Google just launched yet another feature . Now you can add a GTalk widget directly to your Google Homepage.
Its cool I gave it a try a minute ago. Conversations appear in tabs.
Now you can access your Gtalk via GMail , the Gtalk desktop client and also from your Google Homepage.
Wow I got published on one of the sites I love reading the most lifehacker !!!
I was baffled to see so many comments at one go in my mail box then I came across one comment which was talking about an entry on lifehacker about my How to Read Hotmail from Gmail post.
Tears flowed down my cheeks as I got the news (5.6mins ago) that my puberty heroes were back ..yesssssss.. KAWABANGA! The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are here for some serious ass kicking action.
The trailer looks awesome apart from the fact that in 3D our turtles look more like lizards ,seems as if they been on a serious diet.
Man all the sewer adventures , ninjas , stupid jokes , mutants and the Pizzas that will show cast cant wait to see it! I bet Pizza hut is gonna make a max of dough with this flick... i started licking pizzas while watching TMNT cartoons ... can you believe that?
By the looks of it our mutant amphibian friends will need to fight against some new evil baddies .. can't see good o'le shredder anywhere in the trailer.. oh yeah I forgot he is in our office kitchenette :P .
The animated movie is to be released on the 23rd of March in the US and probably by December in Mauritius (wild guess :P ).
Am a great fan of mauritiusblogtracker.com I think this must be the site I visit most after engadget and lifehacker .
Some 3 years back when I first started blogging there were only a few Mauritians on the Mauritian soil that were actually publishing on the web and now when I see all the names in the mauritiusblogtracker.com blogroll I feel really proud.
Lately however I was confused seeing entries like Result transcripts and Protected:Yr3:Slides for Advertising on the tracker which was pointing to a Communication Studies blog for UoM students.
I think thats a good initiative and a change of mind from lecturers and students . Although am not sure if student-teacher talk should be make available to the eyes of everyone online , its a nice way of initiating students to the world of media ..and the internet is nowadays the best distributor of information.
The fact that UoM students are showcasing themselves on the web prove that we are really moving towards a new era .
However people (all new bloggers) be careful with what you post , being visible is not always a good thing and sensitive information should not be disclosed to everyone ..some rodents are always present to prey on what you say.
But on the whole its a nice picture , I hope next year at this time when I check the tracker's blogroll its even bigger ..and i have a feeling that it will :) .
This is a simple hack that will allow you to read your free Hotmail (No POP3 enabled) emails directly from GMail.
Recently GMail has enabled a feature that allows you to read mail from other POP3 enabled email accounts . (To learn more in detail how to set this up please read the instructions ...however this is of no great importance to our hack.)
Now my problem was that I always forgot to check my hotmail account so I thought why not make use of this new GMail feature to automatically poll my Hotmail messages into one inbox.
As you might (not) be aware however that Hotmail (the free version) has no POP3 support so I registered an account on IzyMail which basically asks for your username and password and then provides a POP3 server on IzyMail from which you can connect to retrieve your HotMail electronic mails.
After you register this is what you will get on your IzyMail screen as settings:
User name:
(Account name) javed@hotmail.com
including the ...@hotmail.com part!
Password: •••••• (your password)
Incoming server: in.izymail.com
Outgoing server: out.izymail.com
Server type: POP / POP3 or IMAP / IMAP4
Now all you need to do is to fire up your Gmail then you click on Settings -> Account
Here you can see I have already configured a hotmail account , it gives me an indication on when it was last checked.
Click on Add another mail account to retrieve email from in the Get mail from other accounts section.
Now fill in your hotmail username and password :
In the POP server section however replace the default value with the following: in.izymail.com
You can optionally add a label to messages that come from your hotmail account such as you recognize from where they originate. To do this check the Lable incoming messages option.
Hit Add Account to finish the wizard.
Thats it now you can check your Hotmail directly from Gmail !
[3/3/07 update: It has come to my attention that www.izymail.com is not a totally free service so am busy looking for an alternative , if you have one please post in comments.
