Wishing everyone a brilliant new year ahead and don’t forget to enable timeline review on Facebook. Otherwise you will end up with so many awrudu pictures tagged with you on the FB wall which u really don’t prefer to be be in

Now to eat some kiribath…….

Of course this is a regular place we Sri Lankans visit. But for many foreigners who come here this is a location to take pictures and keep as this will most likely be their few visits to the location.

I noticed that many were flashing at the ancient paintings and I brought it to the attention of one of the tourist groups and more than them the local guide got annoyed and wanted to argue with me. But being at such a sacred place I didn’t want to let my anger lose and never spoke a word.

But now I want to tell the entire world….. Take pictures but leave it for the future also.

So just turn off the flash and use your camera. Today’s DSLRs and standard cameras can operate with no flash. Also the fact that every monkey with a DSLR are consider them as pro photographer has contributed to this.

Stupid tourist guides just do anything for money and don’t think of the sustainability. They will not have anything to show to the tourists if they behave like this. Also if you are visiting Sri Lanka please keep this in mind.

I’m really amazed why non of the responsible authority or the government has taken any steps to prevent such activities. At least to educate the tourist guides….

This post is a re-blog of what I felt would be useful for some. I wanted to install an Ubuntu 12.10 instance which runs on text mode. The blog mentions on Ubuntu 10 and 11, but this is the same for 12 as well….

Open grub configuration for editing;

$ sudo nano /etc/default/grub

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash” into GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”text”
when done save change by pressing ctrl+O (save) and ctrl+X (exit)

Now upgrade grub, type;

$ sudo update-grub

Reboot your computer;

$ sudo rebbot

Now your Ubuntu will boot on text mode

Today the software and the devices we use are more data intensive and the amount of data they are using is quite high.

SLT or Sri Lanka Telecom forced users like me to chance to a connection which provides higher data speeds,yet having a Fair Usage Policy Quota by making the previous connection very slow.

But now this quota is proving to be not enough and needs to be increased if we are to have a proper internet experience.

Youtube, Facebook and all the other commonly used websites now stream all the media in HD. So if you watch a 20 minute video it consumes more than 1GB. How on earth we are supposed to cope with 20GB???

I am a regular internet user who has not downloaded a single torrent in the last month. Yet my speeds are reduced. Is this really Fair??

Join with me to sign the following petition on Change.Org and force SLT to be more customer focused than being just another ISP.

http://www.change.org/petitions/sri-lanka-telecom-increase-the-data-quota-given-for-adsl-connections

Short URL: http://tiny.cc/sltadsl

Sri Lanka Telecom: Increase the data quota given for ADSL Connections change.org/en-GB/petition… via @change

—
Venura Athukorala (@venura9) December 29, 2012

Last Tweet of Tony;

Not sure Clarke will play but in he and Mahela we have as captains two of the finest gents/strokemakers I have had the privilege to meet.

—
Tony Greig (@greigtalks) December 25, 2012

This is what different sources had to say about Tony;

• Cricinfo
• On Twitter Trends

RIP Tony Greig. Cricket won't be the same without you.

—
Venura Athukorala (@venura9) December 29, 2012

We will pay tribute to Tony Greig in a News Special Tonight 6.30pm #RIPTonyGreig http://t.co/WHn7nsPI

—
Channel 9 (@Channel9) December 29, 2012

We earlier tweeted on this day @warne888 took a hat-trick in 1994. Well Tony Greig was there that day, here is his call youtu.be/pYp8Y_7u9wM

—
Cricket Australia (@CricketAus) December 29, 2012

RIP-Tony Greig.A very good man!

—
Mickey Arthur (@MickeyArthur) December 29, 2012

Just read from the bottom and you can comment of course

Some information is masked for security reasons.

On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Venura Athukorala <………..@gmail.com> wrote:

Don’t need any help. I have used a free hosting service and used their DNS to do this. I didn’t have to call them and give my password to verify.

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 6:37 PM, <support@1and1.com> wrote:

Dear Venura Athukorala, (Customer ID: xxxxxxx)

Thank you for contacting us.

Asking the password on the phone is for security and verification purposes. We do not know your password in the first place and we can not just upload anything on your account without the consent of the account owner. Please do understand that we are just protecting our customers and we can assure you that any information you give us is between us 1&1 and you only to ensure the confidentiality of your account.
–
Sincerely,
Arvin Ryan Manongas
Technical Support
1&1 Internet

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:26 PM, Venura Athukorala <………..@gmail.com> wrote:

I had a terrible time talking your customer care.
Why are you asking me to call again and give my password over a phone call??
that is illegal you know…..?

I am utterly unsatisfied with your service.

On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 12:50 PM, <support@1and1.com> wrote:
Dear Venura Athukorala, (Customer ID: xxxxxxx)

Thank you for contacting us.

You can call us anytime of the day. We can only verify the account via phone call.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

–
Sincerely,
Maedelyn Gomez
Technical Support
1&1 Internet

PFA the html file.
When do you want me to call?
Is there any other way to verify?? other than calling??

On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 1:58 PM, <support@1and1.com> wrote:

Dear Venura Athukorala, (Customer ID: xxxxxxx)

Thank you for contacting us.

You need to get the HTML verification code from Google as mentioned in the previous email. Once you have it you can send it via email and you need to call us through 1-866-991-2631, for us to verify the Account. We will be the one who will upload the HTML code.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

–
Sincerely,
Maedelyn Gomez
Technical Support
1&1 Internet

Hi,

I’m trying to verify one of my domains with google and sent the traffic to google sites. <domain_name>.com Please let me know how I can do this.
I tried to use the “domain name provider” option, I can add the sub domain but I could not add the CNAME. Says too long. I have tried your support contact form also. But I’m not sure whether it got through. So I’m sending it again.

Thanks,
Venura

Following are the options available…

1) Using a MiFi router. There are various models and types, Google it if you want more information.

2) If you have an Android or an Apple Device (iOS), you already have it; assuming that you have your cellular/mobile data connection connected.

• Android portable Wi-Fi hotspot -  Android Help.
• iOS – Personal Hotspot - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4517

3) If you don’t have any of these still there is a way, as long as you have a windows and a PC with a WiFi adapter. (Disadvantage of this method is that you can only connect windows computers)

• Connect your Mobile Broadband Connection
• Go to; Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center
• Create the Ad-Hoc Connection
• Turn on Internet Connection Sharing
• Ask others to connect to the defined WiFi Connection Name (In the below video it’s VENURA9.COM)
• Following video explains how it is done;

4) If you are more of a techie you can have a fully fledged WiFi network on your PC. This way you are not restrcited to a network where only the windows users can connect.

