Passing Sunday: Scramble on iPhone

I love words, I love word games, but it usually takes two to play, crosswords in the news paper seem too tough for a guy like me to go through on a lazy Sunday, and everyone is busy relaxing or doing their own thing, that asking someone to play a game of scrabble, may just get you ignorant stares. So this sunday, I chose to download and install Scramble, a free game for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, on my iPhone.

5 minutes down, and I was addicted to it, addicted, that I thought to start a weekly blog post on an apple application for the iPhone, after all with so many free and paid applications available, it will have some nice combos, at-least some great word games.

Scramble, installed in about a minute on my broadband connection and I was breezing through it, and got the hang of the game in about 5 odd minutes. The game offers a 4x4 or a 5x5 Board of balls with letters on it, and I loved the fact that it offers a Qu and not just a Q in the balls when it comes up. You are shown how many possible words you can make and you go on and make the words. Though it did not like all the funny words I had up my sleeve, and the minimum word length is 3 letters (so no, you can't make AT / AX / IS / WE / ME).

It allows you to play either a 2 minute or a 3 minute game, though this is annoying at first, that you were only able to make a few words, but hey, if there is no deadline, how do you actually have fun.

The use of accelerometer allows you to tilt the phone in any direction (90degrees) and change the way the balls are laid out, so maybe you see some other words.

The game also allows you to play 2 player, passing the phone between people, or play with people online.

So if you are a word game fan, and want an interesting game to fall in love with, check out Scramble at the iPhone App Store

Game Cost: Free / Version: 1 / Size 3.1MB / Current Average Rating: 4+

Review: Blackberry 8220 Pearl Flip / A Blackberry for the Ladies

MANY women use BlackBerrys, but most of them just can’t come to terms with what is a very male looking phone. I am not suggesting that Research in Motion (RIM) should start making pink phones, but why not try making them a bit curvy. Even the BlackBerry Pearl, Bold and Storm lack what women want. Finally, RiM seems to have got the idea, and last month came out with the Pearl Flip 8220.

I don’t like flip phones and at first was not really happy with this one either. But the Pearl Flip is attractive and more of a phone — if you, like me, have been carrying a phone along with your BlackBerry, this gives the option of opting for a single device. But I still felt it is more suited for women.

The Flip, like the Motorola Razr, has an outer screen which shows the emails and text messages and also has a nice looking analog clock. It does not let you reply to emails without opening the phone, but you can still preview calendar reminders, emails and text messages.

The phone is a bit beefy compared to RIM’s latest designs and I think BlackBerry should have spent more time working on its curves. I did not like the design of the Pearl, but there are a few welcome changes on the Pearl Flip. The recessed trackball, which allows the flip to close, is very thoughtful. The keys, too, are nicely laid out with small curves. By the end of two weeks I was able to master the Suretype and work almost as fast as I can on a QWERTY keyboard.
The Flip also has a newer version of the BlackBerry Operating System, and the interface is similar to that of the Bold. This is a big step ahead of the previous OS, but I wish the text display in emails were sharper.
The phone, however, lacks horsepower and is slow. But compared to other BlackBerrys its start-up time is much faster. The browser is much better than older models and the company claims it a full HTML browser. But the slow phone makes browsing a pain, even if you have high-speed Internet access available through Wi-Fi.

Overall, I liked the phone. But I believe it is better for people who are looking at buying their first BlackBerry, or their first smart phone. Compared to other smart phones in the market, this gives you BlackBerry emails (the best part), multimedia capabilities, an okay camera, and a good browser in a tight form factor. But buy it only if you want to switch over to BlackBerry services, not because you want a phone that looks good.

Price Rs 21,990

--
The article appeared in The Indian Express, on Sunday 29th March 2009

The Sixth Sense - Wearable Computing

Indian news papers for the last 2 - 3 days have been full of the news on how Pranav Mistry is making waves with Sixth Sense. In case you have also read the news, or are interested in reading more, read on

Computers are a great asset, but they were not designed for out of the box interactivity. Over the last few years computers have become friendlier, even for a child, but you still need to learn how to use it, the interactivity is limited through the use of a keyboard and a mouse, and you need to know what these are. You just can't put a computer in the hand of a person who has never used it, and expected them to use it. This is the biggest challenge that all of us tech geeks must solve, there is a huge movement already there to solve this.