Maybe the people hosting www.izymail.com will come to realise that they could make more bucks if they prolonged the trial period or provided a free version of izymail thus opening up to more customers with the help of google's new feature :P
]
I've got 2 invitations to give away for Joost .. if you are interested please let me know by writing a comment.
As you might have witnessed we are gradually moving away from Satellite and Aerial antennas to watch our favorite channels and series. Many people are now downloading Heroes , Stargate , Lost or Prison Break , all their series directly from the internet(and at times illegally :P..bad!).
The way we watch TV is shifting as the Web has now the capacity to provide for our thirsty eyes... although our ISP still can't :P deliver as fast as we wished it would . Here is where Joost comes into play .
Joost as you will see on many review sites comes from the makers of the popular Skype , they want to do what they did with telephony but this time with video s'il vous plait.
At a 9.8MB something install this new Television on the desktop application is not very big in size which is a good thing as I wanted to test it out as soon as I was sent my beta testing password.
The user interface I must admit was very simple and pleasant to use. You can select from a wide variety of channels proposed by Joost and here I must say they did get some nice channels like National Geographic and Fifth gear , just to name a few.
The image quality is much better than YouTube for example . Actually you can't really compare Youtube with Joost as the latter has for objective to replace the channels you watch on your conventional TV set whereas Youtube is more about sharing videos . Joost provides quality image and content.
The application itself starts in full screen mode which is a bit surprising if you are not used to having your media player spread automatically across your display.
However quality has a price and that means for us My.T users that the video is really sluggish and stops every 5 seconds . What I do is that I just let it play in mute and after it has streamed I rewind back and look at the videos... its painful but what can you do .
Joost is still in beta so there is much improvement to expect before they finally deliver something nice and smooth.
So for me this is a brilliant piece of software but the biggest drawback is that its not for users on slow connections and at times the commands just disappear by themselves from the screen.
Joost provides free contents legally and is funded by adverts which pop up now and then ...see so you still are watching commercials after all ...yaaayyyyyy!
Ok got to leave you I need to watch the Aston Martin V8 Vantage Road test on the FIFTH GEAR channel ...tough life :P.
Gamede is still outside howling and shaking big trees as if they were made of paper. There has just been a power cut in Port-Louis and the AC current has been fluctuating a lot making my pc restart at least a dozen times.
I hope I continue getting power its really annoying not being able to watch anything on the TV or not being able to use the PC. I wonder what people would do in the old times when electricity was still a luxury and a cyclone raged outside. I guess they must have been worried about whether their houses would stand or not. Its only quite recent that most Mauritian families live in solid concrete houses. I do know that some people must be playing card or board games or just talking around a hot meal.
I have another satellite picture of Gamede , the storm doesn't seem to want to move away it has slowed down its pace meaning tomorrow is still not going to be better.
Just an update on the weather here in Mauritius .. we are now in class 3 the weather has deteriorated a lot over the pas 6-7 hours . Now its absolutely insane to go outside its not that its raining a lot but the winds are quite strong.
Here is an additional satellite photo of the beast:
Some links for you to track down Gamede:
1.Cyclone bulletin: http://metservice.intnet.mu/wfcmrue.htm
2. Mauritian Meteo Homepage: http://metservice.intnet.mu
3. Australian Meteo service: http://australiasevereweather.com/cyclones/index.html
I wish you all a very nice weekend too :D
Its been a while since I heard people mentioning the cyclone shelter points in Mauritius. There has not been any cyclones since a long while until yesterday when a class 1 was issued.
We are right now as I speak in class 2 which means:
no school =lots of happy kids
The official meteological bulletin can be accessed here
and it looks like this :
SEVERE TROPICAL STORM GAMEDE WAS CENTERED AT 0400 HOURS WITHIN 50
KM RADIUS OF LATITUDE 15.3 DEGRES SOUTH AND LONGITUDE 61.6 DEGREES
EAST, AT ABOUT 660 KM TO THE NORTH EAST OF MAURITIUS.
