Tech Bangalore

Life is so much organized with good personal domain name & Google Apps

Prashanth — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 02:15:23 +0000

I recently acquired the domain prashanth.net, there’s no domain left with this name since it’s a very common name in South India. And also blame it on Tamil Star Prashanth So, one & a half year running backorder finally accomplished the domain. Now what!!? Since the domain is really good, I wanted all my stuff to come under it! I started learning jQuery & built a pretty neat home page for prashanth.net. Moved my personal blog to this domain & made the previous domain to redirect here (permanent, wildcard). These were all initial setup. One of the main reasons for buying this domain was having a nice email ID which stands out!

Google Apps Registration:

There’s no better option than Google Apps account which comes for free (Standard Edition). I registered the domain with Google Apps account & did all initial setup of creating MX records to make email to work.

Email, IM Migration:

Since I wanted a complete shift to this new ID from my Gmail, I wanted to move all my mails for future refernce. I setup the mail fetcher which is available under “Settings–>Accounts–>Get mail from other accounts”. This mail fetcher copied all mails from my gmail ID to new Google Apps account, though it took few days! Similarly moved contacts with Import & Export options which gmail has. Once email gets activated, it automatically activates IM. You can use Google Talk to connect with all other people who are on Gmail or Google Apps account. I couldn’t tell everyone on my Google Talk about my migration to new personalized ID. I used answer.im to auto respond those who try to contact me on my old gmail ID. Answer.im makes you look online all the time & when somebody pings, it replies with the message you have set.

Docs, Calendar & Custom URL:

Google Apps account also comes with other services from Google, Docs & Calendar. So all these services looks more personalized when you have custom URLs. Setting up custom URLs is very simple, you just need to change it in Google Apps service settings & create appropriate CNAME records on your domain. It might sound a bit geeky, but nothing once you know how to do it. So with Google Apps services & custom URLs, I actually got the following:

Mail: http://mail.prashanth.net

Calendar: http://cal.prashanth.net

Docs: http://docs.prashanth.net

Life looks so simple & organized now! And also gives personalization touch to it! Beleive it or not, I don’t have a office suite installed on my computers. I am a fulltime user of Google Docs! Docs also provides offline access to all your documents on it. All you have to do is enable offline access (requirs Google Gears installed). You can access, modify all your docs even when not connected to internet & all the changes you have made get syncronized when you connect next time.

Syncing with Mobile Phone:

I have Nokia E66, Symbian S60 3rd edition phone. I use System Seven push email service to receive emails in real time. System Seven recently launched syncing contacts & calendar with Gmail/Google Apps. With that my phone’s calendar is always in sync with my online calendar. It doesn’t matter whether I add an event on mobile’s calendar or my google calendar, it gets reflected everywhere.

How to charge USB based devices without a computer

Prashanth — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:52:05 +0000

We all have so many USB based devices which can be charged only via USB ports, like portable music players, digital cameras…etc. But when we go out for a trip or a long tour, it’s gonna be a huge problem to keep them charged all the time. Offcourse you can’t carry a laptop or PC to just charge them!

Here is a solution for that! You can buy a Universal USB Charger which is been sold by many merchants on eBay over here. You can plug this adapter to normal AC 230 volts points. Adapter simply steps down the 230V AC into 5 volts DC which is the voltage USB ports provide. These adapters are available for around Rs.200 on eBay

New Apple iPhone 3GS price in India – My Predictions

Prashanth — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:30:50 +0000

Apple has announced the new iPhone 3GS few days back & claims that it’s 2X fater than the old iPhones & comes with 3.2MP camera capable of recording videos. With this announcement Apple also reduced the price of iPhone 3G 8GB to $99. The new iPhone 3GS 16GB & 32GB are available at $199 & $299 respectively. But the fact is that all these prices mentioned above are applicable only if you sign 2 year contract with AT & T & so applies only in US. Price of iPhone 3G S without contract are $599 & $699 respectively for 16GB & 32GB (Source: PC World).

So, as per my predictions, iPhone 3G 8GB in India might drop to around 23k to 25k from present 31k rupees. If you are dreaming about getting it for 5k, forget it!! Similarly new iPhone 3GS 16GB model might be priced around 30k to 33k rupees & 32GB model at around 35k to 38k.

This is what it’s going to be until unless Apple takes Indian market seriously. In that case Apple might reduce price of iPhone 3G 8GB to in around 15 to 20k, but I seriously doubt it! Let’s wait for the official announcements & see how good I am at predictions!! By the way, what’s your prediction?

