iPhone 3G Reviewed!

Well, I thought it couldn't get better than the dream debut but it does! My first gadget review for the paper is none other than the iConic iPhone. Yeah sure, its the 3G version but for us in India its as good as a (slightly improved) regular 'jesus phone' - desi version pic below - and the first one we can use legally!

The review appeared in today's Economic Times and there are three different versions online.



NEW DELHI: After a few days of playing around with the new iPhone 3G, I'm convinced that Apple's iconic piece of gadgetry is a misnomer. The "mobile phone" is clearly the most unimpressive and probably the most unimportant part of the second generation iPhone. It's a great computer; to be more specific, a great mobile Internet device probably the best ever made - and it's a pity that it's debuted in the country before 3G networks are up and running.

Z back from India? Expect a controversy soon…

Mark Zuckerberg seems to have given the Indian media the slip. Facebook PR assured me that he wasn't giving any official interviews and it seems no one managed to win the TechGoss reward for snaps/info of him in India.

Well, if this was indeed just a holiday/spiritual tour, then history suggests the first thing he'll do, when he gets back, is get embroiled in a controversy! Confused? Hear me out on this one:

1. Steve Jobs visits India in 1974 for some spiritual nirvana and bums around a bit. He goes back to Atari and (allegedly) shafts poor Steve Wozniak while working on 'Breakout'. The incident becomes part of tech folklore...

2. Jimmy Wales visits India in January 2008 and after an interview at IIT Bombay, tells me he's headed to the Himalayas for a few days of peace and solitude. He comes back to the US and gets into a mess after (allegedly) trying to influence his (then) paramour's Wikipedia entry.

(Image courtesy Gus Freedman of Wikimedia Foundation under CC-BY-SA license)

3. Google Founders backpack around India 'like a couple of sophmores' in October 2004. They get back and Google is soon faced with an extended run of controversies.

So now that we officially have a 'three-is-a-trend' conspiracy theory, expect the Z to be fire-fighting soon (Does this count?) If he takes the advice of a Guru on the IPO as suggested by Joy of Tech, it would definitely be controversial ...

The Joke's on Airtel!

Tech sites in general and Google products in particular seem to be take April Fools Day pretty seriously (nice roundup of 2008 gags here). Tech2.com had its own line-up for the big day; in fact the update at the end of the top story was added after NASSCOM called to say that reporters were calling them for quotes!

However, I seriously thought that this was an early Apr 01 joke from Google India though I doubted that AirTel was cool enough to pull off something like that. India's biggest telco's ISP landing page AirTelLive.com is nothing but a google partnerpage which anyone with a domain name can build absolutely free of cost.

Google India, on request helpfully pointed me to a page which has info on a special partner program for ISPs though details on pricing etc. seem to be skimpy. However, the newest version of Google Apps seems to have dropped the ISP Partner section altogether and all the features are available to everybody! I remember trying out Google Apps when it was first launched and it took me exactly 5 minutes to configure something like this.

Contentsutra.com shares the same sentiment, though its pretty obvious that the comments are being seeded by Airtel PR (see comments 2 & 3).

I mean, the least that they can do is basic URL masking so that airtellive.com is all that users get to see instead of partnerpages.google.com... The "Register" link in the 'My Account' gadget at the bottom of the left column is broken. I know that Bharti has pioneered outsourcing of all non-core business (to IBM, Nortel, Ericsson etc.) but c'mon, this is totally pushing it!

Anyway, I have two questions:

1) Does anyone really want an email ID @your_isp.com when all these services are available for free on gmail or your own domain?

2) Why did so many news outfits actually take this seriously and carry it verbatim???

PS: This isn't the first time Google and AirTel have collaborated! The last time they did, the consequences were pretty disastrous!

WiMAX Woes

After another frustratingly slow session of "Mobile Internet" using one of them USB data sticks, my thoughts drifted towards WiMax, which seems to be sliding downhill after a prolonged stay at the peak of the hype cycle:

I remember attending a live WiMax demo in Delhi as far back as 2004, though it turned out to be quite comical. The company had invited the tech press and some officials including the Wireless Advisor to the DoT. The latter was furious when he heard that the transmitter had been placed on the terrace of a building across the road and insisted that he had given permission only to place it on the terrace of the same hotel! The red-faced execs had to literally scamper after him with profuse apologies and eventually cooled him down with some hot chai!

Gartner (yup, the same guys who came up with the term 'hype cycle') has just come out with a report titled “Beware of WiMAX Hype in India” (subscription reqd) that predicts only about 218,000 users in India this year and maybe 7 million by 2011:

“In the near-term, the Indian WiMAX market is not very promising. Gartner advises carriers to focus on the enterprise market and high end residential subscribers. At the present time, it is not clear if vendors would benefit from risk-sharing models with Indian operators. Overall, the long term potential of the Indian WiMAX market heavily relies on spectrum allocation, WiMAX ecosystem maturation, and the timeliness of WiMAX and 3G licenses.” more (Press Release)

Well, BSNL (which along with MTNL will get automatic allocation of spectrum unlike the private guys who will have to bid) seems to have massive plans for WiMax, but given its current state of connectivity offerings, it's tough to be optimistic.

I wonder if anyone from BSNL attended the recent WiMax conference in Bangkok, where the CEO of Australia's first WiMax deployer Buzz Broadband, slammed the technology in front of a global audience. Quick Summary:

"disaster... miserable failure... mired in opportunistic hype"

You Know There Are Too Many iPod Accessories When…

... you need another accessory - in this case a pouch from Case Logic - in which to keep all of them! This MP3 Kit was actually a god send. For those of you who really care, this is what my iPod kit currently contains:

Upper Left Side: USB connector cum AV cable (composite)
Lower Left Side: AC adapter plus two 2-pin connectors (one round & one flat)
Upper Right Side Left: Apple iPod Touch (8 GB), protective skin, cleaning cloth
Upper Right Side Right: Various jacks including audio splitter, airplane seat 2-pin connector, thin-to-fat audio jack convertor etc.
Lower Right Side: A pair of in-ear headphones

I admit, I'm a bit of an organisation freak, but you have to admit this case is pretty nifty. In fact I dare say it NEARLY justifies the outrageously inflated price that Case Logic slaps on its products.

Anyway, lest I be accused of being an iPod fanboy again, do see this very nice explanation of why iPods don't support Bluetooth. One-line summary: "Apple wants to maintain a stranglehold over the accessory universe!"

Antique Gadgets In A Bangkok Hotel

Spent the long weekend in Bangkok - lovely blend of ancient and modern (See inset of the pic below for view from my hotel room). The tech shopping didn't seem too exciting though - prices were similar and often higher than India - the (unlocked) iPhone being the hottest selling item at around 25k Baht. Thats above Rs. 30k making it way more expensive than the going rate here...

(Note: I didn't have explicit permission to take this pic so no faces!)

But the real tech surprise was my hotel room (see inset of pic below) which had a REAL antique AV setup that I just couldn't get over! A good ol' Sony Trinitron, now officially in its last month of production ...

But hey! What's that whacky looking Hi-Fi next to it??? Closer inspection reveals that it's actually also a VCD player ... check out them buttons!

I couldn't find anything on this CMT-VC1 micro system from Sony's retro-styled "Mezzo" range, except this (See last gadget on the page). If the archiving system of the site can be trusted, Sony apparently launched this in October 2001 - the very same month in which a struggling Apple launched another gadget.

Things were never the same for Apple and Sony since then, were they?