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Date of Purchase : 1 day before Diwali (Nov 2010) Place of Purchase : Spice Hotspot in local Mall Cost : Rs. 10,500 Free : a. Spice QT50 Dual GSM SIM QWERTY handset (MRP 2999) [special Diwali Offer] - This was taken by one of my colleague @ Rs.2000, so effective cost Rs. 8,500 b. Screenguard (Model specific screenguard not available, Samsung Monte guard fitted all right) In the Box: Handset, Battery, Charger (Main unit with USB slot), Data cable which also act as charging cable, handsfree, driver CD, user manual The phone came with Android 1.6. I upgraded to 2.1 after a week by downloading the updater tool from Spice official website. After updation, the processor got underclocked to 480 Mhz from 600 Mhz in earlier version. However, this seemed to increase the battery backup. Also, in 1.6 version, there was a separate JAVA running app which vanished after updation. During the next month, thanks to Google, I found that this handset has many clones around the world. It is supposed to be made by a Taiwan based Co. The following are some of the clones (there could be more), in different countries, 1.Apanda A60(China) http://www.apanda.com.cn/ 2.Foxconn 3.China Vision Excalibur 4.Cincinnati Bell Blaze f800 5.Commtiva Z71 (Taiwan) 6.Muchtel A1(Taiwan) http://www.muchtel.com/products/muchtel-a1.html 7.Nexian Journey A890(Indonesia) http://www.nexian.co.id/index.php/product.html 8.Orange Boston 9.ViboA688(Taiwan) http://www.vibo.com.tw/CWS/Consumer_Netcard,2c9681c62913f646012959ee62a500a0,,,.html#top 10.Wellcom A88(Thailand):http://www.wellcommobile.com/th/a88.html 11.Motorola Quench XT502 12.Spice Mi-300 http://www.spiceglobal.com/SpiceMobiles/Model.aspx?Id=167 13.Videocon V7500 (with modified body) There is a thriving blog on Orange Boston http://boston-mania.blogspot.com/ In that blog, the official Android 2.2 ROM for Foxconn and Apanda A60 are available and as per user comments, the same can be used with Spice Mi300 right out of the box. However, so far I have not taken the plunge. Looks & Form The looks are a little geeky and has a plastic feel to it. The size is a little big for the shirt pocket. Fits well in Pant/Coat pocket. Fits well in hand and fells light enough. Touchscreen & Display The touchscreen is very responsive and even the slightest touch is enough and it also has a trackball. It supports multitouch and pinch zoom. However, the 4 touch sensitive navigation buttons below the screen (Home, Return etc) are not backlit which initially made it really frustrating to use the phone in the dark, however, it got better with practice. The default QWERTY keypad is easy to use. It is 3.2-inch HVGA capacitive touchscreen with 480x320 display and color output of 256K colors. There are 5 screens for creating shortcuts. Camera The Camera supposed to be a 5 MP one and has a LED flash. However, it failed to my expectation particularly in close-up. There are some major contrast issues. However, for distances over 6 feet, it works well. The video quality is good and better than most phones that I have seen. Call Clarity There seems some issues with the earpiece as the voice seem to break every once in a while. However, with handsfree (corded as well as bluetooth) this issue is resolved. Connectivity It has 3G (HSDPA), Wifi & Bluetooth. I have been using it with a MTNL 3G connection. Speed has been good. I use it daily for skype voice call without facing any call breaks. Also works well with my home Broadband on Wifi. Bluetooth file transfer and headset works well. Responsiveness The phone tend to become sluggish if too many apps are open. However, I normally use only music player, twitter, gmail, calender and browser and kill the other apps. With that, the response is good. MultiMedia & Browsing It does not have a FM radio, which is a little put off. It has a 3.5 mm jack. The display is good. MP3, MP4 and mpeg files play nicely. By default, videos play in landscape more. It is supposed to support 3gpp, 3gpp2, aac, amr-NB, amr-wb, imelody, mid, midi, mp3, mp4, mpeg3, mpeg, mpg, qcp, sp-midi, wav files. But have not so far tested the full array. It comes preloaded with Youtube app. It does not support flash. But that I understand is Android issue. It does not support DivX also. But installing Rockplayer solved that. The default browser is actually quite good. I also installed Dolphin & UCB browsers. The loading is fast. But that I suppose is thanks to 3G connection. Email I have been using the default Gmail option. Have not configured the Email app. It is supposed to support POP3 & IMAP mails. GPS & E-compass It has GPS including assisted GPS. I have not tried the assisted mode. But normal GPS locks in about a minute. It works well with the default Gmaps. The initial calibration of E-compass took about 4 to 5 minutes. Thereafter, it has been working fine. Memory Card It is supposed to support upto 32 GB Micro SD Card. I currently have a 8 GB card installed which works without any problem. Not tested with higher capacity. It supports installing apps from SD card and installing unsigned apps. Battery Backup This seems to be a problem area. The 1230 maH battery last only for a day with moderate use. I mostly use twitter, gmail, calender, aldiko (about 15-20 min), skype (voice call – 10 min) and music player (30-45 min) and keep wifi and GPS switched off. I charge in the morning, and by 10 at night, its around 35%. Final verdict Overall, at this price, its a good value for money.

