Gas trouble! :)

No, I am actually talking about domestic LPG gas :).

I recently applied for an LPG connection at a HP distributor in my locality. According to the rules, you need to pay deposit for cylinder and regulator only while getting a new connection. However, all the distributors, irrespective of the company - HP, Indane and others, force you to buy accessories like lighter, gas hose, stove etc. This particular distributor insisted me on buying pressure cooker, iron box, mixer, apron etc! Since I had all these appliances already at my home I didn't agree to purchase any of them. I was promptly denied a connection though I had all the required documents like ration card! They even said its company rule and they have to follow. Please note that the purchase of accessories is OPTIONAL irrespective of what they say.

Since I was in no hurry to get a connection, I thought I will try some alternatives. I wrote to HP on their website. To my surprise, they replied in less than 24 hours! They also me asserted that those things were indeed optional. You can check the complaint and reply from HP at http://jihaan.hpcl.co.in/booking/Search.aspx. (click 'Track complaints' at bottom left and enter the reference number: 09019740 and email id: ranjith(dot}kagathi(at}gmail.com. You might have to do this twice some times as their website seems to have some bugs :)) I showed the print out of the mail communication to the distributor and they sanctioned the connection without any more hastles immediately!

So if you are planning to apply for a gas connection, don't pay any extra fees for unnecessary accessories.

Retreiving lost e-mail contacts

Last month I faced some trouble with my yahoo webmail account. There was a virus attack in my mail box and it sent some random product promotional mail to all the contacts in my contact list. This was lesser of the problem as I only had to send a follow up mail cautioning every one in my contact list about the virus attack. But after a week or so, all my contacts were deleted from my contact list! I had never backed up my contacts and hence this was a jolt to me. However, I was lucky to find a copy of the mail sent by the virus in my sent items folder. This mail had all my contacts in the 'To' list. There were well beyond a 100 contacts which I had to manually enter in my address book. Yahoo supports contact imports only from specific formats like .csv etc. The problem was to enter the contacts from the sent mail to .csv file so that all the contacts can be imported at one shot. So I used the following trick:

1. I copy-pasted everthing under 'To' list to a text file. This will have one long line of all the contact names, there mail ids with < > and separated by a comma
2. Opened this text file in Textpad, a very useful text editor.
3. I had to get all the contacts in vertical order in a column format to be copied into a .csv file. So I recorded a macro in Textpad to search for comma and replace it with Enter key. Now I played the macro until all the contacts moved into new lines. This resulted in vertical (column aligned) ordering of my contacts. (Note that you can not use Find/Replace function to replace any character with new line!)
4. Some slight adjustments had to be done for which I copied this ordered contacts into a Microsoft excel and used 'Text to columns' function to achieve them same.
5. Exported my contacts from yahoo as .csv which gave a blank csv file as all the contacts were deleted. Copied the ordered contacts into this .csv file and imported into yahoo contacts. Boom!!! My contacts were back :)

Twitter v/s blogging

I have been twittering a lot recently and that has taken a toll on my blogging. I twitter a lot now and blog a lot less. This blog is about twitter so as to create a harmony between twitter and my blogging :)

What is twitter?
Twitter is a concept of micro-blogging where you need to answer 1 simple question - 'what are you doing now?' how many ever number of times you want. But only one constraint - your text has to be limited to 140 characters (each alphabet, number or punctuation is a character) per post, hence the name micro blogging.

How is answering a question related to blogging?
Though twitter expects you to answer just 'what are you doing now?', people have started posting anything and everything to that question. Sometimes I just post a T-shirt quote that catches my attention at a traffic signal. There are few news agencies which post news highlights as and when they get to know about it. So its fast growing as blogging where people instantly post their views.

How do I micro-blog?
Simple. Create an account at twitter.com. You can now start 'post'ing or sending your posts to your account via various channels -
1. Internet: Login to your account and post a message just like your blog
2. SMS : Register your mobile number with twitter.com and associate it with your account. Whenever you send a text message from your mobile to twitter number, the text message is immediately posted on your account
3. Internet: There are various websites, widgets, iPhone applications etc which provide you alternate ways of posting to your account.

