Now, since I’ve quit Reliance, this really has given me the oppurtunity to look at a good business phone. I was really impressed by the Nokia E63, partly because of the QWERTY, and partly because of the awesome battery life. But this decision has created a major confusion, leading to three possible, viable solutions. I really cannot choose, so any help in this regard would be appreciated.

Option 1: -

Retain the N82 as the personal phone, and get the E63 as the 2nd phone. This would obviously mean that I carry two high end handsets around, which would be some serious overkill, not to mention that it would be the most expensive proposition.

Option 2: -

Sell off the N82, and buy an E63. Agreed, I’d be sacrificing a very good digital camera, and a GPS, but, on the bright side, this would also let me get a GOOD standalone digital camera somewhere down the line. GPS is something I really would not use anyway.

Option 3: -

Spruce up the N82, get a new panel for it and stuff, and use that as the only phone. This would obviously mean I have a single handset for all my purposes, which would be against my own principles, but this would also be the cheapest of the three options.

So, there, these are my thoughts, out loud. Feel free to suggest anything out of the box. No, I’m not looking at a Blackberry just yet. Its just between the three options above.

But, as always, over the past few listens, I’ve changed my opinion about the album totally. This album is awesome. Its an album you must listen to on a good pair of headphones to actually appreciate the musical arrangement.

This album would not be appreciated by most people, considering its a very different Rahman this time around, which explains the extreme reactions to this album. Rediff claims its a masterpiece, while many others have rubbished it.

This one is a winner in my book., like the music of Yuvvraaj, and should be a winner in anyone’s book whose definition of good music is not conventional Bollywood stuff.

Next up, Slumdog Millionaire.

There are multiple advantages to this. You can connect other external drives to this Live USB install, and copy stuff from the internal hard disk (yes, its accesible!), for starters. Only flipside, not all computers support booting off USB.

I think this should be possible with Ubuntu too, though I’d rather have it installed on my HDD instead.

For now, me is happy with Backtrack

Invalid System Disk, Insert System Disk and press any key to continue.

For the uninitiated, that translates into a hard drive failure. My 200GB Hard drive. Gone! About 25GB of Music, 30Gigs of documents and pics, another 20 gigs of videos, all gone. Tried again Saturday morning, to no avail. Funny thing, the hard disk would be detected off a cold reboot, but off a warm reboot, bam! it was gone.

Had no choice but to go and get myself another 320GB hard drive, and somehow hope that I could salvage the data by connecting the old one and copying the stuff over. Installed Windows Vista, connected the old drive, and as if by magic, I could see the old drive! Initiated the most awaited copy process of my life, and 2GB data transfer later, poof! old hard drive gone again. Many iterations and about 6 hours later, at 4am on Sunday morning, I had somewhat recovered most of the data, by painstakingly copying file by file over, shutting down Windows after every 2GB of data transfer, and restarting. By the evening, I was back on track, much to my relief.

The silver lining? The old disk is under warranty, which basically means I get a replacement disk.Why is that a silver lining? Because I would then have 320GB+350Gb (External) + 200 GB = 870GB of drive space, with little or no idea what I’d be doing with it.

I’m open to ideas.

Fully utilizing the capabilities of Gmail’s conversation view, we quickly realised that most of this stuff on these conversations could serve as posts on a forum, which could technically serve as a ready reckoner a multitude of tech related stuff.

And hence, ‘Technomaly‘ was born. We’ve got ideas for this, though its pretty raw right now.

I do not believe that writing stuff can change a system that is sick, diseased, and rotten to the core, totally beyond repair.

Its become a fashion now for every Tom, Dick and harry to say “The Mumbai Spirit will never die” and “People were back to work the next morning”. Stop this hypocrisy, seriously.

Am I the only one that finds it funny that terrorist attacks of huge magntitude cannot deflate the ‘Mumbai Spirit’, but a small regionalistic Political Party can grind the ‘Mumbai Spirit’ to dust, causing schools, colleges, offices, shops, business establishments etc to remain shut?

Pakistan was the cause? Seriously, get over it. The guys have enough problems on their western border region with Afghanistan already, and I doubt anyone in their right mind would want to mess up relationships on the eastern border with India too. More likely these bastards came from those regions itself.

You decide. More to come, when my anger boils over.

It basically is a set-top box, with a hard disk inside, so you can actually pause live TV or schedule recordings of shows, assuming you are not home. Tempting, one would think, but I think it would have its drawbacks. What would one do once that hard disk is full? There seems to be no way to copy out all that recorded data. In which case, it seems logical that it would overwrite. Worse still, what if the hard disk conked? I’m sure there would be a replacement scheme, but then, that would mean loss of data.

