Alpesh Nakar's Blog

Its been almost a week, since I have been back.

Quick stats:

• Skimmed through hundreds of feed items in Google Reader. Yes skimmed. Why? Read on
• Read through 15 work emails - what 15?!!!

Yeah, you are right! I was on top of emails, thanks to HP iPaq 6300 series, Exchange 2003 SP2 – Push Email and last but not least – probably- cheapest gprs connectivity in the world.

You know how much it cost me? Wanna make a guess? 1…2…3… Ok, have you come up with an answer? Honestly email me or comment your answer. Would love to read it!! Come on…

Well I bought pre-paid with talk time of AU 30$. (I still have some talk time left… with international roaming in Australia!)

Ok, the point of the post…. GPRS. Well, to get activated, I called up the customer care. I was given2 options… Free GPRS to providers site. Settings will be sent via sms. (No good for me, its not a NOKIA) and option 2 – the real one – called Mobile Office would cost me as follows:

Activation – AU $ 1.5 (You read it right, although I could not believe it when I heard it!!)

Data Cost – (hold on….) Wanna make a guess…?  1…2…3… Ok… AU $ 0.20 per day UNLIMITED!!!! I almost dropped the PDA!! I was like, “Are you sure?” She said yes!

I am sure, corporates use exchange push mail and gprs, and they may or may not be using this. However this business model is targeting teens, grads – their first job most likely to be a call center – who have 100% disposable income and they are not interested in push mail and gprs, but ringones, wallpapers, etc which costs extra.

Well, whoever benefits from this, including me, its something that should be available here in Australia too. I just don’t believe, how we get ripped for downloading mails, or checking mails.

That brings me to another point and which is an upcoming post. In India, I did not only access office (exchange) mails, rss feeds but also my personal domain emails, gmail and live mails – benefits of google and gprs.

Well, what do you do at 0200 hours sitting in a hospital lounge?!!!

Another Google acquisition – Jotspot via GoogleBlog

Who is JotSpot?

JotSpot, a privately held company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, is the first application wiki company. Founded in 2004 by Excite.com co-founders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer, the company is pioneering do-it-yourself application publishing to enable anyone to create, publish, and share collaborative and personalized wiki applications.

What is JotSpot’s product?

While other wikis only support plain old text, JotSpot’s wiki allows you to create rich web-based spreadsheets, calendars, documents and photo galleries. It’s as easy as using a word processor — you don’t need to know HTML. Thousands of businesses are using JotSpot to manage projects, build an intranet, share files and stay in sync with colleagues and customers.

Competition for Microsoft SharePoint? What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments…

Jotspot HomePage

You would know that probloggers today at one time in their life did have a day job. They took the big step and they are what they are today, because they did start the blogorama! Some are considering moving on from their day job and some are not into it just cause they don’t need to find one!

The point I am trying to make here is, you have to make the choice. Are you willing to take the risk? Do you want to move on? Or do you want to do the routine job, day in and day out?

What options do you have to be your own boss?

To start with, you can blog Well, it’s not that easy and certainly won’t get you quick money. Blogging is really not about money. The green bucks are complimentary. Blogging is really about passion. Passion for any topic(s) that you can deliver well to an audience. Heaps has been written about how you can blog well. I am not a pro in that arena.

Seriously, if you want to make the transition, you can look at some of these options:

If you are Coder, there is

Rent-A-Coder,

TopCoder,

Freelance Scripting

If you are a Web Designer, there is

Elance,

Guru or better still – list yourself in the directory

Last but not least, if IT Contracting suits you, register here Although on this IT contracting website, I did not see suitable profiles. Maybe you can.
So what do you think? Are you in a day job? Are you planning to move outside your comfort zone?

I installed IE7 today and also applied Office Beta2 Technical Refresh to my Virtual machine.

IE7 installed, I launched Outlook 2007 Beta 2 TR.

The first thing I saw was this prompt to sync my feeds between Outlook 2007 Beta 2TR and IE7.

I don’t use RSS Feeds in Outlook 2007 nor in IE. But wanted to see what happens. I clicked Remind Me Later.

Imported my opml from Google Reader into IE7. Then I launched Outlook again. After I clicked on Yes, it synced all my feeds to Outlook 2007 RSS Folder.

