Same data, different devices

Synchronising may become easier with Apple’s Mobile Me service

The iPhone is coming to India. I know this is not hot news. The real excitement is the reason why you should buy the iPhone when it’s here in India. And no, the reason is not the cool touch features of the phone or its pictures, videos, audio. The truth is, the iPhone will be a smart business phone.

The bane of technology is that we are saddled with multiple devices. I have a home computer, a laptop, a Blackberry and a few other devices I use to access the Internet and or do my work (some shared computers, some hand-held consoles). Upwardly mobile people have at least a cell phone, a home computer/laptop and an official laptop/PC, and keeping information, documents, contacts, email all synchronised among these devices is a bit of a bother. I wrote in this column recently on how to access your PC remotely, but if the problem for you is synchronising your files, Apple has just announced a new service called Mobile Me (www.me.com).

The service rides on the inability of an individual user to access Microsoft Exchange for email. Also your office might not provide you with a Microsoft Exchange account. These would make ensuring the same contact information in your phone and your multiple PCs a difficult thing. With Mobile Me, possibly powered by Google, you will be able to manage this mess. Apple will provide you with a 20GB file storage online, a synchronised email, calendar and address book, and a capability to share your files, data, and music across PCs. How this works relies on an acronym called Push.

Say you update a contact on your iPhone (right now, the service is available only on the Apple phone), and you add a picture and the birth date of a contact. Immediately, this update is ‘pushed’ to Apple’s server, from where your PC (Windows) or Apple Mac pulls the information when it is put on. Similarly, if you access your email on your Apple or PC at home and move it to a different folder, or add an entry in the calendar for an appointment with your customer. When you reach office, you will see the same entry and your emails filed properly on your office machine.

You can, of course, say you can do this with other online services too. But what makes Mobile Me interesting is that this will work with Apple Mail Client, Outlook and some other clients, so there will be no need to open a web page and looking through folders, files, calendars to find where you stored the information.

To know more, head to www.me.com, and see the video. Ladies and gentleman, Apple has done it again.

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The Above article was printed in the Indian Express, on Sunday June 22, 2008

Eating Out in Delhi: The Legends of India

I am always very wary of food and restaurant reviews in the magazines and News papers, when I say this, people look down at me, and say, hey you are one of those guys who run reviews, so why not trust another one, it's just that I think food is very personal. A long time back I had come across a blog Eating Out in Delhi, I loved the concept, and wanted to be a part of it, I don't know where they are, and what they are upto, but a few places I ate at from the Blog, were well, nothing to write home about.

A few weeks back I read a review of a New Place called "The Legends of India", and I wanted to check it out, after all it had the man Jiggs Kalra, the man, or should I say, the Sardar behind the reason I started to cook myself, I remember his Telly shows when I was just a child, and his love for Saffron, and the spice, that he could add to your food.. Anyway, so, i thought hey, it's a Jigg's venture, it can't be bad.

I went to The legends of India, on Saturday with missus in tow, after a lovely play at the IHC, and was a little taken aback, we had made reservations for 2, on a Saturday Night, 9:30, and the restaurant, was empty... I was a little taken aback, a trip to the washroom, and the non working flush, put me into thinking, am I at the right place, but by the time I was out of the Washroom the place was starting to fill up, but we still thought, let's give it a shot, after all, it's Jiggs.

The place has a lovely decor, and a shiny staff, all smiling and courteouslly waiting to drop in on you, even if you wave a hand (which by the way is a problem for me, cos I move my hands a lot when I talk), or you look at them, but the service was brilliant. We ordered a Raan, a Mirchi ka Salan, a Bakharkhani Roti, and a Gobi ka Kulcha. The food was preceded by a man bringing us a bowl filled with rose petals, and warm (not hot, not cold) warm water to rinse our hands, a very pleasant feeling. The apetisers (on the house, no they did not know who I am, it's just their way of starting the dinner), were papdi, made in the most awsome manner. The food was brilliant, the Bakharkhani a bit dry, but well the food was wonderful (just a small suggestion, stay away from non bottled water).

