Google Takes a Giant Leap

For all of us, who love Gmail, the problem has been keeping it offline in the same format. My company, uses Zimbra for our corporate email and the Zimbra Desktop Client Still in Beta, makes this possible. Today Google's announcement on the Official Gmail Blog, made Google take a Giant Step with Gmail

So what have they done ?

The problem with all this online world is that you need to be connected, but you can't be, atleast it's not a reality as yet, so how do you access informaiton offline, store it offline, there have been discussions of POP/IMAP and various protocols, but they are just not as good.



Today Gmail Labs released a new feature that bridges the gap between desktop and web-based applications like never before: Offline Gmail. You can now access your Gmail from your browser any time, whether or not you're online.



Google Gears Offline makes it possible for you to download all your Gmail to your Desktop, every last gigabyte, and in offline mode, is much faster, amazingly fast.

Though still in Beta, and I haven't played with it as yet, as I dont' use Gmail as my first email address, but soon you will see an update from me.

We're making offline Gmail available to everyone who uses Gmail in US or UK English over the next couple of days, so if you don't see it under the Labs tab yet, it should be there soon. Once you see it, just follow these steps to get started:

1. Click Settings and click the Labs tab.
2. Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
3. Click Save Changes.
4. After your browser reloads, you'll see a new "Offline0.1" link in the upper righthand corner of your account, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don't already have it.

So, time to wait, and see when you get a chance to try it.

G

Amritsari Meat Wala - Lajpat Nagar

Well in no manner is this a restaurant review, as this is not really a restaurant, but a take away, and a small dhaba. The place may not be worth a visit to have a family sit down, but in case you are in some serious heart wrenching mood to have Red Meat (mutton Keema) with Kalegi (Liver) or Mutton Keema with Mutton Pieces, you need to make sure you have eaten from Narender Kumar's Amritsar Meat Wala.

The guy makes an awsome keema, both for lunch and dinner, and the menu is simple, Keema Meat Rs. 100 a plate, Keema Kalegi, Rs. 100 a Plate, Keema Egg Curry Rs. 60 a Plate. He has some rotis, and on some days Chicken Korma. Pleasantly surprised a Menu exists, without Dal Makhani, and the hype (Butter Chicken).

The guy starts serving at 7:30 PM in the evening, in case you reach their earlier, he will not budge till 7:30 (I had to take Keema packed to a friends house on friday, and he made me wait a cool 45 minutes, worth it, for his food).

He has this big handi (Promise, will soon update it with a picture) he cooks the keema in. The Meat Pieces, Kalegi and Eggs are all in there. He has a tandoor that serves nice rotis. He has been talked about / Written across the Media, and if you are a carnivore like me, head on, and try his Keema.

It’s well worth a visit, so let me give you the directions to the Amritsari Meat Wala. It is on the right of the Defence Colony Nirula’s. Go towards Lajpat Nagar 1, parallel to the railway track. Amritsari Meat Wala is in a corner there. You can call up 9818995844 or 9810552974 for directions.

He Does not deliver, and don't even ask him if he does, he will tell you "SIR, ITNA TIME NAHIN HAI"

PS: Even my Mum and Dad, who are not too big a fan of non-home-cooked meat, loved his fare.

LG's Sky Charger at CES 2009

We all have to do a bit for the nature. This is something I would have loved to implement on our rooftop, but LG Beat me to it. Seen at the CES 2009, this is the LG Skycharger, It stores energy using the Wind and Sun into batteries, that in turn helped the visitors charge their mobile phones and cameras, laptops.

Brilliant, I must say.

G

Make a Quick Buck, Online

Beat the recession by finding some extra income on the Web

Money can’t buy me love, the Beetles once sang. But the times are tough and there is nothing wrong in making some extra dough. This week, I will teach you how to do this without actually having to get a new job or end up doing something on the wrong side of the law. And no, I am not suggesting that you take to multi-level marketing or paid surveys either.

For starters, if you have a digital camera, make a movie, maybe of your dog doing some tricks or your child taking first steps, throw in some animation if you know how to go about it, and upload it on revver.com. They will attach an advertisement to your video and if it becomes popular you can earn up to 50 per cent of the revenue.

Alternatively, upload your videos and pictures to break.com. If they like your work, they will pay you up to $400 for an original video and up to $2,000 for short films. The site also pays up to $50 a picture, if it wins one of their regular contests.

If you are a genius in mathematics, physics or chemistry, or someone who has a diet that actually works, know how to get house things done in the proper manner, or how best to handle a problem child, you can join bitwine.com as an advisor. You will get introduced to people who need advice—you can charge them or become an advisor for free.

If you think there are better ways of reviewing a product or a software, you can start a blog and start ranting at wordpress.com or blogger.com. You can even open an account with payperpost.com and advertise the rate you want for reviewing stuff. You can charge between $5 to $100 a post and some software companies or websites could pay you to review their stuff.

Those of you who can write funny slogans for T-shirts, can set up their own stores at cafepress.com. The website will manufacture and sell the garments for you, and you will make some money without any investment.

Some of us like collecting things. But after a point these only add to the clutter in the house. If you too have old stamps, coins, mugs, collectible lighters etc lying around, open a shop on ebay.in, and start selling. You will not only make good money, but also clean up your house in the process. For instance, I met an old lady who makes puppets and sells them online. If you are also the “crafty kind” then this is one opportunity you can’t afford to miss.

This list is in no way comprehensive, as there are many other sites that let you make money. Just make sure they don’t charge you to sell you a book, or set up an account—in that case they are the ones who are making all the money, not you. So, best of luck with the recession, and if you end up making some money, think of the guy who tipped you off.

--
The above article appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday, 25th January 2009

Why Choosing your Web Host is important

I have a Gmail account, I think most of us do, it's made our lives simpler, I envy Gmail (ahem Google) to have made this brilliant an email client, and at times wonder, if email hosting will make revenues for System3 going in the future, but as long as people need support, and feel any free system is bad, we can still live with our services.

Anyway, some of you would have heard of the (yet again) Plastic Bag Ban in Delhi, while browsing through Gmail today morning, I came across the following ad



And I clicked it, why - Two Reasons, 1. I found the Ad funny, 2. I wanted to this post for sometime.. Now you must be wondering why and how this is related

I run A Hosting Company, incorrect, I run a data center, and when we see customers design their web applications, the web designer is all but bothered about one thing, cost of hosting.

Take for Example Kurkure.in ( A Pepsico company ), they chose the right host, the host is Net4India, I have nothing against them, though people have told horror stories, but then people tell horror stories about any hosting company they have worked with, but here, I think, the people who made the site, did not design the server well.

1. You place an Ad on Gmail, you pay x amount to Gmail to show that Ad
2. Someone clicks, and if the ad is on adwards, a lot of people click
3. You choose cheap hosting, shared, limited bandwidth, limited resources, and what is the end result

Page takes atleast 2 minutes to load, what is the end result

I saw the ad, but not the site. Why, Choose the Right host people. Spend Time with the hosting company (sorry, with the IDC Providers, and not hosting resellers), to size your hosting properly, make sure you have a plan, that helps you grow, helps you cater to the traffic, and shared hosting for something like Kurkure (hey, get rid of Kareena Kapoor, save on that budget, and pay for your hosting), or stop advertising online.. stick to regular mass media.. Tv rules man.