What Credit Card Numbers Mean Here are what some of the numbers stand for: The first digit in your credit-card number signifies the system: 3 - travel/entertainment cards (such as American Express and Diners Club) 4 - Visa 5 - MasterCard 6 - Discover Card The structure of the card number varies by system. For example, American Express card numbers start with 37; Carte Blanche and Diners Club with 38. American Express - Digits three and four are type and currency, digits five through 11 are the account number, digits 12 through 14 are the card number within the account and digit 15 is a check digit. Visa - Digits two through six are the bank number, digits seven through 12 or seven through 15 are the account number and digit 13 or 16 is a check digit. MasterCard - Digits two and three, two through four, two through five or two through six are the bank number (depending on whether digit two is a 1, 2, 3 or other). The digits after the bank number up through digit 15 are the account number, and digit 16 is a check digit. The Stripe on a Credit Card The stripe on the back of a credit card is a magnetic stripe, often called a magstripe. The magstripe is made up of tiny iron-based magnetic particles in a plastic-like film. Each particle is really a tiny bar magnet about 20-millionths of an inch long. The magstripe can be "written" because the tiny bar magnets can be magnetized in either a north or south pole direction. The magstripe on the back of the card is very similar to a piece of cassette tape A magstripe reader (you may have seen one hooked to someone's PC at a bazaar or fair) can understand the information on the three-track stripe. If the ATM isn't accepting your card, your problem is probably either: A dirty or scratched magstripe An erased magstripe (The most common causes for erased magstripes are exposure to magnets, like the small ones used to hold notes and pictures on the refrigerator, and exposure to a store's electronic article surveillance (EAS) tag demagnetizer.) There are three tracks on the magstripe. Each track is about one-tenth of an inch wide. The ISO/IEC standard 7811, which is used by banks, specifies: Track one is 210 bits per inch (bpi), and holds 79 6-bit plus parity bit read-only characters. Track two is 75 bpi, and holds 40 4-bit plus parity bit characters. Track three is 210 bpi, and holds 107 4-bit plus parity bit characters. Your credit card typically uses only tracks one and two. Track three is a read/write track (which includes an encrypted PIN, country code, currency units and amount authorized), but its usage is not standardized among banks. The information on track one is contained in two formats: A, which is reserved for proprietary use of the card issuer, and B, which includes the following: Start sentinel - one character Format code="B" - one character (alpha only) Primary account number - up to 19 characters Separator - one character Country code - three characters Name - two to 26 characters Separator - one character Expiration date or separator - four characters or one character Discretionary data - enough characters to fill out maximum record length (79 characters total) End sentinel - one character Longitudinal redundancy check (LRC) - one character LRC is a form of computed check character. The format for track two, developed by the banking industry, is as follows: Start sentinel - one character Primary account number - up to 19 characters Separator - one character Country code - three characters Expiration date or separator - four characters or one character Discretionary data - enough characters to fill out maximum record length (40 characters total) LRC - one character For more information on track format, see ISO Magnetic Stripe Card Standards. http://www.cyberd.co...es/isocards.htm There are three basic methods for determining whether your credit card will pay for what you're charging: Merchants with few transactions each month do voice authentication using a touch-tone phone. Electronic data capture (EDC) magstripe-card swipe terminals are becoming more common -- so is swiping your own card at the checkout. Virtual terminals on the Internet This is how it works: After you or the cashier swipes your credit card through a reader, the EDC software at the point-of-sale (POS) terminal dials a stored telephone number (using a modem) to call an acquirer. An acquirer is an organization that collects credit-authentication requests from merchants and provides the merchants with a payment guarantee. When the acquirer company gets the credit-card authentication request, it checks the transaction for validity and the record on the magstripe for: Merchant ID Valid card number Expiration date Credit-card limit Card usage Single dial-up transactions are processed at 1,200 to 2,400 bits per second (bps), while direct Internet attachment uses much higher speeds via this protocol. In this system, the cardholder enters a personal identification number (PIN) using a keypad. The PIN is not on the card -- it is encrypted (hidden in code) in a database. (For example, before you get cash from an ATM, the ATM encrypts the PIN and sends it to the database to see if there is a match.) The PIN can be either in the bank's computers in an encrypted form (as a cipher) or encrypted on the card itself. The transformation used in this type of cryptography is called one-way. This means that it's easy to compute a cipher given the bank's key and the customer's PIN, but not computationally feasible to obtain the plain-text PIN from the cipher, even if the key is known. This feature was designed to protect the cardholder from being impersonated by someone who has access to the bank's computer files. Likewise, the communications between the ATM and the bank's central computer are encrypted to prevent would-be thieves from tapping into the phone lines, recording the signals sent to the ATM to authorize the dispensing of cash and then feeding the same signals to the ATM to trick it into unauthorized dispensing of cash. If this isn't enough protection to ease your mind, there are now cards that utilize even more security measures than your conventional credit card: Smart Cards. Source:HowStuffWorks

