Nigerian Scammed, now Nicosian scammed!

We've all heard of the infamous Nigerian scam. But I was recently the almost-victim of a rental scam, set in picturesque Nicosia (Cyprus) of all places. Definitely a leg up from Nigeria I guess. (This whole post / email scam has really infected Nigeria with a kind of suspicious quality - I almost can imagine a whole country of people trying to convince you that you've won the lottery)

So, we are looking out for a new house (don't ask me why - only ask if you're really interested in listening to domestic woes for about 2 hours), and my chief hunting grounds is www.gesucht.de, a very neat site for available housing all over Germany. I've actually seen some possible houses through this site, so its not like the site itself is scammy in any way.

I found 2 ads for 2 different houses, in the same neighborhood, a lane away from each other, which seemed fairly nice, furnished and at kinda appropriate prices. I send appropriately worded posts (translated on Google Translate) to the posters, and yesterday, I get replies. Read below:

Hello,
First of all I'm sorry for the late reply but I had a lot to work and this is the time I could give you a message. From the site add, you could see, that the apartment located in:Mörgensstraße 4 ,52064 Aachen Innenstadt . It has 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 1 kitchen and 1 living room .
I am looking for someone to live in it, as soon as possible, because my company has won the auction for a project, in construction, for a building that will rise up in Nicosia / Cyprus. I am a civil engineer, so my accommodation period in Nicosia,Cyprus will be about 4 years. The renting period is from 2 months upto 4 years. As a result of this I want to rent, for this period, at this price and also to find the perfect person for my apartment. I`m the owner of the apt and it's like in the pics.
The apartment is furnished, but I have the option of sending all my furniture into storage if you want to bring your own (no extra costs). The rent for 1 month is 400 Euro, but you must to deposit 800euro/2months (for the whole apartment) including all utilities (water, electricity, Internet, cable, parking, air conditioning, fireplace, dishwasher, garbage disposal, microwave, refrigerator). You can move in the apt in the same day when you receive the keys. The only problem is that I`m the only person who has the keys but I hope that we will find a solution.
Thank you for your interest and I will look forward to hearing from you soon.
Good luck,
Garey Ylowrn
P.S. Please tell me if this is what are you looking for and reply my only if you are truly interested in the aptartment.

Now, having spent time in Germany - there's nothing extraordinarily sinister about this reply. I've got fairly similar worded replies from other homeowners, especially those who have to urgently move, and are pretty desperate about giving up their place. The only thing that struck me was when I received an IDENTICAL reply to my other house query, right down to the language, with the only change being the name! Thats when I suspected a scam, and all it took was a simple search on Google to come up with this http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=7099&p=56506. Its seems this rental scam is pretty big all over Europe, Australia and other parts of the world.

Lesson for the scamsters? Change your program to email a renter only once for multiple post queries. Lesson for me? Don't get your hopes up :-(

Why I think Google+ is one step ahead of FB

I am not a techie.

I consider myself closer to being a fanboy (or girl in my case) but I repeat, I am not a techie.

But I do love gadgets, new playthings on the internet, new sites, new programs that can do ridiculous things I don't need and widgets that do things that I do.

But I knew Google+ was going to be a whole new ... umm, ballgame.

Google+ has a lot of things to play with ... hangouts, the brilliant automatic linking with Picasa (which had me diving to 'private' all my albums which suddenly were just out there for the world to see - phew). I do however stand by my first status update (is that what they're called on Google+?) in which I offered my opinion that although it was very 'cool' in its look and feel - I did think that the guys at the Big G would have succeeded in making it more user-friendly. Hell, they taught my parents to use email :-)

But coming back to my slightly tall blog title claim - although I'm not sure if Google+ is THE networking tool to do it, I do believe that the future holds ONE networking tool - which is going to run our social lives - online and offline.

To enumerate, I can't see a future with multiple sliding on my tablet / phone between my Facebook, Gmail, Office mail, Google+, GoogleTalk, Skype, Twitter, mobile calling, SMS ... whatever. One of these big guys is either going to, or has already gone for the jugular - ONE ring to rule them all, ONE program to hold it all.

You pick up your phone / tablet / PC / Mac - and you're signed in. You see a list of names, each in their own ... umm, 'circles'? You can either call / SMS / video call / IM / email / Twit them, with stuff like 'tagging', 'attaching' obviously inbuilt. I think the program is what might differ - but every program will HAVE to offer all these communication options and solutions. So it would Facebook v/s Google v/s whoever ... but they would all essentially be clones of each other in terms of what they could accomplish communication-wise for the ordinary user. So person A wouldn't necessary dial a phone number to reach person B, but would dial / SMS / email / tag / videocall an email ID. That would be the one all-pervasive way of reaching you. You are your email ID, or phone number - depending on what you choose to be your online & offline identity.

So according to me, the biggest issue in the future is going to continue to be that of privacy, but essentially dealing with new ways of 'virtually' separating work and personal lives. That would require much more stronger demarcation between friends, family, acquaintances, work colleagues, and a forced attempt by the program itself, to get you to make those tough decisions and draw the lines ... or circles, as they may be :-)

I think we're already ridiculously close to what I mentioned above - especially with FB including Skype in their to-do list, and Google+ with their 'Hangout'. But lets face it - the most difficult thing to 'export' out of your life is your email address, and Google owns you through their Gmail ID. I for one, can't see myself electing to sidle over to FB or any other social network - one's email address is the biggest physical, emotional and virtual investment. It looks like they're all trying to reach that golden ideal of being 'everything' you can do online - and for me, I would any day put my money on the G boyz to bring home that bacon.