G

Nothing Rajni Kant Do - Choke There (Spoof Chak De)

I am no big Fan of Sharukh, or the Chicklit Hindi Cinema, but somethings in the movies just leave you touched. While searching for some stuff on you tube, I some how bumped into the following Trailer (Actually an Advertisiment) for Sun Silk Gang of Girls, Very Nicely done.. Kudos BCWebWise

At one time, Webchutney, owned by a Friend Sidharth Rao was doing such brilliant stuff, look forward to more work like this.

So, time for me to shut up and show you the You Tube Video



G

VAT - The Reality

There have been long arguments if the VAT / Sales Tax is a good thing for consumers or not, and how the VAT is utilised to build the City and there by the country. From my point of view, the Government has the right to Tax people, and I fully agree with it, though What I don't understand is why Have Double Taxation (Like we have on software, when you buy software, you are taxed 4% VAT and 12.36% Service Tax, because it is unclear to our folks, if this is a product or a service, or a service disguised as a product). Though leaving this discussion apart, there has been a new consumer learning that happened for me a few days back. Though I think this is a very stupid thing to point out, but I think there are a lot of smarty pants out there to make a fool out of us.

For those of you who grew up as Kids in the 1980's 1990's, you would recall a program called Rajni on Doordarshan, that used to teach about consumer rights, and recently there have been a lot of advertisements for the campaign Jago Grahak Jago, but still there are these cheap skinned people who are out to make a fool out of you and make a Quick buck.

So what is the lesson. A few years, I don't recall when, all the prices on products moved to Tax Inclusive, i.e if a Product said, Price: Rs. 100 (Inclusive of All Taxes), no one could charge you anything above this.

Then came along a Store, I will not want to name it, but you will know, which promises to sell everything for 99 bucks, now they sell the same product, with a 100 Rupee MRP at Rs. 99 + 4% VAT = 102.96, i.e making Rs. 2.96 more than they are supposed to charge, and they just told you, that they were actually giving it to you a buck cheaper.

We are building a new office, and I had to recently buy Godrej locks, and I bumped into a wholesaler, here in Lajpat Nagar, who offered me 8% discount on all my purchase, now what is the catch

Price of Lock: Rs. 110 (one of them) this is MRP on the Box Inclusive of Taxes
Discount: 8% i.e 101.20
Tax: 12.5% (Now this is another area, how does a consumer know if the tax on this item is 12.5% or 4%, anyway), so 12.5%
Total Price: Rs. 110 Less Discount 8.80 = Rs. 101.20 + Tax (12.5%) 12.65 = 113.85

So you thought you got an 8% discount, and the guy fleeced you.

The Next Big trick is these guys who sell Paint and Hardware. WOW the game that they play. Most of these Big Paint Showrooms now have jazzy looking girls at their billing counters (an eye wash / distraction) and PC's with LCD Monitors / Thermal Printers, that print your bill, since most of the times you are in a hurry or buy cash, you get the thermal print out, take it to the paint mixer, take your paint, reach home.

Put it in your account books, in a few months you look at the account books, and what do you find, chances are if the thermal print survived, it reads "ESTIMATE", so you were sold material, and given a bill, which reads Estimate.

Now you go back to the store, after some ruckus, the guy says, hey buddy, you know what, I will need to charge you Tax (again 12.5%), so you say, ok, I bought Paint worth Rs. 10,000 / Tax: 1250, wow man that's high, and some of us just come back, but realize this, the Paint that he sold you was Tax Paid, so even if he had to give you a bill, he can't charge you an additional 1250, yes, he can charge you 8750 + 12.5%, thus still taking 10K. But why would he do that.. Right

So next time, check your bill, and Jago Grahak Jago

Thanks to this lovely store in GK, who pointed this out to me, and gave me a great discount of 10% on my purchases, lovely guy.

This fleecing is happening across the city, from the manufacturers (Who don't print prices clearly) to retailers who are out to make a quick buck (no wonder they have pictures of stars visiting their shops, obviously you have so much money to blow away).

The worst part, if you want a bill, they actually have to do it hand written, as the computers, are just a show off, only to generate those thermal prints.

Just my 2cents of a lot of irritation :)

G

PS: I think there is a simple alternative, stop buying anything on cash. Buy it either cheque / credit or Debit Card. Since the retailer now get's the money straight into his Bank, he will have to file taxes, and see how our country will grow.

Delhi Police BRT Action - Filmy, Very Filmy

FINALLY SOME ACTION
How many times have you heard the trouble with the BRT, for those of you who are not living in Delhi, or for those, who would really want to see what the best brains of IIT can do, click here for some Google Results. It is one mess that has been created, and with the current way it's being run and developed more, all I can foresee is another big mess, teaching India's, to drive in a Lane is impossible, there was a time in Bombay (Ahem Mumbai) where you could drive in a lane, now even the average mumbaikar, does not want to stick to his lane, let alone the country.

In the last few weeks, there has been a lot of news, about people racing in the BRT corridor, Red Beacon Cars misusing the corridor, and then police / traffic police being deployed to monitor it. I because of my work have to use the BRT Road every now and then, and have never seen any police action, till today, and this was a moment worth capturing. Please note, this was taken with a very low resolution camera, as that is what was handy to me in my car, so apologies for the bad picture quality.

There were these 2 SKODA cars, that were racing, and an Army Jeep, and all caught, fined. The brilliant part, one of the havaldar's, was holding a video camera and recording everything, now that is one FINE thing done by our Police team in Delhi.

Thank you.



Though a small suggestion and an open letter, why not have atleast 2 to 3 Polieceman at all red lights, even when they are working, following picture shows you a car, all dark tinted glasses, the guy eventually jumped the red light, so can I call him a repeat offender, but hey, if you had 2 - 3 Police men there, you could have made some money. It is simple logic

High Density of Policeman at Traffic Lights
Averagely 2 to 3 Cars have a Rule Violation
*Wrong type of Number Plate
*Blasting Music at full volume (after all we are dilliwala's)
*Dark Tinted glasses, you can't even see inside
*Honking at Red Lights
*Jumping Red Lights

Now Calculate this,
Average Wait Time at a Signal is approximately: 2 Minutes
Average Time to Challan Someone: 1 Minute
Average Cars to be challaned: 2
Rough Challan Charges: Rs. 100
Total Charges Per Red Light Collectible: Rs. 200
Number of Signal Changes in an Hour at a Busy Crossing (5 Minutes Green / 2 Minutes Red / 4 Way Crossing): 7 to 8

Total Collections Per Hour: 7 x 200 = Rs. 1400
Total Collections in a 12 Hour Day (8 AM to 8PM): 1400 x 12 = 16,800
Total Collections Over a 20 Day Month: 3,36,000
Average Salary of a Police Person: Rs. 20,000 Per Month (I am not sure of this)
Incentive to be Given to the Policeman for Challans: Rs. 10,000
Total Policeman: 3
Total Salary Cost: Rs. 60,000 + Rs. 30,000 = Rs. 90,000
Per Month Profitability: Rs. 2,46,000

Law of Averages, say, collections are only 50%, you will still make a cool profit of Rs. 78,000 at above salaris and benefits.

