For Eyes and Ears: Review Samsung YP-S2 MP3 Player

The new Samsung MP3 player has the curves of a temptress

I have a thing for shiny little gadgets. The bling factor makes them interesting and I am not even talking about their interesting shapes. The new forms that gadget companies give their products gives the same old technology an interesting outlook. But trust me, I know, like my wife says, I am a dog when it comes to technology, always salivating. So you shouldn’t be surprised when I say the new Samsung MP3 player is an eye candy. Whatever term you would want to use for it, this device lives up to it.

To be available in India soon, the Samsung YP-S2 is a stylish, multi-hued acquisition. The 1GB version costs about $39 and besides the five different colours it’s available in, it also has some nice features. It charges using the USB port of your PC—and there are no silly connectors on the device to spoil its silhouette. The USB cable plugs directly into the same port that is used for the earphones (which, of course, means you can’t listen to music while your are charge it). And every time you transfer data from the PC, like most other new-tech devices, this gets charged too.

Another great feature about the YP-S2 is the multicoloured LED lights that glow when the device is charging. What is more, it also indicates to you the battery status. Yes, I admit this is more a visual treat than technology, but then as I said, this MP3 player is an eye candy.

Well, I was talking about the shape too. The YP-S2 is designed to look like a pebble, quite reminiscent of the Moto Pebl phone. The aesthetics, therefore, are excellent. To top it all, all the buttons—stop, play, pause, next track, last track—are neatly arranged on the underside, leaving the eye to ogle at the smoothness of it all.

The player supports MP3, OGG and WMA, making it a top buy. However, the 1GB storage limit may leave you a bit miffed (okay, but at an average of 5MB a song, you can fit in about 200 songs—how many do you want to walk about with?).

Most of the alternative music players other than the iPod Shuffle now feature a screen, however tiny, for pictures and videos. That is what is missing in the YP-S2.

If you can live with that, there is just one other downside to this cutesy player—it is not finger-print proof. So with the samosas and the chips that snack on, not to mention India’s myriad fried delights, and the dust around, you could end up with a haggard-looking device in a few days. But I’ll worry about that later. My priority is to get my grubby hands on it first.

So there. If you want to stand out in that college crowd or simply love gadgets, and don’t mind having just another MP3 player, look forward to the launch of the YP-S2 Launch. It’ll be worth it.

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The Above Article was Printed in the Indian Express, on Sunday, April 27, 2008

In the Good Books: MacBook

If you want a new laptop, and have the money, go for the Apple Mac Book

When my my three-year-old IBM Thinkpad gave up on me about three weeks ago, I began my search for a new machine. After all, the Pentium 4 had been replaced with the Core 2 Duo, and my 2 GB RAM machine looked ancient. I had two options: buy another Thinkpad, or choose from an HP, the Asus Eee PC or the Apple Mac. For me the transition from PC to Mac wouldn’t have been difficult as I have been on Linux for years, and in many ways Mac works no differently from the Linux box. So I zeroed in on a Mac.

Today, when you can buy several laptops for under Rs 40,000, one doesn’t have to think of taking a home loan. But with the MacBooks starting from Rs 65,000, I needed to think. Since I haven’t been a Mac user, I needed to put down my requirements on paper. I needed a fast machine which would last at least three years. I needed a machine with a small screen, around 13 inches, and which would play DVDs, not necessarily write them. I also wanted a lot of RAM and power.

Among the Intel MacBooks, there were three models. I whittled my choice to a white model, the cheaper one, which came with a DVD reader, not a writer. I didn’t want to spend another Rs 10,000 on a DVD writer and RAM, but I did buy something called an Apple Care pack for Rs 13,000 that helped me extend the one-year warranty to three years.

Back home, I opened the machine, booted it up and 10 minutes later I had a shiny Mac with a wonderful software. All I had to do now was go online and grab freebies like the Firefox browser, Thunderbird for e-mails and Neo office (the open office port for Macs)—I didn’t want to pay Microsoft for the software.

