|
-
We all like to have good wireless signal throughout our house, so that we can freely
roam between the rooms and use our iPhones or Laptops. But if you live in multi-storied
concrete houses (like the one’s we have in India) then getting good signal strength
with one Wireless Access Point will be a challenge.
In my case, I have Broadband connections (one from Airtel and a manual failover from
BSNL) terminating in my study room in first floor. A NETGEAR
Wireless Router connects to Airtel Modem and acts as the firewall. A 8 port Ethernet
Switch connected to the NETGEAR Router and makes more LAN ports available. Two desktop
PCs in the same room are connected through wire (CAT-6) to the Ethernet switch, apart
from wired connections from other bedrooms (2 in each floor) and living rooms (1 in
each floor) in the house. The two XBOX 360s that we (primarily) use as Media Center
Extenders are in the two bedrooms (1 in each floor) connected through Wire. I get
good signal strength if I am in rooms that are near to the Study, but as I move away
and go to my bedroom, the signal drops to zero at one point where there are two solid
wooden doors between the Wireless Router and the Mobile Device.
The solution I figured will be to have one wireless access point installed in my bedroom,
connect it via the wired connection coming from Study, then connect the XBOX 360 in
the room to the Wireless AP. When I looked around in the shops, I found only Wireless
Routers, no plain Wireless Access Points – but in this case I don’t need Routing or
Firewall. Just a Wireless Access Point will do, as connection to the Airtel Modem,
Firewall, etc will be provided by the NETGEAR Router. Finally, I bought a wireless
router itself (LINKSYS
WRT54GH) from CROMA for around Rs.2500. Initially I tried to connect the wire
from Study Room to the Internet Port in LINKSYS Router, then tried out different settings
in the web console. Nothing worked. After few trial and error I figured how to get
this done.
Steps to do in the second Wireless Router (Linksys) (In my case the
Linksys router in my bedroom, first one being the NETGEAR Router in my study Room):
-
Connect the wired connection from the Study Room (NETGEAR Router which acts as the
primary gateway for my house) to one of the 4 Ethernet (LAN) ports
-
Connect the XBOX 360 console to one of the other ports in the same LINKSYS Router
-
Leave the Internet port in Linksys Router to be empty
-
Turn off firewall & DHCP server in the Linksys Router
-
Give it a static IP, Configure Gateway and DNS to be the IP address of the NETGEAR
Router
-
Configured the wireless settings with a SSID and a WPA2-PERSONAL passcode
-
Add the new wireless access point and the passcode in your iPhone, mobile phones and
Laptops
That’s all. Voila!. Now my XBOX 360 is able to connect to the PCs in the house, go
to the Internet; I get excellent signal in my iPhone whether I am in my bedroom or
study room or any place in first floor. This way I have avoided using cellular network
and hence save on the costs on data transfer. Now I am thinking of a third access
point in the ground floor so that I can cover all the areas in my house with a Wi-Fi
umbrella!
|
-
I have written in the past about lack
of Tamil unicode rendering support in all popular smartphones (iPhone,
Windows Mobile, Nokia). This week one of my colleague who uses a Windows Mobile 6.0
(HTC branded) phone showed me SkyFire browser.
SkyFire is a free mobile browser that uses a proprietary proxy server technology to
encode all Web contents (Text, Images, Videos, Flash, Silverlight) at their server
that gets rendered in the Mobile client. Because of this technology the individual
device limitations don’t affect their ability to render any language.
(Mobile IE not able to render Unicode Tamil)
 
(Windows Mobile running Skyfire displaying fine Unicode Tamil web pages)
SkyFire is a great technology and seeing Tamil being rendering seamlessly makes me
happy. But I am sceptical on the success of SkyFire – First, Mobile devices processing
power are increasing every day to support iPhone Safari like true desktop browsers
itself without need of a proxy server; Second, I don’t see a viable revenue model
on how SkyFire will make money to run the operations especially the high server costs.
Nevertheless a cool technology for now. If you have a Windows Mobile give it a try,
better than waiting for IE 6.0 in Windows Mobile or WM 7.0 :-)
|
-
When it comes to Antivirus products I am particular on using few brands only. I look
for three parameters:
-
Protection (Detect and protect against latest threats)
-
Performance (not slowing the machine)
-
Ease of use (normally an antivirus should be invisible)
My first choice for individuals will be K7
Total Security. It is the fastest and the least intrusive Antivirus out there.
