The plus factor

Don’t miss another soap, just get DTH with pause and record
I have come to realise that there is nothing decent on TV on your off day and there is nothing good when you are back home in the evening. But there are some wonderful programmes when you are about to leave for office, or when it is too late for you to stay up. For years I have been toying with the idea of a personal video recorder at home. But this idea had its problems—one, I can only record what I am watching; two, if I am already watching, why would I want to record it. So when Tata Sky Plus was launched, I got myself a unit. Here’s what happened.

For starters, everything had to be installed once again—the old cable ripped out, two new cables put in its place, the old dish replaced with a new one. The silver Tata Sky box and grey remote gone, I had a new black box with shiny LEDs, the same card, and a new black remote in my hands. In place of the earlier 60-cm dish, Tata Sky now uses a 65-cm one, as well as a SHARP LNP to increase your reception quality, especially when it is raining. You need two wires since there are two tuners built into the box—one each for recording and viewing.

Like any geek, my first impulse was to look behind the box. There was an S-Video Out, a Component Out, a modem, an Ethernet port and even a USB port, though the last three are not of much use now.

The unit comes with a 160GB hard disk, good enough to record about 45 hours of programming. I had the 160GB used up in the first week itself—you then have the option of overwriting the oldest viewed recordings. You can upgrade the hard disk on your own, but it’s better to just get rid of viewed programmes. I also liked the feature that protects your recordings using a PIN. The recordings also include programme info and duration. You can set the recording to start 2 to 5 minutes before the programme and end after a similar gap, just in case programmes start a bit early. However, you can’t record radio or interactive channels.

The scheduler is nice, but despite the company’s claims, listings are available only for some channels, and that too for a maximum of 24 hours. I have also not been able to use the series link function that allows you to plan and record an entire series automatically. You can switch to live TV from recording with just a click, though at times the unit goes blank for a couple of minutes after this.

The new Menu is slower than that of the old Tata Sky, since programmes are being recorded as you watch to enable pause, rewind and resume. The rewind option is limited to the point where you started watching the channel. Though pause is a wonderful feature, it ends up making the whole unit slow. But the best feature is the power to skip through the advertisements in a recorded programme—I finished a 30-minute serial slot in about half the time, that is how much content there actually is.

New users will have to pay Rs 8,999 for the Plus, but it’s still a great buy.

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The Above article appeared in the Indian Express, on the 23rd of November 2008

A GPS navigator for my car

It’s not perfect, but the GPS device from MapMyIndia does a decent job of telling you how to reach any placeIt’s not perfect, but the GPS device from MapMyIndia does a decent job of telling you how to reach any place
I don’t like rolling down my car window to ask for directions, but, yes, I have driven in circles and made stupid excuses for reaching late and yelled at people who stick political posters on maps and road signs. Now there is a solution. Actually, it has been there for quite some time.

A typical day for me involves meetings with customers, and I have to travel extensively since Delhi is now growing into the NCR, spread over towns in adjoining Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. Finding an address is often difficult, and even if you roll down the window to ask for directions, the left turns and right turns will just leave you driving in circles again.

So, I started using a GPS about seven years ago when there were no online maps for India. This was before Maps of India, MapMyIndia, Sat Guide and other companies came along. Before we realised, the market was flooded with GPS, pseudo GPS and even mobile phones promising to help you locate places quicker.

Two weeks back I bumped into Rakesh Verma, founder of mapmyindia.com. After a long chat, I asked him to send over a unit so that I could test it firsthand. A week later, I had a brand new GPS unit installed in my car.
The first day, (I had not bothered to read the manual), I could not get it right. But, I knew it had to work. Later, I took the GPS on trips in the NCR and then to Himachal. I even packed it for a trip to Mumbai and used it in the cab. And it worked. I don’t like rolling down my car window to ask for directions, but, yes, I have driven in circles and made stupid excuses for reaching late and yelled at people who stick political posters on maps and road signs. Now there is a solution. Actually, it has been there for quite some time.

