Speedtest - 2012-11-Nov-22

Test Date: Nov 22, 2012 10:27:59 am

Connection Type: Wifi

Server: Chennai

(with Aircel, via Samsung Galaxy S3)

Download: 1468 kbps
Upload: 1180 kbps
Ping: 247 ms

(with vodafone india, via Apple Ipod Touch, 4th Gen)

Download: 1.16 Mbps
Upload: 0.55 Mbps
Ping: 45 ms

Donate to Wikipedia - and - you should know how to ask

Wikipedia runs on donations. I'm not into debating whether it's the right model to adopt or not.

They have "improved" their way of asking for donations by making the requests in local currency (at least this is the first time I noticed). See the banner that was presented to me earlier today. I couldn't say no, given the amount of usage that I put wikipedia to!

Did you donate? If not, please consider doing so.

Improving app discovery the social way

I love to discover apps for my mobile, tablet, ipod touch, etc and I'm sure most of the others who have such handheld devices feel the same way. While the current app engines like "Google Play", "ITunes Store", "Amazon Apps", "Samsung Apps" etc try to fulfill this in some way or another, it still doesn't fully meet my/everyone's requirements.

For long, I've wanted the ability to know what apps are popular with my friends, and for me to publish what I use in an easy way so that others can see what I've discovered (other than me having to write about it).

Would it be possible for Google/Apple to aid app discovery by allowing my phone/tablet/... to publish the list of (my selected) apps that I have installed on my phone/tablet/... to Google+, Facebook, Twitter (via some URL), etc?

Google+/FB/ (or Google/Apple) then in turn needs to have a way for users to discover the popular apps, categories (and such) in their circles at the aggregate level and even deep dive to individual users.

I terribly miss the capability to share my list of apps in an easy way and/or discover what others are using.

Is this already available and I'm somehow missing it? Or do you know if there are such plans on the cards and it's on its way? If so, when? If not, do you know how it can be brought to the attention of the powers that be?

I feel that it may also be worthwhile to provide a mechanism to indicate the phone manufacturer, model, OS, etc in FB, G+ posts - if users wish to include it - and provide a similar mechanism for discover.

How not to irritate your customers/prospects

Hello there! It's been a while since I posted anything.

I was trying to get a new standard chartered credit card due to their "no surcharge on fuel at any outlet" policy and 5x rewards points for 3 chosen categories options. Imagine my frustration when it was not even possible to get in touch with them in a productive manner! See screenshot below.

Internet presence for a lot of companies needs to improve tremendously for them to make significant and satisfying impact.

Internet & Smartphone pangs in the night?

The "Sleepless? Then Stop Taking Your iPhone To Bed." article @ Gigaom reminds me of myself at times! It's a different thing I don't have a smartphone.

Hmm....

Google introducing Two Factor Authentication (via mobile phone)

Google is introducing 2FA. You can sign in with your password and an additional code sent to your mobile phone. More details on the google blog entry.

Will you use this?

Home bandwidth monitoring - Linksys WRT54GL / DLink 502T

Internet connection at home is provided via DSL/PSTN connected to DLink 502T connected to Linksys WRT54GL v1.1.

Given some of my previous experiences regarding internet bandwidth at home (ref 1 & 2),
I need bandwidth monitoring software - one that gives me current upload/download information as well as historical trending information. Unfortunately neither DLink nor Linksys provide this in their official software/firmware.

Linksys WRT54GL firmware from Tomato, DD-WRT and OpenWRT all of these seem to provide bandwidth monitoring.

Incidentally, I chatted up Linksys support today. And while they were quite helpful and gracious, they didn't have any solution to this other than to state that this is supported only on 3rd party firmware, but running 3rd party firware will void warranty :) There was no option for them to take a feature request from customer. I'm sure this is a much required/requested feature for most customers who buy home broadband wireless routers. But without official support, it's kinda stuck.


Does anyone have any suggestions or good experience with any of these without having bricked their hardware? :)

What are Indians searching for?

To see what has been capturing Indian's mind on the web, look no further than the ultimate oracle of search - Google.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2010/regions/in.html

The lists - Fastest rising, Most popular, Faster rising people, Most popular movies, Most popular brands, Most popular how to - are interesting and so are the grpahs/charts.

A brief from their summary.

While the IRCTC (railway ticket booking) continues to top the charts of the year-on-year fastest rising bracket, some of the newer interesting entries this year are the low cost smart phone maker Micromax Mobiles and YouTube Videos. As the FIFA World Cup grabbed the real world attention, netizens too showed the excitement catching them online. Amongst the most popular on the web – Songs, Facebook and Google remain the top three. Amongst the fastest rising people, Indians searched for British actress Aruna Shields and this year’s new Bollywood sensation, Sonakshi Sinha. Other favorites from Bollywood were Zarine Khan, Katrina Kaif; and amongst the men, Salman Khan ruled the web.

Aritel Download Speed Test - Something fishy?

I tried out download speed tests and there's something I'm either missing or fishy.

Airtel & SpeedTest.net are indicating that my download speeds are at 2Mbps.

PCPitStop, DSLReports, TestMy.net are reporting that I'm at 0.2Mbps!

