Author Archive

May 05

Table for two please..or four?

“Get a big TV, don’t buy a small one. Get a 3 burner cooking range, two burners is too small”, with these instructions my daily phone call to Ma comes to an end. Its been less than 3 weeks since I moved to the new city and found myself a pad. Of course the place is empty and its been upto me to spruce it up the way I want it.

Equipped with a shoe string budget and purely functional needs in mind, I scoot off every now and then to the nearby home stores to add bits to my shack. At the end of each such visit I report back to Ma about my purchases and how it fits in well! Unfortunately Ma always has a different view, while I look at smaller furniture, small TV, small refrigerators…her demands are for the big stuff. Its unspoken but well understood that she wants me to buy everything according to how the needs shall be when I am married. It annoys me to no end but I always stop just short of explaining it to her, for I guess she may not comprehend it too well.

When I buy smaller stuff it gives me a comfort that I am still single, not getting sucked up into the family life just yet. Anything family size makes me aware that this freedom might end soon, its almost like marking my territory by buying things which are meant a single person to use…ay! even a dual burner seems to be an overkill in my kitchen! Constant trips to attend weddings of my friends who are now a part of this epidemic(as Barney said in HIMYM) doesn’t do me any good either, for she now thinks that I am ready to be domesticated.

For now I am winning the battle by citing financial constraints(which are partially true as well) but I know one day she’d have it her way, it would the day when Ma would visit me for a few weeks and change the landscape of the house buying comforts for her imaginary daughter-in-law whose name, arrival date, and whereabouts are still unknown.

*** Disclaimer ****

The house in the image isn’t mine(flicked off the net) and I am not getting married! So please don’t congratulate me and scare the bones out of me! :-)

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Posted in Life, Thoughts, funny

Apr 17

Twitter Clients for Nokia – A shootout

I had been promising a blog post if someone suggested me Nokia Symbian based Twitter clients. So here it is, a set of 4 free clients tested on my Nokia 5230 3G phone.  Hope one of these fits the bill for you, almost all of them are easily available over Nokia Ovi or otherwise(have given a link though). Of course I have not tested Gravity, because it is a paid app.

Snaptu

Snaptu is a Java based client and as a result supported on a variety of phones, which makes it an attractive application. Another key advantage being that it is more like a mashup of different applications like Facebook, Weather, Twitter, Picasa at a single place. The user can add or remove his favorite applications as provided by Snaptu.

I have been a loyal Snaptu user since I bought my phone and have been using it primarily for Twitter.  The biggest issue which I faced with Snaptu is on screen rotate, in order to fit in to the rotated screen the application tries hard to fit in but almost always gets stuck at ‘Rotating…’ and I ended up restarting my cell to get the app back on. This is quite annoying if your phone has an accelerometer and supports screen rotate.

Advantages

  • Java application, runs on many phones including older N Series phones
  • Wide range of apps can run through Snaptu, making it a powerful single point of access
  • Auto updates silently as key app runtimes are downloaded on runtime
  • Good Interface
  • Supports Retweet, DM, URL access
  • Separately shows Updates and @ tweets, which makes it a very powerful twitter client

Disadvantages

  • Gets stuck at screen rotate
  • Speed

Tweets60

As the name goes, Tweets60 is for Symbian 6 OS. It is a very light client, particularly quick to install and use on Nokia phones. Touted as the next big thing after Gravity, I tested TweetS60 Lite on my phone, hoping that it could just be the end of the search.

Post login the application doesn’t show any signs of trying to update my timeline. It’s a long wait as the polling settings are manual. This enables you to save GPRS bandwidth if its expensive on your side of the world.

Ok so I now selected the Refresh setting from the Options Menu(not as navigable as Snaptu), but this User Interface would definitely be very useful on a non-touch phone where two menu options at the bottom are to be used for almost everything.

The application did refresh my timeline, but scrolling is painful, not as smooth as Snaptu and I ended up using the stylus. The Profile images never refreshed and while the timeline is updated I cannot scroll through.

Advantages

  • Made for Symbian
  • Light
  • Supports all basic functionalities including following, unfollowing, RT etc…
  • Can easily minimize the application to background
  • Stable

Disadvantages

  • Interface not as colorful/cool as other clients
  • Does not fully utilize touch features of your phone, although rotating works well.

