A little technology update - Skype phone in Europe (UK/Ireland)

Ok peoples as you all know I have a thing for new & kool gadgets, a couple of weeks back Skype in partner ship with “Three” launched their mobile service in Europe. The idea of VoIP over cell phone is very kool but usually mobile companies and VoIP don’t get along good; allowing VoIP calls over their network is considered cannibalism.

Anyways this time it went different, finally Skype phone is launched and whats more, its free, just buy a Skype phone for €89 and that’s it, yeah really “THAT’S IT” you get a very nice looking iPod kinda cell phone for free. Just we have to top-up with €10 a month for normal “Three” calls and SMS’s rates, and rite now there is a promotion when ever you top up €10 you get €10 as bonus for next 12 months.

So in short we can make *unlimited SkypePC<->SkypeMobile calls absolutely free a whole month, plus Skype text chatting and also MSN chatting for free. There are rumours that they might allow Google talk for free as well.

khair I have bought this mobile and already in love with it, I just phoned my Dad in PK for like an hour while sitting in café’, and as most of the people in my dept have bought it so everyone is online and cant stop calling each other, now :) he he! . See the pictures .

Btw the mobile tough looks small, comes with everything a modern mobile has, good screen, Bluetooth, 512 MB built-in, Mp3 player, nice headphones, 2 MPixel camera, long battery life, can also be recharged from USB, and its soo small, my N-73 is looking like a Giant in front of it.

* Unlimited = 3 hours of skype calls are allowed each day, which is like a lot. (btw if you use more than 3 your next day would be 2 etc.)

An Era at LogicTree comes to an end.

While on my stay back in Pakistan I got to work in a very cool company, LogicTree Corp/InfoConSys, met some nice people, made very good friends, and enjoyed my stay thoroughly.

The LogicTree is a pioneer of IVR systems in US, and has installations all over the states, so when ever you call 511 or 411 in Florida, just remember it was programmed by Zishan or Kaleem and tested by Shafqat in Islamabad :).

When I was leaving the guys from office gave a very lavish Iftar part after that we had a very nice discussion over sheesha J at a place called “Kabotar wali Sarkaaar” restaurantJ, which made it something memorable.

Zaimmeeeenaar!

Mukshpuri Peak, NathiaGali. (9452 feet/3150 metres above sea level)

Mukshpuri Peak is at 2-3 hours hike from NathiaGali, its a very beautiful camping sopt. A must to go place, light adventure and fun time. The Hike is extremely beautiful and not very tiring.

But be cautious of going there in the evenings there are multiple incidents of mountain lions in that region. On my trip there out Guide (Mr. Khalid) showed us paw marks of a leopard, and has told us that he has caught glimpses of the cat many times over the past years.

Apparently two kinds of big-cats are found in region of Murree, Galiat and Azad Kashmir. On higher planes there are Snow leopards, and in the lower areas there are Lynx, mountain Cat. Though they are magnificent animals but its always better we avoid encounter; by going to mountains in groups and by keeping a local guide with us.





Snow Leopard(left) & Lynx, mountain Cat (right)
(courtesy of wwf and Google)

These are taken by my camera (The Beautiful Mukshpuri Track)


Tracking through woods

The Peak

pug mark of montain lion that I shot with my own camera.

Lebanese Army! “Destroy Enemy with Attitude” :)

Very Cool Java Applications for mobiles

Few weeks back, I bought a new mobile Nokia 6300; and its a pretty awesome mobile, not that its the most functionally enhanced device in market, but for 13K you get a lot.

Anyways this post is not about Nokia 6300 it about some new mobile applications that you can download and enjoy with your java enabled cell phones; for connectivity I am using Ufone GPRS service in Pakistan, these application should work with any GPRS based service available anywhere.


GMAIL
To start with we have GMAIL client for mobiles, just go to gmail.com/app from your cell phone built in browser, it will download a small application and Voila! There would be a icon in your application fodler, and You have your full sexy gmail account on your cell; You can read mails, reply, delete, open pdfs & images etc. As I use gmail very often so this was actually useful for me.

For more details go here, http://www.google.com/mobile/mail/index.html



OperaMini
Another interesting download is opera browser, just go to operamini.com from your mobile and wasssup! A very good looking, fast browser is installed on which you can read RSS feeds etc and everything.
Plus as per Opera ppl, it’s very efficient as well.