• Run the “cmd.exe” as the administrator

  C:\Windows\system32>
  

• Run the following commands to setup the network (Network SSID is VENURA and the password is 12345678):

  netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow "ssid=VENURA" "key=12345678" KeyUsage=persistent
  

• To Start:

  netsh wlan start hostednetwork
  

• To Stop:

  netsh wlan stop hostednetwork
  

• Go to: Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network Connections
• Go to the properties of the connection you want to share, this can be a mobile broadband connection or even a wired connection
• Select the sharing tab and tick “Allow other network users to connect through this computers internet connection”
• From the drop down select “Wireless Network Connection 2″ (Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter)
• Press OK
• Other PCs, MACs and Phones will see a network named “VENURA” and they can connect using the password “12345678“

References:

• http://www.ishanarora.com/2009/07/29/windows-7-as-a-wireless-access-point/
• http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3849841/How-to-Create-Wireless-Hosted-Networks-in-Windows-7.htm

• Linux Shell

This is the easiest way as long as you are on linux or cygwin on windows. Assuming you are connecting to an Ubuntu Server instance.

# using a google IP for demonstration purposes

# Using Elastic IP
ssh -i AWS.pem ubuntu@173.194.38.191

# Using Public DNS
ssh -i AWS.pem ubuntu@ec2-173-194-38-191.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com

• Using Putty

Pinehead has a nice video explaining everything about using Putty. Only difference is the user name is root. For ubuntu server you can’t connect as root. It’s always “sudo” after connecting using the user “ubuntu”

Ref:

• http://tuts.pinehead.tv/2011/11/21/connect-to-amazon-ec2-using-putty-private-key-on-windows/

• http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/webmaster/projects/article.php/3904926/Cloud-Computing-Basics-How-To-Connect-Securely-To-Amazon-EC2.htm

• http://thoughtsandideas.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/connect-to-amazon-ec2-via-putty/

• Other

Other commercial tools such as XShell which provides free access for non-commercial/personal/student basis have the support built-in. You can just select the keyfile to use when connecting with the user:ubuntu/root and the Elastic IP/Public DNS

I just want to see how it looks like when there is a doodle for a specific day and when your birthday also falls on the same date.

There has been another Doodle on the same day which is “Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson´s 180th Birthday“. Don’t know whether this was shown in our region.

me wishing me

Happy Birthday @venura9 !

—
Venura Athukorala (@venura9) December 08, 2012

Old is Gold

This collection has the most outrageous mobile advertisements of the 80s and 90s. You can have a good laugh having a look at those.

Collection of vintage mobile commercials from mashable.com

Some Apple Jokes:

Image are taken from Facebook shares..

Robin Keeping Bat Cave a Secret

This seems to be more inline with the vision of Sri Lankan Tourism and worth sharing. Please make sure you do the needful by sharing this video to the world. Be Proud, Be Sri Lankan.

Share this on Facebook >>

I thought the above was creative until I saw the below by Max kegfire and Dima Viper. This is awesome guys! They must have really lived Sri Lanka

This has the daily list of applications >>

You can find the same from the Google Play App (Showing 29th Sep 2012 List)

75% off on the Android Market

List on the 29th

Poor me cz I bought TuneIn Radio few days ago and it went on sale…  ($0.99 -> $0.25)

So.. Hurry and get your favorite app for $0.25 and don’t forget to visit the store daily because they are changing the list of applications daily..

List on the 30th

Update:
After few harsh Tweets I was contacted by a nicer person who ultimately confirmed on waiving off the rentals. It was nice, yet I wouldn’t have needed to go this far. I still feel for the others who may have got affected. All I can do is keep others informed and hope for a fair world!

@dialoglk I'm considering disconnecting all 5 of my connections, unless you refund the PRBT subscriptions you have illegally charged from me

—
Venura Athukorala (@venura9) August 27, 2012

I do take care of small things in my family business apart from my standard job. While I was going through the bills I noticed that there were few numbers which are getting charged for PRBT which is a ring-back-tone service operated by dialog. I am quite sure that none of them had any ring back tones playing when I called them and the other thing is one of the numbers was my wife’s and she has no idea of mobile service activation. She is 100% sure that she didn’t. Again the same story with the other number also.

Then I called customer care and asked how this could happen. Answer was a hilarious one. She was telling me that it would have got activated accidentally by clicking on one of the spam SMSs which dialog sends or by pressing a key of an outbound calling campaign. Two accidents? Can’t be dialog….

Seems you are strategically robbing your consumers. How can you get a person subscribed to a service without their consent? I’m quite sure this is not legal also.

When I requested to get the information how this got activated the customer care agent refused to give that information as per her they are not available in their system, all that she can give is the activation date which is in January this year for my wife’s connection. So you have robbed us for eight months now….

As a telecom engineer I’m quite sure that this information is available with the operator and they are legally obliged also in some cases. So I wanted to speak to her manager and seems her junior had told her everything yet she acted as if she doesn’t know. She also was insisting it was an accident. Yet she agreed to give the information. After some time the response was that the system is not available and there is an upgrade happening.. She promised to come back within the day if not next day….

System upgrade happening for days? Are u serious…? These are the days operators are talking about five nines availability and you tell me this and want me to believe that…? OK, for a moment I will believe that…

What about the common man. They will keep on paying without knowing… Even if they know that they are being looted still they will not know how to disable it. This unfair and unjust in so many ways and the TRC should look in to these.

- Getting people subscribed fraudulently
- Charged yet no service provided
- Not providing the consumer with information

These are really crappy stuff by an operator.

Two days later(Today) I get a call saying that Dialog has sent the numbers an SMS or an Outbound call saying that you are automatically subscribed free of charge for 30 days and they have sent reminders also that the number will be charged.

Wow nice explanation. I demanded to take off them from my bill. Any kid can understand that is unfair. I felt really bad for shouting at the customer care agent yet felt really good about raising my voice.

Seriously people need MNP so that they can have a uniform number irrespective of the network. I am now considering taking off the numbers with dialog if they are not providing me a good answer… (No hard feelings but someone needs to protest)

Last option tweeting to dialog and hope at least they do something about this… This is not about me… I have already paid those bills. What about the others who are being robbed…?

• Universities are closed

OK… lecturers are not getting paid enough but, is it really fair to keep on striking? that is a question you have to answer. We have had something going through the university system which had halted the progress. External politics coming into student politics, some groups striking, or some other mysterious reason closes the universities. Is this really because of them or someone not taking the proper action to stop them and making them go from bad to worse…..?

• Private Universities

If these are just unloading useless graduates to the system that will definitely ruin everything degrading the value of all the graduates. But if these are helping the student who just fell behind to show their colours and fill the “bucket of educated” that is good as far as I see. Money is not health, wealth or wisdom. If money takes the first place that will only have the last place in the queue. I see that happening to some of the graduates who come out of certain institutes, these are words coming through experience. But I have seen very good graduates as well…

• Student Politics

This is really good and this helps to develop proper leadership growth in students. But don’t get the non-university politics into that. That is wrong and students are not fighting their battles, just being puppets of someone else.

Graduates getting proper treatment
Taken from Facebook – Click Image for URL

• Medical Doctors/Students Striking/Protesting

All this private university matters come with medicine only and there are more than enough other institutes for the other streams but no one shouts no one complains.

My personal opinion is that they only strike looking at their purse/wallet only.Compared to other government employees they are paid well enough and don’t forget about the private practice…. and other sources of income. Medical college students come out protesting only when there is a private medical college is coming, they never stand-up for the general university matters, which is something I noticed for a long time. They never worry about the innocent patients. This is unfortunate because they are playing with our lives and our money.

