Online Journal of Sudhir Parasuram (Lakkaraju)

Youtube Movies

2011-06-01T18:15:00.001+05:30

Watch free movies as well as rent some @

YouTube Movies

Came in via the Google Friends Newsletter.

Internet & Smartphone pangs in the night?

2011-05-27T17:38:00.000+05:30

The "Sleepless? Then Stop Taking Your iPhone To Bed." article @ Gigaom reminds me of myself at times! It's a different thing I don't have a smartphone.

Hmm....

Moserbaer Super DVD - M&E industry dilemma?

2011-05-22T17:13:00.000+05:30

Moserbaer is one of India's largest CD/DVD manufacturers. They also happen to sell movie VCDs/DVDs in retail format as well as online @ MoserBaerHomeVideo.

Most of their online DVDs are Rs.99/- or so. However, they have something called the SuperDVD which is usually 3 movies @ Rs.30 to Rs.50 or thereabouts. The video quality is very good, only thing is they miss subtitles.

Interestingly, while their online catalog shows VCDs and regular DVDs which are priced close to the 3 digit number (Rs.100/-), they don't list the SuperDVDs. I don't think it's unintentional. Just shows that they are scared everyone will order only those online and regular business may get affected. However, IMHO, if that's indeed the case, it just shows how short sighted they are. They are fighting the inevitable.

Growing Impatient?

2011-05-22T15:22:00.000+05:30

For a while nowadays, I can't wait to completely read a book or watch a movie. I tend to the read the plot/synopsis/story line online before completing the book/movie (very often as soon as the movie starts and has gone on for a few mins). This wasn't the case earlier! What's happening? :)

My adsense account disabled! Google Vs Facebook. Social Networking ...

2011-05-22T02:21:00.000+05:30

Given the long hiatus from my blog and the apparent lack of a huge readership group, here's what I got!

One thing that bothers me when I have to blog stuff is that I've to think about a title. Seriously! Facebook is much easier with the simple "what's your status?" update. Of course, it's a "closed" group, so I'd end up posting a bit more on it than on a public blog and most of my personal, day-to-day contacts are connected via it - so hopefully, they are a bit more "informed" that what comes via this medium (blog). Does make me wonder that Google is so close to losing it on the social networking front!

--------------------

Hello,

After reviewing our records, we've determined that your AdSense account
poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a
responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due
to invalid activity, we've found it necessary to disable your AdSense
account. Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will
both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers.

Please understand that we need to take such steps to maintain the
effectiveness of Google's advertising system, particularly the
advertiser-publisher relationship. We understand the inconvenience that
this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and
cooperation.

If you have any questions or concerns about the actions we've taken, how
you can appeal this decision, or invalid activity in general, you can find
more information by visiting
http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

--------------------

So, what do I "hate" about Google Chrome?

2011-02-22T12:04:00.000+05:30

Well, as I have mentioned earlier, "hate" is a strong word. But then that's probably a good/captivating headline :)

I love Google Chrome for a lot of reasons, including its speed, clean tabbed interface, the process sandboxing of each tab, ...

The one thing that makes me irk and my blood boil at times is the fact that it makes me think someone in their design team probably wanted to do something different and ended up changing the sizes of the minimize, restore and (especially) close buttons at the top right corner. Quite often I almost end up clicking the close button instead of the restore or minimize, thanks to the size differences between this and other applications - on Windows XP.

Do you use Chrome? Do you find this irritating? Is there a reason this is designed this way?!! This probably is one reason, but I definitely find this appearance/behavior troublesome - maybe no fault of Google, but wish there was an easy way to resolve this.

Suggestions? Apart from upgrading Vista / to Windows 7 / Linux?

Large Scale Cheating on RAJ TV?

2011-02-13T23:16:00.000+05:30

Flipping TV channels and happened to see "Cinema Theriyuma" on Raj TV (13-Feb-2011, around 10.40pm). A show to "Guess the Celebrities". One needs to call 5664426 - Rs.10/- per minute. It's very clear that the show is rigged to the core. "Supposed" callers give the wrong answer every time. I'm quite suspicious that the channel is placing fake calls to build up the momentum. See the photo below - it's clear it's Sarat Kumar and Rajinikanth - the calls have been coming in wrong for half an hour now - unbelievable.

Interestingly my mom just walked by and said she blew about Rs.100 a few days ago on this call - was made to wait on the call by someone who prompted her to stay on for 10 minutes - counter ticking. It's sad - I'm quite sure there are tons of such gullible people who get duped. A search on the net shows good number of complaints about this program. I'd say shame on the channel and the relevant regulators for allowing this to go on. Clearly a sign of unholy nexus between tv channel, telephone companies and dare I say regulators as well?

