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Airtel’s low rental GPRS plan

Setu — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:02:55 +0000

Airtel has launched a GPRS plan with a monthly rental of INR 98 with 2GB transfer limit. This is pretty cool as something which was available only to large corporate connections before is now available to everyone.

Here are the details:

Plan type	GPRS/EDGE data plan
Plan rental	INR 98 per month
Data transfer limit	2GB per month

Some key points:

The 2GB free usage is available only on browsing through Mobile Office settings.
Once you have consumed 2GB of free usage, you will be charged 30paise/50KB.
Mobile Internet surfing is handset dependent. Mobile Internet pack will only work on GPRS / internet compatible handset.
The above plan is applicable on data usage only on Airtel network within India.
Any usage on International Roaming will be charged as per the visited operator’s roaming tariffs and will not be a part of these plans.

As you can see, the plan is substantially cheaper than all the existing data plans available to postpaid or prepaid consumers. Also, 2GB is a pretty decent limit considering the best speed you can get is 20 kbps. even with casual usage (email, twitter and browsing) one will ideally use up around 500 MB per month. And since this is a mobile office plan, you can tether your laptop/netbook to your phone and access internet on the go on those family vacations.

To activate this pack, sms INTERNET to 121. In case you are already using any existing data plan, call up 121 and request for migration to this plan.

This might be Airtel’s move to stress test its network ahead of the 3G launch. This way they can find out issues and fix them up earlier, as no one would like their network to perform badly and fall prey under TRAI’s 3G guidelines, understandably.

[via airtel.in]

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Double your Airtel broadband speed with 100 rupees top up

Setu — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:38:12 +0000

If you are an Airtel broadband user, you can double your speed by adding a top up of INR 100 per month. Your speed will be doubled and you will also get an extra INR 100 calling value from your landline. Here are the plans on which the top up is available:

Rental	Speed
Rs. 799	256 Kbps
Rs. 1099	512 Kbps
Rs. 1699	1 Mbps

All the above plans have a Fair Usage Policy (FUP) quota of 100 GB per month after which your speed is reduced to half for the rest of the month.

Once you apply the INR 100 double speed top up to the above plans, you get double the speed:

Rental	Original Speed	Top up Speed
Rs. 899	256 Kbps	512 Kbps
Rs. 1199	512 Kbps	1 Mbps
Rs. 1799	1 Mbps	2 Mbps

Unfortunately, this top up is not available for the Turbo 1299 (day 512 Kbps, night 1 Mbps) and 2999 (2 Mbps) plans.

Here are some key points:

The FUP quota remains the same after the top up i.e. 100GB.
Post FUP you will get half the speed i.e. the original speed in your plan.
INR 100 top up also gives you calling value worth INR 100 from your Airtel landline. This is in addition to any existing free calling value you might be getting in your plan.
The speed upgrade in only for download and not for upload. This means that your upload speed will remain the same. This might make it hard for you to maintain a good ratio on those torrent trackers.

Note that this offer is being communicated to the customers via email or phone. So you might have to wait for some time before it is extended to you.

[via PC World]

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Tata Sky planning to launch HD channels in India this year

Setu — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:47:31 +0000

With Sun Direct DTH already offering Discovery & National Geographic channels in HD quality in India, other operators are also exploring the High Definition space. Since the commonwealth games 2010 in India are planned to be transmitted in HD, Tata Sky has revealed its plan to gear up to provide HD transmissions in India ahead of the games.

"Every DTH operator today is offering almost the same channels at competitive pricing. It will be the interactive services and the additional features that would help differentiate between the operators," Tata Sky Chief Marketing Officer Vikram Mehra told PTI.

Tata Sky is placed third after Dish TV and Sun Direct out of the seven DTH operators in India.

HD ready & Full HD LCD TVs are already gaining popularity in India thanks to stiff competition among the major players like LG, Samsung & Sony.

HD transmissions offer 5 times more pixels than SD transmission. HD ready transmission at 720p or 1080i are substantially superior to their SD counterparts as they offer much better picture quality & Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.

Notably, Tata Sky+, company’s premium PVR offering already has the hardware capabilities and required interfaces (ports) to handle HD content.

As the DTH market has become saturated with seven players offering almost the same stuff at the same price, it is imperative that companies will look for technical advancements in order to lure more customers. It will be interesting to see the HD revolution in India.

