Using Other sims with bsnl 3G data card

I know many want to know how to use other sims with bsnl 3g data card (usb modem).

My review of bsnl 3G will be coming soon.

Bsnl 3g data card is the only one that allows the bsnl sim to be removed. If you remove the back you can take out bsnl 3g sim and use any other sim even non 3g sim. You can even connect using the bsnl 3g software, no hack required.

Just change the settings to the settings of the particular sim and connect as you would with bsnl 3g sim. I tested this with aircel.

For aircel the settings are

Telephone Number : *99#

Username & Password : Leave blank

APN : aircelgprs

I got pretty good speeds, these speeds were as good as the 2g data card speeds. So when you need cheap internet connectivity use your aircel, airtel or any other sim to connect to internet using this method.

It only cost 97 Rs per month to get internet on aircel sim. This method could be a good back up when you don’t have internet through other means or when you don’t want to pay for one full month.

It even works on mac’s

Aircel is the one for your data needs

I am always on the look out for cheap internet usuage. So i wanted a sim that will give me unlimited internet even while roaming and has to be a prepaid sim. There are not many option out there. There are some unlimited options, but the have a fair use policy, which means its not unlimited. So after my exhausting search here is the winner.

Aircel has the best unlimited gprs plan out there, its 97 Rs per month. This is truly unlimited, no fair use policy bull shit here. I have used nearly 5 Gb for this month alone and its still working. I have been using this service for the past 1 year. I always use more than 5 Gb per month. The best part is it even works unlimited while roaming. This is the best option for a data sim especially if you are in the south of India.

I wouldn’t recommend it as your phone sim, because they have very little coverage. But for you data and internet need this is it. It even works as a usb data card sim, if you use it with bsnl 3g usb modem. Its got good speed too, i got 80 kbps with the data card.

Now others are offering unlimited plans, but aircel been doing that for the past one year.

By they way if you want to know what i use the 5 Gb per month for. Its mostly for podcasts, i use listen app on my HTC hero. If you are using android phones with auto sync turned on, it will suck up quite a bit of data.

Don’t buy tata photon pocket wifi now

Tata photon are offering a new device that they are calling tata photon pocket wifi. Which is a router with a sim that gives your broadband speeds. This device is priced at 4999 Rs.

What is the main feature of this device. This device acts a wifi hotspot and allows you to connect 5 different devices to internet.

Why i am asking you to not buy this device now. They data plans are shit compared to BSNL 3G plans. Tata photon are offering the same plans they offered for Tata Photon Plus. So if that data wasn’t enough for you, now you can share the same connection with five more devices.

Even their hardware is crap, the main selling point of this device is portability, so you would guess a router could at least last as long as the laptop battery lasts.

Has an in-built battery for a 2.5 Hrs operation

So if you are in the market for something like this a wifi router that is portable with an internet connection that you can carry. I have two solutions for you.

1. Get a portable router that powers via usb, they are available for 3000 Rs. Get a BSNL 3G usb modem and hock that into the router and you have the same thing that is cheaper and lasts as long as the laptop battery. Bsnl have good data plans and especially an unlimited plan.

2. If you have a 3G usb data card like BSNL 3G or any others. You can share that connection via computer to other devices. Here is how i do it.

I connect the BSNL 3G usb data card to my mac and turn on internet sharing in settings menu  -> sharing -> internet sharing. And now using the mac’s wifi i can connect any device that has wifi to internet. I know there are ways to do the same on windows too.

So don’t buy the tata photon pocket wifi, wait till they come out with a good battery like (10 hours or more) and an unlimited plan like BSNL 3G.

Wipeout India’s poverty 1% at a time

After reading this tweet from Javed Akthar i had this brilliant idea.

@Javedakhtarjadu: 40% Indians are bellow poverty line.35%  some how manage two square meals.15% are having a party .is it fine by you?

Why are the less fortunate being neglected by fortunate people ?

Are Indians not generous? no we are generous people. So why are we allowing so many people to suffer like this. The answer i think is many want to help and don’t know how. If they do know how, they don’t trust the process and think its corrupted.

So how can we change this situation ?

Most of the charities take quite a lot of effort on the individuals part to contribute. It has to be seamless and people shouldn’t even see the process. So how can we make this seamless, that’s were modern technology and branding come into effect.

