Jailbreaking/hacking/modding your iPod/iPhone is something that should be done on the very first day it is purchased. Some people believe that jailbreaking will render their device useless if something goes wrong. That is not true. The following points will, I hope, clear some of your doubts;

Breaking some myths about Jailbreaking

• Jailbreaking does not brick (render device useless) a device.

• Even if somehow your iPod or iPhone gets bricked or stops working while you were Jailbreaking it, it can be easily ‘restored to factory settings ‘ using a computer and will be as good as a new one in a matter of minutes.

• Even if somehow restoring doesn’t work you can take it to any Apple service center where they’ll repair it in a few minutes (they don’t care if it’s jailbreaked/broken or not.

iPhone SpringBoard after Jailbreak(custom themes applied).

• There are no ill effects of Jailbreaking.

• Jailbreaking does not void warranty (I’m sure about this).

• Jailbreaking does not lead to piracy. It’s up to you if you want to use pirated and cracked software or not.

• A jailbreak can be removed anytime without any hassles.

• Your iTunes and App Store account and apps will continue to work like ever before. Jailbreaking does not interfere with either with the App Store or your already purchased apps.

• There is no effect on the performance, battery life or speed of the device.

• You will be able to update your already downloaded/purchased apps from the App store Updates to the iPhone OS can also be downloaded from Apple. Updating will remove jailbreak.

• Your iPod will sync with iTunes as it used to.

• Jailbreak won’t interfere with Genius on iTunes.

• Jailbreaking doesn’t take hours to get completed. Maximum time that you’ll be spending is 2 minutes.

• Jailbreaking does not cause frequent rebooting and/or crashing of  the device. Your iDevice will be as stable as it was when it was not jailbroken.

Why you should Jailbreak your device (without encouraging piracy)

• Enables you to use 3rd Party applications (Most are free, supported by advertisements).

• Allows you to change the feel and look of your iPod or iPhone (even iPad) by installing themes, rotating wallpapers, customisable icons, a flowing dock et al.

• Totally new and amazing lockscreens.

• Custom sounds.

• Allows you to Multitask (even a $829 iPad cannot do that).

• File access and management of your device.

• Download stuff through Safari by using a simple add-on.

• Extended TV-Out functionality.

• Make your SpringBoard Landscape.

• Use custom Boot Logos (only on some Jailbreaks).

• Open your device to thousands of user made tweaks, hacks, themes and what not.

• App store on your device will also continue to work.

• Apple will never get to know that you have jailbreaked/broken device.

iPod/iPhone custom Lockscreen after Jailbreaking with weather, call and mail widgets

iPod/iPhone custom Lockscreen after Jailbreaking with weather, call and mail widgets

The iPhone SpringBoard after installing a theme thorugh WinterBoard

Why you should Jailbreak your device (Use pirated and cracked software)

• Download every paid App that is available on the App store for free (not through the App store but by other means).

• App store apps can be downloaded right on your device, thus removing a PC from the picture.

• You will be able to connect your device with your PC through Wi-Fi.

• Even the paid apps available on the Cydia Store can be downloaded for free after adding the required repositories.

Plus all the 11 points of the earlier heading.

I have given you thirteen reasons to why you should Jailbreak without encouraging piracy and 18 if you want to indulge in piracy. If these cannot convince you to Jailbreak, nothing will.

I gave you 18 reasons for why to Jailbreak. Can you give me 5 for Why not to jailbreak?

iTunes is one software which I detest. Besides using oodles of memory on my not so amazing PC it tries to access my I-work-only-when-not-required Internet at every possible instance. It has a mind-bogglingly huge number of services and applications running in the background at all times (You can ‘end’ processes but that doesn’t serve the purpose in the long run). And on top of all these it doesn’t even allow the user to pause Firmware updates that one is downloading. The option for ‘pause’ is there but Apple forgot to add the resume button so iTunes starts the download again, from the very beginning.

iPhone or iPod touch not being recognised by iTunes?

