. : : Marc Sez : : .

iPhone
Airtel introduced the iPhone in India for around Rs. 30,000. For this price you can get an awesome computer, a decent laptop or even a motorbike! This price was not surprising to me since all Apple products are overpriced. Only filthy rich people can afford Apple products anyway. Airtel claims that the phone is cheaper in developed countries since they have contracts there that tie to you long term plans and help subsidise the cost. Not convincing. If you buy the iPhone I will consider you a rich fool who doesn’t know what to do with money.

Found an article about a guy who bought the iPhone 3G. I’ve quoted in it full since it echoes most of my sentiments about Apple products.

Cranky Windows Guy: Apple’s iPhone Bugs Stopped Me From Switching to a Mac
Adam Frucci

I’ve always been a Windows user, which means I’ve always been subjected to the ridicule of holier-than-thou Apple fans. You know what I’m talking about: blue screen of death jokes, spelling Microsoft with a $ in place of the S, saying “it just works” with a smug, chubby-faced smirk. It’s always been annoying, and it’s always made me want to avoid using Apple products just so I wouldn’t turn into one of those people. But then the iPhone came out, and I wanted it. But I being a Windows dude, I knew to wait a year for what I thought would be a more complete, less buggy version. It was Apple’s opportunity to get me into the fold, to make me a member of the cult. And boy, did they blow it.

I really would love to know where Apple got this reputation of creating lily-white products that never need fixing, created by a company that cradles its customers in fluffy clouds of superior technology. According to my first experiences with an Apple OS, that’s a whole lot of bullshit.

The iPhone 3G is infuriatingly buggy. It crashes. It doesn’t get great speeds when it should, switching to EDGE in areas that have 3G coverage. Coming out of the subway, it takes minutes to find a signal again and stop claiming to get “No Service” in the middle of Manhattan, often requiring a restart. Requiring a restart to get service! What is this crap? And when I do have service, calls still drop and fail all the time. The keyboard lags so much that writing text messages is more annoying than using T9 texting on a number pad. The orientation switching when you rotate the phone is inconsistent at best. Backups take minutes, sometimes hours. Sometimes, the audio output dies and it needs to be restarted to listen to music through headphones. If you’ve got an iPhone 3G or have been reading news on Giz, none of this will come as a surprise to you. What’s surprising to me is how they’re reacting to to the problems.

I called Apple famed customer support to see if they had any solutions for these bugs. Their fix for my problem getting service when coming out of the subway? Turn Airplane Mode on and off. If there’s a more ghetto fix for a problem than that, I’d like to hear it. Last time I checked the C train didn’t have wings. As for when all of these bugs will be fixed, the guy on the phone said “Sooner or later it’ll be working to its full potential.” Oh, great. How helpful. When asked if I could revert to a previous firmware version, I was told to just wait for the next release. Great, thanks for nothing!

Overall, the customer service reps I talked to were friendly, but they’ve clearly been overwhelmed with calls about the iPhone (my average wait time was about nine minutes for the iPhone support number). They’re overwhelmed because they’re the only facet of Apple that’s available to talk about just what’s going on with the iPhone. Officially, Apple hasn’t recognized any problems, only releasing two patches that say they offer “bug fixes” without going into any more detail. It’s the standard Apple technique; giving no information whatsoever unless they feel like it suits them. And this arrogant company causes such heart palpitations in you fanboys?

If you try to go through the PR channels, you get the Apple standard “no comment.” Supposedly, Steve Jobs himself emailed one single person and promised fixes next month. That doesn’t count as an official statement. In fact, that’s worse than nothing at all, because it just shows how little respect Jobs has for all of us. He has time to tell one jerkoff who files a bug report that fixes are coming in September but can’t release a statement that says just that? Screw you, Steve.

When the Playstation 3 got some new firmware that bricked a number of consoles, Sony didn’t keep mum on the subject. They rushed a new firmware out in a matter of days and kept in touch with reporters about what was going on. They even apologized: “We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you and appreciate your understanding and continued support.” Apple hasn’t acknowledged the iPhone issues to the press, let alone saying sorry for them. Because saying sorry would mean admitting that they screwed up.

The problem is that Apple has this reality distortion field that they use, which is a brilliant handling of PR most of the time. They give out tiny amounts of information, and by being so stingy they make everyone beg and salivate for little scraps But in the end, Apple is just a company like every other company. They screw up, they release things before they’re ready and they botch crisis control. The reality distortion field can’t cover for things like that. Their shit still stinks.

Before I got my iPhone, I was actually considering buying an Apple laptop. Can you believe it? Me, the Windows guy on the Giz staff, thinking of switching. Eventually, when the time comes to buy a new computer, I probably won’t want to jump to Vista, after all. Why not try a Mac?

