What Ho!» Mobile

Moved to MTNL from Airtel

gautamsatpathy — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 05:50:23 +0000

I finally moved to MTNL completely. I was using an Airtel connection with BlackBerry services for the last 3 odd months. Wasn’t very happy with them for nature of their billing but was using it anyway.

Padmaja has now joined the SAIL Regional Office at Mumbai and she as MTNL here. So we now have a MTNL CUG for Padmaja, home & I.

My transition from Airtel wasn’t smooth. I had become too dependent on my BlackBerry and the thought of being cutoff from the world (Ya. I know…) was not a pretty one. So I kept the Airtel number till I completed the migration to MTNL.

This migration was far from smooth. First I called 1503 and told them to activate the SIM and BlackBerry services. This happened quickly enough. I remember checking after about an hour and found the SIM activated. So far so good.

Then I pulled out the Airtel SIM and pushed in the MTNL one. Went online to mtnl.blacbkberry.com to create a new user account and setup my email and got my first shock The site kept refusing to accept my phone PIN & IMEI claiming that the device was not registered on the network and giving me instructions to follow. Well I did follow the instructions. Many times. And kept getting a “Registered” message back buty the web site would not budge!

After trying a few times I called 1503 again. The first person I spoke to didn’t have a clue so I called back. The second chap tried a few things and then took a complaint. Gave me the complaint number and the standard “it will take 12 to 24 hour” parting shot.

I put the Airtel SIM back in my BlackBerry and went home.

That was Friday. I gave MTNL the full 24 hours before checking the status of my SIM again. And it worked!

I was able to visit the mtnl.blackberry.com web site, create a new user and setup my email accounts. Had a bit of a bother with the office email but finally got everything ticking along just fine.

I have sent a plan termination email to Airtel and will have to btrave their “BlackBerry Retention” team’s innumerable calls and offers to try and make me stick around.

They should have given me better service to start with rather than trying to retain me with offers of bill waivers and other such tactics. When I took my first Airtel SIM in April 2010 I asked for unlimited GPRS and was given the 2 Gb plan for Rs. 99/-. I still had my BSNL SIM from Hyderabad and I started using the Airtel number as my primary phone. I got a rude shock 2 weeks later when I started receiving SMS messages from Airtel saying that my outstanding bill was Rs. 986 and growing. I have never ever paid such a mobile bill. My Hyderabad BSNL number still does not cross Rs. 406/- per month even when I am on National Roaming and am using GPRS like there is no tomorrow. When BSNL says “unlimited” the service really is unlimited and does not have any strings attached.

So bye bye Airtel! Farewell and I hope we shall never meet again.

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CAMS Web Site Woes

gautamsatpathy — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 08:47:23 +0000

I tried accessing the CAMS web site (http://www.camsonline.com/) today on my BlackBerry and got a rude surprise. Their web site is not at all mobile friendly! Even Opera Mini failed me today on this web site.

Don’t get me wrong – I am a big CAMS fan and regularly use their excellent mailback services to keep track of my offline mutual fund investments. They added Karvey as a data source some time ago and blew me away. I was very happy to get all my data in one place and stopped visiting Karvey’s web site.

However their web developers suck big time. Browser compatibility has always been an issue – I have to use Internet Explorer! It leaves me frightened every time I visit them. Their main supported browser is the worst browser available. Also their web site uses lot of frames, JavaScript and other 1990s web technology. Which shows that they need a new IT Group – people who know what they are doing and have a good understanding of web technologies.

CAMS is a classic example of a great business model with a flawed implementation. You will never get good ouput if you don’t have good people. And good people are not only hard to come by, they are also expensive.

Are they worth the price to CAMS?

Update:
The web site actually worked. I received the statements I wantd but the site did not seem to be working so I ended up with 7 copies of each statement in my mailbox! Opps…

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SMS SPAM Manager

gautamsatpathy — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:09:29 +0000

I receive a ton of SPAM via SMS. It reached a stage where I cringed whenever I heard the new message tone play. I had to clean up my SMS Inbox on daily, deleting anything between 10 to 20 SPAM message every day.

I finally decided to do something about it. A Google search threw up a couple of possibilities and I finally selected SMS SPAM Manager by Melon Mobile. I use a Sony Ericsson P1i running Symbian UIQ3.

Ah! Life is sweet again!

I use a “Black List” of keywords that are matched against incoming SMS and the offending message is captured by the SPAM Manager if it finds a match. There are other ways of filtering messages too. The software is capable of auto loading at phone start up and can be run as a system application. I can view the captured SPAM and “Restore” any message that I want to retain. The SPAM manager then pushes it to the regular SMS Inbox as an incoming message.