Have you ever been greeted by these error messages? ;

Please Install Apple Application Support.

Apple Application Support was not found.

AppleMobileDeviceSupport was not found or is not running.

The Bonjour service is not running.

QuickTime needs to be repaired/re-installed.

<Insert error message which made you say “F*** YOU APPLE AND ITUNES!”>

It was around 15 days back when my iTunes refused to recognize my iPod touch (Windows was recognizing it but not iTunes). I was greeted by a pretty straight forward message “The iPod cannot be used because the apple mobile device support is not running”. I checked the processes to verify it. iTunes was correct,  apple mobile device support was not running. I went inside Common Files to run it but was unable to find the .exe file.

A little bit of Goggling told me that a re-installation should fix the problem. I did that (took 15 minutes) but only to be greeted by the same message again. So I downloaded a new setup of iTunes (97 MB ). Uninstalled the earlier version (9.0) and installed 9.1. Even that didn’t work. For the next 2 days I kept installing and re-installing iTunes hoping that Apple Mobile Device Helper (‘Helper’ is the name of the service) would get installed this time. In those 2 days I also observed that Bounjour.exe was also not running and had actually been uninstalled from the system and iTunes was not installing it. So that’s 2 things that the iTunes setup was not installing.

And then the thing I fear almost everyday happened. I dolted. I switched of my iPod in hope that iTunes might recognise the iPod when it’s in the recovery mode. What’s recovery mode? Read on.

I have jailbreaked/broke my iPod using Blackra1n RC3. It’s a tethered jailbreak which means that every time I switch off my iPod I cannot switch it back on without connecting it to a PC and re-Jailbreaking it (takes 30 seconds). When the iPod has been switched off once and you try to start it again it does turn on but only in recovery mode. Nothing works and all you are shown is an iTunes/Apple logo and a USB cable.

I thought I might be able to connect it like this and then repair iTunes somehow. It backfired. iTunes refused to recognise, yet again. But this time I was screwed. Because no application/software anything that connects to an iPod/ iPhone can connect unless iTunes has been installed and works flawlessly. Blackra1n also refused to recognise my iPod and switch it on since iTunes was not recognising it. I was in fix. The owner of a non-working iTunes and a bricked iPod (almost). Since I don’t have another PC/Laptop the only way was to install windows again and re-install iTunes. I get tense and a headache starts when any of my devices stop working (even if I don’t need them).This time I was tensed as hell. I finally managed to switch it on using my neighbor’s computer. It took 2 hours because;

1. His Mac had iTunes 7
2. Had to download iTunes on his Windows system
3. Some DLL files were missing in his system.

With that done my iPod worked fine but what about iTunes? I could have re-installed windows anytime but that could have resulted in me losing my library (it’s not much, just 700 odd songs named track 1; track 2;track3 and so on.. , 2 audio books and a couple of videos [I can see Vivek smiling there]) plus the drivers would have to be installed again, not to mention the softwares. And even after that there was a chance it might not work. Till that point I had read Apple’s shitty article on iPod not recognized in ‘My Computer’ and in iTunes for Windows at least a hundred times. With all done, I finally managed to repair my iTunes. Piece of cake it was. Took 10 minutes. Worked like a charm. How?! Read on.

The fix

Follow the steps below if iTunes is not installing (or not working) a particular service such as iTunesHelper.exe or AppleMobileDeviceService.exe or iPodService.exe or Bonjour or any other service or part of the program that iTunes is not installing even after repeated re-installations. Since single downloadable files for each service is not offered by Apple, we’ll extract them from the main file (iTunesSetup.exe). With this trick you can install the following parts of the software individually:

1. AppleApplicationSupport.msi
2. AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi
3. AppleSoftwareUpdate.msi
4. Bonjour.msi
5. MobileMe.msi
6. QuickTime.msi
7. SetupAdmin.exe
8. iTunes.msi (47 MB only as opposed to 97 MB for the whole setup)