• Mahapola and the living standards of the students

What can you do with the 2500 you get for mahapola I was getting the same amount 5 years ago when I was in university. With the current living costs parents really struggle to help their children who go to university. When I see a university student I see malnutrition and depression, they are the best gang of young men and women in this county but why is this happening…??

State of Mahapola
Taken from Facebook – Click Image for URL

• Z-Score and A/L’s

Oh god! what is wrong with these people… This is just a simple math calculation. One student goes and files a case and millions suffer because of that.. Why not have a proper established mechanism which is fair in general. No one should go to courts and question as they know what they are getting…

Seriously when someone prepares a paper isn’t there anyone to check and may be even to attempt the given questions and see whether they are correct and can be completed in the given time? This is so unbelievable..

This is how many peopole on facebook see the ministry of education on Facebook

Ministry of Education – As seen by groups on Facebook
Taken from Facebook – Click Image for URL

They have offers for you to get sick and pay in installments if you have a credit card from sampath bank. But you have to get sick while the offer is available……. What a lame advertisement

HSBC on the other hand has another offer going on. When I paid my bill I actually got 10% off from my bill…. Nice bill shock as I did not know about that until I paid and only saw the banner behind later.

I noticed that there was a new layout with blogger which was introduced recently and thought of giving a try for that. Within few days I noticed loads of drawbacks forcing me to revert to an older layout.

YouTube video about dynamic views

Issues I came across are the following;

• No SEO as usual, Everything is in one page.
• Same template(you can only change the colours) and no layout change, so you are not distinguished much from the millions of other users who use this.
• Adsense support is available, but……. what you enable doesn’t apply, they do it the way that they want to do.
• Everything is generated dynamically and I doubt whether the search engines will have the capability detect the content
• When you share using social sharing services there is nothing available to be grabbed from the post (e.g. Facebook sharing) so sharing becomes difficult.

All I see is bad and no good

Hope these will aid you guys to make your own decision if you are using blogger.

Horror!! the thing you least expect from one of the prime social networks has really happened. Twitter gone down…

This shows that anything is possible. So be really careful…. What if Google is hacked.? You create all your accounts with your email. Think about that getting compromised. This may  compromise your whole online identity. So we can’t stop the extremes. But still we should take precautions. Have a very strong Gmail password. Enable step 2 verification. And you are safe from the foreseeable threats, at least!

Reading
Mashable: How Much Data Is Created Every Minute? [INFOGRAPHIC] http://goo.gl/mag/y15Qc

But even though the blogger app was available it was not enabled for our region. I even tried from Thailand still it was not enabled for them also.

Since few days I noticed that it’s available via the official channel, the ‘Google play store’ . So good news for all blogger fans. That’s if you have an un-rooted android like mine.

If you have a rooted device simply install the market enabler app and fake your carrier to be a US one and you can do anything no need to wait…

Update:
Ah! Forgot to mention that this was also a mobile post
]]> http://venura9.com/2012/06/21/blogger-app-available-for-android-in-sl/feed/ 0 venura9 http://venura9.com/2012/06/21/what-happened-to-mnp-in-sri-lanka/ http://venura9.com/2012/06/21/what-happened-to-mnp-in-sri-lanka/#comments Thu, 21 Jun 2012 04:41:00 +0000 venura9 http://venura9.com/2012/06/21/what-happened-to-mnp-in-sri-lanka/ ]]> When I see the crappy service provided by my existing mobile service provider, I always feel like shifting. But…. I need this number, because everyone has this :’(

So MNP or Mobile Number Portability which enables you to switch operators without changing the number has become a valid requirement.

TRC SL had plans for this and I really don’t know why it’s not happening now. Many countries have done this including India. Why not us?

There have bee many initiatives taken for this but things are moving pretty slow and I feel that the major players may be behind this in the fear of loosing market share. But really,better the service the more customers you get

This is just a picture I took at the university and I’m trying to give an interpretation to my observation.

Two guys trying to sell a product of a certain mobile operator and they are using numbers belonging to two rival operators.

• Reason 1: These guys don’t really believe in what they are going to sell (No.. Can’t be… )
• Reason 2: These two guys are trying to attract the users only from the rival operators and they want those guys to rach them easlity so that’s the reason to use rival numbers (does this sound a bit LAME no way… )

Have a look and enjoy… Picture is bulky so will take some time to load….
What do you think….? (Location: http://g.co/maps/mauvg )

Checkout the prices of dongles and data plans;

• Prepaid - http://www.hutch.lk/broadband/prepaid
• Post-Paid - http://www.hutch.lk/broadband/postpaid

• Dongle price is comparatively high but there is news that you can use the same device to make calls, but that is not big news. These types of embedded stuff always fail as they lack the portability across different operating systems and within different versions of the same operating system (E.g. Windows 7 and Windows XP).
• Packages are also priced according to the market prices.

I really can not understand how they are going to distinguish them self. You can say good quality of service, but will u expect customers to trust an operator who is not known to have the best 2.x G network to be good with 3G…?

Prove me wrong guys..

People always complain irrespective of the service provider. There are so many culprits Location, Dongle, Coverage, Number of Users. But no one says that they get a good service. TRC has their own calculations and they rate the operators with their limited knowledge.

What do you really think about this…?

So be wise and use the communications don’t try to send bulk messages to friends with tsunami warnings. Also please cut down the unnecessary calls you make. Let the authorities use the bandwidths and network capacities and do the job more effectively. Let the families go to safe places. Be wise and Be Safe.

More: US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issues new Indian Ocean warning following latest aftershocks - @Reuters

—
Breaking News (@BreakingNews) April 11, 2012

Update: 1805 Hours 11/04/2012
There has been two warnings issued for the main earth quake(8.7 Magnitude) and the aftershock(8.2 Magnitude) first warning time has passed and it’s highly unlikely for that to happen, but the second warning still stands.

Guys hope and pray that the Tsunami goes away…….

Update

No Tsunami, All is well

I will not tell how to hack through SLT routers, but I will explain the possibility of these threats.

• If I have the knowledge on the SLT ADSL assigned IP ranges I can do a port scanning to find the active IPs and even the services running on the on various ports. For this there are more than enough port scanners and vulnerability scanners available. You can Google if you really want to know about them. There are very good open source tools available such as nmap.
• Main issue with SLT is that when they configure the routers they keep the default device passwords intact.
• So when trying to logon to those IPs most of the time the router models are also revealed and you can easily find the default password from the manufacturer’s site.
• If you cannot find the manufacturer still there are only very few username, password combinations. You can try few randomly.
  • Admin, admin
  • Admin, 12345678
  • Etc.
• Other than a few knowledgeable users everyone else are using the default passwords.
  • Get access to the router and you could steal the ADSL user name and password. (If you have a low bandwidth connection or a lesser quota remaining then you can hack and use someone else’s user details. this was possible some time back and I’m not sure whether SLT has blocked this)
  • Allow access to various protocols and ports
  • You name it …
• Also the standard routes provided with SLT are not having the comprehensive security which most of the other widely available routers have. So it’s ideal if you only buy the connection from SLT and buy a known router which has most of the security enabled by default. Don’t fall for offers they give on routers. The seasonal cheap price is the actual price they buy the routers from the manufacturers. So you can expect advanced security

Also many users have their wireless security off so the neighbors don’t need to buy an internet connection. You may think that you don’t need this but there is a huge risk in this. You are trying to stop external attacks with antiviruses and firewalls. But a person who comes to an unsecured network will not be an outsider. So the attacks are much easier. They can hack into most of the computers routers and completely destroy the network. Any criminal activities carried out through your network will be on your account. So better to be careful I guess

There are laws but very few know about them and very few will know and use them. Even if they use them a hacker will be very careful to leave very few traces.

