Enter multimedia, exit logitech

Yesterday I was a bit annoyed and frustrated with my office work and I was driving back home without any interest in reaching home as such. When I was at the Marathahalli junction, I remembered my discussion earlier in the day about a Canon Pixma All-in-one Printer that I was about to buy. Since Staples was just around the corner, and I had not investigated () the shop yet, I thought let me stop over and check out how I could burn down 10000 bucks as soon as possible.

I did manage to get car parking there and I entered the shop. I must say I was really feeling pleasant to find finally that our city did have a comprehensive stationary shop such as Staples. The items themselves were neatly arranged, with a lot of variety and there were atleast 3-4 salesmen to assist you with what you want, although I found that as being pushy with me.

I can go on and on with the way the items are arranged, the sheer number of items etc, but I prefer to just say here that you will surely not be feeling bad that you went there. In fact you would be pleasantly surprised.

In the given 20 minutes that I stayed there, I wanted to make a decision on the printer and a laptop. This in essence is what I wanted to buy.

Image courtesy : Canon Hong Kong

The street price of this all in one is Rs.7,500/- + taxes, but at Staples, I am getting the same offering at Rs.6,500, which is a cool deal. We did have a discussion at our office on the pros and cons of HP versus Canon for printers, and concluded that HP is putting in its development costs into the printer, while Canon sounded more reasonable for the same set of features. But I however ran into one problem buying this yet : My wifey! She was waiting with a gun at my home to shoot me if I ended up with this printer, mainly because of very less space at home to keep such things. So I gave up on buying it at the moment and will look into buying this next month.

I however could not stop myself from buying this – a fully rubberized, water proof, dust proof, noise proof, bend proof, usb keyboard from Enter Multimedia. I was not exactly convinced about this yet, when I saw it, but I am a person who encourages technologies such as this.

One look at this keyboard made me lap it up for just Rs.450/- ($11). Move over the great Samsungs, Logitechs, here is a new innovative, young company called Enter Multimedia which has done the most needed thing to keyboards. It does take a little time getting used to this keyboard, but once done, you are gonna love this cute thing! Open it to work, close it to go to sleep, pretty neat isn’t it ?

Child proof, spill proof, dust proof, bend proof, water proof, noise proof, need I say more? My child now sleeps in peace, while I work in peace. Both of us are not disturbed by each other.

My sincere request to technology product creators : Think, and Ease out our life with your products dudes!

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Technology, Staples, Marathahalli, Enter multimedia, Samsung, Logitech, Keyboard, Rubber, Foldable, Waterproof, Dust proof, Noise proof, Canon pixma mx308, All in one, Printer, Scanner, Copier, Fax, Hong kong, India, Bengaluru, Bangalore, Blog, HP, Officejet, Wonderbox, Products, Technology

E-Stamping of properties – a sure way of avoiding corruption and bribery in Bengaluru

Finally I found some time to write about the new E-Stamping technique that has been introduced on a pilot basis in Bengaluru for preparing legal agreements for sale and rental of properties and many other instruments. The entire article detailing this is available here.

So one would like to know what exactly is the difference between the old method and the new method of stampings. And why in the first place is the stamp paper required itself. For starters, the stamp paper is a document that is franked with the government seal on the top of the page, which in essence signifies the legality of a certain instrumental transaction like for eg., that involving a sale or agreement etc. This used to be supplied by the government to the registrar’s offices and some stipulated banks like State Bank of Mysore used to sell it to customers. This was until a few days back. Now no more do these banks stock these bond papers as they are called. And you may not even get it in the registrar’s offices anymore.

Firstly one has to understand that the government of Karnataka has now shifted over to the e-stamping mechanism which in essence means that these franked papers are no more used from now on. Earlier there were many touts who used to procure these bond papers and make a killing by selling them at a premium to customers. This led to mega scams like the Telgi stamp paper scam, more about which you can read here and understand. This scam alone led to a 30000 crore rupee loss to the government of Karnataka which is much more than any politician even could amass in terms of ill gotten wealth.

The government of Karnataka finally woke up and has ushered in an e-stamping mechanism now whereby a company by name Stock Holding Corporation of India Limited are the official vendors of E-stamps from now on. This essentially means that you go to them now, put in all details of why you need an e-franked bond paper, give your address details, contact details, PAN numbers, property details, rental / sale details, and sale/rental value details etc. There are a multitude of things for which this mechanism can be used from now on. To know more about this company and the things you can use their services for, click here and to get the list of things you can use the estamps, click here.

