R-E-F-L-E-X-I-O-N-S

Samsung Galaxy Tab (Android 2.2)

2011-02-14T07:00:00.004+05:30

Just a couple of points I thought to mention which I did not find while seeing reviews of the above mentioned product on the Internet.

When a phone call comes or when a phone call is made, the speaker phone is automatically activated. In fact there seems to be no other option. If you want private conversation, you need to connect a headset.
While flash 10.1 is supported and therefore the videos in sites like cnn.com are expected to be visible, many sites do auto-redirect to mobile sites (including cnn.com at the point of writing) which often lack such videos. To disable this auto-redirection, type, "about:useragent" without quotes at the browser address bar and hit go. Then choose, "desktop" option from the pop-up which means that any site that you visit now would consider your system to be a desktop rather than a mobile phone.

Happy tabbing!

Nokia N81 "Memory Full" Workaround

2010-11-12T09:00:00.001+05:30

The users of Nokia N81 may be knowing about this issue. The issue is with phone memory and is there irrespective of how much free memory you have in your memory card. While there appears to be an inherent problem with this handset, you can remove some programs/applications from the phone memory that are not absolutely must for you to fix this problem. To do so, just go to, "Menu" > "Applications" > "App. mgr." and uninstall the programs that are not absolutely must for you. Before uninstalling, you can check the memory that a program is using from, "Options" > "View details" and then decide if it would help to remove that. Any new program that you have installed in phone memory like, "Opera Mini" for example should be removed from there and should be installed in memory card.

Additionally, it may be a good idea to clean cache from the default browser frequently.

VIP Road Bhopal

2010-05-20T22:41:00.001+05:30

Photograph taken from the boat club of the lights at the VIP Road, Bhopal. Camera used: Mobile phone camera (8 mega pixel).

Dial-Up Networking Airtel Mobile Office

2009-07-21T20:52:00.004+05:30

I thought of putting the information below as probably it can save somebody's time.

The following configuration settings are working for me using bluetooth in Vista. I do not see any reason why they should be different for USB:

User Name:
Password:
Dial Number: *99***1#
Access Point Name (APN): airtelgprs.com

The last setting is not, "Mobile Office" which is what a casual look at the mobile phone settings may indicate.

In the past I have used Nokia PC suite and it had pre settings (the new version) using which it was easy to connect but I am rarely using it these days.

Vista Bluetooth

2008-08-13T11:06:00.000+05:30

If you had the problem with Bluetooth peripheral device driver installation prompt while using Vista then my following experience could be useful to you.

I wanted to connect Nokia N73 to a Vista based PC. First I activated Bluetooth on the PC and then installed Nokia PC Suite (version 5.8). The device (that is N73) could be located by the PC but there was a persistent prompt about Bluetooth peripheral device driver installation. The system was laptop with built-in Bluetooth and PC Suite was installed so I wondered why should there be an additional driver requirement. I found out that others with more recent versions of PC Suite also experienced this problem.

When driver as prompted could not be installed, I went to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Device Manager and deleted anything related to Bluetooth showing unsuccessful driver installation. These unsuccessful installations showed at different location from Bluetooth Radios location inside the Device Manager. After deleting them I explored at this separate entry titled Bluetooth Radios inside which there were two entries, one saying Generic Bluetooth Radio and the other saying Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator. I disabled Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator. Now, I uninstalled Nokia PC Suite and restarted the PC (the PC Suite uninstallation wants system restart).

After system restart, I again activated Bluetooth on the PC. Since, I had to install Nokia PC Suite again; I went for the recent version 7. After that there were no issues. This blog post is being typed while N73 is connected and I am able to access Internet at this moment via N73.

Home Tag Removal - Joomla Homepage Title

2008-03-28T00:40:00.006+05:30

In the top of the home page in Joomla installation it reads the title of the page followed by Home. It is even picked by google and I often wondered why that tag is there from user's perspective. If you also have Joomla installation and want to remove it here is what you can do.

In Joomla installation directory, go to folder includes and locate joomla.php .