SLT should never configure the equipment with these two vulnerabilities for their own benefit and make the users unsecure. Of course if you are savvy on this better to implement this or get the services of a savvy person.

Related Posts: Sri Lanka Telecom: Increase the data quota given for ADSL Connections

~ My friends, this is the typical story of a blogger who lives a normal life

Still we have to survive and will survive, What do we need to do stuff that bring some dollars back which will keep us going. If the interest rates increase then may be deposit some money and get a good interest. Don’t invest companies are falling…

When I wrote this the LKR to USD was going at 130+

You can check the LKR to USD currency rate from here>>

http://www.social2b.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/social_media_logos.png
After spending millions on social media campaigns in the wrong way a company will find that they are not getting the expected output and start complaining at social media without understanding the cause. This will eventually devalue the true social media professionals.

Companies will be hesitant to look at investing on social media campaigns because of their lack of confident and will always go for the cheaper solution making the situation worse as these campaigns are bound to fail without proper investments. Ultimately the companies will never be able to use social media properly and there by further devaluing the proper social media professionals and their incomes. This will become a rippling worry.

This is not a good trend and as social media enthusiasts we also have a responsibility where we need to make the corporates more educated and focused in going for social media integration by educating them on how to select the proper firm/person to implement and drive the company’s social media strategy.

There are so many ways to do this and I guess the world of social media is equipped with the creativity to do this in numerous ways. I wish and pray that this is done sooner rather than later before many of us loose our value.

Oh! I almost forgot, wish you guys a Happy 2012

If you are looking at getting your life sorted out and getting it straightened you need to have a look at how this person lived his comparatively short life.

I will never be a fan of the closed apple ways of doing things. But I will always be admiring how Jobs brought apple to this place, How he innovated, how he made apple a force that all the giants wanted to beat. Mr. Jobs, fail well and innovation will miss you.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

Facebook is rolling out a new profile layout with a timeline where you can have all your activities throughout your life listed on you profile where a person can scroll down and understand what a person has done throughout his life span. Sounds a bit dangerous isnt it . All the good things and bad things you have done on FB will be available to everyone.  The person you date, your employer and you name them.

Official Facebook Video – YouTube

How to get the preview of the new timeline feature is available all over google and a post on Facebook Timeline by Indu Nanayakkara has a good collection on information about the new profile layout.

How to preview the new feature – YouTube

whether you like it or not you will be forced to move to this in the near future. So you better know what to share on your timeline and what not to share. best is to get the feature while the others don’t see it and tweak your profile to suit your needs. You can even add the events which happened even before joining facebook, whether it’s good or bad still it will make a comprehensive timeline.

Facebook is planning to launch the new feature very soon and this is the official facebook link on the Timeline feature: https://www.facebook.com/about/timeline

Facebook Blog talking about the time line;
https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150289612087131

My New Profile

All you need to have is the capability to move the mouse and Google chrome browser.

Use the mouse to drag the birdie back aim and fire…

For the moment the app is free, enjoy while its free.

Tagging on Facebook…

Final Status update…

Ever since Android came to the scene I have been closely following its progress yet unfortunately have not been able to become a proud owner of an Android device because of the high price. So whenever I get my hands on one I would try to explore as much as possible. One of the main issues with countries like Sri Lanka is that paid apps are not supported by the Android Market.

Also the application developers can decide the markets which their products should be appearing. Skype has allowed only few of the countries excluding Sri Lanka and most of the others, which is quite unfair as far as I see. If you are a tech savvy person of course there are ways to hack and bypass these things. But what I’m going to tell you are some easy ways I have found playing with the devices;

I came across a Samsung Galaxy Tab (Android 2.3) which was operator locked in Australia. So the device was operating without a SIM over WiFi for the moment, which actually allowed Skype to be installed.

As per Android APIs on Market Filters:

When you upload your app to the Android Market, you can select specific countries to target. The app will only be visible to the countries (carriers) that you select, as follows:

• A device’s country is determined based on the carrier, if a carrier is available. If no carrier can be determined, the Market application tries to determine the country based on IP.
• Carrier is determined based on the device’s SIM (for GSM devices), not the current roaming carrier.

So the primary method of identifying the country is the SIM card and then the IP. But it seemed like the IP is actually not checked if the SIM detection fails. I convinced one of my colleges with an HTC Wildfire (Android 2.2) to take off the SIM card and try over WiFi to install Skype which actually worked for him also (Eliminating my doubt whether the relaxation was done because the device was an Australian one). Still you will not be able to get the paid apps, only the free apps including Skype.

Since the android market available in India, which is one of the most visited locations by Sri Lankans you can get down an Indian SIM card (Airtel one cost me 25INR which is about 70LKR, with my passport copy) put it into your phone and over WiFi you should be able to access the paid apps.

I have taken the Sri Lankan context since it’s my native location and this should work on any android market restricted country.

Examples being the Randiv, Sehwag No Ball incident where Sehwag made randiv the culprit using just one tweet no one even bothered to see the other side of th story and believed the social media and the online anti Randiv campaigns. Which emphasizes  the incorrect usage of Social Media can really send the bad information to people.

Hi guys Randiv came to my room n apologize

—
Virender Sehwag (@virendersehwag) August 17, 2010

The other incident which is ralated with twitter is the “Kevin Pietersen Twitter rant” where Pietersen (@kevinpp24) has used the “F” word to tweet the dissapointment of his drop-off. He immediately took that off and later announced that it was a direct message which was tweeted mistakenly

Picture from: Guardian

From the searches I made I found only a handful of Sri Lankan cricketers with Twitter accounts none of the accounts seems to be updating and may be not real as well. Out of the lot Sanath Jayasuriya has a twitter page which is the most updated one and I’m not 100% sure whether it’s really him. There are many Kumar Sangakkara’s on twitter most of them were impersonating Kumar and closest I have found is @kumarsangakkara.

Follow @kumarsangakkara

Following are some of the lists which I found digging online;

• http://twitter.com/#!/GSMTitan/cricketers-on-twitter/members (109) – Twitter List
• http://twitter.com/#!/rohitnarvekar/cricketers-on-twitter/members (157) – Twitter List
• http://twitter.com/#!/NEO_Cricket/indian-cricketers/members (26) – Twitter List By NEO Cricket
• From: tweeting-athletes.com (53)
• From: Techpp.com (26)

Some More Twitter Links about Aussi Twitter Mis-usage:

• TheAge
• On Fox Sports

Modi’s Twitter Madness, On YouTube:

It’s one of the most amazing things to hear that the wedding thanking speech includes a special thanking note to Mark Zuckerberg for getting the couple together.

