A glass of steaming milky syrupy tea is best served cut. One by two or two by three, it embodies the spirit of sharing and camaraderie (and more significantly a resource crunch). Come, have a sip.
MTNL (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd) was running a shoddy DAVP-type teaser campaign. There was no surprise at the end of it [MTNL Jadoo 3G press release], it was for the commercial launch of MTNL's 3G service. All that I was curious about was the tariff for India's first 3G service and as expected, it's not for me. Yet.
The initial service is limited to the NDMC (New Delhi Municipal Council) area of Delhi and most of Delhi stays outside that area (and that includes me. Even my current workplace is outside the NDMC periphery).
The tariff is 'promotional'. Here are the details:
MTNL 3G Jadoo Tariff
Activation charge: Rs 500 Fixed charges: Rs 599 per month Local voice call on own network: Rs 0.60 per minute Local voice call on other networks: Rs 1.00 per minute Local video call on own network: Rs 1.80 per minute Local video call on other networks: Rs 3.00 per minute STD/ISD - STD video call: Rs 3.75 per minute - ISD video call: Rs 30.00 per minute Data - GPRS/3G/UMTS/HSPDA usage rate: Rs 5.00 per MB Data HSPDA rental: Rs 149 per month
Which means that even if I just get a Jadoo connection and do not use it, I'll be paying atleast Rs 748 a month (that's about my average mobile bill a month, including GPRS usage).
And data usage rate is @ Rs 5.00 per MB. That means that if I want to watch an average YouTube video of around 15 MB, it'll cost me Rs 75! Don't know how many people can afford that. Atleast, not me.
This is more like the mobile phone rates in the mid-1990s and will surely fall. I'll then start active blogging, with all frills attached from my mobile device. Till then, I'll have to do with the Eee PC.
These online shopping sites come up with innovative tricks to fool people.
This seems to be use for quite some time, but caught my attention only this morning. The 'new' measurement of camera resolution - the lacpixel/lakhpixel.
If you are wondering what it is, here's the explanation:
10 lakh/lac = 1 million 1 megapixel = 1 million pixels 10 lacpixel/lakhpixel = 1 megapixel
For a layman the bigger the number, the better it is (remember the PMPO days). So a 1.3 megapixel camera would directly translate into an 'appealing' 13.0 lacpixel camera. 13 > 1.3. So the selling chances are higher.
Next we might see some hazarpixel cameras too.
Thankfully didn't yet notice any of the major manufacturers resort to this gimmick.
The T-Mobile G1 mobile phone manufactured by HTC is the first phone to be built using Google's Android platform.
I was getting irrititaed with all that overhype around the Apple iPhone. Thank god for competition. Now we have a G1 to hit Apple where it hurts the most.
The G1, as you would already know by now, is the first phone to be built using Google's Android platform. The manufacturer is HTC (who also have other cool phones on their portfolio) and it will be released in the US by T-Mobile on October 23.
The official press release doesn't mention any dates for an Asia release but it'll "be available in the United Kingdom beginning in November, and across Europe in the first quarter of 2009. Countries include Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and the Netherlands."
The US price for the phone is a cool $179, that translates to Rs 8,264 (as per today's conversion rate). But when a $199 iPhone costs Rs 31,000 intead of Rs 9,187 (via direct currency convertion), you don't know by how much the G1 would make an Indian consumer poorer.
Here are a couple of G1 videos. One from T-Mobile and the other from HTC. T-Mobile:
The mobile phone is both a boon and a bane. While it allows you to be in touch all the time, it also keeps you within the reach of people that you wouldn't like to talk to - telecallers, irritiating relatives or friends, nagging wife/husband or girlfriend/boyfriend, the boss or other colleagues (while you are busy with your wife/husband or girlfriend/boyfriend), crank callers, persistent wrong numbers... you can keep on adding to the list.
