Archive for January, 2009

Will Palm Pre have iSync Support?

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

Palm Pre is the another smart phone which I am eagerly waiting for. Palm is not a very famous mobile company. In India, I think this brand is totally unheard of. However, Palm Pre is the next big thing by Palm and should soon see it’s presence in India.

Palm doesn’t have a great history of support with Macs. Would Palm Pre work with iSync or would apple leisurely delay adding support for it. I wish Palm makes an OSX application for address book and iCal sync instead of depending on application like iSync.

Apple iPhone for BSNL, Aircel & other providers in India

Friday, January 30th, 2009

Apple iPhone in India is currently tied with Airtel & Vodafone. However, I think this exclusivity deal would last just 6 months. Apple should bring in iPhone with other vendors like BSNL, Idea, Aircel, Spice, MTNL and many others. Unlike the market in other countries in India selling long term phone contracts don’t work. So Apple has little scope to share revenues with providers. It would make a lot more sense to rather be available to all esp. the huge pre-paid segment in India.

Apple iPhone should also get cheaper by 22 Feb (6 months from the original launch date – 22 Aug 2008). iPhone 3G 8GB should ideally be priced at 22-23k and 16GB at 29k. India is very price sensitive market and I think Apple will benefit a lot in terms of volume and growth.
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Upgraded to WordPress 2.7

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

I had been stuck on WordPress 2.0.1 for a very long time. I was quite skeptical upgrading to 2.7 – thinking it might break while upgrading. Everything looks fine after the upgrade. Finally!

How to: remove a directory in Linux?

Monday, January 19th, 2009

Removing directory from shell prompt (using Terminal on Mac) is easy. This is a very simple command and very useful.

If you need to remove a directory with confirmation on each file.

Command: rm -r directoryname

This is useful espcially if you want to be double sure about the contents are going to delete.

Command: rm -rf directoryname

This command would remove directory recursively without a prompt. Be careful when using this command.

Bangalore Calling

Saturday, January 17th, 2009

Bangalore was my dream city a decade ago. But not anymore. It has been a victim of the so called ‘development-era’. Nevertheless, I love the city for it’s weather and food. There has been plenty of memorable trips to Bangalore that I have never written about.

Anyways, I am heading to bangalore to speak at Proto, The Startup Event at Nimhans Convention Centre on 23 & 24 Jan 2009. I would be sharing a session with Amit Ranjan. Unlike my usual speaking engagements, to engineering or business school students, for the first time I am going to address India’s top grade upcoming entrepreneurs. It is both a chance to share experience and gain a lot of enthusiasm and inspiration from peers.

thecinema.in – Booking too slow

Friday, January 16th, 2009

Off late, I have had trouble in booking tickets online for Sathyam Cinema’s at thecinema.in. The booking won’t go past the Booking Your Tickets screen. I have been a great fan of thecinema.in booking interface, but I guess lot of data or visitors is troubling their servers. Hope this issue resolves soon.

Top 10 Aamir Khan Movies – IMDB Ranking

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

Aamir Khan has done about 40 movies. I have seen most of them, especially the popular ones. I wanted to take sometime and find out the top. I trust IMDB ranking to a great extend and hence would be using that as the yardstick.

  • #10 Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke – 7.6 / 10
  • #9 Rangeela 7.8 / 10
  • #8 Taare Zameen Par 7.9 / 10
  • #7 Lagaan 8.0 / 10
  • #6 Rang De Basanti 8.1 / 10
  • #5 Sarfarosh 8.2 / 10
  • #4 Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak 8.2 / 10
  • #3 Dil Chahta Hai 8.3 / 10
  • #2 Andaz Apna Apna 8.6 / 10
  • #1 Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar 8.6 / 10

Ghajini is at around 15th position. It was good entertainer but no way in the top 10 aamir khan movies. I think I have seen all these movies at least twice. Do tell me if your favorite is not in the list – surprise me.

Indian Web2.0 Application Showcase

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

Feedmyapp.com the famous web 2.0 directory will now have an Indian Edition. We will be highlighting web2.0 applications from India and Indians across the world. Stay tuned for more new on the best Indian web2.0 portal.

Airtel iPhone Free Bandwidth: An Eyewash

Monday, January 12th, 2009

I have been using an Apple iPhone in Chennai soon after it’s release. Airtel announced 1 year of free 500 mb per month GPRS / EDGE with it. But they will never tell you how they bill it. I used 47.7 MB (of my so-called 500MB) last month and was charged 500+ bucks extra.

So here is what you really need to know about Airtel GPRS Billing: The Billing Pulse is for every 100KB. So if you open MAPS and locate your current position it would be 100KB even if you have actually consumed 4KB. If you have set your MAIL to be checked every 15 minutes you are probably using up 100KB every 15 minutes. So that’s about 10MB per day for every mail account. If you are using Chat, Browser or any other application that uses Internet or even location services Airtel is cunningly billing them.

While my actual usage was 47.70 MB, Airtel considered it far about 500MB and charged me mercilessly. Even tougher to follow up with their customer service to demand explanation. I wish we had better service providers.

Satyam fraud: Raju admits fraud

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Satyam fraud is absolutely shocking. Ramalinga Raju, Chairman of Satyam has resigned from the board and admitted the Fraud committed. The IT industry which is already faced with tough times in US will raise questions in minds of FIIs and FDI. According to the letter, neither the auditors nor any other member of the board where aware of the fraud.

You can read more about this story here: Raju admits fraud; Satyam books inflated of Rs 5040cr.