Chinese phone still working?

From today, state will enforce ban on phones without valid IMEI numbers, but operators promise to help people

IPhone Clone

If you have bought your mobile phone from the grey market, you may suddenly find the handset turning useless in your hands. The government directive to GSM mobile service providers to bar connectivity to cellphones without a valid International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number comes into effect from April 15.
Concerned over national security, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had asked operators to disconnect handsets without valid IMEI numbers. A large number of people who use Chinese-made phones from the grey market or pirated instruments will be affected by this regulation.

WHAT IS IMEI NUMBER?
IMEI number is a unique 15-digit number assigned to each genuine mobile handset. It appears on the operator’s network whenever a call is made. It helps service providers trace calls made from registered phones. It is impossible to trace mobile phones that do not have a registered IMEI number.

WHY BAR NON-IMEI PHONES?
With cellphones aiding terror strikes like 26/11, handsets that do not have a valid IMEI number pose a grave security threat. This was indicated to the DoT in a report prepared by the Intelligence Bureau. It was also reported that Chinese mobile phones without a valid IMEI number were used by militants during the Ajmer blasts.

HOW TO FIND YOUR IMEI NUMBER
1. Ensure your phone is powered on 2. If you were in the middle of a call, end it, and clear any numbers you pressed while making that call. 3. Press the following keys in this sequence: *#06# 4. As you press the last #, your IMEI number will appear on your phone screen.

OPERATORS WILL FOLLOW RULE
Cellphone service providers are reportedly unhappy with the DoT directive as they stand to lose a wide customer base. To overcome the problem, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) had suggested that a software be developed to assign genuine IMEI numbers to handsets that do not have one.
“Services to non-IMEI handsets will get disconnected from April 15. We are informing subscribers that if they have purchased an unregistered phone, they should replace their handsets as service will be de-activated,” said Gaurav Wahi, a spokesperson for Reliance.
Airtel and Vodafone did not comment, but directed us to the COAI. “Security concerns are real, but genuine customers too are getting affected by the DoT move. Users of cheap non-IMEI handsets form a very large customer base of over 150 million people in India. We cannot disconnect them totally. Mobile phone dealers are now providing duplicate IMEI numbers, which will only add to security risk.
“For the last 3-4 months, we have been developing a software to provide genuine IMEI numbers. We have identified around 2,600 outlets all over the country who will provide this service. We will basically track mobile phone users who do not have a valid IMEI number via SMSes and calls and ask them to approach the nearest outlet to make their connection genuine. People will have to pay around Rs 200 for this service,” said TV Ramachandran of the COAI.

GREY MARKET DEALERS UNFAZED
Grey market dealers feel the new regulation is not going to affect their sales. “The regulation will affect mobile phones that do not have IMEI numbers. But the new lot of Chinese phones being sold in the city come with IMEI numbers. Even phones without IMEI numbers can get registered,” said a mobile phone dealer at Manish Market near Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, on condition of anonymity.
“There is a special software to get phones that do not have a valid IMEI number registered. The users have to pay Rs 150 or so. The phones will not go out of use,” said another dealer, who did not wish to be named.


Source:
ALPITA MASURKAR
Mumbai Mirror
15th,April,2009

Google Empowers Indian Voters!

As India gears up for its biggest parliamentary elections this summer, Google India creates an online elections centre to highlight some of the most important information available to voters in India today.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009: Google India has launched an online elections centre that showcases a range of information pertaining to the 2009 Lok Sabha Elections. The website that would provide information to the voters about their constituency and the candidates, is available both in English and Hindi.

India will hold general elections to the 15th Lok Sabha in five phases on 16 April, 23 April, 30 April, 7 May and 13 May 2009. The results of the election will be announced in single phase on 16 May 2009.

Last week, Yahoo! India also announced a new site focussed on providing users with up-to-date information on the upcoming 2009 general elections.

A voter may visit the Google India elections centre by logging onto www.google.co.in/loksabha2009. After first selecting his or her constituency and viewing the location on a Google Map, the voter may examine data highlighting - for instance - any changes in literacy, poverty and employment rates in the constituency since the previous general election. The voter may then consider the educational credentials and attendance record of his or her current Member of Parliament and some of the qualifications of those candidates contesting in this year’s election.

Subsequently, the voter may review pertinent news, blogs, videos and quotes from a range of local organisations and individuals. Finally, the voter may search for his or her name in the voter rolls to confirm his or her registration and to receive information about the accompanying polling station.