'Twitter' has become synonymous to micro-blogging and also since its quicker to pronounce twitter than micro-blogging, 'twitter' is being used as a verb for posting. All the posts to twitter.com are also referred to as 'twitter-feeds' (similar to RSS feeds), 'tweets' and so on. I guess english is getting richer every day with new words :)

How does my friends read my micro-blog?
Just like any other blog, you can share an url of your micro blog that your friends can visit to see all your posts till date. For example, my twitter url is http://twitter.com/ranjith_ka (or www.ranjithka.com/twitter) Alternately, your friends can also create an account with twitter and start 'following' your twitter posts. Similarly, you can also follow anyone's tweets. The tweets of all your friends you are following will be displayed in a consolidated, chronologically ordered list for your reference. So you dont have to really visit all your friends' twitter pages to see their posts. This is very similar to RSS, and hence called Twitter-feeds.

140 characters are too less to express myself.
You can post a text larger than 140 characters but it will be posted as separate posts each of maximum length 140 characters. Its exactly similar to the SMS on your mobile phone with certain character limit.
Believe me, ever since I have started twittering, my communication has improved and I am able to express most of my views in less than 140 characters. Twitter helps you in refining your communication skills :)

What if I want to post more than text?
Twitter allows you to do lot more than posting text. You can upload a picture for your profile. You can also upload any pictures on twitpic.com and give a link to those pics in your tweets. Also if you ever want to share a really long hyper-link in twitter, you can create a 'tiny url' out of the hyper-link which is actually a compressed version of the really long link and share it in twitter so that you have space to accomodate in 140 characters.

Is there any other cool stuff I can do with twitter?
Yes. There are already a lot of widgets, applications on mobile phones developed for twitter with which you can do a lot of cool stuff. If you are a geek and want to do something on your own, twitter has provided an API with which you can build applications. This API is free of cost unlike the iPhone SDK.

Which is better - twittering or blogging?
I haven't yet figured that out. I might very well never be able pick one of them over the other. But I will list certain advantages and disadvantages of twitter compared to blogging.

Advantages of twitter:
1. Its instantaneous and you need less time to post
2. Since the character limit is well within SMS limit, you can just SMS to twitter
3. Lot of your friends will go through your twitter messages than blogging because its quicker to go through smaller posts (notice the length of this article :))
4. You can choose to get twitter updates from your friends as SMS to your mobile. So you'll always be updated about whereabouts of your friends, what they are doing, eating, thinking etc (ofcourse, provided they twitter :))
5. It can be a really good travelogue
6. Can be your online diary which you can update many times a day with small pieces of info instead of a consolidated post before you go to sleep

Disadvantages:
1. You can not provide a lot of information in tweets. For example I can not post an article like this in tweets
2. I can nott write a nice travelogue with accompanied photos on a single page
3. You will get addicted to twitter very quickly :)

Some tips:
In India, where public WiFi is still a dream and internet on mobile phone is expensive, the best way to twitter is through SMS. But SMS to twitter number in india (5566595) will be charged Rs. 3 per SMS. There are some websites which give you an alternate number to which you can post tweets. They in turn post those tweets to your twitter account using the twitter API. However, you need to share your twitter account details with them so that they can post to your account. So be careful. I have an account with www.vakow.com which gives me a local number to send SMS to.


Follow me at www.ranjithka.com/twitter. Happy twittering.

A visit to innovative film city bangalore

After a lot of (mis)communication, some 7 of us finally set out to visit innovative film city (ifc) near bangalore. Its located near Bidadi off the Bangalore-Mysore highway. There is a deviation to film city at around 3 kms from the Wonder-la gate. We initially planned to be there before the gates open at around 10.30 am. Since we had planned the visit on a Saturday, the morning started for most of us at around 10 am. We almost cancelled the plan since we were late according to our plan. But finally the enthusiasm overtook our lazyness. I had stayed back at Harish-Adi-Rajashekar-Mudit's (HARM) place previous night after celebrating Rajashekar's birthday at Leela palace. Varun, Modi and Ravish came over, everyone had some breakfast at HARM and we were all ready on bikes and the car by 11.30.
The Mysore road was as usual busy till the Rajarajeshwari gate and then it was quite smooth drive. After witnessing a road block due to a very strange accident (we still are not sure how the accident could have occured), we finally arrived the the ifc at around 12.30. We had only an afternoon to enjoy everything that ifc boasts about. There are two kind of entry tickets to ifc
1. The basic Rs.50 ticket which is just the entry and tickets have to be bought inside for individual museum/activity
2. The VIP pass Rs.699 which includes the ticket price for all the entries inside.
Without any second thought we opted the 1 st option of entry only and selectively purchased the entry tickets inside.