In our office, we have been using Symantec
Endpoint protection for several years. Our system administrators love the central
deployment & management of the Antivirus client, updates, etc. from the central
server.
When I got my Windows Vista x64 Desktop few years back, I went with Norton
360 v1.0 as I got a good deal from them. And it offered an online backup of 2GB
free with it, which was an added advantage to have safe backups for ultra important
files. Over the years I have stuck with Norton 360, though at times it has given me problems
with Firewall configuration. And Symantec support has been good, whenever I had
issues I could reach them by email or web site or their online chat. Once there was
a problem at their end, they apologized and gave 30 days extension in the subscription
as a token gesture. My complaint at the product (especially Norton 360 v1.0 and v2.0)
is that at times in one of the 3 PCs I have, it will suddenly refuse to get Live Updates
– a quick uninstall and install will fix it.
Recently I was prompted to update free (subscription is valid) to their new version Norton
360 v3.0 which contains their newly optimized version of their core engine that
greatly improves on its speed and resources utilization. Though Norton was the leader
in protection its sore point was its drag on resources. This new version is supposed
to have improved on that. I downloaded and installed the new version, it did an in-place
upgrade pretty smoothly. I disliked the earlier interface of Norton 360 v2.0, now
in v3.0 they seem to have made it more streamline and configuration settings are easier
to find. Overall I will recommend this product.
In Norton 360 the online backup and how it handles it was always a mystery in v1.0
and v2.0. In v3.0 they have given many interface options to see what is being backed
up, where and when (in fact the UI tabs are named with the same words as shown below).
Using the new interface shown below (accessed from Home->Backup-Backup Details->Manage
Backup sets) I figured out that I had over 3 years of backup taking nearly 5GB of
storage which I can get rid of and reduce the online storage size.
After using the option (Delete previously backed up files) shown in the bottom left
of the screenshot below I realized you can only delete by selecting individual folders
and files; not the entire backup set. I wrote to Symantec support and they promptly
responded back with this option. It turned out even that was less optimal. Accidentally
I discovered that there is an integration of Norton backup to Windows Explorer. You
can use Windows Explorer to navigate to “Computer\Norton Backup Drive\Backups
on Secure Online Storage”. There you can see all the backup sets, you can
right-click and delete the one you don’t want. It takes a bit of time, but it works
and is much easier than the product’s user interface. As always, be careful when you
are deleting backups.
|
-
In the past I have done two posts on how to use Pinnacle PCTV 330e TV Tuner USB stick
to view TV (set-top box) signals from Windows x64 operating systems (Windows
Vista x64 or Windows
7 x64). Yesterday while trying to update the driver from Pinnacle site I realized
that with the two earlier posts I haven’t documented all the pieces, so I am writing
this updated post. My instructions are for using Tata
Sky DTH service (set-top box) that’s available in India and my machine running Windows
Vista x64 & Nero 8.0 – the
same steps should work for most other DTH services (set-top boxes).
Step 0:
Windows Vista x64 SP2 should find the driver for Pinnacle PCTV Hybrid Tuner
(330e) automatically, if it doesn’t you can download the latest driver from Pinnacle
support site here – Direct
link to download here. Look for “PCTV Hybrid Pro Stick (330e)”.
Step 1:
Buy from market a composite video cable (RCA) and a Stereo audio
cable (RCA). You get this in various brand names “Belkin
Composite Video and Audio Cable Kit” or “Mediabridge
- RCA Component Video Cable with Audio”. This cable is not included with Pinnacle
PCTuner USB product.
Step 2:
Connect the Audio & Video output (RCA
component connectors) of your set-top box to the audio/video adapter cable (the
small black colour pin with wires coming out that is connected on the side of the
USB stick on the photo below) using the RCA cable kit purchased in Step 1. The small
black colour Pinnacle adapter cable is specific to Pinnacle PCTV and is included in
the box, you will not get this outside.
Step 3:
Connect your Pinnacle USB stick (with the small black pin and cable connected)
to a free USB port in your machine. I will recommend using the USB extension cable
(found in the box) and connecting to a free port in the rear of your desktop (also
for the fact that most rear USB ports are USB 2.0 for better speed) so that the wires
are hidden away from the view.
Step 4:
Now it is time to configure your software to receive the signal and view. I am using
my favourite Nero 8.0 (Nero 9.0 should work as well and provide scheduling capability)
software. The trick here (which I forgot yesterday while configuring and wasted two
hours) is to use the Nero MediaHome software (accessed from Start
search menu or from "C:\Program Files (x86)\Nero\Nero8\Nero MediaHome\NeroMediaHome.exe")
and not the Nero Home (whose Easy Setup option doesn’t allow us to
set the TV input as composite).