GAMEDE IS NOW MOVING AT A SPEED OF 20 KM/HOUR TOWARDS THE WEST-
SOUTH- WEST.
ON THIS TRAJECTORY GAMEDE CONTINUES TO APPROACH MAURITIUS AND HAS
BECOME A THREAT.
A CYCLONE WARNING CLASS 11 IS IN FORCE IN MAURITIUS.
WEATHER WILL BE CLOUDY WITH INTERMITTENT SHOWERS, MODERATE AT
TIMES, MORE FREQUENT OVER HIGH GROUNDS.
EAST SOUTH EASTERLY WINDS WILL STRENGTHEN WITH A MEAN OF 50 KM/HOUR
AND GUSTS OF 100 KM/HOUR.
SEA WILL BE VERY ROUGH.
THE PUBLIC IS ADVISED TO TAKE PRECAUTIONS.
NEXT BULLETIN WILL BE ISSUED AT 1010 HOURS.
A CYCLONE WARNING CLASS 11 IS IN FORCE IN MAURITIUS.
A CYCLONE WARNING CLASS 11 IS IN FORCE IN MAURITIUS.=
It is expected that a class 3 will be issued around 15:00 from a reliable source...no I can't tell you who it is ..yes it is top secret ... no you can't buy me ....ok for $3000 i could tell you.
Anyways Gamede or not Gamede our weekend is ruined for sure .. or is it? ...I am however certain that there will be cyclonic conditions on My.T bandwidth with so many people staying at home , they are bound to hit the information superhighway.
Some things to remember during a cyclone class 2+
1. do not roam about the streets on foot
2. buy candles , they are nice to look at (that would be my main reason)and work great when there are powercuts
3. buy food provisions
4. get something nice to watch on TV or on DVD
5. call your friends and chit chatt about anything and everything
6. eat a lot of homemade rotis!
7. turn your pc , tv and other appliances off if there is a power cut
8. go to sleep
9. look outside your window at trees dancing a wild tango
10. listen to your battery powered radio if nothing else works
In the meantime this is how our region looks like from outerspace:
Yes the new version of my favorite all time build tool is out with version 2.0.5 , I have been using Maven since its initial version and development life was never the same afterwards.
The guys at Apache promise a seamless upgrade from version 2.0.4 which has already been a while on the market.
Needless to say that I have already downloaded this new version and have it installed on my home pc ..my office workstation will have to wait until I have verified that all the builds indeed work without any hitch.
The version 2.0.6 shouldn't take too long to surface either.
Every year for 7 years when I was at the Royal College of Port-Louis ..(a long time back)..February was the month (and still is) when the Mauritian laureates were announced.
The laureates are those kids about maybe 20 of them who due to their high marks in the High School Certificate get full scholarships in big Universities abroad.
In the early years of my time at RCPL my college used to have a considerable amount of laureates and the sound of firecrackers and teenagers singing would echo all throughout the school compound.
The day would be half day and one day in the week was choosen to be holiday , this is why many kids were all eager and praying that the school would have laureates . But over the years the RCPL has produced less and less of them laureates nowadays its the Royal College of Curepipe , RCC , which is dominating like in this year's HSC exams results.
Anyways what really matters is that children who worked hard have been rewarded. But for those of you who might not be getting a state scholarship but still who worked hard and gave the most out of yourselves this doesn't mean failure...loin de la... You will soon realise that HSC is only a fragment of your existence many interesting things lies ahead . A student having 3 As may not always be better than someone with 3 Bs.
Keep striving , keep learning and have faith in yourselves the adventure is yet to begin . Some of you may need to take the exam again but still work hard and it will surely pay off.
Congratulations to all HSC participants !!!
Lets face it every 5-6 years theres a major change in technology like right now Windows Vista is taking over Windows XP (big change according to Gates), IPod now allows you to make phone calls ..with the IPhone, fried rice is now replaced by ...no this one is not replaceable!..