[via Economic Times]

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A short movie on Google

Setu — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:59:28 +0000

This is an amazing short movie on Google which reveals that the search giant is not only a search giant and online advertising company, but much much more. It also reveals what they plan to do in the future:

[information aesthetics via Digital Inspiration]

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Delhi Metro routes now available on Google Maps

Setu — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:56:02 +0000

If you are in Delhi and need info on Delhi Metro routes, look no further than Google Maps. The information is available in the Transit layer in Google Maps. To see this layer, simply click on “More…” button in the maps area and then select the “Transit” option.

Google maps will also tell you if there are any metro routes available when you are searching for directions. Click here to see an example for directions from Noida city center to New Delhi Railway Station where Google maps suggests you the metro routes available. Of course you have to select the “By public transit” option in the drop down for this to work.

Here is a useful video created by Amit from Digital Inspiration on how to use Google Maps to search for Delhi metro routes:

[via Digital Inspiration]

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Driving directions in Google Maps India

BSNL launches 24Mbps broadband plan in India

Setu — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:28:46 +0000

Looks like folks at BSNL have finally started watching online porn over their 2 Mbps connections. And frustrated with the buffering time, they have decided to launch 24 Mbps broadband plans in India.

Here are the details of the plan (BBG Super Speed Combo 9999):

Applicability	All Users
Bandwidth (wherever technically feasible)	Upto 24 Mbps
Monthly charges (Rs.)	9999
Annual Payment Option to customers (Rs.)	99990
Download/Upload Limit (MB/GB) per month	220 GB
Additional Usage Charges/MB beyond free download/upload limit	Rs. 0.20/MB
Free E-mail IDs/Space (Per E-mail ID)	1/5 MB
Static IP Address (On request)	One
Night Unlimited (02:00 Hrs. to 08:00 Hrs.)	No
Security Deposit	One Month Plan charges
Minimum Hire Period	One month
Telephone fixed Monthly Charges in Rs. #	NIL
Free Calls	1000
MCU charges/pulse in Rs.	1
Committed Period for FREE MODEM* ( Type – VDSL WiFi )	12 Months

As you can see, the plan gives you 24 Mbps (that’s 3 frickin’ MEGA bytes per second) at a monthly charge of 9999 INR. The plan also has a data transfer limit of 220 GB per month with NO night unlimited option, after which you will be charged at 20 paise per MB. Also, apparently, the “plan shall be offered after ascertaining the technical feasibility of the committed speed”, which basically means the plan will only be available to people living within a range of .5 – 1 km of a BSNL telephone exchange.

With these conditions and at such high monthly rental, the plan will probably only be used by:

BSNL employees living close to a BSNL telephone exchange
Rich people living close to a BSNL telephone exchange

Although, I am not ruling out the fact that BSNL is only doing good for the country by launching this plan. At least someone has the balls to offer such speeds to consumers in India. 220 GB is a decent bandwidth quota, however, we will need something close to 500 GB to do justice to such speed. And just like every new piece of tech launched in India (no matter how long back it was launched in other countries), the price has been kept absurdly high.

BTW, did I mention that they are offering 1000 INR worth of free calls every month? Plus, they will throw in a free wifi modem (wow!) if you pay them advance rental for 12 months, which, hold your horses, comes out close to 1 lakh INR after discount.

As I said, completely absurd.

[via bsnl.co.in]

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A cheaper nexus one for India?

Setu — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:16:21 +0000

Apparently, Google is planning to launch a cheaper, stripped down version of their nexus one phone in India. Here is a tweet by CNBC-TV18 reporter Ankit, who met Google India head Shailesh Rao in an editorial meet:

Nexus One will not come to India in its US avatar, the India specific Google Phone may be a stripped down version and priced lower!

As expected, they haven’t revealed the price or launch dates. But, if Google wants to complete with Nokia or Blackberry, they will have to price the phone in the range of 15 – 20k without contract (unlocked).

I cannot think of any feature other than GPS which can be discarded in the phone’s Indian avatar. Albeit, with the new Google maps navigation system, the nexus one can actually prove to be the first practically useful GPS device in India.

As always, we will have to wait and see how things turn up. Notably, Apple hasn’t yet launched the iPhone 3GS in India and is still shoving the obsolete iPhone 3G down the throat of dumb Indian consumers at an absurd price.

[via Digital Inspiration]

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24hoursloot is India’s woot

Setu — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 07:20:43 +0000

woot is a pretty famous website in the US which offers super awesome deals every day on one product. They sell refurbished & new products at really cheap prices.

An Indian version of woot is here – 24hoursloot.com goes by the same concept. The idea is simple:

They start selling a new product at midnight every day at amazingly cheap prices.
The item is available to order for the next 24 hours or till stocks last.
The item is delivered at your home. They do charge for shipping.
You do not have to sign up on the website to buy the product

If you are fast enough, you can get amazing deals. Till now they have sold cool T shirts, stickers, posters and electronic items. And as the customer base grows up, we can expect to see much more variety of products on the site.

