Connected People - My History of Mobile Phones

Gadgets have always attracted most of us, and mobile phone is one such invention which has been advanced so much, that imagining life without it, is impossible now. Most "Saints" those who claim to have given up all materialistic stuff, keep mobile phones these days, so as to keep track of their "followers" and likes!!

My journey with mobile phones started back in 2002. After winning "Math Modeling" competition in my 2nd year of B.Tech., along with my friend +gaurav agrawal, I got some 1.5k as prize money, and planned to buy a mobile (of course I had to pool in more money!). The cheapest mobile I could find in the market that time was a Motorola, which looked bigger and heavier than the Walki-Talkie! I bought a second hand AirTel sim from a senior of mine, which brought my phone to life instantly.

Motorola - My first phone (not actual model)

It had a battery as heavy as today's portable external HDD! 2-line mono-color display, mono-phonic rings, vibra (but only with ringing), silent mode option etc. I had to charge it twice a day just to keep it on stand-by. I don't remember how the battery performed for in-call use, as I hardly made any calls with it given the steep call rates (Rs. 8/min incoming and outgoing!). Not sure if they had SMS service that time. It was definitely equivalent of Ford's Model-T of phones, and as Henry Ford had said, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black", the phone also came in only one model, one color!



I don't even know the model number of the phone, leave alone other specs. Only thing I remember is selling it off in 10 days for an Upgrade! Bought it for around 1.8k, sold it for 1.3k!

Mitsubishi Trium, Very Advanced for it's time 

My next upgrade was a relatively unknown phone: Trium from Mitshubishi, bought from Grey market of Chennai! It came only in one color option - Navy Blue; better than the earlier Black one. I bought it with another friend of mine, Aneesh DasGupta (aka Matka). Both of us were very happy with the purchase, as we could negotiate for bulk buying - around 2.3k each! Well, it was green back-lit, 3 line display, with an active wall paper (a black butterfly moving its wings!). Best feature was it's 4-way center key, which came in Nokia phones (market leader at that time) much later. The center key gave customizable shortcuts! The front flap on key-pad was dummy, and did not do anything; it was just for the show. The antenna could be pulled out for another 6". In fully open condition (flap open and antenna pulled out), the phone was easily 1-foot long!!! One of my friend, +Annapragada Ravi  made a comment after seeing me using it once, "abbe, radio par commentary sun rahaa hai kya??"

The phone soon broke (sweat entry in ear piece while talking too long!) and I had to get it repaired for a hefty amount. After almost an year, the software went real bad, and as I switched it ON, the display would go blank; phone would work though! I figured I could reset the display from setting menu by increasing the brightness, but reaching the setting menu was difficult without a working display! Well, the phones at that time did not have an HDMI Output. So I took Aneesh's phone and tried to reach the setting menu while learning press of each key. Mugging, being one of the key attributes of that age, I learnt the key sequence by-heart, and surely worked for my phone! That was probably the most advanced "screen-lock" system ever designed: random sequence of key presses to switch ON the screen!!

I used the Trium for another year with this advanced screen-lock, only to upgrade to a better phone in my 4th year!

Moto C200, One of my favourites!

 Panasonic GD55 - Always dreamt of one 

I was back with another Motorola phone, C-200. Very compact, poly-phonic ring tones, and much more. Used it till end of my B.Tech., before I moved to Canada for higher studies. I liked using this phone a lot, as it was easy to carry, and had very simple menu to use. The purchase was inspired by my friend, +Amit Mitna 's Panasonic GD-55, which was the smallest phone available that time! I always wanted to have a GD-55, but could not afford one, so settled for Moto C-200. Don't remember having any issues with it and don't remember where it is now!

During the same time, my friend Aneesh, along with +mahitosh patankar  upgraded to a Sony Ericsson, T-102. Beautiful phone with Blue light and many good features. Looking at this, I decided to get a Sony Ericsson some time in future!

Sony Ericsson T-102, Aneesh's and Mahitosh's next phone

Well, I moved to Montreal, Canada in Sept-2004, and it was time for a new phone. And of course this time, phone with 2 years contract, to make phone almost free! The first purchase was with Bell-Canada, and I opted to low-end AudioVox flip phone for almost $30. From here began my journey of flip-phones, and I always loved them. Along with my roommate, +Rakesh Surendra , I bought this phone, in red color and Rakesh got the blue one (only 2 colors available!). Good thing about flip phone is (other than it being compact), it needs only one Camera! The camera on outer front flap could take self-portraits, and front display in mono-color would show what your are clicking, when the flap is closed. Colored screen for first time, ability to store few songs, camera with flash, internet support..... this was just wow for me! This was my first and last CDMA phone too. Used it for full 2 years contract period, and when it was time to renew the contract I decided to change the carrier. Bell-Canada was not the cheapest to offer the plans as I paid almost $45 per month for 2 years!