Considering I intend to hook up this Tata Sky system to my computer, it would make perfect sense to take the plain Vanilla DTH subscription, no matter who the provider, and rely on Windows Media Center to do the rercording for me.

Which brings me back to the main question, which DTH service?

I spent half an hour trying to figure how ‘Saajha karen’ means email.

Check it out from the link above, or click here.

I first thought it was some prank played by my friends, but it soon materialized that it was not. Next step, forgot password on Shaadi.com. Birthdate verification failed. Dead end. Created a pseudo profile on Shaadi.com, after going through about eight pages to register. In the meanwhile, six more mails from Shaadi.com, letting me know of Tamil girls from Sri Lanka as potential brides.

Going through ‘MY’ Profile now on Shaadi.com from the pseudo profile, I quickly realised that it was some genius from Sri Lanka, who’d entered his E-Mail address wrong. Mailed Shaadi.com about this, problem sorted in half an hour. Talk about good customer service. That was about the only thing to write home about.

Only flipside to the whole thing. I cannot figure how to delete the pseudo profile I’d created for the purpose.

One, I prefer to keep my personal and professional life separate. None of my colleagues, barring a select few, have my personal number, and none of my friends, barring a very few close ones, have the official number.

Two, my 2nd phone obviously is a Reliance handset. That means CDMA. That means really pathetic handsets. That means a good handset on Reliance comes out, and about 4 million people on the Reliance Network have it (Nokia 6275 and its ’state-of-the-art’ 2 megapixel camera). But, that also means more congestion resistant networks. Yes, its true. Anyone who’d been to a cricket match in India (the ultimate test for mobile phone congestion) knows how well the Reliance/TATA networks perform in comparision to the GSM Networks. That was until the Blackberry came out.

Reliance currently does six different Blackberry handsets, with top of the line being the Blackberry 8830 World Edition. I’ve been tempted to get that, but that would also mean I’m stuck to CDMA, which would be a good thing. Or would it? There began my quest for a good business phone.

For starters, I’m not too impressed with the Blackberry. Lets take all the entertainment features aside (Camera, Music player etc aside) for the basis of this discussion. For the sake of convenience, I’m comparing this to a Nokia E51/E71/E63(rumoured) Round one to the Blackberry, even before the competition begins. Blackberry on CDMA, Nokia not on CDMA.

IMO, a business phone should have all forms of connectivity. On the Nokia side, on the E71, you have GPRS, HSCSD, EDGE, 3G, WLAN, IR and a microUSB interface. On the 8830 we have GPRS, EDGE and mini-USB. Round two, hands down Nokia. Push Email is important, of course, but I can get really really close to Push Email with the new Nokia Email client, which is obviously good. Really not much of a winner here. Maps and GPS. Winner. Nokia.

I’m a sucker for open source stuff, and there are not too many applications available for the Blackberry. Stack that against the Symbian Applications available, and I really don’t have to mention the winner. So, for now, looks like the debate is going to continue. I may sound heavily biased towards a Nokia E Series right now, but I’m open to ideas.

PS:- Sachin, thanks for the comment. That was the motivation for this post. As you can see, I really cannot say if I’d go for a Blackberry at this point. With regards to a Blackberry 8310, I’d think its waaay too ‘2005′ for me. Try the E51 instead. More value for money.

Full Screen view.

Resized to show part of desktop.

PS: - Forgive the shameless self advert for my blog..

Oh wait a minute. before I start, there’s something I need to make clear.

‘Disclaimer: - The Apple iPod and the Apple iPhone suck, even in case Apple comes up with a near impossible event of paying me a million bucks a day to like the above mentioned products. Due to my utter hatred for the above, they are not considered worthy enough even to qualify for this shitty list ‘

Now that I feel a lot better, let me actually begin.

1. Sachin Tendulkar is God. No question about it.
2. A. R. Rahman is God with a coating of heavenly genius. No current music diector in India comes even remotely close. (I’m listening to ‘Tu Hi Meri Dost hai’ from Yuvvraaj as I type this)
3. Nokia makes the best consumer mobile handsets in the world. (HTC comes a very close second).
4. People who say they need a mobile phone just to call and send messages, are telling you the most blatant lie. (Dad, how’s your N95?)
5. 80% of all Mobile Phone users in India have no idea about even half the features of their phone.
6. Indians are the biggest racists in the world.
7. I did not, do not, and will ever not believe in the concept of a joint family.
8. Public Display of affection is just a way to show-off. Get a room, guys!
9. I do not respect elders for their age and listen to what they say. If they’re giving me tripe, I don’t care if they’re 20 or 90. (Explains why my grandfather is not too fond of me :p)
10. I’ll always be obsessed with being prepared well in advance. I hate last minute unnecessary brainstorming.
11. 95% of the people who know me, do not really know me.
12. Out of those 95%, I really don’t like 85% of the people.
13. If you’re actually reading this bullshit, then you’re surely not in the 85%.

