Thursday, April 30, 2009

Check out www.mynetainfo.com if you are a true Indian

With any elections round the corner i was always under a dillema to choose the best posisble candidate for which i should vote. Well this election round, this problem seems to have been solved by a website http://www.myneta.info . This site contains the details of almost all the candidates in the upcoming lok sabha election (including age, qualification any criminal cases etc) and as per the website the source of this information are the affidavits submitted by the candidates.

So this time exercise your right and check out the site http://www.myneta.info before casting your vote. Jai Hind

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

My new phone - Nokia Navigator 6210 - Never get lost again

What are the top two foolish things for a person do do during these time of recession?
  • Changing a job
  • Unnecessary spending money on gadgets
Having done both of them the past month, lets throw some more light on my the second one(the first is going to a boring talk anyways) i.e. shelling out around 14k for a GPS enabled phone in India where roads are re routed daily, house numbers are more randomly defined than a Java random number generator :-).
Nokia Navigator 6210 is my latest phone. Being a loyal Nokia fan for almost the last ten years, my first task was cut shot when i decided to go for a GPS phone was that I would be looking out only for Nokia. Call me biased, but i personally feel Nokia platform (Symbian) has got some great support and usability of Nokia phones is definitely an USP.
Quite a few phones are now available in the Nokia stable offering GPS facilities. But the cheapest one at this time was Nokia 6210 with 6 months on Navigation license (though being a Navigator series phone an unimited Navigation license was expected).
To clear your doubts first what is Navigation and is it the same as GPS. Though Nokia's site does have a good explanation of the same, for the impatient ones Nokia Phones now come bundled with an application called Nokia Maps (2.0). GPS Feature is free for life and you don't pay anybody anything for them (except minimal data transfer charges if you use AGPS which quickens up the initial GPS process). Using GPS you can find your current location on the map which is updated as you walk or drive. This feature is free for life across all Nokia GPS phones i know of.
But navigation takes this a step further by providing various value added services like routing of directions, voice based navigation, POI (point of interests) etc. In Nokia 6210 this comes free for the first 6 months and 8 Indian cities and later on you can buy a license of your liking.
Besides the default Nokia 6210 Navigation, you can also installed third party apps like Google Maps (+ves reliable, free, -ves no voice based navigation, data transfer charges as maps are downloaded over the internet), mapmyindia.com(one time license fee) etc. Personally i am a big fan of Google Maps.

Coming back to the phone, below i briefly mention some of the pros/cons of the handset and my recommendation about the same. You can get a details of the phone features and specifications from its official website http://www.nokia.co.in/link?cid=PLAIN_TEXT_934156

Pros
  1. Good navigation features (AGPS, 6 months free navigation)
  2. Digital compass for pedestrian navigation
  3. Great screen size and display
  4. Battery life is good
  5. A true smart phone with lot of support for third part apps (like voip, messengers etc.)
  6. Firmware is pretty stable and hasn't crashed on me after 3 weeks of continous use.
  7. Works as a pretty good music phone too.


Cons
  1. Build quality is a real bummer has a plasticy feel written all over on it, and is very much susceptible to dust.
  2. The top three keys below the sliders are not very easy to operate. So this phone is a strictly no no if you are an avid texter
  3. Being a Navigation phone a lifetime navigation license was expected. But it comes bundled only with a 6 months navigation license.
  4. Images taken from the camera could have been better. The LED flash sucks

Recommendation

Go for it if you are looking for a great GPS smartphone. If you are loooking for good build quality or a music phone there are definitely better options out there.

Rating 7/10

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Internet Problems (Edge) on Nokia Navigator 6210 with Airtel Mobile Office in Delhi, India

I have a Nokia 6210 phone bought from an authorized Nokia Care Center in Delhi two weeks ago.  The software version on the phone is 3.08 dated 11-June 2008. It also mentions custom version as 03.08.c00.01

I am an Airtel Prepaid customer in New Delhi, India and had been using Mobile Office service on my prepaid number for some time. It worked perfectly fine for my Nokia 6233. On my current Nokia 6210 the Internet connection works fine for the first time through the built in browser or though any other application (like Google Maps, Gmail etc) which required internet and displays the sign  signifying that the edge connection is active.

 

The problem is that once I close the application the standby sign for Edge network is displayed as follows and no matter what I am unable to use the internet connection on the phone until I do the following

  1. Restart the phone (which definitely isn’t a good option)
  2. Wait for around 8-10 minutes after which the Edge on hold sign disappears and is replaced by  which means that the edge is available
  3. I found this out accidentally, but if I press the keys *123# which I typically use for enquiring balance, the on hold sign goes away and is replaced by the Edge available sign.

