My Technophilic Musings

I’m going to be bespectacled and have been advised to reduce and limit my computer usage considerably. A bit of nostalgia set in on hearing this and I thought about my short journey so far in this wonderland of solid-state and otherwise.

First time I touched a computer.
> 1989, at school in 2nd standard

First command I typed on a computer.
> “dir”, 1990, 3rd standard

First game I played on a computer.
> “bricks”, 1991, 4th standard

First Colored game I played on a computer.
> “Dangerous Dave”, 1991, 4th standard

First program I wrote on a computer.
> “Hello, Ankit!” in basic, 1992, 5th standard(The pre-teenage rebel in me substituted the “world” by “Ankit”. Why “Ankit”? That’s a mystery )

First time I held a mouse.
>1992, 5th standard, Windows 3.0

First Windows Program I used
>PaintBrush (MSPaint today), 1992, 5th standard

First “3d” game I played
> Wolfenstein 3D (or Wolf), 1993, 6th standard Continue reading »

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: commands, Computers, corporate, games, history, linux, nostalgia, Programming

iPhone 3G, the “supposedly” latest and greatest handhled, just continues to amaze me, with its ridiculousness of course. I mean first they dare to call a machine a smartphone that can’t run more than one app a time, need you to send the unit back even for a battery change, fix the glaring mistakes of its predecessor and call them “features” and make you believe that you are getting it all for cheap while covertly telling you that you need a minimum of 2 year 70$ contract to get it and need to pay through every hole for even software updates. And then they don’t stop this, just out is the information that you can’t tether the “data transfer powerhouse” to your laptops/PCs/Macs.

HSDPA/HSUPA my a**. I mean what good is a “3G” device that doesn’t even let you use the potential of the hyper-speeds by connecting to your bigger machines or even doing video calls. Oh right, I forgot, now you can check your e-mail at 50 messages per minute, WOOHOO!!, I’m so l33t.

So far the only good things I’ve noticed about the new release are:The MobileMe aka “sync-with-anything-anywhere” service, which although paid (obviously, its Apple we are talking about here), is still interesting. And the new SDK 2.0 that promises the 3rd party devs the same access to the phone as Apple’s devs, seems to be a step in the right direction though it remains to be seen how much of this is actually followed up on by Apple.

So, what do you feel is THE revolutionary thing about this new Cupertino offering? And of course, chime in with your gripes as well.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: Apple, cupertino, HSDPA, HSUPA, iPhone, iPhone 3G, MobileME, SDK 2.0, tethering

This is the last part in this series. So far we’ve seen how to select the gadget and how to get the best price for it. This time we’ll fill in the last remaining piece of the puzzle, the minor tit-bits that go a long way in preventing a lot of heart-burn. Don’t worry this is a short one.

This last piece is to make sure that the place that you decided upon to buy your gadget, is OK in all respects, i.e., is not a fraud and has good after-sales service. You don’t have to do much, basically you just need to go thorugh a few reviews. It’s recommended you check more than a couple of these sites for your research about the seller. The main sites for this are ResellerRatings, BBB, Yahoo Local, Froogle, and if nothing else, you can even ask questions on forums like FatWallet and Slickdeals for people’s prior experiences with your particular dealer.

I hope the series has been informative enough for you and maybe you were able to save a few bucks. Let me know if it was so, or if you have some tricks up your sleeve that you’d like to share with others.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: BBB, deals, fatwallet, Froogle, Gadgets, ResellerRatings, slickdeals, Yahoo Local

Last time we discussed how to select the gadget that you want to buy. This time I’ll tell you some of the things that I do to find the best price for it.

• Use Price Comparison Engines: These engines will let you search for your desired products and provide a comparison of the costs at which they are available at different stores online as well as offline. Two of my favourites are Price Grabber and Froogle. Price Grabber has the added benefits of providing user reviews about the product as well.
• Deal Sites: Many sites across the web aggregate the latest deals. Some are run by the site owners, e.g., Deals2Buy, HotDealsClub etc, which are mostly almost same to each other. Some are run by the community, e.g. slickdeals, fatwallet, etc.These have an added advantage that the discussion that takes place on the original discussion adds a lot of value and insight in terms of how to stack on even better deals on top of it, provides comparison to other deals, rumours about coming deals in advance, and even deals local to your state, city or a particular store as well.
• Bargain Sites: These sites sell overstocked products at a cheap price. Some of the popular ones are Overstock, Smart Bargains, W00t, Stootsi, etc. W00t and Stootsi are a bit different in the sense that they have very limited number of products available at a time for sale (generally just 1).
• Coupon Codes Sites: Many sites aggregate coupon codes for various online and offline stores that you can use with your purchase to lower the price further. However, you need to go through the terms and conditions of the coupon to make sure that it applies to your purchase, and you might also need some convincing powers to use them in some cases . Some of the sites are Wow-Coupons and Current Codes. Continue reading »
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  Quote of the day: “When due process fails us, we really do live in a world of terror.” - JC Denton

  written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: cash back, deals, deals2buy, discount coupons, fatwallet, Gadgets, geeks, hotdealsclub, money, overstock, pricematch, slickdeals, smart bargains, stootsi, w00t
  

If you are a gadget freak like me and can’t resist the temptations to buy the newest toy on the shelves, then you’d obviously want to eek out the maximum you can from whatever budget you have. But while doing so you have to take care of a lot of things. Here is Part I of the few things that I do get the best deals out there while making sure I’m buying the right thing from the right place.