After a couple of snaps at the entrance we entered what is known as the main street. Its supposed to be a shopping street but at the time being only Bata showroom is up. We had read the reviews of ifc before hand so we knew what exactly to visit - wax museum, 4D theatre, mirror maze, Ripley's belive it or not (which was unfortunately closed for maintenance that day). Wax museum was good with most of the statues better than what we had expected it would be. More or less real life sized (we weren't sure of the real life size of those celebrities :)) You can have a look at these pictures on my online photo album
The next was to watch the 4D movie. Most of liked it, Modi didn't feel it was worth 100 bucks though. The 4th dimension is there are nozzles around to spray water, release air/smoke. Harish and Adi even felt some tickling tentacles near their legs. Others didnt feel it... we finally concluded it was because of our thick trousers that we didn't feel it. If you want to feel every 4th Dimension, a thin trouser is recommended :) Overall, its a must watch. There are some good video games in the same complex.
Had some lunch at the food court - there are options though not very good - udupi anand bhavan, pizza corner, some kabaab centres, north indian thali etc. Had a filling lunch and it was time for the mysterious mirror maze.
We had read very good comments about the mirror maze and hence had saved it for the last. It was indeed good. Ravish suggested hide-and-seek and it turned out to be good fun. Not very easy to distinguish between real and virtual images. The best at IFC.
We didn't have anything else planned but had around 2 hours to spend. Thats when we spotted the roller skates indoor stadium. We quickly decided to give it a try... Modi opted out and without any choice he had to gaurd all our belongings while rest of us were in the arena! We were all geared up in next 15 minutes will rollers, helmet, knee cap etc. As soon as I stood up after wearing all the gear I fell down (I was on rollers :)) The next 1 hour was fun. Varun and Adi had previous experience and were all over the place. Harish fell atleast 3 times. I never left the side railings and hence didnt fall. Ravish and Rajashekar were visibly tired within minutes and quit. Modi had the last laugh staying outside - photographing, video graphing and making fun of us... saala. But if you haven't tried the rollers yet, its a very good place. No time limit, 50 bucks and unlimited fun.
Since we had read the reviews, we didn't even thought of going to Fossil museum. There was some fossil search competition going on. Varun was constantly searching around one pretty girl there throught the search.
There was one singing contest at some booth. You can choose the song you want to sing from a huge database. The lyrics appears on the TV screen and there is background music. You need to sing looking at the lyrics. Only trouble is you voice will be heard on a loud speaker and hence we thought its a risk :) Finally we convinced the organizers to sing as a group. We chose the hindi song - 'Pyaar hame kis mode pe ley aaya' since its relative tune-less :) Unfortunately they didnt have it in their database, but still let us sing. We started off and we pitied the people around us. The organizers must have felt sorry for the audience and one of their DJs joined along with us to sing. Modi, however, restrained from making any sound on microphone :)
Finally we visited the miniature city - totaly waste except one artificial water falls. It has the film city's name on a small hill shaped rock in the hollywood style. Didn't good good pics there because of poor lighting.
We left the ifc at around 7pm. Had dinner at a dabha midway and reached home at round 10pm.
Overall, the ifc is a good 1 day outing. Don't expect too much of visual pleasure. It is still incomplete yet a very good outing for a day. It doesn't even cost you much - around 500 bucks including the lunch.
I did a crazy thing there at ifc. There is a cricket game. A machine shoots tennis balls at you and you need to bat. If you achieve some target score, you can play few more overs for free. A couple of balls came out of the practice area and one of them got stuck in a bush there. Modi pointed it out and I flicked it :)

iPhone in iNdia

After a long wait, Apple has finally launched the iPhone in India through Airtel and Hutch outlets.
Though Apple has launched the new 3G phones in India (2G iPhones are now out of production), there is no service provider in India supporting 3G services yet. There are few things one might be wondering about iPhone in India.