After using the Mac for three weeks now, all I can says is it’s geek zen. One may face problems with the missing right click (yes, Macs have only one mouse button) and being on a PC that does not have Windows (there is boot camp, and there are things like Parallels / Vmware Fusion) may not make this the right choice for all, but if you are willing to learn, you have a perfect machine that looks and works well.

Still, some of the bigger problems with the MacBook are that even at 2 GB plus of RAM, it can be slow at times. The machine heats up a lot at the base, so it may not be a good idea to work for long stretches keeping it in your lap. The wonderful backlit keyboard is not present in the MacBook, only in the Macbook Pro series. The white Mac has killer looks but I would advise you to go for the black one as it doesn’t get soiled quickly. The web camera and sound are great, but it does not work in a low light conditions. Still, it’s a wonderful machine.

So if you are looking for a new laptop and have the money, go try this one.
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The Above Article was Printed In Indian Express, on Sunday, April 20, 2008

GS

Asus Eee PC v/s HP HP 2133 Mini-Note - Tech 2

This week in My Indian Express Article, I reviewed the HP 2133 Mini Note.

To read the review, click here, or buy the Indian Express, on Sunday, April 13, 2008, Across India.

I know some of you would like to know feature to feature comparison, so here it is

Spec	HP Mini Note	Asus Eee PC
Processor	VIA 1.0~1.6GHz	Intel UMA
Scree	8.9"	7"
RAM	512 ~ 2048MB	512 ~ 1024MB
Graphics	WXGA 1280x800	SVGA 800 x 600 - Unknown
Stroage	4GB SSD ~ 120GBHDD	4GB ~ 8GB SSD
Battery	2.5 Hours	3 Hours
Webcam	VGA	VGA
Bluetooth	Select Models	NO
Weight	2.63 lbs	2.02 lbgs

Facebook - Step by Step - How to figure on

AS most of you would know, I am a big believer of networking, and I spend nearly 1 hour a day on LinkedIN, looking at how I can connect with more and more people, yes, I understand the debate of Quality v/s quantity, but LinkedIn to me is pure business. A few weeks back, I saw a lot of my school and college friends coming up on LinkedIn, and then I saw there were groups, groups that led me to facebook. Now I have been a member (sleeping) of Facebook for ages, but I finally got to go use it, and now I have some good old buddies all lined up.

This week in my tech2 Article in Indian Express, I look at how to make your profile on Facebook, and how to get connected. To read more, click here, or buy the copy of Indian Express on Sunday April 06, 2008, India wide.

GS

Hard Target - External Hard Disks

Last week in my Tech2 Article I spoke about the Pinnacle Video Transfer, and it needs a huge hard disk, if you end up recording a lot of programs, but then how big a hard disk can you get, can you get scalable external hard disks, I look at two options, one from Netgear and the other from Bufalo, in my Indian Express, article this Week. To read more, click here or buy the Copy of Indian Express, this Sunday March 30, 2008, across India.

GS

On the Record - Recording your TV Program without a PVR/PC or VCR

I love watching TV, but with my 24x7 schedules, and major traffic jams while going and returning from work, TV or missing TV is a thing I really don't like. I would have loved to have a TIVO or a PVR, but well they dont' really have good options that work in India, so on my hunt for recording TV I came across the Pinnacle Video Transfer, and it works nicely. To read my review of the Pinnacle box, click here to read it online, or buy the copy of Indian Express, on Sunday March 23, 2008, across India.

GS

Alarm Bells - 3 Alarm Clocks you may like to buy

24x7 Schedules are taking it's toll on me, and a simple alarm clock, and the shouting from the mrs, is not sufficient to get me out of my slumber, so i need to look for things, that will actually wake me, these are three alarm clocks that I think work, to read more, click here or buy the Copy of Indian Express, this Sunday, March 16 2008, India wide.

