I have always been a Nokia fan. Even if their Symbian OS phones hang more number of times than the rupees in their price, the features and the brand value offered by Nokia is quite unmatchable (Ok maybe the Apple iPhone can beat this by 2008 when it is released in India). Until then Nokia is certainly the unchallenged winner I did say! (SE fans shoo away from here. This is a die-hard Nokia fan’s blog).

Right from the speculation of its launch, I have been an admirer of the Nokia N73, always wanted to own one. Maybe more because of its sleek looks. And finally bought it! This one is its upgraded version, the Nokia N73 Music Edition. Not much difference between the two, except a better firmware, black in colour and a 2GB mini SD memory card. I always wanted a good cam phone. Nokia N73 has a much needed massive 3.2 mp camera. Afterall you don’t take out your digicam everyday and everywhere you go. Sony Ericsson K790i was another camphone with a 3.2 mp camera. Yes, the cybershot one with Xenon flash, bound to give you a little better pictures than the N73. But for me the choice was simple. You wouldn’t think twice over a beautiful girl you have loved all your life but with a little bit of attitude and the perfect girl that your parents suggest you. Would you? So Nokia N73 was the obvious choice, with its aesthetics beating all other phones in its price range hands down.

But yes, as all Nokia symbian phones do, this one also hangs. Infact on the very second day it did :( . So when you are saving your life’s best moment shot with its amazing Carl Zeiss 3.2 mp camera, you might just realise that the cell has got stuck up in some crappy loop :p. But nevermind, you can still flaunt your Nokia N73 smartphone… view and edit documents on the fly, install impressive softwares… a little of its attitude problems are kinda easy to overlook. Even the video you shoot with its cam is supposed to be better than many other available cellphones.

The one feature that I thought was required and obviously missing was Wi-Fi. Nokia N80 has it but the slider phone was a little too bulky for my liking. And I had been so damn in love with the looks of Nokia N73, that I could let anything and everything go! But on the whole I am more than satisfied with this cellphone. The music player is awesome. Its wide screen gives you a complete pleasure of watching any video you did want to store in its 2GB memory card, while its high contrast impressive screen colours and themes will get all your pals ogling over it.

So if you are a Nokia fan… look no further than the Nokia N73 Music Edition! After 1-2 months of use I will surely come up with an indetailed review of the phone. Maybe for now, love has got me blindfolded. So I can’t see any flaws beyond its impressive features. Here is a complete specification list from the Nokia site: Nokia N73 ME specifications.

I bought it for INR 22000 (VAT incl.) here in Goa. It’s not been long for its release and the prices should drop by the next quarter of the year or sooner. But its still worth the price right now!

Oh yes… another problem I have right now, is adjusting to its small keypad. I don’t know if it’s the effect of my last phone… N3315 ;) or if the keys are really too small to quickly adjust to. Am already hitting a lot of wrong keys all the while.

But its sexy sexy… way too sexy! :)

Well, I would be dead tomorrow if I had to disclose the real name of the girl in this conversation over my blog. So lets call her simply “Girl”. Please do not make any generalised statements over the example cited below. I am just sharing my experience. I do not want a Women’s commission to sit in front of my house with a dharna or any of those Geeky Tech Girls (anytime smarter than me) hack into my blog!

Just to be safe let me put this disclaimer: :P
The events and characters mentioned in this blog post are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Ok here we go… A friend of mine called me up and…

Girl: My PC is not working. Someone told me that its because of the RAM, as my PC is making a “Peeng…Peeng…” sound.

Me: Hmm. Yea looks like a RAM problem. There must be some dust or moisture on the RAM.

Girl: Can you come over to my place and get it right? This Tuesday?

Me: Yup sure. Just keep a screw driver handy.

After a couple of hours there are a few missed calls on my cell. So I call her back.

Girl: Hey I have opened the cabinet of my PC.

(Wow! Who the hell said that only guys were adventurous?)

Me: Hey cool! So u wanna fix your RAM right?

Girl: Yup. Ok tell me, which side of the cabinet is the RAM… Left or Right?

Me: UH! No not that way. See our PC motherboards are the same. Can you see 2 off-white coloured slots there?

Girl: Yes there are two I guess.

Me: Good. Those are the slots. Ok so can you see a RAM chip there… right?

Girl: Hmm…well I don’t think so.

Me: Yaar there must be in one of them. Both are empty?

Girl: Yes… I guess so.

Me: (Wdf! Where did the RAM go!) Ok tell me wats there then.

Girl: Ok there is this CD ROM ka thing… Floppy Drive…and…

Me: Wait…wait…a minute… You looking at your motherboard right?