The following video shows how Nokia believes the future of handhelds would look like in the next coming years ..it looks like a Nintendo DS packed with I must admit ..awesome features!!
As a bonus this is the second part of the video it seems that it was taken from a Nokia presentation
The GUI on the 2nd concept phone is just as cool as the first although it has clearly a different design .
Both models make use of touchscreens which is i believe the way things are going to be for our friends in the future ..now you will have to make sure your hands are clean ..not just for dinner!
Have you ever wondered how it would look like if you saw a water balloon being punctured with Superman's eyes!!!!!
Well here is what it actually looks like:
This nice video shows animated folded paper I know at least one person who is going to adore this :) and thats specially for her :
This lady was so hungry she ate 183 pieces of sushi in half an hour and 20 pounds of food in one sitting:
Check out this great video about the Web 2.0 which i found from boingboing.net .
Ok so you just installed Ubuntu like me and you try to play your favorite mp3 .. au claire de la lune.mp3 ..and guess what it just does not play !!!
Now being an expert Windows User you start pondering how on earth this can be .. well thats the problem with Ubuntu , it just doesn't come with the codecs you need to play your favorite videos and tunes.
Well no need to worry there is always Automatix2 ..ok yeah so from the name you know that it automates something ..but what .. well Automatix is a little app that provides a menu showing all the essentials that you require ..including codecs to play MP3 , DVD burners , desktop enhancement utils , VMware , WINE (To run Windows).. and a host of other stuffs which I leave for you to discover.
All you need is to tick which application you want to be installed on your box , click the start button and there you go Automatix starts downloading , extracting and installing your goodies.
Sorry now but i need to rush .. my codecs just finished downloading from Automatix :P.
Here is what I achieved note wise:
1. Installation
After having finally downloaded my ISO of Ubuntu , I mounted my iso file using Alcohol 100% which is a neat little tool that allows you to simulate a CD or DVD drive on your pc. Afterwards using Nero I burnt it to a CD-RW .Mind you if you want to use a DVD-R or DVD-RW it just won't work.
After like 5 minutes I got my Live CD for Ubunto 6.10 and I merrily restarted my pc with the CD inside. I was pleasantly greeted with the Ubuntu logo and had a quick look at the OS GUI before deciding to install it.
2. GRUB Booloader
However I am getting quiet an issue with GRUB which is the bootloader for Ubuntu (and Kubuntu). GRUB menu list shows Ubuntu and Windows XP in the boot menu screen at startup, however am unable to move the highlighter down to Windows XP for every 6 or so times I restart my pc.It appears that on the boot menu my keyboard is rendered inactive.
I had a similar problem with Kubuntu's GRUB and I still yet need to investigate why this is so. To temporarily solve this PITA I had to modify the menu file for GRUB which showed the different OS installed on my system. So I clicked on Places -> Computer -> boot -> grub .
Now you will see a file called menu.lst . However unlike windows you require to have permissions in Ubuntu (Linux,etc..) to be able to make System Admin modifications. In short you need to be root which is the Super Mega Powerful User of all times in the Linux World, able to delete , rename , edit any file.
To achieve this if you are in Ubuntu you need to log in as root ...whats good is that you do not actually need to restart and enter root in the GNOME login screen ..as it is this just wont work. You need to launch nautilus .
3. Creating a password for root
However prior to that you should create your root password , unlike windows where the Super Admin creates his password at the start of the installation , on Ubuntu the password must be created after the OS install. So here is the command to execute :
sudo passwd rootEnter your current account password , then confirm the new password that you want to set against root.Being a hardcore Windows XP user it took me a lot of years and convincing to finally appreciate using Linux. This occurred mainly because i started working a lot on our office Redhat box.
Last week I thought it was high time for me to boot up on Linux at home too . One of my friends had a Kubuntu live CD so I thought I would give it a try. The live CD allows you to run the OS without from a CD or DVD without actually requiring that the OS be installed on your PC.