Although the deal of the day is unveiled at midnight, you can follow them on twitter or become a fan on facebook to get a sneak peak at around 11 pm daily.

What’s more? They also have some contests running where you can win free t-shirts! Go to http://www.24hoursloot.com/win-t-shirts to check them out.

Head on to http://www.24hoursloot.com/ to check the deal of the day!

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Airtel reduces broadband tariff, FUP limit

Setu — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:09:07 +0000

Airtel has reduced tariffs for most of its broadband plans in India. Here is a quick glance at the new tariff (Click to expand):

The caveat here is the reduced FUP (Fair usage policy) quota. FUP quota is an absurd limit applied by ISPs. Once you use up your quota in a billing cycle (uploads + downloads both are counted), you will get half speeds for the rest of the billing period.

Our recommendation – If you are on one of the old plans, and are a heavy user, stay on that as the FUP quota was much more in the old plans. For example, the 1699/- per month 1 mbps unlimited plan , had a FUP quota of 100GB.

However, if you are a casual user, and don’t care about the FUP, go ahead and jump the boat.

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Its a laptop, its a netbook, its a phone… no, Its iPad!

Setu — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:42:24 +0000

Ever since Steve Jobs revealed Apple’s latest marvel to the world, I have been in love with the device. And to be honest, I haven’t been discreet about it.

Except for a very few, most of my friends have been directly or indirectly trying to convince me that I do not need it. People have a strange way of trying to convince others – asking rhetorical questions. Like:

- Why do you need it? You already have an iPhone.
- What is it about it that you liked?
- Why do you need another gadget? It won’t even fit in your pocket.

Steve Jobs once said – “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them”. He also started the keynote by clearly saying that we currently have smartphones & laptops as two primary mobile devices in the world. Is there room for a 3rd kind of device? He then stated that netbooks and ebook readers have tried to go into that area but have not succeeded substantially. This led Apple to think that if they were to create such a device, it should be great at doing certain things, otherwise, it doesn’t need to exist. Hence the iPad.

People have to understand that the iPad is not a substitute for any of the devices that they currently use. Its a new kind of device altogether which fits perfectly in Apple’s huge iTunes ecosystem. And it should not be compared with any of the devices with respect to its existence. Imagine you have been using Yahoo! mail all this time and Google suddenly comes up with Gmail offering 1000 times storage and a revolutionary interface. Wouldn’t you want to use that? Or would you still stick to your old webmail and keep asking rhetorical questions to anyone who suggests you to use Gmail? I already have a Yahoo mail account which I love; Why should I shift to Gmail? If you are the latter, the iPad is probably not for you.

The idea is to get the metaphor in the above example. The iPad is a revolutionary new device which does email, photos, web, ebooks in a much better way we probably haven’t imagined yet. Why do you need it? You need it for the same reason you need a HDTV and a home theater setup to watch movies. You can always watch movies on your desktop or laptop. The reason why you would want an iPad is same as why you would want to watch movies on your home theater setup – Its just better. Now you can still argue that you can do all the said things that the iPad does pretty well on your laptop and convince yourself that you do not need one. Be our guest.

I haven’t used the iPad. So can I really claim that the experience is going to be so much better and revolutionary on the iPad? Yes. Because I have used the iPhone. Every feature that Jobs demonstrated in the historical January 2007 keynote was just awesome on the iPhone when I bought it later that year. Usually companies exaggerate things during the demo to woo customers. But Apple actually develops the tech and then shows it on the actual device. And Apple did not create the iPhone keeping in mind what the then smartphone users wanted. They created the iPhone with their vision of a smart phone. Similar is the case with the iPad. And as many people still do not align to their vision for the iPhone, we cannot expect iPad to get a 100% acceptance vote.

That being said, according to some, the iPad still lacks a lot of things. However, their definition of lacking is based on their alleged expectations out of the device. Since the iPad had, what can only be called the hype of the century, everyone had their vision of what the device would be like, its specs and what it will be able to do. I am sorry but the world does not work that way. If you bought a dishwasher and complain that it doesn’t do your laundry, you probably need to see a psychiatrist.

As stated earlier, Apple did not create the iPad to replace any existing device. They built it from scratch with their vision of how a tablet device should look and feel and how people should surf the web, view photos, or read ebooks. This vision is in line with their vision of the smart phone, which led to the creation of the iPhone. And so far, they seem to be doing good.