I switched to Fido, again with a 3 year contract, however, I did not plan to stay in Canada for that long. With given technology limitations, I could not do number portability from Bell's CDMA to Fido's GSM service. Meanwhile, Bell-Canada gave me amazing offers, to continue with them, and then Fido did the same. I ended up retaining both phones/numbers for less than $45 per month total!! How the negotiations worked out is explained here. This time, I wanted to have a no-compromise phone, and selected a Sony Ericsson Z710i. Available in Dark Grey and Champagne colors only, I chose the grey one!. Sony, famous for it's optics and sound, had put a wonderful (for that time) camera and music player in the phone. The camera was even tilted with respect the flip cover, so as to take take straight photos when flap is open (flap opens < 180deg). Dedicated music buttons on front flap outside, so as to control music on the go! Even the hands-free had music control panel! I had put a 256Mb memory I guess, and had around 50 songs in it! One of the smart feature was it's horizontal antenna, so as to make it comfortable in the pocket. Sony used this design in many more phones.

Sony Ericsson had started marketing it's phones for different USPs, such as 'W' series for walkman, 'K' series for camera etc. The Z series was ultimate of all, and had all best hardware available! This was the time, when Infra-red was assumed as a good technology, and the phone had that too! I brought this phone back to India, while gave away my AudioVox to a friend of mine in Canada itself. Since, this one was on 3-years contract, I had to jail-break it in 2007 sometime.

Sony Ericsson Z710i

After coming back to India, I started with one of the phones, which a friend visiting from India, had forgot with me in Canada: the mighty phone from Nokia's 3000 series, 3315! It was so heavily used, that the number panel had gone blank! This was my first Nokia phone! A demotion from what I had been using, but this was the quickest thing I had ready with me, given my Z710i was locked. The problem was not only that my Z710i was locked and I could not use it, but I had put a daily alarm in Z710i while in Canada, and even if the phone is off, it would come to life automatically at alarm time, would ring and shut down. I could not even switch off the alarm as it would not let me go past the first locked screen. I had to remove the battery and store it, till I got it "unlocked".

The Nokia 3315 was easy to use, and well of course the most sturdy of all! It doesn't need a description here, as most of us have used it or it's siblings some or the other time in life!

Destiny brought me back with Motorola soon! I bought a phone for my father, but he refused to use a mobile phone, and I ended up using it for few months. It was an economical Motorola C115, from the same C family, of which I had used C200, 3 years back. This was starting of 2007. The phone was basic, had very hard keys, and of course had nothing to satisfy my greed. It was just a short stop, before I could find a job in India and treat myself with a bigger phone!

Soon enough, after getting a job in Mahindra, I saw a smart phone with a friend +Jaideep Gurav. It was Sony Ericsson P990i!! One of the biggest and most high-tech phones ever! What was so special about the phone? Well, everything! It was smart-phone, with touch-screen (resistive), with stylus, with number-pad and a full qwerty keyboard, and on screen key-board, with hand-writing recognition, with blue-tooth, infra-red, 3G ready, front camera for Video chat, amazing rear camera (2MP only but great quality!), Blackberry service compatible, dedicated camera key, came with it's docking station to charge, listen to music and connect with computer at same time! Came with replaceable panel if key-pad to be removed and to be used as a palm-top. Included a small tool-kit with it! The price was around 24k when Jaideep bought it, and I got it for only 12.5k from some online deal! Jaideep was definitely not very happy, but I loved the deal and the phone! The 'P' series from Sony referred to the Professional series.

The phone had everything I could imagine. An inbuilt app for business card reader, which would take photo of any business card, and do optical scan, and converts the whole info into contact-card of person, with all fields including company info, addresses, and even Logo! The resistive screen made it so precise to use the stylus, that even using on-screen qwerty virtual keyboard was easy. Hard keys all around it, and so many shortcuts, I rarely had to go inside the menu. Music quality was AWESOME, typical Sony! Another good feature was the physical scroller, which made the phone-use even simpler. Just can't explain how many functions it had! Only difficulty I had was to find a suitable case for it!

The phone was made for fun as well as business! This was probably one of my most favorite gadgets I have owned till date (all gadgets I mean!). It made me addicted to touch screen and qwerty key-boards, and till this day I look forward to having a physical key-board in the phone! I gave it to one of my friend when I upgraded in 2009, and then gave it to my brother to use temporarily. Haven't sold it yet, and would rather retain it just for the love! The phone was predecessor to the P1i series of Sony. It was only limited by that time's technology of processing power and RAM, but till that time, no one was looking for these details. Being smart enough (the phone), I did download many applications for the phone! It did come along with free document viewer & editor (word, excel, ppt, pdf!).