Remember this is only one Side of the Signal, there are usually 2 sides, and about 4 on most of the major crossings in Delhi, so at 2 Sides, you have an average Profitability of Rs. 1.56 Lacs Per Month

Now multiply that by the number of red lights..

There are multiple benefits

If averagely we need 6 Policeman at Each Traffic Light
And We were to Man an Average of 1000 Traffic Lights
An Employment of 6000 People is Generated
The Profit is 2000 Times (Mind Boggling Numbers)

What does all this profit do, reduce tax, improve policing, make sure people who listen to a Whip, listen, avoid accidents, drunken driving.

I know this seems simple logic, and I am not mathematician, but I think it works, it just needs to be put in.

G

The New Mac Book: AS Shiny as it Get's

The shinier the gadget, the higher the chances of it flying off the shelves. The Samsung Metal Series phones have been a killer, people love the metal look on the Apple iPhone, and now Apple has launched the MacBook in aluminium.

I have used an Intel MacBook white for about a year—and it has a serious shortcoming. The plastic quality. Within a year, my MacBook looked like something I was born with.

The new MacBook’s aluminium body is light and suave, manufactured from a single, solid piece of aluminium. This MacBook still has a non-backlit keyboard (oh why!) but the track pad is now bigger and the button has gone. It is integrated into the multi-touch track pad, which allows you to do all those tricks that you do on an iPhone.

The screen is much brighter and shiny, it uses OLED for display. Though colour fidelity is a bit awkward, there is high contrast and sharp reflection. The speakers on this model are much better and a bit louder.

The new design with the black screen border and the aluminium finish now unifies the MacBook, the MacBook Pro, the iMac, and the iPhone designs.

There are some things I don’t appreciate though. The Mini DVI port on the old MacBook has been replaced with a mini display port on the new one, so if you have a DVI to VGA converter, well you will just have to buy another one. The Firewire port is gone, I wonder why, because most external drive manufacturers now offer both Firewire and USB models. The display port is understandable as Apple has chosen to replace the DVI with an advanced bus for high definition video, audio and data streams, but right now displays that will connect are limited.

The Intel graphics card is gone and a brand new Nvidia 9400 M card has been added to the new MacBook, which not only means that you will be able to attach a 30” display to the Book, but also that graphic speeds will be much higher. Though the graphics card takes away 256+ MB, Apple should seriously consider separate RAM for it.

A brilliant change is that the hard drive is available for upgrade through the bottom cover. No screws to be removed. The MacBook is also green—it uses a highly recyclable aluminium and glass enclosure. Apple guarantees it had used a mercury-free LED backlit display, arsenic-free glass, and PVC-free internal cables.

What make an Apple MacBook stand out are the little details—the magnetic latch on the power adapter, the pull-out tabs and the sheer brilliance of design. If you have the money, and want a brilliant machine, buy yourself the aluminium version. If you don’t have the money and still want to own a Mac, buy yourself the older Mac—nothing wrong with it except the plastic body. The new aluminium MacBook is priced upward of Rs 72,910.

--
The above review appeared in the Indian Express, on Sunday 18th January 2009

Enabling the disabled

Last week, most newspapers carried an interesting article about an NRI making a touchscreen for the blind. This is a topic close to my heart and I have been inspired to dedicate my first article of the new year on latest gadgets for differently abled persons.

As a child, I had the opportunity to learn Sanskrit. The other student who took the class with me was visually impaired, though he could read and write. This was my first interaction with someone who couldn’t see. A few days back, at a Titan watch showroom, I came across their Braille Watch, launched in December 2008. The watch is pretty and very useful, an ideal gift if you know someone who is visually impaired. It is also priced at an affordable Rs 995. Though there are other manufacturers making such watches, I have to commend Tatas for taking the lead, and bringing out the best designed watch I have come across in the recent times.

Another great device is the Tango. Invented by Richard Ellenson, the father of a boy with cerebral palsy and made by a company called Blink Twice (www.blink-twice.com), this device lets people affected with cerebral palsy learn how to speak and use touch to convey how they are feeling. The Tango, priced at $7,000 is, however, not affordable for all and still not available in India.

Another great invention called the Frog Pad (www.frogpad.com) is a keyboard that lets you use the computer with one hand. Though not specifically designed for people with disabilities, this is a great tool (at US$150) to help people with just one hand use the PC. It comes in both left-handed and right-handed versions.

Similary, audio books are gradually becoming common, though they are still more popular among people who like to travel a lot. I recall a mail from a society in Pune which wanted help from people to dictate and record books, so that those who could not read could listen to them and acquire some knowledge. In fact, there is a big movement on the Web urging people to read a book, record it and send the MP3 file to the nearest blind school. This is not a tough process since most phones now have built-in voice recorders that create MP3 files.

This article can go on and on. We also have to remember people like Jaipur’s Mujib Khan, who has adopted normal cars to work for physically challenged people (http:// tinyurl.com/ mujibkhan), and all those mechanics who attach additional wheels to scooters so that they can be driven by differently abled people.

Assistive technology can do a lot to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. That is, if the technology is made available. Sometimes it can be very costly, and thus beyond people with low incomes. It is time Government programmes and private organisations came forward with assistance.

--
The above article appeared in the Indian Express on Sunday, 11th January 2009

How to Backup your PC Online - Unpublished Indian Express Article

How to Backup your PC Online

A few days back, one of my accountants created havoc in the office, it was the next day to christmas from what I recall, the problem was, he was getting ready to file the Quarterly Tax Returns that we have to file, and he came with a sad looking face to me, I just lost all our Accounting Data, expecting that he will get a shouting from me, on how, why, aisa kyon karte ho, he was surprised to find me smiling, smiling, because everything was backed up, yes, without him having to do it, everything was automatically backed up, where, to a server outside our office, so even if he had come in, saying I burned the hard disk, we would have been covered, so how do we do it, or to be precise, how can you do it.

Well we as a company can spend resources and time to do it, and also offer this as a full featured solution to our customers to be able to do Disaster Management, but for you at home, I have a few tricks up the sleeve, that will let you do this online, without ever having to really do anything, it’s all automatic, and all for free, don’t believe me, read on.

Though if you use online office editors, such as Google Docs or Zoho, Edit Grid or one of these, your documents would be stored online, but at times you have some documents, etc that you have downloaded, and or given by a friend, that you want backed up, a very innovative jugaad, as you may call it, from my younger brother to my mother was, why don’t you email everything to yourself, but then, hey it’s all step by step, dependent manually on you, so how do we do it automatically.

So how do we do it, head on to www.mozy.com and sign up for their free plan. They have a free plan, that let’s you use 2GB of space on their servers for free. In case you need more space, you will need to depend on a paid plan. Once you have signed up, visit the email account that you used to sign up and confirm the account by clicking on the link in the email.

Once the confirmation is done, we are just steps away from ensuring that your important files are backed up. Download the Mozy client from their website, once you have the client downloaded, it will take you approximately about 3 minutes to have it setup. Then it will come up to a page to ask you to select files and folders you want to backup, select these (this is a lengthy process for it to search for files, so be paitient and let it complete it’s job)

I know most of you will just straight forward jump on to selecting everything, but remember backing up your MP3 collection may seem important, choose properly on what means a lot to you, for example, your files that you keep on your desktop, your address book, the backup of your phone data in case you have it on your PC, the documents folder.