Clicking on the folders did nothing for me! It was empty.

To get the feeds, you need to do Send & Receive. Did that and the feeds started downloading!

All the hell breaks loose!!! My quota on exchange goes phut!!!

AND there is no way (that I could find) to select all folders in RSS in my Inbox!

So now I have to sit and delete each and every feed folder!

So, be warned before you hit yes!!!

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With OpenDNS, you can create shortcuts that let you type something easy-to-remember into your address bar and leap straight where you want to go.

Shortcuts are a cool way to use a short word for a long address. For OpenDNS users, this speedy navigation is one more reason why OpenDNS is smarter.

Create a shortcut from OpenDNS Guide

On OpenDNS Guide, you can create a shortcut right in place, speeding you to your destination both for that visit and future use. Shortcuts you create on the Guide page can be saved and edited once you create a free account, making shortcuts available anywhere on the Internet.

Create a shortcut from another website

With the OpenDNS bookmarklet, you can create shortcuts anywhere on the Internet straight from your browser. Drag this link (OpenDNS Shortcut) to your browser menu bar, and click it anytime you come across a new site you want to shortcut.

Create an advanced shortcut

Anything that can be expressed as a URL can be a shortcut. Parameters make shortcuts even more useful.

What’s a parameter?

A parameter is part of a URL which makes the page change.

For example, http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=yhoo has yhoo as a parameter.

Change yhoo to msft and you get a different page, with Microsoft’s stock price instead of Yahoo’s. Neat!

How do I create a shortcut that takes parameters?

When creating a shortcut, enter %s in the website field as the parameter placeholder, like this:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=%s

How do I use these shortcuts?

It’s simple. Type your shortcut, followed by a space, followed by a parameter.

In your address bar: s msft

Can I launch an application?

Yep! If you want to launch an AOL IM conversation, you can do something like this:

Shortcut: IM
Website: aim:goim?screenname=%s&message=Hi.+Are+you+there?

In your address bar: IM opendns

Limits

Only alphanumeric characters, from the ASCII character set. No spaces are allowed in the shortcut name.

Set up shortcuts for your network

Shortcuts can be set up for network, so all your users benefit from the shortcuts you establish. For instance, set up “help” to go straight to your helpdesk.

Individuals can override the network shortcuts with personal shortcuts, so your assistance doesn’t become an impediment to your users.

Source

Even if it’s your private computer. Mind you, MessenPass fits on your USB drive and does not require installation. So if you are into IM and in a habit of saving your password, you are at high risk with this application.

MessenPass is a free password cracking tool that will easily reveal passwords of your AOL, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, MSN or any other instant messenger clients.

mspass Hosted on Zooomr

It detects the Instant Messenger applications installed on your computer, decrypts the passwords they store, and displays all user name/password pairs in a text or Excel file.

Skype and Hotmail passwords are safe, but how long?

Download MessenPass [via Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration]

John Kremer blogs this breaking news! To celebrate it’s 10 year anniversary, Yahoo Mail will begin offering everyone unlimited email storage May 2007 onwards.

My birthday is also in May! Yahoo!!!

Yahoo! has come a long way. Their blog gives a quick snapshot:

1997: Yahoo! Mail launches with 4MB of storage

2004/2005: Yahoo! Mail upgrades in 2004 to 100MB of storage, followed by a jump to 1GB in 2005

2007: Yahoo! Mail announces unlimited email storage

Another milestone for Yahoo! Great news for Yahoo! fans. I was once.

Feature Request

I just can’t go back to Yahoo, unless they add the following features:

1] Pop and Forwarding

2]Unlimited filters

3]Send As

4] Pop-in

What I like

They certainly have alias, but we need unlimited aliases or atleast upto 25. Features that I certainly appreciate:

1] Look and Feel

2] Built in RSS

3]Yahoo Go! for your mobile

How to switch?

It is really easy to switch from Gmail, Hotmail. I have blogged about this in the past. Use trueswitch. Previously this was available from Yahoo! U.K.

For my Aussie mates, referring to this announcement, I see that it is now available for Australia too! They call it an Australian-first.

Your Comments?

What do you think? Will you make the switch?

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