Ever since I’d seen a preview Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 at GSMArena, I’ve been floored by that awesome device. The good folks at WMExperts have managed to get a unit of Xperia X1, and take it for a spin. Lets see what they have to say about the X1. WMExperts also had a chat with Martin Winlet, the Director of Global Marketing for Sony Ericsson and he also answered some questions people had put to him. Here are some excerpts from their article
Change your Yahoo IM Status to What You Are Currently Listening to
While on IM, one of the most common question everyone asks is – How do you show what song you’re listening to? Well it’s a no-brainer really, quite a few plugins exist which allow to do so, but most of them are buggy, don’t work with one version or the other, or just don’t work at all!
Well after doing a bit of research, I found an ideal plugin for Winamp – Yahoo Messenger 9/8/7 Now Playing v4.3, which works for Yahoo Messenger versions 7, 8 and even the beta version 9. You can grab it from here.
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For those using Windows Media Player, there’s a Messenger Data Plugin v1.1 which you can download from here
For those using Pidgin for all your IM needs, fear not, the MusicTracker plugin will send the now playing satuts to all of your Pidgin accounts. Even better, MusicTracker supports Winamp, Windows Media Player, iTunes and Foobar2000! Grab the MusicTracker plugin from here.
So what’re you waiting for? Go grab those plugins and let people know, what you’re listening to!
Duke Nukem 3D and other games For Nokia N800
Back in 1997, when I was in 7th standard, and an adolescent, I was a huge fan of Duke Nukem 3D – for its AWESOME graphics, the attitude, and of course the sex and the violence 😛 . Back in those days, I used to play it on my old computer – an Intel Pentium 100MHz, with 16MB RAM, an 8X Creative CDROM drive and a Creative SoundBlaster 16 soundcard and had a blast with its 320.x240 “high-res” graphics!
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Coming to the post, while on twitter, somehow the topic of Duke Nukem came, and Vimal George pointed me to the The Internet Tablet Talk forums, where a member has actually ported Duke Nukem 3D to the Nokia N800/N810 Internet Tablet. You can find the complete instructions over at the forums. It’s just amazing as to how far technology has progressed that allows you to play what we used to play on a bulky desktop onto a sleek handheld!
For more such games, do check out the N800 blog and Arnim’s Ports for Nokia
Cheers
The Idiotic Hotel Cashier
Generally I always carry a fair amount of cash with me, coz I’m a bit paranoid as to what might happen if I’m stranded without cash. The set of incidents which happened just now will now ensure that I will always carry cash with me.
I’d been to Hotel Balaji Woodlands for dinner – I don’t go there often, but have been there enough number of times to know that they *do* accept Debit cards. Now it so happened that I didn’t have enough cash with me – I had only Rs 30. Wondering whether I should goto the hotel or not, I just decided to go there. I ordered Naan and Kaaju paneer(or, kaaju curry as that was what given to me, the paneer – well they decided to eat it themselves 8-| ) . I asked for the bill – it came upto Rs. 50. Fair enough I went to the cashier and gave him my debit card to charge it to that. The next set of events left me dumbfounded. Here’s the conversation
Me: (hands over bill and ATM card)
Hotel Guy(HG): (Shakes his head)
Me: What?
HG: Rs 50.. not enough
Me: I don’t have cash. Either you accept that or you give me this meal for free
HG: (puts my ATM card into the drawer)
Me: (Getting pissed) Hello, give me my ATM card back
Waiter: You go get cash, then I’ll give card
Me: Hello? How do you expect me to withdraw cash WITHOUT my ATM card? :-w
HG: We don’t accept debit cards for small amount
Me: (Me with voice raised, and bit of temper) What kinda stupid Hotel do you run? The one which says We accept debit card, but then reject it for “small amounts”? Give my debit card back.
(Now it begins to look like a scene – there are few foreigners in the hotel, and he obviously doesn’t want the incident to be heard to all)
Finally, he gives my ATM card and asks me to pay for the dinner tomorrow. I say fine
So here’s 50 paise to the hotel guy. I hope that amount is “big enough” to be charged to a debit card.
Also posted on Fifty Paise
Appraisals, Appraisals
Past couple of weeks have been sort of “important” for most people in 3i. Reason being: appraisal time. It’s that time of the year, where you are judged and rated for your performances. It’s a 3-tier appraisal, the immediate appraiser being the project manager, then the group head, and finally the HR. Appraisal mean everything for most – whether you get promoted/demoted, whether you get a salary hike or not.
In case you guys are wondering why I’ve mentioned in the first line “for most people”, well it’s because, me being a Trainee, an appraisal for me holds no weightage, monetory wise. The monetory increase will come, once I’m confirmed, ie, at the end of my training period, which will happen in July. Well my appraisal meeting with my manager went very well, he was pretty happy with my performance, and amongst the things he’d said was “I can assign you some work, and not be bothered on following it up with you as I know you will complete it”. That’s given me an immense boot to my confidence, and it’s made me feel good. And to top, my overall rating is a 3.9/5, which is pretty good. So the next thing to watch out for would be my confirmation, which should happen in July. Will keep you guys updated.