The food down, and an hour spent, we ordered deserts, chose to have the Labbab e Mashooq (A Falooda kulfi, not that nice, but brilliantly done). I finally figured out the reason they were not choc-a-bloc on a saturday night, well they dont' have the liquor licence, they should get it in 2 weeks (sad), but the place is wonderful

So if you think, the Indian food is limited to either the walled city, or the likes of Bhukhara and Dumpukht, you need to try out the Legends of India

Where: Connaught Place, New Delhi
Location: Outer Circle, just before the Jeevan Bharti Building
Decor: Brillinatly Done
Staff: Lovely, and appreciative
Price: Dinner for 2, Roughly 2000
Experience: Brilliant
Food: Indian

a few words before I part, the story in the start of the menu, is that about a Khumchewala, a word, you can't really find on the Internet, but try asking your grandparents about it, and you will know, why, food here makes sense.

G

PS: I am a foodie, and not a food critic, I love my food, and I love the rush that great food can create. I have eaten at the best of Places in Delhi, and the worst of run down shacks across, so I thought, why not give it a shot to write a review.

Five of my favourite things

A lot of readers have written to me asking me about the gadgets and gizmos I use. They probably feel that something that works for a technology columnists will work for them as well. Things cannot be generalised like that, but this week let me tell you about five gadgets that I can’t live without.

Laptop: On the top of my list is my trust white Apple MacBook. Without a laptop on my desk that has 3-4 hours of battery backup, and at least 2 GB of RAM, I would be dead. I dont’ use CD or DVD writers, external hard disks or thumb drives. I depend on email. In case I am in an area where there is no Wifi coverage, I fall back on my old and lovely Blackberry 7290.

Email on the move: Though it has started to look old, I continue to depend on my Blackberry, the 7290, which has a full-sized QWERTY keyboard and a right hand scroll wheel. What sets this piece apart from its newer counterparts is its matt-finish screen. Though it can’t play videos or music, sending and receiving mails on this device is an experience in itself. I get about two days without a recharge, helped I guess by the fact that I dont’ use the 7290 for my voice calls. (And no, this article was not written on the Blackberry, though there have been quite a few I did write on it during train journeys.)

Cineplex in my palm: I travel quite a bit, because of work mostly, and this keeps me away from the cinema halls and a DVD player. My Creative Zen keeps me good company with a small screen on which I can watch funny movies (I always have a copy of The Pink Panther at hand). I remember a time when this old woman in the train kept staring at me as I laughed my head off, watching Inspector Clouseau and his antics. And when I miss my close ones, the photo album is handy.

Photo memories: Travel brings you across interesting moments, interesting people, interesting architecture. Though my first love is film, I had to switch over to a pocket-sized camera for the sheer convenience of it. After a lot of delibration, I picked up an IXUS series Canon camera. My version does not have anti-shake or face recognition, but it lets me express myself in the way I want to. In any case, I don’t want a piece of software to take over my life. The 3 inch screen is great to take those wonderful photos and to share them. Its SD card is a format common to my Creative Zen, which makes my life easier. On those occasional days when I am confined to my room, my Gameboy proves handy.

Mobile games: I like the Sony PlayStation, but I can’t carry them on my trips, leaving me with the sole option of hand-held consoles. The Sony PSP is lovely—attractive graphics, can act as my video player, photo player, MP3 player and a game machine in one. Its biggest disadvantage, however: it neither has SimCity nor Pong, the old original Atari classic. So DS Lite it is for me. Its dual screen makes games like Mario brothers engrossing and games like scrabble and sudoko more interesting.

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The Above article was printed in the Indian Express, on Sunday June 15, 2008.

Printing on the move / Review HP Mobile Printer H470b

With business demands going 24x7, and customers still wanting to confer with you before they place an order, there are times when I am on the road the whole day. Thanks to a chauffeur negotiating the mad traffic on Delhi roads, I have the option of working on the move. But how much can you accomplish from the back seat of your car? Okay, you have the data card, your PC, some books, and maybe papers, but what do you do if you left one meeting and have to run to another, with a sheaf of printouts? I have encountered this problem one too many a times since my work takes me both out of the office as well as out of the city.

I planned to carry a small printer in the car for just such emergencies. But the printers that were available for in-car use were either based on thermal technology or limited in their printing. That was, of course, a few years back.

It’s June 2008 now and Hewlett-Packard has announced their Mobile Printer H470b in India. Oh well, I thought, it must be just another printer—and how much can you write about a printer anyway?