Old and new Stamp paper formats – an illustration

The best thing about this approach is that SHCIL as a company will take care of taking money from you for the bond papers and stamps related instruments, and directly remit it to the government and they will create a unique franking with a unique ID generated for each transaction which is accountable at any time and can be traced to the participating parties always with the PAN numbers. And hopefully the Telgis of the new era might have to come up with something more sophisticated than this to cheat the government. So before I end this post, I am proud to say I used this method and feel more happy, satisfied and confident that my money is legitimately going to the government instead of to a tout.

The directions to the office of SHCIL I went to is in Koramangala is given in a map here for reference sake. They work between 10am and 5pm only between Monday and Friday and are closed for the two weekend days.

Technorati Tags: Automobiles, Property matters, Karnataka, Government, Bengaluru, Blog, Bangalore, E-stamp, Estamp, Bond paper, Franking, Franked sheet, Agreement, Sale, Legal, Stock holding corporation of india, Shcil, State bank of mysore, Mysuru, Telgi scam, PAN, Koramangala, Map

Rain Rain went away ….

The past week has been wet, chilly, cold and typical Old Bangalore like. With a cyclone in Tamil Nadu, whether they got cauvery water or not, we got a lot of their rain water. So much so that there has been about 200-300 crores of loss in Tamil Nadu and Kerala because of rains during the wrong time (agriculture affected). Fantastic plans for a weekend just went bust for most of the Bangaloreans. I happened to do YOGA on top of my terrace early morning in the chillness and quite obviously starting sneezing a thousand times immediately thereafter. But my three months of exercise miraculously made my cold vanish within 2 hours even without medicine. Now this is called immunity isnt it ?

Rain Rain Went Away …..

Never Came Again Another Day !

Its back to summer as usual. So the hot days are set to continue again until May or June when monsoon begins and whole city cries for its water logging. In another related incident or news, the road above the Magic Box near BDA collapsed just for this rain. Now the BBMP is in for more flak during monsoons. One wonders if the ride to the new airport will really be so smooth!

Your guess is as good as mine.

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Bengaluru, Blog, Bangalore, Magix box, Rains, Chennai, Tamil nadu, Weather, Cyclone, Yoga, Fever, Flu, Bad cold, Water, Kerala, Crop loss, 100 crores, Community, Immunity, Agriculture, Outer ring road, Bmtc, Bbmp, Underpass, Monsoon, Karnataka

Life’s teachings ….

I was doing YOGA yesterday evening on my terrace when it started raining. I continued doing yoga and the skies got really dark and looked omnious. It was at this time I was wondering that we humans are mere mortals and are too little compared to the elements around us. We might have used our intelligence to achieve many heights. But that still doesnt make us immortal would it?

At one point the skies were so overcast that it prompted me to rush back inside my home, get my new Canon DSLR and take a picture of what looked so inviting. The shopping complexes are just a stone’s throw away from my house and I can see a couple of them from my terrace. I climbed atop the rear parappet wall of my house, putting my life in risk. One wrong move and I would come crashing down three floors and would be dead. All just to capture the rainy moment in this photograph.

It is only then did the irony struck me. LG – yes the famous korean consumer electronics giant stands for LIFE’s GOOD. But a good life comes with a rider, the hoarding below that read “MAX NEW YORK LIFE” which is an insurance company insuring people’s lives! Even Strangerirony is that this is an indian insurance company with new york in their name!

So Life may be good, but you still need insurance is the caption for this photograph! Oh how true.

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, LG, Max new york life, Insurance, Consumer electronics, Bangalore, Bengaluru, Blog, Canon rebel xti, Ramdev, Swamiji, Yoga, Divya yog mandir, Koramangala, Shopping complexes, Next showroom, Pizza hut, 6th block, 80 feet road, Sony world signal, Rains, Cyclonic effect, Weather, Water

You digivision launches in Bengaluru

You must be wondering why the number of articles have gone down over the past week. Well, problems with health, kids homecoming and work at office – enough to summarize whats happening?Ok so what do we have new in Bengaluru? How about a few hotels opening up newly in the city? Or the BIAL cock and bull stories? Well in my own best interests I thought of going back to my line of work – set top boxes.