Search for setPageTitle. It is somewhere near the top 20% of the file.

Comment out the following lines:

function setPageTitle( $title=null ) {
if (@$GLOBALS['mosConfig_pagetitles']) {
$title = trim( htmlspecialchars( $title ) );
$title = stripslashes($title);
$this->_head['title'] = $title ? $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'] . ' - '. $title : $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'];
}
}

Add the following lines just after:

function setPageTitle( $title=null ) {
if (@$GLOBALS['mosConfig_pagetitles']) {
$title = trim( htmlspecialchars( $title ) );
$title = stripslashes($title);
if ($title == 'Home') {
$this->_head['title'] =
$GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'];
}
else { $this->_head['title'] = $title ?
$GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'] . ' - '.
$title : $GLOBALS['mosConfig_sitename'];
}
}
}

Mod_Rewrite

2008-02-25T02:27:00.003+05:30

To direct the URL http://www.yourdomain.com/index.htm to http://www.yourdomain.com/main.htm one can use the following code inside .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^index.htm /main.htm

This would cause http://www.yourdomain.com/index.htm to display the contents of http://www.yourdomain.com/main.htm while the browser would continue to show http://www.yourdomain.com/index.htm address.

However, if one has to direct a URL like http://www.yourdomain.com/resource/view.php?id=2 to http://www.yourdomain.com/course/view.php?id=3 the following code does not work:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^resource/view.php?id=2 /course/view.php?id=3

What needs to be done is as follows:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=2
RewriteRule ^resource/view.php /course/view.php?id=3

OR

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=2$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/?resource/view.php$ /course/view.php?id=3

NUSOAP & PHP5

2007-10-28T15:50:00.000+05:30

NUSOAP does not play well with PHP5. Within PHP5, there are built-in references to soapclient and hence NUSOAP clashes with PHP5.

To make NUSOAP work with PHP5 one needs to open every .php file within NUSOAP (and every .php file using NUSOAP like index.php for example) and search and replace (matching exact word) for the word soapclient. This would mean search and replace in 12*+ files (12* .php files are there in NUSOAP). Any new word can be chosen in place of soapclient. For example, soapclient5 or soapclientphp5 or anything else that one likes.

Out of 12 files in NUSOAP, one file is named class.soapclient.php. Though, the file name contains the word soapclient, there is no need to change the name of this.

*In fact some files may not contain the word soapclient. If you know which files do not contain the word soapclient then there is no need to perform search and replace in those files.

Boaddrink PHP Formmail 1.07.2

2007-09-18T02:33:00.000+05:30

Boaddrink php formail script v1.07.2 has a feature that the email that comes from the form in the website does not appear to come from the sender but it appears to come from an email address of webmaster's choice. While it may be a way deal with spam, it is a problem when you instantly want to know from whom has the form come from. After spending some time breaking my head I could modify the file formmail.php and now it is fine.

Look for these two lines in the original formmail.php file:

$mail_header .= 'From: ' . FROM . $mail_newline;
$mail_header .= 'Reply-to: ';

The above two lines are below the line containing the word FROM. This FROM is the third FROM when you search the file using search function of the editor.

Now, make this small modification:

$mail_header .= 'Reply-to: ' . FROM . $mail_newline;
$mail_header .= 'From: ';

SMS Joke

2007-07-15T17:00:00.000+05:30

Let me draw your face!

Don't MOVE!

Nearly finished

OK Done!

Want to look?

,****,
( @..@ )
"(--)"

Hope you like your face!

Pseudo Indian

2007-06-25T22:16:00.002+05:30

One needs to accept the fact that Sunita is born and brought up in the US and is not an Indian (also her mother is not Indian as well). Unfortunately, we Indians have little to celebrate as far as our achievements are concerned internationally so we live in a world of dream to call somebody as a part of us just because she has been very successful. Kalpana can be called to have more Indianness as she grew up here but she was a naturalised American in the strict terms. It sounds all right to say that Kalpana was of Indian origin and Sunita was of half Indian origin.