A few days back, in a post What if computers were as simple as blocks, I shared with you the work David Merill is doing, going forward Pranav Mistry's work is another break through.

Keeping in mind that these kids managed to what is very simple, but yet no one did it before, and all by spending just 350$ on the hardware, the cost of software and implementation is separate.

It has it's wow factor, so even if you are not interested in technology, and landed here, just while browsing this massive Internet, click on the video below and spend the next 5 minutes, seeing what is possible.



For those of you wondering, how this works.

Pranav has used a Web Camera to capture what he is seein'g, a Mirror Based Projector to project the images that you see, and 4 colored finger tips (also he is seen using nail paint) to identify where his fingers move. Think about it, Simple, yet wonderful. WOW

Time to Switch off the Lights - Earth Hour

Global warming is a pain in the *** and needs to be addressed. WWF is having an Earth Hour, at 8:30 PM on 28th March 2009, i.e Today, the date of the posting. Though it is not possible to do this globally, it's being done per country. A question that comes to my mind, with India where electricity supply is irregular, more than half of our population not having access to Electricity, will something like the Earth Hour really make a difference. I propose to shut off my car, lights, and other electronic items (No not my data center equipment) tonight at 8:30, will you .. What do you think, taking an hour off of our Electronic devices (Plugging them off), our Carbon Devices (Cars, Generators etc) will help ?

If God had a name, what would it be ?

I watched Dear God today morning and found it to be very interesting, a few questions that the movie leaves me thinking, and I like that. The Joan Osbourne Song, If God was one of us, in the movie made me think, can you call this Song a Sufi Song ?

Recently an interview of A.R. Rahman after his winning of the Golden Globe, I was a little surprised (not any more) when the Radio Jockey announced that we have a Sufi in between us, more readings on Rahman and his way of working revealed, how he looks at each song, as the song of God, though you can interpret a song, book, talk in any manner, but if you can interpret God in it, I think you can be called a Sufi.

I am left with lyrics, in my mind from an Indian Ocean Song

Hei tamasha yeh kya
Kyoon tu gum mein zara
kar muhabbat fakiri
Ho bharam se judaa
Hei tamasha yeh kya
kaun bura ya bhala
sab mein aks uska basa
Mei ko chod de ruh se jod le kar jayega paar...

If God had a name, what would it be ?

MUCH MORE THAN A PRINTER

A guide to help find the multi-function printer best suited to your needs

THIS week has been full of calls from friends and family on advice to buy a multi-function printer. It seems the falling prices and end of fiscal discounts are making people queue up to buy gadgets.

A year back I would have suggested home users to stay away from multi-function printers (MFP). The price per print was too high, and the units too expensive — a printer scanner combo came much cheaper. But restricted spaces and the need for privacy have prompted many to look for MFPs, though the huge variety of options leaves most of them flummoxed.

Earlier, the choice used to be easy; it was either Canon, Epson or HP. Now, with Brother, Lexmark and many other brands available in the market, things have become more complex. So, what should you look for in an MFP?

PRINTER
It is no longer about a black and white or a colour printer, as most home printers can print colour. The real choice is the cartridge: whether to buy a two cartridge (CMY + BLACK) or four cartridge (C, M, Y, Black) system. All vendors offer a four-cartridge system, though your dealer may not tell you so. If you would be taking a lot of color prints, it is best to choose the four-cartridge model which gives you the option to replace just the cartridge that runs out. (Printers use four colour inks — Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. A two-cartridge system has one cartridge for CMY and another for black. If you take more prints of a redder tone, the chances are Magenta and Yellow inks will finish first, while the cartridge will still have decent amounts of Cyan left. However, you will need to change the whole cartridge anyway.) While two-colour cartridge printers are cheaper at the outset, the cartridge cost will offset the benefit in the longrun. However, it is better to choose these printers if a majority of your prints will be black and white.

STARTUP TIME
I have seen printers that take up to five minutes to power on, and get ready. So if you needed a print in a hurry, you will have to wait for the printer to warm up and initialise.

