What I liked in Nokia N900/Maemo

It’s been more than a week since I started using Nokia N900 smart phone. At the same time an android phone visited me (Samsung Galaxy S) which failed to impress! I continued using N900 & handed that device over to Santosh to write a guest review on Tech Bangalore. Since it’s too late to write a detailed review of N900, I’m just pointing out what all features I liked on this phone.

Build:

Many said it’s bulky/heavy, but I personally like the way it is built. It perfectly sits in my hands & makes it totally comfortable to use QWERTY keyboard. You will feel it’s bulkiness when you keep it in pocket, you cannot keep anything other than the N900 in your pocket!

Browser:

Almost all N900 reviews talk more about browser! Though I had an option of using Firefox (AFAIK only smart phone which runs Firefox), I liked using the default browser. Default browser is powered by mozilla technology & gives desktop browsing experience. I was really impressed by capabilities of this browser. For ex: Few days ago I wrote a simple location aware foursquare app using Geo APIs supported by Firefox. Out of curiosity I tried accessing this app from N900 & voila, N900 gave my application GPS location & my app worked perfectly fine. I had actually written the code without any intentions of accessing GPS location, all done by the browser.

Angry Birds!

Killing time in power cuts is not that easy. Angry Birds make me feel like Power, don’t come for another hour please!. Angry Birds is a simple yet very addictive game which first came on Maemo & then launched for iPhone too. It’s one of the most selling games on iPhone app store. Game is simple, just throw birds at pigs and kill them!

Vagalume:

I hugely rely on last.fm (I don’t know how many times I said that!) for music. I wouldn’t buy a phone if it can’t play last.fm radio, it is so important for me. Vagalume is a last.fm client for Maemo platform which can play last.fm radios. Unlike other last.fm clients I have seen, vagalume automatically downloads free tracks on last.fm while playing a radio. That means, it plays that track locally instead of streaming it again. One more unique feature I liked on Vagalume is that, you can enter a last.fm url & play that radio. It can be friend’s library, friend’s loved track, similar artists page…anything.

Joikuspot:

The application which enables you to carry wifi hotspot wherever you go, Joikuspot is my favorite right from the day they launched it for Symbian. Thanks to MyNokiaWorld which gave away a premium license of Joikuspot to me. If you aren’t already aware of, Joikuspot uses your GPRS/EDGE/3G connection & converts your phone into a wifi hotspot. Other devices like laptops, iPod touch, tablets can connect to this hotspot & access internet.

Android 2.2 (Froyo) has this feature inbuilt, you don’t have to install/buy any application to do it.

Tunewiki Widget:

Tunewiki widget automatically fetches lyrics of the song you are currently playing on N900′s music player. Tunewiki syncs the lyrics with the playback which enables you to sing with your favorite track. This can be ultimate karaoke machine!!

I wrote about only these many features to just to maintain uniqueness of my writeup. There are lot other things which I like on N900 like unified conversations, unified contacts, camera, email client, customizable multiple desktops, community support….and lot others.

As a special offer to Tech Bangalore readers, you will get a stereo bluetooth  headset free with the purchase of N900 worth Rs.4000. Store price of the handset is around Rs.24k. Leave a comment below to know how to avail this exclusive offer.

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Norton 360 is a complete security solution for PCs, not just an anti-virus software. It includes lot of tools which makes your PC totally safe. Let’s go through each one of them in brief:

PC Security:

Norton 360 comes with all in one set it & forget it automated virus & spyware protection. This system effectively blocks viruses, spyware, Trojan horses, worms, bots, and rootkits. Norton Bootable Recovery Tool repairs, restores and boots severely infected, which is very useful when your PC is not booting because of an infection. Norton has Real-time SONAR technology which detects emerging spyware and viruses before traditional definitions are available making sure you are protected from upcoming threats. Norton firewall quietly defends against hackers from hacking your PC.

Identity protection:

Norton Identity protection securely stores your login, credit card details & makes it easy to shop at online stores. It guards against key-loggers by auto filling the forms with your credentials. Blocks phishing websites automatically to make sure your personal information doesn’t land in wrong hands.

Back up & Restore:

Norton backup allows you to back up important data securely on their servers. Backup can be setup in three simple steps:

What? – What all data you want to backup. Select all the directories which you want to backup.

Whare? – Where you want to store the backup. You will get to choose between local drive & online storage which Norton provides. Norton provides upto 25 GB of online storage based on the package you are buying.

When? – When you want to run backups. Here you can choose between Automatic, weekly, monthly or manual.

PC Tuneup:

PC tuneup comes with set of tools which helps keep your PC clean. Disk optimization optimizes the hard drive and free ups more disk space. PC Tuneup automatically finds and fixes the problems which are making your PC slow. It also has clean up utilities to take care of unwanted temporary files & cookies which improves the start-up speed of the computer.

Overall Norton 360 is a total solution with set it & forget it protection. You have to go through the setup only once & concentrate on work which you want to do rather thinking about security risks.

Today I found a link on Facebook inviting users to apply for beta testing program of their new product, which looks like below:

Wondering what Facebook is upto I clicked on that link & apparently it looks like Facebook is working on a ‘Answers’ portal similar to Yahoo Answers. To get the beta tester access to this application, Facebook requires user to pick three questions & write answers for them. This is clearly about Questions & Answers, let’s see whether Facebook can really stand against well established competitor like Yahoo! Answers.

As mashable reported few days back, Facebook is testing an upgrade to “Photos” application by adding “Related Photos”. Based on the photo user is looking at Facebook populates other similar photo next to it. If you are a Lifeblob user, this isn’t new to you. Lifeblob had this feature from a quite a long time by now.

