1. Go to https://appleid.apple.com/

2. Click on “Find out” link under “Not sure if you have an Apple ID?”

3. Fill out your first name, last name and the email address that you want to use for receiving iCloud verification email.

4. On the next screen, select “Email Authentication” option and click “Next”.

5. Now, go to your Email Inbox and you will find an email from Apple on how to reset the Apple ID password.  Click on the “Reset your Apple ID password” link in the email.

6. You will be shown more than one Apple IDs that are associated with your email address.

7. Now, choose the Apple ID that you would NOT like to use for receiving iCloud verification email and click “Next”.

8. Reset the password for this account by providing a new password.

9. Login to Apple ID by visiting https://appleid.apple.com/ and clicking “Manage your account” link.  Use the Apple ID that you would NOT like to use for receiving iCloud verification email and the password that you had just set.

10. Click on “Edit” link under “Primary Email Address” section, provide a new email address.  Click “Save”.

11. Click Sign Out.

Once you have changed the email address for the Apple ID that you would NOT like to use for receiving iCloud verification email, it’s time to set things right in the Apple ID that you would like to use for iCloud services.  Just log in to your account https://appleid.apple.com/with Apple ID that you would like to use for receiving iCloud verification email.  You should now see the link to resend verification email under your email address.  Click on that link, confirm your email address and you will be all set to use iCloud.

1. Ensure that you have the data plan that allows Internet tethering.  You can simply call up your telecom carrier to confirm this.

2. From the home screen of your iPhone, go to Settings>General>Profiles and have a look at the listed profiles.  If you see any profile by an app listed here just try finding out what that app’s purpose is.  If that app claims to save data usage charges or alters data usage in any way you have found the culprit.  In my case, it was Onavo which had altered my carrier’s data profile.

3. Tap on the concerned profile to go to its details and tap on “Remove” to remove the profile.

Now go to Settings>General>Network and you should find the missing “Personal Hotspot” option back.

If you still find the personal hotspot missing it is likely that the app has altered the network profile and all you need to do is reset network settings.  Just go to  Settings>General>Reset and tap on “Reset Network Settings”.  After the reset, go to Settings>General>Network and make sure that “Enable 3G” and “Cellular Data” options are set to on.

I was able to get the missing personal hotspot back by following the steps outlined above and hope you will also find it useful.

There are several ways to find free iTunes downloads that includes third-party sites that keep track of the free music available on iTunes as well downloading free music from iTunes store itself.

Free Music Downloads from iTunes Store

Did you know that there is a section in the iTunes store that provides free music on a regular basis?  If no then please follow the steps below to find free music on iTunes Store.  These steps are applicable for U.S. iTunes store only.

1. Open iTunes and go to iTunes Store by clicking the link in the navigation menu on left hand side.

2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see the “Free on iTunes” section.

3. Click on “See All” link.

4. Find free iTunes music in the “Music” section of the page.

5. You will need to have a U.S. iTunes Store account in order to download music from this section.

You can also find videos, movies and free tv show downloads on this page.

Alternatively, you can also click this link to go to the free section on iTunes.

Free Music Downloads for iTunes

If you are not satisfied with the limited number of free music downloads available on iTunes then you can visit the following sites to find free music.

1. iTunes Free – This site is updated every week with the free downloads that iTunes store offers as well as free music downloads from other sources and through special deals and offers.  They also provide free music downloads from upcoming artists and groups.

2. Free iTunes Downloads – It’s a blog that is updated with free music downloads available on iTunes store.  It also offers free songs and playlists to download that are offered by other sites.

3. iT’S Free Downloads – This site keeps track of the both the U.S. iTunes store free music downloads as well music available for free on iTunes stores of other countries.  The sites makes it easier to keep yourself updated by subscribing to their Twitter account, Facebook app, iGoogle gadget and a web widget.

4. MP3 Realm – This is a site that you can use to search and download free MP3s for iTunes.  The site provides the ability to search for artist or the title of the track.  They also have a tag cloud of the most popular searches that you can use to discover and download free MP3s.  The site also provides the ability to search and find song lyrics.

5. eSnips – It is a site that allows users to upload and share free music downloads for iTunes.

Where to Look for Free TV Show Downloads

First of all you need to find out the sources to download free TV shows.  Most of the sites that you find on search engines will try to lure you with flashy messages offering TV show downloads for free.  Most likely they will be selling some kind of paid subscription or will make you download and install some software.  Don’t install anything on your computer and if you do, please make sure that you understand what you are installing.

