Type in ‘great driving challenge’ on Google and discover for yourself the multiple ways in which people are reaching out on their networks, for votes. Even if you are not a blogger yourself, you may find a friend who is willing to give you a helping hand. Just hand her (or him) your blog badge (embed code). Reach out to your network, be it on Orkut/Facebook/Twitter or your user groups and forums. I have captured some screens (low res) and organized in a slide show - but you can do the search yourself and trawl through the myriad links now available. Someone who owns a Cedia, posted a video of the same, driving round Ring Road, Bangalore. It seems GDC is indeed starting to buzz on the web.

If you don’t know her, please don’t google her

In my last post, there was a suggestion that we should figure out a way to identify people who are attempting to caste fake votes and just throw them out. Debarring voters from the same IP is not a sensible thing to do, as many genuine people accessing the site behind their corporate firewalls, would log the same IP. Also, it is just not worth chasing people who are busy creating fake IDs. Though these users often don’t realize, that in their passion to cast fake votes, they forget to remove the telltale signatures left behind. So in a matter of few minutes, the system logs voters like Dina, Dina1, & Dina2 sequentially on the voter list

However it does leave a bitter taste in the mouth, as we go through some routine checks, and discover people using the lesser known email ‘alias’ features to caste fake votes. For the uninitiated, Gmail has a very useful feature where you can create a mail alias very easily. This was actually designed to handle spam better. So .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is same as [email protected], or any such combination. The feature was introduced by Gmail to help consumers fight spam by submitting alias IDs on web-forms. You can read more about this feature here http://tinyurl.com/gmailalias

As you are aware technology can be put to both good use and bad. Some smart applicants on GDC chose the latter and decided to register multiple votes, themselves, using aliases. Since it does not take much effort, all you got to do is log in, create a new gmail ID, continue casting votes using aliases, before signing off for the night. Oh - these not so smart ones!

You tell me what we should do with these people.

I think, I already have your answer.

Many of you have complained that over past 4-5 days your friends/colleagues were not getting the voting confirmation emails. We read all your posts, got your emails, calls and worked round the clock to diagnose the issue. Our tech team has gotten to the bottom of the problem and now have a fix!

As I have mentioned in one of my earlier posts, all the ‘attempts’ at voting were captured, and the IDs logged on our database; so now our system has now started re-sending the verification emails, over the past 24 hours - some of you have already called in to report that they have already got the missing emails/votes. The second batch (comprising the missing votes over past 2 days) is going out today.

A whopping 125,000+ votes have been cast in total, with the daily rate now crossing 20,000+. Several thousand votes still remain unverified on our database; so we do plan to run a second round of reminder emails, starting Monday. What is shocking is that over 10% of these mails have bounced, as people put in wrong email IDs - shame on those who tried to cheat! A much smaller percentage of emails failed to deliver, as they were trapped by corporate spam filters.

Starting today, we have duplicated our mail server, added a fatter data pipe and a 3rd server to better prepare for increasing traffic. Does this mean we have eliminated the email problem? The answer is - No. In spite of our best efforts, 2-3% of emails may still drop, but our systems will keep trying to deliver within 24 hours.

Moving forward voters will certainly get the confirmation email, unless (a) they make an error entering the ID or (b) they are using corporate email and their server does not like GDC. We got a stinker from a leading media company, stating that their servers are being spammed by GDC emails; and we could count a whopping total of 14!

Thou shalt get your votes. We will keep trying to remind your friends, even if they have forgotten - so you don’t have to bug them anymore.

Hope this puts to rest all your e-mail related anxiety pangs. Please feel free to write in, if you still have problems next week.