Knonie has been moved to WordPress blog...

To give some more flexibility to my blogging experience, I have moved my blog to a new location.
It would take some time until I move my old posts and start sharing new stuff, so keep visiting:

blogs.knonie.com

---

I Heart Pakistan ♥

Here is my version of the famous rebus "I ♥ NY" logo designed by Milton Glaser back in 1970s. I tried to give it a Pakistani Feel, by using the Flag green color for Heart and Using PK initials for Pakistan. It says "I ♥ PK", "I Heart Pakistan", or simply "I Love Pakistan"

I Heart Pakistan

---

Octopus Paul is a Star... But Bad-Grammar is even more interesting...

Ever since those correct predictions made by that eight-armed mollusk created a hype during this FIFA 2010 World Cup, octopus Paul has become a kind of pop icon.

Coming to Facebook, the presence of Paul can be seen in the form of many third-party applications.
Let me share two of my observations as screen-shots.

See this:

Just check the Grammar of the developers...
"What did Octopus Paul predicted for you?" should be "What did Octopus Paul predict for you?"
Hey guys... You're making an application for the public, and what kind of impression you're making here. What you're doing is not even a slang.

I checked another application, and still, you can see the weak grammar. "an Octopus" is written as "a Octopus". And then "asked" is termed as "asked to".
"David asked to a Octopus Paul:" is certainly something that's hardly English. One cannot expect that the team of application developers overlooked it and no one noticed it.

And here's the interesting part, where the Paul answers your questions, and see what my friend has asked:

Shuja asked to a Octopus Paul:
octopus paul kamina kutta haina? [Don't you think Octopus Paul is a mean dog?]


And the answer was: Always the same. The answer is YES!

---

Interesting Text Message responses after Facebook Ban

After Facebook was blocked in Pakistan, I received a really interesting text message from a friend. That text message has a line mimicking Facebook's notification like:
"So and so has tagged a photo of you".
Below that, there was a picture of donkey drawn in ASCII characters.

I shared it with few of my friends to see how they get it during that time. I received quite different types of responses. I'm posting few of them here.

That's the text message I sent:

Knonie Dost has tagged a photo of you...

 (\./)
 /.".)"^----;";_
 \,,/"( ,     ,   ) \
       //\\ //\\

:-P

Few of the responses are listed below. I have changed the real names to initials for privacy reasons.

---

Mannan likes this

[- Mannan Saddique]

---

Shooo cuteeee
:-*

[- Maanie, "Imran Khalid"]

---

Hahaha. today i was dicusng u wid ur x-collegue "A.R". dat nw knonie has limitd social life wid out facebok.

[- Abdul Basit]

---

Hello! Knonie dost.

[- Hadi Raza]

---

Not allowed. Site restricted. [...]

[- Hasnat Mehmood]

---

Haha yeah, that looks like me.
"S. A" likes your photo. :-P

[- S. A]

---

Hehe :-D
Thank you Knonie Dost.
Like*.

[- Sharjeel Butt]

---

Lol =p funny =p

[- C. Ch]

---

---

Fahad Naeem has tagged a photo of you.

(\./)
/.".)"^----;";_
\,,/"( , , ) \
//\\ //\\

6 Comments:

*)Hahahaha bohat aala...
*)awsum
*)haha lolz..
*)nice.
*) fitt pic hy
*) yaar ye kb ki hay?

lets show them we dnt need any facebook we hav our own! ;-)

[- Fahad Naeem, Also by Bilal Asad]

---

Oh no. Knonie yai kia. Buri baat friends ko aisa Nahi kehtay! But fact remains the same and that is I Love u! Have a great weekend...my balance finished talk to u later!

[- Bilal Nasr]

---

Hahahaha!

[- Saad Omer]

---

Hahaha, never thought of facebook mobile! :-D

[- Ismail Tariq]

---

Hahahahaha missing fb? :P

[- Malik Sarmad]

---

So cute :D

[- Bilal Hussayn Asad]

---

"S. Z" commented on her photo:
:)

[- S Z]

---

Ye Tumne kab se anmol moti send kerna start kr diay.. :P

[- Ghayyur Jadoon]

---

Are u against fb being banned in pak !?