INK AVAILABILITY
Check ink pricing and availability when you buy a printer; and make sure you understand the costs involved. There is a problem of ink availability with some brands, so ensure the inks are easily available and that the company has a telephone order system.

PHOTO PRINTER
Most brands sell printers as regular small office/home printers and photo printers. Though a regular printer can print photos, they will not be as vivid as the photo printer. But photo printers will be expensive and with costlier inks. So if you plan to do a lot of photos, stick to a regular printer.

SPEED AND RESOLUTION
A resolution of 600x600 is great for documents, and a 1200x1200 resolution ideal for pictures. If you still want to buy a printer with a 3000 resolution, let me tell you that it will take longer to print, eat up a lot more ink and be expensive. So make sure you choose the resolution ideal for your nature of work — for basic photo copy and printouts a 600x600 resolution is great, a 1200x1200 should do for photo work. And don’t be bothered by the pages per minute speed if you are not going to spew out hundreds of prints every day.

SCANNER
If you are buying a multi-function printer, make sure you check the scanner. The scanning speed is of utmost importance. I have found Canon to be the fastest, scanning a colour page in less than four seconds and HP the slowest with eight seconds.

If you are going to store for online usage you only need a 150 or 300 x 300 dpi resolution. A 72 dpi scan is enough for emails. So anything above 600x600 will be a waste, unless you want to scan photos.

FLATBED OR DOCUMENT-FED
This is a complicated one. There are models that will only take documents fed as single sheets to do a photocopy or a scan. Though very fast, I would advise you to stay away from these models as they have limited use. The choice between document-fed and flatbed depends on the usage. If you run a small business from home, or are buying a printer for your office desk, the document feeder is a helpful option. But if you need to scan a stack of sheets at one go you need a flat bed.

Flatbeds come with two lid options—check if the lid is removable or expands with the book. If you are going to be scanning from fat reference books, you will need the lid to rise higher. Though there is literally no cost difference between the two options, this is an important feature buyers often overlook. Canon, Epson and Brother have expandable/removable lids on most of their MFPs. Some HP models don’t come with this option.

CONNECTIVITY
Some printers now offer either USB or wireless connectivity. Others will even offer you wired Ethernet connectivity, in the office series. The wireless option works great if a substantial chunk of your work is printing and not scanning, as most MFPs won’t support the scanner on wireless. To scan you will need to connect your MFP to a USB port. In case you have a desktop at home, buy the USB version, so that you can share the printer among your PCs and print from any laptop on the network. Remember, you will still need to pick up the print so the WiFi option may not be all that great.

MEMORY CARDS
Manufacturers still don’t allow direct prints from thumbdrives, or the option to save scans to one. But some models do come with slots for SD / MMC / MS cards. If buying such a printer, go for one which has a small LCD screen, like in cameras, to view what you are printing. Some MFPs offer PICTBridge connectivity to take prints from digital cameras.

PHOTOCOPIER
Though we buy MFPs for prints, the maximum usage will be to do photocopies. Most printers have a separate button that allows you to do a black or a colour photocopy, make sure the printer you choose has two (Color Copy /Black Copy) buttons instead of a complex menu.

WARRANTY
Most manufacturers offer at-home service — in case of a failure they will come, diagnose and repair the printer, if possible at home. Check the warranty if the service is on site or return to bench.

Since printers are used for years, check if there are options for an ex tended warranty.

TIP:Though you may be tempted to buy a photo printer, there are some online printing companies like itasveer.com, snapfish.com and zoomin.com which send home prints at cheap rates. So don’t buy a printer just for the photo prints.

Feature guide

• Will you print more in colour? Buy a model that has four cartridges


• Will you need a fax? Choose an MFP with a built-in fax


• Do you have a PC at home? Buy a USB-based device


• Will you get images to print on memory cards? Choose a printer with a card reader slot and preview screen


• Will you be printing photos? Choose a printer that can do 4”x6” borderless printing


• Will you be scanning books? Make sure the MFP has a lid that can raise itself to fit a book


• Will you be scanning a lot of single-sheet documents? An automatic document feeder will be ideal

--
The above article was printed in The Indian Express, on Sunday 22nd March 2009

Not Just 2+2 / Review Casio FX82ES

IN THE old days, a scientific calculator meant a log book and a slide rule. By the time I got into college there were a number of brands selling scientific calculators. But the choice was easy, given the number of brands actually available in India.