Would you like to test drive the latest version of Google's Android OS without buying a new mobile device? Here's how you can run Android on your PC for free with the Android SDK Emulator. Android is the latest mobile OS to take the world by storm, but everyone doesn't have access to the latest mobile devices. Thankfully, there's an easy way to run Android on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer. Google provides an Android emulator with their SDK, which is designed to let developers test their apps on Android before running them on handsets. We can use this to test drive Android on our computer, here's how to do it. Getting Started The Android Emulator requires Java to run, so if you don't already have Java installed on your computer, download it from the link below and install as normal. Then, download the Android SDK from Google (link below), and make sure to select the correct version for your computer. Once it's downloaded, unzip the files as normal. Download the Android SDK In Windows, run the SDK Setup.exe program to get started running Android on your PC. The SDK will check Google's servers for available packages If you see an SSL error message, click the Settings tab on the left in the SDK and AVD Manager window that opened in the background. Here, uncheck the Force https box, click Ok, and then reopen the setup. Now, the Package Installer will open. You can choose what you want to install, and then click Install to begin installing the Android emulator on your computer. By default, all of the SDK platforms, samples, and APIs will be selected for install. This can take quite a while to download, as several versions of Android are currently available. If you only want to play around with Android, choose the version you want. You'll want the SDK Platform Android your.version. Then click the Reject bullet on all the other entries, and click Install. We wanted to try out the latest Android 2.2 as well as the older 1.5, so we downloaded both of them. Once you've started installing, you'll see a window showing the download and installation progress. This may take a few minutes, depending on your Internet speed. You'll have some little Androids in your taskbar, but unfortunately they don't show the download progress. Setup an Android Emulator Once the download is completed, you can setup an emulator to test drive Android on your computer. Select the Virtual Devices from the left menu, and then click the New button on the right. Enter a name for your virtualized Android, and select the version of Android you want to use from the drop-down menu. This will only show the version you installed previously, so you may only see one version listed depending on your selection. Enter a size under the SD Card entry; this is a virtual SD card that's actually an IMG file that Android will use to store your settings and files in. Then, select a screen size from the skin options. The default is a standard, Nexus One-type display, while the others are different sizes including even a BlackBerry-style device. Click Create AVD when you're finished. The program may appear to freeze while it is creating the AVD, so just wait until you see the confirmation window. You're now ready to run Android on your PC! Select your new virtual Android, and click Start on the right. You can choose to scale the display if you've chosen a larger screen size than your monitor will fit, and then select Launch. Android will now begin to load in your emulator. Several command prompt windows may open, and then you'll see the emulator itself. Notice that the default, large screen size will display a keypad and virtual buttons on the right side of the emulated device. Android may take several minutes to load, especially on your first run. After a while, the boot screen will switch to an Android boot animation. Finally, you'll be presented with your new Android home screen! Use your mouse as you would normally, though remember that you don't need to double-click to open apps. You can open pre-installed apps from the launcher menu, though unfortunately these emulator images do not include the Android Marketplace. View your favorite websites in the browser, and they will render just as they would on an Android device. Note that you can enter text using the on screen keyboard in the emulator, or with your standard keyboard. Since this is an emulator, you may notice some lag in entering text. You can also install Apps that are directly available online. Default apps such as Email work great, and you can even see most of the device settings in Android. Click and hold on the home screen to change the background or try out widgets. You'll even see the nifty Android Lock screen if you leave your virtual machine alone for a few minutes. Just click the arrow and drag it to the other side of the screen to unlock. You can always repeat the steps later to create a new Android virtual machine. Here we've created an Android 1.5 virtual machine with the QVGA screen size. We did experience a few crashes in our tests, and the emulator felt somewhat sluggish, but in all, it's fun to try out a new mobile OS without spending money on a new phone. Launch Android Virtual Machines Later Anytime you want to launch your Android virtual machines in the emulator, just run the SDK Setup.exe as before, and select them from the Virtual Devices list. Alternately, you can launch an emulator directly from the command line. To do this, browse to your Android SDK folder and open the Tools folder. Press the Shift key and right-click, and then select Open Command Window Here. Now enter the following in the Command Prompt, substituting the name of your Android virtual machine for your_device: emulator @your_device Create a Shortcut For Your Android Alternately, right-click on the Emulator.exe in the SDK Tools folder, and select Create Shortcut. This shortcut would actually only run the emulator in Command Prompt and not load an actual virtual device. We'll need to change the properties to do this, so right-click and select Properties. Select the Shortcut tab, and then scroll to the end of the Target box. Enter the name of your virtual Android as before, as @your_Android after the emulator.exe, and then click Ok. Now you can launch your Android directly from your Desktop or Start menu. Conclusion Whether you're a developer who wants to write the next greatest app for Android or are simply are curious about Android and would like to try it out without buying a new phone, the Android Emulator is a great way to get started for free. It is also a great way to try out new versions of Android if you have an older device. We were disappointed that the Android Marketplace wasn't included. source: How to Geek