Bengaluru has just seen yet another service start up. You Digivision. Here is their Ad for digital cable TV boxes in Bengaluru.

Firstly a bit of gyaan on cable set top boxes. What is the necessity of these cable set top boxes when we have so many other boxes with dish antennae that can receive signals from the satellite directly? Well these cable boxes are of a different kind. Earlier we used to get Analog signals for all our channels over the cable that we fed directly into our TVs and could tune to any channel we liked and watch it to our satisfaction and hearts content. Unfortunately world over, the well known broadcasters are now moving their service to digital signals which our TV’s (read old outdated idiot boxes) cannot receive/decode and show us what we want on the screen.

The YOU digivision box is a digital cable box (perhaps its criminal to even call it set top box) which will precisely help in decoding these digital signals sent over cable and can show you those cool channels that you always liked to see once again on your TV. This box is capable of decoding digital signals and instructing your TV to show you the decoded signal. A very nice article by Mike on this phenomenon is available here. You must read this to understand more about this technology/box offering.

So then what is You Digivision all about ? Dont we have similar boxes like that already in the market? Did you think Tata Sky, or DishTV? Well those are satellite receivers with set top boxes. I was more referring to Hathway boxes that are referred to as set top boxes! These boxes only decode digital signals sent over cable. In my locality for example, my local cable operator who runs miles and miles of physical cables all over the locality has tied up with Hathway to offer digital signal decoding as well. So does that mean if I fix a YOU DV box instead of the Hathway one, I d still be able to decode all signals and view them on my analog TV ? The simple answer is NO. Why is this? Simply because Hathway would have scrambled the digital channels so that a smart card inserted into their own box is the only one who could decode these channels and any other box within their network will simply fail.

The features advertised above are hardly of any luxury for me today as any other provider gives those as default ones with the box. For that matter this box does not even have a PVR functionality where I can record something to a hard disk! So if a box cant decode the scrambled signal given by my provider, and does not do recordings even, I fail to understand what is so great about this box that I must buy it.

So if any of my readers want to add on something to this story of your own understanding do leave me comments!

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Bangalore.Technology.Life, Sun, Sun Direct DTH, Sun TV DTH, Sun TV direct DTH, Tata Sky, Dish TV, Dish TV India, Reliance Bluemagic, Reliance Fresh, Reliance Insurance, Karunanidhi, Kalaignar, Jayalalitha, Dayanidhi Maran, Kalanidhi Maran, Dinakaran, Sun network, Rupert murdoch, James murdoch, Hathway, Subhash chandra, Doordarshan, Madurai, Azhagiri, Stalin, Million, DTH, Set top box, STB, Remote, Cable, Digital, You digivision, Box, Set top, EPG, Reminder, Pvr, Digital video recorder, EPG, Electronic programme guide, Koramangala, Hathway, Bengaluru, Blog, Bangalore india

It happens only in India

I had written about bad driving and stressed out lifestyles in my previous blog post. This post is somewhat related to it closely. If you are driving on a road and you see a lorry stopped in the middle of the road with a twig of leaves sticking out of it like as if it were a flowering plant, then what do you make out of it? Should you assme the lorry owner is relaxing on the road? Well, welcome to India.

In India such a symbol means the truck has taken a hit either with another, or has a flat tyre, or perhaps even a flat axle or engine. It also means that this truck which you see has no immediate plans of being towed away from the accident spot and it also does not say anything about how many people it killed in that accident.

Take a break and come back tomorrow, perhaps it wont be there on the street. And the driver of the truck, well he has already been recruited by another truck company to drive and crash a different truck tomorrow. This is the biggest pity in India and Benglurur particularly.

If its a small vehicle its a HIT & RUN case, if its a large one, its a HIT & DRIVER RUNS case. The occupants of such trucks walk away stealthily into the crowds even before someone understands who did what at the scene of crime. And the police have no records of who is driving the truck, the truck companies have no records of who they recruit and there are also no records of the lost lives in these accidents. Everything is conveniently put into a file which says HIT & RUN case – now closed.

So much so that the entire truck drivers association (or union or whatever nonsense you may want to call it) are against the government for asking them to install speed governors in their vehicles. Their grouse is that the vehicle consumes too much fuel if driven at lesser speeds purposely. And if driven at higher speeds, others bear the brunt of their driving and land up at hospital or even worse – HELL.