Have you seen the vegetarian logo on food items, the green square with a green circle inside. Make a charity symbol that looks something like that. Make a logo for it so people recognize it.

Now we have branding how to get the money ?

Every time a user buys a product that has that symbol he automatically is donating a 1% to less fortunate.

1. So how small can the amount be? It has to really small something like 1%.

2. So will we put that symbol on everything? No we will not, only on luxuries.

3. So what is a luxury? Anything that is above the basic.

Here are some of the examples

Above 500 Rs bill at a shopping center – 2.50 Rs gratitude

Above 500 Rs mobile recharge – 2.50 Rs gratitude

Above 5000 Rs phone is a luxury - 25 Rs gratitude

Above 40000 Rs bike is a luxury – 200 Rs gratitude

Above 300000 Rs car is a luxury – 1500 Rs gratitude

Above 1000 Rs fuel fill up – 5 Rs gratitude

So you see how this works there will be a basic price for everything and anything over that will have a 1% gratitude tax. Its small enough people don’t care about it.

You can even make a super luxury section where 2% is given like for cars, watches, perfumes, purses, beauty products etc.

How to automate this process ?

This organization could make deals with mobile operators, super markets, petrol pumps, luxury hotels, movie theaters, amusement parks, everyone who sells luxury items even manufactures.

How much will this earn to wipeout poverty ?

456.58 million user of mobile in india as of june 2010 – lets assume only  25 % of them are active users 144 million – lets assume only 25 % users recharge every month 28.5 million users – 25% recharges are for 500 Rs which is 7 million X 2.5 Rs Gratitude tax

Thats 17.5 million rupees just from mobile recharges every month.

I intentionally put all the figures low to show you how much this could earn even with the worst estimates.

Now add fuel, shopping and everything else luxury and you see how much money this could bring in to the less fortunate every month.

How will this money be distributed to less fortunate ?

Everyone who is less fortunate will be given a atm card that works with any atm machine. You might think atm cards are complicated for people with no education.

This card will be simple, just put in the card anyway, any side and it automatically give you a fixed amount per month which will be alloted by the organization. No pressing buttons or entering anything. This way people less fortunate can get help with some dignity. They don’t have to ask anyone or wait anywhere.

Who is less fortunate ?

There are many metrics and more smarter people than me who could figure this one out.

Even if you don’t implement all this, even a small part of this idea could wipeout poverty in India. People of India are willing to help others as long as it doesn’t take huge effort on their part. And as long as its small enough that they don’t notice.

If anyone can implement this let me know, i will help you in any way i can. i don’t have the know how or the resources to implement this.

Here is another innovative idea by Sunil Malhotra to help the less fortunate during disasters

I personally donate in different way more about it in another post.

Sachin book costs 30 lakhs each

Just read this story on Forbes that Sachin’s book cost nearly 30 lakhs. And its already sold out. The are only making 10 of these books. More about this book here

Here are the features of the book

• 852 pages edged in gold leaf
• Each page measures 50cm x 50cm
• 37kg
• Over 300,000 words
• 1,500-plus images, each individually varnished
• Four 200cm x 50cm gatefolds
• Silk-covered clamshell box

Luxury publisher Kraken Opus mixed in a pint of Mr. Tendulkars blood with paper pulp to create the signature page for a book celebrating the renowned batsmans career. The 10 limited-edition copies, which comes out in February, cost $75,000 each and have already sold out.

via Taschen, Kraken and More Publish Luxury Limited-Edition Books – WSJ.com

They even have a ferrari book which costs 1800000 Rs.

Indian Rupee symbol look crappy

If you remember i wrote about this earlier here.

Now they have finalized the design which looks like crap. Compare this to other currency logo and you will see why.

I just don’t get it how this was approved, why not just put R fully that would have made more sense.

You will be seeing this ugly thing a lot so have fun….

Here are my designs, if i knew something this crappy would have been selected i would have too part.

IIT post-graduate gives Rupee its symbol.

19th Fifa world cup and my views

This is my most watched world cup. I watched all most all the games. i might have slept during one match that i can remember.

Matches were at my time during the night which was helpful. And Internet also helped keeping interest in this world cup going. Loved the guardian world cup daily podcast and twitter comments.