This is a good strategy to win Window users over and it worked on me. So after trying out the live CD I was convinced enough to install Kubuntu , which is a KDE version of Ubuntu. I was really pleased to find that it sported all that I required on my home PC , an internet browser called Konqueror , RSS feed reader and even an instant messenger that allowed me to connect to MSN. I was thrilled to find that My.T was working seamlessly and I could connect to the internet without any hitch.
However after a few hours I decided that Konqueror was not the best browser around so I downloaded FireFox2 but was unable to install it. Furthermore I was unable to see any flash enabled websites because the Flash on Kubuntu can be installed primarily only on Firefox browsers. Damn I was annoyed , I searched and searched the web but I learnt that the mainstream version Ubuntu come loaded with Firefox and that it was sporting GNOME instead of KDE.
Now I wanted to get rid of my Kubuntu so as I can later download Ubuntu and install that instead. I thought maybe formatting the 36GB root partion and 1GB swap Linux partions would remedy the problem... I was wrong . I had to actually modify my GRUB config file , GRUB is the bootloader used by Kubuntu, and remove the entries for Kubuntu leaving only those for Windows XP.
After that all that was required, according to my friend and the different sites I visited, was that I needed use a windows bootdisk and perform fdisk /mbr .
So I went into the Phoenix bios set up of my core duo ,to boot on diskette instead of on CD, only to find out that the vendor had placed a password for the bios . Reading online i discovered that there was a backdoor password for Phoenix bios which was "phoenix" and which of course didnt work! So now am downloading a bootable CD ISO which would allow me to remove the damn GRUB thing.
In parallel am also downloading an ISO for Ubuntu 6.10 using uTorrent client , which is the best torrent client I've seen so far even better than Azareus.
My Linux experience is yet to be over ..i will keep you updated!
After all kinds of blogs here is one original blog about mine appollo which is the favorite noodle of the Mauritian nation.
I normally eat mine appollos like at least 3 times a month .Some while back when I was still going to college , I used to eat at least one everyday. I even took 5 packets to South Africa last year and I must say it was just fantastic to enjoy a good mine appollo far from home.
Mine appollo comes in at least 4 flavours there is Shrimp , Chicken and 2 Vegs , if am not mistaken here (please correct me). I love the Veg ones then I can add all kinds of toppings to enhance the flavoring.
On the mine appollo blog you will get all kinds of recipes that you can try at home. If you live outside of Mauritius , I can always send you a packet of noodles by courrier ;).
Am gonna walk you into how to achieve deployment of maven site from a windows XP machine to a Redhat box, assuming you already have installed maven2 and the know-how to execute commands.
These are the stuffs which you need to perform:
1. Configure your POM.xml by adding the distribution management tag:
< distributionmanagement>
< site >
< id > redhatServer < /id >
< url > scp://HOST /var/www/html/site < /url >
</site >
< /distributionmanagement >
Note: HOST is the ip address to your webserver.
The id element must be a unique name to represent your site.
The url element must point to the location on your remote server where you want to deploy your site. Do note that scp:// is prefixed , this specifies that we are using ssh for tansfer.
2. Edit your settings.xml file ,which should be located under C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_USERNAME\.m2 , by adding the following:
< server >
< id > redhatServer < /id >
< username > USERNAME_ON_REMOTE_SERVER < /username >
< password > PASSWORD_ON_REMOTE_SERVER < /password >
< filePermissions > 664 < /filePermissions >
< directoryPermissions > 775 < /directoryPermissions >
< /server >
< /servers >
USERNAME_ON_REMOTE_SERVER and PASSWORD_ON_REMOTE_SERVER should correspond to your username and password on the remote server (RedHat box).
3. Run mvn site site:deploy
This should now start creating your site and deploying it to your remote server.
4. If you get a nagging prompt that keeps coming like the following :
The authenticity of host '10.206.14.48' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 14:93:e7:25:e5:cb:fe:d9:8b:3f
Heard a nice indian song called Leja Leja on B4U music the clip is sadly copied from Daniel Porter's Bad day video.
They used to copy movie scripts now even song scripts are being mimicked have a look:
Whats annoying is that the song is actually awesome save for the copied video.
