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We’re back! Well almost….

After a long break from blogging to focus more on business and clients, our new corporate website is live. So, stop by the emagine group website and have a glance through the website and the complete portfolio of our design work.

I will be returning to the blogosphere in a few weeks.

Mark Ghosh tells a scary story about the security protocols and customer service at global search engine giant Google and how a life-time of work was lost.

In spite of changing my passwords multiple times, changing login names, changing email addresses and trying all authentication tricks to fix Orkut, the miscreants still regained control of my profile. Instead of falling for the FUD about viruses and worms on my computer (many well wishers who reported the problem to me suggested that I format my computer because i had a key logger that was sending my password to the hackers, completely untrue), I decided to do some research on the problem. The more I learned, the less confidence I had in Orkut and Google’s intention and/or ability to fix the problems.

The Orkut application stores cookies in such a way that if your cookie is ever recreated by someone else or transmitted to someone else, they can use that cookie to log in to Orkut as you. forever. No matter how you change your credentials, you have no recourse of regaining control. So if you ever get caught in a phishing scam that sends your password to someone else and they recreate your orkut_state cookie, they can login as you forever. I will not go into the technical details but the link above discusses it. If you log into your Orkut account using Firefox, using a cookie editing plugin, look for a cookie called orkut_state and copy the contents. Then log out of Orkut. After logging out, re-add the orkut_state cookie to Firefox with the cookie editing plugin and then visit Orkut, you will find yourself logged back in. Now I have tried changing my password, using a different browser, using a different machine from another location and other tricks with the same cookie and I have been granted access in all cases. From my research, it appears that Orkut expires the state cookie after 1 day (other reports talk about a 14 day expiration) but that problem is easily circumvented.

I have not tried the process that Mark lays out (because I am not an Orkut user) but for those that use Orkut (or Google Apps), you may want to check this out.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Thursday launched its Eurobond of $750 million for next 10 years in the international market at the interest rate of 6.875 per cent. The country received terrific subscription of the issue valuing $3.538 billion from the investors’ base in the global market, based on B+ rating of the country, but the government has decided to pick the offers up to $750 million. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told a press briefing that the investors base in the international markets posed unprecedented confidence in Pakistan’s ongoing economic reforms and its growing economy by subscribing the bond issue up to $3.538 billion. “The government has gone a long way to build Pakistan’s brand which is being given the warm welcome in the international market,” he said.

I stumbled on this website the other day, Spoke.com, while checking the web logs. Spoke.com seems to have lifted my profile and contact information from various networking and websites and listed it on their website as “validated” profile and contact information. I have a couple of problems with this.

First, I have never signed up with this website, nor submitted my information to them; thereby making this a violation of my privacy to list information about me on their website without my approval. Additionally, since the information that they have listed in both outdated and incorrect, I am interested in knowing what the purpose of the site is.

Also, I did a search on the internet for Spoke.com and found that Symantec had issued a Security Warning against this organization for gleaning information from Outlook address books including private phone numbers and personal email addresses and listing them on their site for spam mailer and lazy sales/marketing departments to use.

I found another blog, Phil Yanov, where someone had posted an email from a a Spoke representative that said:

“Spoke combines information from multiple sources, including published data, information available on the Web, and information validated by members. In most cases, information about a person, such as their name, title and company, has come from multiple sources and is not protected by copyright or trade secret laws. Spoke does not publish direct contact information such as a person’s direct e-mail address or direct-dial phone number.

When requested, Spoke will remove information about a person if it is proven to have been added in violation of the law, a non-disclosure agreement, or an employment agreement. Since Spoke regularly combines information from multiple sources, including the Web, Spoke cannot guarantee that information removed will not be recreated by another independent source.”

Who gives you the right to take our information that we have listed on our corporate websites and on membership only networking groups and use it for your personal gain?

Organizations like this need to be bounced off the Internet as they have no place in the business world.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
-Upton Sinclair

Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google’s Eric Schmidt are just two of the CEOs who work for a buck. Why do top executives give up their salaries?

by Moira Herbst

Richard Kinder, chief executive of Houston energy transportation and storage company Kinder Morgan, is not a poor man. But since he founded the company with Bill Morgan in 1997, he has drawn a salary of $1 and left his cabinet clear of any bonuses, stock awards, or option grants. He doesn’t use a corporate jet or chauffeured cars. He even cuts a personal check for his contribution to the health insurance plan.

To be sure, he lives more than comfortably off the dividends from his approximately 24 million shares in Kinder Morgan (KMI); annual payouts from his shares top $60 million. The value of the shares has also risen steadily in the last decade, closing on May 9 at $106.95. “I’m not saying I’ll need to get on the welfare line,” says Kinder. “But all my pay comes from the performance of the company. I’m opposed to guaranteed salary, stock, options, and the rest of it. The philosophy is that senior management does well when the company does well.”

An Exclusive Club

In an era of skyrocketing CEO pay and growing shareholder angst about it, a handful of chief executives are opting to draw a $1 paycheck or none at all. Eight CEOs in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index were paid $1 or less in 2006, along with eight smaller companies, according to executive compensation research firm Equilar. Among the most well-known are Steve Jobs of Apple and Eric Schmidt of Google, who will both face shareholders at their respective annual meetings on May 10.

The others are James Rogers of Duke Energy (DUK), Richard Fairbank of Capital One Financial, and Terry Semel of Yahoo (YHOO). The latest CEO to agree to a token base salary is John Mackey at Whole Foods Market, whose $1 salary took effect in January. Jerrold Perenchio of Univision Communications and William Ford Jr. of Ford Motor (F) also received no salary as CEO until 2006, when each stepped down to take the post of chairman. Read the rest of this entry »

Although the advertisement only ran once, I don’t think that anyone who read it the first time knew what they were part of. On the 2nd of January, 1915, The Saturday Evening Post ran a copy of “The Penalty of Leadership,” which even today holds great knowledge and advice for us. To give you some background, during the time that the ad was first run, Cadillac’s brand image was dependability. But when the 1915 V8 Touring model hit the market, numerous defects began to show and the brand image became tarnished. Cadillac’s main competitor, Packard, was using their brand image against them in their advertisements and was winning the sales battle. Cadillac’s answer was “The Penalty of Leadership.” Since its first publishing, Cadillac salespeople have requested copies for themselves and customer. In 1945, “The Penalty of Leadership” was voted the best ad of all time by the advertising industry, and according to Advertising Age (1998), this campaign is ranked 49th out of the top 100 ad campaigns of all time.

The popularity of the campaign was revived in 1967, when Cadillac mailed out scrolls of “The Penalty of Leadership” to its customer list. Elvis happened to be on that list. When he read it, he said that even though the piece of paper had been written before he was born, the author could have just as well been writing about him. Elvis framed the scroll and hung it near the desk in his office at the mansion. It still hangs in Graceland today for visitors to see.

In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition, the punishment fierce denial and detraction. When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work is merely mediocre, he will be left severely alone. If he achieve a masterpiece it will set a million tongues awagging. Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a common-place painting. Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build; no one will strive to surpass or to slander you unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius.

Long after a great work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious continue to cry out that it cannot be done. Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius. Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all. The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by.

The Leader is assailed because he is a Leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy, but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. There is nothing new in this, it is as old as the world and as old as the human passions of envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains the leader. Master Poet, Master Painter, Master Workman; each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages.

That which is great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. That which deserves to live, Lives.

As we enter a new year, filled with hopes and dreams for a better future and a better world, I urge you to take these words to heart. Let it be your resolution for the year: Stop listening to the peanut gallery. Be great and do something great. Do something that you can brag to your kids about!