I was taken by surprise when the printer landed in my office. The brilliant use of clear and translucent plastic gives the product a chic look. Its petite size is eyecatching—everyone who spied it on my desk were drawn to it, with a “Boss, what’s that?”

The size of the H470b may deceive you into thinking it will print only on small sheets. But, no problem, the printer takes A4 sheets besides envelopes. The sheet tray can hold about 50 pages (but I would not recommend stowing away 50 pages if you are going to use the printer in a car). The size and the weight (the printer weighs about as much as a laptop) make the H470 easy to lug around. The power cord and the adapter are, however, bulky and inconvenient for mobile printing.

The printer connects to the PC using a USB cable, but you can upgrade the printer to work with Bluetooth and wireless (these options cost more, no price available at this time).These will also help Windows Mobile or Symbian phone to access the printer.

One recommendation: Don’t try and print papers in a moving car. Instead, stop the car and place the printer perhaps on the car boot, as the printer needs a stable surface, and not your car seat. The battery will last long enough to give about 400 pages of prints, but remember to charge it every day.

I tested the printer with Linux, Windows and Mac PC, and the prints were nice. The sharpness was nothing to write home about, but then you can’t expect the world in a package as small as this. The built-in memory card slots allows prints directly from a memory card (HP should have included thumb-drive support), and PictBridge capabilities let you print directly from your camera, using the USB cable. Photo print quality, however, is average.

The best thing about this printer was the speed: the first black page came out in less than 10 seconds, and a colour page took about 15 seconds. I did not try printing a 4x6 photo, but you can use this printer to do that too, using photo paper and photo inks.

This is a wonderful product. It price, admittedly, is high at Rs 13,900, but for most of us looking at mobility requirements, what HP has done with a small printer is to make one more impossible possible.

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The Above article appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday June 08, 2008

Virtual access: Using Logmein To Access your PC

Access a file on a computer from one that is some place else
I work in a technology services company and the most essential part of my daily routine is to be able to access data from wherever I am. Since most of this is work-related, I end up spending quite a lot of time on the computer. But then I can also remember those days—and I think most people do have those days—when I have a file that I need at work on my home computer. It is that important presentation I have worked on all night and, dang it, I even forgot to copy it to my pen drive.

In such a situation, what do you do? I think there are two options:

Call wife / sister / parents at home, ask them to go to your PC, look for the file and email it to you. This is the most simple solution, but it often does not work. Most of the time, the file cannot be located. And then they find something that they should not be looking at, and the conversation takes a different angle. There is also the possibility that the folks at home are tech savvy at all and operate a computer.

Take a cab/ train back home, go pick up the file in your pen drive and head back to office. In the old days, this was a feasible option, but with distances between work and home increasing, and commute times logging over an hour or so for most of the people, this option could be out of the question

If this is a situation that you often find yourself in because of forgetfulness or because you work on more than one computer, there is a third option to getting the required file—and best of all it’s free. Though there are paid versions of the software that facilitates this, for a home user I think the free version—admittedly with less features—works pretty well.

Head to www.logmein.com. There are a number of softwares available on that site. The one we need is Log Me In Free. To get this click on “Products”, and the select “Log Me in Free”. Note: Download this on the PC that you will want to control remotely, not on the PC from which you will be controlling.

For the downloaded, you need to sign up first. Click on the download link and it will take you to a form. Fill in your email address (this is going to be your user name), then type in a password (make sure this is secure). Select your country, and then fill the other two boxes, and click on create account. Once done, this will bring you to a new screen, which will give you the option of adding a computer. Click on “Add computer” and it will start to download a software on your PC. Download this, double click and install, and you are all set up for a hassle free future.

Whenever you need to access the PC on which you downloaded the software from your office computer, open www.logmein.com using your favourite Internet browser, log in with the email ID and password that you had entered earlier—and you will see your computer. If your home computer is switched off, you will not be able to access it. So ensure it is on—either keep it on or ask someone to switch it on for you. Click on to your computer, select “Remote Desktop”, and voila, you have the home desktop on your office computer.

Go ahead, transfer files, or maybe browse a website, that your corporate LAN does not allow you to do from the office or check on the status of the downloads you had programmed your PC to do.
Happy virtual desking.

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The Above article appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday, June 1, 2008.