By the way here's Doorie from Atif Aslam , god there are all videos on youtube :
Jalopnik.com provides an interesting section about car care. Here you will find why you need to check your engine oil level every now and then and how to take care of your car battery.
These are stuff that many of us , including myself ..take for granted and leave it to our mechanics but its very important to do these verifications regularly.
Here is a list of those special characters shortcuts that you always find hard to obtain :
Use ALT + the 4 character codes for these French chars:
133 à (0224)
131 â (0226)
135 ç (0231)
130 é (0233)
138 è (0232)
136 ê (0234)
137 ë (0235)
140 î (0238)
139 ï (0239)
oe ligature (0156)
147 ô (0244)
151 ù (0249)
150 û (0251)
183 À (0192)
182 Â (0194)
128 Ç (0199)
212 È (0200)
144 É (0201)
210 Ê (0202)
211 Ë (0203)
215 Î (0206)
216 Ï (0207)
OE ligature (0140)
A full list of special character shortcuts can be obtained from starr.net .
This may sound stupid but I never quite figured out where to find the settings from flickr to obtain the javascript code to paste on my blog to be able to get the flickr badge until tonight.. when I finally found the page for the flickr badge.
The turkish Popstar video :
I can't understand a single word that the girl is singing but hey its way much better than Star Academy or a la recherche de la Nouvelle star . Excellent music!
The North Koreans finally found a way to solve their hunger problems , giant rabbits !
A 67 year old pensioner Karl Szmolinsky has been asked by the North Koreans for his secret in breeding giant rabbits. The rabbit expert has already shipped some of the rodents to Korea already along with tips on how to feed the monsters.
Apparently one giant rabbit can feed up to 8 people... so can sheeps ! However I guess that since rabbits have babies really fast thats why the Koreans are seeking to breed rabbits instead of sheeps.
As usual I went to the Cite Martial bazaar (la foire) in the morning only to find out that it had moved to another location inside a brand new building with separate sections for vegetables , fish , chicken , beef and cloth/accessories sellers. The new bazaar is located behind the Mahmmad Elahee stadium up near the mountain..actually just at the foot of it .
The shift was not made smoothly as there were many merchants who were unable to find stalls at the new complex . This is why the police force made sure to show their presence in the area and where the old bazaar stood the roads had been blocked.
Afterwards I headed to galaxy where there was a sales going on .An advert had been playing on the air assuring that you would be glaxaciter (..apparently get excited) by their sales. Personally I didn't find anything really interesting or worthwhile. There might have been like 10-12 persons more than usual but nothing worth getting excited about.
I also went to the Cash & Carry to get a new iPod but the price tag was still too heavy at Rs10,000 something , I guess I would prefer buying it out of the country.
Then I came back home and decided to have a go at Second Life , I initially downloaded the client last year when I bought my PC but then gave up on it. After a 26MB update I was teleported to an empty landscape ,seems there are less and less people in the virtual network.
Suddenly it came to me that I should blog about all this uninteresting things because I really didn't have anything better to do :).
The hot phones to expect from 2007 have already been announced at the 2007 International CES. I know you must be salivating to know them better.
We start by the N800 which looks like an old grandpa transistor with a wide screen. This handset is meant for those geeks that really can't live without checking google.com every 30 minutes. If you always want to be online then the N800 is your phone.
The Nokia N93i is the smaller sister of the N93 . It is an inch or so smaller than its predecessor and is blogger friendly according to Nokia. With its 3.2 megapixel camera this baby can shoot DVD like quality video upto 45 minutes. The price should be around $780 which makes it one of the most expensive Nokia phones.
Am seriously looking for a clamshell since last year I have been following closely the N93 but then there were 2 factors that really deterred me from getting one the first being taht the price of the handset was way too high ...at Rs 30,000 I could buy a new pc instead ..and the other factor was the size of the phone ...really big , which is such a shame.