Social Media gives the opportunity to identify people with similar tastes as their walls, profiles and updates will reflect what sort of a person you are looking at. Since you have a good network there is room to get new people into your network. For example you reach a Friend of a Friend, with the opportunity to get the interested information from your friend, which elaborates the beauty of networking. This applies not only to finding a partner but to do so many other things.

Examples like a corporate, finding employees through references via Linkedin or getting a business via a referral may sound more interesting to some of you.

Of course there have been many misconducts happening over social media, but the success stories are more compared to those. In most of these scenarios the person has been a complete stranger, and no analysis into the person has been done. (wild guess or a blind date).

You can have a laugh watching this, May be this has some similarities with you

The other most important fact is that 1 out of 5 divorces in the US are also because of Facebook which leads to another marriage ultimately because of Facebook

Word of advice on the Valentine’s Day from me; Choose wisely, use the tools available. Make everyday a Valentine’s Day not only the 14th of February.

If you are not aware, Google actually considers the loading time of a website as a page rank parameter. The accepted value is only known by the Google Crawler only. So lower the loading time the higher chance of getting a better page rank.

So the first thing I did was blaming the webhost as any of us would do because they do have the effect most of the time when you are using shared hosting. But thinking rationally there are many things you can do to improve. So the first step was to do a all-round WordPress optimization which gave me about 1 to 2 second improvement yet I had about 10 more seconds to reduce unfortunately. Google Digging strted and actually I found-out that google who ranks website on speed actually is one of the number one speed killers and the social widgets and commenting platforms not far behind.

So I decided to do my own analysis. For this analysis I used the Inspect Element (Inspect Element -> Network)feature which is available with Google Chrome, which lists down the loaded elements with the time taken.

Here goes the top list and the remedies I have taken to resolve that. Of course you can’t take off everything but you need to strike a balance.

1. Google Custom Search:
   I did not enjoy the way the WordPress search appeared on my current template eating up most of the space, so I moved to google’s custom search to save space and because of the nice comprehensive inline results. yet I figured out that this is the biggets killer unfortunately. So back to HTML/CSS/JavaScript to develop my own version of the customized WordPress search which loads in milliseconds.

   If you do not have the programming skills better to stick with the standard search I guess.

   Bing has a better custom search in terms of load-time but does not cover the entire blog results like the google custom search, had Bing Copied Google on this area I would have definitely gone with Bing

2. Facebook Like Box:

This is the nice looking Facebook Like Box which shows the followers of a page and the like option which was making the site very slow, I guess too many are using this and too many content is being passed over the internet from these servers making access very slow. There is an alternative method I found playing with the standard Facebook Like Button fetaure where you have on individual pages to like them. I used the URL of the facebook page with that wollah you have all the likes appearing with that also. You customize this to show the faces of the people who have liked, so for me it looks better than the previous one and loads much faster.

3. DISQUS Comments:

After staying behind on these social commneting platforms for a long time I also moved to this mode to get the better commenting system which was in the third place contributing to the increased loadtime. I did some tweaks to not load all the fancy fetures available (such as liking every comment) even now this is one of the main contributors to the loadtime, yet for me the better user experience is greater than the effect of the loadtime in this case.

4. Google Analytics:

This is something I could not take off even though is has a contribution as this has a bigger benefet compared to the loadtime. This delay is not always visible yet on my Google Chrome sometimes takes a noticable time to load the analytics script.

5. Google Adsence:

Adsence script is also taking a long time to load in patches, just like the Google Analytics script and like Analytics can not be taken off

6. Twitter Widget/Other DISQUES widgets:

Twitter widget is suprisingly does not take a longtime compared to the others to load and it is sitting in sismilar speeds with the other small DISQUES widgets like the popular posts widget.

Mashable Vs Venura9

Mashable - Click the image to View Full Image

Venura9 - Click the image to View Full Image

Basically what Google is trying to prove is when a user makes a search for a keyword which is an unlikely keyword, Google will show the most relevant keyword and show the results for that keyword. But in Bing when you are searching the same unlikely keyword you get the result for the closest match  for the unlikely keyword search straightaway which is a sign of copying.

The “torsoraphy” is the keyword which stared the whole buzz, Where google was showing the results for “tarsorrhaphy” which is the closest match where as Bing was showing the same result when you are searching for “torsoraphy” which sounds quite fishy. Then there are various other combinations mentioned in the Google Blog such as “hiybbprqag“, “delhipublicschool40 chdjob” and “juegosdeben1ogrande” where Google has created artificially to point to unrelated search results which were also appearing in Bing Searches for the same keywords.

Images have been taken from Google Blog

“torsoraphy” On Google

“torsoraphy” on Bing

Actually it is not possible for Bing to search for every possible keyword on Google and save that in a database, anyway Google have more than enough security to stop automated activity on search, for example if you have used the Tor Network to access the internet in internet-filtered environments you may have seen that Google is asking to verify that you are human by typing something, because those types of services are making a considerable amount of hits to Google from one IP or a Pool of IPs. So that thinking can be totally ignored.

Ok then, how this may have happened? Google’s suspensions are;

• Internet Explorer 8, which can send data to Microsoft via its Suggested Sites feature
• the Bing Toolbar, which can send data via Microsoft’s Customer Experience Improvement Program

These are  known to send user experience and data back to Microsoft, So Bing may have got the search data through these channels.

Everyone is reading the Google stuff, but what about the answer from Bing (Microsoft ). This a quote from the ZDNet’s blog post “We do not copy Google’s results”;

“We use multiple signals and approaches in ranking search results.  The overarching goal is to do a better job determining the intent of the search so we can provide the most relevant answer to a given query. Opt-in programs like the toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites,” said Stefan Weitz, Director, Bing.

This post on the Bing Blog, Setting the record straight has the answers from Bing dening the allegations;

Google engaged in a “honeypot” attack to trick Bing. In simple terms, Google’s “experiment” was rigged to manipulate Bing search results through a type of attack also known as “click fraud.” That’s right, the same type of attack employed by spammers on the web to trick consumers and produce bogus search results.  What does all this cloak and dagger click fraud prove? Nothing anyone in the industry doesn’t already know. As we have said before and again in this post, we use click stream optionally provided by consumers in an anonymous fashion as one of 1,000 signals to try and determine whether a site might make sense to be in our index.

Further more it is stating that Google has copied Bing, Quoting an article on The New York Times, Bing and Google in a Race for Features;

• Google has mimicked features like its travel search engine, its ability to tie more tools to social networking sites and its image search or buying start-ups to help it do so in the future.
• Google has even taken on some of Bing’s distinctive look, like giving people the option of a Bing-like colorful background, and the placement of navigation tools on the left-hand side of the page.

Who has copied whom is still to be found-out, But for sure this will increase the competition among the leaders making the search tools more reliable and user friendly.