According to Shailesh Rao, managing director, Google India, “Being an informed voter is a prerequisite for the healthy functioning of India’s democracy. While this is especially true during all elections cycles, we have this year observed many initiatives that have sought to promote access to election-related information in India. Keeping in mind our global mission of organising the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful, we have created this elections centre to highlight some of the most important information available to voters in India today. Indian voters have the right to information about their constituencies and candidates, and we are confident that the website will yield a positive change in voting patterns during the upcoming general elections.”

The Google India online election centre is being launched in partnership with The Hindustan Times and several non-profit groups.

According to Sanjoy Narayan, editor-in-chief, Hindustan Times Media Limited, “This time, the 18 to 35 age group accounts for almost 40 per cent of the electorate. This chunk of young voters is good with technology and wants to make sure they elect the right people. That’s why an election website partnered between Hindustan Times, which brings you the most comprehensive and informed coverage, and Google, the technology leader in the Internet space – can be such a powerful tool in helping them make their vote count.”

The website is also available at
www.hindustantimes.com/loksabha2009 and
www.livemint.com/loksabha2009 in English and
www.livehindustan.com/loksabha2009 in Hindi.

Sony releases indigenous Hanuman game for PS2

The Indian gaming industry has now crossed the platform barrier. In a first, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has launched Hanuman: Boy Warrior (3D) for the PlayStation 2. Developed by Hyderabad-Aurona Technologies Limited (acquired by Pyramid Samira), Hanuman is the first localized game on the PS2 platform to be completely developed by an Indian game development house.

It is also Sony's first game based on Indian mythology and one that is playable in Hindi. The launch of the game is a culmination of a journey that was started by Sony when the first ever game developers' conference (DevStation '08 Mumbai) for Playstation platform was organized in Mumbai.

How to Add Social Bookmark Links in Blogger

Steps to be followed:

1. Go to Blogger Dashboard - click "Layout"
2. Add a Gadget
   
3. A new window will open there click on "Basics"
4. You be shown a list of gadgets Now click on HTML/JavaScript
5. Give a Title
   
6. Copy pate the html codes
   
7. Click on "Save"

Such HTML codes are available from:

feedburner.com
addthis.com
sharethis.com

Earth viewed by Chandrayaan-1

Earth viewed by Chandrayaan-1 TMC on 25th-March-2009 at 16-13- UTC

Image courtesy : http://www.isro.org/

Million Dollar boy

The website of Alex Tew, a 21-year-old entrepreneur, who hopes to pay his way through university by selling 1 million pixels of internet ad space for $1 each.

From The Times
October 14, 2005
Steve Boggan

Alex is 21. He's an ordinary middle-class undergraduate: lives in messy student digs, has spiky hair, drinks a lot of Coke. And is on his way to his first million. Meet an internet whiz-kid

It is difficult to spend time with Alex Tew without walking away feeling thoroughly miserable. It isn’t that his company isn’t pleasant; it is. It isn’t that he’s not extremely bright and unnervingly modest; he is both. More than anything, it is because during the time that you spend speaking to him — let’s say two hours’ time, as I did — he grows richer by almost £1,000.

And if you think that makes you feel bad, imagine the effect on students at Nottingham University when they learn that during freshers’ week at the beginning of this month, while they were blowing what little cash they had, Alex made more than £100,000.

This is because Alex is a 21-year-old phenomenon. He is growing richer and richer by having a simple idea that exploits the omnipresence of the internet and its users’ absolute respect for, and addiction to, anything unique. In short, he set up a website that offered almost nothing for $1 million. And the buyers are flooding in.

The student’s rags-to-riches story begins on a balmy night in August at Alex’s parents’ home near Cirencester in Wiltshire. It was late and he was contemplating the consequences of finally agreeing to go to university after three years of hopping from lousy job to crazy idea and back again. Alex had been accepted on a business management course at Nottingham (he has nine GCSEs and three A-levels at good grades) but fees and accommodation for the first year alone came to £7,000.

“To put it bluntly, I was broke and dreading the prospect of running up huge debts as a student,” he says. We are in the students’ union bar at the university and Alex is drinking a Coke. He is a fresh-faced, spiky-haired live wire — nothing like the geek I had expected, the kid whose simple idea has set the internet community alight.