After running Nero MediaHome, select the TV->Launch Nero TV Wizard. In the dialog
box that comes, select the video device as “PCTV 330e/8x0e Device”,
video input as “Composite”, Audio device as “Use audio from
video device”. You are good to go, complete rest of the steps and close the
dialog box and MediaHome.
Step 5:
Now run Nero Home from desktop or start menu, select “Video”
option from “Video and TV” menu – don’t select “Live TV” (that works only with TV
Antenna/Cable as input). Then in the next screen (shown below) select “Composite”
(ignore the numbers 1, 2 or 3 that may appear in brackets). You will now be able to
see the live TV in the “Watch TV” screen that will appear now. You
can double click on the playing video to maximize or double-click again to get controls
(to play, pause/time-shift, record, stop & volume control). Enjoy!
Don’t waste your time trying to get Windows Media Center in
Windows Vista x64 to work with this Pinnacle product (PCTV 330e TV Tuner USB stick),
it doesn’t work. Windows Vista insists on input coming via TV Antenna/Cable,
where as in our setup above we are using a set-top box and the TV input comes as composite
audio/video signal. As I have written in my Windows
7 beta post the above setup (even with a composite audio/video signal) seems to
be working for India in Windows 7 Media Center.
|
-
This is an update to the earlier
post on my experiences with getting my XBOX 360 US version work in India, it was
basically how I got a 220V Power Adaptor for XBOX 360 in India.
There are two options to get a 220V (India) Power Adaptor for your XBOX 360:
-
The XBOX 360 220V Adaptor I was using stopped working, may be because of the frequent
voltage fluctuations in Chennai for last few months. Hence I went back to Ritchie
Street and bought a new one. This time I made it a point to note down the shop name
for benefit of others (and may be for myself again) as this was most asked in the
comments I received for the earlier
post. I purchased a new XBOX 360 220V Power Adaptor (without warranty) for Rs.2500
+ VAT from "Shah Trading Co.", 15, Narasingapuram
Street, Off. Mount Road, Chennai - 600002; Phone: 044-2841 5874.
-
After this, I contacted Microsoft Support in India and asked whether they have a solution
now?. Surprisingly this time around, they right away offered a solution. They asked
me to go a near by service center in Chennai and drop the original 110V (USA) power
adaptor. Within 20-30 days of doing this, I received a replacement of a new 220V power
adaptor absolutely free. Great service by Microsoft, keep it up.
You can contact Microsoft support in India at toll-free 1800 102 1100 and
select Option 7 for XBOX support. Please keep your XBOX 360 Serial number, original
purchase invoice handy with you when you call and request them for a replacement to
make your XBOX 360 US version to work in India. Considering that officially XBOX 360
support is available only in the region you bought I was lucky to get this replacement
in India. I feel this replacement offer is a nice gesture by Microsoft and note that
it is available only for original XBOX 360 accessories (not third-parties made).
|
-
Few weeks back I decided to repave my Laptop (Macbook
Air) and go with Windows 7 Build 7000 (yes I know in few weeks we will have RC
:-) ). After fixing few issues with drivers and boot camp, I am overall happy. Occasionally
Windows doesn't shut-down gracefully, when it happens you got to force switch-off
(which in MBA means holding the power off button for few seconds till you hear a POP
sound).
The basic installation of the OS (Windows 7) is similar to doing it for Vista using
Boot Camp. You start with Apple Boot Camp CD 1 and proceed from there. My installation
was dual-boot configuration - having both Mac OS and Windows 7. Once Windows is installed
, you continue with the devices installation which can be a little tricky. Below are
few issues I faced before I could get everything working fine.
-
In Mac OS, you can select one of the OS to boot into after a restart. Unfortunately
Mac OS didn't show the Windows 7 installation. Nothing to sweat. When you switch ON
your machine you need to keep holding Alt (option) key till you the
see the boot options. Here you can select Windows 7.
-
In Windows 7, initially for some reasons Boot Camp icon didn't show
up in System tray. I had to run it from C:\Program Files\Boot Camp\kbdmgr.exe.
I found it useful to update all Apple software then it seems to have got fixed.
-
Audio (Sound card) didn't get its driver installed correctly. MBA
has a Realtek HD Audio, so I went to Realtek site and downloaded the latest Vista
driver (R 2.22) from
here or here.
