Contrary to popular belief the concept of a free lunch does exist….we call it freeware!  

Share This

a) Opera – An absolute MUST HAVE … tabbed browing, multiple views, data compression the list goes on and on and on …
though i am a BIG fan of firefox….i will urge you to stay away from Minimo … though its based on the mozilla shell, it falls way way short.
Opera Mini is also an alternative, albeit a limiting one…very strange that Mini offers an option to remember passwords which the full version doesn’t ..

b) Mobispine – Discovered yesterday…and i’m already addicted! An RSS reader for your phone…helps you maximise your news sources and adds some interesting feeds of its own… i’m just piping my “What is Gautham reading just now” to my phone …. and running up some very moderate data usage ….also, on the PATHETIC edge speeds that Hutch offers RSS is a much better alternative to HTML…

c) Google Maps – Brilliant! Necessary if you’re not too used to the offline world or a typical male that can’t ask for directions….offers you the ability to zoom down to street view (well, almost) , has landmarks, aerial or satellite view, route mappers etc etc etc…

d) Widsets – Allows you to run widgets on the Mobile platform…is fun to play around with…. I’ve kitted this out too… the Wikipedia Widget is absolutely rocking….scrapes content, compresses and renders very very quickly…other feeds i’ve added include techcrunch, assorted news and email widgets… i’d urge you not to miss this one…

Gotta run now…but will be back to update this later… have fun!

Share This

While the detailed list and conversation can be found at http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1190824 i’ve handpicked a few…

• Bluetooth is ONLY good for connecting a headset. That’s it.
• There is no file browser on the device at all. Data must be organized (if at all) in the appropriate application.
• The keyboard sucks. It gets slightly better after the iPhone “learns” you, as the employees said, but even then, it’s not a device you can use with one hand comfortably, much less without looking.
• You can only send one picture at a time in an email.
  
• No custom ringtones (yet, as we were being told) and the alert tones can not be changed whatsoever.
• The default ringtones are incredibly lame.
  
• The only form of customization outside of a lame default ringtone is the wallpaper, which you’ll only see when you need to unlock the device or when you get a phone call.
  
• No document editor or native viewer. You can not store documents on the device to be viewed, they can only be viewed as attachments when they’re sent to your in an email.
• No voice dialing.
  
• No speed dialing (which can be made up by the “quick list”, but getting to that quick list isn’t as fast as holding a single key on a real keypad).
  

Being a heavy phone user… I’m definitely not letting go of the Windows Mobile platform anytime soon…

Share This

The internet is the world’s biggest democracy…i first came up with that line back in 2004 when i was writing my SoP for an eBusiness Management course for a school in england…i didn’t go due to a multitude of reasons, but the SoP really helped me crystallize my thoughts…and this was my opening statement…

The Internet has no parallel, it is the world biggest community (11.5% of world population)*, the world’s biggest marketplace (740 million users), and is growing and evolving everyday. We have witnessed the social implications it has had on our lives and how it has revolutionised the way we do business. Today, we are witnessing the second Internet revolution, the era of Wireless Networking. This will increase the reach and growth of the Internet making it a more central part of how we live and operate. I am driven by my passion for the Internet, and am decided on being a part of this global movement, that continues to add value to our lives.

That was 2004, 3 years in a conventional landscape (30 in cyberspace)…those numbers have already clawed up to a billion users globally (15% of global population…growing at 10% a year)…media moguls across the globe are now watching the wireless revolution evolve and attain critical mass…wi-fi and wi-lan are available in india, mobile access continues to grow at 5MM new users in india alone, mobile VAS revenues exceed P2P… we are all witnessing faster evolution of our species thanks to the ever widening proliferation of media and technology…the key trend we’re seeing is, the company that builds the best ecosystem, that allows for the fairest democracy, and that allows the user to be the real winner will eventually win…
Google made online advertising democratic when they first launched ad-sense…they weren’t the first online ad-network, but were the first the allow virtually everyone to run ads on their site and make money of it…in retrospect, the manner in which fastclick, advertising.com and the other networks treated small webmasters was pathetic, and thats why they paid the price…Google continues to grow, and in no small part due to the number of webmasters across the globe that run their ads, swear by their practices and, how their system allows advertiser, webmaster & user to win… the online ecosystem is built (and continues to grow)…Google is not aiming to be a destination….Google wants to be the platform…and has done everything it needs to do, to be the center of the world’s biggest ecosystem…
Don’t for a moment write Microsoft out of this game…they’re still very rich (USD 30BN in cash, billions in profit every quarter) and if you read between the lines of last weeks $3 windows student license announcement for developing economies…you find that they are the only company on earth that could aim at doubling the number of PC owners in the next 8 years… almost all of us use Windows, and alot of their products across the productivity (windows, office 2007, mobile) and entertainment axis (mediacenter, xbox360) are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition… we’re only too used to personalising our computing experience…the key here is we can personalise it because MS has built the ecosystem… even though some of their tactics can be mildly termed aggressive, that’s just business right? …. in the words of kevin kelly, the infinite game is played to keep playing, and to win at every level you play at….

