My last words to friend Thulasi... :-(

I was totally sad and dejected while I wrote this, I came to know the demise of my college friend Ilayadhulasidharan(we call him "Thulasi"). 

I was shocked to see a tweet about his demise by my friend. The saddest part of all is that he expired on 22nd September because of Pneumonia and we came to know only today.

                                    Hailing from a town called Kallakuruchi, Tamilnadu, Thulasi was working for Cognizant technologies in Chennai. I would call him at times and we share a lot of things, he was the only person with whom I had occasional contact after my college days, it's disheartening I can't do it any more. Needless to say, Thulasi was a very-hard worker and he made up his mind that he should get employed in a Software company after completing his UG. After months of hard-work in improving his communication skills, finally 9 months after his B.E completion, he got employed with CTS. It is such a commendable achievement as English was not the medium in the school he studied. He was doing well in his job before this Pneumonia plucked his life out of this world. 

                                  My regret is that I and my friends couldn't even see a final glimpse of him, by the time we came to know it was too late, nevertheless let his soul rest in peace. I convey my deep condolences to his family and relatives.

Thulasi! September 22 will always be remembered. This night is a saddest one in my life so far and I doubt I'll sleep without reminiscing those days of campus interviews which we attended together...

Tablets, what's the point?

It all started in Jan 2010 when Apple.Inc announced the launch of  Ipad, which received mixed opinions. Many technology bloggers didn't see a point in this as it was a nothing but an Ipod touch with bigger screen size . Apple's marketing skills and fanboism led to ipad success and they sold 3million Ipads in 80days, thats truck loads of it.

Smartphones > Netbooks > Laptops/PCs is how the anology goes, now it stands like Smartphones > Tablets > Netbooks > Laptops/PCs.

My question is, are Tablets really needed there in between?. After ipad's success story every other manufacturer planned to release a Tablet to catch-up with the competition. At present scenario a Tablet is a multi-media device, with bigger screen size, which does the same functions of a smartphone. Ipad didn't differ much, it ran the same OS on the iphone with no GPS, 3G/wi-fi only. A user normally can do anything what they can do on a Tablet with their Smartphone sacrificing screen size which isn't deal-breaker for many.

Samsung too has jumped into the Tablet band-wagon, with their Galaxy Tab they have streched a bit far and added phone functionality to it, which IMO is totally meaningless, imagine you making calls with a 7inch slab next to your ears. This device is a bigger sized one of their own GalaxyS smartphone. Every specification word by word, albeit the screen size, is same for both the devices. 

Cost factor: Is it any good investing in a Tablet considering the requirements of a normal user who wants to browse web, handling multimedia etc. Netbooks fits in this case undoubtedly with decent value for money, better specifications, smaller size(compared to laptops) with Windows or any Open source OS. In a long stretch Netbooks offer better functionality over these Tablets. Having said that our Government is planning to launch a low-cost Tablet which is for a different cause altogether. 

There are many tablets by different manufacturers namely HP, Notion-Ink, Toshiba etc. in the pipeline. I wish they come up with something which is an exact alternative to Laptops, netbooks atleast, instead of bigger sized smartphones. How many would prefer a Tablet over Netbook? comments welcome, I would not prefer it for now.

Thanks....

There is no point in crying over spilled milk.

Hey can you give me your office phone number; Sure. Wait a moment let me see it from my phone's contacts book.

The above conversation clearly says we are now more dependent on our gadgets(mobile phones for that matter)for storing Phone numbers than our flesh weighing 1.2kgs. Your contacts' information including Mobile, Office, Residence phone number, e-mail address, house address etc., can be stored on a Mobile phone and no one would disagree with me that these days people don't even bother to carry a contact book, why should one carry that? if a phone can store umpteen contacts with ease.

So what is this "no point in Crying over spilled milk" if you haven't guessed by this time its BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP. People store contacts on their phones but seldom they take a backup of it. All mobile manufacturers do provide facility to connect the device to a compatible PC to take back up of conatcts, messages, calender entries, Notes etc. So how do you take a backup of all these? what are the ways through which one can do it?, let me tell you some.