Well, in 2009, the race for smart phones had begun, and I did not want to stay behind. I thought of upgrading again, but something state-of-the-art this time. But had no money. Big bro came to rescue and offered me a phone as gift. I had my eyes on Sony Xperia X1. Full touch-screen, and slide key-board! It would have all Sony qualities anyway, music and optics! When I visited Delhi, we went for phone shopping, but not to find a single dealer keeping Sony. The Xperia was another dream phone, which paved the path for current Xperia series of Sony Androids. But I could never own one.

Well, the closest rival to Xperia was Nokia's grand entry, N97! The most expensive phone of it's time. Big brother happily bought one for me! Costed him 30k! Had all possible hardware in it, accelerometer, GPS, ambient light sensor, etc etc. I had installed tons of applications on it. Nokia's OVI store did not exist that time, and I had to look for symbian applications all over the web! I used this phone for so many things, music, camera, GPS navigation, data logging and what not! This was my first true smart phone. Camera, 5MP, Carl Zeiss optics, with LED flash; I would go back to Nokia phone some day just for the camera! There was nothing better than it's camera for next 2-3 years! The stylus was big, and had to be stored in the pouch separately. I had bought many accessories for the phone from time to time. It had stereo speakers, and listening to songs from phone directly was fun! The tilted screen while opened, gave it a unique look. The key pad was soft, and four-way mouse pad was very useful. The phone was mighty in many terms.

Nokia E-75 Competition for 

I had another option, while buying it, Nokia E-75, a business series phone. Had almost everything which N97 did, but the touch-screen, and costed 10k less! But, 'dil hai ki maan-ta nahin' and I settled for N97 only!  Now I think E-75 could have been a good option, given the problems I had to face with N97. Well to start with, since there was no dedicated slot for stylus, I lost it soon, and ended up buying many after-market substitutes. Then the screen became non-responsive so many times, and phone used to hang very often, thanks to it's very low RAM and high 32GB internal memory! Then the side lock button got lost, and I had to install an application which would use the ambient sensor to lock and unlock the phone! Nokia also realized the problems very soon, and launched the N97 mini, with smaller screen and 8GB internal storage. My friend +Sagar Shah bought it, as he was much impressed by my N97. His mini worked better than my N97 in many ways.

N97 though had one of the best cameras ever, but had a very peculiar problem: the sliding camera cover. Over time, the cover would accumulate dust and would cause scratches over camera lens. The day time photos were still great, but night photos with flash got screwed. Many people had this problem, and that is why probably Nokia eliminated the cover in N97-mini. Duel LED flash was superb though! I sold mine just last year for 7k!

N97 Camera with scratches

The phone was followed by many smart phones later from Nokia, and next in line was N-900, with open source software! People good with coding bought this phone specially to design their own GUI! Nokia had also launched a very similar model, which I did not know till very late, N79. It was candy model, and had same hardware of N97, except the touch-screen and qwerty keyboard. Nokia wanted to make it so similar, that it carried over the slide lock button (which eventually goes bad), and slide camera cover (which again goes bad). It was the closest to N97 after N97-mini, in terms of hardware and functionalities. 

Nokia N79 - with changeable back panels

N79 Camera carried over from N97, 5MP Carl Zeiss with Slide cover

I got to use N79, after my N97 stopped working, as my wife had one. I gifted her a new phone and got N79 for myself to use briefly. Again, the software had issues and phone started behaving crazy! Nokia has to learn one thing, as long as they were making non-smart phones, they were market leaders, and known for the quality and reliability. But the smart phone series (specially the N series) had so many glitches, that you feel like throwing away the phone at times. If nothing, Nokia can learn from Apple that giving all the hardware is not must, but making the hardware work is most important. This was my 3rd Nokia phone, and probably another Nokia is not coming in near future, since I have shifted to Android totally!

To get N79 from my wife, I had gifted her a Micromax Bling. One of it's kind, and girls' favorite at a time! Perhaps the cutest thing ever happened to phone was Bling! Looking at it just getting opened by side flip was fun!

Well, I never had to use it myself, thank God, but had my share of going through the settings and performance. The phone was so girlish, that not only it had fake diamonds studded all over, and had a mirror at the back, and wasmade like a make-up kit, and had a pink theme, but it also had women-specific apps! It did sell like anything! Sure, Micromax's marketing team did a good job in putting together the requirement, only if the engineering team had put the same effort in making a decent quality phone. My wife did not even use for an year and started demanding another one, due to it's poor voice performance and call drop issues. Well, for 5.5k it was not a bad deal to use for an year, and recently sold it for Rs. 500 with the broken glass! Meanwhile, I used it as MP3 player, connected to my music system! Micromax launched another phone later on same platform for men, called 'Eclipse', which came in carbon black color, and did away with all the jewelry.

