Blogger's Rights - a must read for every blogger

Many a times we come across the news for people getting jailed for their bitter yet true remarks. Passing of resolution against Om Puri's speech at the RamLila Maidan is one of such events.

And on the internet, we do tend to use our freedom of speech , and we do sometimes go over the edge in expressing ourselves.

I found a link which mentions all the rights that we bloggers have, our freedom of speech, to things that go in for our defence in difficult situations.

https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers

The link has references to all your requirements, and points that you should know. Run by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, i found the link to be highly useful.

Hope you guys find it as useful as i did. Suggestions are welcomed

Product Review - Tzinga

I recently tried a new energy drink which i had heard of. The drink's named Tzinga, an is promoted by a Gurgaon based firm.

I purchased a pack of Tzinga. It was a 200ml pouch, hence cutting the traditional can cost. But the price was too shockingly low - INR 20. I can buy 4 of these, and still have a polo. This is probably the cheapest drink out there in the Indian market.

The pouch is more like those cheap one drink pouches available in the market.






The drink comes in Lemon Mint flavour, and claims to have ginseng and guarana added along with Taurine. And all this for 20 bucks. I decided to buy it.

I opened the pack(which is sealed like a juice tetrapack), and tasted it. First thought - Mint dominates every other flavour. Slowly lemon comes into the picture when the tongue becomes used to it. But first reaction is.... too wierd for someone whose just migrated from Red Bull or the similar class. The taste of caffeine is missing, and the flavour of mint is spoiling the drink.

I somehow managed to gulp the whole drink. Will i put my money on buying this product - maybe not. Reason : Out of the league flavour, which is totally imbalanced. Mint might make alcoholics go in for it, but as a regular stand-alone energy drink, the mint's just too much.

If the flavour have had less of mint and more of lemon, the flavour would have been better. Maybe because i'm drinking an energy drink after ages, i'm feeling the exhuberant variation in the flavour.

My rating - 3.5/5

Another visit at the Easy Day - more surprises await

Yesterday, i did visit the easy day store at the Botanical Garden Metro Station again. I was on my way to the Great India Place(walkable distance from there), and it was pretty humid and hot. So decided to pick up some juice or drink.



I bought a Minute Maid pulpy orange drink. The product costs 20 bucks normally, but surprisingly the staff charged me INR 16.50 . On furthur enquiring, i came to know that Easy Day does offer discounts at every product.

I literally was surprised to see that most of the stock had been sold, and fresh stock had been ordered. The store manager told me that the demand for the products had been more than what anyone had expected.

Good to see competition ruling the Indian chains

The Shame minister of India - Mohan Singh

Mohan Singh happens to be the most dull prime minister in the history of India. I wonder what was INC thinking before selecting such a man for the post.


Yesterday, when Rahul Gandhi read his speech from a piece of paper in the parliament, the whole union cabinet came in praise of Rahul for uttering his speech like a child's nursery poem in the annual playschool function in front of his sister Priyanka who was the chief guest.

It really surprises me. The government is acting like an incubator for Rahul Gandhi's political career, and not as the administrator of the nation.

And the shameless smile of the PM in the Lok Sabha, who under the cloud of the tag of an "administrative failure" still thinks praising Rahul will boost his career. His appointed ministers - Raja,Kalmadi, Soren all in jail,with the appointed impeached CJI being his choice- all adding to his failures. Anna Ji was fasting for 12 days for a strong Lokpal bill while all he can think is boost Rahul's career at that time?

Sounds bad for the nation, really disheartening state of affairs .

App Review - Adobe Muze(Code Name)

I just came across Adobe Muse while surfing around the web. Abobe Muze is a new software for creating beautiful web pages without having any knowledge of the web programming. It includes support for scripts. The software is in its initial development stages. Initially released for Mac's, the product is now available for the Windows platform.

Installing it wasn't difficult, as it installs directly from the Adobe site. You need Adobe Air to make it work.

Here are two screenshots from the development phase




I made a very simple site, and in 5 minutes. Yes, it did take me around ten minutes to understand what the software environment was, but then got comfortable with it. The environment is slightly different than of Microsoft Frontpage or Yahoo Sitebuilder, but still user friendly. Being Adobe, the software gives a feeling of a flash player in motion. Nevertheless, it makes quite gud pages. Novice and professional web designers will love this program. And this is after the fact that Muse is just a codename, and the product is still in its initial stages.