Some mobile operators provide a service to block unwanted callers, but many users prefer not do so because you can't block your boss' number. It's just that there are times you wish he/she hadn't called (because you have already overshot the deadline and are still thinking of a good enough excuse). Or that you cannot afford to offend some people even if you didn't want to talk to them. And the National Do Not Call Registry cannot rescue you from your angry girlfriend's phone call (NDNCR is not much effective anyways)
This simple trick might not actually prevent unwanted callers from calling you, but would irritate them (without offending) to stop calling for a while.
This is somewhat similar to the old ploy where you yell from one end, "I can't hear you...". But you tend to exert some energy in the lying effort. Here they cannot hear you and would do all the yelling, while you relax and continue to do whatever you were doing.
Steps:
1. Receive the call. If you can avoid not answering the call this trick isn't for you.
2. Converse for a few seconds (this is optional) to show that you aren't avoiding them.
3. Press the mute option, your end will go silent while the caller would believe this as a network problem (as it often happens in normal circumstances), will yell for a while and then hang up.
4. Follow the same steps if the caller calls again. He/she will get frustrated soon and would stop bothering you for a while.
In case your phone doesn't have the mute option, use your thumb to muffle the microphone.
And don't hold me responsible if anything goes wrong.
In a few days it'll be three years since this blog began. And for the readers I have a special treat that should continue over the next few posts - free MP3 ringtones to download for your mobile phones / cell phones (also SMS tones, the short ones).
I've posted in the past quite a few mobile phone ringtones (some in MIDI format, a few in MP3). Ringtones are fun (though I myself tend use the same one for years together) and here at the Cutting the Chai the motto is to share the fun, at minimal or - more preferably at - no explicit cost.
This is the first batch. You can preview (actually prehear) the files before you download (just showing off the new audio player that I put up here). Some of them can be put to some interesting uses:
Phone Vintage: The vintage telephone ring is one of my favourites. Does bring back the memories of the rotary dial.
Download [MP3 26 KB 00:00:03 64kbps Mono 44 kHz] Right click and Save Link As/Save Target As Phone Electronic: Before we went multi tone, this one was the universal ring. I often rushed back to pick up the phone, only to realise that it was actually the neighbour's phone that was ringing.
Mosquito: Ranked as one of the most irritating noises to reach the human ear. This would make an ideal tone for the alarm, only that you might try to swat the phone in your sleep.
In case you want to save yourself from the botheration of downloading individual fines, you can download all the 12 MP3 (featured above) files in a single zip folder from the link below. Download [ZIP 324 KB]
I don't remember seeing this ad on TV. Maybe because I watch very little on the television these days. The idea of posting this ad came when a friend discussed the noisy nocturnal adventures of the couple next door. But then what the ears suggest can often get obliterated by what the eyes would see.
Ever since I got my new mobile phone I found a new way to keep myself entertained on the long journey to and from work - by watching movies. Though the idea of watching a 70mm film with Dolby and the works on a tiny 320x240 pixel screen may not appeal to all, I've found it to be worthwhile pastime.
But the problem was to find the right format to play on the cell. I had downloaded a few clips from the Internet, while a few played fine, the others didn't. Though the manual says that the mobile (LG KG300 Dynamite) supports MP4 and 3GP playback, not all videos in that format are necessarily playable. Higher-end mobiles face fewer of these problems as they support a much wider range.
After some permutations and combinations and thanks to the super software called Super (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer), I could convert some DVDs which would play on my tiny screen. Though the web is full of 3GP conversion software, nothing worked, while Super did a decent job for free.
Since my needs were limited to my phone model, I didn't try what was best for other phones. Though I played one of the movies on my colleague's Motorockr and it played fine (and now she wants some movies of her choice converted). The only hitch is that the best resolution that Super provides for the combination of codecs which play fine on my mobile is 176x144, therefore the videos pixelate a little while playing on a 320x240 screen, but not to a very noticeable extent (you might overcome that I bit by increasing the video bit rate). Since the audio is encoded in AMR Narrow-Band the quality is not very high and is mono. But on the positive side, a standard two-and-a-half hour long Hindi movie will fit into 150mb. Though files in RealMedia are known to be even smaller, but pity my phone doesn't support that.