1. SIM card: Yes, don't under-estimate this small piece of plastic. SIM cards can store some good number of contacts, depending on its capacity, an 8K capacity SIM card can store upto 100 contacts, now SIM cards(GSM) are coming with 16k capacity so you have room for storing 200 contacts on to it. A 3G sim card, like the one i have from BSNL, is a 32k SIM card and the numbers double. Always, copy all your phone contacts to your SIM memory too, this would be helpful in occasions where you may need to swap SIM cards to phones, so if your contacts are stored on it simply you can copy them on to the current phone in no time.

                  

Some downsides of SIM card storage are,

• Only the phone number can be stored and not any additional information.
• If you lose your phone or the SIM card your have to say goodbye to your contacts.
• Storage numbers are dependent on its size hence you can't store more number of contacts.

2. PC-suite or PC-studio or PC-sync:  Now comes the Mobile manufacturers' part in backing-up your information, as stated earlier they provide an application which can be installed on to your PC/MAC and by connecting your phone through an USB cable/Bluetooth connection. Starting from basic entry level phones to high-end smartphones can be connected to a computer for this purpose. Go and search your phone box, if you haven't thrown it yet, which would have come with a CD containing the application. Installation isn't that difficult, inserting the CD to your PC would guide you with the procedures of how to do it.

 Advantages of using this backup service are,

• All your data including Contacts, Calender entries, Notes, Bookmarks etc are backed-up.
• Connection to the PC can be done via both USB cable and Bluetooth(provided the phone has Bluetooth).
• If your phone's display fails you can still view and take print-out of your contents.
• Your data is easily accessible and can be retrieved at any time when you want.

Some downsides are,

• If you lose your data cable, and if your phone don't have Bluetooth, then its difficult to further take backup or to retireve it.
• You still depend on your computer for things to happen.

3. Online services: Use your e-mail provider's address book, take some time to update all your contacts' phone number, e-mail address etc. this serves for good purpose incase your phone is stolen /lost,  you can even export all your contacts in a .csv format excel sheet. I use the one such as this and my phone has good integeration to that service. 

Downsides are,

• An Internet connection is needed and you can't view details offline.
• Still you need to search for a computer to backup and get your information.

4. Memory card: Mobile devices, even basic ones(not very basic though), comes with memory card facility(atleast 2Gb) and they can be used to take backup of your data on the phone. It still depends on the phone manufacturer to give such a facility and AFAIK all major manufacturers do provide this facility.

Advantages of using this,

• Everything on your phone, including contacts, calender entries, notes, bookmarks, is backed up on the memory card.
• Restoring the backup is an easy task, with a touch of a button, as the card is always inserted on the Phone.
• No need to depend on a PC to restore your contents.

Downsides,

• If your Memory card gets corrupted you need to depend on the file recovery softwares to get your data.
• If your lose your  Memory card, you lose your data too.

5. Service provider: Some service providers have Mobile phone backup service like this one, contact your provider for such a service. If, none of the above mentioned methods are working and if your data is sensitive enough that it shouldn't be known to others this backup service helps but be ready to cough down the amount your SP demands as this is a premium service.

6. Third-Party applications:

Note: This is applicable only for phones running on a dedicated Mobile OS(Smartphones).

There are number of third-party vendors with security applications supporting multiple Mobile OS platforms, yes, indeed applications aren't free but you get  your bucks worth for it. They provide advanced level security and features, having used one personally(got a promotional free one with license, so didn't pay for it) i was very much satisfied with the features and functionality, you can set password for your Messages, Gallery, e-mail applications on your phone.

If you are a Symbian-Nokia smartphone user check the Ovi store

                    Windows Mobile user user check the Windows Marketplace

                    Google's Andriod smartphone user check Andriod market

                    Balckberry User check BB app world 

I am not a Smartphone user where do i go?. All feature phones("non-smartphones") support Java you can search for Java applications, you can find some free here getjar.

There are six ways which i found, though i use only three on a regular basis, there are many available, if you are using any other way than mentioned above please let me know and put it across in your comments i would be interested in trying it. Always backup your data with more than one source/method there is nothing which is secure and trust-worthy in this case.

