Idle/Random/whatever Thoughts of a Demented/Idle/Whatever Mind

Nokia R&D invited some of us to preview their pilot project of WeMeet application. Its an interesting application. Its a simple application which allows you to have threaded sms conversation with friends as group chat generally does. Its a simple application though still in its testing phase or the pilot as the Nokia guys call it. It has a simple interface ( screenshots nicely compiled by Prashanth at TechBangalore ). You can create groups in simple steps. Send message to friends is a breeze as  well. Just like other group SMS services like SMS Gup Shup , it allows you to send SMS to all your friends in that group in a single SMS. It sends a message to a local number in Bangalore(not a premium number), which in turn broadcasts this to all the people in the group. As this is currently only in pilot phase, its free and available only in Bangalore. To join create, modify and send message to groups an SMS is sent for your cellphone. When you receive an SMS from a group message, ...

This particular phishing mail was very interesting. It claimed that I got a refund from Income Tax Department. That too of Rs 820.50. Here is the complete mail for you. Dear Income Tax Department of India customer, After the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are going to receive a tax refund of $820.50 Rupees. Please submit the tax refund form and allow 3-5 days in order to approve it. A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons.For example submitting invalid records or sending the form after the deadline. To complete the form , please Click Here . NOTE! For security reasons your ip may be recorded.. Thank you, Income Tax Department of India Online Department. I love the fact that they are ignorant about me being a customer of Income tax department. I think I am more appropriately a victim of IT Dept. But I was more in shock for the whether I am going to get $820.50 or Rs...

Well its was well known that mobile numbers with 8 are going to start soon . But it so happened that my dear friend Daaku took a new Tata Docomo connection. Now the amazing thing was that it starts with 805xx-xxxxx. So now if I try to call this friend of mine, my Vodafone network tells me that its an invalid number. I was confused and so I asked my friend daaku to call me. I got his number in caller ID but calling it was again not possible. Obviously its not mistake in dialing the number, rather its a stupid things that Vodafone and possibly other networks too have done. So here is my guess what has happened. Vodafone, takes the number +91805xx-xxxxx as 91 for country(that India), 80(Code for Bangalore) and 5 would be Tata Indicom as they provide landline with that series. Interestingly Vodafone seems to have not configured its network to this change which happened for mobile numbers starting with 8. I tried contacting Vodafone customer care, they seemed to be unaware of the issue...

Times of India has again done the unthinkable. Its misguiding its readers completely by its flawed headline which says Opt for e-fling tax, get discounts But whats there actually is an advertisement straight out of a leaflet from some company called Taxsmile. It says, pay Taxsmile for e-filing of your tax and you will get a lot of discounts and prizes. Thats outright stupid to have as a story. If I have to e-file my taxes should not I head over to https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/portal/index.do . Why should I bother to pay someone else for it. And as I have for previous two years, I have found it really simple. So Times of India instead of simply explaining how to do an e-filing, has advertised for a company. Smart people. I guess Times of India is getting itself into a reputation of being an untrustworthy news source, the latest being http://wearethebest.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/25-years-moved-so-quickly-it-seems-like-just-12/ . Probably its good enough for the Page3 a...

Mobiles are something which we now take for granted to call anyone. I remember the days when I thought who the heck will pay  Rs300+ rental and then Rs16 /min for receiving or making calls as airtime charges. Obviously the call charges were separate. Who thought that things will reach this far that at Rs175 rentals, you would get 300 mins calling free. Its truly amazing. Another thought that I had not very long back actually was that I had written on how my mobile should look like here . There were a few people who thought that its entirely impossible to achieve what I was wanting. But then today there was this story on CNET that talked about Toshiba coming out with an amazingly fast 1GHz smartphone. Well, I am not surprised by it. But what I am surprised at is that it runs the crappy Windows Mobile. It sure could have done better with Android or Symbian. Windows Mobile, duh. Dude I would need multi-touch, just to make sure I can give the three finger salute of Ctrl+Alt+Del. S...

For the past some days I have been cycling to work and overall its been a pleasant experience as yet. I thought I would share some of the learnings with this post. So here it goes in no particular order 1. Make sure your tyres have enough pressure in them. If it gets low, it will become difficult to ride it. 2. Make the seat position such that you can peddle on the full. It gives you more power and also prevents what’s called Biker’s Knee. By instinct we would like it such that our feet reach the ground easily. Never go by that. 3. Cycle fearlessly. Be on the left side of the road as much and possible, but never go to the extreme left. It might land you in trouble. You can surely take minor panga from the faster automobile users. 4. If in places like Bangalore, where you have too much ups and downs, keep trying different alternate routes so that you can take maximum advantage of the slope. 5. Dont wear headphone. You might not find out whats happening on the road. Sometimes I...

Well as the title says, nothing special to talk about here. I wanted you to know that I have decided to make my tumblog as the place where I will put pics from my cell cam and quotes that I find really interesting. My tumblr blog is at http://the100rabh.tumblr.com . Enjoy :-)

Well building on my knowledge of WxWidgets and frustration with ever growing size of music players like Winamp or Windows Media Player, I decided that did not need those many features most of the time. So what was that I was looking for 1. Play Mp3s 2. Have a playlists, retain it and ability to add all files to the player at once. 3. Mp3 tags are mostly useless, filenames make more sense 4. Shortcuts should be simple and also alternative global keys 5. Small size, preferably below 2MB. 6. Multi-platform code. 7. Playlist Queue This was my priority, in no particular order, while I was designing this Mp3 player. But then I got some feedback from friends who wanted search feature as well. So there it was. All done and over. But then again most my friends and me felt that the UI sucked. Well it continues to. I am not good as styling so still looking for help from friends to make a better looking UI So now its a 716Kb file which you need to download and the...

I now try to introduce this Bill for Prevention of Moral Policing. Now the most obvious question is that why? Well moral policing is becoming a menacing problem in India now. We need to create some sort of a law for prevention of this menace. But then isnt it that nothing is going to change if I put this Bill in here. Well that anyways happens, look at Women Reservation Bill for starters, its pending since eternity now. So here I present the Bill for you. By this Act, every citizen of India is given the right to dress, act and speak as he/she wishes to unless he violates any of the laws of the Indian Constitution. Any act by a person/group/organisation to forecfully stop or intimidate any person or group from acting according to his/her will be punishable under this act. Any such action would lead to the group/person/organisation being declared guilty and would be punishable with minimum 6years to maximum of 14 years of rigorous imprisonment and/or fine upto Rs 50lakhs or actual...

Well IPL is being moved out of India for all the reasons in the world. Now IPL stands for Indian Premier League. But who lifted the cup last time around ? Well it was Shane Warne . Interesting isn’t it. An Australian lifting the Indian Premier Legaue. Well if u consider that there are a large number of Indians in Australia, well its not all that bad to think. Anyways from now on I would refer the event as IPL. I now seriously believe that IPL is a direct challenge to ICC. How? well, ICC can only organize the World Cup every three or four years. But BCCI would do this every year. The best part is that ICC cant do a thing about it. Since last year IPL was held in India, this year it is being moved to South Africa. And its not without a great deal of pitching by South Africa. So if you look at it, BCCI has clearly sidelined ICC by moving IPL to another country. There is one more thing which comes to my notice when I look at the entire IPL saga. Well its Mahatma Gandhi. Interestingly, ...