[- Hamzah Jamil]

---

Facebook itna yaad araha hai kya :p

[- Ahmed Faraz]

---

Yet another Desi Facebook... Some painful observations

Recently, I came across another replica of Facebook, apart from PakFacebook, called MillatFacebook.

While visiting it, I got some interesting observations that I'm sharing here.

In fact, all these desi replicas of Facebook remind me of the advertisement techniques where some issue, usually, religiously oriented, is highlighted and people are told that we should not use these foreign things, and we MUST switch to our local cloned versions of these products. These local brands cash the situation and try to gather customers. Sometimes it's the entire America that we should boycott, and we should not drink Coke/Pepsi, and then there are those ill-tasted Amrat-Cola, that usually highlighted that religious part somewhere in their slogans and ad-compaigns.

Coming to MillatFacebook, I wonder why any social networking site specially for Muslims need to have the word Facebook in it?

Why "Pak Facebook" and "Millat Facebook", that now I'm expecting some "Watan Facebook", "Mulk Facebook", "Islam Facebook", etc. Can't they even come up with any title without the word Facebook in it? And then, this same Blue color, almost same interface and more or less same features, means, no creativity... That in fact depicts an overall slave-mind.

Here's the screen-shot of the very first welcome screen. [Click to enlarge]

And the welcome message reads:

"MillatFacebook helps you connect and share with more than 1.57 Billion Muslims and Sweet people from other Religions."

So, they say they are providing a platform for connecting more than 1.57 Billion Muslims, as if they actually have this many members.

And after logging in, we can see a Notice in BOLD, as seen in the screen-shot. [Click to enlarge]

The very first line of this notice says:

Dear Bother/Sister, !! CONGRATULATIONS & Salam to all: Over 70,000 Muslims already united as One Millat/Ummah at MFB.

Wow, so they say they already have 70,000 members... But what a marketing technique.

Upon browsing, it's revealed that in fact they don't have this much real members, perhaps not even a 1000, and they might have used some programming techniques to show some users from all over the world, with no data, but only names.

Then, the next part of that notice says that "We are doing a server upgrade to ensure high speed..."

So, a site serving so many users need to take "48 hours" to upgrade, and they don't even have some backup or temporary alternative server?

Then, upon further researching about the domain name, i.e. millatfacebook.com, I found out that it is registered on 20th May, 2010.

Here's a screen-shot of these records:

Now, we know that due to that [so-called] Anti-Islamic issue, planned to be held on 20th May, [as discussed here], Facebook was blocked in Pakistan from 19th May onwards. That was, in fact the best time to launch a new site, because Facebook is not accessible in Pakistan. So, they might have come up with the idea and created this site. And here, they are claiming to have 70,000 members from all over the world. In only 10 days, they got so many "members"... It's quite hard for me to digest, especially when the site has a borrowed name, features, and such worse quality of service.

I took these screen-shots in the afternoon, and now, at night, while I visited this site, they are DOWN.

And just look at the quality of the Notice this page is displaying, image below: [Click to enlarge]

And what a surprise for me, now they decided to even increase the number of their members in this new notice, as it reads:

"Dear Brother/Sister, !! CONGRATULATIONS & Salam to all
Almost 90,000 Muslims already United as One Millat/Ummah at MFB."

So, during a span of few hours, they got 20,000 [Twenty thousand] more members, even while their site is temporary down for upgrading.

My idea here is not to discourage or humiliate anyone but why people use Religion as a tool, and then, why they tell such blunt lies in the name of Religion? I'm not aware of any Religion that encourages deceiving your fellows.

I appreciate their efforts, and perhaps, according to them, they are serving and saving the respect and integrity of Muslims by doing all this.

May God give us the vision to see things clearly!

Amen!

---