Now, after this experience, there’s no way I will. I don’t trust the computers to “just work,” and if problems arise I don’t trust Apple to handle them in an open way with customers. In fact, I expect them to try to keep things from me, I expect to continue to feel disrespected by King Jobs and his merry minions. And I’m not alone on this one. What could have been an amazing opportunity to introduce thousands of people to the Apple OS experience has turned people off rather than getting them hooked.

Overpriced
I will never buy Apple products. This isn’t because I am prejudiced but simply because they are too expensive. I don’t give a damn if ‘it just works’ when I can’t afford it!

Overhyped
The hype that becomes before any Apple product is insane! Even if the product turns out to be flop (MacBook Air - no optical drive!) media and fanboys build up the product to extreme heights. I had to turn off the Apple category on Digg to get rid of the iPhone articles clogging up the main page. One in five articles was related to the iPhone.

Hardware Vendor Lock-In
Apple sells hardware and software together. No wonder they can claim their operating system is far superior. They design the hardware and can optimise it for the software. I want to be able to replace the parts of my computer that stop working with alternative parts from the market and not send it to Apple support every time.

Fanboys
This is the main reason I will never buy Apple products. Apple fanboys can be found everywhere. They will defend the company with their dying breath, buy every single Apple product and are basically the only reason for the company’s success. They will refuse to listen to fact and make fun of Windows and Linux users alike with such fanaticism that it annoys everyone else. These are the people that somehow find blog posts that talk about Macs and iPhones and start lengthy discussions on the subject that often beat the word count of the post many times over. No doubt some of them will arrive here and comment on this post. I hope that they don’t.

This kind of hero worshipping behaviour is just annoying. Even though they are a minority the persistence of these fanboys makes people think they are right. I am no Microsoft fan but recently I hate Apple even more since they portray an image of being above criticism which is a position that no company should ever take.

Finding reliable and affordable webhosting on the internet is a daunting task these days. There is so much misinformation and false advertising that anyone new to website building and hosting is bound to be confused by all the options available. If you want a trusted way to look for web hosts and find the right one for you I suggest ‘Web Hosting Rating’.

Hosts are classified by type, awards and features they offer. You can read reviews about the host to see what users think about them and then make the right decision. An added advantage of the site is the huge collection of helpful articles on subjects ranging from choosing a domain to setting up a content management system on the hosting account. A great resource for newbies and experts alike!

We all know about DD Sports. They’ve been broadcasting low quality video all over India since 1999 and their programming usually consists of deferred live sporting events from the 1980s. This might be because the channel gets as much funding as hockey in India (about Rs. 5000 per month I estimate) and can’t really afford to buy broadcasting rights to most sporting events. They usually take major broadcasters to court demanding free access to cricketing events hoping that the government will pity them and the cricket-crazy public will support them.

However I must admit that I have found the channel mildly interesting when there was nothing else on. This was mainly because they treat all sports equally and show everything from skiing to the World Rally Championship.

DD Sports is also the channel to go to for the Olympics coverage. Other sports channel cannot cancel all their regular shows to cover the Olympics full time but since DD Sports is paid for by the government and don’t really have anything else to show they decided to run the Olympics full time. They hired a few bilingual commentators and set forth to bring the 2008 Olympics to the mega-serial-watching Indian masses.

Update: I was too sleepy to complete this post yesterday. Here’s the rest.

The annoying thing about their coverage is that the anchors switch to Hindi half the time. Why are they using a language that half their viewers doesn’t understand?* I am forced to switch to some other channel when they start muttering something in Hindi.

DD is known for their incredibly dull sets for their shows. They managed to come up with something colourful for the Olympics but the quality of the production is still amateurish. Anchors are sometimes looking off to the side at the wrong camera even when they’re not caught off guard, coverage suddenly cuts to a completely different event before the current one has ended and random advertisements interrupt important finals of events.

So why do I even go to DD Sports? It’s the only channel that shows the Olympics without news marquees and logos covering half the screen like in most of the news channels that spare a few minutes to cover some of the events.

How can DD Sports improve and redeem itself? By shutting down the channel, selling the few pieces of equipment they own and donating the money to children suffering from brain damage caused by watching this show.

* Here I am assuming that only about 2 people watch DD Sports, which I feel is a reasonable estimate of their viewership.

Las Vegas is a crazy place and it’s always fun to head there. The whole city seems to be built around going crazy and having fun so you can find everything from casinos to holiday resorts there. You’ll never run out of things to do whether it is chilling at a hotel or checking out the museum and casinos all over the place there. The best way to complete check out the city is through Las Vegas Tours or you can consult some online travel guides also. Otherwise you might miss a lot of the fun places that makes Las Vegas so awesome and end up wandering all over the place. I must have gone around in circles some ten times before I realised I was lost!