I had to buy another phone for my wife, and this time with her choice, we got HTC Wildfire for 13k. The competition was with LG Optimus One - entry level android from LG that time. The phone was good, touch was great, little slow, but ok for her. Nothing amazing about the phone, and nothing to complain about. Only that she dropped it so many times that I had to replace the touch-panel 2 times in 2 years. Sold that too recently for 3k with partial working screen! Camera was the most let-down feature of the phone, given the era and specs (5MP). My Sony P990i's 2MP was much better at job! HTC upgraded the model to Wildfire-S, with improved RAM, which was very much required, and eliminated the optical button at the bottom, which mostly went unnoticed!

HTC Wildfire: Nothing great, nothing bad

My wife has finally moved to Karbbon Titanium S5 very recently, which comes highly recommended btw. I haven't used it much, other than installing apps for her. But the phone is great for the price (bought it for 9.7k)!

Well, after trying all hanging phones, including N97, N79, HTC Wildfire, I finally wanted a phone with REAL GOOD config. Waited for almost 6 months, and finally got myself a Samsung Note-2 last year. The DAY it was launched!! Paid 40k, and 3 days later, Samsung reduced the price to 37k!!! Really bad move on Samsung's part. Now at least I am not buying a Samsung phone in it's first month of launch, in future. Now the phone is available for 28k in market. Well, Note-2 does not need introduction again, but it is again one of it's kind, with Capacitive screen BUT with a stylus or S-Pen as they call it! My experience of P990i and N97 comes back with Note-2! S-Pen was probably the biggest reason I bought the phone for. With technology shifting from Resistive to Capacitive for better touch-feel, they had to do away with stylus. But Samsung's magnetic screen brings back the fun! High processing power and 2GB RAM with many more high-tech things, Note-2 is still one of the fast phones in the market, given how rapidly technology changes these days! I am fairly happy with it, and have to live with it's limitations. 

Hopefully, Samsung has improved the Note-3 for all problems in Note-2. The overheating of Note-2 while using internet is one of the most common issues. Keep it in your trouser pocket, and you start to feel the 'heat'. The S-pen design is not as good as original Note (1), as the new S-pen has spring action nib, which does not give a firm feel while writing. The back panel for such a huge phone is made to slip out of hand intentionally, so that you drop it more often and shift to Note-3 in 1 year!. Note-1 had matt finish and came with free flip cover. Flip cover for Note-2 has to be bought for 1.7k extra!! That is like almost as much as the first phone I bought! While making S-notes, the palm touches the 'back' button by mistake and your are out of the application for no reason. Well, after spending 40k on it, I will have to live with it for at least another 2 more years, and this time I am not upgrading just for higher processing or higher RAM, but for a new technology all together - will wait for flex displays or something else!

May be a good time to mention a special phone, which I have never used or even seen in physical form, but it has played very important role in my life, Nokia 8210. I was named after this in my 1st year of B.Tech. Rest is history as some of my friends know!

NOKIA 8210 

Smarter Way to Watch TV: TV-Stick

How many of us ever have connected our Laptop to our LCD TV for watching movies on a bigger screen?? Perhaps, everyone! Given our ‘geek’ nature, we are always on lookout for gadgets, which provide us more entertainment, better connectivity, higher productivity (really?)

The electronic hardware companies have too many devices to offer: smart phones, tablets, phablets, net-books, notebooks, hybrid tablets, compact PCs, Workstations, Smart TVs and so on. Unlimited ways to get connected to the World! But, the question remains, what will suite your need and which one to buy? Also, given the Indian economy, none of these devices are easily affordable, since the branded ones come with a premium price tag. Not to forget, the product life cycle of electronics is shortening day by day, and by the time you reach home after purchasing one of these devices, a new one would have been launched in the market! Compatibility of these devices is another issue, and hence data management across various devices becomes even bigger challenge.

 What is TV-Stick?

With snowball effect of Android devices / app market, many companies have come up with innovative solutions, to deal with many of the above issues. “Android-Stick” or “TV-Stick” is one such attempt in this direction. Based on the philosophy of reusing exiting resources, using open source software, and minimizing acquisition cost, TV-Stick offers a versatile solution to convert an Idiot-Box to a Smart-TV!