STEW

STEW is a widget for Nokia phones and can be easily integrated on the main screen shortcuts of your phone. I had read amazing reviews about STEW on the net, so decided to test it out myself.

STEW opens through the browser of your phone, although this may not be noticeable.

I dab the application to open it, and wait…the screen goes blank! I get a feeling that it is hung up but no, it comes back to life…a good 7-8 seconds of staring at the blank screen. Okay so here I got, entering my login credentials, and the screen pops a warning that the login details are being sent as plain text and would not be encrypted!

Then the cool STEW interface pops up. I love the color theme and cool icons, but the application doesn’t support most of the common twitter features. All I can do is update status, search for tweets or view the refresh settings. Moreover, on screen rotate the timeline text does not justify within the screen edges, thus not readable.

Advantages

  • None really, except the interface

Disadvantages

  • Very slow load times
  • Very limited tweeting support, unless you with to type @ or RT yourself
  • Text justification goes for a toss when the screen is rotated

Nokia Messaging for Social Networks (BETA)

The is the last application I tested on my Phone. As you can see it is still in BETA, and is freely downloadable on Ovi.

The communities application supports facebook and MySpace too, the user needs to add his account details and can simultaneously login into these services.

The loading time is slick and the interface is quite comfortable. The best feature is a right side pane on the screen which has shortcuts for DM, RT, @ and favorites. It makes it very easy to use the application, it also has a planned support for uploading images directly from the phone and tweet them. There is also a drop down which can be used to select twitter pages as on the website.

One downside of the application is the constant popups requests for internet connection authentication which renders it almost impossible to use on my phone. Maybe other users do not get those popups.

Advantages

  • Nokia’s native application
  • Supports Facebook and Myspace too
  • Smooth interface
  • Supports most common twitter features
  • Screen shortcuts

Disadvantages

  • Still in Beta
  • No option to save login details
  • Annoying Internet authentication popups

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Posted in Reviews, Technology

Mar 25

Leaving Maximum City aka Mumbai aka Bombay

There is a silly line which I mutter every time I get down on the VT station (okay! CSTM for the MNS and SS) with my friends. Watching the crowd, I’d quote innumerable hindi films:

ये है मुंबई शहर. सपनो का शहर. यहाँ सबको जल्दी है. खाने की जल्दी. ऑफिस जाने की जल्दी. पैसे कमाने की जल्दी. जीने की जल्दी. रोज़ यहाँ हजारो लोग आते है अपने सपनो को पूरा करने..

I arrived in Mumbai around 6 months ago, for my job required me to. I had always believed that if one could survive in Mumbai one could survive anywhere. I had been here before, but always as a visitor, an outsider just for short trips. But this time, I was meant to stay here and live the place.

Within a week of my landing here I ended up living in Dadar. Oh yeah! I was living in the townside as a Mumbaikar would say. For them anything ahead of Sion is a part of the suburb! I guess I had well avoided the most stressful activity for any newcomer, of finding a ‘decent’ place to stay, thanks to an old friend.

Like Morgan Freeman once talked of life being institutionalized my life started oscillating between the 8.41 AM Thane Fast from Dadar and the 6.27 PM CST Slow from Thane back home. Within 15 days I was the champion of the Central Line with a good awareness of surviving Western and Harbor too. I could tell you how much time in exact minutes it takes between point A to point B. I could lounge myself or squirrel through crowds to get in the trains. You could quiz me for any station sequence and I’d ace it!

In between work and trains, the endless stream of people and constant acitivity at any time of the day made it so alive…nothing like the sleepy towns I have been to. Between the extremities of lavish homes at Khar and the people living off the city streets I was amazed by the ‘in your face’ nature of life here.

Hundreds of Mani’s Dosas(What! you never been to Mani’s Cafe in Matunga?) and Filter Kapi fueled my mornings enabling me to be a corporate labor each day, with Mani never realizing how he was fueling India’s GDP through an able manager like myself!

Marine Drive and Nariman Point

Our weekends were sprinkled with our Foodie desires and frequent visits to the Marine Drive. That stretch of Queen’s Necklace would continue to be one of the favorite places of the city, almost an oasis of peace in bustling city. It was a part of my first evening here and I hope it shall be a part of my last evening here too.