Getting around in a new place can be difficult. Things are so much easier with a GPS device. You won’t get lost and you can find out interesting spots with it! You can win one by signing up for the Trusted Tours & Attractions newsletter. You can get alerts like discounts on vacations and things like a Kennedy space center discount so make sure to subscribe.

Usually the articles in The Hindu can put even stim junkies to sleep but occasionally they have good ones.

Yesterday and today they ran a two part article called Inside Tibet that painted a different picture of Tibet, contradicting the claims of the Dalai Lama and Tibet’s Government in Exile.

Inside Tibet - Part 1
Inside Tibet - Part 2

If the situation is vastly improved and Tibetans are enjoying a much higher standard of living, is the Free Tibet movement still relevant? Or is the reporter being shown a different Tibet carefully promoted by the Chinese government?

If you live in Milwaukee, finding the right contractor for remodelling jobs can be a hassle. Instead of asking friends and hardware shops for the numbers of contractors you can make things simple for yourself and use the ClickSmart directory service. This directory contains a large list on contractors along with a short description about them and their contact details. So you can simply browse the site, find the contractor that you think is most suitable for the job and then contract them.

Since they are classified according to area you can find a contractor for jobs such as milwaukee bathroom remodeling easily and quickly. This is just an example of the extensive business list the ClickSmart directory has. You can find pretty much anything for anything using the site. Try it out.

I know… I said I was quitting World of Warcraft. However the reason I quit was due to lack of players and it looks like there might be a solution to this, which is why I’m going back to the game.

A few weeks I found World of Warcraft - India, a Google Group set up by some current WoW players in India. They were debating moving to a new server so that we could play together. Adithya and I joined the discussion and we finally decided to start Horde characters on Deathwing US PvP. So we started new characters and played a little. I got bored soon and started playing other games.

Yesterday Xavier said that he was finally starting WoW. This was good news because Blizzard had recently created awesome incentives for bringing your friends to play through a program called Recruit-A-Friend. If your friend uses your guest key and starts playing, you both get triple XP and free level ups among other benefits. This made levelling characters so much easier and we quickly went to level 16 in a single day.

So I’ll continue playing WoW along with Battlefield 2 (from Thursday), YS Flight (don’t ask), Fighter Ace 3 and Team Fortress 2 (via Steam). I also have to find time to play Medieval 2 Total War, The Battle for Middle-earth 2 and Command & Conquer Tiberium Wars!

Everyone is trying to maintain an online presence, be it individuals or companies and they best way to do this is to buy a domain and web hosting. There is a lot of information about these topics on the net and a new user might get confused attempting to get a firm hold on these subjects. If you want a simple site where you can register domains and buy web hosting services you should take a look at NetworkSolutions.

To make things even easier for people setting up websites for the first time, they offer many tools such as a web page builder to get your site up and running in no time without any knowledge of scripting or design. Blogs, web analytics tools and web design services can also be found on the site itself. Their ecommerce web hosting services are very interesting because using it you can set up a credit card portal to get credit card payments without having to install any external processing portals or scripts.

After you’ve set up your site, what do you do? You make it popular of course! NetworkSolutions offers tools for this also. They have search engine optimisation and pay per click advertising packages to suit your budget that will make your site show up well on search engines and bring you more traffic. Check it out.

Human beings are capable of accepting and adjusting to many things. However some things we just cannot accept. This is one of them:

Ganesh: i dont move close with girls basically

After he said this I was shocked and rendered speechless. Never in my life have I heard a lie as big as this. So I asked a few of my classmates what they thought of this statement.

Bharath: lie
Bharath: absolutly lie

Muruganandham: fraud!!!!!!
Muruganandham: telling lies

Gowtham: Yes, i agree with him, he doesnt move close with girls… But ‘very close with girls’

Vijayalan: No comments… Dumb struck!!!

Harikumar: is that our class ganesh?

Naresh Kumar: liar
Naresh Kumar: scene podatha

Vinod: well me moving now
Vinod: have three test this week from wednesday da
Vinod: so byeee

Vinod has once again show that studies are more important to him than The Biggest Lie In The World.

Networking marketing is a good strategy if you want to promote a product rapidly and use customers themselves as a way to market the product. Whenever people here about networking marketing they think of the pitfalls but when run properly a MLM company can generate a lot of residual income for the employees. You should look into this if you are interested in a network marketing business opportunity.

Pro Networking Marketing is a site set up just for giving you information about network marketing and how to successfully run such a company. You can subscribe to their mailing list and immediately receive an email with a lot of information about network marketing and which company to join. If you would rather browse the site, there are a lot of helpful articles that will help you get organised and get started on this path.

The articles are simple and helpful such as the one about how to select a network marketing business to take up. You have to look at the size and scope and also examine their track record. Other articles help you decide how much to invest, what category of company to chose, marketing the product online and numerous helpful tips and strategies like this.