A typical day for me involves meetings with customers, and I have to travel extensively since Delhi is now growing into the NCR, spread over towns in adjoining Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. Finding an address is often difficult, and even if you roll down the window to ask for directions, the left turns and right turns will just leave you driving in circles again.

So, I started using a GPS about seven years ago when there were no online maps for India. This was before Maps of India, MapMyIndia, Sat Guide and other companies came along. Before we realised, the market was flooded with GPS, pseudo GPS and even mobile phones promising to help you locate places quicker.

Two weeks back I bumped into Rakesh Verma, founder of mapmyindia.com. After a long chat, I asked him to send over a unit so that I could test it firsthand. A week later, I had a brand new GPS unit installed in my car.
The first day, (I had not bothered to read the manual), I could not get it right. But, I knew it had to work. Later, I took the GPS on trips in the NCR and then to Himachal. I even packed it for a trip to Mumbai and used it in the cab. And it worked.

So, what’s the verdict?So, what’s the verdict?
There is still time before you should go out and buy it. If you are an early adopter of technology then it is great to own this GPS device, especially since mapmyindia.com updates its maps every four months.

But, I did face a few maps, some of them very funny.
*On a flyover, the GPS suddenly tells me to turn left or right. The GPS can tell if you are higher than ground level. But I don’t think this unit was programmed and it didn’t know if I was on the road under the flyover or on the flyover.
*It was not able to detect a lane 80 metres from my house it kept assuming I was on the same lane.
*It runs Windows CE which is making it slow. At times you turn left, and know it is the correct direction, but the GPS is stuck and keeps asking you to turn right.
*The built-in bluetooth hands-free is horrible.
*There is no way to see alternate routes and difference in distances.
*Time to reach a destination does not update as accurately as it should — the GPS knows the speed of your car and can calculate distance.
*Switching on takes about three minutes, the time taken to lock on to the satellite.
*The battery life is really bad, I could not get more than 30-45 minutes on a full day’s charge. That is when I realised that you have to use it with the car charger plugged. That way the moment you turn off the engine, the GPS shuts down as well.
*The touchscreen is a nice feature. However, other keys are a little hard to press and the keyboard is a bit too small. The service should know that Marg means road, for now you have to type road in place of the Hindi name.

Still, overall, it is a nice product, though with some shortcomings. The problem is that MapMyIndia is a map maker and not a product maker—the unit is from Delphi. Maybe they need to use a different hardware. But the maps are done well, and you can actually search and reach the destination.

The model I tested, MapMyIndia Navigator NAV300, is priced at Rs 22,900, including unlimited updates of the maps.

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The above article appeared in the Indian Express, on the 16th November 2008.

Phishing Lessons

No, I did not make a spelling mistake in the headline. I spelt it right: ‘phishing’, some of you might have already heard it, is something you could be on the receiving end of if you are not careful. Today, I will tell you about phishing and how you can save yourself from an attack.

What really is a phishing attack?
To put it simply a phishing attack is an e-mail, sent to you purportedly from your bank, asking you to reset your password by clicking a link in the mail. Once my uncle got a mail from his bank saying his account had been hacked. The mail asked him to visit a website and re-enter his username and password to reset his account and make sure that the hackers don’t siphon away money. After some discussion I convinced my uncle that his account had not been hacked into and he was just on the receiving end of an unsuccessful phishing attack.

By definition, phishing is a type of deception designed to steal your valuable personal data, such as credit card numbers, e-mail IDs, passwords or bank data. The mail can originate from what will appear to be an authorised sender, your social networking site or a fake website, and come even on your instant messenger or cell phone.

What does a phishing attack look like?
Regular e-mail users might have already noticed subjects or mails with messages such as:

“Verify your account”, “You have won the lottery”, “If you don’t respond within 48 hours, your account will be closed”, “Security advisory”, “2008 A-category results” and the like. You could even receive an e-mail from your bank, software vendors, or an online portal asking you to update your credit card information. Never respond to such mails.