Suppose if QuickTime player is giving you some problems. Why re-install iTunes? Just install QuickTime again! [QuickTime is 25.5 MB as opposed to repairing/re-installing the whole iTunes (97 MB)]. The method is very easy;

1. Make sure you have a setup of iTunes, version doesn’t matter but 9.0 is recommend.
2. Right click on the setup and extract files as you would for any .Zip or .Rar file.
3. Wait.
4. It’s right there! Instead of one setup you have the liberty to install the part you want or which iTunes wasn’t installing earlier for some reason.

Now use the setup to install that one program which was giving you troubles. Like if the error was that “MobileDeviceSupport is not running/working/active” then install AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi .

I still wonder how I wasted so many days trying to fix iTunes when all I had to do was extract the setup!(Apple doesn’t say anything about this). The reason as to why the problem arose and why iTunes was not installing some parts are still unknown. Thanks iTunes for adding to my troubles and thanks Apple for confusing me with a useless article.

All over the internet people are just advising users to try re-installing iTunes and waste their times, I hope this post helps somebody.

I’ll be uploading all those 8 setups individually as a new post.

PS: I have now switched from Blackra1n to Spirit.

UPDATE: You can now download iTunes.msi, Sysadmin.exe, QuickTime.msi, MobileMe.msi, AppleSoftwareUpdate.msi, AppleApplicationSupport.msi, Bonjour.msi and AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi from an iTunes Setup from here.

I’ve seen people take up blogging to earn money from AdSense. Even before writing their first Blog post (they don’t blog for too long as they give up after 10-20 posts) they try to collect information on Adsense. This is wrong, at least in my eyes. It’s a totally personal opinion, no offense. I started Blogging because I wanted to see if I could write well. During those essay writing questions in an English exam I saw the word limit as an enemy. Not because I couldn’t adjust my thoughts to fit the word limit but because it would eventually lead to some key points which would have made my essay look better, skipped.

I started blogging seriously only a few weeks back. Adsense was never on my mind. Though I had initially planned on getting a domain registered and shift to hosting on JaoPapa Err. GoDaddy or somewhere else, I now stand corrected and have no plans of shifting to hosting unless I have some decent amount of traffic coming to my blog to at least pay off the hosting charges.

Even without having ads on the Blog and without hosting (ads are possible on WordPress.com blog though only for blogs with 25000+ monthly hits or VIP blog. And WordPress takes half of the revenue in case of the former) I have earned (or saved) $2.99. A petty sum right? I don’t care, at least I made something.

The way I earned (all right, saved) is quite interesting! If you have been following my blog you must have read my post on the iPhone/iPod App Spawn Lite. I just explained what it is and why I love it. Somehow, the developer of that app saw my review of the App and was kind of impressed. She made a comment and asked me send me an E-mail to her and she would send me a promo code for the full version of the app. A promo code is nothing but a 7/8 digits code which you enter while you are paying for an app. The promo code is accepted in place of money and you are given the app for free!

I was so excited about it because I wanted to use the full version of the app since a long time. Now that I had the promo code, I headed over to iTunes App store. Searched for the app, pressed buy. Entered the code and it worked like charm! $3 dollars saved!

Thanks Nicolai!

PS:  Saying that this post is late would be an understatement.

Image Credit

It’s official now. According to the current leaderboard the video that you see below Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” video has surpassed Charlie bit my finger by some 374,600 views and is currently on top on YouTube. Charlie as of now has got 178,736,003 views while Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” has been played 179,110,603 times. Viewers have confessed of watching Bad Romance 100 times, if not more. The Evolution of Dance is personally my favorite and has naturally slipped from 2nd rank on the leaderboard to 3rd and has fetched 141,248,892 views.