The codec combination that I used to convert my videos on Super (playable on LG KG300 and other phones) was:
Output container: 3gp (Nokia/NEC/Siemens) Video codec: H.263 Audio codec: AMR Narrow-band
Other details can be found in the screenshot below:
Ideally I would've liked to know of the ideal conversion settings for the MP4 format, but still haven't been able to figure that out. If I do, you'll find that posted here.
If anyone knows of a better software or of a better way if going about doing it, please do let me know.
You might not always have DVDs or VCDs around to convert and feed your mobile phone with. But there are plenty of places online from where you can find good quality videos to download from. One of the sources that I particularly like (for the quality combined with compactness) is Stage6.DivX.com. Though DivX allows downloads from their site, but it is through the DivX player. There's no explicit direct download link.
I hunted around a little and found a shortcut to directly download DivX videos (many others would've also discovered that). Here's a 'How to Download Videos from Divx/Stage6':
1. Go to stage6.divx.com 2. Identify the video that you want to download 3. Right click on the thumbnail and 'Copy Link Location' (on Firefox) or 'Copy Shortcut' (Internet Explorer), alternatively you can left click on the thumbnail and copy the URL from the address bar 4. The URL would be something like: http://stage6.divx.com/The-Last-Stop/video/1361844/My-Favorite-Brunette 5. Copy the numerical id of the video. In our example it is 1361844 5. Insert the id into this URL (replacing the asterisks): http://video.stage6.com/*/*.divx 6. Your final URL now becomes (as per our example): http://video.stage6.com/1361844/1361844.divx 7. To download the file (in DivX format) you can paste the URL into the browser address bar and press enter or let your download manager take care of the downloading.
Occasionally there are errors while downloading multiple files simultaneously from the site, therefore it is preferable to download one at a time. To play the videos you can play it on the DivX player or the very utilitarian VLC media player (which plays multiple formats which most other popular media players don't).
Else, you can convert the downloaded videos on to your preferred format using Super (with many options) or Audio/Video To Exe (very handy and lightweight but minus the customisation options of Super). It is preferable to keep both the free media converters on your PC as often what one cannot do, the other performs seamlessly.
If your movie is split over multiple files, it is preferable that you merge them into a single file before going for the conversion process, so that you enjoy uninterrupted viewing pleasure. 123 Audio Video Merger is a nice and easy freeware utility to care of the video merging process. But it might have some issues while merging multiple vob files.
I'll try to upload more movies which are now in the public domain (I like to play it safe) in mobile compatable formats under a newly created category on this blog - Movies for Mobiles.
After over three years, I have finally changed my mobile phone (to the relief of my friends). The old one is still functioning, but I needed something more to keep me occupied during my 80km daily ride. After a little research and a suggestion from a dear friend, I zeroed in on the Dynamite aka LG KG300.
I was essentially looking for a sub-Rs 10,000 phone with decent features and good looks. With mobile phone prices getting slashed rapidly the sub-10K segment is hotting up, though some of more loaded phones will cost a few grand more. Now on to my dissection of the phone in question:
Why LG? Because I didn't want a Nokia. My first and second phones were Motorola and wanted a change from American style reverse receive and cancel buttons. LG makes good stuff; my family has been a LG fan since we got a Golden Eye television years back.
Price: Yes, that's the most important factor. Though the LG e-shoppe lists the price at Rs 8,990, I got it for Rs 7,710 (with bill) along with a free 512 MB Micro SD card (I got the phone two weeks back). No the dealer didn't round it off, insted he offered me a free !dea connection and a gaudy mobile pouch. The prices should fall more in the coming months. For its features it is the best you can get at that price.