Girl: Motherboard….. oh no… I was talking abt these CD ROM and stuff. There is this wire that goes from the CD ROM to….

Me: Nah! You seem to have got it the wrong way. The RAM is on the motherboard.

Girl: Oh! Ok… let me get to the motherboard haan… wait a sec.

Me: Okie… I am holding on…

Girl: Ya. So tell me…

Me: Ok so can you see 2 white or off-white coloured PCI slots at the center of the motherboard?

Girl: Yes. There is this PCI written.

Me: Ok there must be another slot with AGP written aside. Now get to the slots where nothing is written. Must be off-white in colour.

Girl: Hmm… no re… but I guess there are blue ones…

Me: Blue? (Hoping that she has still got the right one) Hmm ok maybe… it’s that way in urs. Or is it…?

Girl: Ya ya… I found the RAM.

Me: Oh great!

Girl: There is this one slot empty and one has a chip in it. Ok tell me how big is a RAM?

Me: It’s like say roughly 15cms long and say about max 2 inches in height…it’s fixed vertically upright in the slot.

Girl: Hmm… Yes then this is the one.

Me: Ok… so now you got to remove it. Just get your hands static free.

Girl: Hey tell me, it has like small capacitors. You sure this is the one right?

Me: (Pause) Ok… this time you have got hold of the Modem probably. Look in the center yaar… this one must be to the side of the board.

Girl: Yea… it’s like to the edge.

Me: Ok… so can you figure out the RAM now? 2 white slots…with a RAM chip in one of them. Green colour… plain… no capacitor nothing.

Girl: Hmm….hmm….yea looks like this should be it.

Me: It better be! :P

Girl: So what do I do now?

Me: Ok touch some metal part around you. Your palm… fingers… get them static free…

Girl: I can’t find any metal part in here.

Me: Not in there yaar… Ok… the side of the cabinet? The one that’s not painted, touch that.

Girl: Ok… Doing that… done…

Me: Hmm… Now can you see 2 clips that are holding the RAM? Put them away such that the RAM automatically pops up on top.

Girl: Hmm… ok..yea.. Removed them. But the RAM has not come out.

Me: OK… remove it.

Girl: Done…

Me: Now you can wipe it off with your hands only… Can you see a golden lining at the bottom? Just remove any dust on it. Just wipe it with your fingers.

Girl: Done.

Me: Now just remove any dust from the other slot. You got to put this RAM in here. Just in case the other one was damaged.

Girl: Ok Done. Now what?

Me: Ok your RAM will have a notch somewhere in between which divides it into two unequal parts. So will your slot have. Get it aligned the right way to enter in.

Girl: Hmm got it the right way.

Me: Now place the RAM over the slot and apply slight pressure on both the sides using your thumbs so that the RAM goes in and the clips snap back to hold the RAM. Remember both sides should go in simultaneously.

Girl: Ok it’s not going…

Me: Apply a little more pressure.

Girl: No its not. Do I require to press it like real hard?

Me: Nooh… that might break it. Ok just check if you have got the smaller side of the RAM into the smaller division of the holder…the slot…I mean

Girl: Wait… yea it looks like OK.

Me: Then try again… it has to go in…

Girl: Yea… pressing… no its not.

Me: Uh! Its easy… it just requires a little more pressure than what you are applying… And the clips should automatically snap back.

Girl: Ok one side has gone in.

Me: Just one side? Both should go in simultaneously

Girl: Ok the other also now.

Me: Hmm… Is the RAM moving now?

Girl: No… Ok put the clips also.

Me: Ok… looks like you are done. Just assemble things back… and get your PC powered.

Girl: Ok will check back and let you know.

After about 30mins I get a call.

Girl: Yea PC is working! Was a tough job… You should really appreciate me…

Me: Yea you did a great job!

Girl: Yipee!

Did I hear a “THANKS A MILLION” ok shorter… “THANKS” common say @least the “T” of Thanks :(

Well this was still way too easier. Had another friend of mine, she made atleast 10 calls to me to get her Windows XP installed over the phone. Freaky! I thought it was the easiest job on earth!

Both the above girls will be joining IT companies in a quarter. :P (Girls Please read above mentioned disclaimer also).

Hehe… ok… am not taking a shot at any girl with this post… It’s just that PC noobies really flush your brain out for simple tasks… I hope that they really get better in the second time!

They call it the Gmail Paper. According to Google:

You can request a physical copy of any email for FREE in your Gmail inbox with the click of a button

Google will print all messages instantly and prepare them for delivery. Allow 2-4 business days for a parcel to arrive via post.