A TV-Stick, mostly Android based (some Linux versions also available), comprises of minimalist hardware to reduce size and acquisition cost. Little bigger than a memory-stick, a TV-Stick can be compared to a smart phone, except it does NOT have: Various sensors (accelerometer, light sensor, proximity sensor, gyro, etc), Sim-card slot, and touch-screen! Instead, it packs various input-output ports, which may include HDMI output, few USB inputs, expandable memory slot, mic input etc. So how does it work without a screen? As the name suggests, a TV-Stick connects to TV’s HDMI port, and displays everything on TV screen. Various USB input ports are used for connecting multiple devices, such as mouse, keyboard, external HDD, external mic etc. Processing takes place inside the TV-Stick, with its decent processing power (1-1.6GHzs), onboard RAM (~1GB) and Android OS. On-board Wi-fi module can communicate with domestic Wi-fi router, to access internet, or to communicate with other devices connected to local network. Applications can be installed from Android Play Store, as done on smart phone, and photos/videos can be stored/run from internal memory / expandable memory / external HDD. Being Android based, it can run most of the applications, which run on your smart phone, including web browsing, media applications, YouTube, social networking, IMs, Maps, email clients, organizers, document readers and so on….

Why TV-Stick?

Since TV-Stick is toned-down Smart phone, what is the need of having it, when most people (read ‘everyone’) already own smart phone? Well, with the prevailing philosophy of ‘bigger the better’, we are always looking for bigger screen phones, and many people are shifting to phablets and even tablets, just to enjoy the media on bigger screen. But watching media on your HD TV with friends/family is a totally different experience! Only high-end smart phones support HDMI output, using which phone’s screen can be duplicated on TV, not to mention, micro-USB to HDMI converter cables are expensive and rare to find!  Also, after connecting the phone to the TV, it is difficult to operate it, since phones don’t support external mouse/keyboard. Other option is to use a laptop with VGA or HDMI out to stream display on TV. But with all physical constraints (laptop size, battery life, connector cables etc.), this may not be a comfortable solution for daily use. Given the low price of TV-Stick (~INR 5k), it can be used as a dedicated device to connect the TV to internet, as well as use various other applications on TV. It ensures reuse of the old LCD TV, and can also save money one may plan to put in buying a smart TV (smart TV costs INR ~10k more than a regular LED TV). As technology advances, it is economical to upgrade the TV-Stick only, while keeping the same old TV. TV-Stick is definitely not a replacement of any existing devices, but definitely a useful addition to the gadget fleet!

Where do I get TV-Stick?

TV-Sticks are available online on various virtual stores, including ebay.in, homeshop18.com, junglee.com, naaptol.com, snapdeal.com etc. starting at INR 4,500. Home grown company, Micromax has also introduced SmartStick for INR 5,000. Various reviews are available online, such as here. While buying one, ensure that it has sufficient processing power and RAM, to run most of the applications, sufficient storage or supports expandable memory, keyboard, mouse and Wi-fi. Some TV-Sticks come with wireless mouse and keyboard in the box itself.

How do I use TV-Stick?

Ensure that your TV has HDMI input port. You may also need HDMI extension cable if you want TV-Stick to hang from the TV. A Wi-fi router with a fast internet connection will help you connect with online world; otherwise you can use TV-Stick for just offline content. USB or wireless mouse/keyboard will be required as input interface. A Google account is required if you wish to download apps from Play Store.

What else?

TV-Stick or Android-Stick is just one way to enhance your entertainment experience. While most TV-Sticks run on google’s Android OS, Google itself is focusing on many other such devices. The most talked about is google’s Chromcast. Although similar in appearance, Chromecast is very different from Android-Stick. Chromecast works as a wireless interface between your smart phone / laptop and TV, to stream the media or duplicate the screen. It also needs to be connected to wireless internet, for online video streaming. However, controlled by smart phone or laptop (via android app), the online videos are directly streamed to Chromecast, and not via phone or laptop. Unlike Android-Stick, a Chromecast can not work independently as a mini computer. A detailed comparison of two can be read here. Chromecast, though not available in India yet, can be purchased from abroad and easily setup and used in India without any restrictions.

Other devices offered by Google include Chromebox and Chromebook. Chromebox is much like Android-Stick, with further more capabilities (inbuilt mic, serial output, multiple screen support, cloud storage etc.), but for a price. Chromebook is google’s laptop, based on chrome OS, and run everyday applications via Chrome web browser. All google’s devices support the philosophy cloud storage and cloud computing, rather than storing data offline.

Tech Visions - 2

Almost forgot that I own a blog!!! Heard about the gun shooting in Dawson college last month? Killed 1 and injured many others. Well, there have been so many posts over this topic anyway, people have written so much.... especially after it all happened, people came up to say, "You maniac, go shoot yourself and don't kill innocent people" and stuff..... man, whats the use commenting on it after everything is over Prolly people think by criticizing it they may prevent such incidents to happen again. But, do you really think it works??? I think on the contrary. But well, who cares.