Related External Posts;

• Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results—and denies it
• Google: Bing is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results
• We do not copy Google’s results
• Setting the record straight
• Bing and Google in a Race for Features

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which includes Social Media Optimization (SMO) also as a subset in my definition of SEO, is useless if the website does not appear correctly in the browsers of the target market as they will come to your site but will not be able to access or use it properly. So this is also another key aspect related to getting more traffic into your website.

Few important notes are as follows;

• You can not optimize for all the available browsers and versions that is available in the world (Including numerous Browsers which are used by minorities and older version like IE4 or IE5).
• You have to pick and choose the browsers and the versions applicable to your niche.
• If you are using well known frameworks such as WordPress which is used for my blog, the platform itself will handle the majority of the browser compatibility. But since this is not your platform you will not have the greatest flexibility, but you will hardly need that
• If it’s something that can not directly handled with a platform, you will have to do the tedious job of doing that by your self.

To get an idea on the browser usages you can use many statical sources available on the internet.
Stat Counter is my preferred source.

Some time back I had post on social commenting platfroms (DISQUS vs IntenseDebate) where I took IE6 as the base where I had a comment questioning the base I have selected. The commenter is probably from US, but if you look at the Sri Lankans who are mostly likely to view this post they have a different pattern compared to the global pattern where IE6 is the most used variant if Internet Explorer which I have explained below in the third graph.

Sri Lankans are more into Firefox, With IE and Google Chrome (Which is my personal favorite) in a close race at second and third. With a rapid growth shown by Google Chrome in the last 12 months.

Considering the browser versions Firefox 3.6 at first with IE6 amazingly sitting at the second place justifying my decision to take IE6 as the base browser (which is one of the worst browsers ever to be released)

Few interesting tweets from @statcountergs

• Firefox overtakes Internet Explorer in Europe in browser wars 4th Jan 2011
• Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser falls below 50% of worldwide market for first time 5th Oct 2010
• Chrome Market Share Rises Above 10 Percent 10th Sep 2010

So in conclusion I have to say is that make your own R&D and optimize and assure quality for your niche set of browsers.

* Note: These statistics are the latest available as at January 2011 (From Jan 2010 to December 2010)

Everyone its time to look at IP Version 6 and to prepare for the change if you already not taken the preparation steps. Ipv4 will not go away but will live in harmony with ipv6 where the new structure will be applied for the new ip addresses.

• From Ipv4 to Ipv6 the 32 bit numbering will change to 128 bit with a vast increase of the number of IPs which can be provided (From 4,294,967,296 to 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456) which is the main reason to move for IPv6 to provide more IPs with the expansion of the internet.
• For IPv6 the address formats will be in the hexadecimal representation like 3FFE:F200:0234:AB00:0123:4567:8901:ABCD compared to the dotted decimal notation of IPv4 like 173.192.231.62 which can not be remembered like IPv4
• The IPv6 header has a new header format that is designed to minimize header overhead compared to IPv4.
• From the DNS level Address (A) resource records in DNS to map host names to IPv4 addresses and Address (AAAA) resource records in DNS to map host names to IPv6 addresses.
• In terms of security IPSec support is not optional in IPv6 where it was optional and implemented externally in Ipv4.

You can read more online, Few references are as follows;

• IPv4 Technical Reference
• IPv6 Technical Reference
• Microsoft TechNet
• https://www.arin.net/knowledge/ipv4_ipv6.pdf
• http://forums.techarena.in/guides-tutorials/1064417.htm
• http://www.techsutram.com/2009/03/differences-ipv4-vs-ipv6.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6
• http://www.networkdictionary.com/networking/IPv6vsIPv4.php

Sampath Web Card which is a Prepaid debit card where you can top-up the card from any sampath bank branch. All you have to do is make the payment with the card number as if you are paying for a credit card using a credit card payment slip. Also you can use this with PayPal. You can basically top-up the card up-to about Rs. 100,000 in deposit amounts in 2.5k, 5k, 7.5 and 10k rupees as per the website. But the guy at sampath told that I can deposit in any amounts as long as I use this for genuine purchase purposes. If you have a sampathnet account you can straightaway top-up the card from there after linking the card to the existing account. To check the existing balance either you have to call the cardcenter number which is at the back of the card or you can check it from sampathnet acount if you have that.

Here is the Link on Sampath Web about the Web Card.
Here is the Link to download the sampath web card application.

Following are the steps I went through to get the web card and verify my card with PayPal.

• Made an initial payment of 2500 at the head office with my NIC number mentioned with “web card initial payment” as the receiver using a normal deposit slip (you have to do this only for the initial payment as you don’t have the card/car number). Out of the payment 500 is taken as a onetime card charge, so when I got the card I had a balance of 2000 (if you have a sampath bank account the charge is only 300)
• Handed that over to the card center with the filled application.
• Received a call from sampath bank confirming my identity
• After about one week got a letter asking to pick the card at head office as I have given my preference (there are other preferences such as receive the card by post)
• Collected the card and the PIN at the head office.
• Provided the card details to PayPal and verified, then you need the 4digit transaction id to complete that. To get that either call card center number which is at the back of the card or you can check from the sampathnet account if you have linked the card to sampathnet account.
• Gave the 4digits to PayPal and I was ready to purchase online.

If you need any more information you are welcome to leave a comment.

But, Fedora is the operating system which is closest to being a real opensource operating system compared to distributions like Ubuntu which has more commercial purpose.

If you have a look at Ubuntu which is my personal operating system it is now having some paid software appearing in the software center, which is an indicator of deviating from free and opensource mode. With time we will start to a see a radical deviation of Ubuntu to towards commercial side as far as I see. This will close up the doors or restrict the large number of users who have switched to Ubuntu. So I guess very shortly (within another few years time) the time will come to switch to fedora or some other Linux distribution. Fortunately most of these distributions use the gnome desktop environment, so switching will not be very hard. You can make the switch now or wait, but I can tell you that you will have to make that move sooner than later.

You can get the latest version of fedora and the related information from the fedora website and even join and support the project if you are a willing opensource activist.

Forget about all the socio-technical stuff and think about a organized and clean twitter account and still this is the tool for you.

There is not much to explain about the process once you login to the website you can basically press ‘wack’ to start managing your twitter account. Also some of you may already be knowing about the tool who will be able to give the readers more insight in to using the tool.

You can login to from Tweeter Karma page with twitter (Twitter’s OAuth) and once you allow the connect access you can press ‘Wack’ button on the page to get the related information.

This shows you the list of all the related users with your account and shows whether you and the related users are both following each other or whter you are only following or whether only the user is following you. You can basically follow the users you have missed to follow back and unfollow the users who you do not foresee as followers or the followers whom you do not have any use of following them.

This new year why don’t you also cleanup your twitter account and wish all of you a cheery new year!

Then came the third parties such as DISQUS and IntenseDebate where they combined many of these social commenting providers to give a comprehensive solution with more interactivity and user friendliness. My first choice was IntenseDebete which I noticed an increase in the loading time of my blog after sometime, still the ongoing social commenting madness kept me away from reverting back.

