Social networks have been around us in the form of Orkut, Facebook and LinkedIn; touching our social interaction in cyberspace and helping us bridge the gaps in our social and professional life. At a time when the social networking space is seeing lot of innovations, MaxHeap has come up with this great idea of introducing social networks in high rise apartment societies. While most social networks have a great emphasis on third degree contacts like friend-of-friend or colleague-of-colleague, CommonFloor the social networking brainchild of MaxHeap, is all about knowing your next door neighbor. But to restrict it to just a social contact directory would be to undermine the usability of a great resouce portal. At Commonfloor knowing your next door neighbor (and the hundreds others who share your apartment complex) is about knowing people who share the same physical, social and economical space in the society as you do.

So where LinkedIn can serve as a great place to form contacts with peers who might help you drive your professional life and Facebook or Orkut can help you reunite with old friends, CommonFloor can find you golf partner, bridge players, trekking enthusiasts or your local morning laughter club. On one hand forming a club around your favorite past time is an incentive to some, having something as practical as a car-pool will be a lucrative idea for most, attractive even more when CommonFloor provides you with all the tools to manage your groups, find new members, add them and call for meetings, suggestions and much more … just a CLICK away.

But hey!! City life is not just about you and your neighbors having a good time … there are always a bunch of things at home and other than work that you want to do and CommonFloor can help you achieve. CommonFloor also acts as a Concierge provider by helping you with your daily chores like electricity bills, phone bills, movie tickets and mails. You can also ask for domestic help, maintainence work and keep track of your queries online. When was the last time you were looking for “saboodane ki khichdi” and did not know where to find “saboodane” or worst of all … what recipie to use ? Why wait but ask for tips from your neighbors using CommonFloor.

CommonFloor today is trying to cater to every need of working professionals and their families living in huge apartment socities. It is coming with tools and technologies to enable you to make your life full circle even from your office desk. The latest additions in its kitty of products is local search, local news, shopping offers, food services and movie rentals from 70mm.com.

This is all but the start of the story, to know CommonFloor more you need to get registered (which is free as in free beer) to the portal alongwith your neighbours in your housing society. This and a lot of upcoming stuff is going to make CommonFloor the next revolution in online space which is going to make our offline life easier and more fun. Just dont forget to check the demo out there.

In keeping with the revision of custom duties in the Union Budget this year, Reliance Communications has lowered the prices of its range of wireless datacards - marketed under the brand name Netconnect - by about 13%. A PCMCIA card from the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) will now cost Rs. 2590 which is 400 rupees less than before while the Netconnect USB modem price has been reduced to Rs. 2490, from an earlier price of Rs. 2850.

Mobile call rates are going to take a further downhill route with the government going great guns to reduce the rates to a tenth. The DoT (Department of Telecom) is all set to implement a host of policies like enhancing competition, triggering price wars, engaging new operators, promoting infrastructure-sharing. India already has the lowest call rates. As of now, a local call typically costs Re 1. This is supposed to go down to 10 paise within next two years. While STDs will cost 25 paise a call. Of the new entrants in the GSM sector, Tatas and Reliance are going to be the most significant.

Source: Economic Times

The campus flavour of Firefox, the most popular non-IE browser, seeks to target school and college-goers. The best thing to hit the campus since ramen noodles - so says the Firefox Campus Edition tagline. Basicaly it’s Firefox preloaded with a handful of extensions meant to be useful for studs.

• FoxyTunes - a music/video control panel right on your Firefox window. Feature-rich and compatible with almost all media players around.
• StumbleUpon - with this extension there is never a dull moment. Get ready to stumble upon very interesting webpages.
• Zotero - your research assistant.

Of course if you already use Firefox you can install these extensions and make your favourite browser campus-ready!

Srishti ‘08, the annual Hobbies Club exhibition of IIT Roorkee is around the corner, actually it starts 29th Feb. One of the most interesting informal events being organized this year is the Search Engine Optimization Contest. The contest does make sense in the current W3 wars. Like any other SEO contest, it expects contestants to optimize a single web page for a non-existent phrase of two “silly” words. The main reason for this is to keep existing web sites from getting a head start.

All the details and rules for the contest are already up on their site. Here is the link : (you will have to register before submitting your URL)

I bought a Reliance data card on 2nd Jan. Let me share my experience having used this wireless internet soultion from Reliance for almost a fortnight. Anyone considering to buy this may find this post useful. I have also mentioned how to improve the connection speed.

Need For Wireless

I bought my laptop some months ago and was considering what internet plan to go for. Here in Siliguri I can’t go for my favourite Dataone (that I have at home) as that needs a wired landline connection. Also, a pity that Airtel broadband is not yet available in Siliguri. So wireless seemed to be the perfect option - it also has the carry-it-along advantage. I was unsure which data carrier to go for until a friend told me about Reliance’s freedom @ night plan.

Reliance Netconnect Plans

There are many plans to choose from. All are expensive I tell you. The one that suited me is the Freedom @ night plan. It offers unlimited surfing in night hours i.e. 10 pm - 6 am for a monthly rental of 400 INR and daytime surfing charges 0.50 INR per minute.

Getting The Data Card

The data card comes mainly in 2 models - USB and PCMCIA. The prices are 2890 INR and 2850 INR respectively. There is an activation charge of 330 INR. I went for the USB one as it can be used in both desktop and laptop. Besides, I thought there might be some heating problem with the PCMCIA as it is internal.