The first step to buying anything is obviously whether you are buying the right thing. The list of do’s and don’t and this regard are:

• Do not blindly go by the what the manufacturer’s site says. After all I’ll always say that I my product is the best.
• Do not just make the decision based on the feature set. More features mean more possible points of failure, so a device with fewer features but better reliability is obviously much better than the one that promises the moon but only the “once in a blue -“ kinds.
• Make sure to search for similar products from other manufacturers. Just because it comes from Apple’s stable doesn’t make it the best. (For the record, in general, I don’t like anything that comes from Cupertino)
• Look for the reviews. Search for the reviews for the product you have in mind, but a big problem with this has now arisen with the advent of “paid reviews”. But of course, you can always turn towards the community. Read through all the site-based single person reviews as well but also look for forums and other communities related to the type of gadget you have in mind. e.g. – For cameras, DPReview is a good place to go, for WM smart phones, XDA-Developers is the place to be, etc.
• Is the after-sales support good? You don’t want to be locked out with a product that you can’t do anything about if something goes wrong.
• Look also for the hidden costs of product. Many a times the base product is cheap but then it requires you to shell out a fortune in terms of required accessories to yield it’s full potential (e.g. Archos players).
• Maintenance costs:e.g. Most Apple products dont have easily replaceable parts and need to be sent back to factory for even things like a new battery.

Now, the list above seems small but when put into practice it isn’t. But obviously, a geek who can handle all the latest electronic gizmos can surely handle the irks that come while chosing one, and of course, within a short while, it will become second nature to you.

Are there any other things that you look for buying your new boy-toy? Do let me know. Next time, we will look at how to get the best deals for the stuff you crave.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: Apple, cupertino, deals, Gadgets, geeks, reviews, stuff

HTC announce their shiny new Touch Diamond recently. Everyone ooh’ed and aah’ed while ogling at it until they realized that HTC has taken a step back (or forward towards matching Apple’s iPhone crap) by removing the expansion card slot from the phone. Yes, it has 4 GB of internal storage but I’d rather have an SDHC card slot with the ever falling prices of solid state memory (an 8 GB Class 6 SDHC card is worth not more than around 60$ these days). With a history of ultimate-gift-to-mankind phones like HTC Tytn, HTC Tytn II (Kaiser), iPhone, etc that excite so much on the first look and then start becoming dimmer and unwanted as the euphoria settles, we are left to wonder when will we see the real “Super Phone”. The do-it-all-be-all-end-all phone.

Well, my prediction is (Nostradamus style) : NEVER. No sir, you are not going to see your dream phone any time soon, or any time at all, for that matter.

Why do I say that. The reasons are pretty obvious, once we take off our wishful thinking hats and don the smart thinking ones.

1. A new dream every day: Around 8-10 years ago, I wished I had a cell phone. Around 6 years ago, I wish I had one with a camera. Around 4 years ago, I wish I had a phone with Mp3 player and expandable memory. 3 years ago I wished for a smart phone. Now, I wish for…. You get it. By the time something comes out, our dreams have already moved on. After all they  aren’t called “dreams” just like that

2. Where is the money: You might be ready to give a fortune (and your first born son) for that ultimate phone, but the evil-phone-conglomerate wants much more than that. They want you to be slaves. They don’t want the world to spend a huge amount in one go and then stop. They need to mint more money and too much more frequently than you’d like to spend. This is why the strategy works. Give out a phone that has slim form factor, nice UI, wi-fi, but then make the processor crappy (Touch), then lure them with a better processor but take out the wi-fi (Touch Dual), Add the wi-fi back and slap in a keyboard too, but keep’em wanting for better graphics (Kaiser), give ‘em a shiny new toy, but then lock it down in every possible (iCrap). So, you’d be stuck in the vicious circle of “upgrades” and keep the phone factory churning.

