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How to decline Facebook request

A colleague I just met at work has invited me to be their friend on Facebook. I don't want to offend them, but nor do I want to share my candid photos and lousy Scrabble scores with someone I hardly know. Can I ignore their invite?

"Can I be your friend?" might work as an ice-breaker among small children, but it's not a question you hear often between adults, at least not outside of Las Vegas.

Friendship, it is generally understood, is a relationship that evolves through shared interests, common experiences and a primeval need to share your neighbor's power tools.

Yet for many people, Facebook permits a return to the simplicity of the schoolyard.

Rather than inviting someone to be our Facebook friend only after we've become friends in the real world, many of us are using Facebook as a short-cut around all that time-consuming relationship building.

Why bother asking someone you've just met questions about their family, interests and ability to run a farm or aquarium, when you can simply send them a friend request and read the answers in your Facebook news feed? And so we think little of receiving friend requests after we meet someone for the first time at, say, a dinner party.

If you like the person, perhaps because they brought an excellent bottle of wine to the party, then you can accept the request in the hope of further opportunities to sample the contents of their cellar.

If you didn't get to taste the wine because they accidentally spilled the bottle over your brand new party dress, then etiquette experts would probably agree that you can decline the friend request, send them a dry-cleaning bill and humiliate them in a derisory posting to your real Facebook friends.

In the workplace, however, the dynamic is very different. The consequences of offending someone by ignoring their friend request are greater with a colleague you see every day than with a careless dining companion you may never meet again.

So why are people you work with increasingly offering to share their Facebook output?


Joan Morris DiMicco, an IBM researcher who studies social software in the workplace, said it's partly because some people just don't anticipate the ramifications of sharing their personal life with colleagues.

But it's also a function of the Facebook interface, which recommends other people for you to friend.

"Once you've connected to one person you work with you get recommendations to connect to others that you work with," she said.

Of course, many people don't have a problem with being Facebook friends with colleagues, especially those they know well. But for those who would rather keep their work and private lives separate, there are options other than ignoring an unwanted friend request.

One is to accept the invitation and then use Facebook's privacy settings to limit the flow of information between you and your new "friend". To do this, you can create a "colleagues" list from the Friends menu and then add to it your new friend. Then navigate to the privacy settings and use the "Profile Information" section to control what information people on the "colleagues" list can see.

An alternative, says workplace etiquette expert Barbara Pachter, is to suggest to the colleague that you connect instead on LinkedIn, a social network for professional relationships.

"You can just go ahead and ask them to join you on LinkedIn and hope they forget they sent you a Facebook friend request," said Pachter, the author of New Rules @ Work.

"Or you can say, Thanks for asking me. I'm keeping Facebook for my family and friends. I'm asking you to join me on my professional network instead.'"

Pachter said that whatever you do, it's important not to offend your colleague -- and that's not just because politeness is good etiquette. "The person you offend might end up being your boss next year," she said.

Sony launches SD/SDHC cards

Sony has launched a range of SD/SDHC and microSD/microSDHC cards. Providing memory capacity to consumers in compact devices, these cards can be used in cameras, mobile phones & laptops which use SD card format.

The new range of memory cards are all class-4-speed for high-definition recording and include unique benefits like x-Pict story and File Rescue software.

Speaking on the launch, Masaru Tamagawa, MD, Sony India said “The new memory cards range SD/SDHC and microSD/microSDHC will complement Sony’s existing Memory Stick line up, satisfying the needs of a broader range of users, and strengthening Sony’s position as a full line media supplier. In addition to the current models, Sony also intends to expand the product line-up to address the price conscious customers and capture 35% share in the SD card market by 2010-11."

Class 4 data transfer speed means stable HD video recording and better speed to cope with the advanced functions of compact digital cameras. Sony’s SD/SDHC memory card range features storage capacity of up to 32GB, while the microSD/microSDHC memory cards are able to store up to 8GB of data.

With File Rescue software, users can retrieve photos, videos, or music files that were damaged or deleted by mistake. The same is available as a simple download which is free of cost. Then there's x-Pict story, which will let them combine their choice of music with their favorite pictures.