What will be its effect? What will be it’s consequences? Not much, except Lady Gaga getting more views than ever before and Wikipedia’s YouTube article getting updated once again. With Evolution of Dance, a funny video of 2 small children and now Lady Gaga breaking into the top 3, what do you suppose will a video need to surpass these? Will it be yet again a music video or a video that will make us ROFL or an amazing dance sequence? I for one am waiting to see that video which will break the 3000,000,000 mark since I suppose it won’t take Lady Gaga to break the 200,000,000 mark.

For all of you who are blissfully unaware of the video or even Lady Gaga herself is the video which now stands on the number Uno as the most watched video of all time. Other honors bagged by this video are;

The following post describes the happenings of today’s morning which seemed to be so uneventful that it occupied me wholly. The actual post of the happenings in Palika will follow shortly, but I recommend you not to wait for it as it might take anywhere between 60 Earth seconds and 2 light years. The post that will follow will include tips on bargaining, sighting of an almost naked foreigner near Connaught Place (female, I must clarify) , a blacked out Janpath including the North Avenue (somebody’s gonna get screwed) and a small story about a small 2 1/2 feet boy bullying a full grown man almost 6 feet tall. Go through the happenings of before I went to Palika firstly, since it’ll help you understand the next post better and more importantly since you don’t have any other option besides reading this post.

It was morning when I woke up ['duh" is not required since it had been quite some time since the last time I woke up in the morning, had slept at 4] with my mom saying something.  I didn’t pay heed to what she was saying as usual and continued to enjoy the lightness which you feel while you sleep. She told my dad something, my dad told her something and she again told him something then my dad said something which ended the 5 minute long the discussion not   right there but a few meters away from where it had started. I was sleeping throughout this discussion until the 4th minute. I woke up startled because I had heard a word, ‘Palika’. Either it was me going insane or my dad had finally agreed to take me to Palika in the evening.

I had been pestering him to take me to Palika for quite some time now, and not only take but buy stuff as well… Not that I cannot go alone, but because my parents won’t let me go alone. To some extent that is right, but why should I agree? It’s wrong! Coming to a more important point, my dad bargains like a professional (eh? I’ve never seen a professional bargainer though, but if there does exist one either it looks like my dad or it is my dad). It doesn’t take him more than two Earth minutes to make the seller come down from Rs 500 to Rs 300, that is when he’s not even trying.

And considering its Palika, the prices usually start from 500 and can go down to Rs 50 (In some cases even less) if you try hard enough, keep looking at different shops when bargaining. You’ll notice the shopkeeper will keep cutting the price until you hear the price that you had in your mind (Don’t expect to get stuff for free).

I knew that today’s evening will be an exhausting one because if my dad is awesome at bargaining, he’s more awesome at walking and hanging around in shops for no apparent reason until he reveals it you, which he till today hasn’t to anyone in my proximity. Some people might say, why Palika, why not Nehru Place? The answer is that in Nehru Place you can get the best deals possible on stuff that is big which usually involves computers and Printers. But finding small items like a decent case for PSP in Nehru Place is PITA.I usually buy gadgets from retailers who give me a bill and then direct my spaceship towards Palika Bazaar to get buy the accessories and stuff.

I had to go in the evening so had nothing to do all day, so I compiled a list of things that I wanted to buy;

First was my iPod touch’s case/cover. The backside (not the bum side, because it doesn’t have a bum) of my iPod had a mirror finish when it came, now it looks like wood. So to save it from further damage, buying a case was must. Should be around Rs 100-150.

Second was the screen guard for it. It’s been 5 month since I bought it, and I’ve not bothered to do that. Actually I have but my dad didn’t bother (shifting blame feels so good…). Should be Rs 50-100.

Third was a wall charger for it. It’s not economical to switch on a 450W computer just to charge a 12W device. I had this charger from a Chinese phone which my dad had misplaced. The charger had a port for a USB cable to fit in. It could probably charge the iPod too but after hours of dilemma and confusion I gave up the idea as the chances of my iPod getting fried were really really high. Had no idea (looks like Noida, doesn’t it?) about the pricing though, still guessed it to be around Rs 150-200.