The SPAM Manager silently captures offending SMS and I am at peace at last

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Facebook, Blog, Website, Orkut Etc…

gautamsatpathy — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:00:30 +0000

I joined Facebook during my last trip to the US of A in September 2008. I was in San Francisco for 3 weeks for Oracle Open World 2008 and 2 SOA related training programs our Product Manager and I were doing. I called my college (IIT Kharagpur) mate, Rajiv Kaushik, and badgered him for the phone numbers / email addresses of our common friends living in the Bay area. Rajiv advised me to get a Facebook account.

And I must say that Facebook did help me find my old friends fast, much faster than I had thought possible.

But I am not an active user. I find that I don’t have any time during the day and secondly I am often away from my room and laptop. Evening and late night computing sessions are given over to research, personal finance, blogging, web site maintenance, cataloging my digital media acquisitions etc. Facebook just does not fit in for me, particularly since I haven’t seen a half decent mobile application worth using. I tried Fring but was disappointed. I just upgraded Fring to the latest release but haven’t tested it yet. The biggest problem with Facebook on Fring is the sluggish UI. Menus take up to 15 secs to open! Not acceptable.

I tried the mobile phone’s (Sony Ericsson P1i) web browser. Not Opera Mini but the built in browser. I posted a test update to see how things work. The UI is compact and lightweight enough to be fast. I will try that for a few days and see how it goes.

I am almost completely mobile now. Other than the Jabber based instant messaging solution used at work. I use Fring for Yahoo, GTalk, MSN & AOL. Also for Orkut to some extent but I prefer the phone’s web browser for Orkut. Profimail keeps me in constant touch with my personal and work emails. One email client that handles all my email accounts! Very highly recommended! The built in RSS Reader keeps me in touch with news of my interest. Google and it’s world is available any where and at any time. HandyDay and the SynchML based, built in Remote Synch program keeps me in constant touch with my calendar.

I recently realized that my current lifestyle forces certain choices on me. I will use a product or service only if it offers a good mobile UI. Lets see if Facebook will become one of my commonly used tools.

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Gangtok Trip – Day 8 – Return To The Plains Of Bengal

gautamsatpathy — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 09:33:13 +0000

April 18 – Day 8 – The Return to the Plains

Today we return to the heat, dust & polution of the plains. Gangtok was pollution free most of the time.

We had asked the travel agent in Siliguri who had rented us the cab on the journey from Siliguri to Gangtok to send us a car at Gangtok. The car was to arrive at 12.00 noon. We had planned to stop mid way to go river rafting in the Tista (spelling?) river (Cost – Rs. 325/- per head, adult or child). You can opt to go rafting over various distances, e.g., 11 km, 7 km etc. The price varies with distance.

Noon is aslo the check-out time for Mintokling. I paid by credit card. Pema, the manager put a 10% service charge on everything. Also she told me very clearly that she wanted rhe room vacated by noon. This is the first hotel i have come across that is so insistent on the check-out time. All this happened at a quarter to 12 and one of the hotel waiters / bell boys was waiting outside to take my luggage out. I told him to come back at 12. Rather childish but I was put off. I have often stayed in my hotel room after check out and since Prma insisted on the time, so would I!

So we were tossed out of Mintokling at noon. Pema did not offer us the hotel lounge to wait for our cab. The bell boys just dumped our luggage on the street outside the guest house. That earned them no tips.

Then the secobd nightmare started. We kept calling the cab driver’s mobile phone and he kept telling us that he was stuck in traffic and would be there in another half hour. We waited outside on the street till 2.30 pm when finally the driver showed up with another passenger. Then it struck me that the travel agent in Sulliguri was taking me for a ride. He had no intention of sending an empty car to Gangtok though he was charging me for both legs of the trip. The driver had met the 9.30 am train from Kolkata, picked up passengers and driven to Gangtok to arrive at about 2.15 pm, the same time we had arrived three days ago. He had no doubt charged those people double the fare claiming that he would have to return with an empty car.

Anyway we pilled in and drove off, leaving Gangtok close to 3.00 pm. This driver wasn’t a good one and gave mw a few tense moments on the mountain roads. I had to keep shouting at the idiot in Bengali to slow down. Padmaja and the kids fell asleep in the back seat and slept through most of the journey. I stopped the car ouside Gangtok to buy a loaf of bread, some potato chips, and a couple of packets of biscuits. Mamli & Bablu practically devoured the lot, having missed lunch. I dared not stop anywhere for a bite to eat as we had a train to catch at New Jalpaiguri at 8.00 pm.

We arrived at Siliguri at 6.30 pm and stopped at the LIC guest house on Sevak Road. I called the travel agent (Raju & Tarun) and told them flatly that I would only pay half the agreed fare and they should come and meet me to discuss it. There was a lot of spluttering on the other side and indignant muttering which changed into abuse at which point I disconnected.

Tarun & Raju arrived about 10 minutes later. There was more shouting but I stood my ground. I was the customer and paying for a service with which I was very dissatisfied. Secondly that idiot Tarun of the travel agency was abusive from the first. I would have paid them the whole amount if they had but apologized for their grossly deficient service. I finally left for the station at New Jalpaiguri leaving Rs. 800/- lying on the ground where I dropped it as the idiots refused to accept it. I think this is the first time a customer has stood up to these idiots and refused to be brow-beaten.