So the government and the unions are not only putting at risk many a life in the city, but also sometimes their own kith and kin by doing such immoral decisions at their own cost.

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Accidents, Trucks, Lorry, Rash driving, Outer ring road, Marathahalli, Unions, India, Bengaluru, Blog, Bangalore, Hit and run, Police, Traffic, Case, Government

LED lights on Bengaluru streets!

You must be wondering why my articles are dwindling on this site. Well I ll let you in on a secret. I ve been into many things of late. Lots of useful work at office, 30 minutes of Yoga in the morning and 45 minutes of Yoga in the evening, 15-30 minutes of acupressure during the day, and the usual phone breaks, lunch breaks and the two hour commute into and out of office. Enough to keep myself occupied. But that did not prevent me from enjoying the interesting things that Bengaluru provides. A couple of days back, I had lot of time to kill at a signal light near Sony World, Koramangala. I was always interested half heartedly in the knicknacks that the beggars sold at this signal. Well they aren’t exactly beggars, perhaps street urchins or jobless people would be a better word to use.

The person for the day was trying to entice me to buy an LED desk light. It looked powerful and intuitive too. The top portion had about 8 LEDs of white colour and the power source was from a mouse shaped based (in fact its a mouse lets say!) holding 3 AAA batteries. In between these two was a flexible cord which could be bent in any way desired.

“Esthu?”, i asked (how much).

“120”, came the reply.

Agreed I haven’t really seen something like this for Rs.120 anywhere around Koramangala. But still for a moment I felt its too high.

I looked a bit disinterested when the girl asked me “Kitna dega saab?” (how much will you give sir)

I said “50”.

“Less 20 bucks and give me 100”, she said

I stuck to my stand : “50”

She nodded her head and walked away. For a moment I believed that this light wont be mine. It is useful here to say I had bought the same light at the same junction from another person earlier in the week for the same amount that I quoted. But he was desperately hungry and it was almost the end of the day, past 9pm. So he had no choice but to take the fifty bucks. On the other hand this girl was neither hungry, nor was it the end of the day with scores of potential customers yet to come.

I felt doomed with this item. I let her go. The signal light was still red. She went around and I observed out of my rear view mirror that no one wanted that light except me.

After a while I got a knock on my left window. Rolled it down and she said “70”. I took out a fifty buck currency note and held it in front of her. “If you want to give it, give it, else walk away” I said.

She said 60 bucks atleast. I just gave her the fifty, and took the light. Period. I won the battle for this second light. Although at the bottom of the heart I still know maybe that the light itself costs say 25-30 bucks only. As a product it can consume quite a lot of batteries in a short time, but then the light it gives can put any other branded emergency light to shame.

So my street shopping continues …..

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Streets, Sony world, Koramangala, Bengaluru, Bangalore, Blog, Shopping, Led light, Led, Mouse, Stand, Cord, White, Oasis, Traffic, Signal, Red, Emergency light, Urchins, Beggars

Crazy Bengaluru – One early summer morning?

I headed out to my office on a clear summer’s day to get a whiff of fresh air and what I got is this

The temperature pattern in Bengaluru is becoming more and more unpredictable as each day dawns. Its a storehouse of surprises each day. The fog just lasted for a bit of inner ring road and then it was the usual clear day again ahead. How BIZZAIRE!

Technorati Tags: Automobiles, Winter, Fog, Bengaluru, Blog, Bangalore, Temperature, Cool, Cold, Chill, Sunny, Heat, Sweat, Hot, Sultry, Weather, City

Next opens showroom in Koramangala, Bengaluru

I had written earlier about OASIS opening up shop next to my home about 300 metres away. The fun did not stop there! Koramangala seems to be a place of plenty and more and more to come in future too. It has become a hub of very interesting shops and things to do. At this rate it will be a mini Bengaluru in itself. I have Pizza Hut right next to my home. So if I ve gobbled up a huge pizza and am feeling heavy, I can go over to the new NEXT showroom opposite Pizza hut to do some window shopping of all electricals and electronics!