And after watching this video, I am pretty much sold to the idea of using iPad as my primary web, photos, email and ebooks reader. Are you?

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The Apple Tablet iPad is here

Swaroop — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:27:50 +0000

Time to shave and cleanse myself, I said to myself . The Apple Tablet is finally here – which is also the most awaited product from Apple in the recent times.

The excitement level for this product was mixed. Some of us liked it, and some didn’t. Sure it has its own set of flaws. But here you go – It features….

The Hardware

Has a 10’ inch High resolution LED screen with a 1024×768 resolution.
1 GHz Apple A4 series processor – designed by Apple to give the best performance for multi touch features and the awesome games.
Multi-touch – Not like those stupid Windows tablets we’ve been seeing, the real deal – with as good sensitivity as the iPhone.
A great battery life with 10 hours of use and 1 Month of standby.
Built in speakers and the “30 pin” Apple exclusive pin for connecting 3rd party docs/camera kits

The Software

Runs 140,000 Applications the iPhone Applications from the App store in Full screen, Of course there is an iPad SDK for developing specifically for the iPad.
Comes with iBookStore where one can go download e-books. Suck on this the e-book readers.
Does iWork – the office suite – specially created for the iPad’s with multi gesture easy use. It heavy on your pocket with 9.99$ each app (it sucks here, we agree, but hey there’s Google Docs).
Has got the usual Youtube, Safari, Maps, iPod applications for your entertainment.

Comes in 2 models – The normal one is with Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n) and the extended model comes with 3G.

The pricing model is competitive and looks like

Model	16 GB	32 GB	64 GB
Wi-Fi	$499	$599	$699
Wi-Fi + 3G	$629	$729	$829

The pricing is very low – At least goes head on with other net books/e-book readers and video game consoles out there.

Now go the rants

Isn’t available for another 60 days – Damn you – It’s another long wait. It’s okay if you release iPhone next generation on the same day.
Uses some stupid “MicroSIM” – which here at India – we don’t have. Yes i know, we don’t have 3G either.
Doesn’t do flash. Yes those who use the iPhone will not complain.
Why didn’t they put in a camera when the software thinks its has one.
It can’t still multi-task – Shouldn’t I browse and email on this good hardware at the same time ? Grow up A”ppl”e. I did it on my 733MHz PIII machine a decade back.

A few more pictures here

Stay glued, we will keep you updated on user reviews (Once its released) and will tell you if you should buy it. Let us know if you liked it.

[Via TechCrunch and Apple]

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Fabulous Offers on Apple Macs and iPods for HSBC Credit Card Customers

Setu — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 05:37:26 +0000

Croma is offering freebies with Macs and iPods if you purchase them using your HSBC Credit Card. Mac buyers get an Epson all in one printer and iPod buyers get an iPod docking speaker!

The offer is valid till 28 February 2010.

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Reliance Digital vs. Croma

A free iPhone app everyday

Chirag — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:34:51 +0000

Just like at Christmas, some good people are giving away 1 iPhone app free everyday. Today’s app (Reign of Swords) is apparently the winner of Spike TV’s Video Game Awards “Best Hardcore Mobile Game” of 2008.

It does take some time visiting the website everyday but heck, I can do that for a free, potentially good game

Free App A Day

[via - Gizmodo]

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Dominos Launches Online Ordering in India

Setu — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:40:38 +0000

[UPDATE]: This service is currently only available in Bangalore and the 30 minutes guarantee is not applicable on Online orders. #fail.

Better late than never. Dominos Pizza has started taking orders online in India now. Now you can order Pizza from your computer without the need to look for a menu card. And they have a cool website for this too (Although, its been > 15 minutes and I still have not received my “happiness code” on my mobile):

Sweet!

Head on to http://www.dominos.co.in/orderonline to order online!

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The $1000 iPhone app

Chirag — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:29:57 +0000

We finally have a proper iPhone app that costs more than a frickin MacBook! Yes, we remember the “I am Rich” app but let’s face it, it was only meant for show-off and lasted only a few days before Apple pulled it out.

BarMax was designed by Harvard lawyers to help law students pass the Bar exam. It consists of a full 2 month course including audio lectures, practice tests and more. As of now, it’s meant only for the California Bar exam but BarBri plans to launch the app for other popular states by the end of this year. In case you want to try before spending that hard earned money (duh!) there is a free trial version of the app.

And just FYI, the second most expensive app isn’t too far off. It’s a video surveillance app called iRa Pro and will cost you $899.99!

[via - Gizmodo]