Photo attachments are printed on high-quality, glossy photo paper, and secured to your Gmail Paper with a paper clip. MP3 and WAV files will not be printed. We recommend maintaining copies of your non-paper Gmail in these cases.

You can make us print one, one thousand, or one hundred thousand of your emails. It’s whatever seems reasonable to you.

Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment.

After being exposed to bizarre April Fool Pranks all day, like one local daily claiming that Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai had married secretly overnight and published a photoshop edited pic of the marriage, I guess I quite very much knew on how to react to this prank by Google… I just burst out laughing. It was soon that many of my friends thought it was all true and instantly posted it on their blogs appreciating this effort by Google.

Had they known about Google’s new FREE 8Mbps Broadband Service TiSP that will require your Toilet to access, they did really know what a fool Google was trying to make out of them.

Hey have a look at the system specs for acquiring TiSP access:

Windows XP/Vista (Mac and Linux support coming soon)
Internet Explorer 6.0+ or Firefox 1.5+ with the Google Toolbar
Round-front or elongated toilet providing at least 1.0 gallons per flush
Use of automatic toilet bowl cleaners is not recommended

Haha… And you couldnt let yourself leave without having a look at these amazing installation pics that Google has on their site.

Man! Google knows how the get out the better part of you! I was completely ROFL!!! All in all, I guess the Gmail paper was a good attempt. Considering it looked close to real until you would quest yourself with why would Google want to go bankrupt printing photos of my neighbour’s 5yr old nephew’s kitty.But Google has this repute of putting suprises into stuff that look like April Fool gimmicks. A marketting stratergy as I see. I remember when Google launched Gmail, a 1GB email service then in 2004 on the first of April. It was all for real. Also in 2005 it gave away 2GB email space again on the first of April. All these sound intelligible. But certianly not Gmail paper or TiSP. :P

Earlier Google had come up with some really hilarious April Fool pranks like Google MentalPlex, Pigeon Rank, Google Gulp, Google Romance. To know more about them here is where you should go: Google Hoaxes.

Anyways thanks Google for the good time that I had with this joke and making me feel superior than many other fools who fell prey to your prank!

Google has constantly strived to maintain and augment the quality and value of Orkut, often integrating it with some other services in its pack.

Google has already integrated Google Talk into Orkut. Often when you login, a list of friends online on GTalk appears in the sidebar. It wont take time for Google Talk to be the most popular chat client with this addon. The only glitch in it is, you cannot integrate your Google Talk id into it until you have configured it with orkut.com. You have to register a new one. :(

Also while visiting profiles, showing mutual friends list was a welcome change. Replying back instantly to any scrap without visiting the scrapbook of the person who scrapped you saves so much time. Earlier while scrapping back one would tend to follow scraps to newer profiles. Ok now saves a lot of time! :lol:

While the above features have been around for quite some time now, Google is integrating new and interesting features into Orkut.

NEW FEATURES:

Google Video/Youtube: You can now add your favourite videos from Youtube or Google Video (both services owned by Google) into your orkut profile. As India is becoming broadband ready, this add-on will certainly pick up fast amongst the Indian Orkut users.

Local Timezone integrated into Scrapbook: Thank goodness! I have been craving for this since long now. It was such a pain to calculate the time when someone scrapped you. And you often got confused with the birthday reminders still running of the ones past. Now you do know the exact time and date someone scrapped you and also of how many hours ago or days ago the scrap was logged if you are too busy to remember the present date or time :lol:

Google Maps: Check their help section and you will know that they have plans for integrating Google Maps also. If you are logged into Orkut, you can view its working here: http://www.orkut.com/Map.aspx. Right now it lists my friends in US and UK only. I am waiting for the rest countries to be added in. Have a look at it and you will realise the power and spread of google!

Suggest Changes: Orkut users get a chance to vote too. Click here to vote for some suggested changes on Orkut. Listing them below:

Friends

• Display friends in alphabetical order
• Allow more than 1000 friends

Scraps

• Allow only friends to view my scrapbook and send scraps
• Set scrapbook to local time zones

Communities

• Display my communities in alphabetical order
• Add ability to search for users in a community

Photos

• Restrict the copy and paste function for photos
• Allow only friends to view my album
• Allow posting more than 12 pictures in album

Profile Settings

• Add a language to the list of languages
• Add a religion to the list of religions
• Allow me to change colors and layout of my profile
• Add option to hide email address

My Profile

• Add blog features
• Add option to hide or show online status
• Increase number of recent visitors shown
• Keep profile out of search results

Restricting copying of photos, hiding online status, etc are the ones I voted for. If you have an idea yourself, use the same page to let Orkut hear you.

