Finding lost mobile phones is big business. Previously independent application developers and service providers like airtel had come up with software to track lost mobile phones. However these softwares had an inherent weakness. The thief could always uninstall the application !!!! That is where the advanced mobile tracker from samsung scores. The application comes preloaded with the tracker software. Hence the thief can not uninstall it.

You need to activate the application before the loss. make sure to change the default password. Then enter 2 mobile numbers who shall be alerted in case of a loss. A sms is sent as soon as there is a change of sim card. The sms contains the new number. From the mobile number you can easily trackdown the thief.

“Your Posts, Your AdSense Ads” That is the promise by devilsworkshop to wannabe bloggers.* You get to keep all revenue generated by your post without going through the hassle of maintaining the blog. Even Pavan bats for edubook. Awesome proposition. Only if you are someone who wants to make somemoney in your free time but you have noaspiration to be a blogger.  But it is really stupid to take up such offer an if you are as good as deepak jain of mobilegyaan.

1. The main reason why you should never take up an offer that promises to pay you the earnings from your post is because a good post is worth a lot more than the adsense revenue it generates. A good post builds up a brand, a recognition for the blog. A good post earns links. A good post converts a casual reader into a feed subscriber. Every other post on the blog benefits from these things. And you get nothing for this. Having built up a feed subscriber base of more than 30,000 users on my earlier venture mywalkin, I know the value of these things just too well.
2. A blog network is indifferent to quality. I know every post needs to be approved. But for that a post needs to pass a minimum criteria. It need not be upto your mark. If you are the high quality blogger then you are effectively subsidizing the lack of quality in other bloggers’ work.
3. The problem of a blog network is that it is more like a democracy where quantity matters more than quality. The person with the maximum number of posts gets the maximum benefit from the home page. Also the related posts links favors the author with the highest number of posts.
4. Finally what about ownership? who owns the blog? who decides what advertisement shall be used? Who decides the tone of the blog? How do you ensure that the blog maintains certain standard?

When does a blog network make sense?

1. When the network provides you a job. Like any other job, you do your task and you get a salary. You do not have to worry about change in ecpm. I think techcrunch or gigaom work this way. Not sure though
2. Like rahul says in his blog, if you are a niche blogger then you can use the blog network as a platform to publish your off-topic articles
3. If you have co-ownership and after set down certain criteria like minimum quality of post, you may consider joining a blog network.

P.S: I have very high regard for rahul, deepak and pavan even though noone other than pavan knows personally. Hope you guys do not get me wrong.

P.S TO P.S: Deepak you are too good to abandon mobilegyaan. Hope to see you back on mobilegyaan soon

As the entire world is trying to deal with the problem of recession, job cuts and business challenges, mumbaikars have been given a terrible and sad surprise of series of bomb blasts and firing. The sheer audacity of the terrorists makes me angry. Angry at the impotency of us as a nation. I hope someone in Delhi will realize that this is the limit and we must do something conclusive. Something other than talking.

ngpay seems to be the most useful application that I have installed on my mobile. The about us page of ngpay claims that it is a mall on your mobile. And for a change, that is not an exaggeration.

With ngpay you can

1. Book bus tickets on redbus.in, book train tickets, check pnr status etc on irctc and book airtickets as well
2. You can book movie tickets
3. You can do online banking. The facility is available with HDFC bank right now
4. You can pay bills for most of your utilities.
5. And there are even more things like doing charity and sending gifts

Truely a mind blowing and ultra useful application. The best part is that inspite of so many functionalities, the ngpay people have managed to keep the interface really non-confusing. The service works on most of the mobile phone models but requires a gprs connection to operate. I will like to see a version that allows users to do some of these things with sms as well.

Virgin mobile india has come up with an irresistible offer that will instantly convince you to buy the mobile phone from the online store of virgin mobile.

On the purchase of a virgin mobile handset you shall get

• Free talktime worth rs 100
• 500 free sms
• free lifetime validity
• free prepaid connection. (I do not understand the difference between the 3rd and 4th point)

I have been impressed by the innovative offerings and unique advertisements from virgin. However I am not sure if the latest move by virgin is equally smart as this will cannibalize the alternate sales channel and the dealers are not going to be happy about.

I am a great supporter of chinese mobile phones. The chinese phones allow middle class people to use mobile phone features that would be otherwise unaffordable. However one primary problem in buying the chinese phones is the complete lack of brand awareness in India. If the chinese mobile phones have to really take off in India, then we shall need some sort of review system that will separate out good chinese manufacturers from the cheaters.

I think this is a great idea for a techie to start a new website. Looking at the amount of traffic that my prior posts about chinese mobile phones have been generating, I shall not be surprised if the website becomes immensely popular fast. If anyone is thinking of doing the same then do get in touch with me. Will love to help you out.