The site is designed a little counter-intuitive so be patient.
-
If some devices like in-built Camera didn't get installed correctly, go to device
manager, update driver and point to the BootCamp CD.
-
I have a HP Photosmart C6288 Printer (part of HP Photosmart C6100
series). The default setup from HP will fail to install as it couldn't find either
Windows XP or Vista. To fix this, right-click on the setup program (AIO_CDA_Full_Network_enu.exe).
Then use the "Troubleshoot Compatibility" option or select properties and the compatibility tab:
-
Set the compatibility mode to Windows Vista
-
Set the privilege level to "Run this program as an administrator"
-
I have a Tata
Indicom Plug2Surf USB data card. To install this, first time when you run the
setup, Run it as Administrator. Even then when you run the application it
will not detect the modem. You will need to ignore the application and create yourself
(manually) a dial-up network connection. Customize and follow the instructions from this
blog post (which talks for Huawei card though), skip the portions specific to
Huawei, but it gives the correct username/password phone number to dial, etc.
-
For PDF creation, I was using CutePDF which
doesn't work with Windows 7, so I went with PrimoPDF (free).
-
For Antivirus, I went with my good
friend Kesavan's - K7
Computing Antivirus which works fine in Windows 7.
>
You should be all set by now, as for me (as seen below) all the devices are working
fine. Eagerly waiting for Windows 7 RC.
|
-
One of the strengths of iPhone is
the now famous iTunes store, which helps you buy
applications/music/movies/TV shows seamlessly. Lot of companies have tried the
concept (which is not new) as old as 10-15 years back, for example Microsoft has tried
it multiple times (Zune, Windows Player) in the past. The winning difference has been
the flawless execution and the simplicity that Apple has delivered. Apple has managed
to satisfy both ends - with their clout they got the big media companies to
sign uniform pricing's and they also made it easy to get the casual developer on-board.
The formula from Apple was simple - you make the application, we manage the hosting,
delivery, installation, payment gateways, legal/taxation, etc. The developer gets
70%, Apple gets 30% - a neat deal for both parties. And Apple's new iPhone OS3 is
pushing the envelope much further - check out this cool
preview of iPhone OS 3 or here
in YouTube.
Few months after my purchase of my iPhone, I searched for some applications. I found
thousands of applications in their store, but I was looking for something that will
be useful for me and not clutter my phone. A phone for me primarily is for Voice,
SMS, Camera, email & web browsing (in that order of priority). I was not sure
on the number of applications that will be available for India - as so far many of
the American companies have avoided dealing with copyright/licensing/taxation trouble
for India market. They feel the trouble is not worth for the size of the Indian market
for these (how wrong they are). Traditionally Indian mobile users have not
followed the global trend (and other advanced Asian markets like Korea and Japan)
in purchase of applications, games, music & movies, but that I think is due to
content for their taste not being available. Since iPhone store is one of the biggest
USPs of iPhone, is probably a reason iPhone
has sold only 20,000 units in India since its launch.
In iPhone store I found a plethora of apps to be bought for India, there was no shortage
- I have tried few iPhone apps and the shopping experience from the phone was great.
The apps I use regularly are two (both free)- TwitterFon and Skype (recently
released). I also bought a Tetris game for $4.99. Regarding the apps, I found TwitterFon
to be very convenient to use, I am finding myself twittering more when I am outside
the office - waiting for something in a queue or participating like y'day in a boring
session for CIOs by IBM India. About Skype for iPhone it is great to note that in
India it works over both Wi-Fi and 2G connections. The quality of Skype calls using
iPhone is great and the convenience of speaking with a mobile phone anyday for me
is better than a headset or holding a USB Skype phone.
|
-
In last month TED conference, Pattie Maes' from MIT & Pranav Mistry demonstrated
a wearable device. It's a wearable device with a projector paves the way for
interaction with our environment. The device which they call "Sixth
Sense" enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data.
A very exciting idea which opens up boundless possibilities if lives up to its claim.
One of the uses of this device they show is a live video (latest on the relevant headlines)
being projected in the newspaper in your hands. When I saw this, I was reminded of
a old Tamil movie - Pattanathil
Bhootham (released in 1967). In the movie there is a scene where the "Genie"
shows (then) latest movie songs on top of the movie's advertisements that is in
the newspaper.
What was a dream and thought super-natural 40 years ago is now a reality. Exciting
to look forward to the reality of the coming decades.