Looks: Well, it is a good-looking phone. The big screen, black and grey combination gives it a sophisticated look. In my opinion Nokia phones in that range aren't droolable. The body is shiny black and the kepads are matte. The shine is a little turnoff for people like me who don't like glossy stuff. I prefer suede or nubuck shoes. The chipped-off edges look good and the grey bar on the sides makes it look slimmer than it actually is.
The blue blinking light on the top left corner (which I've also seen in Samsung phones) is an irritant, but you can turn it off. The LG logo just above the screen should've been absent. All the sockets are covered with flaps and there are buttons on the sides for volume control, camera operation and the music player. The keypads though good looking are prone to making you make some typos. Features: It has loads of them - that's the USP. Here's what the LG site says:
Music Related Features * MP3 player * MP3 ringtones * Embedded songtones - 2 * FM radio-10 station memory * FM recording - live FM recording and schedule FM recording * FM alarm * Graphic equalisers - normal, bass, dance, class, treble, party, pop, rock
Camera Features * Camera support - 2.0 mega pixel * Video recording - unlimited - depends on memory card * Video playback - 3GP & MPEG format * Video caller ID * Photo caller ID * Digital zoom - 4X * Continuous shoot - 3/5/9 shots * Color effects - 14 nos. * Slide show - manual * Backlight compensation * White balance * Night mode * Self timer - 5/10/15 secs
General specifications * Dimensions (mm) - 102.5 x 47.5 x 16 * Weight (gm) - 89 * Standard battery (mAH) - 800 Li-Ion * Standby time (hrs) - upto 200 * Talktime (hrs) - upto 2 * LCD - 240x320 pixels * Number of colours - 262K * Type - TFT LCD * Standard accessories - battery, charger, operating manual * Free accessories - stereophonic headset kit and USB data cable [I also got a 512 MB micro SD card]
Additional Features * Bluetooth enabled * Internal memory - 56 MB (USB pen drive) * External memory - Micro-SD, upto 1GB * USB charging * GPRS - class 10 * SMS / MMS * Predictive Text Input - T9 * WAP - 2.0 * Download/save as support - http://in.lgmobile.com * Phonebook memory x fields-500 x 7 * Scheduler * Body mass index application * Mestural application * Voice recording - AMR/WAV format * Call conversation recording * Melody composer * Message copy from phone to SIM * Message copy from SIM to phone * In-flight mode * Intelligent call - speaks the incoming call number * Human voice prompt - speaks the stored no. in phonebook * Speaker phone * MIDI - 64 Polyphonic, MP3 * Ringer mute button * Built in games - 3 * Calculator * Conferencing * Frequency Band - GSM 900/1800/1900 * Voice memo * World time * Modem * Unit converter * Alarm-multiple
There's a lot of good and a little bad about this feature-packed device. The goods you can assume from the above listed specs. Let me give you a lowdown:
* The FM radio allows storage of only nine channels (though the site says 10). Here in Delhi we already have more channels than I can save on this phone. Therefore you'll have to pick and choose for preset stations if you happen to reside in a high FM-concentration city, else go manual searching.
* Voice recording is a nice feature, especially for us journalists where we needn't use any external devices to record telephonic conversations, or go crazy scribbling notes on a notepad. It also doubles up as a Dictaphone. Moreover you can also record or schedule recordings of radio programmes. The recording quality might not be top of the line, but it is satisfactory. There are two recording formats available amr and wav - amr is lighter and will allow more hours of recording but wav gives better quality and also larger file sizes. And you can save any of the recorded songs as your ring tone.
* The embedded ring tones except one (which I've set as default) didn't sound good to my ears. In addition to the 20 preset tones you can store five more of your choice. The two embedded song tones are definitely an irritation - Jhoom Jhoom and Just Chill aren't the songs I would ever like to hear when someone calls me. Trying to figure out a way to delete them. Though the vibration mode doesn't vibrate enough to let you know of an incoming call while you are walking, some of the ring tones are loud enough to be heard in traffic. And you too have a take at becoming AR Rehman (hopefully not Himesh Reshammiya) with the melody composer.