Actually today many don’t like to comment with social media like Facebook with the increasing threat of privacy and security (may be with the exception of twitter and few others) and what I noticed was that the social commenting madness settled a bit with all this controversies surrounding, while grabbing a high share of the blogs and other websites allowing comments and eating up loads of bandwidth from the internet users by connecting to different sites, loading numerous JavaScripts and making so many AJAX queries. With time I also wanted to revert back, but only then I found-out that there was no way to sync back the comments to blogger as that support was temporally suspended due to a bug by IntenseDebete, that temporary suspension then has become permanent. Also the exported comments file can not be imported by blogger. The next alternative was to import the comments to DISQUS which also failed to sync with Google even though they have the support on paper, at the point of granting Google access the operation fails. Also they didn’t have the customization I preferred compared to IntenseDebete which made me stay with IntenseDebate for such a long time.

Then the time came for me to make the decision where I received complaints from my blog readers of inaccessibility of my blog over IE. Being a Linux user I never had much focus on IE but many, so I started to do the quality check with firebug and managed to sort-out any errors coming up on Firefox and Google-Chrome but when it came to IE(base was IE6) there was always some error, a JavaScript error thrown related to Facebook API from the IntenseDebate script.

Finally I gave up my love for IntenseDebete and made up my mind to move to DISQUS forgetting about all the difficulties I many face importing the comments and loosing the template I prefer. Even though I could not sync with Google I could import the comments after playing for a while with the exported XML where the Non-English comments didn’t show up correctly and I had to edit it manually before importing to DISQUS. I took IE6 as the base browser for IE as IE6 was always a pain in the web developments I was involved, DISQUS could not even load the main page of my blog on IE6 which was asking me to download the blog, which was quite comical.

My faith on both those platforms was lost and my last decition was to revert back to old school commenting and loose all the comments with these so called interactive and userfriendly commenting plaforms, which actually makes the conversations more complex and difficult rather than making it simple and easy.

Social commenting has its advantages for sure but having that on your blog actually may not give you the same benefit you are expecting because of the poor cross-browser support and heavy loading time and unexpected behaviors. As per my googling the WordPress users are not facing the same deal of difficulties. For me I guess I’m happy with the default commenting with the expectation of the twitter comments integration in to that will happen soon.

Some Related Links with comparisons:
http://tech.mahesha.com/ | IntenseDebate or Disqus?
http://www.lessannoyingsoftware.com/ | Disqus vs. IntenseDebate – Why we switched
http://www.gabrielkoen.com | Intense Debate vs. Disqus

Update: (14th January 2011)
This was written when I was using Blogger, now I have moved to WordPress. After doing my R&D for a while I figured out that most do prefer DISQUS over IntenseDebate for WordPress. No need to play around as most of the WordPress users have done that for you already so I have also moved to DISQUS.

I can sync the comments to my database (to WordPress) and keep them with DISQUS also and it seamlessly integrated with WordPress to access via the admin panel. The advantage I see is that most of the content related to the comments are actually stored somewhere else and the load to the hosing servers will be lesser by client scripting handling the load.

Seems like my old number also is issued to someone else and the guy who owns that is has become a nuisance to the people who have called to that number thinking that it was me.

So rather than doing such things, why not introduce the portability which many of the people are talking about these days. There was some buzz that this is coming, but seems like it will take longer in the typical Sri Lankan manner. But it’s sooner the better we get these things in place.

What MNP or Mobile Number Portability means you can have the same number irrespective of the package you are using and irrespective of the network you are using.

Have fun watching some advertisements done by idea to welcome MNP in India;

….and some Ads by Digi Malaysia;

As an example:
In my case when I join my company, my existing number will be added to the same corporate VLAN allowing me to use the corporate services. If my company decides to make a shift to another operator they can do that and none of the numbers will change only the network will change.

When this was first talked about many of the major mobile players didn’t like this because they were afraid of the competition. As far as I see this is a very good concept because you are recycling the numbers which have not been used for sometime. So basically these customers are already lost so why not give them the graceful opportunity to leave with their existing number which will make life much more easier to them. Also a mobile user will not shift networks just to experiment. Only in the scenario of a major dissatisfaction they will consider this path, which will require to get some approval from a governing body such as the TRC which you don’t want to follow unless you are really desperate. As I have found in many of the countries this has been implemented the shifting is very less due to following reasons as I see;

- Operators are providing a far better service as there is a higher risk of loosing the customers.
- Operators have introduced cheaper contracted packages, so the customer can’t leave until that is over.
- The paperwork is quite cumbersome so they always think twice.
before making the shift.

Yes, Implementing this will have some weight on the operators as all the existing systems will have to be changed to match the needs of MNP. This will favor the mobile Value Added Services (VAS) vendors, as the system will have to be upgraded to suit the new changes. But this cost is lesser than what you get out of implementing this mechanism.

So as a conclusion I say this is good, bring it up and let the consumers have what they deserve rather than operators dictating terms to consumers.(which is the wrong way what is happening in Sri Lanka)

My Personal view is that Social Networking nowadays have gone bit more further than where it should have gone. Anyways..

Inspired by the this article on social networking becoming a nightly routine, I decided to have my own poll on social networking habits before you sleep and come up with answers. Hope you guys will help me on this.

Credits: to the tweet by @InduNan

aha.. aha.. lol and wot of Srilankans? | RT @SocialPlaza: Facebook and Twitter Now Nightly Routine for 72% Of Brits http://sns.ly/khO73

—
InduNanayakkara (@InduNan) December 05, 2010

The certificate for omega.contacts.msn.com could not be validated. The certificate chain presented is invalid.

Seems like the certificate for MSN has expired, so you need to add the new one.
To resolve this, open a new terminal (or Ctrl+Alt+t) and run the below commands respectively;

rm $HOME/.purple/certificates/x509/tls_peers/omega.contacts.msn.com
wget "http://files.andreineculau.com/projects/pidgin/omega.contacts.msn.com.txt"
mv omega.contacts.msn.com.txt $HOME/.purple/certificates/x509/tls_peers/omega.contacts.msn.com

Reasons may be that the mobile data connections get interrupted and are with connectivity spikes very often due to the mobility factor. Some bug in the client causes the connection not to be closed properly. I’m not a XMPP/Jabber guru but if you dig a bit more you might find the reason.

My case was with the official IM client by Nokia. The client stopped working all-of-a-sudden and I was having conversations on this over twitter with @nokiamessaging which then they fixed and just after fixing that this issue came up, which is quite normal I can very well understand that as a developer. I never though that this happens with Nokia also . So I had to start the conversation again with @nokiamessaging which they then transfered to @NokiaHelps on twitter which accepted that it was their bug(this may also be because of a bug with GoogleTalk). Suggested solution for me was to contact Nokia support which was unfortunately was not available for Sri Lanka. I was suggested some resources online while they look for support options for me which actually I have not received a reply so far.

Anyways I was quite sure that this would go away after sometime as it is very unlikely that GoogleTalk servers will keep a non responsive session forever. Which eventually did happen after few days. I wanted a quick solution which I did not get


Anyways I tried the following also which may have helped.