Video links:
1.The clip from Pattanathil Bhootham (பட்டணத்தில் பூதம்) Tamil Movie released in 1967, showing
the idea of videos being projected on a newspaper
2.Full movie Pattanathil
Bhootham (பட்டணத்தில் பூதம்), free and legal from Rajshri.com
3.Sixth Sense demo by
Pranav Mistry (forward to the minute 6:30 for the newspaper demo)
|
-
Part 1
If you are like me who grew up in 1980s, you will no-doubt have a huge collection
of old Audio cassettes (Tapes) that contains your childhood favourties but now lying
somewhere collecting dust. Today you should be lucky to be having a cassette player
in working condition to play them. A decade back I started hunting for my favourite
albums/movies and managed to buy most of them as Audio CDs or MP3 CDs, but I still
long for digitising my old tapes so that I can listen to them where-ever I want. So
few years back I bought an inexpensive cassette player which has a stereo speaker
out (1/8" TRS
Jack in USA or 3.5mm miniature EP Jack in India, which is the standard type used
in your iPod, Computer speakers) . To record involved four steps:
-
I connected the Speaker-out from the player to Line-In in my PC using a standard 3.5mm
Stereo Audio Patch cable like the one shown below. The audio quality depends
on the quality of the cable and the pins used, so buy the best looking one or a branded
one that you can find in your local electronics store.
-
Recording quality turned to be good, but to set the correct volume level in the player
and Mic-level in PC was tricky. That part took me few hours to set it right, too high
the volume in player then you can listen to the audio in your PC speakers but nothing
gets recorded and too low the recorded song can't be heard while played back.
-
Setup Line-In as default "Recording Device" in Windows. This can be done
in Windows Vista by Right-Clicking on the Speaker system tray icon (bottom-right before
time) and selecting "Recording Devices". Then in the dialog (as shown below)
that appears Right-Click and select "Set as Default Device". You might want
to double-click on the Line-in Icon and adjust the audio-levels for fine-tuning. If
everything is working well, then when you play something in your player you will see
the bars on right-hand side of the Line-In row moving up and down.
-
The software used to record took some experimentation as well but was easier. I settled
down with using the free
Windows Media Encoder to record the songs as WMA files and then converting
songs that I needed in my iPhone alone to MP3 files using Nero
WaveEditor. I was not comfortable with directly recording into Nero WaveEditor
or the free Audacity equivalent.
If you are using Windows Vista, you can also try the in-built Sound Recorder as well
that now supports durations longer than 60 seconds but it doesn't offer the level
adjustment controls found in Windows Media Encoder.
That's all it takes to record your tapes as WMA/MP3 files. You are now good to throw-away
your cassettes.
Part 2
Part 2 of this story happened about six months back when during my trip to USA in
June '08 I had purchased a device to make the conversion easier. The device was ION
Audio's Tape2PC. I saw it online and ordered through Amazon for $130 or so.
The device claimed to make it easier for converting the tapes to MP3 using bundled
software and the USB connection (so no cable hunting). I presumed the software does
auto rewinding to beginning of cassette, identifying each track automatically and
auto-reverse once one side of the tape is over, so that we don't need to baby-sit
during the entire tape.
After I got back to India, I never found time (or the interest) to set up this device
until last Sunday. That's when I unwrapped the box, connected the cables and without
a moment's thought switched the Power-ON. I got the display lights for a second and
the device went blank. That's when it stuck me that the device was 110V and I connected
to 220V (in India), and the power supply inside the device should have got burned
. Next day I gave the device to my local Electronic Repair shop (Rajam Electronics, Station
Road, West Mambalam, Chennai -33. Phone: 044-2474 0106) to fix it. They diligently
worked on it, fixed it and gave it to me today. They charged me Rs.400 (USD 8) towards
their service charge and for replacing the 110V transformer to 220V and few other
components that got burned. I brought the device home and plugged in, Windows Vista
promptly deducted the device as a USD Audio CODEC and it worked just fine. The burning
episode was a blessing in disguise, now I don't need to keep connecting every time
a 220V-110V Step-Down adaptor.
