Reasons for Choosing Tata Photon Plus

• Instant Connection and Activation. (was the most important one for me)
• Best reviews compared to others.
• Best price for device in the market.

In Murugesh Palaya, next to total mall i could find only one shop selling the Tata Photon Plus. I checked the price and rest of the details there and searched for other devices as well. Instead of taking offline i wanted to try booking it online through the Tata Photon website. I applied for the connection using the side bar Apply now button. Within 2 hours i recieved a call from their customer care team and they promised to send the agent according to my convienience.  By evening according to my convienient time the agent was home, and my connection was activated. It took around 10-20 minutes for setting up the device (installation + forms + payment).

On activation tata photon lets you browse Internet for 48 hours at lower speeds. I choose Rs 950 Unlimited plan (5GB data cap upto 3.1 Mbps and after words at 256kbps). The plan was activated the next day and i was getting considerably good speeds to watch a youtube video without buffering.

I got no complaints with the connection as it delivers what i need, though the speeds are not so great compared to a 2Mbps Airtel broadband connection.

Issues

The welcome team is horrible. I felt horrible due to poor voice quality of the calls and disturbances on the line. They do not understand that you are attending an urgent meeting and asking them to call later, they kept calling again and again. I got 5 welcome calls and everyone asked whether i did get any verification calls. The last welcome call identified as “bhaskar” was ver annoying and i felt he was in urgency to finish his work off. He called me  thrice inspite of telling that i am busy at the moment. The very next day my connection stopped working. Enquiring with the customer care i came to know that the connection is barred on the grounds on address verification. I felt that was horrible as i had taken the tata photon plus as i was in urgent need of an internet connection. I asked the customer care to activate it for a day as i had very important work to complete from home. They did nothing, speaking to their immediate supervisor also did not help. They promised me to send a verifiction officer the very next day by 1PM (friday). I waited the whole day and nobody came and customer care did not have an answer. The next day i called up the guy who gave me connection, and somehow managed to get a verification officer visit me (saturday). The connection was back to active state after i gave a call again to Customer care on Monday.

First place i did not want a postpaid connection. The sales agent said the prepaid connection is having problems with activation, so i have to choose a postpaid and then after 2 months i can move to prepaid.

Worst Part

I payed 1800 for the device and my friend a week later took two devices at Rs 1200 each after a bit of negotiation.

I am satisfied with the connection, but i strongly dislike the welcome procedure and other stupid formalities they have and a horrible customer care.

• 12.1-inch screen
• 3G & Wi-Fi
• 8 hours of battery time.
• Dual-core Atom processors made by Intel

Features of the Acer Chromebook

• 11.6-inch screen
• Dual-core Atom processors made by Intel

Chromebook Pricing

The Samsung Chrome book would cost $429 for wifi version and $499 for the 3G version while the Acer Chromebook would cost $399.

Google claims that both Acer and Samsung Chromebooks will boot-up within eight seconds.Chromebook wont be available in India when it will be launched on June 15th 2011.

Features of Face Tweak for Facebook (Firefox Addon)

• AutoLogin – Auto-login to Facebook (assuming Firefox is set to remember your password)
• Chat Emoticons – Adds smileys to the side of Facebook, clicking on one adds to your message
• Replace Smileys – Replace text smileys as graphics (graphics are original from Facebook.com)
• Fixed Header – Makes the Facebook navigation menu remain ‘fixed’ to the top of the screen
• Fixer – Bigger photos, better albums, download videos, show age, Google Calendar integration, etc.
• Auto Confirm Friend Requests – Automatically accept all friend requests
• Autopoke – Automatically pokes back pokers listed on your home page
• Deletes – Bulk delete friends
• Ignore All Requests – Denies all facebook requests on button click
• Invites – Invites your friends to the app if they’ve already allowed the app access
• Highlight Birthdays – Highlights today’s birthdays on your home page
• Games Quick Invite – Adds quick invite links to various games (needs ‘Invites’ option enabled)
• Poke All – Adds ‘Poke All’ and ‘Poke Selected’ buttons above the pokes on user homepages
• Reply Button – Adds a reply button to comments
• Select All Friends – Select all friends at once instead of having to do so one by one
• inYOf4ceBook – Larger versions of thumbnails and profile pictures on mouse-over
• Video – Adds links to download or convert videos with Zamzar.com, and provides embedded code
• View All Photos – Places link to view all photos of a user
• View Photo in Album – View all photos of a user or an albumI