When I saw the N76 like an hour ago I thought hey this might just be in my pocket in a few months time. This is the first slim phone a la RAZR from Nokia. Its attractive , trendy , fashionable , comes in 2 shades black and bright red. And above all its a smartphone.. can't wait for it to come out. Should cost around $507 - Rs 18,000 something.
See all the nokia phones in action from the nokia site .
Another interesting phone is the iPhone , yes you heard it right the iPod just got magical powers. Now not only can you listen to music but you can actually take calls too!
Its designed to provide easy access to the web and your email. Apple is convinced that it's a breakthrough Internet communications device .The iPhone will not have any buttons but will be controlled with its touchscreen. The nice big screen is certainly a wow factor along with the big storage unit which will allow up to 3 films to be stored , 4GB and 8GB units will be available
However with advanced technology comes big price tag so do expect to spend at least $500 for the 4GB version and $600 for the 8GB one.
The article below is a paid review
Design is not the most striking point about thephonespot.com. Initially I thought it must be just one of those commercial phone sites that are appearing here and there on the web until I discovered that the engine behind thephonespot.com was simplicity.
You can nagivate through the mobile phones being offered either by make or by network. Most of the new phones on the market including the N93 are listed on the site.
A good tool to find your dream phone is the Refine your search option which is very easy to use. In my case I usually just click on the features that am looking for my new phone and there you go a list of available phones just pops up beneath.
If you are a trendy shopper well you can always check out the latest phone section as you can see from the screenshot above. Here the N93 seems to be at the top of the chart . I believe its a cool phone the only minus part is its size which is monstrously big, if only it was a little bit smaller!
Clicking on a phone provides you with a list of its features .There is also a full specification and a nice 3-D view page that is available for each phone. I like the 3-D view page as it gives you more insight as to what to expect design wise from the handset especially when you haven't seen it close up before.
It would have been nice however if they had offered videos of the phone . Some phone sites are now offering this feature thus providing more in-depth coverage as to how the phone works and looks like.
The most remarkable thing I discovered about thephonespot.com was the PhoneFinder service . What you must know is that phones on this site are sold based on packages that are offered by 5 popular networks namely Orange , T-mobile , Virigin , 3 and O2 . Now the same phone based on different types of packages will be sold at different prices and the monthly package fees will also vary from network to network.
In the end it does become a headache if you have to manually calculate the right package which will fill your needs. This is where the PhoneFinder service kicks in . A wizard like character dressed like a salesman will guide you from the point of choosing your ideal phone from all the options that you are looking for (e.g 3G , Video , Bluetooth,etc..) to actually picking one phone from the list that is proposed to you and finally choosing from the 5 networks the best package that suits your needs.
Whats nice is that the sales-man wizard is funny and even gives his suggestion as what he "thinks" is the best solution package wise.
Personally I think that this site does its job smoothly and effectively without any unnecessary bells and whistles. This is certainly a site am gonna come back to if I need to buy a phone in the very near future :P .
The general trend these days is that the web is getting everywhere and allowing bigger chunks of data to be propagated throughtout its global network as more and more people get connected via broadband.
Thus it becomes plausible to watch TV and listen to music via streams. I find it really enjoyable to be able to control what I want to watch. Personnally I think video on demand or VOD has great prospects.
In my little room at home for example I got a DVD player , Satellite TV and my livebox with a VOD settop box. The DVD player is cool you can watch your DVDs on it ...obviously .. but you need to feed it with media. Satellite TV provides a ton of video content , channels with specific genre for example Cuisine TV channel provides recipes, cooking tips and National Geographic channel provides documentaries about animals , plants and nature in general.
However at times you don't have any new DVDs to play nor do you find any interesting content on Satellite ,you end up either on the Net or in bed ..fast asleep from boredom. Of course it would have been healthier if you did some exercises instead.
With VOD this is another story depending on the video on demand service to which you are subscibed , in my case its MY.T watch, you can choose from a collection of video provided online. Its like another type of freedom the freedom to choose what YOU want to see.
