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    Nokia E 63 – Headphones don’t work with music player [Solution found]

    September 11th, 2009

    I just purchased a Nokia E 63 yesterday. Its an impressive phone given its smart features and price tag(11.6 K in Thane). As I was exploring it, I noticed that the headphones won’t work with the music player, though the headphones work with FM radio. The music player would play only through the loudspeaker and the volume too was quite low.

    Here is the solution:

    Menu > Tools > Settings > General > Enhancement > Scroll down to ‘Text phone‘ and set it as default.

    Now plugin in your headphones into the 3.5 mm jack and enjoy the music on headphones.

    Let me know if it solves or not your problem.


    Next electronics / Planet M mobiles – Beware of the price tag

    September 8th, 2009

    I am looking to buy a new Nokia phone and I went doing a price-check of the Nokia E63 in the popular gadget stores in Thane. All of them(Pragon, Mango, Nokia Priority dealer) quoted about Rs.12,000 however the Planet M mobile store quoted around Rs. 13400. That Rs. 1400 or 11.6% above the market rate. When I exclaimed that it was a bit too much, the salesman did some “checking” on their computer and blankly told me “Sir, the price has changed now. New price is 12,200.”. Also it is my experience that for many other gadgets, the price is on the higher side as compared to other stores.

    Moral of the post: Be careful with Next Electronics and Planet M mobiles. You may be the “Next” in line to be overcharged.


    Solution to retrieving devanagari / hindi / marathi from MySQL database

    May 14th, 2009

    Web developers working with Indian devanagari language may face some issues while pulling out strings from the MySQL database. If not done correctly, one will get a series of question marks instead of the devanagari.

    Solution:

    Set the ‘collation’ of the database, table and column to ‘utf8_unicode_ci‘. Now, whenever you want to retrieve the unicode string, simply run the below given query before running the actual query to retrieve the unicode string.

    mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");//run this query first
    $resource=mysql_query('SELECT book_title FROM hindi_marathi_books');

    Thats it! Now use PHP to parse the strings as you like!


    Incablenet (Hinduja TMT) set top box review

    March 7th, 2009

    Its almost 6 months that I have been using a Set Top Box (STB) from InDigital. My top-line cable operator is Incablenet (Hinduja TMT). CAS as such has not been implemented in my area(Thane East)–so I get almost 200 channels for Rs. 280 monthly. It used the MPEG-2 technology.

    Installation-

    The installation was easy and was done my my cable operator. There is no ‘dish antenna’ to be installed on the terrace or near the window. The STB can be placed just besides your TV. The input connection is the same co-axial that was earlier used to be plugged directly into the back of your TV. With STB, this cable input is fed into the STB. The output is drawn through 3 cables – 2 audio(L and R) and one for video–all of which are fed into the ‘AV input’Ā  of your TV. The TV should be set to ‘AV’ mode. The STB required a ‘CAS card’ — its size is of a credit-card and functions like the mobile phone SIM card. Total time for installation is under 5 minutes.

    Remote control-

    The remote control is lean and decent in looks, unlike those fat and ugly remote controls I have seen with Reliance Big TV. Few buttons on the remote control are redundant. The keys could be confusing at times.

    Switching on the STB-

    After switching on, it takes around 10-15 seconds to ‘actually’ switch on. During this gestation duration, it just flashes the Incablenet logo. Then, it switches to the first channel no–101[Channels start from 101 as opposed to 1]. In some models, it switches to the last channel or the most viewed channel. Its seems that the STB keeps on learning your preferences(some models only).

    Picture and sound quality-

    The picture quality is remarkably better. The sound is crisp-clear. The co-axial cable needs to be well maintained-esp the pin that feeds the signal from co-axial into the STB. If this pin this rusted or loose-connected, the picture and sound may be scrambled[like a CD when it is scratched]. This caused a lot of annoyance initially until I replaced the pin.

    Changing the channels-

    Changing the channels is not so smooth. Every time you change to a new channel, it shows a black screen for some time(1 – 2 secs) and then the actual picture and audio can be seen. It is thus a pain and not user-friendly. There is a blue bar shown at the bottom of every channel which shows current time, the now running serial/movie name and that of next serial/movie. In some models, . These details in the blue bar do not get updated automatically. You need to escape that bar(ESC or OK button) and bring it up again to update again. This is another drawback.

    Changing the volume-

    This functions against your intuitions. The volume is relative to the main volume control of your TV set. The volume is set on per-channel basis. This means that though you may adjust the volume of one channel, you may need to re-adjust it when you change to another channel. Though once set for a particular channel, it remains at that level until you switch off the STB.