The device turned out to be a slight-disappointment. The audio quality was great due
to the USB interface, but the software functionality was limited. No Auto Track Identification,
No Auto-Rewind, No Auto-Reverse - you need to baby sit throughout the cassette play
time, no escape from that. The in-built software (EZ Tape Convertor) does make it
easy to mark each tracks, tagging easier and moves automatically the completed tracks
to iTunes. You can find a detailed product review of Tape2PC
from UK's PCAdvisor here - I suggest you read it before you decide to buy this
device. My opinion is that if you don't mind spending few minutes extra for each cassette
and you don't have that many cassettes then you can safe yourself some money by not
buying this. Instead go with my alternate method suggested in Part-1 of this post.
|
-
 For
little more than a year I was using HTC
S710, as my usage of emails grew after
my company moved to Exchange Server the phone was feeling to be too small &
slow - it was time for a new phone for me. After waiting for few months (iPhone got
released in India around Aug '08) and deciding between Sony
Ericsson X1, Samsung
Omnia & HTC
Touch Pro, I went with the original and the popular Apple iPhone 3G. After the
purchase of iPhone in Dec '08, and playing around with the phone for few minutes wiped
away all my doubts about iPhone. It is the best Smartphone out there in market. It
is going to take Symbian (OS
that powers Nokia) & Windows Mobile (OS that powers HTC, Omnia and X1) few revisions
before they can catch up with the ease of use and ergonomics of iPhone.
The purchase itself was different from other phone purchases I have made. I had to
go to Vodafone store (no one else seems to be selling it) in T.Nagar (Chennai) and
pay Rs.26,400 by credit card (only CC and Cash, no cheques - even
though our company has over 30 post-paid connections with Vodafone), I had to read
and sign a 7-page license agreement from Apple - promising that you
will never download pirated content, you will indemnify Apple for any claims out of
usage of iPhone and the likes. I learned that my exiting data plan with Vodafone will
not work with iPhone, I had to opt for a different iPhone
dataplan at Rs.499/699 per month (which will not work on other
phones, so you need to have two plans at the same time if you want to use in different
phones). The phone's packaging was minimal. It seems the small pin (like a office
paper clip) that you need to use to remove SIM card from the phone if lost will cost
you Rs.500! . The sales guy informed me that the phone comes with warranty against
any manufacturing defect, but if I happen to drop the phone and anything other an
air-crack happens, it can't be repaired and I better throw the phone in the nearest
trash can.
Regarding the features of the phone, enough has been talked by reporters around the
world. I would like to highlight few of my experiences.
|
Positives |
Negatives |
|
Browsing in Safari browser is the best you can ask for in a mobile device. Fantastic,
all my favourite web pages appear flawlessly. |
Though a Tamil font seems to be in-built, Apple Advanced Font-Rendering (AAT)
seems to be missing. So Tamil pages are rendered illegible.
|
|
Stocks, Weather, Maps - all applets seems to be aware of India and displays appropriate
information for Chennai. Yahoo!'s Weather applet is much better than what you see
on their website |
No SMS Forward, little irritating
|
|
Battery life is decent, with 2 days of battery life for minimal usage, with Wi-Fi
at default settings. One full day of battery life even on heavy browsing, Talk and
Wi-Fi and Edge turned ON |
No Contact's (Address book) forward, a practical use-case missing. Should be easy
for Apple to implement in a future software upgrade. |
|
YouTube functionality, Camera, iPOD are all cool apps to have |
No built-in software to create Word/Excel/Powerpoint files and no Adobe Flash support.
|
Highlights - Apart from the positives above, few other points
impressed me the most and they are:
1. My company uses RADIUS certificates based authentication implemented
at the Windows Server 2003 level for Wi-Fi security. Even on a Windows Mobile (better
integration between Microsoft Products) you can't connect that easily to these Wi-Fi
access points. With iPhone it was seamless. It automatically detected that I had this
authentication method, prompted for my Domain Credentials, downloaded & installed
the certificate. Everything worked flawlessly. More over with half-a-dozen Wi-Fi AP's
that I have configured across my office, house, relative's houses where I frequent
- the overall Wi-Fi experience has been outstanding. Even with-in my office just as
I get out of Wi-Fi zone, it seamlessly moves to EDGE (Cellular network) and back.
2. The design idea of having a Toggle switch in the side for Silent mode -
brilliant. Other than this and Volume Control (two buttons on side) everything else
in iPhone is touch. It is not practical to access your phone through Touch when it
is in your pocket and you want to turn it to Silent when you are in a meeting. And
having it as a Toggle switch, you can easily feel / see whether your phone is in Silent
or not. And you can configure when in Silent mode whether the phone should vibrate
or not.
3. The Exchange Server integration through ActiveSync is outstanding.
Next to having Outlook 2007 client this is the best client software for Exchange server
- period!. It is so good that nowadays I hardly bring home my laptop to work on emails.