One of the most amazing theories which came up was the guy couldn't fit in the society because of the Quebec culture and attitude of people here towards non-Quebec people, ie, rest of the 50% population of Montreal. Well, I kinda disagree to this one too.... how about the shooting in Concordia few years back, or the our favorite Columbine shooting??? Well, may be lets not discuss it here anymore, you never know who is reading it and who gets offended and then who tracks it down, and then they deport me to back to my homeland :( Anyway this was not supposed to what I am discussing here, I was supposed to write about those dreams I had where I had these visions about the technology ;)

Before I start, I would like to know, why is it that writing a blog in a "blog window" feels so cool and writing it in doc file and doing copy paste feels so stupid??? (does it? or is it just me?) Given that the 'save', 'spell check' and many other options are much easier to use in MS word. But I guess, blogging is supposed to be a "cool" thing. You just do it as a time-pass, its not very "serious" thing. Ohk, back to technology (geeeeeeek). I just realized that I already mentioned about the MP3 players. So lets start with something different. Business cards! or to be precise business e-cards. You receive that 2 line email with an attachment which is nothing but senders e-card, which could have been written in plane text..... NO.... we need colors!!! Well, how long do you think people are going to use the paper business cards? How about this small pager looking like e-card gadget, which can store just your business cards?

Ohk, here is goes. So MS corp comes up with new gadget, which looks like a pager, but thinner, comes in white or black, has screen as big as your business card and 4 navigation keys and 1 on/off button obviously, with a bluetooth connectivity (infra red is old fashioned...c'mmon). Now, your MS office comes with another utility to make e-cards, with a million basic templates and of course if you are not yet satisfied you can make your own! Prolly import a pdf or jpg and convert it into a e-card, lets call it the '.ecd' file. So the device, name it 'ECD 2000', can store one of your own business card and may be a zillion cards from other people (don't need more that a Gb I guess to do that, iPods got 60Gb these days, c'mmon). Ya, so what you do is, connect your ECD 2000 to your comp and transfer your own e-card to it and you are good to go! Now assuming that every 'rich' guy has got one of these ECD thingie, only thing you have to do is place 2 ECD's in front of each other and push 'Send' on one and 'Receive' on the other, and your e-card is transferred!! Cool? But obviously it has some limitations, like browsing through the cards etc. So 1 month later Sony comes up with a model of its own, 'Sony Eio', comes in silver, thinner than ECD 2000, metal finish, feather touch buttons (like the one on your microwave oven). Eio lets you browse through the cards alphabetically, so if you are looking for Mr. Xin Yan Zou (that is a REAL name), you don't have to start from A, B, C.....X. So life is peacefull, although you pay almost twice for the Eio compared to ECD 2000. But.... but, after 2 months Samsung comes up with 'SGX-A210' which has the capability to store upto 3 business e-cards of your own!!! Now that's COOL!! So you can make different type of e-cards and chose which one to give to whom! Later on with further improvements, you have ECD's which can not only transfer your own e-card but can send any other card from your database, given that the .ecd file is not 'locked' or 'protected', in which case only the owner can transfer it!

Well, not very exciting, but just wanted to get it off my head.... man can't sleep (well that has a different reason though). At 5 in the morning, writhing this dumb blog, only thing I wish is that somebody makes a gadget which could finish your thesis :((

tech visions

"Technology, as i see it.... " can you believe it I used such a line for a SoP when I was applying for a scholarship...ofcourse I din't get it. Remebering my GRE analytical/essay writing score, 3.5/6, lowest in the university, I can bet you can't have worse writing skills than mine...seriously. People who have been correcting my SoP's and CV's...they have so much patience.

Well let's talk about something else; the technology, which is helping to make our life easy...or may be more complicated. I still remeber those college days, when we had access to unix systems, no GUI. There were only 2-3 windows systems, for 97 students in the batch, that too we couldn't open any site with a "mail" in it(rediffmail, mail.yahoo.com etc). On unix system you can read the incoming mails from yahoo, rediff etc, but cant send mails using these accounts. The CS studs tried changing the properties and do lot of patching work to send mails from unix or windows account. I could never do that or even remember everytime if somebody would have told me how to. So I started receiving mails on my regular yahoo/rediff account, check it on unix systems and used the yahoo greetings to send mails using the windows systems rather than emails! kind of innovative huh! Dont kow if sounds good to you or not, but my girlfriend surely liked it then!!! Getting a regular mail with a picture of roses...everyday...what more a girl can ask for ;). I have always believed in innovations, rather than improvements. just come up with something totally new! I hate to work on increasing the efficiency of a system by 0.127%, or improving the control algo for a smoother curve, rather I would spend my life designing a new system, which uses totally different phenomenon. I dont know if I would be able to do that sometime or not, but i really appreciate the people who do. Amar Bose (the Bose speaker and music system guy u know, phd from MIT), designed new amplifiers, came up with bose speakers...nothing can beat it. Now he designed car suspensions, after 24 years of hard work...using electromagnetic coils and motors! I have seen people, famous people, working on car suspensions for their whole life, trying to improve the handling/comfort/ride quality by 1-2 or max 3% in 5 years. Because all they can think of is a spring-damper system. Prolly they will replace the fluid, use different solenoids..whatever...but doesnt help. Bose gave a new life to suspensions...no spring no damper...its awesome!and thats the future!

