Saturday, December 31, 2011

The year comes to an end...

So the year of the headache finally comes to an end. Shouting parlimentarians, dud new launches of over-hyped products, and returning slowdown speculations. The year, that witnessed Charlie 'Harper' Sheen getting kicked out of the 'decade old' running series two and a half men, and dozens of more stuff.

Lets hope that the new year brings in some good news for the 'geeks' , waiting for some groundbreaking products


a very happy new year to you all

Reliance Thugs Again


Among the pleothra of allegation, Reliance has been one network that doesn't give much statments in its defence. After being involved in 2G spectrum allocation scandal, and bad customer services, its now found of cheating its customers. I personally saw Reliance not confirming to what has been stated.

Whenever one uses Facebook mobile site, the site clearly states that using Facebook App from their phones would not charge any data on the Reliance network. On reading this, one of my good friends who is on the Reliance network, asked me to install the Facebook app on his Samsung phone. He had the first version of the Facebook app, and when i tried it out, the app was charging it. So i decided to download and clean install the latest version. But still it was charging for data. When i had started, his phone's balance was Rs42.60 , and by the time i was finished trying the new Facebook app, his balance was Rs13. 29bucks were lost, and that was just because Reliance was cheating by charging people for what should have been a free service.

We called up the complaint desk at 198. It took us half an hour to connect to that number, and when it connected, the voice was cracking due to bad quality of service(QoS) inspite of the fact that Reliance spends a fortune on getting movie stars root for its 'flawless' network(had they spend it on strengthening their infrastructure, they would have got more subscribers). At the first call attempt, the complaint desk doesn't believe that it has been constituted for handling complains, it states that it has been constituted for activation/deactivation of services. On the second attempt, the guy told us that the charges were valid as this service was not free. He then started contact the Reliance GSM nodal and appelete officers, whose numbers "were not reachable". Imagine grieverence redressal officers "not reachable" on a weekday. Lame professionalism.

But then, my friend tells me that Reliance has been a notorious network. Earlier, he was charged Rs30 couple of months back for a caller ring back tone which he never requested. Then it took him 3 days to get the caller tune deactivated. And he had to waste over Rs48 to shut down the service(reliance charges Rs6/min to call the IVR from where the service is deactivated).

Then i think to myself, earlier this year, Reliance ADA shares were penalised and blocked for trading by Securities and Exchange Board of India(SEBI) for carrying out insider trading that had inflated the group's share prices. What can one expect from such a network.

Well, i have to admit. Vodafone Essar has given me great service, and greater complaint support. No wonder i'm happy with it.

VLC brings in Santa


VLC Player has been known well in the software industry for being so stand alone and external codec free. Also its UI works brilliantly in Window 7. But here is something that i just noticed.

Its been quite sometime since i've updated my VLC player. I've been using my 3 year old VLC player, but this is the first time i've seen this thing. A christmas hat. VLC has really picked up the right things from Google. When i first saw this icon, i was quite surprised. Then i realised that it was the 20th, and the countdown to Christmas had begun. Its good to see companies like VLC take a step ahead to give its users a goodwill gesture for the holiday season.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Posts on hold

Hey guys





I would be busy for a couple of weeks now, so wouldn't be posting. But i have some new stuff waiting to be published.

signing off

PH

Sharad Pawar Slap Episode - a wakeup call


The recent episode of the slap that Sharad Pawar had to face as an effect of the public ire due to 'price rise' happens to be one of the most serious things that has hit the political class lately. It does come like a shock call to most of the political class. It does represent how much the public has resentment against UPA's policy of forcing its injust decisions on the nation. The silent yet supporting and non-aggressive behavior that guards at the function was attending clearly shows that even the people associated with securing these 'thieves' support the attackers. UPA has been forcing its decisions for its own benefit ever since it first came in power.

Just to give out some examples, earlier, the UPA had been trying to avoid the Joint Parliamentary Committee for an enquiry against then telecom minister A. Raja(who'se chargesheeted as of now). Same is the situation for the highly mass-supported India against Corruption led Janlokpal bill, and the retaliation of the masses against lifting any sort of investment restrictions on FDI. In times of recession, opening up FDI would just put more oil to the fuming prices of essential commodities. Within UPA's rule, prices for essential goods have jumped up 300-400 times, and in some goods upto 1600times. petrol was given the excuse, but everybody understands that 200% hke in petrol cannot cause a hike of 400% in foodgrain prices. Evidently people in the government are involved in artificially inflating prices.

And the way that the prime minister has been supporting all this is pretty pretty shameful. Mr Mohan Singh happens to be one of the biggest failures of the 21st century for India. From administrating, to economics - he's failed at everything.

And then, when a commoner hits out at a corrupt politician, all the political parties unitedly condemn this incident. And they forget this condemning when the students were lathicharged by police while protesting against 49% reservation in education and government jobs , or farmers protest injustice by the system to them in front of Rahul and other 'dum,toothless yet highly supported by dorks' leaders.

Its high time while policical parties should realise that they should stop this 'Loot-tantra' else they would have the same fate as of Saddam Hussain, Hosni Mubarak, Col. Gaddafi or the Russian Czar. Now what they do is in their hands. Getting assaulted by the mob, or developing the nation with public-accepted strategies is completely in their hands.

Another loyalty rogram - Payback


Future group introduced another loyalty program for its customers called "Payback". This new program allows customers at future group's trademark 'bazaar' stores(such as big bazaar, food bazaar, future bazaar) and other future group stores, such as pantaloons, hometown, along with a few other chains(such as fernsnpetals, icici bank credit cards, hpcl, univercell, LetsBuy) to avail points on purchase, and redeem them. And here's the business model. The signup form clearly states that the information would be used for telemarketing. Most of the people dont care about that, but i do, being privacy conscious. The companies have to do this in order t recover the cost of the cards, and make a subsequent profit out of it. I filled in incorrect information. Nobody loses anything and everybody gains something.

One thing, that occured to me was that chains such as Pantaloons have their own loyalty program. Till now, they have been giving discounts to the ir existing customers on their own loyalty card. With this new card, it might be possible that Pantaloons would be giving some benefits only to the Pantaloons 'green card' loyalty program members. Then how come one customer use two or three loyalty cards for the same purchase, it is something i'm still not able to understand.