4. The firmware upgrade process through iTunes software is extremely easy. I have
my reservations in general about iTunes software, but the updates to the phone through
this has been implemented very well. Other OEM's should learn to mimic this.
5. The MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint & Adobe PDF viewers that are built-in are much
usable. I could open the most complex Excel Sheets and Word documents that I received
in the last few weeks at it and it opened all of them without any fuss. What is better
is that the viewer supports the latest MS Office formats (Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint
2007).
Blank screen bug
I was wanting to do this post for over a month now, but it didn't make it. Today my
phone had its first serious problem - suddenly the display and touch were not working
entirely. I guess it was to do with a video I was downloading from YouTube with the
built-in app. When it gets a call though it was ringing, I was not able to pickup
the call. Any number of Power button presses, Home button presses didn't help. I started
to feel worried that it had developed a hardware problem and I had to give it
to Vodafone/Apple for servicing. That's when I searched and found
this page which had a solution to the same problem. The solution is to keep pressing
both the Home and the Power ON button for 10 seconds and the device will do a reset.
|
-
 Recently
I was checking out one of Nokia's entry level phone (Rs.2000) - Nokia
2626. The phone had "Hindi" letters printed on the keyboard,
so I was doubtful whether it will have Tamil fonts. I launched the built-in browser
and went to INFITT website (HTML
page in Unicode), it said loading and processing for over 2 minutes; but I was delighted
finally to see the page display properly in Tamil (you can see the image in right).
This means that this entry level device has 1. Unicode support, 2. Tamil Unicode font,
3. Rendering support for Indic languages in particular to Tamil. This proves
the present
Unicode system for Indic languages does work even on the most basic/low-end devices
and processors. So the reason Tamil Unicode is not yet supported widely on all phones
especially high-end Windows Mobile, iPhone, Blackberry & Nokia Smartphones is
not because of any technical limitations, but a lack of interest from the manufacturers
to ship Tamil (Indic) support. It is mostly got to do with the wrong assessment by
them, that all Smartphone buyers in India can read and care only about "English" and
not their mother tongue.
References: Hindi
support in mobile devices in India.
|
-
Necessity is the mother of invention they say. How true is this statement!. When you
thought the Music Industry is doomed because of piracy from free MP3 downloads, someone
out there comes with a new model.
In the above chart from Economist you
can see that the falling sales of physical (Audio CD) media is not being compensated
by the rise in Digital sales. The Digital sales comes predominantly from iTunes (and
other similar pay per download services) and from subscription services (like Rhapsody)
which offer a flat fee per month for unlimited songs. Both the models have produced
mixed results and are expected to continue with no clear winner as the choice depends
on individual preferences. One clear trend that emerged in the last one year was the
death of "DRM" with Apple leading the way and Amazon following it. As Nicholas
Negroponte wrote in his classic book "Being Digital", you can never categorize
an individual "bit" (Binary 1 or 0) to be of a particular character (Porn, Politics,
News, Sports and so on), so policing the Internet for Piracy can never be fool-proof.
I believe policing is certainly not the fix for increasing music revenues, instead
a new business model that ensures ubiquitous DRM free music to listeners world over
and fair-price/compensation to content producers will assure more success. World over
many models are being experimented including Ad funding - which I feel will be of
limited success, will not be a failure but also not a block-buster. In this connection,
a new business model tried out by Nokia in its "Comes
with Music" (CWM) looks very promising.
CWM simply reverses the economics of Music Industry. Instead of paying for each song
or track, your music cost is loaded on to the listening device. You buy the Nokia
handset for around $230 and you get unlimited songs for one year, after which you
can buy a subscription or buy a new device. Of course, Nokia wants you to buy a new
device every year and that's the attraction for them to try this model. This bundling
of content cost on to the device is in a way similar to TV License fee in UK, where
a tax that is collected
to watch TV in UK helps government to subsidize BBC content production costs.
This is the reason why many of the content in BBC websites are restricted by IP to
permit UK viewers only.
