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  1. India’s first real HD tv channel is putting me on TV! ! !

    December 5, 2008 by pranav

    The channel is doing a show on blogs and is covering www.IndiaDailyPhoto.com and I have this opportunity to promote the photoblog on TV. Our 2 minutes of fame. Afrin is also here and speaking about her blog . And I am gonna hit the Publish button while its recording live in about a min.

    Category blog, Blogging, Photographs | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

  2. Airtel’s EDGE is the best internet available in India

    December 3, 2008 by pranav

    I have used quite a few ISPs, from Airtel, Hathway, Tata Indicom, BSNL, Reliance and of course the local cable internet providers…

    Everyone has their positives and negatives. I’ll use the following parameters:

    1. Availablity in one’s area
    2. Stability
    3. Speed & Use
    4. Pricing
    5. Customer Support
    6. Mobile vs residential connection

    Availablity: Airtel EDGE is available in the major cities and it automatically reverts to slow GPRS in case you are in a rural area. The GPRS, is still sufficient to chat via eBuddy, Google Maps and use mobile websites. Anywhere in the country if your phone is showing Airtel network coverage, your handset should mostly revert to GPRS. 

    Stability: Since it is wireless, there is never the fear of a cable getting cut. The downtime of the Airtel servers has been zero. Whenever I have tried to connect, I have easily connected and stayed connected. The only time it drops is when I am moving and go out of coverage area.

    Speed & Use: EDGE gives an effective speed of about 100-150. Torrents and direct downloads happen at anything from 15-20 kbps. I have tried using it overnight as well. I left my phone plugged in to the charger, left the bluetooth on, on the phone and my laptop and left some legal Jamendo torrents running. In the morning I had easily downloaded about 6 albums and they were all seeding happily. Surfing on the laptop is a breeze even on VPN. During peak hours, the speeds do tend to be slower. Say around 64 kbps.

    On the phone, I use apps like Nokia Email, ngpay, Opera Mini, Google Maps, eBuddy, etc. and they all work smoothly. I have not bothered running torrents or ssh’ing via the phone, although it is supported. The only difference between EDGE & GPRS would be that with EDGE, you can use Google Maps, eBuddy & Opera Mini all at the same time, and with GPRS only one of the 3.

    Pricing: The connection costs me about Rs.660 per month with taxes included. I may get faster connections at that rate, but it is perhaps the mobility at this price and speed and wide coverage, that makes this a very good deal. Using tools like ngPay in remote areas while in a moving train, or using Google Maps, Ebuddy, etc. on the phone make this connection worth it. I travel almost every other weekend, and using the phone to go online, easily saves me approximately 100 rupees of cyber cafe costs in other towns/villages  every month.

    Customer Support: You will need minimal customer support if your handset is supported by Airtel and Airtel is supported by your handset manufacturer. I use a Nokia E61 and it turns out the software on my laptop is preconfigured for Airtel and the configuration settings sent by Airtel are perfect for my phone. I have never called the Tech Support. Billing Support is very standard and there isn’t much they can offer you. They have just 1 EDGE plan that you can choose.

    Mobile vs Residential: Yes, at home I can have a great deal on a connection that will be fairly stable. But, every ISP I have used in the last 7 years or so, has provided me with sufficient downtime due to multiple reasons and left me stranded. Also, the mobility factor for me overrides the unlimited downloads factor. I can do the same downloads at perhaps a slightly slower speed. But in 2003 I paid BSNL about 5000 rupees as I had downloaded about 10 GB data over a dial-up connection. In comparison, I can download a lot more if i really was paranoid enough to do it and will cost me only 660. I am not taking away any of the benefits of the fixed cable line connection, but as a personal choice I would prefer Airtel EDGE if I had to pick one.

    If you live in a major city in India and use a smartphone, I dont think Vodafone, Reliance, Idea, Tata, Virgin, BSNL or any other provider has anything better than this connection to offer. The only desirable is that the EDGE coverage should spread to as many regions as possible and they should definitely make GPRS faster. The only thing better would be when BSNL launches 3G services.

    PS: I wish Airtel would pay me something for being nice to them in this post. Even free usage of their service for a couple of years would do.

    PPS: If you can suggest something better, please let me know. This is not the perfect service but better than the other offerings.

    Category blog | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

  3. Bombay.

    December 2, 2008 by pranav

    VT Station, St. Xavier’s College & Metro, Cafe Mondegar & Leopold’s at Colaba, Taj Mahal at Gateway of India, Oberoi next to the Air India building at Nariman Point, etc. is usually there on the must-see places I would suggest a visitor to Bombay. My Bombay.

    Today, the same landmarks are in the news for the wrong reasons. About 15 months before the recent attack I had blogged about the blasts in Hyderabad and the blasts in Bangalore. The events got replicated again and magnified in their gore but I have almost the same views even today.

    Added pain, added insecurity, added unhappiness and added disappointment. This time an old school friend was taken hostage and I felt first hand the pain of sensing the danger and the anxiousness and the helplessness and then the tearful relief of knowing that somehow the friend managed to escape. It hurts and leaves me numb thinking searching for an answer and a solution that doesn’t seem to exist.

    All the usual mindless activities that happen after a disaster have begun … the email forwards, the petitions, the photographs, the annoying politicians and Bollywood people, the trivia, the conspiracy theory, the official count of the dead, the actual estimates, the welfare amount for the families of the dead, etc. etc.

    Don’t give me any of those. Give me peace.

    Category blog | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments

  4. And I am back!

    December 1, 2008 by pranav

    Now, I will blog soon, sooner than you think. Tons to blog about…

    • travel
    • IndiaDailyPhoto.com
    • observations I’ve made
    • some interesting websites
    • books
    • movies
    • people (lost & found)
    • plans for the future
    • plans to save and change the world, etc. etc.
    1 thing I can tell you, in this last stint of hibernation from the blog, I have experienced a lot lot more than any previous stint ever. Diverse things, people and places.
    As a random thought, after several months I finally changed my default browser on my default machine(T61 laptop) as Chrome from the old friend Firefox. I haven’t migrated completely, I probably never will. More on browsers in my next post.

    Category Blogging | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

  5. Locked out of the house… and my keys are with me!

    September 2, 2008 by pranav

    I live in an independent house, the landlord has generously rent out 2 rooms of his house and the terrace to me. The landlord however has access to my section of the house via a connecting door. I leave the connecting door open so that the maid can enter my section of the house and clean the house in my absence.

    As it turns out, the maid locked my entrance door and now I am locked out till the landlord returns.

    I left the wifi router on in the morning. So, now I have internet access sitting outside my house! I wish I had a password for the door the way I have one for my router. I find it compelling to blog about this situation. Hell, even my torrents are downloading as I type.

    Category blog, Blogging | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

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