We made it to the station in time to catch the Darjeeling Mail to Kolkata which left New Jalpaiguri at 8.00 pm. We will arrive in Kolkata early tomorrow morning, about 6.00 am.

Thus ends our Gangtok Trip in the summer of ’09.

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Gangtok Trip – Day 2 – On The Train to Kolkata

gautamsatpathy — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 01:26:05 +0000

April 12, 2009, 5.30 am, Day 2:

I suppose it is the uncomfortable berths but I always wake up very early in trains. The fact that most people are asleep and I can brush my teeth without cheerleaders also seems important somehow.

Anyway, here I am, up nice and early, teeth as clean as they will get on a train. Everybody else is asleep. The sun is up though the drawn curtains don’t let in much light. I have always had a fascination for staring out the window of a speedilng train, a pleasure that my kids don’t seem to know exists. My daughter, Mamli, would rather read a book and my son, Bablu, would rather play a game on my mobile or watch a movie on it. I suppose they just aren’t used to the fun part of travelling yet. I did a lot of travelling with my parents and sister when I was a child but between Padmaja’s and my job, we don’t get to take a vacation often.

So much for pleasant early morning thoughts!

Here is today’s first photo, taken through the window of the train with my Sony Ericsson P1i in burst mode and then resized on the phone.

Photo taken from Falakunama Express early in the morning.

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IBM Offers To Move Laid Off Workers To India

gautamsatpathy — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 05:52:13 +0000

IBM Offers To Move Laid Off Workers To India « LayoffBlog.com

Go work in India they say. Well it is to be expected. But will they come? And if they do, will they stay? We already see white faces in our offices, streets and shops. Not many. Just a handful but the numbers seem to be growing.

The Indian technology workers moved to the US to look for many things, money being one. Opportunity is another. The press of people competing for limited job opportunities is so high in India that children are taught to compete from a very young age. Without this learning they will not be able to survive. Imagine this – half a million students appear for the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) of the Indian Institutes of Technology. A few thousand are selected.

This very learning helps the Indian worker to shine anywhere in the world. And remember that the conditioning starts at a very tender age, in fact from Kinder Garten itself. So can the Americans compete in India with Indians for technology jobs? I think not. They don’t have what it takes to survive here.

It is not about the climate, the food, the dust and the 3rd world living conditions. If you are working in IT you can afford good housing, good food, good clothes, good transport. The good things in life. You can also afford to pay somebody to insulate you from the worst of the local conditions. A good driver for your car costs Rs. 6,000/- a month. That’s about $150/- a month. And the driver will clean your car everyday. And he will be available from 7 am till late in the night. He will work weekends too. A maid to clean your house, do the dishes, wash clothes costs about Rs. 800/- a month or $20/-. You can have people pay your bills, buy your groceries, deliver cleaned and cut vegetables to your door step. All for a few hundred Rupees a month. Total cost of insulation – less that Rs. 15,000/- a month. Or about $350/- a month. Very affordable. Even on the pennies-to-the-dollar salary that the LayoffBlog says is the catch in the offer.

So where is the real catch? Competition. Can the Americans survive the punishing work schedule that the typical Indian IT worker routinely puts in? Week after week, month after month. The day starts early and ends late. During the average work week I get about 3 hours of sleep everyday. And about a couple of hours with the family, if I am lucky. I am tied to my laptop and mobile phone the rest of the time. I sleep with my mobile phone under the pillow. Every morning I take it with me to the bathroom to check emails while I crap. I again use the phone to check emails and respond before I fall asleep. I survive on multiple cups of dark, caffeinated coffee every single working day. Towards the end of the week my coffee consumption can go up to 9 or 10 cups a day, each with two teaspoons of strong coffee in it.

If I don’t work at this rate there are many others who will happily replace me. I get a decent salary that enables my family to live comfortably. My children go to the best private school in the city and hopefully we will be able to afford the best college education this country can provide. I am comfortable. Not rich. But comfortable. But the pace is punishing.

Can you survive here, dear Americans?

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TOI on Mobile – Alas, No Indian Express Yet

gautamsatpathy — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:36:21 +0000

Over the last half decade, The Times of India has been on the forefront of technology use. A few days ago I stumbled across their TOI Mobile service and was suitably impressed.

I immediately went searching for a similar service for The Indian Express but sadly was not able to locate any. I use MobiPocket Reader to pull the main Indian Express stories via their RSS feeds and then have MobiPocket synchronize with my Sony Ericsson P1i. This works well for me but a mobile formatted version would be great!

The Times Of India is still delivered daily to my door step but I have stopped reading it. The character of the newspaper has changed drastically over the last few years, making it another tabloid like the Deccan Chronicle.

I prefer the Indian Express.

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