Did I love the city? Do I want to leave it? These questions keep coming, but I feel they are irrelevant…afterall the choice has been made, my preferences do not matter. But, I do know for sure that this city allows one to dream and pursue them…it is both kind and ruthless to people….Like Sinatra once sang:

“This town is a lonely town…Not the only town like-a this town…This town is a make-you town…Or a break-you-town and bring-you-down town…This town is a quiet town…Or a riot town like this town…This town is a love-you town…and push-you-’roundtown”

I survived Bombay…and I know I can now survive anywhere.

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Posted in India, Life, Thoughts

Mar 11

Hair strands falling off my head….

Yep! Like the French army fled against the British in the Battle of Agincourt, my hair strands have decided the give up and flee from my scalp. Needless to say it just takes away a bit more of the already low levels of self confidence I had about my looks.

If looking at the stranger in the mirror wasn’t enough, there are always infrequent observers(aka cousins and relatives) and the visits to barber which serve as a cruel reminder that I may be going bald.

A few months ago, on a visit to my home for a family event, a cousin observed, “Arre you have lost so much hair!”. Not only did i want to retort back by saying,”Oh yeah! When did this happen, they were all there like last night when i checked! Strange, I didn’t know!” I also wanted to top it off by boxing him in the face.

A few months later, a visit to the hair salon(the frequency of these trips have already dropped now!), the barber giggled and said,”Arre Sir! What happened, you have so little hair left on the scalp!” I just muttered,”You that means less revenue for you and more savings for me!”

Last month my sister send me a big bottle of shampoo from the US(yeah imported shampoo!), and it struck me…it could very well be the last bottle of shampoo I’d ever need!

Even dad now looks weirdly at me, I know he’s looking at the scalp and its last few battalions. I know that he is thinking, how could this egg-to-be ended up in my family of good haired people. Frankly, I haven’t gotten a clue, maybe its genetics or maybe its water…all I know is that with each passing day my head is getting smoother.

I know everyone would reach there in another decade, its just that I am reaching there first! I always liked to get attention, but being the only egg in the house doesn’t do me much good. Of course I’d expect the ladies to look beyond the obvious in me(while I may not be reciprocating that!)…and yes research says that balding is also a sign of virility!(Okay my only selling point!)

Neither is it controllable, nor did I bring it upon me! But my hairs have decided to flee.

PS-Did you ever notice, that the MD of Marico(of all hair products like Parachute etc…) is bald! ;-)

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Posted in Health, Thoughts, funny, story

Feb 21

Installing Nokia Ovi Maps and the nightmare!

Installing/Upgrading Nokia Ovi Maps on my Nokia 5230, and then downloading India Maps data on it was not an easy job. This deserves a DIY post.

I believe this installation process would atleast help Nokia 5230, 5530, 5800 XpressMusic users, maybe others too.

Before we begin, the pre-requisites for this are:

  • Microsoft .NET 3.0 framework or higher must be installed on your computer
  • Nokia PC Suite must be installed
  • Data Cable (needless to say here, but you’d need that) for your Nokia model

A lot of readers would tell me that the process I mention below is longer, and I could have done the updates via the Nokia Ovi Suite instead (which I did try to do, but the India map data would never download properly, even after 5-6 attempts).

So here’s are the two applications you need to download, and everything shall be fine:

  • Nokia Maps Updater – Download this to install latest version of Nokia Maps on your phone
  • Nokia Maps Loader – This one is critical to download the Map data for your country on your Nokia phone (the advantage is that you’d use less of your data bandwidth while using GPS now, as the map data would already be on your phone)

Once you are done installing the above applications, do this:

  • Run Nokia Maps Updater, connect your phone to the computer, download the latest version of Ovi Maps. Let it sync and install on your phone.
  • Keep the phone connected, now Run Nokia Maps Loader, Select your country and click on download maps. It’ll download map data from the web onto your computer and then sync it up on your phone.

Only disadvantage is that your phone needs to be connected all the time, and it screws up when you get a call in between the updates! Hope this posting is of help.

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Posted in Reviews, Technology

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