Another thing to note here is that the sites may not provide direct links to free TV show downloads as most of them allow you to watch TV shows online only.  We will cover the downloading part later in this post in detail.

Coming back to the sites which provide free TV shows, the two sites which I could find that provide genuine links to download free TV shows are:

Project Free TV: This site has a collection of TV shows that you can download free of cost.  Just click on the name of the TV show that you want to download and the site will show you episode-wise links for available downloads.  Remember to click on the link with the name of the episode and not the link which says something like “watch in high definition with…”

MoviesPlanet: This site is basically a search engine which gathers links provided by people for the TV shows available for free downloading.  When you are on the home page, just search for the TV show that you want to download, select the show that you want to download from the results and you will be taken to a page with the details of the TV show and links where you can watch or download the show for free.

How to Download TV Shows Free of Cost

If you are able to find out the free TV show download that you were looking for, it would need some more items and steps to actually download the TV show on your computer.

The items that you would need to download TV show are Mozilla Firefox browser and the Video DownloadHelper add-on for Firefox.  First install the add-on and then open the link to free TV show download in Firefox.  As already mentioned, with the links you get from the above two sites, you will most likely get to a site streaming the TV show.  Just play the video in Firefox as usual and once the video starts streaming, you will notice that the Video DownloadHelper add-on’s icon in the navigation toolbar becomes active.  Use that to download the TV show on your computer.

Before downloading TV shows for free, please consider that it may not be legal in your country to download these videos.

If everything is fine then just relax and enjoy your free TV show downloads.

The best part is that you don’t need to purchase anything to participate in the contest and if you are the lucky one, you will walk away with free music downloads worth $10,000.  Wow! the winner will never need to pay for music at least in this life.

If you don’t wish to make a purchase, use this entry form to participate in the contest.  Read the participation rules for the contest to make sure that you are eligible to participate.

Interested in more free music, see how you can get free itunes music downloads.

It is another fantastic service by Google that will make it easier for people to search for music, preview samples and purchase music online.  If you want to know more about Google Music Search, please check out the video above.

Update 5/10/2011: If you are looking for the Google’s cloud music service, please read our post on Google Music.

Recently, one of my colleagues was trying to set up an ad campaign for a client when he got stuck with a peculiar problem of domain name being longer than 35 characters.  The ad was getting disapproved by AdWords system, so he filled up an exception request explaining the scenario.  Within few hours, he received a response from Google saying that he should use URL of the home page instead of other pages for ads.  Needless to say that it was an automated response because it was clearly mentioned that the domain name itself was longer than 35 characters.  He again filled up the exception request and clearly mentioned that he is trying to use the home page URL only.  The AdWords customer support again responded with the same canned answer.

Tired of trying the exception request procedure he sought help from an AdWords Customer Support agent on a chat.  If you wish to have some fun, just read the chat transcript:

Damn it, they don’t even have any standard turnaround time for customer requests and this is the case of a user who is willing to pay Google.  Amazingly, Google also sent a feedback form after this chat session which mentioned that they use it for improving the service.  I am sure that either nobody fills that form or it just goes into a database with no one looking at it ever.  May be Google is trying to run some algorithms to understand the text and keywords stored in that database

Google needs to work upon improving their customer support system if they want to compete in the business software and applications market.  I have always been an ardent user of Google products and services but it is just their ignorant approach towards customer support which puts me off.

Have you ever had an experience of contacting Google customer support?  I know there will not be many people but those who have had this opportunity, please share your experience.

Free iTunes Downloads: This blog keeps track of free music downloads available at the iTunes Store and provides a link to download individual songs.  Apart from music downloads, the blog also tracks free video downloads available on iTunes Store.

iT’S Free Downloads: The site is much like the one mentioned above.  It keeps track of all free downloads available at international iTunes Stores.  They also provide a widget for your MySpace profile, a Facebook application and a iGoogle Gadget which shows the latest free downloads available on various iTunes stores.

Free-MP3s.eu:  This site allows you to search for free music downloads across 3 sites viz. iJigg, MP3 Realm and Esnips.  I suggest searching through MP3 Realm as it shows good number of results for available downloads.  iJigg also provides decent number of results but the links in search results from iJigg didn’t seem to work when I tried downloading.

The contest named iFashion Photographer Hunt, is open to all fashion photography enthusiasts.  Under the contest, photographers will upload their portfolio on ibibo website which will then be rated jointly by the registered users of Ibibo and a panel from FTV.  The judging panel includes famous fashion photographer, Jatin Kampani.  At the end of the contest, five selected fashion photographers will get to click FTV models in an event which will also be shown on FTV later.