GS

Skype is not the Limit - Alternatives to Skype

Skype has gained a lot of popularity, and is amongst the highest known VoIP apps around, but there are others, that can do more, and better, want to know what are the great alternatives, read my review on the top 3 (from what I think)

1. Gizmo (http://www.gizmoproject.com)
2. Open Wengoo (http://www.openwengo.org)
3. Oovoo (http://www.oovoo.com)

To read my review, click here to read it online, or buy the Copy of Indian Express, this Sunday, 9th February 2008, India wide.

GS

How to fix a laptop that’s run out of juice

I tried to Answer the question that has bothered a lot of Laptop users, how to squeeze, more Battery time, out of your laptop

Every laptop owner I know of has asked me this question: why does a laptop begin to lose steam after six to nine months of use? With reducing battery time and no back-up, some prefer to swap the old battery for a new one. While in some cases the battery may actually be dead, there are ways to maximise the usage time, especially if the laptop is not more than a couple of years old. The following tips are designed for a Windows XP user, but even if you are using Linux, Windows Vista or a Mac laptop, you can implement them. Here’s how:

Use the Power Management software. Every Windows copy has one installed in it, but some OEMs also bundle it in their utilities. Though these work, I don’t find them very useful. A good utility is the Speed SwitchXP, which you can download from http://tinyurl.com/28ngz. It works only on Windows XP and will let you choose multiple profiles, from Dynamic Switching to Maximum Performance, and will help you drive up your battery time.

Dim the screen. If you are watching a movie in a lounge, it might be a little difficult, but if you are working on a machine, a 10 per cent or a 100 per cent brightness is not going to alter how a spreadsheet or a Word document looks like. This is one of the best battery time savers, and all laptops have a smart function key to increase or reduce the screen’s brightness. On my IBM laptop, I squeeze in an extra 20-30 minutes with a dimly lit screen.

Unplug all extra attachments. Remember that the data card or USB dongle to connect your cell phone through Bluetooth eats up battery power. If you are offline and don’t need the Internet, then eject the data card. This will increase your battery time by 5-10 per cent. Also, if you disable the optical drive (CDROM / DVD ROM) in the PC (go to My Computer, right click, move to Properties, Device Manager, expand the CD-DVD ROM section, right click and click Disable), it will save you another 5-10 per cent of power.

Every few months, take the battery out of the socket and clean the contacts using a plain tissue paper. Make sure you don’t use wet tissues or one sprinkled with perfume when you clean the connectors.

Charge and discharge your battery frequently. Most users keep their laptops plugged in all the time, which causes the battery to remember its minimum discharge position, also called Memory Affect. If you are a casual or a heavy user, try to use the laptop without the adaptor till the battery runs down to about 10 per cent of its capacity. Then plug it in again and it will help maximise the battery life.

These steps will not increase the battery time from one hour to a 20-hour backup, but it will ensure at least two extra hours of usage time.
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This article appeared in the Indian Express on Sunday, 2nd March 2008

Late Posting - Sound of Music

My biggest hassle with setting up a home theater is the wiring, and with LCD's taking place of regular TV's, and getting wall mounted, options of good quality speakers, to create great movie watching experience, get's minimized. In My Indian Express Article on Sunday, 24th Feb, 2008, I look at two interesting products, the Yamaha YSP 4000 and Philips HTS8100 Sound Bar.

Sorry for posting this late, to read this article online, click here or if you still can, grab a copy of the Indian Express of Sunday, 24th Feb, 2008.

GS

Denon S52 - A Great Dock, but Overpriced

AS a part of Tech2 my column in the Sunday Express, I sometimes try to lay my hands on the latest technology, but this time around, an old technology, that of an iPod dock, but in a new format from Denon, the S52, struck my eye. Here is my review of the Denon S52. To read it online, click here, or buy a copy of the Indian Express, this Sunday, 17th of Feb, 2008, across India.

GS

Lap It Up - The Asus Eee PC is Here in India

Asus has done two wonders, one launched the Eee PC and just in time brought it to India, I was thinking of laying my hands on the OLPC to really see what can be done with a stripped down machine, but it was getting impossible to get an OLPC Unit, but I know, what I have to buy now, the Asus eee PC. To read my review, click here or go buy the Print copy of the Indian Express, this Sunday, Feb 10th, 2008, India Wide.

