Yashventures

I am trying out a new Google service these days – GMail for domain. Google hosted email for your own domain. I have moved the Uconomix.co.in domain’s mails to Google for testing purpose. It looks cool. It comes with all the GMail goodies – excellent web interface, free POP3, built in chat and much more. Above all it’s free! It is free up to 25 users for any domain. I don’t know what will be the charges if I exceed that limit.

Presently I am using Rediffmail Pro for Uconomix.com domain but I am not satisfied with the service. Many a times mails are lost and the web interface is really bad! Rediff should learn something from guys at Google. Rediffmail’s free accounts have a very good ajax based web interface but paid users have to do away with the age old UI. If Google Mail performs good then Rediff’s gonna loose one customer! Oh and I forgot to mention there’s a two GB storage per user as against 200 MB in Rediffmail Pro!

There’s one catch though with this service. It’s an ad supported service. I haven’t seen any ads in the emails sent using their SMTP server from my outlook. Typical AdWords text ads do appear in the web interface. Probably they might come out with an option of paid but ad free service in the future.

If you want GMail for your domain visit – https://www.google.com/hosted

I just converted our wired network to a wireless one (Wi-Fi based). It was fun and pretty easy. You just need right mix of networking devices and a bit of knowledge about playing with IPs and stuff.

In a typical scenario you’ll need following devices:

• DSL modem (for Internet connection) – D-Link 502T which was provided by my ISP – MTNL
• Router (For sharing the connection) – D-Link 502T is a DSL router so I didn’t require it separately
• Switch (Not necessary as such) – I’ve already got an 8 port switch
• Wireless Access Point (It will distribute the Wi-Fi signals) – I used D-Link DWL G700AP
• WiFi adapters (Either USB based or PCI based – one for each computer) – My Compaq notebook had it built in, I bought D-Link DWL G122 USB Wifi Adapter for other computers.

We can also use a wireless DSL router(D-Link DSL D524) that combines the properties of DSL modem, router and access point in one single device. Since I already had the DSL router and switch, I only needed the wireless Access Point.

So here’s what I did -

I connected the switch with the DSL router. Earlier the DSL router was connected to a computer and all the computers had static IP addresses in the 192.168.0.x series. We were using an HTTP proxy server for sharing the Internet connection. Now when I connected the router to the switch, I had to change the IP addresses on the computers with the series specified by the ISP. I set the default gateway to the IP of the DSL router and I was able to connect to the Internet without any proxy.

Then I connected the Access Point to the switch. Access Point is basically a wireless hub. It is used for broadcasting the WiFi signals. I configured the Access Point though the web interface to give a name to the network and set an encryption key. Security is an important feature in the wireless networking. It is WiFi based and anyone in the range of the signals can get into your network. The G700AP supports 128 bits encryption (It’s called WEP). I set an encryption key – a sort of password for the network.

Now since the network was on, I tested it on my notebook which has a built in WiFi adapter. I searched for the available wireless networks and my new network was found. It asked me whether I want to connect. It asked for the encryption key and after providing the correct key, it connected me to the network. My IP was provided by the DSL router and it was in the series specified by MTNL. I disconnected all the network cables, took the notebook in another room and opened Janoos.com and voila! I could connect to Janoos.com!

I then installed the USB adapter on one of the desktop computers. After a simple driver installation and same process for connecting to the network. it worked perfectly!

So now we have a wireless network at Uconomix. The WiFi standard used for this network is 802.11g. The range of the WiFi signals is 100 meters indoor and up to 400 meters outdoors!
Here’s how the setup works -

So what was the cost?

Since I already had a DSL router and switch, I had to buy Access Point it cost me Rs. 2699 and USB adapter was for Rs. 1549. I bought them from Hypercity – a giant mall near my home. I could have got them for probably 100 rupees less from Lemington road.

If you wish to setup a wireless network with Internet then you should go for a wireless router. Your ADSL connection from the ISP can then straight go into that device and all you need is WiFi adapters on the computers.

A few months back I was looking for a software that could let me type in Indian languages like Hindi or Gujarati. I was specifically searching for a program that would let me type phonetically i.e. if I type yash it would display यश in Hindi or યશ in Gujarati.