I heard that new iPhones costs $199 (8000/-). Why is it sold at 31,000/- in India?
The previous version of iPhone (2G version) actually costed $399 for 8GB and $499 for 16GB. But Apple slashed the prices of the latest 3G iPhones selling them for half the price - $199 for 8GB and $299 for 16GB. But there is a catch here.
Apple changed the strategy with 3G iPhones. Sell them cheap but collect a premium every month. The service provider AT&T for iPhone has increased the monthly tariff by about $10. For a mandatory 2 year contract that iPhone comes with, this increase will account for $240 increase for 24 months. Also the free SMSes (upto 200) provided earlier will cost 5$ now (for 200 SMSes) This will cost another $120 over 24 months. Together the tariff change will cost the iPhone user an additional $360. This explains the $200 reduction in iPhone prices. This is not a new way of fooling the customer but this is the typical way mobile businesses operate in the US. Most of the service providers provide the phone for almost nothing. Few of them sell very high end mobile phones like Palm Treo for as low as $50 if you subscribe for certain service plans. Apple is following the same model now.
But, unfortunately in India, things work in a very different manner. The post paid connnections are not very popular here. There are many cases of defaults and hence even service providers promote pre-paid connections. So the plan of selling the phone for less but charging higher tariff later will not work here. One example was Reliance's 500/- phone where Reliance had sold mobile phones for throw away price of 500/- but charged a rental every month. Reliance faced huge losses due to that. Airtel and Hutch must have learnt a lesson from this. Hence they are charging higher upfront price when you buy the phone without depending on monthly rentals.
In India 8GB costs 31,000/- and 16GB costs 36,000/-

Can I buy the phone from US at cheaper price and bring it here?
This was possible earlier with 2G iPhones. Those phones could be bought at an Apple store and could be unlocked using certain softwares to be used in India and other coutries outside US. But you can't but 3G iPhones in Apple store without subscribing to 2 year AT&T service plan.

Can I subscribe to 2 year AT&T contract at Apple store just to buy the iPhone and later break/cancel the contract? I am ready to pay some nominal charges in the process.
I am not very sure about how the cancellation of a contract works, but otherwise it is very difficult to do so because of the following reasons,
1. Since the 2 year contract is similar to a post paid connection, they will verify your credit worthiness which will require few documents including Social Security Number. If you are not a citizen of US, you might not be recognized as credit worthy customer and hence the subscription might be denied.
2. Even if you get your US citizen friend to buy the iPhone and the contract for you, either you have to pay the monthly charges every month unnecessarily or pay the penalty for breaking the contract.

What are the advantages of 3G over 2G?
There are a lot of new features supported in 3G. Also one major difference is that 3G is lot faster than the 2G. But currently no service provider in India is equipped with 3G service. Though your phone supports 3G, you will be limited by the 2G service from the service providers. It is like buying a Ferrari or Bugatti to drive on Indian roads :) By the way, BSNL has announced 3G service to be launched by the end of this year. Lets wait and see.

Why will iPhone fail in Indian market?
I feel iPhone will not make it big in Indian market because of the following reasons
1. Its quite expensive by Indian market standards
2. Many of the iPhone's killer features like 3rd party applications and Web apps require WiFi connectivity which is not very common in India yet. Even the hacker forums provide applications to be downloaded via WiFi only.
3. Handling iPhone requires some amount of computer knowledge and a lot of geeky knowledge.
4. The media - video and audio files can't be exchanged via bluetooth - which will be a major disappointment for the Indian market.
5. Consumers in Indian market are not ready yet to buy/rent media through iTunes by paying large sum of money (Each movie on iTunes store can cost around 50-150/- Each audio album can cost around 50-100/-)

iPhone

Disclaimer : This is not another iPhone blog where you can keep track of the latest developments on iPhone hacks. This blog is in response to a lot of queries that I have recieved from my friends ever since i bought the iphone. If you are new to iPhone or if you don't have enough time to search the web and collate the basic details then this blog is ideal for you. If you are already a vivid follower of iPhone developments, then the details here will look as old as 10000 bc :) - in which case I would recommend you to skip this blog. I am not even planning to update this article but will point to some useful resources at the end of this article for the latest updates.

For the in uninitiated, iPhone is 'ipod+Internet device + mobile phone'
from apple as described by Steve jobs...

All the following details are true as on April 23rd of 2008...

Where to buy?
iPhone is available only in USA and in some European countries. Though the launch of iphone in India and Asia is rumored to be very soon, Apple has kept it secret in its typical style.