Today we can install almost anything we find on the internet on a windows machine…and thats what affords us options, choices, freedoms which in turn empower us….we can now share our ideas with the world (this blog being a classic case), get feedback, collaborate and jointly evolve…this is the role that technology & media combined are playing in the evolution of mankind… technology was always supposed to be open, to be free, shared, transparent…and media today makes it viable… web 2.0 is the biggest attempt and success story ever towards socialization of media & technology … its anyones guess about which company will eventually prevail… but the one thing i can say with absolutely no hesitation is that the consumer will win (and is already winning) … we’re really really really lucky to live in this day and age… subsidised by media, empowered by technology… democratic, free and liberated!

This is just ONE more reason why i LOVE the internet…

Share This

Last week Yahoo introduced their oneSearch mobile search experience for the majority of cell phones which offer Internet access. This week, Yahoo is working to fortify its innovative hold on the mobile search market with a suite of services which enable publishers to increase the discovery, distribution and monetization of their content via oneSearch; Yahoo Mobile Publisher Services.

Read on…

Share This

Share This

Yahoo! beat Google, Napster, YouTube and MySpace, after participants carried out a set number of tasks specific to each provider on both a laptop PC and a wireless device.

“Yahoo! Mobile achieved the highest rating, primarily due to the fact that it represented the best replication of the full website on the Third (mobile) screen,” according to Paul Brown, User Experience Analyst at Strategy Analytics. “However, mobile implementation of these brands is tangibly inferior to the fixed user experience across a range of metrics.” Mobile implementations of these brands are tangibly inferior to fixed with user experience ratings ranging form -12 to – 34 index points. MapQuest is the most sought-after web location on mobile followed by Google.

David Kerr, VP of the Global Wireless Practice, added, “Many users, especially among digital enthusiasts, show a preference for web search, web mail and web 2.0, user generated content and social networking content over branded content. However ease of access and discoverability of content on mobile handsets continue to be a huge pain point which is directly limiting content consumption”

Benchmarking Key Brands: Fixed and Mobile Experience

Share This

Over the course of my mobile life I’ve owned several Nokia phones. It all started with a Nokia 3310, followed by a Nokia 3330 (where I was first exposed to WAP 1.0), followed by a Nokia 6600, followed by the Nokia n-gage, and another n-gage, then a 1100 and most recently a Nokia 6600. Though I’ve owned other mobiles the bulk of my phones have been manufactured by Nokia & I haven’t had too many complaints. This post actually is about the latest Nokia I got my hands on, the Nokia 5300.

I wanted to gift my mother a new phone, and the requirements from the phone were basic. Symbian for the UI, USB Connectivity, expandable memory, a decent camera (1.3 MP+) and a decent looking phone considering women are far more conscious of form factor. Expandable memory knocked out the Sony Ericsson range, Symbian knocked out Motorola, Samsung & LG and I was back hunting at a Nokia store. The 5300 caught my eye and since it met every single basic requirement I went ahead at bought it.

What’s the verdict: Brilliant (except for average battery life)
Pros:
Symbian 40 phones, being simpler, are much faster than their Symbian 60 cousins.
Basic features like number duplication warnings make your life much easier.
This is something that neither the NSeries nor the ESeries offer.
A BRILLIANT PC Suite and USB Connectivity.
Backing up the entire phone has never been easier.
I’ve been known to curse Nokia for the shitty versions of their PC Suite and compliance / connectivity issues with their phones over Bluetooth/ IR but from all the handling of this phone & the new suite , this version ROCKS.
The ability to backup every bit of information on your phone including messages, contacts, images etc by simple drag-drop mouse commands.
A crisp camera and 2GB Memory Cards.
Dedicated easy access buttons for Music and deep base earphones.
An additional pin to add after-market headphones.
Connectivity: IR, Bluetooth, USB (you’ll be surprised how many basic phones don’t come with all 3).

Cons:
Battery Life. For heavy users, this can be limiting.
From heavy user perspective: The inability to multitask with multiple java apps.

Share This

I didn’t stop there (check the post titled 2019 for the abridged version) but the rest was more wishlist and not what i’d need to be seamlessly integrated with my online oxygen.