The demo site i developed is online. Check the photo gallery tab for the software's beauty. You can check it by clicking Here . You can go directly at the photogallery at http://prattzz.freewebspace.com/the-photo-gallery.html

As you could have seen in the site, scripting is embedded in the program. So in case of building a customised site, the program gives quite a lot of options. Also, the gallery does support facebook'ish photo browsing, something that appealed me a lot.

My personal rating for Adobe Muse : 4.5 out of 5

Adobe Muse is available at http://muse.adobe.com/

India gets a new cheap super-charged SUV with Force One

Yesterday, Force motors launched their new SUV - Force One. The new SUV is already making waves , as it is offered at a surprisingly low price of INR 10,65,000 , which seems to be quite cheap. And to add to it, the SUV comes with a Mercedes-Benz validation of the whole car, adding to it reliability and perfomance.

To add more, Amitabh Bachchan was made the brand ambassador for the SUV.

Source

Difference between the Govt "Jokepal" Lokepal and Anna's Lokepal

Today, on the Delhi Metro while on my way back to home , an India Against Corruption volunteer was distributed pamphlets clearly specifying the difference between the government formed Lokepal better known as Jokepal, and Anna Hazare led IAC's Lokepal. The pamphlet stated all the crucial points in Lehmann's language, so easy that anyone can read and understand. All of you should have a look at it. The pamphlet being in Hindi, was read by all in the train, and triggered discussion about the movement.






This pamphlet can also be read in English at http://www.indiaagainstcorruption.org/docs/english_pamphlet.pdf and http://www.box.net/shared/l5okarpc3l3btzk6ore8

And after that, if the government doesn't decide to formulate Anna ji's Lokepal, then its a shame that we have selected such pathetic people to run the nation.

TOI comes in support Anna

Recently i was going through the Times of India, and found the TOI supporting Anna's IAC too.



The Times of India, a prominent national running since 1838 ,a part of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd , which runs companies like Indiatimes.com (check Here for details), supporting Anna openly is a big big setback for the government. This movement has turned to be way bigger than anyone in the government ever imagined.

Seems like there's more insult left in the government's account

Bharti Walmart - Now in India

Recently, i purchased a few things from a new store in Noida metro station. I've been to that store a few times, but never purchased anything(probably because carrying around stuff is heavy, plus the metro inspection is rigourous).

Recently,. i bought a couple of items from there. And then came a shock

"Easy Day - a Bharti Walmart Store"

It was pretty surprising to see that a Walmart store in India has so less popularity. Even the company isn't promoting the chain much. Also i tried the site for easy day - seemed like a badly maintained blog, and not the site of a JV of two major consumer chains.

The chain had reportedly spread mostly in the towns and not in metropolitans, though it has started to open some of its stores in Delhi, and is planning to open a few more including one in Greater Noida.

Lets hope good news will start pouring soon

The curious case of uber-dum UPA

Lately,the government as been scared of everything that has been coming on their way. Whether if there's a film like Aarakshan which openly criticises the increasing commercialism in education, or Anna ji's 'satyagrah' against the corruption embedded in the system and in favour of a strong Lokepal bill(unlike the government's version popularly called jokepal) ,the congress party has been on a defence.

Congress has been avoiding responsibility. Lalu Yadav's three brother in laws - the most scammed and notorious politician in the history of Bihar state are also a part of congress. So is Mr Shashi Tharur, who invested in Kochi Team while alloting it the franchise for IPL. The whole Congress party has been a camp for corrupt politicians.

Congress has been really scarerd of things lately. And even a kid knows that only the guilty fear from justiice, the honest are bold enough to challenge justice to trial them. And the way Congress has been scared, it clearly shows that they have been directly or indirectly involved in scams.Lets not forget that their current chairperson Sonia Gandhi and her late husband Rajiv Gandhi have been accused in the Bofors scandal and helping criminals accused in Bofors anti-aircraft launcher and the painful Bhopal gas tragedy . Congress has been acting so shamelessly and greedy. It is surprising to see that they aren't even scared of the fate of the Nazi's, and dictators like Saddam Hussain and Hosni Mubarak

Seems like INC will en-christ itself somewhere in Europe , and the new name would be Indian Nuthead Chickens !