If you find any difficulites, I am glad to help in this regard. So, have you started to backup, do it now if you feel intimidated by my post.  Happy backing-up, good luck.

An Education Title Music

This is my first post of something pertaining to Music, this composition from the movie 'An Education' which i saw recently, i liked the movie, made me to share it and i bet anyone listen to this would like it.  Music director of this movie Paul Englishby is not the original composer of this track, a person named Floyd Cramer way back in 1965 composed this wonderful piece of music. After a bit of googling i found this direct embed code which streams the track

	Floyd Cramer - On The Rebound .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

 enjoy!  hope everyone likes it.

Thanks.

3G and all craze

                       On March 3rd BSNL officially launched their 3G services here in Hyderabad. On March 9th i took hold of a BSNL 3G prepaid connection with 3G Promotional plan. Being a Mobile Internet user most of the times 3G was always a special interest to me, as it offers better internet speeds, better voice quality and the killer feature video calling. In this post i share my experience and understanding about the service, what exactly 3G means to a normal user and what you need to possess( w.r.t mobile device) to avail this service, lets roll on.

                      3G is not a technology its a Value Added Service(VAS), all what the providers get is the additional bandwidth to support High speed data which inturn optimises voice and video call quality. In India 3G operating frequencies are mainly in 2.1Ghz band(2100Mhz) for better understanding of operating frequencies read  Mobile operating frequencies posted earlier. If you have a mobile which supports 3G you are all set  to make use of the service.

How to choose a 3G mobile device: A mobile device should have a 3G radio built in to support 3G frequencies, yes its the hardware not software, this feature can't be added to a device through a firmware update or installing any application. So you walk into a mobile shop, buy a 3G device, insert a 3G SIM card and start making video call is that it, NO, make sure the 3G device you buy have a front facing camera which is must for  Video calling. Prices of mobile phones with 3G have come down in the recent times so buying a 3G mobile device will not make your pockets empty.

What a normal user can get from it: The striking featue of 3G is the ability to make video call, you can see the face of the person whom you are calling to provided the user at the other end have a 3G device with a front facing camera. Let us talk about the reverse compatibility here will a 3G SIM card works on GSM too, Yes, if at times you dont get any signal around your area for a long time you can make calls via GSM, but only voice calls, for this you need to do a small setting change in the device go to your Network settings and make the Network Selection to GSM, this is how it looks

In Dual mode : The device automatically goes to 3G when there is no GSM signal and vice-versa.

In UMTS: The device will be in 3G only mode

In GSM: The device will be in GSM only mode.

The evolution goes like this. GSM > 2G, UMTS > 3G, LTE > 4G

In addition to video calling you also get internet access at better speeds, upto 2Mbps is what BSNL promises, you can be online while on a call in a 3G network with the existing 2.5g GPRS your Packet data connection is kept on hold during call and is active after your call is disconnected doesn't it reminds us of our dial-up internet modems what we were using in older days, thats also another reason why 3G is called Mobile broadband.

How to make full use of it: This is where the geeks try to make use of it to the fullest extent i dont want to make voice calls(network provider's) from my 3G connection instead i will make Internet VOIP calls from it, Yes all you need is an Instant messaging application like Nimbuzz , Fring , Palringo and a flat rate data plan from the provider. You can get good VOIP voice quality over 3G.  At present BSNL doesn't give any great data plans what you get is a paltry 25Mb free which will go down in a jiffy browsing larger web pages. You can also make use of Skype to make cheap international calls over 3G connection some of the applications mentioned above also supports video calls.

With BSNL the only provider giving 3G services i would say they are not marketing it well, if they can give some good data plans and advertise things well sure they will remain Monopoly in 3G services also can make path for competition, when by the time the other private providers start rolling out 3G services they would be having strong and good customer base.

P.S. If you find any information mentioned above which needs correction feel free to comment, I am open to it.

Addicted to Podcasts now.

Another quick blog entry.