Two decades later, with global and domestic brands vying for space on retailers’ shelves, Casio has somehow become the brand of choice due to its large range—from the simple calculator to hand-held PDAs that can do graphs. Recently, my inability to use a regular calculator compounded by the loss of my favorite Casio fx100 led me to a stationery shop to buy myself a new calculator.



Casio fx-82ES natural display appealed to me for a number of factors. The first was my love of fractions, the ability to enter an equation in the manner its written on paper was very important. The second reason was its ability to replay or go back and re-edit a calculation and see its impact on the result. The third was, of course, the cost.

After looking at a few models, the decision was clearly not to spend more than Rs 500; and the fx82ES was priced just right at a cool Rs 475. In fact, I was happy buying a Casio, rather than a Flair or Orpat, because my trusted old friend had worked wonderfully well for 20 odd years.

I have been called a show-off for preferring to use a scientific calculator, but, as I said, I am incapable of using a calculator without parenthesis. That’s not the only plus of the fx-82ES. It also lets you see results in the format of a fraction and switch to decimal view at the press of a button.

Another great feature, especially useful for students, is the capability of the fx-82ES to accept and calculate on basis of an array.

The fx82ES has a multi-line 96x31 pixel screen, comes with a hard case, three-year warranty and is very very light. The plastic and the built quality is amazing, and the manual simple to understand. Overall, the Casio fx82ES is all value for money. Go ahead, calculate your benefits.

--
The above article appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday 15th March 2009

Microsoft + Ingram Micro Go Agressive This March, with Home + Student Edition of Office 2007

I hate piracy, yes, I do, I know it looks like a loud statement, but I have always been an advocate of non piracy. Though I will state, that I have always given free options to my customers, and colleagues, by using either linux, use Open Office, and or now, IBM Lotus Symphony to do your work, but not pirate. But some how, there is this comfort that people have built around the Microsoft Office usage pattern. Though Office 2007 is pretty different from the usual office editions that were there till now, but hey, don't we all want the latesht.

Just recieved this mailer from Ingram Micro for partners. They have come out with an agressive scheme (I am sorry, I can't mention the partner transfer price, due to partnership agreements) to sell the Office 2007 Home and Student Edition, Version 2007 till the end of March.

So what does Home and Student Edition Not Have
1. It does not have Outlook
2. It does not have access

What it has is, Word, Powerpoint, Excel and One Note

For more details, contact your Microsoft Partner.

G

Beetel Launches DB7401 - Desktop Phone with Temperature Measurement

Beetel, pne of India’s leading telephone brands, announced the launch of the DB 7401 desktop phone, with a unique in-built temperature measurement and record feature. This innovative feature records the temperature and displays it right on the phone providing an opportunity to get room temperature details on the phone itself. The large 16 Digit LCD display also features an Analog Clock with five different alarm sets and a calculator, besides displaying details like Incoming Numbers, Missed Calls, Total Calls, Repeat Calls, etc. The Beetel DB 4701 is priced at an attractive price point of Rs. 1095/- only

DB 7401 includes a unique Talking Caller Line Identification (CLI) facility, which announces the number from which a call originates every time a call is received on the phone. The phone is also equipped with a Talking Outgoing Message (OGM) facility and safety features like rejection of calls from 5 numbers, anti line tapping and software controlled outgoing lock. The DB 7401 also features an inbuilt phone book that stores up to 100 phone numbers and a 100 numbers incoming calls and 50 numbers outgoing calls memory. The phone can be operated in multiple languages and offers 10 Melody and 8 Normal ring tones in addition to the Music on Hold function.

Warranty 1 Year, Available in a Store near You.

TRAI Amends Quality Of Service Rules For DTH

At the time of issue of these regulations, only two DTH operators apart from Doordarshan were providing DTH services in the country. Since then, three new DTH operators have started commercial operations and the number of DTH subscribers has also risen to about 11 million,” Trai said in a statement laying out the need for the amendments.