In the past few days when Indian media was ga-ga about Sunita's return, it reminded me of the saying, "बेगाने की शादी में अबदुल्लाह दीवाना". However, in one respect this too much coverage about Sunita in Indian media was good as youngsters have something better to see as their role model.

On the lighter side (Blink counters)

2007-01-26T21:13:00.001+05:30

Pachmarhi Visit

2007-01-13T22:52:00.000+05:30

Visiting hill station in winter these days does not sound like a bad idea. In fact during holidays around 25th Dec. it is considered peak-season in Pachmarhi - a hill station in Madhya Pradesh. It is difficult to get hotel booking - not impossible - if the booking has not been done in advance. Pachmarhi is not a very cold place and is meant for those who want to do the trekking. The reason is that the waterfalls which are the centre of attraction are not easily accessible. Even if you have a 4 wheel drive car, it is common to walk 1.5-2.5 km further to get down in an up-down path and reach the point from where you can enjoy waterfall. It you just want to relax and not sweat then it is perhaps not for you.

Some photographs with comments can be seen below.

Pachmarhi

Welcome New Year

2007-01-02T11:49:00.001+05:30

Sabhi Kuch Ho Tumhi Mere

2006-12-10T18:22:00.001+05:30

Arranged and played using computer.

A Great Cause

2006-11-21T12:34:00.000+05:30

The following letter may be of interest to all those who want to build a better country. I believe most people desire this in their hearts but kneel down due to the current state of the system following the path of least resistance. After all becoming part of the system is easier than changing it. However, there are still some people who choose to take the difficult path being aware of its consequences and these are the ones who ignite the latent desire in the hearts of most people. These are the real heroes. Unfortunately, they get less famous than the film stars whose only job is the entertain others and to help others pass time. These people should be brought into light and as the role models of the nation change, the nation changes.

Manish.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 09:04:28 -0800
From: "Manjunath Trust" manjunathtrust@gmail.com
Subject: Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity Award
===============================================================
Manjunath Shanmugam, an alumnus of IIM Lucknow was shot and killed in Lakhimpur Khiri in Uttar Pradesh, on November 19, 2005, by a dealer of Indian Oil Corporation - the company he worked for. His only "fault" was that he did his duty: he would not accept bribes for turning a blind eye to the adulteration of fuel being carried out by the dealer.

The Manjunath Shanmugam Trust is formed by members of the international IIM alumni network. MST's immediate objective is to ensure quick justice in Manjunath's case. The broader vision of the trust is to build on the network, skills and resources of the professional corporate community, to help improve governance in Indian public life. For details please visit www.manjunathshanmugamtrust.org

On November 19, 2006 Manjunath's first death anniversary the Manjunath Shanmugam Trust has undertaken following initiatives.
1) Launch of a national helpline that will help people across the country in using the Right To Information Act. (9250-400-100)
2) Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity Award.

The objective of Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity Award is to honour and encourage person/s or institutions who are working to uphold the values of truth and honesty in the Indian public life. We are looking at deserving candidates who have reported and actively rectified/have worked to rectify corrupt practices in government, public or corporate life.

The nominees will be evaluated on the basis of
1. Gravity of the situation and its impact
2. Corrective action undertaken , not merely reporting the situation
3.Extent of difficulty faced by nominee in\n correcting the situation

The valid entries will be assessed by a panel of distinguished jurors, drawn from the corporate sector as well as public life.

Nominations will be accepted from 19th November, with details and form available on the MST's website www.manjunathshanmugamtrust.org. The award carries a citation and a cash prize of Rs. One Lakh.

You can help us in any of three ways
1.If you know of deserving candidates for the award , pls do write in to manjunathtrust@gmail.com with some details. We have a research team in place that can then take it forward.
2.If you wish to nominate someone, pls download the nomination form and send it to us at the address mentioned.
3. if you can direct us to sources who may have this information that will also help.

We wish to make this annual award a success, and encourage more people/institutions to work to improve Indian public life.