The fourth item was kind of optional, like not actually required. It was a data cable-cum- charging cable for my PSP. I had bought one originally (from Palika) when I bought my PSP (from a Sony Store), but it gave away after about a year. Not bad I must say. I took a data cable from a friend who had got one with his Philips IPOD which he eventually lost. It was of no use to him so I took it from him he gave it to me. I could transfer data with it but couldn’t charge my PSP at the same time. Though the wall charger that Sony provided still works fine. Should be around Rs 150, I assumed.

I wanted a wall charger so that I could charge my iPod without my PC and I wanted a charger for my PSP so that I could charge it through my PC! Technosis I tell you!

I added up the total amount, came to be Rs 450-600. I wasn’t expecting this much, but dad seemed in a decent enough mood and he had to had to buy me these things, after all he had promised. But then, parents promise a lot but do they stick to it?

I still had about 5 hours. Wasted Spent some time loitering around doing exactly nothing. Read 2 chapters of  The Restaurant at the End of the Universe on my iPod. Went to my parent’s room for some reason which I forget almost immediately when I entered the room. Sat on the floor for some reason which is still unknown to me and dozed off…….

If you have ever in your life slept on cold hard floor at a time when you were totally exhausted you can probably understand what I mean. The cold hard floor had a feel of its own which almost unsurprisingly felt as if I was sleeping on cold hard floor.

After that quick nap of 3 hours I started getting ready. If you are something like me, it won’t take time for you to dress up or even dress down for that matter. 3 minutes flat is what takes me, include washing my face and the time comes down to 2 minutes but not flat this time.

Grabbed the car keys, dad was for the first time in my 16 years of uneventful life ready on time before me. :O . He did seem to be in a good mood.  We moved out of the house, crossed it’s boundaries. Dad sat in the car as I started it, engaged it in the first gear released the clutch and pressed the accelerator simultaneously and moved closer to our destination, Palika.

UPDATE: The second part of this post might get delayed a bit, no not by 60 Earth seconds and definitely not by 2 light years. Just by a couple of four coupled hours, that’s it.

⇨ Don’t waste time remembering terms, they will all be outdated by the time you actually get to use them

⇨ If it feels complicated, it probably is, and will break down the first chance it gets

⇨ Most of the terms that consumers come across are used to sell a product. Don’t be             intimidated or fooled by any term

⇨ Replace any term that you don’t understand with the word “magic” and continue

⇨ Stare down at the terms, and make them blink first

⇨ Those using the terms probably don’t know exactly what they are talking about either (e.g  Planets)

How noobs cope up(or rather give up) with the ever increasing complexity and number of tech jargon.

This post has been taken from Digit’s March 2010′s issue’s article on page 120 named “How to deal with tech jargon?” though the image (copied) was my idea(I am so intelligent!!)

Which ones are Chinese?

Trust me, if I delete the names of these phones from the image above I don’t have an iota of doubt that you’ll get confused in recognizing which ones are branded and which ones are ‘Chinese’. Chinese because of course they have been produced in China. But don’t worry, only the looks are same. The features of the Chinese phones are not par with those of branded phones rather they are 42 steps ahead. The Chinese market gives us almost GOD phones. Considering their prices I have nothing to complain about.

You must have of course heard that what a 12K branded phone (Nokia, Sony Erickson, Samsung et all) can do can be achieved to some extend by a Chinese phone costing a meager 4K. The question that arises here is not that can the Chinese phones actually do all this but rather how do the Chinese phones do this? The answer is quite simple. Manufacturers of these kinds of mobile phones have tried and tested technology in their hands which was developed by the branded and established companies. The small manufacturers just need to adapt these technologies, that’s it! They don’t plan to make big in the industry (they cannot) and only care on launching devices which will catch the consumer’s attention.