Exclusive!!! Nokia N97 connected to large LCD Display

Prashanth — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:53:25 +0000

Nokia N97 can be connected to LCD Displays & TV to view it on big screen. This could be an awesome way to show your photo gallery to your family. Nokia N97 has 32GB inbuilt memory which allows you store big video files & also supports 16:9 aspect ratio. So, you can probably store movies on N97 & connect to a big screen to watch them. Here is a video from Nokia stall at Startup City happened last week. In the beginning of the video you can see a video playing clearly on big display!

Nokia N97 Photo Shoot!!

Prashanth — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:03:26 +0000

I had an opportunity to experience the new Nokia N97 at two back to back events StartupCity & Nokia N97 Bloggers meet. I tried to explore all the aspects the end user probably going to look at & here are the pictures. Few images are from my cam & few from Manasa (thanks for that )

Tried loading my other Blog Control Enter, just shows how awesome the browsing experience is on N97

How can we forget Phone's basic functionality, dialer, fully touchable!!

Main menu of the phone, did you notice OVI store app!? N97 is the first phone which is shipping with OVI Store app

Staying updated with the news is hell lot easier now!

Software/Firmware Information

Viewing HD videos is just awesome on N97 which supports 16:9 aspect ratio & comes with 32GB inbuilt memory which enough room to all your favorite videos

I still don’t understand how I forgot to take a snap of all new “Customizable Home Screen” But I love the first picture, just shows how awesome the browsing experience on this phone & that’s my favorite picture (I keep looking at it again & again!!).

BSNL discounts monthly charges for EVDO & NIC Cards for exisiting Broadband Users

Prashanth — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:32:36 +0000

BSNL Bangalore announced discounts on monthly charges for EVDO & NIC cards for existing Broadband users paying more than Rs.499 every month. Monthly charge for EVDO connection for normal customers is Rs.550, but it is just Rs.300 under this offer. Similarly monthly charges for NIC card connection is Rs.250 & discounted price is Rs.150. These discounts are applicable for one year & after that period you will have to pay the normal charges. You need to also keep your existing broadband connection & should be paying atleast Rs.499 to be eligible for this offer. In case if you discontinue your Broadband connection in between, you have to pay the normal charges. So, basically these are addon plans for BSNL Broadband users to enable mobility.

BSNL EVDO connection seem to be pretty good with city wide coverage & providing speeds upto 2.4 Mbps. As per the experienced users you can get 2mbps speed when you are close to the tower & around 1mbps when bit far away from tower. The big plus of EVDO plan from BSNL is, it’s unlimited!

For more details about these discounted plans check these docs from BSNL Bangalore website: EVDO Plan, NIC Card Plan. For more details on EVDO cards, coverage & help queries you can check out my friend GigaCore’s blog & forum bsnlevdoclub.com.

Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 – It’s ALL you need!

Prashanth — Sun, 10 May 2009 04:13:20 +0000

Lenovo launched its All-In-One Desktop. We at ControlEnter were fortunate to be try it out first hand, thanks to Lenovo being generous enough to let us feel their new product.

Well to start with IdeaCentre range is exciting because it bring desktops to a whole new level. It is something which will probably be a good differentiator from assembled products for Lenovo besides competition for iMac. IdeaCentre packs in your computer, 21.5? monitor, 2.1 speaker, webcam, Wii like game system and full HD TV in into a box which is only slightly bigger than your usual LCD monitor and definitely much much smaller than a CRT one. This wikipedia linkwill probably make you remember what CRT is all about

Ideacenter at Lenovo Exclusive Preview to Bloggers

Well specs are something to think of, its definitely not cutting edge, its a 2GHz Intel? Core?2 Duo Mobile Processor. But then to pack everything into that box, it makes up for most of it with a decent ATI Radeon graphics card and a 2GB DDR3 RAM. A decent 2.1 Dolby Home Theatre audio certified packed in produces decent quality sound.

One of the killer feature of this setup is the remote control that it packs in. The remote control is a multi-functional device which packs in a motion sensor and voip handset(basically a speaker and mic). The motion sensor also makes it possible to use it as an air mouse And yeah u can also control the multimedia function via it as well with an array of buttons located on it. The basic games(Tennis, Table Tennis and Bowling) that were demonstrated to us come with the pack. They were definitely fun to play.

No Ethernet is a damper though, but yeah it has 6 USB ports(2 in the side and 4 at the rear), a firewire port and 6in1 Media Card Reader. The webcam is located at top of the box and the to login to the system you can use the VeriFace? facial recognition technology from Lenovo instead of the passwords.