That's a whopping difference.

(PCPitStop, depending on the type of test, location of server, shows different results - this is probably truly representative of what can happen with others as well)

I can speculate some reasons why some of those appear faster than other, but when I tried download software (via browser, free download manager), it still remains at around 256kbps or .25Mbps.

See the results for yourself.

2Mbps speed results





0.2Mbps or ~256kbps speed results

Airtel "Fair" Usage Tracking - "Broadband"

I'm on a 512kbps DSL "unlimited" download "broadband" plan which defaults to 256kbps after a certain amount of download (can't recollect the limit). Airtel is my service provider.

This month is the first time, I've come across the limits being applied. And the only thing that was of significant download size for the entire month was the linux Ubuntu download (about 700MB).

Initial Message


Message after "limits" were applied



And to imagine that this comes @ ~Rs900 per month, makes me cringe at the "broadband" options that are available in India.

Why do Google Chrome 8 & 7 co-exist?

So, why do Google Chrome 8 & 7 seem to co-exist, each of them taking about 150MB space?

Kindle 3 WiFi, e-readers, touchscreen tablets

So, I got Kindle 3 WiFi for Krish, still to get to Chennai with it. I like the concept of e-readers, but I'm aghast at the prices at which books sell legally :) IMHO, many product prices do not take PPP into consideration and there are possibly some valid reasons for it as well in the context of "e-goods". However, they do lose out on a large market for this very reason as well.

Well, FWIW, I'm quite tempted with the concept of touchscreen tablet when compared to a plain e-reader. I'd like to gift one to my parents who'll appreciate the ease of using a touchscreen device when compared to a regular desktop/laptop. However, I'm also sure that I'd be hogging the device if that was the only touchscreen tablet device at home :)

Samsung Galaxy Tab with 7" touchscreen, camera, wifi and android is a step in right direction - however I'm not fully convinced about screen size. I'd rather take the ~10" Apple iPad - however that's still missing camera (front & back) and is also exorbitantly priced without an external/SD card storage mechanism. I'll probably wait for the next gen tablets to make entry into the market. Apple can be quite greedy at times - afterall the 16GB iPad sells at $500 while 64GB sells at $700. $200 difference for 48GB! But then, the Samsung Galaxy Tab at $600 isn't a very inspiring price either for a 7" device. There was mention of a $500 variant with just Wi-Fi, but I can't seem to find enough information on it on the net - they mostly talk about the 3G+WiFi variant.

I do like Krish's take that a reader like kindle without extra-ordinary capabilities will keep him less distracted and dedicated to the task of reading! I couldn't agree more :) Will be interesting to see how HTC Nook Color (Barnes & Noble) stands up against Kindle.

In the meanwhile, if any of the readers are interested in gifting me one (either the tablet or e-reader), thanks in advance :)

Broadband speeds - 19-Jun-2010

Seems a slight improvement over the previous test results.

Discovered TweetDeck recently

Discovered TweetDeck (for desktop) recently - kind of an answer to my earlier post asking for a social networking amalgamation.

The thing with all these "wonderful" tools (including Twitter, FB) is that their business model is unknown (not fully mature) at the moment.

And, while I've handed over to TweetDeck the keys to my LinkedIn, Facebook accounts, I'm still not ready/comfortable to hand them the Google keys.

Anyone have any feedback?

Find the most happening phone in your part of the world

Crisp version for those in the US: iPhone More Global Than Android — for Now

Or better still, look at the data yourself in the report (recommended) after a read of the blog from AdMob!

Airtel redefines broadband as 512kbps, ping test fails

My friend Krish recently pointed to the fact that Airtel was doubling speeds. The original Airtel press release indicated that minimum default speed will be 512kbps going foward.

Now, I'm there @ 512kbps download speed as evidenced below. Yahoo!!!

As you can see the upload speeds aren't there yet, but that's still ok :)




Update:

Look at the ping test results. While I'm not fully sure of what the implications are yet, the line quality appears to be concerning (or maybe its a function of test time of day, server load, etc).

Now.


Grade D: Concerning. Most online applications will not perform well but should function is some capacity. Test to other servers to confirm.

Earlier.

Grade B: Very good! Your connection should work well for any Internet application. Some online games may not perform optimally.

My tiny-band up/down-load characteristics

Fiction books I'm reading

The list of fiction books I've read or am reading or interested in reading.

This list is on the sidebar of my blog as well.

Do you have a list? Where is your list?

Any site/list that helps share this in better format and helps exchange views/recommendations and find similar interests/books?

My blood boils

when I see these nasty, stinky, stupid family dramas on TV, and audience hooked onto them like crazy!! :)

On a different note, it however presents an interesting opportunity for those studios to provide a social networking platform to bring together and "bond"/bind their audience ;-) Not to mention provide an opportunity to watch the reruns, download them onto a set-top-box, etc. Enter Eos and the like!

Schools & Twitter

It just occurred to me that schools can keep parents notified with announcements / news by using twitter as an easy & free (for now) medium.

All that the school has to do is establish a twitter account and all parents can be notified about the same for subscription.

Will work wonders for regular news as well as unexpected announcements like declaring a holiday due to rains (or such).