Now You Have To Pay For Freedom From Internet [Software]

Remember the good old dial-up days, when you used to have Internet only few hours a day?

If you let out a sigh of relief and thanked heaven for broadband, you can stop reading right now. But, if you replied saying, “Those were the days!”, this is something that will interest you!

Freedom is as simple as software gets. It has one purpose. It blocks Internet on your computer for a stipulated amount of time. In this time, you can forgo all distractions and concentrate on your work. It’s obviously great only if your work doesn’t involve looking up stuff on the Internet. In their words:

Freedom is the perfect New Year’s resolution, a simple productivity application that locks you away from the internet on Mac or Windows computers for up to eight hours at a time. Freedom frees you from distractions, allowing you time to write, analyze, code, or create. At the end of your offline period, Freedom allows you back on the internet.

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LG Releases A Weird Video To Show Off Optimus 2X

LG has released this 3 minute video to show of the power of their dual core Android based Optimus 2X phone. Something about it is just not right. It could be the music, or the video with a weird game concept with weird missions like finding the butterfly on HD screen and executing multiple apps in parallel to show off the phone’s strengths. It just went over my head.

I also couldn’t appreciate Google’s weird Android 3.0 Tablet demo video from yesterday. What happened to neat and simple demos?It’s like the world is going retro SciFi.

[via PocketNow]

3G launch in India might be delayed (yet again) [WTF]

Just when Indians were looking forward to finally be able to justify the 3G enabled handsets they have been buying since the last 5 years, Indian government has poked their nose again at the 11th hour restricting the launch of 3G service by cellular operators in the name of “security”. Yeah, the same “security” thing that almost banned blackberry’s services a few months back.

Indian government is afraid that with 3G services, users will be able to do more than just talk on their cellphones. And at very high speed. They have asked the cellular operators to hold the launch of 3G services until they (the cellular operators) have the infrastructure in place for the government security agencies to be able to intercept these activities in real time. That’s basically a euphemism for – “we won’t let you launch 3G services until the government officials have the infrastructure to peep into your users’ activities”.

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iPad available in India for ICICI bank customers

ICICI Bank and GadgetsGuru.com are selling the iPad wifi models in India at absurd prices and calling it ‘offer’. Apparently, these morons do not know what an offer means.

Here are the details of the alleged ‘offer’:

• iPad 16GB wifi – INR 34,999
• iPad 32GB wifi – INR 39,999
• iPad 64GB wifi – INR 46,999

Airtel Broadband disconnection woes

Everyone knows that it’s a major trouble to disconnect a service from any provider in the Indian telecom industry. They will plead, offer discounts and try everything till you get pissed, leave it as is and stop paying the bills. And then they sue you for not paying the bills.

Since I was aware of the issues, I planned to disconnect my Airtel Broadband connection well in advance. I called them up and to my surprise they were really friendly. They offered to transfer the connection to any city or any individual in the same city. I said no and they explained the procedure to me – Give a disconnection request, go and submit the instruments to the nearest customer care office, pay the dues and your job is done. I did the same. They told me the present dues are already paid, my connection will be disconnected in 24 hours and they will send the remaining bill at the end of the month after which they will return any security deposit that was made. I came back happily appreciating Airtel! But of course I was mistaken.

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Government of India planning to develop its own Operating System and Anti Virus [OMFG + WTF]

Apparently, Government of India is pissed off with all the cyber attacks on its servers and has decided to build its own Operating System and Anti Virus software. The government formed a high-level taskforce in February to devise a plan for building indigenous software, said a senior intelligence official who is a member of the said task force.

Senior personnel with the government believe that an indigenously developed, low grade, but clean OS and anti virus software will bring an end to infiltrating attempts from foreign shores.

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Airtel launches iPhone 3GS in India, no surprises

Looks like iPhone 3GS is finally hitting the Indian shores on 26 March 2010. Bharti Airtel announced the availability of the iPhone 3GS on its network in a press release on 24 March 2010.

As expected, the price of the phone is absurdly high. Here is a run down:

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How newspapers change subtle details [WTF]

Today morning while going through my Boston.com Big Picture feed, I came across this amazing picture of the solar eclipse.

The title said, “Two men sit on a bridge to watch an annular solar eclipse in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China on January 15, 2010. (REUTERS/Donald Chan)”

After some time when I picked up the newspaper (Times of India, Bangalore Edition) and saw the front page I was surprised to see the same picture! But the real shock came when I read the title. It said, “A Chinese couple watches the solar eclipse over Zhengzhou in central China’s Henan province, on Friday”.

Here are the two things I didn’t like:

1. They changed “two men” to “a couple”. Just to make the solar eclipse more romantic?
2. They didn’t mention the photographer’s name. As Vir Sanghvi has said, we should show some grace.

I feel strange that the gazillion bloggers out there are better than professional newspapers when it comes to this.

The missing iPhone key

A friend just made me realize that the iPhone (and iPod Touch) keyboard does not show a backtick (`) key on it’s keyboard when you are typing into text boxes. I tried every possible combination but no, it just wasn’t there. And to tease us mortals, it appears automagically in the email keyboard. Imagine the fate of those (like my sad friend) who have backticks in their passwords.

Now seriously, what is stopping them from doing this apart from being a snob. For fuck’s sake they have keys like (¿) and (¡) on the iPhone keyboard!

Microsoft wants you to buy gold membership to use facebook and twitter on your Xbox 360 [WTF]

I signed up for the Xbox Live update preview and got accepted. With high hopes, I downloaded the preview update only to find out that the things that can be previewed need me to sign up for a Xbox Live Gold membership! WTF?

Apparently, just like the Netflix streaming service, Microsoft is gonna make facebook and twitter available only to gold members. I can understand that they want to earn $$ from it (why wouldn’t they, they are M$), but charging a subscription fee just for using these services, which otherwise are completely free, is insane.

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