I have such visions many times....ya i sound funny. well not abt the suspension..but similar things sometimes. I thought of the MP3 player long back when the disc-man was hot stuff in the market..and few years later..boom its there! Sometimes really funny, when I was 13yrs old or something, I thought of generating electricity from train wheels...obviously I dint know abt the energy conservation principle! well, came out that its actually used in india!

the way the technolgy is improving these days, I am not sure if it is making our life simpler or complicated. Because people are not working on actually improving the technology or coming up with new ones, they just want to give you more options, more colors, which actually confuses you. I opened my first ever email account in year 2000. Since then I have opened atleast a dozen(literally) more, and forgot most of them. All of them serve the basic need, but we need more space....not exactly, but new colors. Then again this chat and blog thing....IRC, ICQ, yahoo, msn, rediffbol, gtalk and a million more i dont know about. then u got atleast 7 different messengers which are compatible with atleast 4 of these services. I myself have used eassymessenger, yahoo, trillian, gaim, msn, windows messenger, eassymessenger.net, meebo.com and what not..i dont know why. then these groups and blogs and societies...."join classmate.com!", rediff connextion, yahoo 360, live journal, orkut, hi5 and ofcourse the blogspot! Sometimes when i think about all this, i know i have wasted so much time on these sheer nonsense things....although i wouldn't have utilized my time in a more constructive way anyway.

So basically I feel that, all these improvements are not helping but more bugging and annoying. But somehow I have this inclination towards google. They kinda do new stuff....google desktop search...saved my life! All these hardware companies, making faster processors, better motherboard and higher GPU's for gaming ....laptops with 4Gb RAM for personal use..and not for NASA research (i remember my 1st comp with 1.1Gb HDD)...all they are trying to do is improve the technology...making things compact, light weight, more powerful, higher capacity...and all this. But is it actually required? well, u still have to purchase/pirate the software, look for updates, u need internet for sure...need anti-virus...and millions of other tasks you need to do to keep your system up-to-date....more complications with improving techinology! So what do we need then? A change..... change in the way we look at PC's. I dont know if it is already in the market..something like this..but m sure that it must be in google's or somebd's agenda.

Imagine a PC...or let me call it a GC, google computer, which has minimal hardware, like a keyboard and mouse ofcourse, a screen..well, small amout of HDD, or prolly RAM/ROM coz thats gonna be faster than mechanical HDD, low level processor, and other very basic requirements with a high end ethernet/wireless card to connect to internet(which would be ultra ultra high speed). The GC comes pre-installed with the Google OS, GOS, which has nothing but a web browser. It doesnt take 8 min to boot and load all the 219 programs like windows...or linux...whatever. It just connects you to the internet...or rather your personalized google space, Gspace. Now, here is the fun part, you got a HDD quota on google server, which you can increase/decrease whenever you want, by paying extra money. You dont have to buy a new faster HDD, from 5400rpm to 7200rpm (and now 10000rpm) and throw your old one, or keep those 300Gb external HDD's to store movies and songs. Well, you will not be storing any movies or songs on your Gspace anyway, because everything is available on google video/audio/media center. Just pay for it monthly, or per movie and watch it whenever you want! It will have all the movies and songs in many languages! Now what do u do for work??? Well, google has license to all the softwares, including the tech ones, Adams, Catia, Spy, Matlab and others like word, Nero, Acrobat, photoshop, Maya....u just name it! most of them are free, others you pay monthly or as per usage...hourly or the amount of processing you need. now you dont have to worry about updates, you always work on latest version, that way all this compatibility issue is solved [u cant open a CD in nero5, which is burned in nero6 or RoxieCD, same with Matlab :(], because, at a time, every1 is using the same version....so u got same version on every GC, wherever you go! No worries about virus and ads. no system crash problems, ur data is safe with google servers...u know how it works right....No hacking problem and all, hopefully google will have the highest security level. so All the softwares can be run in the web browser itself, afterall its the data transfer, so google takes input data from your keyboard, does the processing at its end, gives you back the results. Now imagine the processing power!!! If 100 people have GC'c and paying for the softwares and the processing and whatever, google will obviously have enough processing powerfor the worst case scenario, ie, even if all 100 people are using the processor, it should be faster than the PC's. But obviously again with time zones and everything, only 20% of the total users would be processing at a time..so u got like 5times advantage in processing most the time!!!!