The TV Tuner card makes this a good replacement for your TV. The keyboard and mouse are wireless. Which is not always a good idea, considering that replacing AAA cells is not always cheap.

With a price tag of around Rs.65k it does seem like a good buy.

[originally posted by Leeladhar at ControlEnter]

Airtel to stop Airtel Online GPRS plan from May 5th!

Prashanth — Sat, 02 May 2009 12:30:03 +0000

Airtel is withdrawing it?s one of the popular GPRS plan Airtel Online in effect from May 5th. Airtel Online is a restricted GPRS plan which allows to browse internet only on Mobile Phones. For browsing on computer or laptop using your phone as modem, you should have EDGE plan ?Mobile Office? charged Rs.99/week for Pre-paid & Rs.140/week on Postpaid. Airtel was charging Rs.5 per day for Airtel Online which was pretty cheap & allowed users to browse net on the go.

From May 5th Airtel introducing the new plan VBC (I still don?t know the expansion!) which allows seamless browsing. Airtel announced to charge 30paise/50kb for this plan. I still don?t know what ?Seamless? browsing means for Airtel. Whether they are going to open up all the ports & give access to POP, IMAP servers? And whether users are allowed to browse internet on computer using this? We have to wait & watch what it?s gonna be.

After May 5th you can send ?VBC ACTV? to toll free number 222 to activate this new GPRS plan.

Note: This post is based on an SMS I received from Airtel.

You have been receiving SMS codes: TA-ICICI, AX-Airtel…and wondering what’s it?

Prashanth — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:03:47 +0000

Recently, from almost a month SMSs from Banks, Service Providers, Companies have started prefixing something like ID, AT, VK…etc. What’s all this after all!!? Here I am to explain you what it is! Normally these SMSs originates from a Bulk SMS provider where you can use 11 digit Alpha-Numeric characters as "Sender". But there were some security risks in this method. I was able to give a phone number as "Sender" & it appears as that person at the recipient end. Basically there was a chance to send SMSs as a different person! I was actually using this to fool my friends.

But the new TRAI regulation insisted bulk SMS providers to restrict the "Sender ID" to 8 characters. Other three characters should be used to specify who is the service provider & where it’s originated from. Say for example: HDFCBANK sends an SMS to you using bulk SMS provider located at Tamil Nadu which uses Airtel. You will receive it as AT-HDFCBANK. First character specifies which service provider the message is being originated & the second character specifies from which location it’s originated. Here is the table which has details of these SMS codes:

Service Provider Codes:

Service Provider	Code
Aircel, Dishnet Wireless	D
Bharti Airtel	A
BSNL	B
BPL Mobile/Loop Telecom	L
Datacom Solutions	C
HFCL Infotel	H
Idea Cellular	I
MTNL	M
Reliance Communications	R
Reliance Telecom	E
S tel	S
Shyam Telecom	Y
Spice Telecom	P
Swan Telecom	W
Tata Teleservices	T
Unitech Group	U
Vodafone Group	V

Service Area	Code
Andhra Pradesh	A
Assam	S
Bihar	B
Delhi	D
Gujarat	G
Haryana	H
Himachal Pradesh	I
Jammu & Kashmir	J
Karnataka	X
Kerala	L
Kolkata	K
Madhya Pradesh	Y
Maharashtra	Z
Mumbai	M
North East	N
Orissa	O
Punjab	P
Rajasthan	R
Tamil Nadu	T
UP-East	E
UP-West	W
West Bengal	V

So, combination of these two constitutes the first two digit of ?Sender? followed by an hyphen (-) & actual sender name.

Create your own website with really easy interface, no coding required!

Prashanth — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:05:34 +0000

Having a website of your own is becoming as common as having an email ID. Many people still think creating website requires lot of effort, money & coding knowledge. Roxer is a website which provides easy drag & drop web site building interface using which anyone with minimal knowledge about web can build really good looking pages. Roxer is a free service which also provides hosting for pages created by you & a free sub domain. For your website, you can have free sub-domain like yourname.roxer.com. I know there are lot other websites providing same service. But I still considered writing about it because of it?s elegant & easy interface. The best part of Roxer is it allows users to edit it?s own homepage to have try before signing up! You just need to click on ?Lock? symbol to edit a page & lock it back once done. Though all the features mentioned above are free, you need to pay for few premium features like having your own domain for your pages. You can have a look at comparison between free & premium services here.

Link: Roxer.com