So, my dear fellow phone lovers, stop wasting your time waiting for that ultimate phone, and go “upgrade” at once, because “that” phone with just “that” one more feature…ISN’T COMING…

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: Apple, HTC, HTC Diamond, iPhone, kaiser, PDA, phone, smartphone, super phone, Touch, Touch Dual, TYTN

Qualcomm wets it feet again in the ice-cold/boiling-hot mixture of a sea that our Mobile Phone Industry is. They decided that the all the phone makers around the globe are just churning out junk upon the unsuspecting people. Claiming to take the bull by its horns, and revolutionizing the world that whirls around it, the touted features are:

• No Battery Required
• Unlimited Expandable Memory
• Completely Waterproof
• …and weight -> weightless
• size -> oops, I lost the phone somewhere inside my fingernail

Go and see it in action at http://www.handsolomobile.com/

BUT, then come back and hit the “Continue Reading” link to know some more scoop about it

Continue reading »

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: batteryless, handsolo, mobile phone, qualcomm, waterproof, weightless

Who wouldn’t agree that Morph is most probably the coolest mutant (besides Wolverine of of course ). Now, it seems that the Finnish Giant Nokia has a lot of X-Men lovers as well, as they put out their latest offering to us lesser mortals. They call it “The Morph Concept”.

Featured in The Museum of Modern Art “Design and The Elastic Mind” exhibition, the Morph concept device is a bridge between highly advanced technologies and their potential benefits to end-users. This device concept showcases some revolutionary leaps being explored by Nokia Research Center (NRC) in collaboration with the Cambridge Nanoscience Centre (United Kingdom) – nanoscale technologies that will potentially create a world of radically different devices that open up an entirely new spectrum of possibilities.

Yeah, yeah, museum-shmuseum, nanotech-shanotech. All I know is that until I see this thing up on <put your favourite retailer name here>, my call is “vaporware”.

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written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: cambridge, Cambridge Nanoscience Centre, MoMA, morph, nano-tech, nano-technology, nanoscale technologies, nanotechnology, nokia, nokia morph, Nokia Reseach Center, NRC, the morph concept, The Museum Of Modern Art, vaporware

Just wanted to share some pieces that generated a variety of “hmmm”, “ahaa” and “wow” from me:

China Mobile set to trial LTE:

China Mobile said it will join Vodafone Group plc and Verizon Wireless in an ongoing trial of LTE technology…….The trials — which include three powerhouse network operators — underscore the momentum LTE is gaining as a leading 4G technology possibility vs. WiMAX and Ultra Mobile Broadband.

“HMMM” - U go LTE!!

Telstra Launches the i-mate Ultimate 8502 and 9502 in Australia:

Telstra and i-mate have today launched the i-mate™ Ultimate 8502 and i-mate™ Ultimate 9502. Telstra is the first operator to deploy these devices globally and both devices will be exclusive in Australia to Telstra customers. Building on a five-year partnership which has seen the successful launch of 10 i-mate™ devices on the Telstra network, Telstra has teamed up with i-mate™ again to release the Ultimate mobile devices.

“AHA” - So, they are not vaporware after all !!

Android SDK m5-rc14 now available:

*New user interface - As I mentioned when we introduced the m3 version of the Android SDK, we’re continuing to refine the UI that’s available for Android. m5-rc14 replaces the previous placeholder with a new UI, but as before, work on it is still in-progress.
*Layout animations - Developers can now create layout animations for their applications using the capabilities introduced in the android.view.animation package. Check out the LayoutAnimation*.java files in the APIDemos sample code for examples of how this works.
*Geo-coding - android.location.Geocoder enables developers to forward and reverse geo-code (i.e. translate an address into a coordinate and vice-versa), and also search for businesses.
*New media codecs - The MediaPlayer class has added support for the OGG Vorbis, MIDI, XMF, iMelody, RTTL/RTX, and OTA audio file formats.
*Updated Eclipse plug-in - A new version of ADT is available and provides improvements to the Android developer experience. In particular, check out the new Android Manifest editor.

“WOW” What else can I say?!!

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: 4G, android, android sdk m5–rc14, cellphone, china, china mobile, google, i-mate, i-mate ultimate 8502, i-mate ultimate 9502, LTE, mobile, mobile phones, Telstra, ultimate, verizon, verizon wireless, vodafone, Windows Mobile

As everyone knows, I’m an out-and-out Windows Mobile worshipper. It’s like a girlfriend, who is very difficult to manage and understand at first, but is a great source of joy if you know how to manage her. I don’t like any other phones now; the extensibility given by WM will do that to you.

I also “admire” Nokia because of the quality and reliability they provide with their phones. Having worked for them in a project (Nokia Networks/Nokia Seimens Networks actually), I know how much testing they put in before releasing something. That coupled with the recent crap-doings by even the largest of the WM Phone companies like HTC, have made me try to look elsewhere.

Now, if this news comes true, then we are in for a treat, as the two giants might just come together to give us a sweet little toy for our “smart” cravings . Read the news and let us know how you feel about it.

PS: Don’t even mention iPhone/iPod/iTouch or any other iCrap.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: HTC, iCrap, iPhone, iPod, Microsoft, nokia, nokia mobile, Windows Mobile, WM