What more can you expect?
Google has a big list of free services. The most probable one being integrated into Orkut, can be its premiere blogging service – Blogger. While I am a wordpress fan, if they plan to integrate RSS feeds from blogs, I hope they do not exclude other blogging platforms. Also maybe they will include Google Calender some day. But all these inclusions will certainly have a cluttered orkut interface someday! :(

Now does that mean I have been paid to write nice and sweet lines about Aapka Video??? Certainly Not! This is completely an unbiased review and only reflects my evaluation of this free online video sharing service. Keep reading to know of how I rate this service.

Aapkavideo.com is in its beta stage right now and been the talk of the Indian cyber space for about 2 months now. Log on to their website and the first thing that will please your eyes is the clean and simple interface. Simplicity does not pause here. Right from creating an account to uploading videos you don’t have too many things to bother about. However when I tried to view the videos in Firefox, they just refused to play. So I had to use IE. Guess, this should be fixed once the site is out of its beta period.

So isn’t this just a desi version of Youtube? Hmm… YouTube has been insanely successful, and I don’t see a reason why something as remarkable as Aapka Video should not. Infact this is one of the best Indian Video Sharing Services I have seen around. A prominent feature on the site is their “Specials” – a series of videos related to a hot topic in news, sports or bollywood, is certainly a unique idea. Infact, the very next moment when Sachin Tendulkar scored an unbeaten 100 against West Indies, his 41st century in ODIs, Aapka Video was quickly up with a special on his most prized hundreds.

However their USP is a quality collection of the latest desi videos. All videos that matter to India and Indians. Be it bollywood videos, hot stories that have hit the news, cricket, videos from the Indian television screen, and every content that is true to being Indian. In fact I could not resist myself clicking on every next video that popped up in their similar videos section.Users can not only share multiple videos with their near and dear ones but also upload their own videos in all types of video formats like .wmv, .mpeg, .mpg, .avi, .mpe, .mov, .movie, .mpe, .mpeg, .mpg, .qt, .mpv2, .mp2v, .mpe, .asf, .asx, .avi ,.wm, .wmx , .3gp , .mp4, .rm etc with filesize of upto 100MB. That’s what their tagline says “Director Ban Jao”.

One thing that impressed me was that the video streaming was really neat and fast. You can also view the videos in a larger size at the click of a button. While tags, category listings and search can be used to discover new interesting videos.

SUGGESTIONS:

• Videos on Aapkavideo.com can be marked as offensive if the content is inappropriate. Presently, this feature can be accessed even if you are not logged in. Just a suggestion to them, that this feature be available to only registered users.
• Also they should incorporate some rating system for the videos.

With broadband penetration in India pacing up, this service seems to be just bang on to be launched and grow bigtime. I have already got addicted to viewing videos on AapkaVideo.com. And now its your turn…

Rating: 4/5

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First prize is $2000.

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Ok so let me not take you for a ride and lets come to the point. So whats there in for us? I called up BSNL and this is the kinda info that their customer service gave me:

• BSNL will offer on all Home and Business Plans data rates up to 2 Mbps, subject to technical feasibility.
• The customer wont have to pay any extra charge to BSNL towards the plans or the already existing hardware setup that is capable of providing such speeds.
• The following offered by BSNL are the new upgraded plans with higher bandwidths also:
  Home 250 – 1GB limit, 90 paisa per MB over the limit.
  Home 500 – 2.5GB limit, 80 paisa per MB over the limit.
  Home 1000 – 5GB limit, 80 paisa per MB over the limit.
  Home 1800 – 10GB limit, 70 paisa per MB over the limit.
  Home 3300 – 20GB limit, 70 paisa per MB over the limit.
  There is no mention of the Home 900 UL plan.
  Business 700 – 4GB limit, 80 paisa per MB over the limit.
  Business 1200 – 8GB limit, 80 paisa per MB over the limit.
  Business 3000 – 20GB limit, 50 paisa per MB over the limit.
  Business 5000 – 35GB limit, 50 paisa per MB over the limit.
  Business 9000 – 75GB limit, 50 paisa per MB over the limit.
• This change is with effect from Jan 1, 2007.
  

Hmm… you must be wondering that BSNL Customer Service guys are good opposed to their poor image. That guy surely had a lot of patience to gimme all this info on phone without getting bugged with my foray of questions at 12:45 AM. Yea I appreciate that. But hello… they are still the very same “We have not been notified yet” guys if you ask them anything even a little out of the way. I still have a number of questions gone unanswered.