I came across a nice web based project created by Vijay Lakshminarayanan that was exactly what I was looking for. It had many Indian languages but no Gujarati. However it was open source and it was easy to add a new language so I added Gujarati to it. Other languages supported are – Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu. That project can be found here. There are a few glitches with the script so I continued my search and came across another open source project called Baraha. Baraha is a windows application that has many more features. Actually it is a bunch of useful applications including a unicode edit pad, a Kannada spell checker, Indian language sort etc.
If you are on Windows then you can use Baraha and if you are on other platform or want to type online then you can use the online tool.

I recently purchased a song from Soundbuzz.com – Teri Deewani by Kailash Kher from his album Kailasa. I bought it for 10 Rupees which was a fair price I thought. I paid through credit card and downloaded the song…..but I couldn’t play it! It’s a protected song in WMA format which requires a license to play. This is called Digital Rights Management. Although I was shown a message when I purchased the song that the license was downloaded on my computer, whenever I tried to play it I got a message saying I don’t have the license to play. Contacting Soundbuzz.com didn’t help. It’s a company doing business in 13 countries and selling music worth millions of dollars every month, but their customer service sucks and so does the DRM!

It was my first tryst with buying music online and the DRM and it was a bad experience! Three days and I am not yet able to play the song for which I paid legitimate fees!

DRM imposes several restrictions on the usage of the content like

-You need special software to play it

-It can not be played on another computer. So if my computer crashes and I loose the license then I must buy the license again.

-It can not be played on any portable music player unless the device supports WMA and the content owner allows to do so in the license. So basically you need special software and hardware to play the content.

In the world where MP3s are available for free why would someone pay for the music which comes with all the strings attached? I can any ways buy a CD and make MP3 and play it anywhere on any damn device!

I have serious doubts about the success of the DRM technology. At least the current technology makes it more difficult for the legitimate users to use it freely. Apple’s iTunes has similar problems. Songs purchased through iTunes can be played only on iTunes on a PC/Mac or an iPod. And they too can not be copied onto other devices or computers.

What these people want to achieve by implementing such foolish restrictions? The protected songs can still be converted into MP3 and can be distributed freely making a joke of the DRM! If I buy a song I must be able to play in on my computer, on my mobile phone or in my car stereo. Do these music companies want me to buy a new copy for each of the device that I play it on?

I found an ad of Google AdSense on a site’s AdSense block. This looked a bit strange to me. Advertising AdSense on AdSense….

I recently bought a new mobile – Sony Ericsson k750i.

Here are the key features -

• 2 MegaPixel Camera with auto focus (Takes really amazing pictures – see the photo gallery on this site)
• Media player (Superb sound quality)
• FM Radio
• Bluetooth
• Infrared
• USB
• Extendable external memory. Comes with a 64 MB Memory Stick Duo Pro card, can be extended up to 2 GB!

Other features -

• 4X Digital zoom – Not of much use. It’s like resizing the image isn’t it?
• 2,62,000 colour screen
• Themes
• Animated wallpaper
• MP3 ringtones! (Yes I can now set my favourite song as ringtone…the full MP3!)
• Camera shutter (No one will list this as a feature but I really find this a useful feature)
• Java Midlets (For games and applications)
• Modem – so you can browse Internet using the phone as a modem
• GPRS, MMS, Web browser, Email
• Loud speaker..don’t need hadsfree to listen all the great music
• Software for video, sound and image editing – right on the phone. There’s also a very good music composer software.
• Brilliant games with amazing graphics!
• Organizer – contacts, meetings, tasks, world clock, timer etc usual features.
• Quicshare – I can now synchronize my Outlook with my mobile. Very useful.

Accessories -

• Wired handsfree
• Flash – this is a fantastic thing. The books photo that you see in another post is taken at night with the help of the Flash.
• Memory Stick to SD converter
• Charger
• Sony Ericsson PC suit

This phone is exactly similar in features as the w800 Walkman phone – the only difference being the Memory card. w800 comes with a 512 MB card. K750i is the best possible combination of features one could ask in the mobile. The best thing I like about this phone is its camera! I just love it!!!

At Rs. 15,800/= (with bill) this is a steal!!! There are a few downsides as well – this isn’t a smartphone, doesn’t run on Symbian and lacks 3G. But overall a great phone! A perfect blend of fun and productivity.

I can’t describe how great is the media player..you’ve got to listen to it yourself. This is really a Walkman phone! I am going buy a new memory card soon cause I’ve already filled the existing card with my favourite songs.

More photos of the phone and some pics taken with the phone camera