“I’ve always been an ideas sort of person and I like to brainstorm at night before I go to sleep — it’s my most productive time. So I wrote down ‘How can I become a millionaire before I go to university?’ It was a rather ambitious question, but I went with it.
“Then I wrote down the attributes that this idea would need: it had to be simple to understand and to set up; it had to attract a lot of media interest; and it needed a good name. After I wrote down those three things, the idea just popped into my head. I’d like to say it was more dramatic than that, but it wasn’t.”

His thought processes went something like this: what if he set up a website called the Million Dollar Homepage which contained exactly one million pixels (the tiny dots that make up an image on a screen)? What if he then used that page as, in effect, an advertising notice board where advertisers — mainly from the US — could buy space at $1 (60p) per pixel?
What if, when you clicked on the group of pixels bought by an advertiser, you were directed to that advertiser’s homepage? And what if you told potential buyers that this is the first page of its kind, that it’s going to become incredibly famous — and that a young British student will be able to go to university as a result of your generosity? “I went to sleep and when I woke up I still thought it was a good idea,” Alex recalls. “So over the next few days I set up the website and off it went.”

The Million Dollar Homepage captured the imagination of advertisers and has now spawned dozens of copycat sites that will undoubtedly do nowhere near as well as Alex’s. The reason for that is simple: the selling point of his page is that it was the first. In the first four weeks alone, Alex sold more than 300,000 pixels at $1 each.

He sold his first blocks of 100 pixels (the minimum number the eye can read) to his three brothers and some friends. Once sales had topped $1,000, he used the money to pay for a press release that was picked up by the BBC. This, is turn, “went viral” across the internet as person after person e-mailed it to friends around the world.

“It is brilliant in its simplicity,” says Professor Martin Binks, director of the Nottingham University Institute for Entrepreneurial Innovation. “I think advertisers have been attracted to it by its novelty and by the curiosity factor. Those that are buying space have realized that the site has become a phenomenon and people are flocking to have a look at it; that makes the advertising good value for money.”

I asked one of Alex’s advertisers why they bought space on the site. Was it charity, or is his idea really that good? Chris Magras, chief executive of engineseeker.com, an Arizona-based company that helps clients’ websites to appear at the top of worldwide search engines, bought 6,400 pixels as soon as he heard about the Million Dollar Homepage.

“It was ingenious,” says Magras. “It is easy to make money on the internet, but it is very difficult to have a unique idea, and this was. I immediately knew that this website was going to attract huge numbers of visitors so I bought pixels there and then. The results for us were amazing. We used to get 40,000 visitors a day to our site — that’s now up to 60,000.”

Back in Alex’s student digs — he is staying in halls of residence — raggedy T-shirts are drying on a clothes horse, course work is scattered around and the sound of the leaking toilet next door is keeping him awake. He has been at university just two weeks and, so far, no one knows he is the Million Dollar Boy.

I ask him to show me his bank balance to ensure that this isn’t an elaborate hoax. There is £50,600 in there and rising. We look at his Pay Pal and 2Checkout accounts — the clearing houses that receive payments — and there is more than $100,000 waiting to be passed to him. I see other orders that will take the number of pixels sold to more than 300,000.

“It’s criminal, isn’t it?” he says. “It’s like Monopoly money. I’ve always had a knack for making money and I always knew I wanted to live on my wits. When I was 8, I used to draw cartoons, make comics, photocopy them and sell them at school for 30p. I’ve got lots more ideas that this money will help me make reality. I see it as fun.”

So, what will he do with all that money? “Well, so far, I’ve bought lots of socks,” he says. “My socks were a mess.” His favourites have a Space Invaders logo on them. “They’re made of pixels, see? I will confess that I have been to look at a Mini in a car showroom. I’d love a car, but I don’t want anything stupid like a BMW.”

The other students really haven’t latched on to his identity yet, and he’s a little worried about how they will react when they do. “I’ve been thinking about that and I suppose I’ll have to be on my guard a bit, wondering whether they just want to get to know me or the money,” he says. “I’ll have to rely on being a good judge of character until the novelty wears off.”

Million Dollar Homepage - Own a piece of internet history!

http://milliondollarhomepage.com/

Bhangra Knights vs Husan Video

"Tera husan bahut mujhe bhaata hai, Tere sang naachun jee chahta hai..." the catchy song in the ad (which re-emerged later in many hit remixed avatars) was composed by Dutch musicians Niels Zuiderhoek and Jeroen den Hengst.