Thats what some japanese companies are doing, utilizing the resources to max. they ask u to hook up ur system to net, and let them use it for processing when you are not using it, mainly for research work. Well, the funda of param 2000, indian super computer; again a new thought which changed the way people looked at super computers; dont use a ultra fast and ultra costly processor which is difficult to manufacture, but use many slow processors in parallel, tough part is to design the algorithm to distribute the job(thats what I have heard..not sure..google for it and lemme know :p). Hard work but worth it! So why not to use all possible processing power available in PC's, hook them up together when people are not using it! or even better, get all the processing power centralized, Gserver, and let everybd use it thru net. Well, it would be cost effective too. Just look at it. Since google is getting GC's manufactured by 1 particular company, in bulk, its gonna be cheap. Also, the hardware is minimal...kinda an intel celeron or smthing :p. that would be like 1/10th of the price of a PC i guess. Then you dont have to worry about norton 2005 and 2006 every year. You dont waste your money on new versions! and you have access to every damn software...if you wanna try a software, you dont have to purchase the whole damn thing and realise its not useful for you!

Use your GC as a VoIP phone to call(with video) any other GC in the world for free, using Gtalk ;). Finally when everybd has a GC, u get a Gaccount, which basically is ur gmail account type, u chat with it, u use G-services with it, u email/blog/call/shop/get salary/file taxes/pay bills ....whatever with it. The Gaccount will eventually give you a GIN, Google Insurance Number, which will replace your SIN/SSN/PIN. Now everybody in world is on the same ground, globalization has completed, no boundaries between the countries. Information is travelling at the speed of light. Welcome to the G-world, experience the G-fied life!

blah blah blog

ok, so 4.30am on a saturday morning, and I am finally planning to blog something..well I always hated this whole blog thing, but may be I can use it in my own way. I have no clue what these blogs are for and I am just too lazy to google for it and "learn" about blogging. Well, I have never been a good learner ....except from my own experiences..which unfortunately have not been really good :p

so I have been thinking about all this blog thing, have been reading people's blogs sometimes (you know when you get that forwarded link in that high school or university alumni yahoo group...) But i guess my way of looking at it is totally different...well may be not the best way..but whatever.

so i think this blog thing can be used to just blabber out, whatever i keep thinking about, all sleepless nights, and may be one day i can collect all this and write autobiography :p ....well most of the people want to write a book...i want to write autobiography...perhaps it won't be the "best seller" .....for a long time, but still, by the time i write a book i hope to have earned enough money to afford the losses!

so all this blog is going to be about ME!!! I know nobody is going to visit my blogs[u just proved me wrong ;)]. So let me start with this whole blog funda itself. Well I hate it because I hate the "wired"(not weird) life most of the "geeks" living these days. you know, real life and real fun is when u actually meet "real" people and not when talk/blog with some "gr8nbed_143". At this point lemme clarify something, which I should have prolly mentioned in the beginning of this blog, all the names used in my blogs are totally fictitious and resemblance to any "real" "screen-names" is totally co-incidental. ya so i was talking about the blogs! people say its kinda global dating thing and its the best way you can find "perfect" friends because the number of people you can "meet" through wire is atleast 7million times more than people you can actually interact in real life. well, very true. but still, you know it doesn't give me that feel :p

people are losing the presentation skills, social life and so many other qualities because of the increased wired communication. here is the preference order of social interaction of many people these day: personal meet-talk on phone-chat-email-mighty blog! [i just lost 500 words i typed...cant do it again :(( ]. ok, so people's preferences..that's what i was talking about. so people say, this preference order is convinient given the cicumstances, the time zone differences, long distance, gloabalization and many other factors; true again. but i got another thoery working behind it. well everybody is not a good faker on the face...i mean everybody can not lie in front of other person without showing the face expressions. so meeting people and talking to them, tough task dude. you need to look presentable(doesnt mean you need to be arjun rampal or something), good colloquial skills, fast thinker and blah blah. so not a good idea basically when there are easier ways available. talking on phone- well u dont show how are you feeling, but still you have to make it sound correct and still gotta think fast. like i talk to my parents with a smoke in hand [plz dont tell my parents if you happen to know them]. so you can lie if you are little bit confident about ur skills! but still why not to just chat, where you can use :( or :) irrespective of what you are actually feeling.. i mean there is no way the other person will know your feelings. and you can take some time to think..."the connection is bad", "i just went to get some coffee". and then comes email, where you have plenty of time to think/consult/search, oxford online dictionary and finally come up with the best excuse you could have. And above all is this blog....and thats because...well as i said i dont know much about blogging so i wont discuss that :D. (well I prefer emails myself, u know the spell checks and all that..really helps :)). so finally this is the only way i/others can express mine/their opinions to millions of people..thanks to the free web spaces, search engines like google and the high speed unlimited DSL!

well talking about google..i would like to write a whole blog on it! may be just after this one tonight! so i guess thats about the introduction...not mine but introduction to blogging...which i will keep doing now....kinda getting hang of it :p