For me, I hope someone in India (may be Reliance Big or Hungama or Airtel or Times)
brings out this model for India. Unfortunately, till date there is no comprehensive
subscription based sites in India offering Indian Film and Classical music. You are
left with buying physical media then ripping it yourself (which is what I do) or paying
blatantly expensive price for each track to legal sites or simply pirate.
|
-
I have been using as my primary laptop a Macbook
Air running (obviously) Windows Vista for last six months. Everything is great
with the laptop - the lightweight and the very cool design. There are only three things
I don't like in this laptop: No right mouse button, Only one USB port, Problem with
Wake up after sleep. The first two I can't do anything about, but the last one I can
try to fix by a driver update. A check in Apple site didn't show up any updates for
Bootcamp for Vista. Then looking into Device Manager I realized the graphics card
in Macbook Air is Intel Mobile 965 Express, so going to Intel support site I downloaded
the latest update: Mobile
Intel® 965 Express Chipset Family Ver.# 15.11.3.1576 Date: Oct 11, 2008 for Windows
Vista 32
Installing this, solved my wake up problems. If you have a Macbook Air, running Windows
Vista and having problems with the machine coming up after sleep, I highly recommend
this upgrade.
|
-
 
Today I got a chance to visit Cray Inc. (The
supercomputer company) headquarters in downtown Seattle. I got to see in their lab
the recently arrived Cray CX1 Supercomputer. This is the first product to be made
after the partnership between Cray
and Intel to bring the benefits of High Performance computing to desktops. This
is a cool (with Cray's patented cooling systems and low decibel noise) computer that
you can put it under your desk (or as a Cray engineer said on top of the desk to
show the world you have a Cray machine) and run demanding applications without a datacenter.
The machine sports state of the art specifications of
Up to Eight Blades per Chassis and in each chassis - Single or Dual Intel Quad-Core
Xeons (overall upto 16 Quad Core Xeons), 64GB per Blade (or Node) and so on.
The basic chassis costs about $8000 and an average configuration including few compute,
storage and graphics nodes costs between $25,000 to $60,000. Not that expensive for
owning a supercomputer. The part I love is that it runs
Windows HPC 2008 and the front-display panel sports a Windows CE for showing the
status.
I wish I can get one of our media customers to pay for this and then we can deploy
their web servers onto this!
|
-
 Few
months when the Petrol/Diesel shortage happened in India I decided I will buy an electric
two-wheeler. Apart from the advantage of driving when Oil is scarce, I thought it
will also give a personal satisfaction of being environment friendly. Of course, nothing
is more "Green" than a bi-cycle. So about a month and half back I purchased
the Ultra
Velociti - an electric powered scooter. It runs only on Electricity with no Oil
at all, the dealer claims there is nothing to maintain or service in the vehicle other
than periodic Tyre Air-Pressure and Battery check.
Specifications of the scooter (* Under Standard Test conditions and
a payload of 75 Kg):
-
Speed 45 Km/ Hour*
-
Range 50 Km/ Charge* (Each full charge takes about 6 hours)
-
Vehicle weight 88 Kg
The only dealer
I could find in Chennai when I searched was GEE GEE Motors in Royapuram, but they
were willing to come down and give a test drive in my office. The scooter on road
including Road Tax, Registration & Insurance costs about Rs.41,000/-. After paying
the full money I had to wait for nearly 2 weeks before I got the vehicle complete
with registration and Number - I don't like to drive vehicles without number and insurance.
Having been driving only a car for last several years, when this scooter arrived it
was a experience of "Freedom" for me. I was able to go for local
shopping in crowded market streets in West Mambalam & T.Nagar easily, without
having to worry about parking and traffic. When I am driving this scooter and see
the vehicles next to me I feel good that I am not polluting and I am spending negligible
money for driving. Though the manual says maximum load is 120Kgs, I was able to ride
it myself with my wife and kid comfortably - obviously a bit slower than riding it
alone, but nevertheless you can. The one problem I faced was of charge, the power
meter is unreliable - from full, once it drops to half it takes only few minutes to
drop to zero. While it is in this region, it runs in kind of a stop-n-go motion. But
this was because I didn't charge for over a week (though I didn't drive more than
few kilometres as well), but it will be a wise idea to charge it every few days once
- to avoid this problem.
(You can see the charger in the left picture, the other
end can be plugged to any 5V socket; The Power-meter and Speedometer in the picture
on right)
Overall I found it to be a great second vehicle. Can it be the only one?, I doubt.
I feel the technology, power of the motor and the engineering have to undergo one
or two more iterations before the first time two-wheeler purchaser can go for this,
selecting this over a motorbike.
Reference: GEE GEE MOTORS, 73, Mannarsamy Koil Street, Royapuram, Chennai.Phone: 044-43528008,
43528009
|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » Gadgets ( RSS)
More Posts Next page »
|
|
|