For details, http://www.operamini.com/


Agile Messenger (Yahoo, MSN, Googletalk etc)
Third is Agile Messenger in which we can chat and all(MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk etc) J2ME application installs itself directly to the mobile, open the following URL in your mobile phone's WAP or WWW browser: http://www.agilemobile.com/am.jad


BBC News watcher
And the last one is BBC News Watcher,
Just go to this page, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/6228169.stm, give your details, and they will send you an SMS instantly with the download link, download it to your mobile, and you can have very kool looking Mail watcher on your mobile. Again very kool!. My mobile phone was not in the list of phone on which the application works, but I downloaded it for the nearest match, and its working perfectly. (my phone is Nokia 6300 and they had application for Nokia 6280).

Vitual PCs, Perfect for Testing different OS

VirtualPC

At my work I had to make a cluster of machines to setup Voip Solution. For that we needed at least two Linux machines to install Asterisk (http://www.trixbox.org/) on it and then play around with it.

One solution to do that is installing physical machines and then installing the VoIP servers on it, but there was a simpler way and maan! Its kool.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 (Free from Microsoft Waaaaow!)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc

&

Also free one - VMWARE - The future of Virtualization -www.vmware.com-

Thanks to VMware I have been able to set-up testing lab in on my 12’’ laptop! Awesome! Rite now I am running a Debian and a Fedora working perfectly with different IPs, No need to format to Linux file systems, No GRUB Boot loader or anything. Unbelievable!

At first I thought …. OK, maybe it can do this but with a substantial loss in performance and reliability. How wrong was I!

VMware have a lot of options but MS one is Simpler, both are free though.

Musharaf is on the Hot Seat! chk this out, it's Funny!

Few Nice Lines

One of a board members at my company resigned, on the bottom of his mail he quoted this "Rubaii", I really liked it.

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour'd it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd --
"I came like Water and like Wind I go." (Attributed to Omar Khayyam)

Allisson Stokke an unknown babe is becoming super popular! And the fact that she hates it makes "interesting" :)

A new funny/disturbing hype over the blogging world; Allisson Stokke wasn’t exactly famous a few weeks ago but suddenly this 18 year old athlete (pole vaulter) and student from California got really famous. Google came up with 905,000 results (which is a LOT for such a girl) on this unknown athlete and student. An amateur homepage started posting her pictures. She hates the attention because she just wanna be a normal girl doing normal things. (Yeah rite!)

chk out the story abt her, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/28/AR2007052801370.html

but yet again, look at her and god bless the internet!! :)

Well!! AplologyAccepted :)

Funny!

Microsoft Surface™, the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft Corp.

Looks Kool, but isn’t the idea scoped from the one given by Apple Computers Last Year.

check this Apple's Multi touch screen movie

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6379146923853181774&q=Apple+Multitouch&pr=goog-sl

When I walked on the sea, Good Ol' days in Sweden,

I and Rizwan went to our university beach where we walked on the sea. It was a great experience.... Now I can proudly boss "I have walked on a sea, have you?"

and I enter the blogging world…

After riding a brain wave of solid 20 mins, understanding the invloved risks, gambles, speculations, health hazards, privacy threats etc. I have decided to blog! The decision is pertinent to four points,


1- Since by a stroke of luck I am a Manager at my company; and as you move up the ladder you get more involved in office politics and have less work vs more "Responsibility" he he, so -How to kill time-

2- My work place is full of "Uncle" type people and Computer Gaming Retards, so playing Warcraft in my office looked extremely odd, and made ppl roll eyes :p.

3- Check out what the blogging fuss is all about.

4- I might end up having fun and It sounds cool! (Damn! This point came out so lame :p)

-TimeLine- by Michael Crichton

Few days back I read a book named "TimeLine" by Michael Crichton. The book was recommende and given to me by a friend (Docktor aka Ayyaz) it took me months to find time to start reading it and I admit I am not big fan of historical fiction; and the book started somewhat slow as well. By once I started it on my 4 hr long flight to Dubai, I could never stop, on my arrival I stood at the arrival lounge for 2 hours just to finish it! Amazing Book; Highly Recommended .