    Channel listing and surfing-

    Channels can be listed alphabetically or serially. When listed serially, the channels are grouped by their genre–i.e.–All music channels together, all finance channels together, etc. This genre grouping makes it easy to find closely related channels.

    Radio-

    Though many radio-stations are available, there are mainly regional and Govt.-run stations. Radio-stations from all over India are available. There is no FM/SW1/SW2/MW/AM/etc. switch. Stations from these frequencies are available under one-roof — serially one after the other.

    Other utilities-

    The only other utility I see is games. But I think these require a subscription in addition to my monthly cable Tv charges. There was no way I could use them so no review about it.

    Miscellaneous:

    The error codes are descriptive and understandable by the lay man. There is facility to lock channels, bookmark/favourite them. “Service messages” can be sent by the service providers(I have received 0 in the past 6 months) and there is an option for firmware upgrade.

    [.::Screenshots coming soon::.]


    Corporate v/s the local guy- Internet and cable TV service providers

    March 2nd, 2009

    In the last three-five years, I have seen corporate houses jumping into the local guy’s business-esp internet services and cable TV services. While some of the players were present longer since 5 yrs, some have recently jumped. In this post, I am just comparing my experiences of dealing with these corporates and local guys.

    Most of the people reading this post come from a decent and humble(read middle-class) social and educational background, including me. Since me and you have been availing these services from our local cable operator, we know how frustrating it can be. Also, these local guys are very naive most of the times. Taking advantage of this, multi-crore corporate organizations wooed us with their promises of professional services and standards, better features, utility and technology. Right now, I am using some of these ‘professional’ services as well as ‘local’ services. Overall, I find that the local guy wins in the long-term.

    With professional services, they give you a ‘Customer care’ no. Whenever you run into a problem, dial that no., spend 30 seconds dialing 1 for English, 2 for support-related calls, 3 for pre-paid customers, etc. Then they force upon some grade-less instrumental music created by an anonymous local artist as ‘hold-on’ music. During this ‘hold-on’ music, a computerized voice message keeps on telling you that you are very important customer for their business and they appreciate your patience for holding the call. If you are lucky, within the next 2 minutes you may get some so-called ‘customer-care executive’ to receive your call. He will VERY nicely ask for your details and complains, do some basic troubleshooting and finally end the call saying ‘I am forwarding your complaint to the concerned department, please rest assured’. He will hang up with a greeting line such as ‘Have a nice day’ or something else. You wait for two days to see if any ‘concerned department’ calls up and talks with you. So you again call their ‘customer care’ and repeat the whole process of ‘forwarding your complaint’. Even if you be rude on the call and abuse the ‘executive’, it hardly matters because to that executive, every call for him is like a story. OnceĀ  the call ends, the story is permanently over for him. After much trying, you get lucky one day and a over-worked ‘field engineer’ calls you and finally the problem is solved after much trying.

    When availing services from corporates, I was always felt cheated. They promise ‘Excellent customer support‘ but their meaning of ‘excellent’ is not what you think. They dress so neat and sharp, they speak good English(We good so many ‘English Speaking classes), call themselves as ‘executive’—and are in the occupation of looting people, especially educated and straight-forward people like us who think that these ‘marketing guys’ are really working for our good and that they will honor their words in time of problems. Actually, in the time of problems, most of them will not be working with that same company(in cities, people change jobs so fast) or will forward you the customer care no.

    The local guy, on the other hands, tells me exactly what to expect from him. I can call his mobile almost any time- even late evening and he will usually solve the problems under one hour. His phone line is never busy and he never lies to me that I am some very important customer. He exactly knows the most common problems people face in that local area and its solutions. If something is not working as promised, or I am being ripped-off–I can loudly say ‘Customer ko chootya banata hai. Paise leta hai aur kaam nahi karta‘ and be sure that it will have an impact. If things don’t improve, I know where his ‘wires’ are. I can cut them any time and return the agony caused by him due to his failing services. Infact somebody actually did this with Pacenet Broadband and Sify Broadband in my area and the service improved thereafter.

    From today, I have pledged not be brand-carzy and find ‘local’ alternatives of these ‘brands’. My local TV guy gives me over 300 channels for Rs. 280/- per mo whereas CAS would cost me Rs. 1500 + taxes. Also, DTH providers don’t allow me to create customized channel packages. They want to buy those packages which ‘they’ think are good for me. Actually the strategy behind these inflexible packages is to sell a package that has 50% good channels and 50% crap. This is how the DTH providers actually sell the crap channels by forcibly bundling them with good channels. Also, they make you sign a ‘Terms and conditions’ while subscribing which effectively allows them to add or remove any channel without considering you. It may happen that one fine day they may remove all good channels from your package and replace them with crap.

    So make your decision only after being weel-informed. Don’t belive the marketing guyz if they say that shit does not smell.