GS

How to Download You Tube Videos

This week I try to answer a very perplexing question for all you lovers of Online Videos. This question has many answers some simple, some complicated but the one that works each time, is here. To read my article, buy the Indian Express, this Sunday 3rd Feb 2008, across India, or click here To read it online.

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How to download videos from YouTube

Youtube has changed the way we perceive entertainment. The videos on the site are funny, intelligent and wonderful enough to share with friends. But there’s a problem: every time you want to view the videos or show them around, you need to be online. And Internet connections are neither reliable in terms of speed or uptime, nor are they cheap if you are on a pay-per-use plan. So what do you do to download the videos to your PC?

The new iPods, including the iPod Touch, can play these videos, but it’s unlikely you will buy an iPod for that reason alone. Besides, what if you want to watch a video which is not on YouTube, but on Google Video or MySpace, or any of the other video-sharing sites. If you, like me, have faced this problem, here’s a practical solution. And no, you don’t need to spend money on it. Here’s how you can download the videos:

First, you need the Firefox Web browser from Mozilla. If you don’t have it yet, this is one more reason to do so, besides the fact that it is fast and efficient to download. Just go to www.mozilla.com and download it for free. If you already have Firefox, make sure it is Version 2, or just go ahead and download the update.

Once you have the Firefox on your PC, download a tool (or an add-on) called the DownloadHelper. To do so, go to http://tinyurl.com/2zj6z5 and click on the ‘Install Now’ button. A window will pop up, warning you to install softwares that you trust. Don’t worry, there is no virus here. After installation, which should take about a minute, Firefox will have to be restarted. Do so by clicking on the Restart Firefox button.

Once the Firefox has restarted, you are more or less ready. You now need to download a player that will allow you to play the FLV files (YouTube and other flash videos). You can play them on your regular Media Player, but it will require a Codec. I suggest you use a free player like the FLV Player for which you have to open the page in http://tinyurl.com/j54bt. After downloading the player, set it up.

To get the video from YouTube, go to www.youtube.com and browse to the video you want. Once you are on the page that has the video, go to the top of the screen where you will see the three balls of DownloadHelper change from grey to some other colour (see image). Click on the down arrow next to the coloured balls, select the file and download it.

Save it on your desktop or any other folder. Remember that each video file is about 5 MB or more, so it will take time to download. Once this is done, double click on the video and it will open in the FLV player downloaded earlier.

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The Above Article appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday, Feb 3, 2008

India Internet Outage Update 6 - 1100 IST / 2nd Feb 2008

Update on ITR and Updates of Traceroute now show that India is back to a normalised state, but only Monday will tell when the load comes in, right now confirmation from (Our Customers) in the US and in China / Hong Kong / UK confirm that the network has become accessible back at normal speeds.

Though FLAG has not issued any advisory yesterday, but the following Graphs show a much better response time, though Packet loss is still high, and this could be higher utilisation as well as a domino affect on the old data congesting pipes.

1. Traffic Index


2. Response Time


3. Packet Loss


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India Internet Outage Update 5 - 1000 IST - FEB1/2008

It's been two days that the connectivity to India is affected. Most of the backup routes are now in place, and traffic has started moving. We are now seeing the Transit time come down to about 350 milliseconds and are still far off from the 270 that is desirable.

In the meanwhile, National News Papers (finally) have woken up to carry the story, links here

Times of India
Hindustan Times

Updates from ITR

1. Traffic Index, it is now reviving and is around 72 for VSNL Gateway at Mumbai


2. Response time is normalizing, and is now becoming faster


3. Packet loss is now reduced to Under 5%, from a peak of 10% it touched.

India Internet Outage - Update 4 (IST 1800)

Update from FLAG

Further to the update below, please see the latest update.