For the blissfully ignorant, IPv6 is short for “Internet Protocol version 6”. A replacement for the aging IPv4, which was released in the early 80s, IPv6 will exponentially increase the number of available Internet addresses or IPs (from 32 to 128 bits) and consequently the number of devices attached to the Internet. It would serve as a base for data delivery from everything from telecom to television. There are a host of resources which talk about the benefits and features of IPv6, some of which can be found here and here!

Combine IPv6 with Wimax/WiFi, the growth of embedded systems and AI and you find yourself in wireless paradise where all your devices i.e. car, fridge, camera, phone, tablet, TV talk to each other! Sound like sci-fi fiction? Opera already has a dedicated division which builds internet browsers for devices! Still sound like Star Wars? Before i give you a host of other reasons about why its not, i’ll give you some background on where the web is headed and the concepts behind Web 2.0.

To quote wikipedia “Web 2.0 is a term popularized by O’Reilly Media and MediaLive International as the name for a series of web development conferences that started in October 2004. It has since come to refer to what some people describe as a second phase of architecture and application development for the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 applications often use a combination of techniques devised in the late 1990s, including public web service APIs (dating from 1998), Ajax (1998), and web syndication (1997).“

This IBM Page (courtesy De) is a great resource for developers.

To put it simply, the next wave is server based & collaborative computing, limitless bandwidth and seamless connectivity. Any analysis of M&A activity by Internet heavyweights will give you a good idea about Web 2.0 products and why they’re where any netrepreneur needs to be focussing his attention. There is already a long list of products from companies like 37signals, Salesforce.com, Trumba, Adventnet (Zoho) which deal with life management systems ranging from CRM to online collaboration. Flickr & Live.com are Web 2.0 products that need no introduction.

A peek at Google’s portfolio of products and services and Google’s acquisitions all point in one direction – Owning the Web 2.0 platform. Microsoft is what it is because it owns the PC platform. And that’s just what Google has aimed to do.

Yahoo! isn’t a stranger to 2.0 either, the new Yahoo! Mail, Live Words and Widgets are all 2.0 products. In addition to that, their acquisitions include Oddpost, Flickr & del.icio.us

While it’s easy to lose yourself admiring Google, you could very easily lost sight of Microsoft and be fooled into believing that they’re not very active on the 2.0 front. Ever wonder why the rumoured MS acquiring Macromedia didn’t work out? Maybe, for Vista to be a success, it had to be more nimble. A little digging into MS Investments & Acquisitions throws light on my humble 2cent theory. Sharepoint, Windows/Office Live, Origami, Windows Mobile 5.0 are not just concepts! MS publicly can now be in every room of the house & Windows has long been associated with BMW. Origami is WiFi enabled, it does have a tablet version of XP running on it (and should be able to run Vista). There are no limitations on the browser, the connectivity, the OS. Whats there to stop them?

It’s hard to imagine that something as big and wide as the Internet, can evolve so fast! While i still haven’t been able to identify any opportunities that the Semantic Web will present, i’m sure i’d be just as amazed, just as curious and just as ignorant as i am now.

Share This

i had tried downloading FMA last year….on de’s computer back in Diamond District…..and the only thing it did was crash his computer, at one stage not even allowing a normal boot up…but de being the guru that he is found a way around that…(and obviously refused to run the program ever again) …. extremely skeptical of burning my fingers again, i went by the promise on the site that a ’stable’ version was available for download….FMA 2.0 !

FMA is a free powerful phone editing tool allowing users to easily manage all of the personal data stored in their phones, using Bluetooth, IR or serial port. FMA allows easy management of Phonebook (both SIM and Phone memory), SMS, Profiles, and Files stored on the phone. This makes tranfering files between phone and computer extremely easy….including ringtones, themes, pictures and the like…

Now for the real stuff….FMA can also allow you to pickup and dial calls, send and view SMS, take photographs and get assorted information like battery life, battery temperature, phone temperature, view call logs etc…. directly from your PC. It could actually allow you to use your phone as a spy device….with it taking photographs and/or recording a conversation in the next room…..and this isn’t where it ends!

It allows your phone to become your mouse/controller to operate your PC…..so for example you can open iTunes or Winamp and switch to the song of your choice without even looking at your PC….much better than buggy symbian software like ControlFreak and Bemused….

Will get my hands on some higher end Sony Ericsson;s this week and hopefully get inquisitive with them too….i’m sure they’d be able to integrate perfectly with FMA….considering that the SE’s are more powerful than their nokia counterparts and more intelligent due to FMA….i’m questioning the need for a mid range nokia or a symbian phone….in anycase….i’m not in the phone market for the next couple of months…(reality check ) but when i’m there….FMA will definitely get me to think in favour of SE! unless i head for overkill right to the palm 700W!

Share This