However, the biggest hurdle in Vista’s way is the fact that it needs a high-configuration PC or laptop for it to work in its full glory. If the configuration is less, the computer works really slow. Also, if you do not have a graphic card, the new features like ‘Arrow’, does not work at all. So, a customer has to spend more on the RAM and in buying a graphic card, which increases the total cost incurred by him.

Further…

Vista is a lot more secure than XP as it has a lot of anti-virus software upgraded on it. The anti-piracy software fitted into it will also help the customers and the company in the long run. However, the compatibility of the customer with the new hardware isn’t what it should have been. Windows Vista should have been a lot more user friendly.

Can someone PLEASE explain to me what that means? Arrow? Of course, you mean Aero!

An excerpt from the article: -

ET reported earlier this week that the government is examining the possibility of issuing new norms which will unsecured WiFi connections illegal. Sources also said the new norms may put the onus of educating consumers on telcos and ISPs. Besides, the ISPs will also be asked to ensure that customers access the internet over a WiFi connection only through a password. WiFi networking companies may also be asked to limit WiFi signal right down to a defined radius by installing access points around the signal. The department of telecom and the department of information technology will work with the home ministry and intelligence agencies on this issue. Sources said the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERTC-in) is also helping the government issue new norms on WiFi security. It is not clear if these agencies will await the recommendations of TRAI.

Now, either the guy who wrote the article has got it all wrong, or TRAI’s understanding of wi-fi networks is incorrect. Can someone please answer these questions for me?
How much more secure from terrorists are access points really  going to be, even after you ’secure’ them? What stops a person from legitimately accessing a ’secure’ wi-fi network at say, a coffee shop, sending out something inappropriate using that network, and then slinking away quietly? How different would it then be from whats happening currently? What would then be the point of making open wi-fi networks illegal?

Another excerpt: -

“Internet service providers are taking steps on their own to secure WiFi connections. All ISPs are installing AAA servers and firewalls. But, if you look at the terror mails, they were sent from hacked or open WiFi accounts – there is nothing we can do about this. When people take a broadband connection and routers to make their homes and offices WiFi enabled and then leave it open when they are not in use, there is nothing ISPs can do about it,”

Of course there is nothing ISPs can do about it. No one can stop an individual from terminating his wi-fi connection at a router, instead of his computer. Can someone please explain to me how does using someone else’s open wi-fi network classify as hacking? We’ve got this term completely wrong. If that indeed is hacking, then I hack wi-fi networks every single day!

To conclude, we’re curing the symptom, not the disease. Its just not practically possible to figure out how many open wi-fi networks exist in the country, even if a MASSIVE wardriving operation was organized.

Maybe its just me, but then all they would prevent even if they achieved ‘complete wi-fi security’ is just someone from sending an email that they’re responsible for a blast. Now, who’d stop the blast itself from happening?

Oh and btw, my wi-fi network is WPA2 secured, thank you very much.

i wake up every morning, which in itself is not significant achievement, but when you consider its my iClock that ticks 7am, i’m up, feeling refreshed. Now, i must mention about iClock here. iClock is this beautiful, touchscreen clock that is the hottest timepiece ever invented since time itself. its glowing display, and the way each digit on the clock is preceded by i, just makes it an amazing thing to look at, while you wait to fall asleep. i particularly love the way you set the alarms, sliding your finger to drag the hour hand and the minute hand to the time you want the alarm to go off. it has even has customizable alarm chimes, which you can buy using iTunes. Just hook up your iClock to the computer, and you’re good to go. Awesome stuff, right?

Anyway, in the next i15 minutes, i’m done brushing my teeth, using my iToothbrush. iToothbrush is a white, translucent toothbrush with an tiny LCD screen, that indicates when i should change my toothbrush. Needless to say, i can connect this to my computer via USB. i just have to tap the bristles lightly, and iToothpaste magically appears. i know you must be wondering why i must connect this to my computer. Well, thats because i can then download refills for itoothpaste using iTunes. Cool, right?. i’ve saved a lot of money not buying normal toothpaste because of this. Maybe i could save all this money to buy more songs from iTunes.