Product Review - Canon A3200IS

I recently purchased a digital camera for my dad, as a gift. This being the first digital camera at home, i decided to personally select the camera that would be the best investment for a long term.

I checked out a lot of camera's at the Croma store in East of Kailash. Some friends had suggested Sony, and some had suggested Canon, so i decided to stay within the two. My alloted budget was Rs7500.And my demand - a camera with 10+megapixels,around 4-5x optical zoom, HD(preferably full 1080p) and an easy UI..

The best in the range was this Canon A3200IS. I took a whole 3 hours at Croma to finalize on this camera. Tested the camera's quite in detail. The following was the result.

In the range of around Rs7500-8000, there were two camera's with the desired config - an Olympus and a Canon. Canon A3200IS was priced at Rs7564, whereas Olympus was priced at Rs7800(roughly, don't remember the exact figure, but was Rs78xx). The Olympus one was a full HD, and had a better lighting detection, whereas the Olympus one was a 720p, but what i've learned from experience is that features matter less unless they're implemented flawlessly. So, decided to use all these camera's on full resolution, with full optical zoom.

Here, the Canon one scored better. Pictures were crystal clear. The flash firing was a bit irritating, especially when it fired in medium lightning where even no flash could have done. But then, in the live mode, you can set flash off, and everything would be done. On zooming the pictures, Olympus gave a bit blurry whereas Canon was perfect. In Video mode, both Canon and Olympus did good, but in A3200IS the images got blurred on recording in HD and zooming more than 3x. Olympus was better here.

But the more important thing was zooming, flash and pixel rate. Olympus forces us to go in for full HD and full 14Mp, even when we do not want that. This can be very irritating. For example, if i need a picture for my facebook display, why the hell would i need a 14MP resolution picture, it would firstly take sometime to upload the picture, secondly i'll be wasting time and money over broadband charges, and thirdly, resizing in facebook would eat my brains. And so is for other photo sharing sites.

Also, Canon has a better after-sales network than Olympus in Delhi and NCR, this is something i cannot ignore. I cannot roam around the NCR just for some service centre. Already going to the Nehru place service centre of Samsung seems irritating.

I'm uploading two photos for a better first hand experience. I tried uploading video's, but uploading 26Mb didn't seem possible for the internet connection to handle.

In one of the pictures, you can see my whole computer setup. The computer, that hadn't been cleaned for sometime(as i was out on a vacation and recently came back) seemed more dusty than it actually is. In fact, dirt from many places hidden from the eye seemed visible(all thanx to the neon flash). So no problems in night shooting. In the picture, just select original size, have a look at the computer CPU cabinet .There's a sticker from the airport luggage division. Just have a look at it. You'll understand how the performance of the camera is.




In the other picture, i've pictured my monitor at night without the flash, or any artificial lightning. My computer's home screen background being black, was perfectly visible and readable. Infact, nearby panel buttons and their labels were easily readable too in the photo. The camera seemed good.

Another good point with Canon was that it had a two year warranty on its product, whereas Olympus had only a 1 year warranty. Liquid damage is not covered in the warranties of both. But anyways, 2 is better than 1. That cuts the need of additional warranties. I was asked by the Croma executive to purchase another two year warranty for Rs350, which i declined. Certainly two years are enough for the camera warranty. Canon does good work there.

Being under independence sale, Croma sold me Canon A3200IS for Rs7564. The prices were a hundred more, but managed to bargain hundred more bucks :) .

My personal review - 4 out of 5. Could have been better, but still gets the value for money tag. Though i would mention that some would be tempted to give it 4.5 out of 5 . These many features, plus under Rs7600, plus HD, plus Canon seems to be a great combination at this price point.

UPA acts shameless

The Manmohan Singh led UPA government has shown the worst form of politics in the history of mankind. Not only UPA has become undemocratic, anarchic and cheat, it has been commiting atrocities on people rising agasinst injustice.

Recently,on the Mumbai-Pune expressway, four farmers were shot dead by the police, and public property worth lakhs was sabotaged by the police when the people protested the 'illegal' land acuisition by the government. And when asked this question, the maharashtra government shamelessly calls the farmers 'liars'. This is when the media has the footage of the shot victims being dragged by the police before being killed.