H.Jaishankar
IIMB ('91)
Trustee
Manjunath Shanmugam Trust
www.manjunathshanmugamtrust.org

Gyeballs

2006-10-26T10:53:00.000+05:30

I have always been a Google fan and now am witnessing its increasing focus towards advertising revenues. Buying YouTube is one example. Buying Writely made sense as Google did not have the word processor technology but Google already had video technology. They seem to have bought YouTube primarily for the sake of eyeballs.

When Google launched customised search, I had a look at it and was not surprised to find that to use customised search one will have to show the advertisements of Google. Now, if a site owner wants users to search own site, generally he/she would not want to send them away.

The worst policy is that of showing advertisements at the top of the search page. It may give the impression that the site at the top is rated no. 1. The fact is that the site may be far behind in ratings but gets that position because it pays money. It is true that the area where these links are displayed is marked sponsored links and is shown in light colour but a person searching may not notice these things and may be inclined to click the first link.

GTube: Google's Acquisition of YouTube

2006-10-10T23:54:00.000+05:30

A few questions:

How is the acquisition in line with google's motto to organise and categorise information considering that they are already offering this kind of service through google video? Doesn't the acquisition have to do with the site traffic and hence it is pure business purchase?
Is the primary reason for the popularity of YouTube the sharing of contents made by people or is it sharing of contents made by professionals that are being uploaded by YouTube users?

Some observations:

Most of internet videos are going to be somewhat like TV in which there are strips etc. These strips will contain advertisements. This can be a mega business and google is eying that business.
To position YouTube as a different concept from Napster, tie ups with professional content providers need to be done. Some are already being done which is a positive sign showing progress in the right direction.
The video in internet would be a customised version of TV since user can choose better what he/she wants to watch. The user has an additional advantage of uploading his/her own video and interacting with others.
YouTube videos can be integrated in the search results of google video.
Google's motto seems to have become broader. Now it is not just about organising and categorising information but is also about becoming advertising king.

Laptop to Webtop

2006-07-21T13:13:00.000+05:30

Collaboration can best be achieved when things are interconnected like they are via internet. The specialised activities can be done at selective places and can be distributed easily using internet. For example, after google spreadsheet came into existence, many users of spreadsheet packaged software would not need the latter especially if they are not power users.

This change from laptop to webtop is possible due to 24/7 fast internet connections, which are becoming faster and faster. Internet phones, radio stations are quite common. 100 Mbps internet connection is becoming common in Japan (for less than Rupees 2,000/- per month) which is the speed of local networks. Days are not far when large size internet video becomes common too. When this happens TV business may struggle as via internet the user can choose better what he/she wants to watch.

All that is required in future is specialised service providers providing services via internet (like movies, music, word processor, image processor etc.). There won't be any need to have anything in the personal computer except an operating system and internet connection.

The future of internet based companies and ideas looks very bright. The future looks like belonging to Google. Microsoft still is going to play a vital part of everyday life for most but perhaps not as vital as it used to be as Microsoft Office may go out of business and some people are going to switch to Linux/Mac as it becomes easier to switch.

If fixed phone services are to survive, they will have to start offering broadband and the 24/7 phone (if possible). Nobody likes wires, but due to electromagnetic radiations the wireless world could be a problem.

Many office buildings are not required especially those in service industry as people can as effectively work from home using collaboration tools.

Finally, a webtop is an office providing collaboration, a TV/radio providing entertainment, a software provider, a telephone, a videophone, a shop, a bank, a bill payer and the list goes on and on.

SMS Joke

2006-06-21T00:24:00.000+05:30

Santa Singh exits a shop with a bottle in his hand. He goes home and gives the bottle to his wife Santo. The shopkeeper sees him coming back after 30 minutes.

Santa: Where is my free gift with this mineral water?

Shopkeeper: There is no free gift with this.

Santa: Hey, don't you see what is written in the bottle - bacteria free.