Then there is the advance fee fraud, popularly known as the lottery scam. These are mails, often attributed to companies like Yahoo and Microsoft, claiming you have won an obscene amount of money, and asking for an advance fee so that they can transfer the lottery amount in your name. Well, the world is not such a simple place.

So how do you protect yourself?
We are always in a hurry, the world demands us to be that way. It is this sense of urgency that the scamsters want to exploit, they want you to respond immediately without thinking. A phishing mail can even go to the extent of saying that if you do not take action in the next 24 hours your account will be frozen. Just stay calm. Call your bank/vendor and make sure they have asked for this information. If they say they have not sent any mail, just delete it.

But there are a few other things you should do. First get the latest version of an antivirus and Internet security suite— please don’t buy a pirated CD. Download/buy original software from www.symantec.com, for Norton Antivirus, or www.avg.com for AVG. These software have anti-phishing filters built in, and will alert you the moment it detects phishing. This is one good reason you should have a legal antivirus, a legal genuine software, and the latest patches.

If you don’t want to spend money, get yourself either the latest version of Internet Explorer from www.microsoft.com or download the latest version of Firefox from www.mozilla.com
—both have an internal anti-phishing engine built in to alert you when you are on a site that steals data. However, the most important prevention is not to take a rash decision, or answer to the e-mails in a hurry.

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The Above article appeared in the Indian Express, Dated 9th November 2008

Converting VHS to DVD, the easy way

As technology advances, a lot of stuff we had grown used to gets left behind. Remember film cameras, vinyl LPs and VHS tapes? They were the rage at one time, but have now become just memories.

A lot of my readers have sent me e-mails asking how to convert VHS tapes into DVDs. But I have always shied away from this topic since it involves a lot of complexity. Then, Eureka!, one morning I just woke up with a simple idea on how to do it. And here it is, the easy way to convert VHS to DVD.

This is what do you will need:
*Pinnacle Video Transfer
*USB hard disk
*PC with a DVD writer, Windows XP or Windows Vista
*The Film Machine software
*Some patience and time

I have in the past reviewed the Pinnacle Video Transfer and if you have not bought it till now, this is another reason for you to buy it. The gadget, now available easily across India at a cool price of Rs 9,000, not only records your TV/DVD to a USB hard disk but will also record any video that you have in composite or S-Video.

So how do we get started?
*Get the Pinnacle Video Transfer connected to your VCR
*Connect an External USB hard disk to the Pinnacle
*Load the tape that you wish to transfer to DVD
*Now press the centre button on your Pinnacle Video Transfer and play the tape, the contents of the tape are now digitised and stored on the hard disk in MPEG4 format
*After the playback of the movie is finished stop recording on the Pinnacle.
*Disconnect the hard disk from the Pinnacle Video Transfer and connect it to your PC, move the file you just created to your PC
*In case you just wanted to save the file, so that your rotting VHS Tapes and VHS Player can now be history, your job is done. You can double click the file and watch it on the player of your choice.

The tricky part comes if you want to convert this file into a DVD. You should have a DVD writer in your PC and a good software like The Film Machine (TFM), which you can download from http://members.home.nl/thefilmmachine. The software is about 29 MB in size. Though it is not a fancy looking piece of software, its functionality and the fact that it’s free are great reasons to have this conversion software.

Install TFM and make sure you read the manual on the site. Fire up TFM, select the file you saved, press Next and select where the output file will be saved. Select output type MPEG2 if you are creating a DVD and MPEG1 in case you are creating a VCD.

Select the AC3 Encoder you want to use, stick with 4:3 as the aspect ratio and leave other options on default. Press Next, and make sure you select “don’t burn DVD” as I don’t’ really like this part of the software. Fire up, and let it convert the file from MPEG4 to DVD format.
Now all you need to do is, fire up the DVD burner software that came with your DVD writer. In case you don’t have one, you can download a free version from http://www.deepburner.com/ and use it to burn this file into a DVD. You can now enjoy your favourite classics on DVD and relive old celluloid memories.
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The above article appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday 2nd November 2008