Indian Inside

Apple’s 8GB iPhone 3G is now $99 on contract

shashi — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:50:44 +0000

We were planning to order iPhone for dumma on his birthday. I went to upgrade through his account and saw it was a bit more than we thought as he had already upgraded, still decided to take it.

But when I logged into my account and went to upgrade option…woooooooooooo! iPhone was $99 for upgrade ( with 2 yr contract) of course.. But still we could save a lot on talktime plan and data plan too..Then I googled and found that Apple set this new price as $99 with ATT connection on June 8,2009. And to my surprise as soon as I told about the $99 offer, another friend of mine ordered an iPhone too..

Here’s a screenshot:

If you wanna save on talktime and data plan then follow these steps – Employee/Student discounts for ATT

Happy Birthday dumma !

From America to India in Minutes

shashi — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:05:12 +0000

This ad was at an Indian store in the city. Am talking about “Mysore Woodlands“. Its one of the best Indian restaurants ( am not advertising, relatively it is) in Rochester,NY.. But I was kinda perplexed by their ad at an Indian store. It said “From India to America in minutes“, rather it should have been “From America to India to minutes” ?

As its an Indian restaurant in US – they want to take people from US to a place where they feel like India, showcasing their food and their style by which they capture the minds of people through their dishes, making people feel homely.

If this was their idea, then the ad is wrong ! isn’t it ? what do you feel ? check the capture !

Showing off Indian-ness in US

shashi — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:49:36 +0000

Once there were two guys,”Sam” – an American and “Vish” – an Indian. Both worked at the same company and both are interns. Let’s describe their personalities to start with – Vish is lean like a stick and Sam is well built. Both share the same characteristic behaviour of pulling other’s leg. One day they were walking on the streets of a city in New York state(downtown) and they were on their way to a restaurant for lunch….

They were crossing the street, the pedestrian crossing signal showed Red. There were no vehicles on the road and Sam ran across the road, but Vish didn’t. After the signal turned White Vish crossed the street and joined Sam. Till then Sam was wondering why Vish didnt join him while crossing. As soon as Vish joined him Sam said to him, ‘hey dude why the hell you didn’t cross the road with me’. Vish said the signal was Red, he said. Sam replied saying ‘Rules are made to be broken’ – nobody cares – you could have crossed the road. So Vish replied bluntly saying “Sam if u break the rules people say Sam broke the rules, but if I break the rules , ppl say Indians break the rules. I need to maintain the identity of my country”. Hearing this Sam was speechless !

And I delibrately did not have my last say on this story, as I want to know people’s reaction on this..Thats the end of the story guys.. had been to a temple yesterday and thats another funny story will add that to this article asap..

Bing – a real decision engine?

shashi — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:01:25 +0000

Frankly speaking Bing is much better than expected. Live search was really horrible and its nice to see leaps of change to Bing. The search results are pretty vast. The dropdown to show the list of related search strings is pretty good. I was impressed by Bing Video search, you can get to see a small preview of the videos before clicking and thats awesome. Videos are categorized according to length of the clip, or source of the video etc.

Maybe that leads to some fair use legal problems, but the idea is something unique. Bing has a feature of turning on/off mature content-Google has the same stuff but slightly different style of working (safe search). The image search is quite appreciable.

The question here is will it be a real decision making engine? They have lot of categorical searches such as shopping,travel, images, videos, etc.. One thing is Bing can be a direct path to porn – just search for some hot strings and you will end up getting direct preview of photos and videos.

How many people will be ready to shift to Bing. Even though the search is pretty impressive.

Some things I was surprised are.. When you search “bing” on google. It gives a sponsored link to Bing.com just above the search results. And they have advertised everywhere massively… Any tech site you visit you see a text/banner ad.

Screenshot:

Secret of Credit Cards

shashi — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:19:54 +0000

Frontline video of “Secret History of Credit Cards” was a real eye opener atleast for me. I only knew few things of what they told in the video. Most of the horrifying things weren’t even heard of at all. Video link – “Secret History of Credit Cards“. They also have a nice article telling what things a consumer has to take care while dealing with credit cards – “Eight Things a Credit Card User Should Know” . I was kinda scared after seeing the video (I have 2 credit cards(visa & amex)). Late payment fees and other fees are probably the best way of mkaing money for the banks. Anyway credit card companies won’t be happy with customers like me (as I make payments promptly and cannot be charged interest ).

Some of the shocks were :

- Concept of “Universal Default” : “Even if you make your credit card payments on time, the credit card bank can raise your interest rate automatically if you’re late on payments elsewhere”

- “There is no limit on the amount a credit card company can charge a cardholder for being even an hour late with a payment”

oh my god , this is real crazy , how can they just charge us so much. Nobody is regulating ??

- “There is no federal limit on the interest rate a credit card company can charge”

This is another weird concept. How come no regulations have been made. In the video the authorities say there are regulations but where the hell are they being incorporated in the system??

- “You can get help” ( http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/more/where.html )

Links:

Video link – “Secret History of Credit Cards”

Eight Things a Credit Card User Should Know

History of Weed

shashi — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:16:29 +0000

Its very nice to see this history of Weed. You will like it.. Watch it !

Are You a Gadgets Parasite?

shashi — Thu, 21 May 2009 04:53:37 +0000

From the BBC:

Teenagers in Los Angeles in the US have been taking part in an experiment to find how how they would cope without their electronic gadgets for a week. The 15 and 16-year-olds gave up their mobile phones, mp3 players, TV, radio and other electronic luxuries, and discovered that it was like to trying to kick an addiction.

I will bet if somebody can survive without gadgets even for one complete day. Tech has influenced our lives so much that its almost impossible to be without electronic gadgets for a day. Check this make technology to make us more human – I was surprised to see how he brought out such minute things. We are slowly becoming parasites – parasites of technology, surviving on gadgets. Check this video…

njoy

When Ganguly got hit in the unmentionables !

shashi — Sat, 16 May 2009 23:22:07 +0000

This screenshot was sent by Niranjan today morning. He was watching the match and found this on cricbuzz. Just see what the commentators said ! you will just ROFL..

Don’t Design too Much Today;Tomorrow it Will be so Much Easier

shashi — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:29:40 +0000

Don’t Design too Much Today;Tomorrow it Will be so Much Easier – says Sharp Develop’s Authors. This is a screenshot of the stuff written in the book !

ISRO Launches Spy Satellite – Should they announce such news?

shashi — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:06:12 +0000

I saw this news on IBNLive saying “India’s spy in the sky: ISRO launches RISAT-2“. The Indian Space Research Organisation on Monday successfully launched a revolutionary spy satellite that will help security agencies monitor the hundreds of mountain valleys that connect India with Pakistan and terrorist hideouts in Afghanistan further north.

Should such news be announced ? It doesn’t make sense. “Its like our professor saying we are going to have a surprise tests tomorrow”. Come on guys its a spy satellite !! And you announce as if its a weather forecast satellite !