The truth behind "Shocking Video From Steve Jobs’ Last Business Meeting"

Shocking Video From Steve Jobs' Last Business Meeting from The Final Edition on Vimeo.

I am sure you have come across this video on your Facebook or Twitter or any other social network you are on. It is shocking as the title says. It show Steve Jobs, one of the greatest men ever lived on the face of this earth, slumping on his chair during his last business meeting. 

This video was uploaded on Vimeo on 31 August 2011. Later, it was uploaded on YouTube on 6 October 2011. Original and gripping as it may seem, this video is fake. Why do I think this video is fake?

The video about "Steve Jobs' final meeting" is fake for one simple reason - this video has the same red chair from Walt Mossberg's AllthingsD interview with Steve Jobs. And one of the clips or many clips in the video is from that famous interview. See the video for yourself and find out that line in the shocking video that Steve says is from AllThingD Video. 

Now, the website that made this video, The Final Edition, is a parody website, whose only intention is to poke fun at The New York Times. They probably made this video to drive traffic to their site. Now, you decide if you want to take a parody website seriously!!

Who is mailing you?

Pishing. Scamming. Spamming. And what not! Email accounts are easy targets of spammers and scammers from time immemorial. Most of the email service providers have successfully developed spam fighting systems that automatically send junk mail  into your spam folder or trash them. Yet, spammers find a way around that system and get into your inbox. Worse still, some of them impersonate people you know and trick you into downloading spyware, sending money or joining scam websites. How we wish we had some way to identify the person mailing us? There is a way you can do that now.

Rapportive!

Rapportive is a browser extension that integrates itself into your Gmail Account and it works on both Chrome and Firefox. It does a very simple thing! It shows you who mailed you the mail you are reading. For example, if you receive a mail from me and you have Rapportive installed on your browser, it will show you my photograph and any information available on web about me. It will show you links to my Facebook Account, Twitter Account, Linkedin Account etc. This helps you make sure that the mail from me is in fact from me and no one else.

You may not get the information right away for all email addresses. They have just launched Rapportive and its in the process of accumulating information on people. But I am sure, the service will improve over a period of time as you keep using it and Rapportive will be able to give you exact information about people you interact with.

Imagine receiving a mail from someone, claiming that it is from your friend stranded on an island and he needs help. Rapportive will help you understand if that mail is really from your friend. All you need to do is [if you are using gmail], to click here and install the extension on your Firefox Browser or Chrome Browser!

Cosmos Infomedia Scam is back!

Take a look at the two screenshots above! What do you see? Same picture. Same layout. Looks like two screenshots of the same website, don’t they? In fact, they are not. They are the screenshots of two different websites claiming to do the same thing – make you rich by letting you work from home, doing mail order.

I received an SMS from my Internet Service Provider today, which read as follows:

Earn 7 to 37000 p/m by doing 2hr paper work at home for quick details open www.cash37k.com or to get details  by post SMS your name add. Pin code on 09321123454

I wanted to find out what exactly this scheme is. And the screenshots provided above are where I ended up. In August 2008, Trendy of Trendite exposed www.Earn45k.com, a site that promised to make customers rich by doing Mail Order from home. According to Wikipedia "Mail order is a term which describes the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote method such as through a telephone call or web site. Then, the products are delivered to the customer." Trendy explained how Earn45K is a scam. Following are the reasons he provides to show how the site is a scam:

1. A Google Search will take you to forums where people discuss how they lost money because of Cosmos Infomedia

2. The contact address on the WhoIs page of the site and the actual contact address mentioned on the site is different. [A WhoIs page is where you get the details of a site’s registration.]

9 months after Trendy reported Earn45K as scam, Times of India reported that certain Aravind Ojah was arrested in connection with Earn45K Scam. That was in April 2009. Times also reported Ojah entering into tie ups with telecom companies to send out SMS to victims. I tried finding out more about Ojah and his accomplice, Mirinda. There is no trace of either of them online, except the Times of India News and Trendite Update. And then, today I received an SMS from for Internet Service Provider about Cash37k. That is eight months after the news of the arrest!

I have only one reason to believe that Cash37k is as wretched a scam as Earn45k – both the sites look the same. The difference is in the money they offer you will make and a few links that were present in the original site is missing in the new site. The new site has a link called “Refund” which is probably to dupe people who may suspect fraud. The new site, like the predecessor, pretends to quote from Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes [Banning] Act 1978 in an attempt to mislead customers.