These small companies which had a very small market share when came into existence could release a phone with a hell lot of features and to some extent even combining the features of two totally different mobiles was possible since they could release mobiles with the latest technologies without worrying about future sales (almost no warranty).

Nokia N95 clone made by Chinese company with built in laser pointer (Image via intomobile.com)

The mobile which you see to your left is a ‘clone’ of Nokia N95. It houses a mediocre 2MP camera, a loudspeaker which is probably louder than your PC speakers. So the alibi I-didn’t-hear-my-phone-ringing- will not work from now. It has a 3inch QVGA 320*240 screen with 64million colors.

A front camera is also present though3G is absent. The phone looks just like Nokia’s N95 (it’s a clone remember?) and is one-fourth the price of the actual N95. Not to mention you can even watch TV on this thing. Did I mention the built in laser pointer? Not actually required but might come in handy some day. 2 SIM ports on top of that too.

But how can they produce mobiles so cheaply and even sell them at a very reasonable rate? The answer is yet again simple. The following are some of the factors that established brands have to spend money on thus increasing the price of their devices:

1. No R&D: Constant advancements are being made in the field of technology. The rule of the field is simple

Who makes it first, sells it first.

For instance touchscreen has revolutionized the industry of mobile phones but a lot of money had been invested in improving it and making it good enough to be used in mainstream mobile phones. Companies need to get back this money from the buyers in order to achieve a profitable turnover. This is of course achieved by increasing the prices of the devices.

Apple's touchscreen phone released(not sure about this) way back in 1983.

The picture above is not actually related to the topic of this post but this phone from Apple which dates back to 1983 and the best  part if have still not realized is that it’s touchscreen!

2. No warranty. Well, almost no warranty. The best you can get is 6 months but mostly what you get is equal to the time you spend in the shop after paying for the device. Once you open the shop door to get out and close it behind, your warranty is over. How does this help in reducing the cost? The answer is yet again simple. The branded companies have (supposedly) service centers with at least 6 employees in each one of them in every nook and corner of the world. This does lead to customer satisfaction but the cost that they incur for these kinds of services is almost unbelievable and yet we have to pay for it.

3. No Advertising: From Zoo Zoo’s and Cheeka (the pug features in Vodafone ads) by Vodafone to city full of people let loose on hopping balls by Sony Ericsson are ways of attracting consumers. This way though succeeds in increasing sales but the cost of the advertised device increases

Cheeka (that's his name, I still call him Vodafone vala kutta)

On the contrary, Chinese phone manufactures don’t have to do this. They get ready, tried and tested technology at zero R&D costs. Since there is almost no warranty, the question of availability of service centers at every nook and corner does not arise. Usually the seller himself acts as a service center employee. Advertising is minimum. So costs are low.

4. Quality The parts that are used are sub standard which eventually leads to the lifetime of the phone getting shorter. Quality parts are expensive to manufacture. Don’t expect sturdy phones from the Chinese makers. If you want something sturdy, go for Nokia. Drop a Chinese phone twice and be ready to start the car, because you’ll be needing a new phone. Misfires or as to say malfunctioning of a particular part does happen but is rare.

This helps them in providing mobiles at unbelievable rates.

Some recent happenings in mobile laws have though changed this scenario a bit.Only mobiles with valid EMEI’s are only allowed in the markets. These changes are for good and I don’t need to point out the reason as to why these laws have been put in in place.

Now the question arises that why should we buy these phones? They have almost no warranty and no guarantee towards safety of the users! These phones are almost at one-third rate compared to the branded phones. So if you suppose plan to use a phone for 2 years, why spend 15K on it when you can get better and more features for 5K? Even if the phone stops working, you can always go out and buy another one, it’ll still be 5K cheaper!

But on a more serious note, these Chinese manufactures cannot and should not replace the brands because the brands provide us with technology and new features which the Chinese are no doubt awesome at replicating but useless at inventing.