Once the selection is made, the PC will start backing up files to Mozy’s web server, and will give you a pop up window that shows you the backup process. Now let’s setup the options so that you can have the backup done automatically. Go to the application and it’s preferences and make sure the following are setup

Goto Scheduling, and Schedule the time your Backup should be done, you need to make sure your PC is on at the time this is scheduled, I personally select a time of 11 AM daily, Also on the automatic backups, I have selected 30% in the option 1 (wait until the compute r is less than this % busy), 10 in the second option (wait until user is away from the compute for atleast these many minutes), and 24 (hours between backups)

I have also changed the option, to alert me after 2 days in case the backup has not happened. In the bandwidth let this option be, as it is set to 1 mbps, and probably the home plan you have is only 256k or 512 k, that’s it, you are all set.

Now in case you were to delete files of your computer or loose your computer, all you need to do is, goto www.mozy.com and select restore files, and it will give you 3 options, 1. To download the files using a Mozy client, 2, a web download, i.e like you download files from websites, and third to ship you a DVD (most expensive).

I personally feel Mozy is a great free service, though on the paid front, I would not really be able to comment, as I have not used it, but there are a number of other services, and a few others are coming up, so look out, and keep your data secure.

Download Boom De Ah Da - Discovery Song

Discovery and it's whole network is one of the most favourite channels I have to watch on television. Ever since I bought myself the Tata Sky Plus, I can now record and watch all the programs that I wanted to. A new campaign by the Discovery Channel The World is Just Awsome, and a lot of people across the globe have fallen in love with the song and made it their ring tone, and soon we should see it topping the charts.

If you haven't heard the song, or want to download the ring tone for your phone, or the mp3 for your pc, head on to Discovery's Website, and download it.

For those looking for lyrics, Thanks to Wikipedia, the lyrics are

--
(Dialogue)
Astronaut 1: It never gets old, huh?
Astronaut 2: Nope.
Astronaut 1: It kinda makes you want to...
Astronaut 2: Break into song?
Astronaut 1: Yep.
I love the mountains,
I love the clear blue skies
I love big bridges
I love when great whites fly
I love the whole world
And all its sights and sounds
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da (twice)
An African tribe dancing, with one getting near the camera (Going Tribal/Last Man Standing)
I love the planet
I love real dirty things
I love to go fast
I love Egyptian kings
I love the whole world
And all its craziness
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da (twice)
Richard Machowicz firing a Milkor MGL grenade launcher (Future Weapons)
A construction catching Machowicz's fire
I love tornadoes
I love arachnids
I love hot magma
I love the giant squids
I love the whole world
It's such a brilliant place
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da (repeating until fade)
--

So go ahead download it, if you are a discovery fan, or a geek in your heart, I am sure you will love the song.

G

Vista Capable - A New Mess in the New Year for Microsoft

Ever Seen this Badge and Wondered Why o Why ?

In our greed to get the latest, we end up depending on principal vendors to tell us what to buy. I was in a meeting at a customer place, and we were having a similar discussion yesterday, what is the minimum requirement to run your software, and the vendor gave a description, the software actually does not run on the minimum requirement, so it makes you wonder why do all software vendors say this, why do car vendors talk about mileage under certain conditions only, software to work on this minimum spec, while these things never ever happen. What is then the ideal configuration, and you will be told to buy the super computers of the world just to run an office suite or maybe that drawing application that you wanted to use.

A lot of you must have switched to vista, and or thought about switching to vista, and gadget geeks like me must have come out with a standard answer "NO", if you explored why the "NO" came out Vehemently, well the reason was, that most of the machines were not ready for it, and if they were, you needed some sort of an upgrade. No there was nothing (well actually there were, but now they are fixed) wrong with Windows Vista, but the machines over all were not ready.

In a recent news item, Microsoft has landed itself in a soup, in a lot of ways this is good for the consumer. The links to the story

Network Computing | Technologizer

New Year Resolution

Hi,
It's the new year, well it has been for some days now, and no it just did not dawn on me. Just that every new year brings in a lot of hopes, lot of resolutions, things that you plan to do, and things that you look back on.

1. Last year, I made sure I had written a story in each of the releases of Indian Express, except the sad weekend of 26th November, that none of us globally will forget. I also wrote some articles for the Readers Digest, and made a resolution to keep it up this year, and make sure that you don't miss a story from me, I know.. those who follow it to the last mile, there was no story on 4th January, well, actually I messed it up, I repeated a Topic, but am posting that story here for you to read in a seperate post.

2. I also thought, that in 2009, I will try to update my blog regularly, well not daily, as that would be a bit difficult right now, but frequently, and not only with my Indian express stories, so that this does not become a repository of just Indian Express stories I have done.

3. The economic crisis, seems to be setting into all industries, and this is not only making people loose jobs, but making it difficult for entrepreneurs, to evolve, to come to market with strategic options, so as to both up-sell and down-sell to their customers, to help survive together. Tough times have always brought out the best in entrepreneurs, and we at System3, i.e My Company, will work to bring new products and services out this year, so that our customers and potential customers can have a larger variety to choose from.

So to all my readers, A very Happy New Year, and hey, have a ball

G

ADIOS 2008

This year, like any other, has been one hell of a treat for all us gadget and technology freaks. Why do I call myself a tech freak? Well, I am among those who look out for new technology every year, and by December say “hey you know what, we should have just waited a while and bought it cheaper”.

2008, too, had its share of things that revolutionised technology and changed the way we made our choices. Here’s an attempt to revisit all the movers and shakers of the year.

The most awaited launch this year was the iPhone 3G, with operators waiting for the clock to strike 12 to sell the first unit which promised high-speed Internet on your phone. We also waited eagerly for 3G services which were supposed to bring the high-speeds to the iPhone, but by the time MTNL launched its services it was mid-December and that too was restricted to a few customers, who are unsure of what they would have to pay for the G force.

There was some other mobile news too. Hutch became Vodafone, Virgin joined hands with Tata to become the first company to pay you for all incoming calls, and Airtel launched more and more services. The fight for 3G licences is still on, and soon we should get to see one of the big players finally giving you a full-fledged service.

Till then, the iPhone is just another iPod you can use to make some calls. At the price it is being sold at and with 3G still beyond us, the Jesus phone has been confined to being every yuppy’s dream, maybe also a conversation starter at parties, but is yet to become a phone that flies off the shelves.

2008 was also the year of the Netbook. These new age laptops make sense, as they are cheaper than regular notebooks, and are also green, using lesser energy to produce, ship and run. Since most of us use laptops only to browse the Internet, document management tasks, e-mails and chat, we really don’t need the fastest computers on earth that can calculate a trillion bits of information in a second, at least not all of us.

I bought the Acer Aspire One from among a choice of Dell, MSI, Asus and HP. I also found a lot of other users switching to these machines, which not only offer great battery time and ultra portability, but are ideal for the daily grind. No wonder, market leaders Asus and Acer together managed to sell 10 million of these tiny laptops in 2008. For me it has been a good investment. Though I bought it as a second machine, it makes good sense even as your primary laptop.