 Not sure where the problem is. I really doubt it’s got to do something with Airtel as the same number worked perfectly fine with my previous Nokia phone in the same area. In addition my wife’s phone (again an Airtel prepaid number) is working great in the same area. So either this has got to do something with the handset or the compatibility of the handset with the Airtel, New Delhi.

 

I have tried various sets of setting from the following sources

  1. The wizard in built in the handset
  2. Getting the settings from the Nokia site
  3. Getttng the settings from Airtel Customer Care

 

But with all of them I am facing the same set of problems.

 Anybody out there facing similar problems or have any suggestions for the same?


Update 22nd April 2009

This most likely looks like a problem with Airtel or compatibility issue between Airtel and this handset. The reason i say so is that recently Airtel has also launched daily plan for mobile office with the following tarrfis. You can view this menu by keying in the following *567# and pressing the dial button and choosing to activate internet (if you get an message that mobile office is already activated, deactivate it once and then activate it again)

  1. Rs 10 per day for 3 MB
  2. Rs 20 per day for 8 MB
  3. Additional data for the above to be charged at 20 paise for 50 kb.

Already existing plan 30 paisa for 50 kb

Once I migrated to plan 1 or 2 above the problem ceased to exist. So this means once the internet connection is stopped and i get an update form Airtel regarding the balance in my prepaid account, that seems to be the root cause of this issue. As this thing does not occur with Plan 1 and Plan 2, the problems do not exist there. 

Any ideas anyone?


Sunday, March 01, 2009

Airtel Drops a Bombshell in the form of "Airtel' Fair Usage Policy"

Comcast did it, so did AT&T in the US along with numerous other ISP's. It's the turn of Airtel to follow suit. As per the notice put up by Airtel they would be implementing an "Airtel' Fair Usage Policy" which gives them the power to cut down your bandwidth speed to half (at the same charges) after you cross a specified data transfer limit in your unlimited(They should now remove this word, isn't it?) data broadband limit.

The details of this awesome :-) plan are available here 


The rest of the details are pretty sketchy here, not to mention since when this has been implemented, where we may check our usage, whats our usage etc. etc.

Strange that we do get automated calls and all kind of advertisement with our Airtel Bill, but Airtel found it quite unnecessary to inform us about this update from their end which would be hitting us directly. I found an online petition against this move from Airtel which can be accessible here  http://afup.broadbandforum.in/

If you feel this issue is important to you, use the power of Social Media (twit, blog, social networking sites etc.) to spread the word around and make people aware of it, as looks like Airtel is not gonna do that for sure.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Delhi 6 Music Review

Movie - Delhi 6
Music Director - A.R. Rahman
Director - Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
Lyrics - Prasson Joshi

After creating magic with Rang De Basanti in 2006, the trio combination of A.R. Rahman, Prasoon Joshi and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra are back with Delhi 6. So do they manage to carry on their RDB phenomena forward? You bet they do...

Rating 9/10

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Slumdog Millionaire Music Review

After winning the Golden Globe for best music and getting four music related Oscar nominations Slumdog Millionaire "original" audio cds are finally avaiable in India. So does the music lives up to the hype it has been creating for the past two months now?


Ringa Ringa
Singers - Alka Yagnik, Ila Arun

For some strange reasons the Indian version of this album opens up with the typical bollywood item number "Ringa Ringa". You can definitely feel the hangover the song "Choli Ke Peeche" in this song and the fact that the same set of singers have been used for the same heightens the same. Personally I thought this was the weakest link of the album, but surprisingly this still made as the opening track. Ila Arun and Alka Yagnik are great as usual.


Jai Ho
Singers - Sukhvinder Singh , Tanvi Shah , Mahalaxmi Iyer, Vijay Prakash

One of the song which has won A.R. Rahman an Oscar nomination is definitely the picks of the album. Allegedly this song was created for the film "Yuvraaj" but unluckily (or luckily ;-) ) Subash Ghai decided not to use it in his film and hence it was used for SDM. Poetic lyrics by Gulzaar sahab are great with Sukhvinder Singh again not disappointing. Definitely one of the tracks to look forward to in this album.

O Saya
Singers - A.R. Rahman, MIA

This song produced in collaboration with MIA has got SDM one more Oscar nomination. Song played alongwith the titles in the movie is amazingly picturized in the slums of Mumbai and A.R. Rahman and MIA lend some great vocals to this song. My favourite in the album, but I guess this may lose out to "Jai Ho" as the frontrunner for an Oscar winner.

All of the rest are typically instrumental songs, gelling really well in the movie though my favourite being "Latikas Theme" and "Liquid Dance". The album is finally concluded by the soulful number "Dreams On Fire".


To conclude I would not recommend this as Rahman's best work, but this definitely another gem in Rahman's cap. Go and enjoy this wonder. :-)