Ibibo, which calls itself a “talent incubator,” has been trying all sort of ideas to promote usage of its various services like photos, blogs, Q&A etc.  Previously Ibibo had launched a similar talent hunt contest to find best of Indian bloggers.  The contest itself was criticized across the blogging community for mass-plagiarism by the contest participants.

Let me share some of the experiences from the recent past.  These are true and real-life experiences shared by the people I know.  I am also naming the companies just to make sure that the effect does not get diluted and show that this is widespread and not limited to one company.

1. Bank of America (BA Continuum Solutions): It is a company which just doesn’t value the candidate’s time.  This candidate gets a call from a recruitment consultant about an opportunity with the company and fixes a telephonic interview.  The candidate waits for the interview call on the scheduled date and time but does not get a call from the company.  After five hours of the scheduled time, the candidate gets a call from the consultant saying that the interviewer got busy and hence could not call and then fixes up a new time for the telephonic interview.  This time also the call doesn’t come and no information from the consultant either.  This process goes on for 10 more days in which the the call is fixed two more times but both the times, the company forgets to call up the candidate.  Anyway, the candidate gets lucky the fifth time when he finally receives a call from the company’s HR department but only after reminding them through the consultant when it was already 30 minutes past the scheduled time.  The candidate goes through this round of interview and the time for next round of telephonic discussion is fixed.  This time, the interviewer was a gentleman who called up the candidate on time and at the end informs the candidate that the HR team will be in touch for fixing the face-to-face round of interview within that week itself.  The candidate never gets to hear from the HR team.

2. IBM Daksh:  A poster child of Indian BPO growth story and one of the most respected companies in this space.  They interviewed a person who had already spent a long time with IBM Daksh before moving to another company.  This time round, it was a home coming case in which the person received a call from the company’s HR team for a matching position.  Since it was with a different unit than the one where this person worked in the past, it was asserted that he needs to go for more than one round of interview.  After four rounds of interviews, where the fourth round was supposedly the final round, the company realizes that they need a person with a different skill set and this person is referred for a position with another unit within IBM Daksh.  The company had the candidate’s entire work history with them but nobody cared to check it before interviewing the person.  Moreover, the skill mentioned as the sole reason for not selecting this person was very objective in nature and could have been easily identified during the first round of interview itself.  This would have saved everyone’s efforts and time but the company did not seem to care about it.

3. Barclays Shared Services:  This is a classic example of how companies can mess around with their existing workforce; the talent which they have been able to hire.  Recently, the company had hired a set of Team Leaders for their operations team.  After two months of hiring, the company organizes a workshop in which all the team leaders including both the old and new hires are put through a leadership skills test conducted by an external agency.  According to the results of the skills test, the company decides to demote certain Team Leaders to a lower position which does not involve team handling and makes them report to their peers.  Isn’t it humiliating for an employee.  I wonder what could have changed in those Team Leaders during their tenure of two months with the company.  Even if the company feels that some of the Team Leaders lacked on few aspects of leadership skills, they should have been put on a development plan under their supervisors rather then demoting them.  I would say, the company should also put the HR team and the hiring manager through the skills test as they are the first to be blamed for hiring people who did not meet the company’s requirements.

4. Honeywell India:  A classic example of how the hiring process at some companies can be extremely bureaucratic, painful and complete waste of time for both the company as well as the interviewee.  Honeywell India was in the process of hiring for a middle level position and this person was interviewed for the same.  Can you imagine an IT Head interviewing a candidate for Finance function and driving the hiring decision?  Can you imagine a candidate being cleared on telephonic interview but failing in the face-to-face interview with the same person and if you can, won’t it be a case of discrimination on the basis of appearance?  Can you imagine a candidate being asked to go through few more rounds of interviews after being informed that he will be made an offer?  If you can’t, just check out Honeywell India where all these things happen.  I fail to understand, how a company as big as Honeywell could be so bad in deciding on a candidate.  The entire process wasted over a month’s time for both the company as well as the candidate along with the candidate’s effort and money involved in traveling five times to the interview location.

Will these people who have had such poor experiences with the above mentioned companies ever think of working with them or suggesting people to join them?  On one hand, the companies talk about lack of talent and on the other hand they have such ill managed hiring processes.  It is high time that these companies start improving their processes and start respecting potential candidates and valuing their time and efforts.

If you know of any such incident or have experienced yourself, please share with all of us.