Google introducing Two Factor Authentication (via mobile phone)

2011-02-12T22:56:00.000+05:30

Google is introducing 2FA. You can sign in with your password and an additional code sent to your mobile phone. More details on the google blog entry.

Will you use this?

India Film Industry on Twitter

2011-02-12T22:50:00.001+05:30

Is it a way to stay connected with their audience, fan club or is it a strategy to attract eyeballs or both or more?!

http://twitter.com/#!/list/sudhirlp/cinema

Doesn't necessarily contain everyone in the industry, just some I've come across. A wikipedia entry may be worth this one?

microSD price dropping like hot cake

2011-01-04T04:10:00.000+05:30

Last Sunday, I got an 8GB Transcend microSDHC card for the LG GS190 purchased recently. It cost me Rs.580 @ Mercy electronics.

When I compare it with the Rs.2150 I paid for 1GB 4 years ago (when I got my Nokia 6233), I'm amazed at how fast memory prices are dropping. Way to go!

Price comparison: Ebay.in has similar rates (Rs.585 to begin with) and Amazon has it cheaper ($8.14 onwards = Rs.364 @ 1 USD = 44.77 INR).

CD-R Price Rs7.5 per unit

2011-01-04T03:58:00.000+05:30

I'm left with just one more CD from the Moser Baer 100 pack I bought in Apr/May-2005. At that time it was Rs.12 per unit.

Yesterday I bought a Moser Baer 100 pack from the famous Mercy Electronics at Rs.750 for 100-Box, i.e, Rs.7.50 per unit. That's approximately a 19% drop over period of 5.5yrs. Do you think it's a good drop or not fast enough?

P.S:
Retails @ Moser Baer at Rs.1200 per 100 box and ebay.in at Rs.1100 to Rs.1400!

Interestingly Amazon has it cheaper at $12.99 (Rs.581 @ 1 USD = Rs.44.77 INR) and upwards (albeit brand is different, TDK). There are local Indian brands that are quite cheap as well, just no "guarantee" on quality though.

Samsung Galaxy S model stopped?

2011-01-02T21:09:00.000+05:30

Looks like Samsung Galaxy S model has been stopped in the market. I visited Samsung showroom to inquire about the price and was told that a new model will come in market by Jan-15 (Pongal timeframe). The reason is supposed to be Super AMOLED screen shortage and newer model will come out with Super LCD screen. Not sure about authenticity.

A few minutes aprior, I had visited Poorvika Mobile Showroom just adjacent to the Samsung showroom. They too informed me that there are no Samsung Galaxy S mobile handsets since 1 week in the market and they are expected to come in about a week's time. They didn't have more information beyond that.

Mobile Lost

2011-01-02T08:26:00.000+05:30

The wifey lost her phone on Friday evening, 31-Dec-2010. It was lost at Adyar between the visit to Birla Planetarium, Peryiar Science and Technology Center and visit to JP (Car) Battery center (more on all those in possibly another post).

It was a phone that was passed down to her from her sister via her mom. While the phone was a very old model (0.3MP camera), it was certainly fully functional and carrier lot of sentimental attachment. Resale value of it wouldn't be anything more than Rs.100 to Rs.300.

However, it brought back my attention to the fact that Indian telecom market is in between being ill-equipped and disinterested to handle mobile phone loss. While the service provider will block the sim and issue a duplicate one, they are not at all keen in tracing the mobile phone with the help of IMEI (this does require co-ordination between service providers so that the device can be tracked between networks).

The good thing however is that I remember reading an article in the newspapers recently (within last 2 weeks to a month) that mobile phone tracking (in case of loss, security?) is going to become a reality soon in the Indian market thanks to government pressure, service providers "supposedly" upgrading to required technology and collaborating between themselves. I'm not holding my breath on that one, but it would certainly be interesting and useful if it came to fruition.

We ended up getting an LG GS190 thanks to its support of an 8GB microSD card and an ok speaker phone - key requirements for the wife and kid to listen to music.

Interestingly, Univercell, the mobile phone retailer offered a mobile insurance plan for a year (to protect against loss, accidental damage, etc) for as little as Rs.50 (or Rs.100?), but I refused. I'm guessing getting that refund will be a problem in case of loss - thanks to the requirement of going to a police station to register the loss and possibly getting an acknowledgement! And you know easy (or relishing experience) that can be!

Reco Reqd - Film Negative/Positive Scanner

2010-12-19T05:19:00.000+05:30

There are tons of photos lying at home - beginning 4 generations ago. Both positive and film negative. Want to digitize them. Any recommendations for good film negative/positive scanners? I could find a bunch on Amazon and Ebay, however haven't done enough background homework/research.