* Currently both SMW4 & Flag cables on atlantic side are cut and hence the traffic between Mumbai & London is affected.
* Capacity in access of 10G is affected due to this outage.
* Restoration plan

IPLC Circuits - Discussions are in advance stage for restoration of these circuits towards London. Efforts are on to make this BW available ASAP. Confirmation is still awaited and exact ETR will be communicated tomorrow.
Internet BW - Additional BW of 1x STM16 for restoration of internet traffic towards pacific is in progress. This BW will help partial restoration of internet services. Due to this limited BW being made available, internet customers may still face higher latency & packet drop. Exact ETR for this BW availability is still awaited.

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India Internet Outage - Update 3 (1200 IST)

The following is the excerpt from a mail from Reliance.

You may be aware that our Flag international submarine cable is cut near Egypt. Flag has confirmed cable cut at 8.3 kms, from the Alexandria beach manhole, in a similar location to a reported SMW4 cut earlier on 30th morning. This outage has caused a major interruption in the international internet services and the IPLC services towards London & Newyork. We have an arrangement to protect our BW on SMW4 but unfortunately at this time even SMW4 is also cut and hence the protection is not operational.

We are talking to various carriers, for alternate BW and will keep you posted on the development. We will provide next update at 6 PM today.

We sincerely regret this inconvenience due to this force majeure.

Currently the network is still congested, and traffic is moving with difficulty. all ISP's are working on getting some other routes, and hopefully we should have restored connectivity by tomorrow.

GS

India Internet Disruption - Update 2 (8AM IST / 31 JAN 2008)

India's internet connectivity is still not fully restored, though all ISP's have restored to alternate routes, but the routes are still taking about 500 - 600 miliseconds that usually take about 270 - 300. This is causing major delays in International VoIP Traffic, Email movement between India and other countries and also Website access. There are reports that the cable that has been damaged is a part of the Flag Telecom, Reliance Owned organisation. Attached is the map of the cable at Egypt.



Though there are no updates on the Flag Website about the outage, but a report on Computer World confirms a similar thought.

I have been in continous touch with the Reliance IDC network and their Service Managers and the confirmation is that this is going to be a long outage, and we will not have full speeds for another few days.

Reliance, FLAG, Yipes and all these companies make the major part of the Internet economy worldwide, and most of the network is self healing, but I am not sure how much insight is given into monitoring the network, this is not the first instance where reliance is affected, but then, it just proves, we are now dependent on the Internet and the Global players need to build in larger redundancies, and not route everything towards and from the US.

Indian News papers are now reporting the outage, but sadly there has been no comment from either Bharti, VSNL, or Reliance, or FLAG for that matter about this anywhere, all the papers are printing are the same comments from ISAPI in India.

GS

Internet Services To & From India Affected

India has become the service provider of the world, and today most of the BPO's, Telecom Companies, IDC Operators (Like my company) and other Companies that process data for the world are disconnected. The reason is a cut in an Undersea Cable somewhere around Alexandria, Egypt. The downtime started at about 2PM IST (Jan 30, 2008), when we started noticing huge packet losses and high trip times between the US and India, and there was an estimated time to revive given for 8PM IST (Jan 30, 2008). Right now, News channels and News Papers, Online News Sites are screaming India is disconnected, to explain the situation below are some Graphs from Internet Traffic Report

First Up: Traffic Index Measurement to India (VSNL)


Second: Response Time to India (VSNL)


Third: Packet Loss to India (VSNL)


Some News References:
CBC Cananda
NDTV India
Reuters
Bloomberg
BBC

The first to report this was Headlines Today, in an article here

A few interesting traceroute's, that I can't share here for purposes of Privacy, show that this is a FLAG cable owned by Reliance, and Reliance is worst affected. ISP's which peer with Reliance, and service Providers (such as my company) are also affected. ISP's like Bharti and VSNL are partially affected, but affected non the less. It is estimated that the whole process will take anywhere between a week to 10 days to restore to normalcy.

Last time this happened was when an undersea cable around Hong Kong was cut in December 2006, to read the story from that time click here.

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