There is no doubt that the performance of Iphone has been patheic in India to say the least. However analysis of how a smart marketer like Apple got its acts so horribly wrong throws up some interesting observations.

1. India is not a priority market: Apple has never been bullish on India. That does not surprise me as apple has always sold pricey products and Indians by nature are value conscious. I am not suggesting that we buy only cheap goods. We do buy expensive goods but the features must justify the price.
2. Apple’s partners in India (Airtel and vodafone) got their strategy wrong: Airtel and Vodafone knew very well that revealing the price of the IPhone will kill all excitement about the product. I am sure that is why they kept silent about the price till few days before the launch. However contrary to what they expected, this created lots of negative press about the product.
3. Deliberate strategy of Apple: You are free to think that I have lost my mind to suggest that Apple deliberately wanted to have limited response to Iphone. However fact is Iphone is still a new product. There may be some issue with the handset. If that had happened, Apple with negligible presence in India would have got into a difficult situation.  Hence apple could have planned to get a small set of users into the fold so that the word of mouth effect can start and Apple can learn about indian consumers without taking too much of risk.

What do you think? Was it Apple’s stupidity or brilliance?

MTNL is giving out Gold to its users as a part of a lucky draw. All you need to do is recharge with a minimum amount of Rs.300 (Trump users) or have a bill of Rs.300 (Dolphin users). Also, MTNL is providing its users with more talktime at the same amount i.e. Rs.300 and Rs.525 as talktime on its Rs.300 and Rs.500 recharges. There is 250 gms of Gold up for grabs, with the contest running till the 30th of this month. so hurry now.

Fewdays back I had bought a LG 6600. In that post I had promised to post a first hand review of the LG 6600 mobile phone. As promised I am ready with the first installment of my review.

Looks of LG 6600: The metallic finish of LG 6600 looks quite impressive. However the corners and edges should have been a little more rounded. The screen is quite bigger compared to similar handsets. That is quite helpful in reading messages and especially in playing games. Unlike most other mobile phones that I have tried, the button to end call is not on the front panel but rather on the side panel. It was a bit of problem early on however now that I am accustomed to this positioning I am quite comfortable with it.

The voice quality of the LG RD 6600 leaves a lot to be desired. The voice quality is so bad that it makes me wonder if I have got a defective piece. The voice quality does not justify the huge interest level shown by people in this handset from LG.

However the RD 6600 from LG looks like a great value for money handset. At close to 6k price tag the mobile comes with camera, music player, FM radio and a screen that makes playing games on the handset quite comfortable as well. I am yet to try the picture quality of LG 6600 and will update this post as soon as I manage to click some pics.

Spice D-88 Gold mobile phones have been launched by spice mobiles. Spice seems to be concentrating too much on the dual sim mobile phones market. After the D-80, D-88 and D-90, the D-88 Gold is also a dual sim mobile phone. It supports both CDMA and GSM network SIM cards.

I am disappointed with the phone as with a price tag close to 9k, my expectations were much higher. The camera quality is not upto the mark having a 1.3 megapixel resolution only. The D-88 Gold has a 512MB memory card that comes preloaded with songs of the movie Dostana. The memory is too low and I would have expected spice mobile to have a better music choice.

Overall I will not recommend the Spice D-88 Gold mobile to anyone as it comes with a price tag that looks disprportionately high for its features.

In one of the stupidest mistakes that any blogger can commit, I forgot to renew my domain name I rectified the error as soon as the site became unavailable. However by then the domain name had been removed from the nameservers. I had to resubmit my nameserver information again. It took 2 days for the nameserver information to be propagated.

Unfortunately by now google has decided that binaryday is nomore and it has dropped most of the pages from its index. A search for binaryday, brings a inner page at the 5th place. I am really worried right now, as this will mean all my hard work over the last 8 months is going to get lost. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Bleu 458x is a sleek but simple mobile with some really interesting features. There are 2 soft keys just below the screen of Bleu 458x. The phone comes with a VGA camera. While the camera of this bleu mobile leaves a lot to be desired, the 458x is perhaps one of the few mobiles in its price range to come with a camera.

The Bleu 458x comes with 4MB internal memory and PC connectivity. It also comes with a FM radio. It also comes with bluetooth that helps smooth transfer of file. It has standard features like FM radio.

Most importantly Bleu 458x comes at a price of Rs 3,600. That makes it one of the best budget mobiles available in the Indian market.

Only the smartest guys from google can come up with such a brilliantly stupid bug. The android phone treats any text typed on the keyboard as a command. What makes the matter worse is that then it runs the command in the super user mode. So typing reboot on the keyboard reboots the mobile. And guess what….typing rm rf will actually delete all files. If this is stupid then the world is full of intelligent people. Read this article from zdnet for more details.

After Sourav ganguly and Anil kumble’s retirement, I keep wondering when will the retirement of Sachin Tendulkar happen? Will he be there till the next world cup..noone but the little master knows the answer