1) DTH firms cannot charge the subscriber for visits or repairs for equipment under guarentee.
2) The channel composition of a subscription package can’t be changed for six months (if the validity of a prepaid plan is longer, that will apply).
3) During this period, the the DTH operator must pull a channel, subscription charges should proportionately be reduced, or another channel in the same genre and language must replace it.
4) While the DTH operator can choose the channel that will replace the unavailable channel, the subscriber can choose whether to accept the new package or to pay the lower price.
5) DTH operators must entertain requests to suspend subscriber accounts for a period of 1-3 months.

Source: Content Sutra

TRAI Release | Full Amendment

How The **** Does Apple Do It - The New iPod Shuffle

It's the worlds first talking MP3 Player



Just got a press release from Apple about the release of the new iPod Shuffle. Though I am yet to get a confirmation if this is available in India immediately or not, but will fill you up on that soon.

The iPod Shuffle was something that I always liked for it's simplicity, but the missing screen was hmmm a bit of a downer for me, I was not sure how I would find the right music, how I would manage a play list, I was just not sure. Then the iPod Shuffle got copied, people across China started making copies of it, and it hit a low price of Rs. 450 (No Memory) + 2 GB Memory Card (Rs. 600) ~ Rs. 1050 in the market. The sound Quality on the copies was bad, now Apple's upped the Ante

To know more about the Apple Shuffle iPod, newly released, check out Apple's Website

--
Pricing & Availability
The third generation 4GB iPod shuffle will be available within 4 weeks and comes in silver or black for a maximum retail price of Rs. 4,900 through Apple Authorised Resellers. iPod shuffle comes with the Apple Earphones with Remote and the iPod shuffle USB cable. iPod shuffle requires a Mac with a USB 2.0 port, Mac OS X v10.4.11 or later and iTunes 8.1 or later; or a Windows PC with a USB 2.0 port and Windows Vista, Windows XP Home or Professional (Service Pack 3) or later and iTunes 8.1.
--

G

Another Step Closer to Number Portability

We all are tired of our cell phone service provider. Whether it is a Customer for Provider A, or Provider B, all of us don't like the level of services our providers give, and we are all waiting for number portability, after all, why would I want to change my number after all these years.

Though theoretically speaking Number portability should not be rocket science, but is being made rocket science to protect a lot of interests. After all if the number portability does come in, how many of us will switch providers, even if it comes at a cost of Rs. 50 a month, I think most of us. The problem will be who will be the winner at the end of it all.

But leaving this, the reason I am doing this blog post is, because of a news in the Economic Times yesterday about Number Portability now a Step closer

The 95 Dialing is now out (Thanks to our Friends being always confused), how many times will they have to renumber India, first they added a 2 as a prefix to 6 digit numbers, then they moved us to 8, from 7, then they gave 5 as the start prefix to both Tata Indicom and Airtel Land Line (called Touchtel at that time), then realised the blunder, eventually moving

All MTNL Lines Start with 2
All Hand Phones Start with 9
All Airtel Land Lines Start with 4
All Tata Land Lines Start with 6
All Reliance Land Lines Start with 3

I dont' think 5,7 and 8 are still granted. To dial out a neighbour city we were using 95, and the city code, say if we called Delhi to Gurgaon, you would dial 95-124-phone number, now you will need to dial 0124-phone number

So what will be the fun of 95 going out, confusion again, but hey, what the hell, we are evolving. I just hope the Babus pay more attention this time and don't get us to change numbers again in a few months.

To read the article, click here

G

My New Tech Toy: Casio FX 82ES Scientific Calculator

I suffer from what may be called Stationery Fetish. I can't resist walking in and buying something from a a Stationery store if I ever cross one. Staples opening in India was something that I always looked forward to, I agree that there maybe stores that have a better variety (Considering Staples is just about starting up here, and since lost on it's direction), but hey, the variety of staplers, pins, pens, and accessories can drive you crazy to spend money.