Cheers
How-to: Change the themes and icons of Sony Ericsson P1i
The p1i by default comes with a rather drab theme, and the default ones are no good either. So, to spice up the phone’s look a bit, you can always download new themes(my current one is the PSP original theme from Themebin). While changing the theme is a no-brainer – just download (or beam) the theme(.utz) file to your memory card(or phone memory), use file manager to browse to the location where the theme is saved, click on it and just apply! The new theme – including wallpapers, sound schemes will all be applied. Most themes also come with icon replacements, which replace the original icons with new ones. To check if your theme has icon replacements, Just check if there’s a folder called “resource”, present in the skin archive. IF it’s there then your theme comes with an Icon pack.
For that we’ll have to do a bit of tweaking. No, don’t worry, it won’t cause you P1i to go berserk. First, connect your p1i to the computer via the USB cable(Bluetooth won’t do) in file transfer mode. Once the memory card is detected, browse to it. Just copy the “resource” folder from the theme folder over to your memory card. When asked to replace or overwrite, just say yes.
This is how my P1i looks, with the PSP original theme.
         
EvDO Service to Start In Chennai Soon?
while surfing through Chennai telephones site, I came across an interesting web page: http://chennai.bsnl.co.in/News/EVDO.htm This is indeed good news for me, and for those people who can’t just go for a wired connection now(read my reason as to why i cant get a wired connection here). While a web page announcement is a good thing, whether it’ll change the ground reality – that of lack on information among BSNl employees about EVDo, anytime soon will remain to be seen. I’ve previously blogged about my hassles in trying to obtain *information* about an EVDO connection. Let’s hope this time around I get better news and feedback. I will keep you guys informed about happenings as and when I get the latest updates
Sony Ericsson P1i Review
More often than than, a Sony Ericsson phone is generally equated to be a music enthusiast’s phone, with their immensely popular Walkman series of phones. Sony Ericsson’s P-series cater to business needs, and P1i had been in market for a while now, infact rumour goes that P1i’s production will stop in September. Well then why this late review? Well because, (a) I bought this phone recently and (b) It’s a darn neat phone! So let’s go ahead with the review!
The P1i is a smartphone, powered by Symbian OS 9.1, with a UIQ3 user interface. The display is a generous, 2.6″, 256K colour TFT touchscreen and has a resolution of 240×320 pixels, which translates to a fair amount of real estate. Hardware wise, the P1i has 208MHz processor, with 128MB of RAM alongwith 256MB of ROM and 160MB of internal memory.
Build Quality and Looks
1 Year At Chip Forums
Today I completed an anniversary of sorts – 1 year of registering at Chip India forums. Chip was the first site I visited soon as I got my BSNL broadband connection(yeah, a year ago), and was instantly hooked on, esp with “friendliness quotient” factor of the forums. I was on “lurk” state for a few days, and was overwhelmed – by the amount of knowledge these guys at forums had. Initially I couldn’t post a reply to many topics – since I didn’t know much about them, at all, although exception was anything regarding Linux, since I’ve been a Linux user for a bit, but then posts on Linux were few and far between. Nevertheless, it’s been a very fruitful, daunting, learning experience.
Over the this period, I’ve made quite a lot of friends. In-fact, Sathya Says wouldn’t be in existence if it wasn’t for Chip, as I’d come to know Preshit over there – Preshit’s now a good friend of mine, pro-blogger, web maniac, twitter & flickr buff, and of course, my site host – ExperTrio. Preshit’s been a huge influence on me, especially with the way I see the Internet now. Of course there are other guys at Chip, who’ve helped me a lot, but Preshit’s influence is something different altogether. I’m also a registered user at Digit forums, a Moderator at Tech2.0 forums, but Chip remains Chip.
Thanks to all for making this stay worthwhile and an extremely pleasant experience.
Happy Birthday To Me
Well on March 19th, 2008 I turned a year older….(wiser? pfft). It was a nice day, as I landed in Mangalore on that day from Chennai. I’d taked a flight from Chennai to Bangalore on the previous day, followed by a train from Bangalore to Mangalore(my post on my Maiden Flight Journey got lost in teh InterWebs :(( ) However the train was delayed by 1 and half hours, which resulted in me reaching home at 10, instead of the usual 8:30. I was with my family, after being away from family for 3 months it felt good! My phone was busy all day with sms and calls wishing me(my phone bill will be high this time, as I was on roaming while answering the calls and replying to the sms). I also got loads of Birthday wishes on Orkut, Chip forums and on twitter(thanks guys for the wishes!). That evening I went to the temple, followed by a trip to a Hotel called Trshna. Food was kinda ok, but it was a nice outing. The past 1 year has been extremely fruitful, about a year this time ago, I was nearly down the dumps, whole loads of backlogs(aka KT’s), aggregate nowhere near to what is called “acceptable limit”. Lots have passed since then – cleared all my backs, got a distinction, a job off-campus at 3i. Here’s hoping the coming year will be even more fruitful.
Cheers