The tweak worked like a charm selecting all facebook friends and suggesting them to facebook pages. The only issue I experienced was that it was crashing my Firefox 4 a number of times. It pulls out script from the facebooktweak.com website and causes the browser to go into a non responding state (hanged). Overall Facetweak is a brilliant enhancer for your facebook.

What Indian’s searched in 2008 

• orkut
• gmail
• yahoo
• google
• youtube
• yahoomail
• indian railways
• rediff
• cricket
• katrina kaif

Gmail now lets you know if you are logged on elsewhere in any other systems and you can disconnet from those systems remotely. A very great feature which i always wished Gmail had. The notification is bound to be useful, though it’s by no means foolproof. You have to be log on somewhere to learn of other active sessions, and you have to look carefully for that notice. And if you have chosen to save your password on the other computer, someone else can simply log back on unless you change it.

Google will be preserving six month access logs of users being investigated for illegal conduct. 90% of illegal internet content being investigated in Brazil involves orkut. Orkut out of the 60 million users, half of the users are from Brazil.

I still remember the days when orkut started when it was purely more professional and less spammy. Now a days its the biggest source of spam for marketers and people promoting website or some product. Porn is also another major area that is giving orkut a thumbs down. The amount of sleazy profiles and communities in orkut has gone in large numbers. Fake profiles,Defaming people are all part of this. Lets hope Orkut does some sorta move like this in India also to counter the Indian Spam and Porn posters.

How to change your theme.

1) http://www.orkut.co.in/EditSkin.aspx?ch=1 Go to this link and you can change the Theme.
2) You can find the link to theme changer on the orkut menu bar on top and in the right side next to where your email is shown.

The Screen shot of the theme changer window + a look of the new orkut theme in a profile page is shown below.

The total amount of internet users in India is now estimated to be around 49 million according to JuxtConsult. A very intresting and break up analysis is provided by JuxtConsult on the Count of internet users in India. Out of the 49 million, 40 million are from urban and the rest 9 million are from rural.

There has been a tremendous growth in the usuage. I personnely can pretty much say that because when i was in school i know how many of my friends used internet(in 2000). Now almost 98% of the people whom i know have their online presence as well.

25 Million people browse internet daily in India and 9/10 daily users access internet either from home/ work. A part of them does access internet from both places.

A very detailed report can be found here

Google 2008 Pranks

• Google launches Dajare in japan – Google’s mission to organize the worlds information by also “organizing the world’s laughter”
• gDay – which was announed in Google Australia website, a new beta search technology that will search web pages 24 hours before they are created.
• Google Dialect Translation for translating regional dialects of Korean to and from Standard Korean.
• Offline access to Google Docs – Im not sure whether this is a hoax. have to wait and see to check whether it’s true or a hoax.
• Gmail Custom Time – Did you forget to wish your friend on her B’day. This is another one of the prank by google which promises you to wish your friend by sending a mail back to past. You can send you email back upto April 4th 2004 :p
• Google Wake Up Kit
• I would update this list if i come across anymore

Everyone thought it to be the result of some survey conducted. Today Times of India reported again those to false figures as the Hon Minister of HRD got these figures from a Internet myth mail which has been circulating on the internet for a long time.

Pretty sad that someone who holds a high post can list of figures without any confirmation. This particular move has caused much crtisicm.  The credibility of the facts that Indian govt lists are now seem doubtful!. Who knows whether it must be some fact a blog has listed! God save India!