Price?
In US, 8GB version costs around USD400 and 16GB version costs around USD 500. 7-10% tax is applicable depending on the region of purchase. You can purchase it either in Apple store or AT&T stores. You can even place an order online on Apple online store but will be shipped only to an US address. I got a 8 GB version last September through my coleague at Ittiam and I am lovin' it ... (I hope McDonald's won't sue me for this :)) Price is slightly higher if you buy it from Europe. Check the Europian prices here...

How to get it working?
Iphone is sim-locked with the carrier partner of Apple in the repective countries where it is officially launched (unfortunately it is not yet launched in India/Asia yet). As a result you won't be unable to use it without unlocking it. You need to unlock your iphone before being able to use any GSM sim( Airtel, Vodafone, Spice - are all gsm services). I use Vodafone sim on iPhone.

You will come across a lot of jargons like - jailbreak, unlocking, virginize, bricking etc on the web. Don't bother if it sounds alien. Hacking community has worked hard to make things as simple as possible for you. You can unlock the iPhone in 4 minutes flat (yes its just twice as long as preparing 2 minutes maggi :) ) the best part is the software for this is available free of cost for download.

ZiPhone is an unlocking software that does everthing (jailbreak, unlocking, installing installer.app for your iPhone) required to be able to use any GSM sim. It can't get simpler than using this software to unlock iPhone. It's a single-click-wait-for-4-mins-until-the-'completed'-message-is-displayed solution for unlocking. And the best part of it is you can do it all by yourself without any fuss. However you'll lose the 1 yr warranty from Apple as soon as you unlock it.

What's the big deal if I lose warranty?
Basically, nobody will service your mobile if hardware fails - no replacement of battery etc - you are completely on your own. But don't panic - you need to be a little disciplined in using it. I have added few tips for iPhone maintenance at the end. If you are still apprehensive about unlocking on your own, you can buy one from one of those gray markets at a 3-5k premium. I have even heard that few of them provide you some additional service in case you manage to spoil anything. All said and done - as I said earlier you are on your own and nobody to be blamed once you unlock it.

Pros of iPhone
Multi touch touchscreen
Amazing UI - User Interface experience . I bet, you can't get better than this
A lot of 3rd party softwares are available free of cost
Huge screen
Amazing Internet based applications
High resolution camera - 2 MP. (Don't equate this with other 2 MP cameras. The photos taken by iPhone camera are much better even when viewed on a PC compared to other 2 MP cameras)
8GB and 16GB is quite a memory
Very good display quality
Value for money @17k INR for 8GB 16 GB costs around 22k INR
A sure attention grabber :)

Check out this demo tour video on Apple site.

Cons of iPhone
Not launched officially in India
Warranty is void as soon as it is unlocked
No service provided in India.
No video recording
No copy-paste
No optical zoom
No digital zoom
Can't share files - songs/videos/photos/contacts through Bluetooth
Can't forward an SMS
Can't use iPhone as a portable USB drive
Only way to transfer files is - syncing through iTunes (software provided by Apple)
Can't sync from different PCs (this is the most painful. You can
transfer files only from one PC!)
Even if you manage to sync from a single PC every time, there is a problem. If some file is missing on your PC but is avialable on your iPhone the file gets deleted from iphone when you sync with the PC !!!
The loud speaker is not really that loud
No FM (A hardware limitation)
No support for office files - doc, xl or ppt. You can only read them if you receive them as attachments in your mail.
Not a very great organizer
Internet connectivity is only through WiFi or EDGE. No GPRS

All the software limitations above are in the default iPhone software.
Most of them are already resolved by 3rd party applications. Few of
them can be expected to be updated by Apple itself in future
software/firmware updates.

Tips for maintenance
- You have option to recharge the battery through USB or direct AC. Avoid charging through direct AC whenever possible, as voltage flucuations might damage your battery.Use only USB mode of charging.
- In cases where you have to charge it through direct power use a voltage stabilizer. I might sound a little wierd here but I follow this whenever I go to my hometown where I don't have access to a PC. It will save your dear iPhone.
- Don't upgrade to new firmware releases from Apple unless you find out that it can be unlocked.

Overall experience
I would rate it 9/10. ( I know this number doesn't make any sense as my rating is not benchmarked:) but still it gives you a feel for it) Watch the demo video

Useful resources
iphone hack blog: http://iphone.unlock.no/
iPhone hack site
Apple site
Lot of videos on Youtube
and....
My blog :) - just kidding - don't expect me to update this article any further