And there are users in the market who are ready to splurge for the sake of peace of mind. They will not go roaming around (or underground) in Pallika, or Nehru Place or Lamington Road in Mumbai.

I for one would opt for a Chinese phone over a Nokia make any day. What about you?

I just received the monthly bill of my mobile phone or to say correctly, of my connection which unfortunately is Dolphin. Dolphin is under the so very good MAHANAGAR TELEPHONE NIGAM UNLIMITED. Unlimited because whatever it does has no limits. From giving a 599 combo plan subscriber the speed of 4999 combo plan (I’m not complaining) to owning Dolphin which does everything except giving a good reception not to mention a satisfactory customer support. It can do anything, ranging from anything to anything.

The customer support does exactly what it was made to do, make the subscribers wait. First you call the (if you have enough signal that is), then have the option of selecting   either Hindi or English. You press the desired key, send a DTMF but unsurprisingly it chooses what it wants to opt for regardless of what you wanted. Then you press the required keys to get to the customer careless support. At this point you should switch to the loudspeaker of your phone and get down to completing some work because this will take some time. At the same time don’t forget about the call too, not that it will connect to those careless support but might drop. You don’t really want your call to get dropped after waiting for a quarter of an hour (yes, that’s true).

And if you had the patience and you showed it. Wasted 15 minutes of your life to subsequently waste 15 more then there would be someone on the other end of the phone (don’t worry if there isn’t , waste 15 more minutes and try again) saying a very lousy hello not to mention the monotonous welcome-to-MTNL-customer-care-How-help-you-may-I. Then the torture begins. Sometimes, they pick up the phone, say hello and then hang up :/

They’ll ask for your mobile/ landline number. Be ready to tell it twice, they don’t get it the first time or maybe it’s the connection which doesn’t let them. You tell them their problem. They search it in their guide, ask a senior and reply

Sir abhi system hang hain, bad main call karna.

Or

Abhi problem hain, kaam nahin kar raha-thank you for calling. Have a nice day.

Or

Namaste sir, I am sorry Tuesday tak kuch nahi ho sakta because weekend ke baad holi hai.

And you keep staring your phone trying to recollect what happened and as to how you just wasted 15 minutes of your life.

But sometimes, mind you, sometimes your luck is good and the guy (girls are never) on the other end is good and is willing to help you. He talks with etiquette and in the language in which you feel comfortable. But you still have to go though the 15 minutes waiting time. I think the time has been planned so that only customers with genuine problems would be able to connect as prank callers would never wait so much.

Signal reception is amazing. Sometimes most of the time it is not there. It is there when you don’t need it and there when you need it. Most of the time the network is busy. More importantly if suppose you have 5 out of 8 bars and you dial a number, the bars start disappearing and eventually come down to the point of ‘no network available’.

You can’t put busy status on both, but after some time both assumes you are idle and the network gets busy itself.

The most awesome feature is the’ skip SMS’ feature. It is in built in all Dolphin connections. Basically what it does is it eats up all those SMS’s that were sent to your number when your phone was switched off. Ingenious, isn’t it? You will never, mind you never ever get to know who sent you what SMS! And you might receive a ‘Happy Holi’ SMS from a friend on Diwali. Don’t strangle the friend because it wasn’t his fault.

On a more serious note, I received my bill today. It was almost Rs 1100. The following are the death list details:

Airtime charges

a INCOMING AIRTIME                                                     0.00

b OUTGOING AIRTIME                                                     188.50

c VOICE MAIL USAGE                                                        0.00

d SHORT MESSAGE SERVICE                                           762.75!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You see there? I don’t think I need to explain the matter any farther. 762! OMG! How is that even possible! OK so I did explain it but will not any further. My mom will kill me! Ok fine, not anymore. I’ve taken a decision and will take the action shortly.