MTNL Unlimited 3G Data Plan Now At Just Rs. 750 In an attempt to triggering another price war before the launch next generation 3G Mobile and Data service by private operators in Delhi telecom circle, India's first 3G Mobile service operator Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), today announced the launch of 3 new 3G Data Plan for its postpaid and prepaid subscribers. MTNL slashes the 3G Unlimited Data Plan cost up to 58% and introduced bucket of new 3G offers including Unlimited Prepaid/Postpaid Advance Rental/Payment Plans.With the launch of new 3G recharges now the Unlimited 3G Data Plan will effectively cost at just Rs. 750 per month for Home and Roam usage. MTNL Delhi introduces 2 new "Advance Rental Data Card Unlimited Plan" and with the Plan-4500, the effective cost of Unlimited 3G Data Downloads will be as low as Rs. 750/month. The new new 3G Data plan for Rs. 4500 comes with the validity of 180 days and provide Unlimited Free High Speed wireless Broadband 24×7 anywhere in India (Home and Roam). However Initially a data cap of 200 GB per month shall be placed in Unlimited Plans, however if any customer exceeds the usage, the excess charges can be waived off. MTNL 3G subscriber can enjoy Free data Roaming in more than 700 cities across India with BSNL 3G network. The new data coupons will be available through Etopup system and Promotional scheme shall be implemented for 90 days w.e.f 31.01.2011 to 30.04.2011. All the New 3G data Plans will be launched in Mumbai with in few days! Source: Telecomtalk

