New Airtel Unlimited GPRS Plans

Earlier we had unlimited GPRS plans from Airtel at about 20 Rs/day. It was really a very good plan. My friend told me that he uses Airtel, only because of this unlimited GPRS plan. But that plan was withdrawn weeks back (may be because of unfair usage from some users ??). But Airtel faced severe critism because of this. I know a few who started thinking of taking connection from Vodafone or AirCel because of this!!

But now there is some good news for the heavy Airtel GPRS users. It has introduced a new plan which goes this way.
Rate : Rs 20/day
Usage limit : 8 MB/day
Cost beyond free usage : 20 Paise / 50 KB

To activate this do this:
Send DP to 56789 (tollfree)

But I still doubt that this will become popular?? As 8 MB limit per day is way too low from my point of view, since Aircel is giving unlimited GPRS for rs 17/day and Vodafone is giving the same at rs 19/day.

Enjoy !!

1000 Rs LAPTOP for Indian Students

Indian government has planned to provide laptops at Rs 1000 to professional-science programme students.

The government has allocated Rs 5000 Crore for this project.

There was also a news that BSNL is planning to provide free internet service (at 2 MBps!!!) for all citizens... Well India seems to be on its way to be a information super power!!

Specifications:

• Internet Browsing (Yes.. This is mainly meant for browsing internetonly)
• Plays audio and video.
• 256MB memory (RAM or HDD ??)
• OS should be some flavour of Linux

I guess this might look something like this... Below is one of the cheap laptops given to African Students.

Hacking Tips for Reliance Netconnect

I am living in an area where no broadband service provider is providing broadband connection. So I had to take wireless connection such a reliance netConnect USB modem connection. I can tell you this is the only-only reason why I took this connection.

If you see that reliance netconnect advertisement on TV, you can see guy travelling in his car seeing the video of his new born baby!! Never try to do that in your car because you might be very well disappointed!!

Use only if you have a good signal. If you using a laptop, move around in your rooms and find where you get the best signal. Also, there are some antennas available in ebay for increasing signal strength. I have not tried it. But heard from others that it improves signal to some extent.

Connect the earphone to your USB modem and let it freely hang. This has worked for me!! Try various placements of that earphone cable and find out where you get the best signal.

Try and see whether you can use any nearby browsing center, if you have. The cost involved is more or less the same I think.

Use if for simple browsing/email purpose only. You should forget youtube :(

In night after 10pm you might some good speeds. So if you have freedom@night plan you can think about downloading some stuff.

If you know something about linux, then try to netConnect on easy to use Ubuntu Linux. How to configure netconnect for linux it is given here. I have found the total MBs downloaded per night is more in Ubuntu linux than it is in Windows!!

Finally note that this is no substitute to a wired broadband connection. This can be called as a good Dial-up connection. Also remember that we are living in India. :D We can expect good speed may be when we get 3G in India.

You can read my previous netconnect review here.

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

Reliance Net-connect Data Card/CDMA Modem - Review

I recently took a reliance NetConnect CDMA modem Internet connection from a near by reliance web world. I am pretty much satisfied with the connection and speed, considering that this is just dial-up but a high speed dial-up connection. I had to take this since there is no other good providers in my area.



Basically your NetConnect data card's performance depends on signal strength at your place. Take any reliance CDMA phone to the place where you will be using it (like your room). See that it is having full signal inside your room. If it is having full signal, then you can have a very decent surfing speed and download speed of about 14KBps-16KBps (yes.. it is Kilo Bytes) I have full signal (5 bars) in my room and I am quite happy with my connection.

Coming to Net-Connect freedom@night plan, which I have taken, they allow free download from night 10pm to morning 6am. I just tried to download some *** (edited) stuff and I was surprised by the resuls. It had downloaded about 360MB in a night. Theoritically, you can download 420MB in 8 hours if you have a speed of 16KBps.

Remember, it is still very costly to use other than the free usage time slot. It will cost you 50paise/min that is 30Rs/hour in the non-free time period.

So take this only if there is no other good providers in your area and have good CDMA phone signal at your place.

I will post about some hacks in my next post!! Remember to check back.

UPDATE: hack's here

Gmail keyboard shortcut for Delete mail

We must have used keyboard shortcut for browsing through gmail.
( You have to enable it in settings to use it actually !! )
There are some really useful shortcuts (which I have given below for your reference)
c - compose a new message
n - goes to next message
p - goes to previous message
! - reports as a spam message
r - reply to the message
a - 'reply to all'
f - forward that message

But what is the key for the Delete in the Gmail ??
It is not specified anywhere in the google help pages...
But someone in blogging community has found it to be # ( that is Shift+3 )
This moves the message to trash immediately!!
So if you are using the Gmail mail keyboard shortcuts, they you can use this also and increase your productivity ;-)

There are many others keyboard shortcuts also. You can read it from the Google website.
But there are really too much to remember and to use....

Hathway pune broadband - unlimited download connection - My experience !!!

I tried to download something using my hathway 8 to 8 liteway unlimited download connection.

I downloaded Knoppix live linux on a CD and here is my analysis.

File size was about 697 MB !!




Total time taken to download was about 8.5 hours (night 10 pm to next day morning 6.30 am)

So the net download speed was about 23 KBps !!

The important point I noted was the speed was somewhat slow in the night time and after midnight it was pretty good !! In the morning I got about 30 KBps download speed !!

Ha ha ha, I think it is not bad to think from a hathway pune point of view !!

Welcome to my blog

Welcome to my blog. Here you can find many useful stuff.
This is going to be pure Tech blog.

I have planned to speak about various things like
* My broadband BSNL Dataone connection
* Useful Internet tips and tricks
* Coding Contests for developers
* and so on....

I am going to tell my new findings on internet also !!

So keep visiting my blog.
Dont forget to bookmark my blog !!!