My team all through the tournament was Spain. I am real madrid supporter so that was a natural choice. Argentina looked like they could upset Spain’s plan. But that didn’t happen, surprisingly i was never worried about Brazil.

Germany looked stunning beating Argentina, but Spain made them look really bad. That semi final between Spain and Germany was wonderful to see. But the best match of the tournament goes to the third place match between Germany and Uruguay. What a match till the last minute it could have gone either way.

Best player for me was Xavi of spain, it looked like no one could take ball away from him. He controlled the game against germany so well. The whole mid field of spain was wonderful. He showed  the brilliance of Zidane in this world cup.

Fifa’s website was the one i visited most this world cup not for the news. But for the games, FIFA WORLD CUP FANTASY & World Cup Predictor. These games kept me interested and made me check the fifa.com all through out the world cup.

Check out my score from both the games.

FIFA WORLD CUP FANTASY out of 496619 players i came 32389 that means i am in the top 6.5%

World Cup Predictor out of 909029 players i came 37531 that means i am in the top 4%

Here are the numbers from this world cup. pretty interesting that spain players dominate three stats.

All in all a wonderful world cup, i would have enjoyed more if there were more goals.

Royal familes and Rolls Royce

This is one of the bizare stories i read in recent time. After reading this you will realise why kings and queens in India are extinct.

The Rolls-Royce owned by Maharani Sethu Parvati Bai of Travancore in 1933 had a small stool on the floor where a dwarf used to sit and massage the queen’s legs remaining invisible to people around.

If they could have used that money to help their people, they would have still been here today ruling their people.

Royal familes and Rolls-Royce.

How to get speech to text in HTC hero 2.1 india

This feature is disabled in India update of 2.1, which was released few days back.

With speech to text you can speak something and the phone will convert that to text, so you could use this text to search web or send sms etc.

Before you give it a try, its cool feature but doesn’t work that well in India.

May its because of the India accent and you also get quite a few server errors. Its because they don’t have their speech to text servers in India etc. Now i know why HTC hero 2.1 update didn’t come with this feature. It would have been a bad user experience.

If you still want to get this feature here is how to get this feature.

Go to android market place and download this program “Speak N’ Send“. Once you install this app when you open this app it will ask you to download “voice search”, its not available in market place.

So click the below link in the app and download from the apps own server. Once you download this program and install it. Open the program and Speech to text should be working.

You can use it in this program or in regular google search on the device.

Download Handcent sms program which will help you send sms using speech to text.

Sorry for the bad screenshots this is the easiest way to get android screenshots, others are too complicated. I used my laptop webcam.

HTC Hero gets 2.1 update in India

There is a thing or two other companies could learn about how to update a mobile device.

HTC did a wonderful job of updating the HTC hero. First you get a small update which allows you to download firmware over the air. Then few days later they sent the 2.1 android update.

I thought it would be like any other updates, it will completely reset my device. So i backed up everything on my phone that i wanted to my sd card using astro file explorer.

HTC update didn’t reset anything. All my apps, settings, contacts, calendar were there.

But it was disappointing that not all the features are available.

No speech to text – this was one of the features I wanted
No live wallpaper

What do you get in the 2.1 update

Few new HTC widgets (And the ability to download new htc widgets)

To download new widgets go to widgets and look at the first link, it will allow you to download more widgets. try the notes widget its really cool.

Improved market place now you can search better and also see screen shots of apps, Before installing them.
There is a new navigation app, not yet tried out.

You can now see what programs are using your battery etc.

Now there is bluetooth file send & receive support. If you want to receive any thing from other mobiles or computers now you can do it through bluetooth. But its useful only for small files like mp3 etc. If you want to get anything bigger on to the device its still better to do it via usb. It took me 22 minutes to get a 150 mb file through bluetooth.

There are quite a few small one but they are just normal updates nothing to write home about.

That’s pretty much it.

Pretty sad that not all the features of 2.1 android are ported over to this update. But the way they are updating the firmware for these devices is something special.

I think the speech to text has problems with recognizing indian accent and may be that’s why they have not added it.

The only issue i am facing with this update is wifi is not working on mine. It doesn’t show my wifi access point. i have reset the phone. And tried all the suggestions in android forums.

But still no luck…