2009 is at our doorstep, but the debate between Plasma and LCD TVs is still on. Back in the old days it was a simple choice between colour and black and white, plus size, all defined by budgets. Today, when everything can be bought on EMI, having the biggest TV, Plasma or LCD has just made life a bit more complicated. I personally am very happy with my standard television and don’t really want to shift to an LCD. For one, the wide format (16:9) is only good if you are watching DVD, the regular TV feeds look awkward on this format. HD should be here in a few years, but not right now, unless you plan to watch a whole lot of HD content by buying a Blu-ray player.

The Plasma vs LCD war should also be over soon. With the price difference diminishing, one should win over the other and become the standard. Till then, I am also a spectator.

The list can go on, but I will bid farewell to 2008 with this, and wishes for a great new year ahead. See you in 2009.

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The above article appeared in the Indian Express, dated Sunday 28th December 2008

Time for Teamwork - On the Lean

Three solutions to share knowledge, virtually
THE corporate world has a lot of knowledge, but hardly any knowledge centres, and hence all this knowledge seems to be residing among individuals instead of organisations. This week I will show you some solutions that will let you share knowledge, interact, collaborate and work with distributed teams on common goals, all this without spending much money.

We will always be able to email presentations, documents and spreadsheets to colleagues and clients, but we will always end up asking for more. This is where tools like Zoho office (www.zoho.com) and Google docs (docs.google.com) come in. Both are effective when it comes to working with teams, but they still fall short of our requirements.

Both are great to share Word documents and to work on them together, but are unable to do the same while sharing an Excel sheet or making a guided presentation to multiple people. In my search for a solution to this problem, I came across three websites.

If you want to share a spreadsheet or work on graphs without having to install anything on your PC, then head for editgrid.com, open a free account, look at some standard templates and spreadsheets others have made, and start. You can send an invite to multiple people who can log on to slide-share and work with you live or otherwise on the same spreadsheet. You can do this from any PC, and so there is no need to carry all those files with you. The website has a paid version for enterprises that look at data security and support.

If you are familiar with modern day organisations, you would have come across a term called Webex (now a Cisco company). Webex allows you to share any application, do presentations remotely and work together as a team, but at a price of 33 cents per minute— sadly, meetings end up costing quite a packet. Now you have an option. Dimdim.com offers the same features for free. Though their $99 per year version offers higher speeds, it also has a free version which is sufficient if you audience is small—about 10 to 15 people—and you want to limit interactions to text or voice chat. You can also do video conferencing, though this feature is not very stable as of now.

We all need to send screenshots, whether it is for support on an application or getting advice, and the Print Screen button on your keyboard can’t always do the trick. Jingproject.com from Techsmith, the leaders in professional screen capture solutions, allows you to take screenshots—pictures or video—and annotate them using text, arrows, lines, boxes and highlights in multiple colours, all for free.
So go ahead, share that knowledge.

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The above article appeared in the Indian Express on Sunday, 21st December 2008

New year, New Tech - Tech Trends 2009 as per Me

It is the end of the year, the time for so-called Gadget Gurus like me to tell our readers what to look forward to and what to buy in the new year. Here is my take on how techworld would look like in 2009.

BIG SCREENS: There was a time when we thought a 21” television was the ultimate in home entertainment, a time when a 14” portable TV was considered cool for they saved space, a time when most conversation revolved around the colour TV in the drawing room. Then size took over. Bada hai toh behtar hai replaced everything else. From 25, 29, 32 to 70 inches, we were all spending on the bigger TVs, at times dishing out more than you would on a 1-bedroom flat to acquire a rather large screen. My first prediction for 2009 is that bigger will become cheaper and you will see 40” screens going for as low as Rs 30,000. The obscenely big 52” screen could also come within your grasp. So whether it is playing games on the latest console or cutting costs by watching DVD movies, in 2009 the big TV will be the next big thing.

PVRs: No, I am not talking of Mr Bijli’s chain of cinemas, but personal video recorders. Things have already started moving in 2008. Though Zee has been talking of it for a couple of years now, Tata Sky took the leap with its Plus model. Though still in its infancy, Tata Sky Plus has taken PVRs to Indian homes, and to people who have always dreamt of owning a Tivo Box some day. Anil Gupte of K.E.E.N Inc, has been developing a digital recorder out of his Pune office, and you should soon see every major player jump onto it. Soon, it would be like the good old days of the VCR, though this time around the magnetic tape would be replaced by a Hard Disk, making it a personal video recorder. Though the prices of recorders are not fully unjustified, in 2009 we should see them become cheaper. There are already about five major players in the market, and with more joining the fray it’s only going to get better for the buyer.

PERSONAL ASSISTANTS: Cellphones are becoming smaller and lighter by the day and can already do much more than what they were originally designed for. Our greed for the lightest and the latest has always led us to cellphones which claim to be user-friendly but end up as being a pain to use. But with time the cellphone has also become the assistant that we all yearned for, making us reachable on voice, e-mail and text, making sure our contacts and calendars are synchronised, and that we are up to date with what is happening around the world. Though most new age phones come with browsers, the next level would be automated concierge services, what I would call personal assistants. A few start-ups are already on the job, creating applications like Around Me on the iPhone that tell you what cultural events are happening in town, how to get tickets for them, or suggesting a place to go out for dinner. The technology will let you manage your vacation, business, office, work and even leisure, all intelligently. If you have a larger task to do, you could always place a call to a service provider which will do it on demand. These services could be available in India by next year.

BLU-RAY DVD PLAYERS: The glass wall has finally been broken and Blu-rays have started appearing in India, though at costs which will make you think twice, even thrice. Moreover, not many movies are available on Blu-ray. But, in 2009, we are likely to see DVD’s enter the lower end of the market with players having built-in upscalers. More and more content will soon be available on Blu-ray discs, and yes, you should also see Blu-ray movies available at your movie rental shop.

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The Above article appeared in the Indian Express dated 21st December 2008.

Hands-free freedom - Review Jabra SP 700

At last, a device that lets you talk and drive the safe way
NO, I am not in favour of anyone using the phone while driving, but then at times you just need to. There are a lot of Bluetooth options, which let you do this safely, but then, some people don’t really like a device plugged into their ear, and most Bluetooth hands-free speakerphones are just not worth their salt.

The other day, my Jabra SP 5050 speakerphone died on me. It was about three years old, irreparable and out of warranty. So, I got in touch with Faxtel India, the local distributors, and was told that they would be coming out with an SP 700 model in early November and I should wait for it. Last week, the wait ended and I finally got my new car speakerphone kit.
So what is so nice about the gadget that I decide to write a review?

My earlier Jabra was great, but it had its share of problems:
The battery time was less than two hours, so I had to keep it plugged into my car charger.
Power on and Power off were lengthy processes—at times when you were actually trying to switch off the hands-free, you ended up dialling a number.
In case you left the car with your speakerphone on, it used to stay on till the battery ran out. So at times my calls would be ringing inside the car, while I was in my bedroom.

So what makes the SP700 better?

Well the unit is small, beautiful and all black. The speaker and microphone are integrated— the earlier model had a separate microphone, which made more sense as it could be turned around for better reception. The new one will only listen to the person in front, and that is also good in many ways.

It can now play music over Bluetooth. But, why would you want to do that in the car which already has a stereo. Well, with all the music phones around, it is better to have options. Moreover, the speakerphone can even link to the car stereo using the FM transmitter. When a call comes in, the music actually goes off on its own. All you have to do is press the answer button on your hands-free.