This government is the most corrupt government after the PV narsimha Rao led Congress government. PV Narsimha Rao was the most tainted person who ever took the position of the Prime Minister. After PV Narsimha Rao, Manmohan Singh is the most failed prime minister. Infact, i consider this UPA government equal to the 'British East India Company' who used to forcefeed striking masses after commiting barbarious and inhumane atrocities on freedom fighters. The warning by P Chidambram(who has been at cold war with Pranab Mukherjee since 1991) to the hon. Anna ji for forcefeeding seemed to be a British command, and not an Indian one. Is this what we have to suffer for getting a corruption free India. If that is so, we are ready to do this.

Infact, these times are worst than those of the atrocious British, who at the moment, are facing losses due to rioting(law of karma i'd say....ain't that true charlie) . Even during the British rule, people were allowed to stage 'anshan', but this UPA government doesn't even allow people to protest in favour of a strong Lokepal bill. Arresting 200 students who were staging a silent march in favour shows how low the UPA has stooped. I do fear that UPA will go to the extent of fake voting and causing discrepencies to get back in power once again.

And as for Manmohan Singh, the ex-chairman of IMF has shown the most shameful behaviour as a prime minister. His failure at sharman al shaikh shows that he's not worth putting into administration, being the prime minister should completely be ruled out. No matter what congress and UPA say, he is the worst PM till date that India has ever had. Infact, he's the first Indian prime minister to be ridiculed, inspite of ridiculing the PM being a punishable offence here. Still noone even cares to take action against anyone who ridicules him. This shows that even the law enforcement agencies, the UPA itself doesn't care about the PM's insult.

Well, thats the UPA. They made Manmohan Singh the prime minister even when his public in Assam defeated him so badly that his security was confisticated. This shows that UPA doesn't care about the mandate of the masses, and wishes to do whatever the want to.The rest is exhibited by the PM coming in defence of Suresh Kalmadi, who scandalised the Commonwealth Games. This was done inspite the fact that the media had consequently been showing enidences of a scandal in everything even before the inagruation of the games. It is only Suresh's close links with Sonia Gandhi, whose husband late Rajiv Gandhi was his collegue pilot which saved Kalmadi for more than a year. Eventually, he had to be jailed after the law enforcement agencies were forced by the media to take into account the evidences that prove him guilty.

And same is for A Raja and Kanimoze(or whatever the name is of this daughter of Karunanidhi.). Both were found accused of scandals worth INR 2000000000000. That big an amount can make countries like Nepal sustain centuries. And Manmohan again came in defence of them. What a shame it is.

Is staging a protest a crime? Then why did they attack and arrest Swami Ramdev and his supporters? This is because they got scared that Ramdev had brought over 2,00,000people at the legendary Ramlila Ground on the very first day, and that too from various nations, if not various states. And this is the figure for the people registered with him, the masses who didn't register(like me) are seperate and unaccounted.

It is indeed a time for a change. As Anna ji's rightly said, 'it is the time for the second freedom revolution'. I seriously worry that if situations do not improve soon, then maybe we shall have to see a scene like the ones we saw at Cairo where the people attacked the defence forces for freedom from corruption. Even till date, people express their desire to personally kill Hosni Mubarak as a punishment to the atrocities he's committed to them.

Lets bring this corruption rule to an end. I shall be supporting Anna ji on the 16th, and request all of you to be there too. Jai Hind

Cisco Packet Tracer - a great software

Recently, i had been practising some networking as a part of my training at NTPC limited. Many a systems at NTPC were process critical and online, so i could not understand on how to configure them.

I did some research, and found out that there's a software called Cisco Packet Tracer , which is a network simulator for networking students. I decided to try it myself.

The software is easy to use and install. You just have to click on an icon, select the type of device, and click to deploy it. Double click on the device to configure its settings. Click and select a specific type if wire(coaxial, optical or telephone) and a couple of click to deploy it. If you don't want to waste time in selecting the appropriate wire, just click on autoselecvt and the appropriate wire would be selected automatically. You can support WAN's, multiple networks, etc without any hassle.