After that, its time for the morning download. No, not on the computer, but on the iCommode & iFlush combo. iCommode is this magnificent toilet commode, touch activated again. Slide your hand on the iCommode seat, and Hey Presto!, it opens. You can then procrastinate all you want while you crap, listening to music on your ipod. Oh, i must mention, the iCommode also comes with an iPod Dock, with speakers strategically placed under where your butt cheeks would go. it feels awesome when music is literally playing up your butt. After you’re done, you flush down your iShit down using the iFlush, which is a subscription based service from, yeah, you guessed it right,  iTunes. The makers seemed to have realised the difficulty people would have in hooking up the iFlush and icommode to the computer, and hence they iWirelessly allow the iFlush to be controlled. This is what i call iTech iEvangelism. You can then wipe your butt with iTissue, which is a special silky tissue that treats the skin like its supposed to be treated. iTissue is available free when you subscribe to iFlush for a year, and remember, its not sold separately. Needless to say, it is nice and colourful, and has had people staring in awe at it.

Of course, iSoap and iShower need no mention. Everyone knows and remembers the market frenzy when iSoap and iShower were launched. People claimed they would not bathe unless they had iSoap and iShower in their bathrooms. Not without reason too. Who cares if you need a subscription to stream iWater out of the iShower? Or get iLather from the iSoap? it is all so iCool, in more ways than one! Best of all, look at how much technology they have on the iSoap. its touch activated alright, but it won’t lather, unless you connect and activate it via iTunes. The iShower well, is the best thing since sliced bread! Move your fingers around in a circular motion around the rim, and you have cold or hot iWater streaming right at you, depending on if you moved your finger clockwise or anticlockwise. iWater is specially treated water, available via iTunes. You cannot have normal municipal water flowing through the iShower, considering all the technology behind it.

i then drive my iCar to work. The iCar, just like the iPhone, is a product that aims to change what we were made to believe were basic features. The iCar does not have a steering wheel, nor does it have four wheels. This reminds of me of how the iPhone did not have the capability to forward messages, or send files via bluetooth, and how people raised such a hue and cry about it. The iCar runs on iPetrol, which is a specially formulated petrol not available in retail stores. it must be purchased through iTunes. When you do this, you use the inbuilt touchscreen GPS in the iCar to choose your destination, and the iCar ‘drives’ you there. Who said four wheels are necessary in a car? Ask the millions of iCar owners who are happy! You could get a fourth wheel fixed, but then this would null and void the warranty on your iCar, and you would not be eligible for future firmware releases for the car.

The killer feature on all these iDevices is that a user cannot replace the iBattery. You have take it to the nearest iStore. But the battery life of each one of these devices in awesome, except the one time when i had to carry the iCommode to the iStore, when it stopped working midway through my morning iCrap. The kind guys there just replaced the firmware on the iCommode and returned the device to me in three days. Top-Class customer service i must say!

i could go on and on and wax eloquent about all my iStuff, but thats not the iPoint of this iPost.

inspite of having all this iStuff, i wonder why no one still considers me cool! is it my fault that anyone who stays over at my iHouse cannot use toothpaste, since iToothpaste cannot be shared with any other user? in a rare occurence the other day, a friend came over to stay and was stuck in my iToilet, because he did not have a subcription to iTunes, which meant he could not flush his own shit down, nor could he use iTissue. He could not shower either, since he did not have a subcription for iSoap. The idiot carried an unbearable stench on him throughout the day, and has never visited me since.

But its strange. i’ve got no other friends. i’m all alone. No one visits me anymore after i got all this iStuff. i wonder why? Have people stopped appreciating cool technology? Have people stopped understanding the effort to create such iProducts? Wherever i go, people seem to get scared and run away. Maybe they think i’m too iCool for them. But i’ve got one very close friend, who even sent me a iTshirt on my iBirthday. it was a nice, translucent iTShirt, that you connected via USB to your computer to activate the print on the front. i like the concept. i’ve just connected the iTshirt to my computer, so maybe i should go and check what the message was.
Oh great! in big blue bold letters, it says:

‘iSUCK!’

Maybe i’ll wear this everyday!

PS:- Google has about 2,390,000 results for ‘I hate the Iphone’. Try it! I’ve included just the top 5!

I read somewhere about the Iphone being a groundbreaking device in India. I wonder how long before it indeed is ‘ground’broken here, into pieces that is.

And yeah, for all you judgemental freaks out there, yeah, I think its ubercool to bash the Iphone

Pic alongside is a screenshot of my GPS Position today evening, signified by the red dot. Whats so great about it? Despite being in a train at 60kph, on Vashi Bridge, I still had a strong GPS signal, and it tracked me all the way from Chembur to Vashi.

Now, lets see the IPhone do that, out of the box?