The present upload speed limit is 64kbps. Will it be the same or increased? Why there hasnt been any change in the unlimited plan? (Hehe… I know even I could answer that… With unlimited bandwidth @ 2Mbps coming @ just 900Rs a month… people will suck them out dry…!) This is not just it! There a a couple of hiccups more. BSNL says that the 2Mbps speed available is subject to technical feasibility. Hmm.. I asked them what they meant by that. Thank God this BSNL Customer Service guy could tell me something about it. Says: It will totally depend on the telephone exchange of your area. Smaller exchanges which are not capable of handling this speed boost to 2Mbps, wont be able to offer this support. You need to call up the BSNL internet section to know more about your exchange’s speed limits. Speeds could vary from 256kbps to 2Mbps… :( Not fair! I reside in Porvorim. Which is just 4km from Panjim where 2Mbps will be possible. Porvorim it still may not be :(. Also there has not been any change in the free night surfing feature. I think they should have relaxed the timings… 2:00 AM to 8:00 AM sux bigtime for normal working people. Though not nocturnals like me :lol:

But in the bigger picture, this is certainly a welcome change and I see India soon reaching their Vision 2010 with this. Provided they upgrade their infrastructure for such changes. Its certainly not upbeat. BSNL even keeps new connection applications pending because their exchanges run out of ports. Uh! I wonder if all this will turn out to be a gimmick with the infrastructure not capable of hosting such big promises. I just hope not!

When I tasted 512kbps on their promotional game plan, it was awesome. 2Mbps should be God like Speed! And it comes for just Rs 250 a month! Anyways, as BSNL’s 900 UL plan subscriber, I have a reason to grumble.. but I know I will anytime prefer even a 128kbps unlimited connection to any plan that has data transfer limits :lol:. I just hate them….

More resources to read about BSNL’s future plans and on the 2Mbps upgrade:

THE HINDU
THE ECONOMIC TIMES

I was expecting some important business mail and another urgent email. Its really frustrating to see the ‘Service temporarily unavailable :(‘ page right there on logon…

Only God and Rediff knows wats the problem. I dont think it is a service update or upgrade thats causing the delay to restore things back to normal. Its a common practice to pilot test such updates and the service should have been back online in an hour or so. May be its some network or hardware failure/upgrade thats taking this much time.

I think such email services should have their official blogs to keep their subscribers updated of the latest with them. Whatever.. I am still sulking… I wish I had given my regular business email for the urgent commuinication. :(

Who wouldn’t want your domain email to have all the features of and power packed into Gmail. So I signed up there and within a matter of an hour I was running my email on Google servers. 2GB of space and a hulluva features over SquirrelMail(the default mail webmail client on my server), its brought a smile.

The configuration doesn’t take much time at all. Just a MX entry change from your Domain/Hosting CP, and if you would like to have a custom page from your domain then a little CNAME settings that you will have to ask your host to do it for you. Or you can just redirect any subdomain. Once done you can use Google’s Gmail to send and receive your emails and also chat on Google Talk with that id.

Currently this service is free. This is what I just read on Google’s Official Blog:

If you’re from a larger business or university with more advanced needs for communications and sharing, please get in touch regarding premium versions of the service, due out later this year.

Also here is what their site says:

Organizations accepted by Google during the Google Apps for Your Domain beta period are eligible for free service for their approved beta users even beyond the end of the beta period, as described in the Terms of Service.

Hmm… that means there is always going to be an ad supported free version on the roll. May be they will offer their advanced services like Writely (their word processor) and Google Spreadsheets into more plans to be rolled out in future.

You can offer this service free to as many people, as you would like to use your domain email. While Google’s competitor Yahoo, offers a service for a single email at some 34.95 USD/Year and 10 email IDs for 9.95 USD/Month. Though all this is interesting, I don’t see big organizations resorting to a Google or a Yahoo to manage their email. Inhouse mail servers not only give companies a server-level defense against spam and virus attacks, but also provide the ability to back up e-mail at will.

But for all my needs for this blog’s email, this free service is way too impressive. And the word does count FREE :).

The Press Release:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., October 9, 2006 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community.

The acquisition combines one of the largest and fastest growing online video entertainment communities with Google’s expertise in organizing information and creating new models for advertising on the Internet. The combined companies will focus on providing a better, more comprehensive experience for users interested in uploading, watching and sharing videos, and will offer new opportunities for professional content owners to distribute their work to reach a vast new audience.

MORE >>

Here is the Webcast.
Recently Microsoft released a Beta version of Soapbox to compete YouTube. Now it will surely be a tougher task to beat the net giant!

POST SPONSORED BY: YouTube.com videos