Alternately, if anyone has this in Chennai and can spare for a few days, I'd obviously be most thankful!

Home bandwidth monitoring - Linksys WRT54GL / DLink 502T

2010-12-19T00:19:00.000+05:30

Internet connection at home is provided via DSL/PSTN connected to DLink 502T connected to Linksys WRT54GL v1.1.

Given some of my previous experiences regarding internet bandwidth at home (ref 1 & 2),
I need bandwidth monitoring software - one that gives me current upload/download information as well as historical trending information. Unfortunately neither DLink nor Linksys provide this in their official software/firmware.

Linksys WRT54GL firmware from Tomato, DD-WRT and OpenWRT all of these seem to provide bandwidth monitoring.

Incidentally, I chatted up Linksys support today. And while they were quite helpful and gracious, they didn't have any solution to this other than to state that this is supported only on 3rd party firmware, but running 3rd party firware will void warranty :) There was no option for them to take a feature request from customer. I'm sure this is a much required/requested feature for most customers who buy home broadband wireless routers. But without official support, it's kinda stuck.

Does anyone have any suggestions or good experience with any of these without having bricked their hardware? :)

Bill (or sms ?) shock - Matrix Cellular

2010-12-16T00:10:00.000+05:30

I use Matrix Cellular services while traveling to the US. In general, I've been happy with their services (just that their billing collection cycle is abysmal). It's actually quite convenient to have a "local" mobile phone at hand in foreign shores. More so in a market like US where phones are locked to the networks and it's not easy to use your own phone there - irrespective of whether it's a quad/5 band.

In view of my recent US trip, I got an SMS a few days ago which said that I'd incurred a bill for Rs.27.7300 in view of my recent usage. I was shocked (understatement of the year) that it was Rs.277300, called up their customer care, registered a complaint, was assured that it will be looked into asap and I would get a call from concerned department in about 15-20 mins. Suffice to say that I never got that call.

And then I got another SMS yesterday which said that a bill worth Rs.27.73 is being dispatched to my residence.

See - Rs.27.7300 Vs Rs.27.73 !!

Now, I'm waiting for the bill to see what it is actually!

On this related note, the situation of US telecom industry where phones are locked to networks, just makes me think that we have the best possible situation in India - at least for now. There is however, a slow penetration of network locked phones coming up in the GSM space as well and it's always been there for CDMA.

My happiness with Indian market is notwithstanding the famous India 2G scam, albeit that is a sad story in itself, not to mention that it's like reading a thrilling novel!

Virtualization on mobile phones - 2 in 1 phones!

2010-12-14T19:55:00.000+05:30

And I'm not talking about dual sim phones.

Virutalization is very well know in the world of computers - laptop, desktop, etc. Infact, I had some of my first trysts with it _years ago_ when I ran Red Hat Linux on my Microsoft Windows desktop using VMware. There's still a lot of evolution happening in that part of the world.

Now, here's something neat and surprising. LG & VMware are supposedly working together to create a new phone which will use virtualization to support 2 phones - for personal and office use - on a single physical phone. Will be interesting to see how this takes off!

Snippet:
LG and VMware have created a partnership intended to deliver a dual-profile mobile smartphone sometime in 2011. As a result, users should eventually be able to carry a single device that logically segments personal applications and data from work resources so that IT departments can manage and secure just the corporate “side” of the device.
...
VMware mobile middleware will create two virtual instances of a smartphone in one physical device.
...
The virtualized phones will have two phone numbers – personal and work. Presumably, the employee could receive an invoice for personal usage and the company could receive an invoice for corporate charges.
...

What are Indians searching for?

2010-12-13T20:32:00.000+05:30

To see what has been capturing Indian's mind on the web, look no further than the ultimate oracle of search - Google.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2010/regions/in.html

The lists - Fastest rising, Most popular, Faster rising people, Most popular movies, Most popular brands, Most popular how to - are interesting and so are the grpahs/charts.

A brief from their summary.

While the IRCTC (railway ticket booking) continues to top the charts of the year-on-year fastest rising bracket, some of the newer interesting entries this year are the low cost smart phone maker Micromax Mobiles and YouTube Videos. As the FIFA World Cup grabbed the real world attention, netizens too showed the excitement catching them online. Amongst the most popular on the web – Songs, Facebook and Google remain the top three. Amongst the fastest rising people, Indians searched for British actress Aruna Shields and this year’s new Bollywood sensation, Sonakshi Sinha. Other favorites from Bollywood were Zarine Khan, Katrina Kaif; and amongst the men, Salman Khan ruled the web.