- At the bottom of the gmail main window you will find ‘ Last account activity: ‘ at the end of that line you will find a ‘details’ link which pops up a table showing your latest login information which gives you the option to logout from any other logins if any. please go ahead and do that.
- Then change the password, this may help if a hacker is keeping the connection live. At some point GoogleTalk must be reseting abnormally long connections due to the same risk and that will get rid of the hacker if he haven’t changed the password before you do that (or even a bug which is doing the same)
- You can also try changing your security question and any other security information as well which was mentioned online, which I did not try myself.
- Also you may visit the below source which was suggested to my by @NokiaHelps
Gtalk status always showing as “available” even if I’m signed out from gtalk client

Try these and be patient if you are having the same problem.
It will go away but I can not guarantee when as that may depend on the clearing process of GoogleTalk servers. My case it was about 2 days.

Anyways thank you @Nokia for the support you have given, I feel that this should go a bit more further and thank you @twitter for enabling me in engaging in such conversations which I would have never been able to, if not for twitter.

All the telecommunication related companies have their twitter account these days. Main reason they have a twitter account is because they want to have the Follow us on Twitter, Facebook ,LinkedIn on their website. Other than that I don’t see many using twitter to advantage.
Following are some of the things a telco can do on twitter;

- Spread the latest news about the company, inform the profits, the awards and the achievements.
- Tell about new products and new updates new releases of products.
- Engaging in small conversations with domain related experts and big-shots which may give you the edge of recognition.
- Provide customer care, this applies to most of the telco’s with services such as mobile operators.

For a telco twitter is a very important place, everyone who has a say on the industry have twitter accounts and the people who have the influence are also active on twitter (this includes CEOs, Bloggers, Writers and other researchers etc.). So this is probably the best place to get things corrected or messed up.

There are various ways which can be used. If you are a huge company you just need to setup your account and the related people will start following you if you have the correct content.

But if you are a small company it’s very difficult to get people to follow you unless you follow them.
many have the tendency to follow back if the follower seems to have some value for them (i-follow-back). ah… make sure that you follow the correct people, the people who has the influence. Finding the correct people is not that difficult with twitter if you have the correct keywords and the names. Make sure to follow back as long as the follower is a foreseeable stakeholder.

You can try to create a trend for your product or company. which is not that very easy. But if you have enough followers you may be able to do that. Not worldwide I guess, or if that can be achieved that would be great.

Some Cases and Examples:

When Murali retired his fans spammed twitter with #murali to make him a trend which actually took him to the top which was quite amazing. This was achieved mostly because of the Sri Lankan twitters who got together in this. (I, myself spammed quite a lot )

On the topic of Customer Care, in our region I first noticed Maxis Malaysia(@maxiscomms) doing a good job with organizing events, awards and informing the CSR stuff intermingled with the customer care.

Looking at Sri Lankan players, very recently dialog(@dialoglk) started to give some CC + other stuff (much better than their standard cc, which really sucks despite the new TV advertisements ) which was then followed by Mobitel(@MobitelSriLanka) very recently with other operators falling behind with only the twitter account with no updates(e.g @EtisalatSL). Top two are also following the i-follow-back method I talked about earlier.

Due to my busy schedule I never get the chance to visit customer care’s which are open at daytime. I saw something about keeping open 24 hours at mobitel CC but actually was never sure whether it was only the bill payments. but was actually a bit amazed that there were CC representatives available at that time.

As per them even though the web interface shows like that I have not been subscribed …? well lets wait and see. CC service was good but not the supplementary services. It’s time that Sri Lankan companies think more down the line of the quality of the products and services they offer rather than only thinking price all the time. there was no consistency and I was made uncomfortable by their incapable web development company they have selected.

So much for self care.

Oh! all-of-a-sudden it crashes showing all the information about the GlassFish server they have used and submitting the user information in plain text. Good luck for security!

There was this link which says subscribe to xxx service. Normally clicking on a link would show information about the service you are subscribing and will ask for another confirmation before you are subscribed. As soon as clicking on the link it says “you have subscribed to the xxx service”.
When I go to that link now it says “you are already subscribed” and no way which I found to remove the subscription. I dont have a mobitel connection to make free calls to their customer care which can hardly be reached anyway.

So I decided to send a mail, which I am waiting for a response. I will share the reply (if I get one) with you in my next blog most probably. Let’s see how I’am treated and whether the customer is really the king (anyway this is their problem, no need for the king )

The most amazing thing is except for the ill-designed link no other place has the information about the company which developed this system. Well… you will be amazed that, it’s a famous local web development company who is boasting about the government services which they are providing all over their website. God Bless! the ordinary man who pays the taxes and uses theses systems.

Find below my message to Mobitel:
Dear m3team,

So like everyone I also bought one and was complaining about the speeds from the begining and was jealous to hear the speeds the Mobitel consumers enjoyed.

Still I got the dongle for about 5,400 LKR + Package Charges ++ More Charges (Including an unfair pro-rate rental) with 6 months contract with a Huawei E220 with an ineffective operator lock. Which many used with other operators after the contract was over.

With time Mobitel also came up with some packages which had some cometitive pricing.
You can get the detailed Mobitel Broadband package information from here..

Figure 1 – Extract from mobitel.lk

Ok ok Airtel , They have some competitive pricing, with no coverage.
So that is excluded. If you are interested I found a link which has some informal AirTel Broadband pricing information, which may not be 100% correct.

I was in a dilema as to what I should use. Then searching online I found out that most of the people are praising Mobitel. Knowing that I will be loosing the advantage of browsing with a real IP and will be behind a NAT, I went for speed. As soon as I bought that, mobitel started some more packages where they provided some attractive pre-paid packages which drastically reduced their speeds due to the high usage.

Oppsss! have I made a bad decision, that was the question I started having. Still I was not seeing much of a reduction with the speeds. Actually from my home I was still getting higher speeds compared to Dialog.

As I figured out, there may be some connection with the number of users and the reduced speeds. As far as I know there are very few people who uses Mobile BB in my area, that may be the reason I am still having higher speeds. Also dialog seems to be behind with coverage compared to Mobitel. So for me so far Mobitel is comparatively good.

Recently Dialog changed their pricing not once but twice to beat the competition and the final detailed list for Dialog Broadband packages can be found here..

Figure 2 – Extract from dialog.lk

This gives some advantage to the users who have a lower data usage. where there speeds will drastically reduce after a certain level of usage depending on the package.

Still I feel that Mobitel is better for me and competive prices giving a higher demand may (Should not happen technically, but this is Sri Lanka ) reduce the speeds and the quality of the service from Dialog.

I’m not supporting Mobitel by any means but what I’m saying is that they are comparatively better for me and not for many of the other users. So if you are making a decision it’s very hard and complicated. The only way is to use them all and choose the best one.

Since Etisalat has got their 3G licence it’s not going to take that long for them to also start introducing competitive packages. Which I am looking forward to.

Here’s my comparison (Remember: I get a better speed with Mobitel):

I use the 1290LKR package from Mobitel which gives me 8GB per month.
Even if you exceed the limit still you are charged at 1.50LKR per 1MB so that is 150 for 1GB.

Dialog has a package for 1,490LKR which gives 7GB, after that the speeds drop.
So if you want to maintain the speeds you get 1GB for 300LKR (You do not have the 10MB charging blocks, no half measures)