The software is quite advanced, as it supports clouds, tv's, ip phones, voip phones, printers, pda's, laptops, tablets, MPS, and a lot more. You can test any end by either sending a test data packet, or using its visual interface., that is by means of the regular command prompt operations like tracert, ping, etc, or by using the browser emulation.

Cisco Packet Tracer does allow you to see what happens in the OSI model during one specific point of time in transmission. This is extremely useful to see how things work. IP header, OSI model layer usage, all such data for one point of time is given.

And te best part - Cisco Packet Tracer is an absolutely free download from the Cisco site. There are also many mirrors out there for it. That adds to the surprise.

Download cisco packet tracer from http://www.ccna4u.org/2010/05/packet-tracer-version-53-software.html

Overall, i can say that it is one of the best LAN trainers out there. People doing networking courses such as CCNA should use it to learn.

I'd give it 4.5 out of 5.

More posts coming soon

I'm currently working for a review on a Canon Digicam, and a few other posts. Occasional lack of details have been stopping me a bit from doing so.

Please maintain your patience. I shall be adding more posts very soon.

More Vodafone Billing Problems

Recently,i had activated a GPRS pack on my Vodafone postpaid which entitled me to use3Gb internet free for Rs 198. This validity of this pack would be one billing cycle.

Now, since i had applied for a broadband connection at my place, i had requested them on the 8th to discontinue the pack from the next billing cycle. But unfortunately, the customer care executive, who recieved the mail discontinued the pack a day before the end of the cycle. Because of this, the phone bill has inflated 6 times the usual.

Calling up customer care didn't help,as they stated that they didn't have a record for the mail i sent.

I shall now have to again correspond with the Nodal office. But this time, if the nodal office doesn't settle the issue, i shall directly turn to the hon. consumer court. This is no joke that companies can play everyday. If their employees cannot discharge their duties well, they should be fired !

Lets see what happens

Blogadda doing wierd antics

Blogadda had recently mailed me that they would soon be mailing me a book called Chanakya's Chant by Ashwin Sanghi , as i was one of the 50 lucky winnners under their book review program. In this program, they used to mail books to bloggers for free, on the condition that they would post a review of it.

I confirmed their mail, and waited for a week for the book to reach me. When i didn't get the book, i started communicating with them. On furthur communication, they informed me that they had mixed up the name , and had sent me the mail by mistake, and sent it to someone else with the same name. DO you believe their excuse, well i surely don't.

Yet once again i see how companies and sites attract people on their siteby fake promises. Makes me wonder, when will people ever learn to be honest...

Fotopic Down...

Hey
Fotopic.net was one website which i had been using for years as my image backup. All my cherished moments were uploaded in the fotopic.net gallery.

For sometime now,i had been too involved with some petty things, because of which, i wasn't able to keep track of the site. Now, when i have lost things in the hard drive crash(some months ago), i decided to post the new pictures of my vacation to fotopic, not knowing a surprise awaited.

Finding that more than eight years of memories being lost, with the dim 'match in the field' seems like a dream. Lets see if i can find out aa way to retrieve them..

Signing off

Two and a half men even in the skies

On board mt recent flight Jet Airways 9W 830 Chennai to New Delhi, i finally got some time to catch the in-flight entertainment. Usually, hog on to some movie available, but that day the flight was delayed due to some ministers arriving. So i finally browsed through the Jet's media collection. And it was good.

The Big Bang theory, Two and a half men, How i met your mother were a few of the shows available. The movie collection consisted of some movie "Hall Pass" (and another one,whose name i don't remember).

The music section was good. New hits from all genre's were there. Infact, Indian classical - a rarity was there in abundance. Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and Manna Dey's full albums were there. These days you don't get to hear that kind of music even when you have to pay a premium.

And the flight landed at IGI Terminal 3. Looking at its grandeur, no wonder GMR infrastructure was excited launching it. T3 beats any mall anytime. Now chennai airport's copying it.

My experience with Jet has been damn good. T3, and the in-flight experience has been good. Hope to be back on daily track soon

More posts coming

Hey
For the past month, my desktop had been down. The motherboard had some RAM detecting issues.
Well, its fixed now, after Intel replaced it(and it had to be shipped to Itel's facility in Chennai to do so).

Well, i'll be back soon to what i love doing the most.

Signing off


PH