifying it’s search results accordingly with it’s toolbar on the user’s computer. Google finds this unethical because they spend a significant amount of money, time on R&D to construct and improve their search engine’s capability.

So, what does this point to? This means Yahoo! search may also be consciously or unconsciously copying the search results from Google because of the fact that it’s search algorithm is primarily being powered by Bing.

google-vs-microsoft-bing-vs-yahoo — A comical illustration

The following statement from Yahoo! – Microsoft deal’s press release has a lot to say about this,
Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing online advertising technology.

SearchEngineJournal posted an article stating how Google backed up it’s claims, Amit Singhal, the Google Fellow who’s backing up the accusations, runs us through the entire story. It starts with the term “tarsorrhaphy,” a surgical procedure that almost no one knows about — and that Google was the first to find the common misspellings for. While Google queries for the misspelled word returned the typical smug “didn’t you mean” suggestion, Bing seemed to be lifting the top Google result without bothering to give the corrected spelling.

However, this was just the start. Google reps started looking at the query results from Bing, focusing on both common and bizarre terms to get a sense of the field. The definite trend was that the top Google result, even when it was “something [Google] would consider mistakes of our algorithms,” was displayed as the top Bing result.

Things really start to point toward one of the reasons behind Yahoo! – Bing’s search deal. Does this mean both giants had a meticulous plan to fight against Google Search’s success by striking such deal in the name of research and innovation?