Shayan Anique, Self Proclaimed World Record Holder, Turns out to be a Fraud [Updated]: ProPakistani

Shayan Anique, Self Proclaimed World Record Holder, Turns out to be a Fraud [Updated]
Rooney United Faisalabad crowned Zong United Kickoff Tournament champions
Qubee Fires its Entire Sales Staff
TCS Connect, an Online Shopping Portal, Launched
Ufone Offers Free Blackberry Services for 6 Months
Klik – Photography and Tagging Friends made easy
AIESEC lauds Ufone’s project ‘Pakistan Tum He To Ho’
Ufone Extends ShahCar Offer 2

Shayan Anique, Self Proclaimed World Record Holder, Turns out to be a Fraud [Updated]

Posted: 28 May 2012 04:40 AM PDT

It is unfortunate to report that Shayan Akhtar, the self proclaimed world record holder for Youngest Microsoft professional, is a fraud told me officials from Microsoft.

Shayan Akhtar, a student from Okara, recently claimed that he has set a new world record by scoring 998 marks out of total 1,000 in a Microsoft Professional Certificate programme.

Furthermore Shayan had claimed that Bill Gates has invited him for one to one meeting in July 2012.

Microsoft officials from Pakistan as well as United States, who wanted to remain unnamed, confirmed ProPakistani that Shayan is fabricating facts and communication records to gain popularity for reasons not known to them.

Shayan Akhtar was never invited by Bill Gates, commented company officials.

Microsoft officials also maintained that Microsoft doesn't keep track of age for its certified professionals anymore. Hence there's no point of claiming being youngest or oldest certified professional.

When we asked from Shayan about the same, he said that Microsoft could be lying to ProPakistani, and that he was indeed invited by Bill Gates for which he is visiting US in December 2012. He said he could show us the email invitation as well. (We will update this post, when and if we get the scan of invitation)

He also claimed that his name will appear in next publication of Guinness Book of World Record, for his extraordinary achievement. He was of the view that his certification (in November 2011) was a recent record that is why his name isn't appearing in online search for world records on Guinness website.

Shayan's father didn't take our call.

Microsoft didn't comment when we asked if company is considering any legal action against Shayan for the propaganda.

It merits mentioning here that Punjab government was considering to honor Shayan by throwing a ceremony which of course isn't happening now.

It maybe recalled that Ammar Afzal, a student from Okara too, was involved in such kind of fraud as well. He had claimed similar kind of records in various certifications, which were later found out to be fake.

Update:

Shayan has tried to fabricate emails, exactly like what Microsoft officials claimed earlier. Just five minutes ago, I received an email from "Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation". Here is what the email reads:

We’ve just contacted Shayan Anique to confirm his Bill Gates Invitation. He is invited by Mr Gates to visit Microsoft Corporation in November because of the work he had done in the field of Microsoft Technologies like ASP.NET, MVC, .NET FRAMEWORK and WINDOWS PHONE.

He is also a youngest MCPD in Windows Phone and Web Development 4. Although we have sent his world Records Documents for Verification to Guinness. We have also verified his MCP Transcript from Microsoft. It is totally valid.

We will inform you as soon as we receive reply from Guinness.

Your’s Sincerely,

-
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Main Office
PO Box 23350
Seattle, WA 98102

Interestingly, the header of email suggest that this email was sent to us using a proxy email sender.

Check below screen shot of email header:

I feel pity for Shayan.

Rooney United Faisalabad crowned Zong United Kickoff Tournament champions

Posted: 28 May 2012 04:30 AM PDT

After an exhilarating ninety minutes of soccer, Rooney United Faisalabad successfully triumphed over Carrick United Karachi to be crowned ZONG United Kickoff Football Tournament champions. The final score of the match was 0-0, with the fiercely contested match heading into sudden death to determine the eventual winner.

Players of both teams have successfully qualified to participate in a 5 day training program at Manchester United's state-of-the-art Soccer School in Abu Dhabi.

Both sides demonstrated a good, clean game of soccer, with not a single booking made during the entire match. There were equal shots on goal from both ends, with neither team yielding possession of the ball for long periods of time.

After sixty minutes of football, with no change on the scoreboard, the match went into overtime and still failed to produce a result. The equally footed teams then took the contest to the penalty kicks phase where still a result could not be achieved. When the match finally went into sudden death, a momentary lapse in concentration by the Carrick United goalkeeper provided Rooney United the fitting victory they deserved.