World Cup or Cricket Cup

2006-05-14T12:18:00.000+05:30

If we look at the number of countries that play cricket, perhaps the system of counting used by our ancestors would be sufficient. It is amusing to hear such statement like:

Australia is world champion (such statements forget the countries getting top slot in olympic)
Sachin is world's no. 1 batsman (many people may say Lara but the point here is the use of the word world)
Muralitharan is world's no. 1 spinner
McGrath is world's no. 1 pace bowler
Don Bradman is world's greatest batsman ever

It is so common to see such statements that one feels nothing wrong in saying them or hearing them. However, if we do see the type of sports accepted in olympics and the no. of countries that play cricket we find that cricket playing countries are in great minority.

It is time India realises this point and actively promotes sports that are played globally like football, tennis etc.

Google's Strategy

2006-02-23T12:28:00.000+05:30

As google takes its second step into the field of hosting with googlepages, gradually its stategy is becoming clearer and clearer. Google's mission to categorise/organise information seems to have taken wide and even no meaning in some cases after the very successful advertising program. For example, offering users to create webpages for themselves does not strictly fall into the category of organising information. However, one can fit almost anything on the name of organising information. For example, writing a book in English Grammar can fall into the category of organising information but there are millions of books available on the same subject and the information related to the subject is already organised.

Another example that does not seemingly relate to organising information is Google Talk. It is one of the hundreds of VOIP applications allowing people to talk. A third example can be Gbuy - an online payment system - which is in pipeline.

As a company grows, its mission can become wider as it appears to be the case with google. The strategy of google seems to focus of innovation. Innovation providing superior user experience makes the user promote the application because he/she just loves it. This gives rise to more usage, which in turn gives rise to more advertising revenues for google. More and more products of google are coming into the lifestyle of user and the strategy appears to completely dominate internet and eventually dominate desktop as well. There is nothing wrong with it as long as it is win-win situation. Perhaps all google needs to do is to edit their motto related to categorisation/classification of information.

Why Google?

2006-02-14T18:39:00.000+05:30

Microsoft agreed to block the blog of a Chinese writer!

Yahoo agreed to provide the IP address of a person to Chinese authorities who was using Yahoo mail to send some information related to China.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed to follow the Chinese local laws for wanting to do business there.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed to provide details regarding search data asked by US govt.

But when Google introduced filtered search results for one of their sites to abide by the local laws in China, there is huge cry about it. It is interesting to note that the results are filtered only at google.cn site. If a user does not want filtered results, google.com and scores of sites like google.co.uk etc. can be used. In this context there seems to be too much noise regarding this issue.

I guess, google is paying the price of being famous. One thinks of Google when one thinks about internet. It has also become synonymous for innovation and success. It is not just Google's philosophy, "Don't be evil" that is being ridiculed and is responsible for so much of negative publicity since all corporations claim to back great philosophies and appear evil at times.

Internet Explorer 7 Beta

2006-02-05T14:45:00.000+05:30

Finally, IE 7 beta can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/ie7/ie7betaredirect.mspx if you have a genuine windows XP (SP2) system.

The download and installation were smooth but required restart. The first look after running it reminded me of Opera. It has a new look and offers new features. However, these features may not be new to someone using Firefox or Opera. There is tabbed browsing, meaning no need to open various windows to open different URLs (Incidentally, when it crashed all the tabs were closed.). It has built in search window at the top that even allows you to use google. There is an RSS feed reader and overall a nice aesthetic look. The button to open new tab is not so obvious at the first look. There were also a few bugs that I noticed, like cursor not showing at appropriate place and text not showing even though it is typed in black in white background and occasional crashes. IE 7 beta had difficulty in running a Java based live classes application that ran without any problem in Firefox. I hope Microsoft takes care of these issues when IE 7 goes out of beta.

Note: The screenshot contains the 123iitjee.com toolbar.

Internet and Anonymity

2006-01-24T20:29:00.000+05:30

The days when internet could thought to be a place where one could completely hide information about oneself seem to be getting over. There are many tools using which the identity can be traced. The government agencies have proved it that tracing can be done very accurately. Many of such tools are now available without cost. One such nice tool made by a youngster can be seen at http://www.seomoz.org/ip2loc/ip2loc.php . Try it by entering your IP address. You can find your IP address at http://www.whatismyip.com .