Aritel Download Speed Test - Something fishy?

2010-12-12T23:00:00.000+05:30

I tried out download speed tests and there's something I'm either missing or fishy.

Airtel & SpeedTest.net are indicating that my download speeds are at 2Mbps.

PCPitStop, DSLReports, TestMy.net are reporting that I'm at 0.2Mbps!

That's a whopping difference.

(PCPitStop, depending on the type of test, location of server, shows different results - this is probably truly representative of what can happen with others as well)

I can speculate some reasons why some of those appear faster than other, but when I tried download software (via browser, free download manager), it still remains at around 256kbps or .25Mbps.

See the results for yourself.

2Mbps speed results

0.2Mbps or ~256kbps speed results

Airtel "Fair" Usage Tracking - "Broadband"

2010-12-12T21:26:00.000+05:30

I'm on a 512kbps DSL "unlimited" download "broadband" plan which defaults to 256kbps after a certain amount of download (can't recollect the limit). Airtel is my service provider.

This month is the first time, I've come across the limits being applied. And the only thing that was of significant download size for the entire month was the linux Ubuntu download (about 700MB).

Initial Message

Message after "limits" were applied

And to imagine that this comes @ ~Rs900 per month, makes me cringe at the "broadband" options that are available in India.

My next phone - looking always to the future :)

2010-12-12T09:59:00.000+05:30

I've been tempted long enough. The first two are what are available in the Indian market now. While the others are those on the global list.
Samsung Galaxy S
HTC Desire
HTC Desire HD
IPhone 4
Nexus S

Thanks to the IPod Touch 4 that I got about a month ago, I'm quite impressed with the IPhone apps platform and the number of "useful" apps on it. Not sure how the android market stacks up to that for those apps that I seek now and possibly want in the future.

The Indian market unfortunately has no "real sale" even during peak holiday seasons for things such as these. Given that this is already year end and there are rumors about dual core mobile processors (from Samsung, Qualcomm, ARM, Intel) hitting the market in Q1 of 2011, I'm tempted to postpone the "always in the future" purchase decision. But then, there's also the thought that with more powerful processors, battery may be a bigger problem and hence possibly not worth it.

Let's see how this goes.

Why do Google Chrome 8 & 7 co-exist?

2010-12-06T08:52:00.000+05:30

So, why do Google Chrome 8 & 7 seem to co-exist, each of them taking about 150MB space?

How do I show ads between my posts? - Blogger Help

2010-12-05T19:10:00.000+05:30

This one finally solved my previous problem.

How do I show ads between my posts? - Blogger Help

My blog posts were associated with a previous adsense account which I'd discontinued. Ads were not being displayed due to the non-existent account association.

BTW, I'm using the Chrome "Blog This" extension to create this post. It's more of a test post :)

Adsense - initial blues

2010-12-05T08:13:00.000+05:30

Between my regular and humor blog, there's a difference in the way adsense works.

It works fine in my humor blog whereas on my regular blog, just the sidebar container works. The ad below the first post in main page doesn't come up, nor do individual posts show the ad beneath them. Not sure how feedburner is rendering those.

Could certainly use some help in figuring this one out.

Tata Docomo Prepaid - VAS "cheating"?

2010-12-05T08:05:00.000+05:30

At the risk of making this blog sound like a "bitching note", here's another one of those "cheap tricks to make quick money" schemes in the market.

My dad has a Tata Docomo prepaid number. Last night he got the following sms notifcation.

"Hi! Your subscription to Tamil Regional Love Tips alert service will be renewed in next 72hrs & you will be charged Rs 30. To unsubscribe, call 155223 (Toll-free).
Sender: 54321
Message centre: +919032055002
Sent: 4-Dec-2010 19:15:23"

We were surprised to see this since he is pretty much loved by the family and doesn't need additional tips, that too from a commercial entity at this stage in life! :) Just to make it clear for those who are too innocent to understand the ironical remark, he never "subscribed" to the "service".

It took some effort in navigating their "Tol-free" number to skip past language selection menus, trying to figure out if the service was caller-tunes/sms/voice/data based, and finally unsubscribing to the service and confirming that more than 2/3 times at various levels with different prompts (press "1" to confirm, press "5" to confirm, press "9" to reconfirm" and so on). I bet they are relying on the fact that some poor soul who does indeed want to unsubscribe will be frustrated and give up and they can charge a couple of Rs till he figures out how to actually do it.

It just irks me that corporates, and that too famous ones like Tata, can stoop to such low levels and cheap tactics.