The final marks the climax of a 2 months long knock-out tournament where 128 ZONG registered teams of young boys competed enthusiastically for a chance at football glory. While initially it was decided that 16 players from the winning team and 16 other players would be sent to Manchester United Soccer School in Abu Dhabi, Mr. Usman Ishaq, ZONG Executive Director Commercial announced after the match, "Given their sterling performance in the final and the passionate football they have displayed throughout the tournament, we at ZONG have decided that all 16 members of the Carrick United Karachi team will also join the Rooney United team in Abu Dhabi."

Speaking at the award distribution ceremony, Mr. Feng Tuixian, CFO ZONG said, "I would like to offer my heartiest congratulations to both Carrick United Karachi and Rooney United Faisalabad to making it to the final of the ZONG UNITED KICK-OFF Football tournament and giving us all a chance to witness the fabulous football talent that Pakistan has. It was indeed a well played contest and it was evident that both teams really put in their best performances. Though inevitably one side had to emerge as the victor, I believe that Pakistani football was the ultimate winner here today."

Manchester United Soccer Schools (MUSS) offer coaching courses for footballers of all ages, backgrounds and abilities, from six year olds through to adults. ZONG have teamed up with MUSS to offer 32 lucky winners the chance to participate in a 5 day program at their state of the art facility in Abu Dhabi, which will include a series of fun and challenging coaching sessions

focusing on a variety of different technical areas such as dribbling, short passing, turning and finishing. The program will also look to develop the young players in other fields, such as tactical understanding, and mental, physical and social growth.

Qubee Fires its Entire Sales Staff

Posted: 28 May 2012 12:51 AM PDT

Read this post in Urdu

Qubee, Augere's WiMAX arm in Pakistan, has laid off its direct sales staff in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad amid possible change in sales strategy of the company, we have confirmed with multiple sources with-in and close to company.

We aren't sure of exact number of employees who were impacted by this massive layoff, however, it is said that at least 100 employees were immediately fired.

Though we were unable to confirm this officially but sources close to company suggest that Qubee is going to revisit its sales strategy, which is likely to be based on commission model, instead of having in-house sales staff.

You may remember that Mubashir Naqvi, former CEO of Qubee and considered to be a sales guru, had employed direct and door-to-door sales staff when Qubee commenced its operations in Pakistan, that was unlike other WiMAX and broadband operators operating in the country which operate through franchises based on commission model.

In a related news Qubee recently lost Mr. Hashim Shaikh, the head of Marketing along with Mr. Zuhaib Ahmed from Marketing department too. Qubee is yet to fill both the positions.

It maybe recalled that Qubee announced the landmark achievement of 75,000 subscribers in Pakistan for its WiMAX business at the end of March 2012, which were 55,000 earlier in July 2011.

To read more, click: Qubee Fires its Entire Sales Staff
ProPakistani.PK

TCS Connect, an Online Shopping Portal, Launched

Posted: 27 May 2012 10:39 PM PDT

Online shopping is all the rage these days and TCS has decided to give it a go by launching TCS Connect, to take your online shopping experience to next level.

TCS Connect is an online shopping portal that has a wide variety of products with different payment options and delivery all over Pakistan.

TCS has been a trusted name in logistics and supply chain industry of Pakistan for well over two decades and this is a clever move on their part since quite a few people are still hesitant about buying expensive stuff online (yes I'm talking about our parent's generation).

TCS Connect will sure help the hesitance go away from those minds that were earlier reluctant to buy goods from online stores. Their country wide delivery network will flare up the ease by simplifying the online shopping process and experience.

Talking about the layout and design of the website, it is functional and easy on the eyes. The shop offers an extensive catalogue for the buyer with categories including mobiles, lifestyle and books with other categories to be populated soon.

Of course with a new launch you need some incentive for the potential buyer to choose you instead of the competition and TCS does that by offering deals on selected products that include a redeem on next purchase, free insurance for a selected period, a percentage value of product cash back and free delivery all over Pakistan.

TCS claims that the products on sale are authentic and come from official suppliers and manufacturers themselves. In this scenario, prices below the market level aren't really possible since all TCS is doing is validating the identity of the official vendors.

TCS Connect provides extensive payment options with credit card payment, cash collection at banks, Netbanking and EasyPaisa/Omni being available. You don't have to be online to buy anything as well. You can get information about offline orders from the Call Center or any TCS Express Center.