The new Jabra also gives great voice quality and an extended battery life of about eight hours. It even announces the number you are getting the call from, though most often you don’t remember any phone number. It is still a cool feature.

I also loved the voice prompt feature. The moment you get into your car, and press the power on button, it connects to your phone and says “connected”. Similarly, when you power it down, it says “power off”.
The coolest feature, however, is the auto detect, which uses advanced acoustics to detect if you are in the car or not and switches off the device in less than two minutes, thus saving battery time, and making sure your phone is disconnected when you exit the car.

Though the listed price is Rs 5,499, I picked it up for Rs 4,999. I believe the device is available for as low as Rs 4,500. So think about it, do you want to keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel, or hold a phone and put yourself and others in danger.

For more information visit Jabra Website

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The above article appeared in the Indian Express on 7th December 2008

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

Time to help the Innovators

Einstien in every House
LAST WEEK India launched Chandrayaan-I, the country’s first unmanned mission to the moon and a statement of our technological prowess. This week I am going to tell you about the unconventional way we Indians do things—the quintessential Indian jugaad and the wonderful innovations that come out of it. I will tell you about a washing machine that does not need electricity, a cellphone charger that works using a micro-windmill and a timer-based switch that cuts off a two-wheeler engine. No, I am not talking of ideas, but innovations that are being churned out at the grassroots level.

This week at TieCon2008 in New Delhi, I got to meet Vishnu Swaminathan, the Chief Innovation Officer of the National Innovation Foundation (NIF). I had a one-on-one chat with him on how we, as urban dwellers, entrepreneurs, and people with ideas can work with the NIF to take things forward. We spoke about inventions that don’t come from universities, or research labs, but from knowledge-rich poor people, who innovated because there was a need to. What they need right now is people who can make these ideas commercial.

Remya Jose’s washing machine which works when you pedal the exer-cycle might not work commercially, because those of us in the cities who need to lose weight don’t wash our clothes ourselves, and the rural poor who need to wash their clothes might not want to lose their weight along with it. But what it needs is someone who can maybe take the idea of a cycle-cranked washing machine and change it into a hand-cranked machine which, with a few spins of a handle, cleans your clothes, that too without any electricity. Similarly, N Satyanarayan’s micro-windmill may be great to generate 1Ampere current that can charge many of our devices. But I think it needs to be modified so we can use it as an all-in-one charger for all devices, with multiple tips and voltages, which can be mounted on your balcony with a cable running into your room.

As children we all had our own ways of doing jugaad. But society taught us to become doctors, engineers or lawyers, and this kept us away from innovation, took away our scientific temperament. A look at the NIF database and you get to know what you missed out on. It lists over a thousand innovations even we could have thought of. From making the cycle-rickshaw a geared machine to Tukaram Verma’s Rs 175-contraption which cuts off two-wheeler engines, these creations tell us it is time we also got thinking or at least supported the good innovators. Remya, Satyanarayan and Tukaram must get their due credit before someone steals their ideas.

This is where you have to see the NIF team’s passion and zeal to get these innovations to the masses. And the NIF does all this for free, as it is an NGO funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology and run by a bunch of academicians, who are really connected to the cause.

If you think you have an idea, or know someone who has one that you think will work, you can inform the National Innovation Foundation at 1800-233-5555, an all-India toll-free number, or through its website www.nif.org.in. Soon, someone will get in touch with the innovator, and who knows it could be the next big thing to happen to us.

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The above article appeared in the Indian Express on Sunday October 26, 2008

Review Lacinema Premier - Your Giant Media Vault

An affordable option to store movies, photos, songs and play them on the telly

ONE OF my customers called me in the middle of the night. He had just returned from an African safari and wanted to show his pictures to family and friends on his 70" LCD television. But there was a glitch. The cable that connects his camera to the TV was missing. He wanted to know whether he could burn the pictures on a DVD and show it using his DVD player. But finding someone to convert the pictures into DVD movie format would not have been possible by brunch the next day, when he was expecting his friends. To make matters worse, his DVD player did not have a USB drive input, so the option of saving the pictures on a pen drive was out. Anyway his player did not support JPEGs. My friend had to put off his show.
Here was a problem any of us could face with the amount of media—movies, music, pictures—that we tend to acquire these days. And I think I have found a solution, though not the best.
Earlier this month, LaCie, known for its external drives, launched LaCinema Premier external media drive in India. The lightweight matt finish plastic box comes with a power adapter, remote control, manual, USB cable and a video/stereo RCA cable to connect it to the TV. My MacBook was unable to save content on the drive and I figured out that by default it was formatted using an NTFS file system, not the default on Mac. So I had to reformat the drive before I dragged about 10 GB of pictures, MP3s, downloaded YouTube videos and encoded DivX movies into it. To make sure that the media detection feature worked, I put all files in a single folder— but you can have as many folders as you want.
When I finally hooked it to my TV, it had no display. I realised that the USB was still plugged in and you couldn't play anything on the LaCie while transferring data to it. Soon, I had some songs playing through my TV speakers. But the interface was bad and the only thing I could see was a timer which showed how much of the song had played, along with a playlist.
I went back to the homescreen which has icons for movies, music, pictures, browse and settings. I selected movies and immediately it listed all Mpeg and MP4 DivX files, though the podcasts and YouTube videos didn't play. I downloaded the latest firmware from the LaCie website and updated the unit, but still no luck. I gave up on the podcasts and turned my attention to the DivX which played normally, though there was some trouble forwarding/rewinding the videos.
The picture viewing was good and the slideshow worked. But I tried out only JPG format. It also played most music formats except music bought on iTunes.
The LaCinema is available in 500 GB and 1TB capacities and ships with a 2-year warranty. The 500 GB version costs Rs 12,500 and the 1 TB version Rs 17,500. It is usually available with computer hardware retailers. Buy it if you are an early adopter of technology, but if you are seriously looking to link your digital media with the TV, this is not the ideal option.

Good
The Box is Small and Easy to Carry
The Remote is nicely laid out
Affordable

Bad
Supports only limited formats
You can't read and write to the drive at the same time
As there is no Ethernet port, you can't update/download content directly from the Internet

Ugly
There is no HDMI Port on the device, though it supports 1080 on component video out
An additional SD Card slot or a USB port would have made it easier to transfer files to the drive
They could make the USB the host port, so that it can read/copy information from digital cameras and other devices
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The above review appeared in the Indian Express, Dated 19th October 2008

Living with the acer aspire one

A month ago, I fell prey to buying what my wife calls a “mini dumb laptop”. I use a powerful Mac Book, and she uses the latest Core 2 Duo processor-based machine. Between us we have 3 GB of RAM in our laptops, and large capacity hard disks, mine is a 13.3” display and hers a 12.1”. So why on earth did we opt for a so-called small wonder.

My company installs complicated wireless networks and often I have to get my hands dirty on the field. As my white Mac could not take the beating any more, I thought of picking up a 15” laptop for my on-the-road work. But the thought of carrying a second laptop—I need both when I travel—in my bagpack made me ensure that I didn’t end up adding more weight.

My needs were simple, the machine should weigh about 1 kg, have a battery time of at least two hours, should run Linux—Yes, I am a Linux guy, but Windows, too, will do—should be decent looking, and have both a wireless and a wired network device. A webcam would be nice, and a built-in microphone so that I can chat with my team using just the laptop.