I wonder what more is in the offing for this locality. However I still have fond memories of Everest School, a school run for the little children, the students among which my own cousin was one of them. It was exactly on the same spot where NEXT now stands that once upon a time there was a little school with little kids being taught interesting things. Many a sports day, a flag hoist was conducted at this very place which has now given way to this swanky building selling home appliances. Of course this was exactly 15 years before when Koramangala was close to nothing in terms of economic progress. I guess the owner of this place too has caught a whiff of the real estate smell. Of course one cant imagine a school being run in a building as small as this anymore! Its now the time of International schools, since the national ones have no meat left in themThis building also houses MAX NEW YORK LIFE, an insurance provider of all sorts. While the guy at the bottom ensures you waste your money, the guy on top ensures you save money to waste

So thats it for now, yet another showroom in Koramangala to waste time on!

Technorati Tags: Earn the dough, Technology, Koramangala, NEXT, Home appliances, Bengaluru, Bangalore, Blog, Everest School, Max new york life

Magic box – 72 hr box ready in one month- Bengaluru to see more ….

Infrastructure upgrades are something any Bangalorean will appreciate at all times. And the BBMP had started off one such project of installing MAGIC BOXES all over the place on Bellary road leading to the new Devanhalli International Airport. The earnest and direction was finally clear and a Malaysian company provided the technology to create single lane underpasses within 72 hours. This time was only for casting the boxes and making them ready where as the other road activities were supposed to be done in parallel. The excited BBMP started digging up Sankey Road in full swing only to break a huge water pipe laid by their own cousins – the BWSSB – making it a costly mistake since it cut off water supply to North Bangalore for days together! Some mistakes can be corrected but they will take their own time due to the mess and complexity created years back when such plans were not in place.

The BBMP and BWSSB started finger pointing at each other but this time they had to only save their skins with the project progressing. No excuses would be tolerated at the cost of progress was the clear message. So the commissioner took this up personally, camped at the site all night to rectify the problem in the right earnest. Finally the BWSSB and BBMP spat was over and they worked together to still try and realize the goal even after 72 hours. People almost started condemning these authorities for yet another broken promise. But the BBMP was ready to take all brickbats at the cost of progress. In fact the airport completion came as a severe blow to infrastructure planners who were otherwise lethargic. Now they had to pull up their socks and complete their side of the work. To add to their misery neither a train system could be ready nor were there any other alternative roads that led to the airport. This put severe pressure on BBMP to make Bellary road traffic free. And there were no excuses to be taken this time. The public were ready to fly at a rage to ridicule the authorities if they did not work. The LEAD INDIA effect started showing in their thoughts and faces.

(All images courtesy the times of india, dated 21- FEB – 2008)

So finally today the MAGIC BOX was finally opened up to the public much to their relief. Though slighty complicated, on using the road once one can understand how to go about this concept of infrastructure. The only thing one cant do now is to take a right turn on sankey road from mekhri circle. Instead one will have to upto BDA junction (windsor manor bridge) and take a U-Turn on a similar magic box which would be installed there to come back to cauvery theatre and take a left towards Sankey Road. Vehicles from Sankey road can go underneath the box and take a right towards MG Road or go over the box and take left to merge with traffic towards Bellary road. So that leaves the people coming from windsor manor bridge who would need to go left at Cauvery junction, take U-turn a little ahead and take left again to go to Bellary road.

One month was pretty quick to solve the problem of signal woes with the MAGIC BOX. hopefully in two more months, without breaking more pipes, the BDA junction, Sanjaynagar junction, and Sahakarnagar junction would have MAGIC BOXES. I only hope Mr.Commissioner then thinks of doing the same MAGIC at the following junctions please!

Old Madras Beninganahalli Bridge junction

KR puram – Banaswadi flyover junction

KR puram railway station

HP junction on ITPB road

Garudacharpalya junction on ITPB road

Bhoruka park junction on ITPB road

Hoodi Circle

Bellandur junction on outer ring road

Intel junction on ORR

HRBR – Babusapalya junction on ORR

Hennur road junction on ORR

Thanisandra junction on ORR

Nagawara junction on ORR

Kasturinagar – ORR junction

Good job BBMP and keep giving us more such MAGIC tricks! 🙂

Technorati Tags: Earn the dough, Technology, Magic box, Old madras road, Kr puram, Bangalore, Bbmp, Bwssb, Water pipe break, North bangalore, Bial, Airport, Devanahalli, HP, ITPB, Garudacharpalya, Hoodi, Intel, Bellandur, HRBR, Hennur, Thanisandra, Nagawara, Kasturinagar, Sankey road, BDA junction, MG road, Bengaluru, Blog, Cauvery theatre, Lead india, Rk misra