Priced between Rs 600 to Rs 1500, the new range of Memory cards will be available across all Sony Center stores and other major electronic outlets across India.

Actor Ajith and his passion for Photography

It’s not something you’d associate with an action hero. But to Ajith Kumar, photography helps beat the stress of rigorous shooting schedules.

It was in the year 2000 during the shooting of his film “Dheena” that Ajith Kumar got hooked on to photography. The cinematographer, Arvind, was an enthusiast and his infectious interest rubbed off on Ajith. Ever since Ajith has been dabbling in photography, shooting anything and everything that came his way.

“In fact, after I gave up active motor racing, I took my camera to Sepang, Malaysia last year to the Formula One races and shot a whole lot of action pictures,” says Ajith.

But, it was only recently that Ajith decided to get trained by a professional photographer to really understand the technical aspects of photography. “I attended a crash course in photography organised by Raja Ponsingh at his Ambitions unit,” informs Ajith. The actor, meanwhile, had equipped himself with Nikon D2X and D700 SLRs with a complete range of lenses, including a tripod and a monopod.

Camera, a must-have

Earlier it was more of amateur shooting. “Camera became my constant companion, especially while on long outdoor shoots. I’m able to relate better to the filming camera after my interactions with my Nikons,” feels Ajith. While there are no special subjects he would like to shoot, he loves the unusual, candid pictures he has been able to take, like the ones reproduced here.

“It is really true how a picture speaks a thousand words. I am able to communicate better with my friends and associates and, hopefully, my fans will be able to identify better with me and my views and feelings which I convey through my photography,” says Ajith.

Explaining the photographs, he says, “The one of the fish in an auto was spotted by me when I was on the way to a location shoot in Visakhapatnam in 2008.

And, the other one of the man carrying the goats on his bike was taken last year while I was on my way to a friend’s farm near Tambaram. These are fleeting moments and, if not captured on the spur of the moment, are lost forever.”

In the midst of tiring days of continuous shooting and tension-filled hours, the camera comes as a relief to Ajith, the actor. “As an actor, it does help your creativity, apart from helping me unwind on the sets. I am even able to relate better to the cinematographer on technical aspects and interest in photography, as I found recently with Nirav. I am even able to find myself when I’m lost in the midst of shooting scene after scene,” says Ajith.

And, ever since the birth of his daughter Anoushka, Ajith has been recording every moment of her growth. He says, “I’ll probably have more than a thousand pictures of her and it will be a veritable treasure for her when she grows up.”

5 copied features of Microsoft Bing

Microsoft has admitted publicly that it did a poor job of making people aware of the features in its old search engine. With the rollout of Bing, it’s becoming crystal clear just how unfamiliar people were with Live Search.

Features that had long existed in Live Search are suddenly getting noticed and being branded as "new." Here are five examples.

Smart motion previews
Internet safety experts are up in arms, according to a Fox News story, because Bing’s video search lets visitors preview videos by hovering their cursors over a thumbnail -- potentially providing a way for children to watch porn without having to navigate to a porn site.

But, according to Bing Search GM Mike Nichols, who responded to the controversy in a blog post, the feature has actually existed for “well more than a year.”

Photos on the home page
In its adulatory review, the WSJ said, “Bing.com evokes the cover of a glossy magazine with a stunning photo that takes over the page. This photo, usually slightly off-beat and somewhat alluring, changes every day.” Microsoft introduced photo-heavy front pages on Live Search in June 2008.

Bing 411
TechCrunch said that Bing 411-- a feature that lets users call a number to get local information -- was a “direct swipe” at a similar Google product and had been “lost in all the excitement” around the launch of Bing. Other publications also covered the supposed “introduction” of Bing 411.

But the product had existed under the name Live Search 411 since October 2007.

Bing Mobile
Microsoft got lots of attention for the roll-out of the mobile version of its search engine. But by the company’s own admission, the mobile version did not include any new features.





Local Business Center
SEORoundtable, which also points out how Bing is getting praised for old features in Live Search, notes that “people are first noticing that Bing has a Local Business Center.” But as SEORoundtable notes it already existed in Live Search -- all that’s new is the Bing.com URL.