* There are limited options (only six) for incoming message alerts and you can't also add to it. You can have the phone read out the numbers you are inserting, but that's not that useful a feature. There's also an 'intelligent call' alert which reads out phone numbers to you before the phone starts ringing (this might be helpful while using the headset and the phone is embedded deep into the jeans pocket).
* You can set images or video clips as caller IDs. Fun idea.
* The inflight mode allows you to use the phone while barring it's other functions besides music, so that you can enjoy music while on a flight.
* The music player has eight preset equaliser settings but doesn't have a user-defined option. The inbuilt speaker doesn't sound very good and the earphones are decent. Though not comparable to the quality of standalone digital audio players or Sony's Walkman series, it should keep a not-too-finicky listener happy. But playing music guzzles a lot of battery power.
* Everyone seems to want a camera phone. But my honest suggestion is, if you love photography, go for a digital camera. Camera phones just can't match the results delivered by some of the base models of digicams. Nevertheless, it is always handy to have a camera in the phone for those 'Kodak moments' when you think, "If only I had a camera now." Don't fall for mega pixels. It is just another marketing gimmick. The reasons are here.
The camera boasts of a 4X digital zoom (by the way digital zoom is usually useless; it just crops and enlarges the image, thereby deteriorating the quality. Optical zoom is what you should have). But actually it is only 2X in the still camera mode and 4X for the video camera. There are a lot of preset features to help you get closer to that perfect image. There are a few effects which can be put to interesting uses. The video camera quality leaves a lot to be desired.
* The screen is exceptionally bright and but you can't reduce the brightness. The colour display is vibrant. But all these takes a toll on the battery. There aren't also much options to customise the screen display and you have to keep yourself content with the few available options.
* It has Java and a few pre-loaded not-so interesting games. You'll need to download some to keep yourself occupied.
* There are a few interesting extra features like the handy world clock (with a world map) which tells you the time of 60 prominent international cities. There's a unit converter which converts kilogrammes into pounds, kilogrammes into ounces, kilometres into miles, miles into yards, miles into feet, centimetres into inches and also the other war round. It also calculates your body mass index. And for women, there's a special feature - the menstrual calendar. And for the money minded - a currency converter. The interface is quite fast and it responds almost immediately.
Battery: It comes with a lithium ion 800 mAh battery promising 200 hours of standby and two hours of talk time. Two hours of talk time is a little less for the chatterboxes. The battery also tends to drain out fast while using the multimedia features. It has USB charging therefore you don't have to worry about carrying the charger every time; a standard USB cable (it comes equipped with one) should do the job for you. But while using the phone to transfer data to/from a PC, it needs to be shut down. A little hassle, as you might just miss some calls during that period.
Software: Though there's no software that accompanies the phone when you purchase it. You can download the relevant software and drivers for the LG KG300 from the links below [Links updated. Dead links removed][Added alternative Rapidshare download links - 080414]: PC Sync [zip 2.90 MB] [Alternative link] USB driver [zip 131.7 KB] [Alternative link] Modem driver [zip 3.9 KB] [Alternative link] A detailed LG KG300 manual can be downloaded from here [PDF 1.66 MB] [Alternative link]
Ever since the ads started airing during the ongoing IPL season, everyone everywhere is gushing about them. And they are indeed cute.
In addition to the existing RSS/Atom feeds and Email alerts you can now subscribe to Cutting the 
The T-Mobile G1 mobile phone manufactured by HTC is the first phone to be built using Google's Android platform.
In a few days it'll be three years since this blog began. And for the readers I have a special treat that should continue over the next few posts - free MP3 ringtones to download for your mobile phones / cell phones (also SMS tones, the short ones).