To get the data card you have to go to any Reliance Webworld or Reliance Communications outlet or computer shops. I got it from a Reliance Communications outlet on Hazra road (opposite Paramount Nursing Home near Hazra more), Kolkata. As for any other postpaid connection, you need to carry these documents - an identity proof (voter card, PAN card, etc.), a residence proof (ration card, electric bill, phone bill, bank statement) & a passport size photo. After two days I got a call from reliance for verification, they even went to my house to verify - the formalities of a postpaid connection.

Setting it up

Run the installation disc and follow the instructions to install the Reliance Netconnect software. Insert the data card in the USB port or PC card slot when asked.

Netconnect software

The installer registers the data card as a modem and adds a dialer software. The software interface allows you to connect/disconnect, send/read SMS, make/receive calls, change settings. It shows the connection speed and bandwidth used. However, the bandwidth and timer readings are reset everytime you disconnect making it impossible to keep track of total bandwidth or time usage. Netconnect installs an internet optimizer software called Netbooster which accelerates surfing speed by reducing the quality of images in real-time.

Connection Speed

This modem relies on the same tower as mobiles. A mobile tower is too busy handling calls to and fro and you can’t expect a dedicated connection. As a result, the connection is erratic. I have used it in Siliguri and Kolkata.

Siliguri: Every now and then the connection dies - although it is connected speed becomes 0 kbps. Chatting on Gtalk is next to impossible as I get dc almost every minute. Surfing speed is not bad, does the job. After 2 a.m. the connection becomes somewhat stable allowing me to surf with peace of mind. Those who are on time-bound plans will find this erratic speed all the more irritating.

Kolkata: Descent speed and satisfactory surfing experience. I don’t need to use Netbooster. The connection is more or less stable and doesn’t drop usually. Gtalk experience is also good.

Delhi: A friend who has used this in both Delhi and Siliguri reports far worse speeds in Delhi compared to Siliguri which is really surprising.

Tips to increase the speed

I continuously ping a server (google.com) to keep the connection alive. This way the connection remains active all the while and chances of getting dc are significantly lowered. By continuous pinging, I am able to chat in Google Talk. Surfing speed also improves considerably this way.

Now how to ping? Open command prompt and type ping www.google.com -t and hit enter key. The command prompt can be invoked by going to Start > Run and typing “cmd”. Vista users need to enter “cmd” in the Search box under the Vista Start menu.

Value for money

I think the tariff pricing could be lower. The price for the data card is reasonable but the monthly tariffs are not. The problem is the wirless internet market is yet to mature and there is not much competition in the sector. Reliance will tell you the reason behind such pricing is it is wireless. But considering the quality and speed of connection this is priced steep.

Other options

Tata indicom has a similar offering. Though I have not used that, I think both are in the same league when it comes to speed. The Airtel data card is priced higher at 5000 INR. Then another option is using your mobile phone as a modem and subscribing to the Airtel Mobile Office. Mobile Office offers unlimited internet access over GPRS or EDGE (depends on your area). The cost in West Bengal is 498 bucks per month. Then you have the 199/- monthly rental plan for BSNL postpaid users which is also unlimited EDGE internet.

Future

With the launch of 3G the speeds will increase.

Final Word

I can surf most sites smoothly. I can keep in touch with friends online. Can download small files of megabytes sizes. I can research on net. Chat with friends. Orkut pages load pretty fast. People at home can see me on webcam (video quality sucks due to slow speed). I can have voice chat with friends. So this serves most of my needs. However I can’t rely on Reliance if I have to give an online exam which is timed.

There have been many warriors of the third world war: the WWW war, amazingly there are 3 Ws in it. After Yahoo!! and Google battling for the internet supremacy, there are new players on the ground. Recently Johnson & Johnson bought an online parenting community, Maya’s Mom Another site, Kaboodle that combines shopping and social networking was sold to Hearst.

eBay bought the 2001 founded social bookmarking site- StumbleUpon from the founder Garret Camp. Around the same time Getty Images bought Pump Audio that helps independent musicians and music labels sell songs to movie studios, TV networks, and the like.

The free RSS feed management tools providing site FeedBurner was grabbed by the Google for a whopping $100 m. Google also bought the 8-year-old e-mail security and archiving service Postini in this year’s June.

Yahoo bought Zimbra’s Web-based e-mail and calendar software that had more than 6 million paid accounts by 2007. Facebook, earlier acquired by Yahoo, had purchased Parakey, an open source web operating system developed by the creator of the Firefox, Blake Ross.

All these deals were made in the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars and the companies were sold for around 50 to 60 times their seed values. All in all a good year for these men of WWW, the third world.

Recently an argument with friends got me triggered off with this Bose thing. Well, Bose is crap (for the money they charge you). But Bose, they know how to sell their stuff VERY WELL, very good marketing.

Bose is okay, not bad, but not very good…not for the discerning listener. Not for the audiophile.
For the layman, Bose is easy to configure. Easy to listen. Not too many settings.
Audiophiles (NOT me) will change settings for each song, each movie…they will spend 10 minutes adjusting the settings to listen to a 2-minute song.
For them Bose is not good enough. And it is true…Bose’s lacks DETAILED midrange….that is the sounds between the high and the bass.

Also, read this link http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=343759

and this link of course http://www.intellexual.net/bose.html

I think that is enough of Bose bashing for today.

With inputs from John.