The Dolphin is sinking and it will take you with it, that is if you are using it. So, therefore I’m surrendering my SIM card. I don’t want such humongous bills at any cost.In a short sentence, it sucks! I am planning to opt for Airtel. I’ll be changing my number since the chances of MNP coming before they send me a 100k bill are not very bright.

I got an internet connection around nine months back and Demonoid was one of the first torrent sites I visited and was quite lucky (and surprised) to see that the registrations were open. So I wasted almost no time in registering. And since then I have not seen the registrations open even a single time. I am giving away free Demonoid Invites.

Demonoid is the best torrent site I have ever seen mainly because it is limited to quality users, but don’t worry the seeding is awesome. I was able to leech Mahabharat! A freaking 12 GB torrent! (yes, I did seed it for a day afterward). The site has almost every torrent you can think of. They have a no spam policy which works almost perfectly as there is a complain box right next to every comment (5 complains and you’re banned). I use Demonoid almost exclusively and only rarely don’t find a torrent that I’m looking for.

The only problem that I’ve experienced with Demonoid is that it gives me the following message once a day for sure

Maintenance

We are currently performing the daily site maintenance.
We’ll be back soon

Do not click refresh. It will send you back to this page.

How to get a free Demonoid invite

Besides this, no problem at all. But one problem is and I think, will always be there that is registration. Either you need to be lucky like me and open the site at the time when registrations are open, which I suppose is once a year for 1 hour. So the possibility of you getting an account is 1:8760.

But luck doesn’t always come in play, so you won’t get an account. Not unless  you have a friend like me. You can even get an account by entering an “invitation code” which can only be obtained by a current user. I’ve seen people selling these invite codes for something like $5 each. I’ll give you a discount. All I need is a you to follow the following steps.

UPDATE 3: Users who Tweet about this post with the post’s link in the tweet and paste the link to the tweet as a proof in the comments will be higher on the priority list among the users who want the invites.

UPDATE: The following post doesn’t matter much now as the problem has been resolved. The problem was either on Bing’s side or it was OpenOffice’s website at fault.The reason is still unknown. Though you can still go through the post.  It’s nice and you will definitely learn something.

Sometime back around November, there was this news about some hefty amounts of money being transferred by Microsoft’s Bing from legit customers and retailers to some not so legit users. And boy, Microsoft did something really sensible, sensible as in what they have been doing from the starting -screwing up. This flaw was know as Bing’s Cashback flaw. The sensible thing that I am talking about is really sensible. Microsoft threatened legal action against the man who discovered the problem. See? How sensible. Rather than coming out their closet, accepting their mistake and trying to close the loophole/glitch they try to sue the person who found out the problem in the first place!. But these are of course my notions. The source of my knowledge is the Internet and Companies and Country (ies) make sure that the users all over the world remain blissfully unaware of the bugs/ glitches/info due to which their privacy might have been compromised at some point of time or more importantly they might have lost all their hard earned money. The reason I bought this topic up is due to a new problem being faced by Bing which currently has a market share of about 10% in US and slightly lower in other countries. A 10% market share is not huge but still it is significant. More importantly because Bing is the default search engine on Internet Explorer and it takes more than a few steps to change it to Google or a search engine of your choice. The new problem concerns OpenOffice.Org. Go to Bing and try searching for the string “OpenOffice”. You will get almost everything except the official website of the multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Bing makes sure that you don’t find the link to the official website until the 5th or 6th page for that matter. The reason for the problem is still unknown to blissfully unaware netizens like us. An obvious explanation for this problem can be that Microsoft doesn’t want people to opt for the Open Source suite and rather want to sell their own. Another thing here can be a flaw in Bing’s algorithm which is forcing it to behave this way. The answer is of course best known to Microsoft itself and I hope that they do bring this topic up and not sue me for bringing it up And as some places on the Internet say, Is Microsoft trying to kill OpenOffice? But with a 10% market share, I doubt if that is even possible.