On the Music player of my 5800 there is an option called Podcasts  i should call myself a stupid for not opening this since i bought the cell phone so its alomost two months now i missed it, no worries better late than never. Few days back i opened it accidentally and i was exposed to a world of Podcasts about various different topics. I started subscribing to the ones which i liked, i want to learn Hindi hence in the process of finding e-books, now i have decided to go through this way to start my learning, i could find only one podcasts related to Hindi language learning and found only one 'ispeakhindi'  available on the Directories which was last updated some 1200 days back with only to two Audio podcasts.

After that i googled for some other sites which publish podcasts about Hindi language learning, there are plenty available and i found this one , i haven't listened to any of the lessons published there but soon i will, not only this there are surplus topics related to Music, Finance, Technology, Sports you name it, topics available from A to Z. So the next question is how do you listen to all this. Please read on

Pre-requisites: All you need is an application which can download podcasts and update the feeds, i got one inbuilt on my device, there are podcasting application for all platforms(Smartphone) download the one intended for your device. Next you need a GPRS/3G/Wi-fi connection to download the podcasts and listen to it, make sure you have flat rate data plan, i have upto 2Gb data downloads for a month from Airtel with a top-up of 98 which serves for the purpose very well, average size of a podcasts varies depending upon the length and the quality of it, so 2Gb is more than enough if you are even constantly downloading.

How to Subscribe: If you want to add a new podcats look for the rss feed on the website Like this one, type the address, the application prompts to enter the address when you want to add a new podcasts, update it and  you are good to listen to the Audio, there are Video podcasts too.

There are some good things like this which you can make use of and when utilised in a constructive way learning things is a lot simpler. Podcasts are indeed a simple and effective way i found so far for learning.

Thanks for reading...............

Raining free gifts, but what matters is I GOT IT late.

Title to this is bit of an exaggeration but i didnt find a way to put it across. So my apologies.

I got this from Nokia india marketing as a complementary one for my Nokia mobile purchase, wait there is a long story behind how i got it. On jan 5th ( the day i bought the device) the shop person was getting some details from me, my phone number, email blah blaah, then he called Nokia customer care or some dept to validate the details given by me and after few minutes i got a message on my mobile "Congratulations you have won a genunine Bluetooth headset, to claim you gift call to toll free number and there was also a voucher code", the shop person was very cunning that he said i can take either the Reebok watch or this gift, at that moment i was desperately in need of a watch so i opted for watch, this fellow to took this as a chance to grab a Bluettoth headset by calling that number and addressing himself as me and informed the customer care exec to deliver this one at his residence.

                                                         Some sensible guy/girl who attended this call noted shop person's address but entered my name and mobile number for that parcel and they shipped it via Bluedart on 13th jan, i got a call from Blue dart on 15th jan(friday) that i have got a courier i had no idea what it was and asked that person who called from where it has come??, he replied 'From Nokia' and the address was wrong i was clueless and confused why nokia would send me a courier which has a wrong address i already got their phone i thought it could be some marketing services. Also i didnt want to leave that beacuse it has got my name and Phone number in it correct. Saturday and sunday went past and on Monday 18th jan at 1.30 p.m a person from Blue dart called me and said your parcel is ready for delivery, i told that person to give it in one of my office sites since i was at other office site, the parcel was delivered and due to some bunch of irresponsible people who doesnt take care in other's items it was given to a wrong person who holds same name as mine also that parcel didnt contain any initial there was simply 'Krishnaswamy' (i dont know why they used 'y' instead of 'i' in the end i hate when my name is mispelled) with my Mobile number.

                                                    Next monday 25th jan i called blue dart, dont ask what were you doing till that time beacuse i was least interested about it also i didnt even imagine that it would be a bluetooth headset, i got the parcel number from that person who called me initially and asked status of this parcel number they said its delivered on 18th jan 01.45p.m and it was received and acknowledged, that was ridiculous how could a parcel a physical item which was delivered didnt reach me for 7 days, i started to probe on to this and found a soul in office has received and acted lackadaisically also was instrumental in sending that parcel to other person with the same name of mine. The person who recieved it (who got the same name of mine) was surprised and knowingly or unknowingly opened it, to my foolish mind i didnt think in the way that it could have gone to the other person having the same name finally i got it on 25th evening, Thanks to my H.O.D who helped a lot in unearthing this mystery.

That was the story.

Thanks for reading........