My options were limited to the HP Mini Note (brilliantly made, but costing around Rs 40,000), the Asus Eee PC (the original 4GB Flash Drive version is now available for about Rs 14,000 and comes with a 2GB SD card thrown in for free) the MSI Wind, the Dell Mini and the Acer Aspire One. A few showroom visits later, I was still mulling the Idea Pad U110 from Lenovo, though I was in no mood to spend the price of a Tata Nano on a laptop that I would rarely use.

The only machine that lived up to expectations was the HP Mini Note, but it was too pricey. I loved the mouse clicks—they have put one on the left and one on the right—and the silver finish. But that was when I saw the Blue Aspire One, with its orange reflective trims, plastic keyboard and mouse keys similar to HP, though a little small. I fired up the machine and it had a Tux Linux built-in (a Chinese import), which was not going to work for me. So I ended up buying the same laptop with Windows XP Home preloaded for an additional Rs 2,000I spent Rs 25,000 on the machine, got it home and asked my tech head to reformat the machine and install Ubuntu Linux and Windows on multiple partitions.

It has since become my machine of choice at home. I use it to check my emails over the weekend, do Skype video conferences with my family across the globe, update my blog, and even some research. I am a big guy, so the keyboard is a tad bit small for me. But it is nicely laid out and I love the fact that the Page Up/Down keys have been placed right next to the arrow keys.

The webcam just about works, and the microphone is good, but the speakers leave a lot to be desired. I managed to get about two-and-half hours on a Windows run, and about three hours on a Linux run (yes, Linux also consumes lesser power). Getting the wireless to work in Ubuntu was a bit of a pain. And, in case you love to install things, you should buy an external CD Drive.

The three USB Ports, a dedicated SD Card slot, and a multi-card reader make the machine versatile, the built in Ethernet port and wireless are good, though the switch for turning off the wireless is not all that nice. The mouse is not as good as the HP Mini Note, but is much better than that of the MSI Wind or the EeePC.

The biggest problem I encountered was with the 1024x600 display. Most sites today are designed for 1024x800, so Yahoo’s new interface on email and the Gmail interface won’t load up and my corporate website looked a bit skewed.

I don’t think the machine will be able to play a lot of games as the graphic speed is not very high. I managed to crash Firefox every time I had more than eight tabs open in Windows, for the machine has just 1GB RAM. Upgrading RAM is not recommended as the whole machine would have to be taken apart.

But still if you are planning to buy a laptop, mostly for web browsing and checking mail, and if mobility, and not speed, is what you are looking for, then do check out the Atom machines. The prices are going to fall soon, making them more more attractive. As of now, the cheapest Acer Aspire One model comes for Rs 19,999 + taxes.

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The above article appeared in the Indian Express on Sunday October 12, 2008

HOW TO CUT DOWN ON YOUR INTERNATIONAL PHONE BILL WITH SKYPE

I don’t think there are a lot of people who have not heard of Skype. But they don’t use it either because they don’t really want to switch on their computer to make a phone call or because they don’t realise how much money it can save them.
So how does a person like you save money on calls without having to keep your PC on always, then hunt for a microphone and speakers and to make sure they are all fine-tuned so that your call can go through.

Alternative 1: Get yourself a Windows smart phone with Wifi built in. Browse to www.skype.com and download the version for your smartphone, login to Skype and get the Skype ids of those you want to call. I would not suggest using Skype on GPRS, but if you have Wifi at home and a Windows Mobile, this is the best and the fastest method to go online. Remember that when you are making a Skype call, you can either use the Bluetooth hands-free or use the set of speakers and microphone built into your phone.

Alternative 2: Get yourself a Skype phone. Netgear, Linksys and Belkin sell it across India now. The cheapest is a Belkin phone priced at about Rs 8000; Linksys and Netgear retail at about Rs 12,000—in the US, these cost just half as much. Buy the wireless variety; the wired one will require you to switch on your PC. Your phone will use the wireless access point you have at home for the Wifi network, and logon to the inbuilt Skype so that you can make Skype-to-Skype calls.

So what happens in case the person you are calling does not have Skype? Skype offers two great services, Skype Out and Skype In. The Skype Out service is the cheapest and the most reliable VoIP provider I have come across. It enables you to make a call to the US for as little as 2 Cents a minute, or Re 1 per minute, if the person you are calling does not have Skype. You can call a landline or a cell phone, but do not use this to call someone in India and do read the tariff sheet on skype.com for more details. With Skype Out, you can make free Skype-to-Skype calls and call regular numbers. There are also plans that will let make unlimited calls to a specific country for a fixed monthly plan. The Skype In service allows you to take up a number in the US, the UK, Hong Kong or 18 other countries. For the person -calling from that country, your phone is a local call. So you are in effect just a local call away from your siblings or children living in the US. And it’s all legal.
Enjoy the flat world with Skype. ...

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The above article appeared in the Indian Express dated October 5th 2008

TO REFILL OR NOT

Often while talking to customers or responding to readers I am in a dilemma whether to suggest a refill or a new printer cartridge. Well, this week I will list the options and tell you how to go refill safely. But please note, these are my comments and parts of this article have been sourced from leading manufacturers of printers.

Life was simple in the days of the dot-matrix printer. The dots were printed like a typewriter using a similar ribbon. You could go to any third-party manufacturer and they would change the ribbon inside your cartridge for a tenth of the cost of a new one. Then came along laser and inkjet printers which sucked the ink out, along with a lot of money from our wallets. This was when the trouble started.

Most of us have some time or the other fallen prey to refilling gangs who charge anywhere between Rs 50 and Rs 800, depending on the cartridge, but leave us with spoilt printers that no one would repair. Service centres would tell you your printer was dead because you used refilled cartridges and that the repair could not be covered under warranty.

As my friend and business acquaintance who runs a chain of cartridge refill and remanufacturing franchises across the country advises, the chemistry of inks is very different. The same ink can’t work for 600 dpi and 1200 dpi printers. Similarly, between two models of colour laser printers from the same manufacturer, the inks would differ. But the refill guys just use the same set of inks—a concoction of chemical, colour, and water—to fill your cartridges. These would eventually leak and kill the printer.

So, the next time you buy a printer, I suggest you check the manufacturer website, and not the dealer about warranty information. I found this following quote on the HP website: “For HP printer products, the use of a non-HP ink cartridge or a refilled ink cartridge does not affect either the warranty to the customer or any HP support contract with the customer. However, if printer failure or damage is attributable to the use of a non-HP or refilled ink cartridge, HP will charge its standard time and materials charges to service the printer for the particular failure or damage.”
This is what the FAQ section of the Epson website says: “Epson does not recommend refilling or using third-party ink cartridges. If these third party products cause a failure, the repair of that failure will not be covered under warranty.”

There wasn’t much on the Canon or Samsung websites, but industry sources say no printer manufacturer (though their service centres might) would refuse to service a printer just because you have used a third party cartridge.

Though one has to be fully aware of the bad practices in the industry, the market is gradually getting structured. Leading players like Cartridge World, Laser Tech and others are making it a better market. Some remanufactured and compatible cartridge suppliers like Inktec sell compatible cartridges for roughly half the price of the original cartridge and run the same length without damaging your printer.