Unfortunately for my case the video archive for MY.T is not very big as its still a new service and trying to seek its niche in the booming broadband market.Am however confident that in the coming years either MY.T watch or another VOD service provider will find its place in our bedroom/living room.
Did you know there exists on the web a place where logos reside, an actual homepage for logos?
...well there exists such a place , actually it looks like a big ad page a la million-dollar-page , but still its nice to look at :D and you can actually click on the logos to go to the respective site.
You can also submit your own logos to the site which is neat , provided you have one .
The start of a new year implies a lot of different things to different people. For me its about keeping my resolutions whilst for many secondary students new year means new teachers , new mates , new subjects , new uniform ....and new private tuitions.
I remember how private tuition selection used to be in my days , we used to talk between friends which tuition had the greatest concentration of cool people or which tuition professor was the most brilliant ever ...
But then there was those private teachers that had built a small empire from mass teaching school kids and this is why am writing this blog. I know at least a handful of these so-called "semi-god" teachers .Parents love them and other teachers worship them. From my personal experience I have only one word for these individuals "escroc" !
There is no such thing as mass teaching with a small room filled with knowledge hungry teenagers. Come on tuition are meant to be given to help a student in a specific area where he or she requires more attention. Now how can an idiot with 30 students in his room be able to achieve that in 1hr every week ?
On top of that some of these "teachers" are so unreachable that you actually need to book an interview for your child with him. I know of one star (etoile filant) which used to give GP tuitions in my days...and apparently still does. The guy was on every parent's tuition wish list for their kids. Kids who were unable to squeeze into his tuition used to feel as if they would never pass the General Paper exam. I got the "privilege" to be in his class at school .... guess what he did to make pupils learn to write essays ... well he gave them the essays to learn ..pre-mache.. the ones where he has already thought about what should be written.. so dumb.. I would say its a sacrilege to our freedom of thinking.. come on make your pupils creative and make them think for themselves.
I got the incredible chance to have a great GP tuition teacher on the other hand ,called Mr. Kudrath ,which I respect a lot . I never got the chance to thank him for allowing me to express my gratitude and thankfulness for helping me develop a creative and scientific approach into writing essays and in other every day life situations.
Mr. Kudrath instead of having a room of 30 students would have only around 5-6 people at max and he would take the time to talk about different subjects and allow you to express your feelings and opinions. I really enjoyed going to his tuitions that was something really worthwhile in my teenage life.
Thanks also to Mr Luximon and Mr Payandee for maths and physics if it wasn't for these two people I would not have developed a love for solving problems . Parents if you are reading this don't go for the teacher with the most students go for the teacher with the teaching vocation.
I woke up late usually by 6:30 am already on my feet but this morning was hard maybe because I slept on a different bed , had to giveaway my room to my cousins as they were crashing at my place for the night.
My head is still full of last night's new year celebrations at the Caudan waterfont. 2006 had a better fireworks than the one we had on 2005 which was spoilt by rain , not may people had gone out of their homes that year..
Several people after midnight struck where lighting really big and dangerous fireworks on the esplanade and placed them in water bottles before setting fire. Now yesterday ,as is the case still this morning, was very windy due to a cyclone passing in our region and many a time the water bottle would fall down or move resulting in the firework going towards a crowd on the ground or towards the Caudan Labourdonnais hotel. In one instance a tourist at the top of Labourdonnais hotel in his room was quietly enjoying fireworks when one of them fireworks went straight from below directly into his room , needless to say the guy was really frightened.
Strangely yesterday I didn't have much problems sending SMS or making calls around midnight on the CellPlus network. Reading through the papers this morning it seems that around 6 million texts have been exchanged overall yesterday which is a record. Both Cellplus and Emtel had made special arrangements to cater for the load of the festive season.
On moving out of the Caudan at around 1am in the morning there was a really huge queue and it took me at least 20 minutes to get out. Thank god there is Caudan if there wasn't we would have probably been enjoying the New Year at Champs de Mars.
Anyways just would like to wish you all a very happy and prosperous new Year 2007.