Currently TCS Connect only ships within Pakistan but orders can be placed from anywhere in the world. Orders can be tracked online so you can know exactly when you'll get the product instead of vague estimates.

All in all it's a good venture by TCS though they are a little bit late to the party since many shops have already built up solid reputation and are trusted by consumers. However I do not think it is a project doomed to the waste bin simply because of the brand recognition TCS has.

I don't see it challenging other online shops for market share but it definitely has potential to grow and it wouldn't be surprising to see it evolve into more of a gift shop backed by authentic products and on time delivery in future even if its performance as a pure e-marketplace isn't stellar.

Just to conclude here, we know from people close to TCS that they are working on payment processing gateway as well. This is in addition to mobile banking solution that TCS is working on. Hence payments through their own branchless banking will be an option too, just in few months.

Here are the links to TCS Connect:

Ufone Offers Free Blackberry Services for 6 Months

Posted: 27 May 2012 10:24 PM PDT

Read this post in Urdu

Ufone Blackberry Ufone Offers Free Blackberry Services for 6 Months Ufone is offering its new Blackberry customers with free Blackberry services for six months. This offer is valid for all those new customers who will buy Blackberry smartphones from Ufone.

Ufone website says:

Did you think BlackBerry was just for the uber serious, money laden businessmen? Think again! With Ufone, BlackBerry is for everyone! Because only Ufone brings BlackBerry services absolutely free for 6 months, when you buy any BlackBerry® smartphone from Ufone.

This offer is valid for first 1,000 customers only. So hurry up to get free Blackberry for six months, before the offer expires.

Terms & Conditions:

BlackBerry® plans included in the six month free offer are only Ufone Social and Ufone Complete packages. Read this to know further about Ufone Social and Ufone Complete packages.
Ufone customers having active BlackBerry® services as of 25th May, 2012 cannot avail this offer
Offer is limited only to purchase of a new BlackBerry® device from Ufone
Offer is only valid for first 1000 customers and 30 days from the date of launch
Terms and Conditions apply

Klik – Photography and Tagging Friends made easy

Posted: 27 May 2012 10:16 PM PDT

Snapping and distributing those snaps through different platforms like Facebook and Google Circles is something we all usually do. Taking a snap and then tagging the names to the right person on the snap is a tedious job. Klik makes this task very easy and makes snap sharing a lot of fun.

Lets accept it facial recognition is a tricky business we have seen software's in the past that have performed this task horribly.

Klik by Face.com is a facial recognition application that has the ability to tag photos of your Facebook friends. The application can apply different filters to a taken photograph but Klik was originally designed to identify your friends' faces from their Facebook profiles.

To make it easier let's assume you have a friend's circle of approximately 50 friends and 25 of those friends are connected to you through Facebook. You and your 50 friends go out for a picnic and along all the other fun activities you also take a lot of pictures. Now you plan to share those pictures on Facebook. What Klik does is that it can take those pictures and identify those friends that are added on your Facebook profile and tag those pictures with their names automatically for upload on face book.

The application which is currently available on iOS taps into the users iPhone camera to take the pictures. Klik users must log into Facebook to enable the application to operate, and the user’s friends must share their profile photos publicly to allow Klik to access them.

The application which is running a face recognition software at its back then scans your friends profiles for their pictures, then those profile pictures are matched against the pictures that you are uploading. Once a match has been established your picture is tagged with a name and is ready to be published.

It is good to know that the application can only scan and tag photos of a users Facebook friends and no one else because the application is using Facebook as a source for matching the pictures. In terms of Privacy this is a very strong point because Google also claimed that it could support facial recognition of complete strangers with its patented Google Goggles technology but then it had to back track on its plan because there were serious privacy alarms raised.

If for instance Klik does not identify one of your friends in a picture who is also your friend on Facebook the application can be put into a manual learning mode where the user can direct the application to manually tag the photo and then tell the application to remember the tag for future refrence

Today's technology is becoming more and more bamboozling. A users phone having the ability to recognize people is something that we could only dream of or only see in movies a couple of years ago but today we see fiction converting to reality. We truly are witnessing apex of an era.

Klik can be downloaded for iPhones here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/klik-by-face.com/id484990787?mt=8

AIESEC lauds Ufone’s project ‘Pakistan Tum He To Ho’

Posted: 27 May 2012 10:08 PM PDT

Pakistan is a beautiful country and we are confident that the project taken forward by Ufone 'Pakistan Tum He To Ho' is one of the best projects which will neutralize the false negative impression of Pakistan globally.