wise move mate ... now go to sleep!

Dear friends, As maximum of you suggested for gifting gym subscription to my son, I discussed the same with my wife and even shown this thread to her .....we decided to gift him ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTION TO GYM and SWIMMING. The instructor clearly told that he will not allow my son for Weight Lifting etc. and will be strict to it. We are thankful to you all dear friends and Rimweb......that we came to the conclusion for such a wonderful gift for our son after having your suggestions. Ab ek aur khushkhabri : When we visited the Gym....there's ongoing scheme for FAMILY PACKAGE. So, I taken the membership also for me, my wife and my son. Meri biwi toh sabse jyaada khush hai, ke maine bhi gym join kar liya hai. She was trying to convince me from the last many years for joining the gym. Ab hum bhi thoda weight loss kar lenge aur body shody banaa lenge. Ab shayad wajan 103 se ghatker 95 ho he jayega kuch din mein he. Thanks once again dear friends for your valuable suggestions.

^ mere khyal se L1 -

Personally I prefer books, my father always used to gift books, but overall from this thread I think some sort of outgoing/physical activity is logical choice. Not sure if this has been mentioned before but have you considered pets? A dog might be, or an aquarium? Dogs can be very good companions and instill a sense of responsibility.

One more idea i would like to share. Give him A plant of flower or fruit etc. Tell him that this is ur lifetime gift. He need to preserve this for whole life, This will make him a habit of "Connected to Environment" and good hobby of gardening. TREE are our lifetime friends. So he will care that as like friend and His "Caring for OTHER" habit will be cultivated simultaneously..

It is true that when ever MNP will be introduced, only 4-5 percent of mobilephone users will actually move from their existing operator to another initially. In a country with millions of mobile subscribers, the figure of persons opting for another operator using MNP may appear insignificant, but one should understand the importance of MNP per se and not judge the phenomenon by figures. Firstly, in India, the concept of loyalty towards a mobile number is not accepted and assimilated by people, predominantly because people have the feeling that to change an operator for what so reason, there is no option but to change your number. So people hop from one operator to another, changing their mobile numbers and wasting money in SMSing others about their changed number. There are very handful for whom changing mobile number matters a lot, mostly due to professional reasons. This group has stuck to its operator for years together despite the shortcomings in service it might be facing. So far, there has been no accurate data available with any government body or mobile phone operators on how many connections any individual in the country has procured in his life time and for what reason he did that. I am sure if any such study were to be conducted, one would realise that an average mobile user has changed at least two service providers to get better service or tariff plan and in the process has changed mobile numbers at least twice. I am also sure that the figure of such persons would be huge and not limited to 4-5 percent as is being claimed by mobilephone operators. Would you not treat this figure as a benchmark of the transition users are looking for? It will take months, may be years together for majority of people to realise that changing mobile numbers to change your operator is a passe. Now they could move without changing their numbers. More importantly, even if one presumes that less than 10 percent of mobile users would actually avail MNP, the system of MNP is still necessary for the sake of accountability of service providers. Let us for a moment presume that since only one or two percent population commits murders in our country and this figure being miniscule, government decides to withdraw any penal provision for murder. Will it be acceptable? The issue here is not about figures but general impact it would have on people. Same applies for MNP. The MNP system would keep operators under pressure to perform and now allow them to take customers for granted. MNP would make them accountable to every customer and not just the creamy layer of high-billed postpaid customers. One needs to look at the larger picture here and that will ensure success of MNP.