Everyone has been talking and raving/criticizing/talking about Worldcall’s new EVDO wireless broadband service. Techlahore recently talked about the rival PTCL service that just launched in competition. We had been using the service in my old company for the last 3 months and after using it regularly, I think its time to share the experience of using this product nearly daily in a full review.

First of all, any good wireless broadband service is a Godsend for techies, consultants, generally people on the road. If you travel intercity, then even more so. Worldcall EVDO is very usable though it has some ticks that could make it better. In light of loadshedding and power issues I think a laptop with this dongle attached makes you invulnerable to KESC. That in itself, is something to pay for. Should you pay for this each month instead of your electric bill?  Read on more for the full review. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 100% [?]

I like Microsoft. I like Google. I use Google’s chrome , apps on top of MS’s Windows daily.  I’ve been to the Microsoft Campus, I’ve worked with people from the company and know more about it’s insides than I do about Google. So when Microsoft has “syncing” issues across its teams I can understand and appreciate why. But from Google, I would not expect this , especially given that they are much smaller, leaner, meaner. And we love to love Google and love to hate Microsoft, right? 

So imagine the puzzled expression on my face when i saw this : (screenshot below)

I’m using chrome with Google’s custom search engine. Google’s browser not compatible with a Google service? And it then recommends a Microsoft browser as an option too (of course that is good error messaging by the Google CSE team but funny nonetheless). Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 9% [?]

Youtube loads up -very slowly- on Worldcall most of the time. I dont know why, but (large) video streams over http  generally on Worldcall cable are very bad. DSL providers do not seem to have this issue. So if 80% of what you do is web video, then you should probably be on DSL

Popularity: 11% [?]

We already knew of the few that have opened in Karachi, Raffles has also opened one in Lahore, and there are atleast two now in Lahore… not bad for a country that so far was dominated by the Wintel brands…

Apple here is a still a “elitist” brand, expensive and bought mostly by geeks, media professionals and CEOs. You cant beat the volumes of MAC vs PCs…but who cares about that!!! I want one!!! ..besides… It will look nice with my iPod touch

Popularity: 12% [?]

So i heard this on the radio the other day. Windows Vista starter edition is retailing in Pakistan for Rs 2,600. Not bad, bravo Microsoft, now instead of a one time promotion, why dont you just make this the standard price for your OS? You will kill 70% of Windows OS piracy with one blow, which probably is the aim anyway. And if you make it cheaper for students, (at UT we used to get legal Windows, office and visual studio for USD $5 per CD, no jokes.) then no one will want to go to Rainbow center to buy software CD’s

In the wake of such rampant piracy of software which really has not gone down at all in the last several years at the consumer level, reducing prices to corner the market is really is the only option, and then offering a subscription based upgrade service to hold onto that market share would work…. Most consumers will not buy pirates software  if prices of the legal versions are reasonable for them.

Now, oddly,sadly,insanely enough a copy of Windows Vista will cost about as much as a full tank of petrol!!

Popularity: 15% [?]

In one word, yes. Alltop is one of those technologies that will seamlessly blend into your life, like your cellphone. Our parents used to (still do) read the paper every morning. We’ll read Alltop.

Check out the Pakistan page on Alltop, the relevance should hit home right away. This is like the cute litte buzz.pk but for everything. Alltop has lots of topics, such as Muslim Blogs, Going green, Marketing. A worldwide newsrack, only cleaner and easier to read than the real life version.

A big thanks to Guy and his team and to Atif for making pakistan.alltop.com  happen.

Alltop helps solve the problem of information overload, using a simple elegant UI. I just hope they don’t run out of nice colours for the cool looking Alltop bar!

Popularity: 14% [?]

For the geek in you : a Mac OSx Leopard VM running on my IBm T61 vista box. So, if I wanted, now I can run Leopard and Vista on an IBM T61 laptop. I call this having my cake and eating it too ;)  Mac fans do not accuse me of  blasphemy (yet), I am thinking of making the switch so I’m just playing with the OS to get an idea. Full post here.

Popularity: 14% [?]

…lootmaar.com this week. Jawwad is holding an auction for charity - (the auction is for lunch with Jawwad) and its at 50 bids, and its at 75,000 with the reserve price met and theres still 3 days left! . All proceeds go to the SMB Fatima Jinnah Girls school project.

From what I can see, this is also the hottest item on the site right now…  I did’nt know my boss was this popular!

Popularity: 11% [?]

Since the day I bought my iPod touch I’ve become a believer that the iPhone needs to be taken seriously as a mobile platform that competes with RIM and Windows Mobile. While the Palm OS (which still has the best todo list app ever) regresses, and Windows Mobile and RIM take center stage, the new kid on the block is poised to kick some serious behinds in the coming two years.

So, now ITT is available on the iPhone and iPod touch.  Bookmark this link to access the RSS feeds on the iPhone! Let me know if this works….

Popularity: 9% [?]

Well….could I ? Dump my Wintel laptop and MS office,  get linux, staroffice, dump Dreamweaver and Visual Studio and stick to just Eclipse and the command prompt? and still do my daily work+play+blog+etc ?

We love to talk open source, linux, openoffice,etc and how cool it is, and how everyone but US should be using it.But really, we DON’T ever think of using it ourselves, or in our companies. We dump everything and run to MS office at the first sign of trouble, while say, opening an excel file or making a chart.

but could you, as a daily user live on just open source tools? Do you really need microsoft? Or will a firefox browser on linux, running Google docs, gmail, facebook and wordpress do just fine?  Its almost a religious conversion. I still don’t think I could. I still believe in a mix of technologies. I know very few techies in Pakistan who actually walk the walk and talk the talk, so to speak. If I get may be enough people asking me through the comments stream (who cares about this anyway, so dont ask ), maybe I’ll take up the challenge.

Popularity: 7% [?]