It might sound silly – one of the good reason to live in Norway is the enormous amount of bandwidth which one gets at their disposal. I am now the proud owner of a wifi Internet connection with a fair share of bandwidth to spare.

Well, there is no reasons to feel special and there is no way one can brag about it as every tom, dick and harry has their own wifi router here. However, comparing it with the sort of connections that I am used to, this one indeed sounds a bit over the top.

Speaking about the Internet connections back home, brings back painful memories of staying in a *university* hostel for four years without personal Internet access — certainly not by choice but due to the lack of adequate infrastructure and also wee-bit of bad luck. Anyways, at least at home I had broadband connections for which I ( hmm..no my dad) had to pay for every byte of transfer. So, It was important to watch out for every link clicked, every file downloaded and the ultimate goal of having a broadband was to find ways of using the bandwidth creatively so that it doesn’t exceed the monthly quota.

Conditions have certainly changed now and I have too much bandwidth at my disposal. But then, the question is — what to do with all these bandwidth ?

No matter how hard I try, I’m still left out with a inadequate feeling of not exploiting all the available resource. Of course, there is always an option to use torrents for one’s own heart’s delight but then, you’ll also have to live with the constant fear of getting busted for breaking copyright laws. Oh wait, what if someone decrypts my WEP, break into my access point and starts downloading illegal contents. Now I understand better what people mean when they say — PARANOIA RULES! All of a sudden, creative bandwidth utilization seems to be much better option than all the additional luxury which comes with wireless Internet.

Hmm.. or perhaps grass is just greener on the other side :/

Just a while ago I watched something disturbing in TV and now can’t stop myself bloging about it. It was some scenes from a reality program ‘big brother’ in which a bollywood actress “shilpa shetyy” is a part of.

Being born with sliver spoon in mouth and coming from a very dependent atmosphere, now she obviously finds it hard to adjust to the western way of life. I am not least bit bothered about the fact that a rich Indian movie star is now treated in an ordinary way. But, it is indeed disturbing to see the way one being ill-treated and harassed because of some social and cultural differences.

First of all, it ain’t easy to adjust from the eastern way of life to the western way all alone with no prior experience and if this is the way people gets treated, it only adds fuel to their misery. Being moved from east to the west, I can clearly understand some of the sentiments and the glitches of adjusting to a new way of life. But, lucky me.. I was surrounded by lots of nice people who made it easy for me.

Like any self-respecting Indian living abroad, I felt offended seeing the clips. Yes, it’s hard or rather impossible to generalise people as a whole, especially a section of the society comprising of more than a billion people. But even with in India, it’s not impossible to find prejudice against whites and other sections of the society and I find absolutely no point in some people protesting against it in the streets back home. Speaking up is extremely important but isn’t it also good to do an introspection before pointing the fingers at someone else.

Anyways, racism is a menace and I am happy to see all the media publicity these incidences are getting. At-least, it might help to bring out the seriousness of the issue. In an ideal world, respect for the culture should be a two way thing but the ground reality is not even close to anything ideal. Welcome to the real world, where not every second person is culturally sensitive. Sad, but true.

Look what I got for a new project.

The confusion behind the trademark thingy is turning out to be interesting or rather more confusing. A quick google search only helped to add to this pool of confusion. Found a site which says that the trademark belongs to apple, another one which says that it belongs to CISCO, plenty of others which gives related and different stories.

Ahh..I see, this is the perfect setup for yet another classic trademark war. With a speculated number of 11 million iphones( or aphones) hitting the streets by the end of 2008, I guess Apple wouldn’t mind spending some $$$ to buy a simple (i).

Anyways, I was just wondering how cool/uncool it would be if apple has to settle for the name (a)phone.

DISCLAIMER :

All the following names are completely from the wild and it’s got nothing to do with anything or anyone.

GS : Holy crap ! I saw the picture of a phone.
Daedalus : Big deal, I saw the video of a phone.
Tux : Really ! wow ..That’so extreme.
BT : huh ? Guys do you live in information age :/

The list is long and it doesn’t seem to stop anywhere in the near future. After imac, itunes , ipod, isquint ibla ibla ibla …. apple has once again come up with cool innovative products iphone and atv. Desktops and portable music seems to have lost it’s charm and now they are positioning themselves in set-top boxes and phone markets.

But, why (a)tv ? What the heck happened to the cute apple(i). ASFIK, itv was the code name for the product but this also turned out to be the largest British broadcasters, independent television. So, dropping of the (i) makes sense here, isn’t it ?

But then, what about the iphone released by cisco ? Why isn’t there any trademark clash between Apple/iphone and Cisco/iphone . I’m a bit lost here, please enlighten me if anyone can unravel the mystery.

Anyways iphone, seems like a cool phone and an Opera browser in it will make it even more cooler. Won’t be hard to port as it runs on OS X. I was never a big apple fan, but still can’t wait to get my hands on this beauty.

The long wait is finally over ! Nintendo’s much awaited wii reached European markets yesterday. It’s interesting to look at the excitement this device has brought in this part of the world. Some of my colleges even camped in front of the store to get hold of this baby on the first day.

Some of them brought it to the office and I got a chance to play some of the wii games yesterday itself. Trust me ! it’s absolutely amazing. With sophisticated motion-sensing technology, you get the feel of getting involved in the game. After all,not everyday you get to land heavy punches over your friend’s face.

The thing which makes wii more special is the Opera powered browser. The browser will allow users full access to the web and will support all the same web standards that are included in Opera 9 desktop browser. So, ultimately using this browser one gets to play other java and flash games online. The software will be saved to the wii’s internal flash memory and the browser will be able to connect to the Internet wirelessly (802.11b/g) or via an Ethernet cable.

Wii Browser has yet to be launched, but I speculate that it be will released before christmas. Nintendo has stated that they will offer Opera free of charge as a temporary promotion for all Wii users until June 2007, go grab it before it gets heavy on your wallet

IE7 is available for free download, I’ve tested it and found it surprisingly better. After half a decade of absence, IE is very much back in the game with this new release. I wonder, how many people would be able to use it as M$ does a validation check for genuine windows before installation.

Heard FF is releasing their new public version this tuesday and Opera has already announced a new feature “Fraud Protection” for our next public release.

Browsers wars are on once again, lets see how the market react to it.

Check out this guy who took photos of himself every day for 8 years.

If you’ve been in the Internet lately, you must have come across this video of a dude, “Juan Mann” giving away free hugs to strangers in Sydney. This video is one of the highest rated videos on youtube right now and, I can definitely see the reason why. According to him, his sole mission for this campaign is to brighten up a stranger’s day by bringing a smile on his or her face.

What astonishes me more is how fast this video has travelled across the world touching millions of people. His cuddling campaign received an international dose of publicity, after it was put up in youtube( well, it also shows how powerful youtube has become in reaching masses). Just go to the site and search for “Free Hugs” and, you will come across hundreds of other Free hugs videos from all around the world.

Anyways, my heart felt appreciation to “Juan” for this selfless deed of spreading the message of love and good will, keep going dude.

HUGtracker