This was said by Haider Raza, one of the members of AIESEC International during a press conference held by AIESEC representatives here in Lahore.

AIESEC representatives from foreign countries are currently visiting Pakistan to monitor Ufone's project 'Pakistan Tum He To Ho' and as part of the project they conducted a press conference in which they shared their review of the project with the media.

Haider Raza briefed the media about the salient features of the project carried out by Ufone and AIESEC jointly. He said that the project in mainly initiated to neutralize the negative image of Pakistan. Haider Raza urged the visiting AIESEC to go through the portal 'Pakistan Tum He To Ho'. It would help them understand the positive side of Pakistan, he added. In the next phase, the AIESEC interns would share the available information about Pakistan on the portal to other websites, blogs and networking communities to create global mass awareness that Pakistan was a progressive and forward looking country, he declared.

Christoph Rauch, another member of AIESEC International visiting Pakistan now a days, shared with the media about his perception of Pakistan before visiting and how his thought process changed after spending a couple of months here. He also pointed out similarities and differences between different cultures and highlighted the importance of exchange programs which gave students an opportunity to visit different countries and learn about their cultures and norms. "All groundwork done by us will be shared with AIESEC members across the globe which will ensure that the Pakistan's soft image is portrayed all around", Mr. Rauch maintained.

Ms. Zsophia Antal, another AIESEC member, while sharing her experience of this project said that this project is really an eye opener for the people. She said that Pakistan is really a beautiful country and the people here are very friendly and peace-loving. "To conduct this project with Ufone was a wonderful experience for me and I'm pretty hopeful that 'Pakistan Tum He To Ho' will help highlighting the positive side of Pakistan in the international arena.

Other AIESEC members Heer Ayoub and Aneeqa Khan were also present at the press conference.

Ufone Extends ShahCar Offer 2

Posted: 27 May 2012 10:05 PM PDT

Ufone recently announced the launch of ShahCar Offer 2 through which 20 lucky Ufone customers will get a chance to win 20 brand new Suzuki Swift Cars.

To get a chance to be a part of the ShahCar offer 2, all the customer needs to do is buy a Ufone SIM today or use their existing Ufone SIM's or port their existing number onto Ufone's network and consume a minimum balance of Rs.200 before the 30^th of June 2012.

Earlier this offer was to end on May 31st, which is now extended till June 30th, 2012.

On consuming Rs. 200 or more customers shall automatically qualify to enter a lucky draw where 20 lucky people will become proud owners of their very own Suzuki Swift cars. The more the customer consumes the more chances they get to win.

Customers must ensure that their Ufone SIM is in their name. This offer is applicable from 10^th April 2012 to 31^st June 2012 and is valid for all new, MNP, Prepaid and Postpay customers.

Akbar Khan, Chief Marketing Officer at Ufone said "the success of the Shah Car offer encouraged us to do more for our customer and this offer is truly a message that our customers are our most valued assets. Like our first phase this offer is a ray of hope for our customers to win a brand new Suzuki Car and we look forward to share many more exciting offers with our valued customers".

Terms & Conditions:

The winners will be contacted by Ufone itself via call from '333' number or via an SMS from 'Ufone' ID
Please do not entertain any calls or SMS asking for credit transfer or balance load/share to win the prize. Ufone will not be responsible for any loss that may occur due to any such activities
The duration of this offer is from 10th April 2012 to 30th June 2012
For this offer customers have to consumer a minimum balance of Rs.200 including taxes
This offer is for all new, MNP and existing Prepaid and Postpay customers
Ufone employees, their family members and employees of related organizations cannot be a part of this lucky draw
Lucky draw will take place in the first week of July 2012
Ufone's decision(s) related to the lucky draw will be deemed final
Prizes can be availed from specific service centers
To avail the prize it is mandatory that the SIM is in your name
Prizes cannot be exchanged or transferred in any situation
The car given as prize will be Swift DLX, the color of which may vary from the pictures shown
Car delivery is dependent on the delivery schedule of the manufacturing company
All documentation and expenses pertaining to the registration of the prize car will be the winner's responsibility
Ufone keeps the rights to advertise the winners
Terms and conditions apply, which can be changed
19.5% FED on usage and 10% withholding tax at recharge or bill applies
Terms and condition apply
Using SIM without proper documentation is a crime – PTA

To read more, click: Ufone Extends ShahCar Offer 2
ProPakistani.PK

world on your screen

Monday, May 28, 2012