BSNHell hit me again!

Yes!!! my BSNL Broadband and Phone was not functioning for 9 days. This became a big project for me.

5 days - followup on phone - None of the BSNL team was able to answer my phone.

2 days - Physical followup - Visit BSNL Office and sit on the head of the concern person. Even reach out the Area Manager to escalate the problem

2 days - Actual time to find the problem and provide me the fix.

There was a problem in cable from the Pole to my House, which was fixed today. Hats off to the BSNHell Customer Support. Hoping to get a Rebate of 9 days in my next bill.

Meanwhile, during the BSNHell period, I tried something new. My spice mobile phone provided me Internet Access through GPRS for Rs.24/day. More experiences on my GPRS internet access in my next post...

Wishing all of you a Belated Happy Diwali 2008 :-)

GTalk - Unable to Send Files

Recently, while trying to Send Files using GTalk, I received the following Error Message: "You cannot send files because User Name is using chat in Gmail or is using another chat program".

Below screenshot is after fixing the Send Files problem with Sanal Kumar. You can make out the same using the disabled color Send Files button in the fore-ground window.

Google search revealed similar problems being reported, but without any results. Some of the links, directed to the Official Google Help which mentioned that "Voice calls and file transfers are only available between users signed in to the Google Talk client."

In my case, what surpised is that I was not able to sent files to my friend Sanal, whereas he was able to send the files to me without any problem. He hinted me that he was using the chat earlier from Gmail browser and later he switched on GTalk client. This hinted us to try relogging into GTalk. Sanal closed GMail chat and also GTalk client and relogged-in to GTalk client. We tried the Send Files, but there was no success. We even suspected that this might be some issue with Firewall, but there was no such information on Google Help website.

Now, the only last option was for me to close GTalk and restart. Surprising, this helped resolving the problem! Isn't it really strange that even though I didn't use Gmail chat, but my initial chat session with Sanal was created using his GMail chat. Hence, I had to restart my GTalk client once again!!! Hope someone from GTalk team would see this post and write some justification comments.

Big Bazaar Store Locations

The other day I was trying to search for Location of Big Bazaar Stores in India, but could not find straight forward website which had official list of all stores. After sometime, I realized that I forgot to see the Store Locator link on the Pantaloon Website.

If you are looking for the store address, please visit http://www.pantaloon.com/ and click on the "Find a Store" link on the top right hand side of the website. Here, you can choose the store as "Big Bazaar" and then select the City you are looking for. Hope this helps internet users to locate the store easily.

The direct URL of Store Locator is : http://www.pantaloon.com/storelocator-all.asp

Wishin you all a Happy Shopping! :-)

AirTel DTH Website

Here's the link to AirTel DTH website for now. You can check the Packages here. This website is still under beta and you may expect some errors on it. This site may open officially on 09-Oct-2008. To simplify, AirTel may link it with http://www.airteldth.in/. Lets wait for the surprise!

Update on 11-Oct-2008: Here's the official website - http://airtel.in/digitaltv

Microsoft Product Lifecycle

When is the support for Visual Basic 6.0 ending? Till when Windows XP Service Pack 2 will be supported by Microsoft? When is Internet Explorer 6.0 era ending? Do you have such questions on any Microsoft Product. Then, the below URL is the answer for all your questions.

Microsoft Product Lifecycle Search

You can search for any Microsoft Product support end date here. A very usefull link when arriving at the Product Versions for your customer. Just bookmark this for future reference.

Google Chrome caught as a Trojan Horse

Today while navigating through my Windows Explorer folders, I navigated the folder containing the ChromeSetup.exe file. Suddenly my aVast anti-virus program detected it as a Trojan ( "Win32.Midgare" ). I immediately captured its screenshot and posting it here for future reference.




Although it has not created any harm to my PC, but still I am curious to know why aVast detected it as a Trojan! Have anyone found similar problem?

Bharti Airtel DTH services from 09-Oct-2008

Bharti Airtel has announced the launch of Airtel digital TV, its Direct To Home (DTH) Satellite TV service. The service will be available to customers through 21,000 retail points including Airtel Relationship Centres in 62 cities across the country starting October 9, 2008. At present there are five DTH players in the Indian market. The 5 existing players are Zee Dish TV, Tata Sky, DD Direct, Sun Direct DTH and Reliance Big TV.

The launch of Airtel digital TV is the culmination of our three screens strategy, which is to be present across mobile phone, computer and TV screens. Airtel digital TV uses the latest MPEG4 standard with DVB S2 technology, which translates into exceptional picture clarity and consistent high quality audio for the customer. This latest technology also enables delivery of more complex interactive content and is High Definition ready. Also, Airtel digital TV uses 20% larger dish antenna that offers better performance during rain.

Besides the latest technology., Airtel digital TV brings many firsts to the DTH segment in India:
1) Universal remote for both Set Top box and TV that offers enhanced viewer convenience
2) Highest Set Top Box memory enabling more interactive applications
3) Exclusive content such as World space radio
4) Interactive applications such as iMatinee (Book cinema tickets), iTravel (Browsw and book travel packages), iShop (Shop on TV for your favourite brands), iCity (Get your city's information) and Widgets (Update yourself on latest stock news). 8 screen iNews, 2/4 screen iSports
5) Amazing games with high quality graphics, refreshed every six weeks
6) Audio gain control for uniform audio levels across all channels
7) Simple and intuitive search
8) On screen account meter
9) Last viewed channel in case of power disruption/switch off
10) Low battery indicator on the screen.
The customer care is available in 8 different languages and a team of 800 professionally trained service engineers.

Above Source: Economics Times

Currently, the market is dominated by Essel Group's Dish TV DTH service (about 4 million subscribers) followed by Tata Sky (2.7 million subscribers), Sun Direct (1 million subscribers) and Big TV ( half million subscribers). State-owned Prasar Bharati's DTH service DD Direct Plus is the only free-to-air service, where consumers do not pay any monthly subscription fees. According to sources, DD Direct Plus has a subscriber base of about 3-4 million subscribers, mostly in the remote corners of the country not connected by terrestrial or cable television.

Initially, the company had introduced three different packages for the North and Southern markets. For the Northern market, the package starts from Rs 2,499 and for the South, the package would start from Rs 1,499. Depending on the language and genre of channels, the monthly tariffs would range from Rs 125 to Rs 424, the company said.

I have been using Tata Sky since 1 year and so far happy with its Quality. I have seen Reliance Big TV at my neighbour's house, but its quality is not that superior as Tata Sky. Lets wait and watch AirTel's DTH. At the time of writing this Blog, I just saw its Advertisement in Television - which has major bollywood stars (Saif, Kareena, Madhavan, Vidhya Balan, A R Rehman, Deepika Padukone, etc...)

The Customer Care (1-800-102-8080) is refusing to give any additional information untill 09-Oct-2008. Checkout the TV Commercial on YouTube.