Another friend of mine, who is in the Textile and Garment Business, who claims to suffer from the same Disease of sorts, has banned himself to go near staples or any other stationery shop, though his collection of pens is enviable, and the post it's he has wow.

Anyway, back to my tech toy. Ever since I went to Engineering School (to do my electronics and datacom), I got hanged on to a scientific calculator. My days of yore involved using a slide rule, but where can you buy one today ?

Casio has made wonderful calculators all through my life of using them from 1990 till now (18 odd years). My biggest problem with standard desk calculators is, they can't do parentheses, and they just can't handle fractions / exponential figures the way I would want to see my result. Though my brother and I can endlessly argue about the reason I would need this format of numbers in business today, but as they say, it's just a comfort zone, and you tend to stay in one.

Anyway, Casio's latest FX82ES available in India now for a list price of Rs. 475, handles a few things marvelously well

1. It has mathematical formula input
2. Handles Fractions as Fractions, results are also in Fractions and in case you want decimal numbers, click of a button can get you these
3. Full editor functionality of editing your formula and or going back in history / replaying the calculation
4. 7 Memories
5. A Large Screen 31 dots x 96 dots (WOW)

For those of you who would want to check out functionality before buying it, you can download the user manuals by clicking here. To know more about the Calculator, visit Casio's website on FX82ES

Non Tech: Why God Made Moms

A few days ago, I was a part of a Mail Trail about the subject, Why God Made Moms. I chose to reply back to the sender alone, due to the sensitive nature of the email, but Harpreet sent out a mail, which touched all of us. Her mail is replicated at the end of this posting.

A video was then returned to the whole mail trail, which is brilliant, worth a standing ovation, so here goes, WHY GOD MADE Moms



BTW, are you still grounded ?

Everybody thinks that their moms boss over them too much, nag too much,
fight too much.. but they are the best things that ever happened to a
person. only a mom can give total unconditional love even if you are the

worse possible daughter. LOVE U MOM..hope u know that :-)

G

Living with iLife

If you are a Mac user, you would want to know about Apple’s utility tool iLife which got upgraded to iLife 09, along with their office suite, iWork, which is now iWork 09.

iLife is a Mac suite of utilities that has four essential multimedia tools that most of us need. A photo management utility called iPhoto, a website builder called iWeb, a music making and rearranging utility called Garage Band and iMovie for moving editing. Now that most of us use digital cameras to take pictures and make movies, iMovie and iPhoto can be handy. So we’ll look at these two tools this week and keep Garage Band and iWeb for another column.

iPhoto 09
When Picasa came out, it made life simpler and Facebook and Flickr made photo tagging fun. But sadly, a Mac had no such tool till iLife 09 came out. iLife 09’s iPhoto allows you to tag faces in the pictures and then it uses a complicated algorithm to recognise faces and sort pictures by faces. It has an accuracy of roughly 90 per cent. And when it gets stuck, it checks with you to see if this is the person you are looking for. The other feature in iPhoto 09 is the ‘geo tag’ for images. That is, you can tag the place where they were taken and then search for photos on the map. The map lets you drop pins for locations and you can mark favourite locations. Other new features allow you to create thematic slide shows and export slide shows as movies and share them on Flickr and Facebook.

iMovie 09
Every time I do an installation for a customer, I use my standard digicam to record a video of the customer talking to me and I keep them for records, hoping that one day I will have enough case studies to make a training file. I could take them to a professional movie editing studio and get them to add titles and other fancy things, but as someone said, if you have a Mac, you could do it all by yourself.

The new version of iMovie 09 lets you add fancy titles. iMovie 09 also features eight new transitions, such as fade-in and fade-out, and 19 video effects, including Aged Film, Sci-Fi, and Cartoon.

If all this is a bother, iMovie 09 has something called Dynamic Themes. Apply the theme and IMovie does the rest for you—adding animated titles and transitions to a movie. My favourite feature here is ‘video stabilisation’. Video cameras now have up to a 400x zoom and it becomes impossible to shoot a stable video at high zoom rates without a tripod. iMovie analyses how much your camera was moving and reduces the camera shake for you. This feature helps to add a professional touch to your home video.