With this supposed innovation, facebook will now start showing other photos of people who are face-tagged in a photo next to it. The application feature addition is designed to drive users to explore additional photos that may be of interest based on the photo they’re currently viewing, thereby further personalizing the experience (and increasing page views).

Just to set the record straight, we have had this feature ( and a lot more ) at http://www.lifeblob.com for over a year now and facebook has blatantly copied it. Every time you upload a photo on lifeblob, a recommendation engine not only looks at the face tags, but also the other information associated with your photo to show you photos that are closely related around it.So when you upload your graduation day photos, we discover other photos of your graduation day and show it next to your photo. What facebook has done is picked up this idea and launched a simple version of it that only uses face tags. Bravo!!

–Pranav Bhasin, Founder, Lifeblob

You can check the detailed post about this feature by clicking the above link. This is not the first time Facebook copied something, it copied ideas from Friendfeed (later acquired) & Twitter few months back. Do spread the word by sharing this & also by joining this Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Facebook-STOP-copying-from-Indian-Startups/128733897152335 which Pranav has created (Yep! an FB Page!)

24HoursLoot is an online store which lists a T-Shirt at discounted price everyday & discount applies only for 24 hours. 24HoursLoot is creative enough to come up with some nice design everyday. T-Shirts with catchy captions, music band logos, geeky slogans are the few of the listed designs so far. Though normally T-Shirt designs are standard, sometimes they allow user to customize it. Like, T-shirt with twitter design allows user to add his/her username, a T-shirt with QR code printed on it for the text you provide…etc. Sometimes they also list products other than T-shirts.

New design will be open to public every mid-night 12 & will be be available for next 24 hours. Website provides options to subscribe to new loots via Email & SMS to make sure you won’t miss any loot. Head over to 24hoursloot.com & start looting!

Every website uses services like Stat Counter, Google Analytics to tracks visitors & get detailed analytics about their visitors. But, these tracking systems are mainly concentrated at visits made from computers. Though it tracks visits from mobile devices, details are very less. With growing smart phone popularity, you can’t just ignore this space. I personally underestimated traffic which comes from mobile devices to Tech Bangalore, which I found 20% of overall traffic after enabling mobile analytics!

PercentMobile:

PercentMobile is a free mobile analytics service which gives granular details about visitors browsing your website from mobile devices. Details which PercentMobile gives you is just awesome, like, how many devices were wifi enabled, how many were touch screen, how many were smart phones, how many had QWERTY keyboard…etc. PecentMobile also lists all the devices which are used to browse your website.

I enabled PercentMobile for Tech Bangalore few days ago & above screenshot shows how much detail you can get from PercentMobile. Screenshot is partial, there’s more to look in analytics, like Network provider, region, most visited URLs, referrer…etc.

So, head over to PercentMobile & enable mobile analytics to your website!

Magic, is something which amazes us so much right from our childhood. I always wondered how a burning piece of paper turns into a pigeon? how three threads change their lengths as I see it? how did the magician know I will pick ‘A’ spade!? Well, it’s really a magical world. But, it’s not that easy to find information about magic & magicians on the web.

My friend & a magician himself Philip Tiju took the initiative of creating a website which has every information about magic & magicians. After months of hard work he came up with worldofmagicians.com. The site has everything about magic & magicians. History of magic, a huge directory of magicians with basic information about them, videos, photos, information about magic institutions, magic dealers, links to e-groups what else you can think of?

One thing I liked about the portal is, most the place it’s open for public to add information, for ex: If you know a magician who is not listed in directory, you can go ahead and add. In this way public can contribute information they know to the site.

Go to WorldOfMagicians.com

Airtel is getting more competitive in it’s GPRS offerings by offering one more GPRS pack at very affordable price. My friend Ashwin posted a screenshot sometime back which says about this new pack:

So, as per the screenshot if you easy recharge with Rs.19, you can browse free till 200MB. Though it’s unclear how much validity it carries. If you know, do let everyone know via comment section.

Update:

As Chaitu commented here, validity of this plan is 3 days.

Airtel has recently rolled out a new GPRS pack which is very competitive with GPRS packs offered by new providers like Docomo. With new plan user gets unlimited browsing all through the month for just Rs.98. Though Airtel calls it “unlimited”, it comes with fair usage policy limit of 2Gb. If you are using GPRS only on mobile device, 2Gb is more than enough for a month. If you are connecting your laptop or PC to browse internet, then you should be counting on those bits!

To get this plan, just “Easy Recharge” with Rs.98. But, before that activate Mobile Office on your number. To do that dial *567*11# & you will get a confirmation message. Dialing this activates basic plan of Mobile Office, which is 30paise/50kb, pay as you browse. After you ERecharge with Rs.98, it overrides the basic plan & you will get 2Gb of free browsing. It’s instant

If you don’t have settings send ALL to 543210

Update:

To check your usage details & expiry date of the pack dial *123*10#

Airtel has two unlimited GPRS packs for it’s prepaid customers. One day pack offers you unlimited browsing all the day for Rs.20. Similarly you can go for weekly pack for Rs.99 & do unlimited browsing throughout the week. Getting these packs activated is quite simple via SMS shortcodes as follows:

• To activate daily pack (Rs.20), send MO to 56123
• To activate weekly pack (Rs.99)  send MO to 56122

Since I’m not an Airtel user, I don’t know more about other GPRS packs Airtel is offering. If you are aware of any, please share it with others in comments section.