On the other hand the large printer manufacturers are trying to keep you away from refilled cartridges by putting in chips that count the number of prints. These have a flipside though. Your cartridge designed for 2,000 prints would stop printing if you have printed as many pages, though covering just 2 per cent of the paper and even with ink still left inside the cartridge. Cartridge World and Laser Tech have started offering chip resets, but not for all cartridges.

Cartridge refilling, if done carefully and through proper channels, is a benefit to the environment. If you want to go for a replacement, just make sure your empty cartridge does not land in the hands of refillers.

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The above article appeared in the Indian Express, dated Sunday September 28, 2008

Messenger on the Move

Here is how to stay connected with Internet contacts through your GPRS phone
I recall when I got myself a BlackBerry about three years back. I kept thinking of a way to chat with my teams using the phone. Time went by and in came Google Talk. There were other third party utilities which could do the same, but all of them wanted money.

There wasn’t much you could do if you were on a general GPRS phone and still wanted to use all your messengers. Well, finally, I have the answer for you and it is called Nimbuzz. But only if you are on a Symbian Series 60 phone—not iPhone, Blackberry or Windows Mobile.
So, what is so special about Nimbuzz? After all, there are other players like IM+, Agile Messenger, E-buddy, and Fring which offer similar services. But I liked the Nimbuzz, and this is why.

I use ICQ, AOL Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Skype and Facebook, as well as an internal chat messenger that runs on a protocol called Jabber for our corporate team. At times I carry my Skype phone with me so that I can make cheap International calls—with tarrifs falling, we may not have to do that much longer. But carrying so many phones can be tough and I have always wanted to move Skype to one of my phones, so that I could skip to Skype when I wanted and stick to GSM during the rest of the time.

Facebook chat, too, is becoming more of a necessity, as most of my school/college friends don’t use messengers. Moreover, I did not want to load too many applications on the phone and wanted to stick to a single application — on my computer I use Trillian for Windows, Pidgin for Linux and Adium on Mac to give me one list of all my contacts, irrespective of the messenger.

And this is exactly what Nimbuzz does for your phone, and that too for free. Nimbuzz even has a client for the PC, so your experience on Windows is no different than the one on your cellphone.
So, is it all good? Well, not really. The Edge/GPRS services in India are far below quality and they need to be improved drastically. At times my messenger conversations went missing, and at times I could not make Skype calls because of the poor GPRS/EDGE service. On the upside,...3G will soon be available in the country. And if your phone has Wi-Fi, you can use Nimbuzz to chat or make Skype calls over the wireless network.

There is some serious competition too. Ebuddy, which offers MySpace, Google, Yahoo, ICQ, AOL and MSN, though without Skype, is also free and hence the nearest competitor to Nimbuzz. IM+ offers all that Nimbuzz has to offer, minus MySpace and facebook, but only if you pay $29.95. Fring offers Skype, MSN, Google, Yahoo, ICQ, AOL and SIP (another VoIP Provider), but no Facebook and MySpace. But Fring is still in Beta, and we should see other things added to it.

For now, Nimbuzz is the best way to stay connected while on the move. Download Nimbuzz from nimbuzz.com, and as they claim, join mobile freedom.
To know if your phone is compatible see tinyurl.com/tech2-nimbuzz

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The article appeared in the Indian Express on Sunday 21st September 2008.

Two days with the iPhone

It’s a great phone, but with many flaws, so if you want to own one wait for a better price and 3G
The iPhone is finally here, and it is not making waves except in Page 3 circles. I know you want the phone, I want it too, but is it worth the money you have to dish out— as a friend used to say, “now we need to take housing loans to buy gadgets”. Anyway, I got a chance to live with the Jesus phone for two days, and this is what I felt.
Though I have never seen a better phone for business use, it has a whole lot of shortcomings. But still, if I were to buy a phone, it would be an iPhone, but only if the price was right.

The biggest complaint would be that the battery dies out too quickly. Though I was not using Wi-Fi or 3G, or any of the connectivity features, I had to recharge the phone and pray it would last. Since the phone was on loan, I did not have the car recharge kit. I could always recharge it using the USB port on a laptop, but the other end of the phone requires a proprietory connector—why can’t all companies stick to USBs so that it can be recharged anywhere? The phone has a string of features like Bluetooth, Automatic Screen Brightness, Edge, 3G and Wi-Fi; to make sure you get good battery life, turn these off, but then that would make it just another phone.

I did not try out Edge, as I think no one should buy this phone to use it on Edge, it will have to be used as a 3G phone. Luckily both my house and office, and most of the places I work out of—friends’ homes, cafes etc—have wireless. Connecting on Wi-Fi was not bad, though pulling email every time I went into a Wi-Fi zone was rather tiresome. I’d rather stick to a Blackberry for now.

the phone. I also loved the ease with which conference calls can be made. In a usual business day I end up doing about two to three conferences with my team and my customers, and it’s a painful experience with most phones. With the iPhone, all you have to do is press the Add button, call the person, and then press Join. I managed a three-party conference call, even going into private mode with one.

I also managed to crash the phone quite a few times, very unlike other Apple products. I then realised that the phone had over a 100 apps installed in it. Once I removed some of these Apps, the phone was easy to work with. I felt the typing was a bit slow, but then I am used to a regular keypad.

People have complained that it does not have a flash and can’t do picture messaging, but these were not big issues with me. Usually, I do not send MMSes and don’t really know a lot of people who do. The missing flash, though, can be a bit of a problem if you use your phone camera too much.
The interface is brilliantly done. However, getting the search in contacts took some getting used to. But the way the phone asked me each time if I would like to take the call on the speakerphone, the regular iPhone or my bluetooth headset was something I liked. Connecting to the bluetooth headset was also a breeze.

I loved the fact that Apple has given a standard headphone jack on...the phone. I also loved the ease with which conference calls can be made. In a usual business day I end up doing about two to three conferences with my team and my customers, and it’s a painful experience with most phones. With the iPhone, all you have to do is press the Add button, call the person, and then press Join. I managed a three-party conference call, even going into private mode with one.

I also managed to crash the phone quite a few times, very unlike other Apple products. I then realised that the phone had over a 100 apps installed in it. Once I removed some of these Apps, the phone was easy to work with. I felt the typing was a bit slow, but then I am used to a regular keypad.

People have complained that it does not have a flash and can’t do picture messaging, but these were not big issues with me. Usually, I do not send MMSes and don’t really know a lot of people who do. The missing flash, though, can be a bit of a problem if you use your phone camera too much.

Another little problem is that you need a pin which comes with the phone to take the SIM card out. Though no one needs to swap SIMs regularly, if you lose the pin, you are in trouble.

The capability of the iPhone to sync with my Mac or Windows PC is great. The way contacts are stored is also awesome, but sadly I could not search the contacts by first name, maybe I was doing something wrong. The switch to turn the phone from ring mode to vibrate is reminiscent of the Palm. The volume keys felt sturdy, and added to the solid feel Apple has built into the product.

So, do I want one? Yes. Why don’t I have one right now? One the cost is too high, and 3G is still not here. But there is no other phone that offers the same experience, and no one, yes no one, beats the touch interface.

For now, I am going to buy the new iPod Touch, as it can do email on Wi-Fi, along with music, video and even the apps, only the phone is missing.

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The Above Article appeared in the Indian Express, Dated 14th September 2008