If you want to burn the movie to a DVD, iLife 09 has a tool called iDVD that lets you author DVDs. For a sound track for your home movie, use the Garage Band, or if you simply want to upload it to a web server, use iWeb. For more information on iLife, check out Apple’s website at http://www.apple.com/ilife. In case you already own an Apple, the list price on the new version is $79. Apple India’s suggested retail price is Rs 4,320 plus taxes. You can’t really run iLife on a PC, so if you don’t have a Mac, you must upgrade to one.

--
The above article was printed in the Indian Express, on Sunday 8th March 2009

What is EBS 2008

Microsoft, released Essential Business Server 2008, in November 2008. I have been playing with it since the time it had released and finally have now implemented it in a production environment.

Over the next few days, I will mention about the trouble I had in deployment, errors recieved and how I fixed those to finally get to a production environment. But a lot of people recently asked me, what really is EBS 2008, and how different it is from SBS 2003.

SBS was one of my favourite programs when it came to small companies looking at a Microsoft based deployment. A single server edition worked as your Active Directory server, your Exchange server, and in case you wanted a Database, also your Database Server (If you had premium edition).

The limitation with SBS 2003, was that you could not have more than 75 client machines. Now the limitation is gone. EBS ships in two variants, EBS Standard (Limited to 75 Clients) and EBS Premium (Limited to 300 Clients)



To know the differences between editions, click here

For Microsoft website on Essential Business Server, click here

A great resource on EBS FAQ's, EBSFAQ.COM

THE BIG IDEA: Another One Bites the Dust

Just got a Press Release from Shonal the PR of Blackberry / RIM in India. She mentions that Idea just started Blackberry services, so as they say, Another One bites the Dust.

Now blackberry Services are available on

Airtel
Vodafone
Reliance
Tata
Idea

Announcing the launch, Mr. Pradeep Shrivastava, Chief Marketing Officer, IDEA Cellular Ltd. said, “IDEA has continuously endeavoured to enrich the lives of our customers through cutting-edge technology on our network. Our partnership with RIM to offer the BlackBerry solution with a rich portfolio of smartphones reinforces this commitment to our customers. With the BlackBerry solution, IDEA customers can now stay connected and access information in a timely manner, thus increasing productivity and contributing to a better work-life balance.”

Ms. Frenny Bawa, Vice President, India at RIM said, “The innovative BlackBerry solution has proven successful in enabling businesses to mobilise their workforce and it has also proven popular among consumers for its industry-leading messaging capabilities and rich multimedia features. We are pleased to partner with IDEA Cellular to expand the availability of the BlackBerry solution in India.”

Wonder, Now that Every one has the blackberry services available, will they start a price war on the handsets ?

For More info, on the Idea Launch, click here

G

An Ode to KK

No, I am not talking about the singer or the actor—the story is about a visually challenged programmer from Bangalore, named Krishna Kant Mane, whom I met at the Freed.in conference, where I was speaking this year. He codes programs, builds software—he is writing an accounting software called GNUKhata—and is an active speaker, teacher and activist. KK’s talk at the conference led to a huge discussion on which screen reader software works best for visually impaired users.

There have been thousands of white papers on how accessibility is important in a PC. If you have ever noticed those two small notches on the keyboard under F and J and wondered there are for, well they may not have been put there for visually challenged people, but they do help them.

There are no computers with a Braille interface, but with advances in Speech Synthesiser technology, screen reading software and other features, it is becoming easier for visually impaired people to use a computer.

A software called Orca, which is included in the Linux distribution, is what makes all this possible. Orca is a free, open-source screen reader. Though it works on a Gnome Linux box, people are trying to get it to work on other platforms. To know more about Orca, go to: http://live.gnome.org/Orca.

To know if his computer has shut down, KK has to place his finger next to the air vent of his laptop to see if the fan has stopped spinning. He wishes the machine could say goodbye.

I know this is not one of my usual tech stories, but we all have to contribute in some way to help brighten up the lives of other individuals. Hope this article inspires some of us to think and build solutions for other challenged people, and to help someone use a computer better.

--
The above story was published in the Indian Express, on Sunday, March 1, 2009
--
Photo Courtsey: Jace - Flickr