We discussed Places Organizer, the booking marking system in Firefox 3. In the Places Organizer, we can create bookmarks, add it to a folder, assign tags to the bookmark and assign a keyword too.

How does assigning a keyword to a bookmark help us?

Let us say, you have a lengthy URL which you cannot remember, but you need to access it every now and them. You would then add it to the toolbar. Good. But if you prefer to use the keyboard than mouse, it is difficult to access such links in the toolbar. Here the keywords come handy.

In Places Organizer, just assign a keyword to the bookmark. Now you can access the bookmark by just tying the keyword in the address bar. For example, I assigned e as the keyword for my email. So, to check email, I just need to press F6 or ALT+D to go to address bar, type e and press enter. Simple. The places organizer converts the keyword into the URL before sending the request.

Labels: FireFox, Tips

Global SMS traffic during the New Year period increased by 30 per cent over the same period last year, an research by Acision, a messaging company, revealed.

Global phone users sent a staggering 43 billion text messages to wish their loved ones a happy new year. Growth was strong in both the mature and emerging markets, according to the report.

India's 220 million mobile subscribers sent over a billion text messages representing a 300 per cent increase on daily traffic levels. [More Than a Billion SMS Wishing Happy New Year in India]

The Philippines retained its title as the text messaging capital of the world, sending a remarkable 1.39 billion text messages from a subscriber base of just 50 million. That means, on an average of 28 SMS per subscriber in Philippines, comparing to the 4.5 SMS per subscriber in India!

Labels: Mobile, News, SMS

Let me tell you something happened to me, do keep it as a secret, alright? This happened in 2004, when I had returned from the US after a long time, and wanted to settle down in Thiruvananthapuram. Since I had been used to voicemail and answering machines in the US, I enabled the voicemail in my cell phone. I used the default built-in female voice as the voicemail greeting. When some of my friends since elementary school called me, the call went to voicemail.

It seems they got shocked listening to an American English female voice! They were telling me later that an American lady attended the phone and said something unclear in English! They were after me to find out the truth! After all, I had recently returned from the USA and was staying alone in an apartment! They wanted to search every nuke and corner of my apartment and find out the American lady! :-) Then I realized that, I am now living in my India and should adjust myself with it. I just disabled the voicemail feature in the cellphone, and living peacefully after that!

OK, now back to the news. SpinVox, a voice-to-text services company, came up with the list of top ten most annoying voicemails. Such voicemails use up the valuable time that people increasingly don’t have to spare in their busy lives. [We wrote about SpinVox a few months ago.]

According to SpinVox, the following are the worst voicemails that people should avoid.

Top Ten Annoying Voicemails

1. The Marathon Message: The extremely long voicemail that never ends.
2. The Death March: Leaving a phone number at the end of a long voicemail. If you missed it, you now have to listen through the entire message just to get the phone number.
3. The Screaming Eagle: The voicemail left in a noisy bar or as a fire truck is passing by.
4. The Drunken Dispatch: The drunk dial voicemail.
5. Voicemail Interrupted: As the person is leaving the voicemail, they stop in the middle to have a conversation with someone else or answer another call before they return to finish the message.
6. The Misguided Message: A person or telemarketer leaves a message for you that was actually intended for someone else.
7. Voicemail Incognito: The anonymous voicemail.
8. The Dehydrated Dispatch: Any voicemail left by someone with a bad hangover.
9. One Way Wonder: When the person thinks they are speaking to you when they are actually talking to your voicemail.
10. The Pocket Dialer: The person that accidentally calls you because the phone is in their pocket or bag and isn't locked, leading to an endless soundtrack of them walking down the street, driving or having a conversation with someone else.

The last two are very common in India. Even now, I receive the Pocket Dialer calls from friends and relatives. I had to listen to their discussions when seated in the bus, restaurant etc.! Hey, I do not listen to such calls for long. When I recognize that its a pocket dialed call, I always cut the phone to save the callers money and privacy, and save my time!

What is good to do?

• Keep your messages short, about 30 seconds is perfect. Use text message (SMS) or email for other info.
• Leave your recognizable name and just one contact number when you start the voice message.
• Repeat your call back number slowly at the end.
• If you are in a noisy place, consider test messaging (if its a cell phone) rather than voicemail.
• Always use keyguard or phone lock in your cell phone to avoid accidental calls from the phones in your pocket.

Labels: News, Voice

The Chhattisgarh government plans to send SMS alerts about availability and supply of food to beneficiaries of the subsidized public distribution system (PDS). The government will provide 35 kg of rice in a month to each family at the rate of Rs 3 per kg under the scheme.

To get the alerts, the poor families will have to register details of their mobile phones at the website of the food and civil supplies department at http://cg.nic.in/khadya/. When the food is available at the local distribution center, SMS alerts will be sent out to families registered.

The alerts would also be given out through the Internet at the PDS website. The government is also planning to set up toll-free call centers across the state to take up supply related complaints of PDS beneficiaries immediately and deliver reply to them in time-bound banner on their telephones. The SMS facility, Internet updates and call center will start functioning from Jan 26, the Indian Republic Day.

Chhattisgarh is the first state of the country to have such high-tech system. I feel glad that the poor people of Chhattisgarh has cell phones even though they do not have enough money to buy their meals. The government officials are unclear how many of such families actually own mobile phones. But all they want is to roll out the functionality and be the first, sounds good!

[via yahoo news]

Labels: Mobile, News, SMS

I use Firefox 3.0b2. Firefox has improved the Bookmarking, which is now called Places Organizer. Places contains your bookmarks, tags and history. You can search in all bookmarks, a selected folder, or even the history. You do not need to install any add-ons for using this functionality.

You can create a new bookmark, or add a new folder or add a separator, or organize your existing bookmarks in the places organizer. From the Places menu in the toolbar, you can access recently starred pages, most visited started pages, most visited pages, etc.. Places Organizer also help you take backup of the bookmarks, restore it, export the bookmark to a bookmark.html and import bookmarks from a file or Internet Explorer.

Other feature I liked in Firefox 3 are save tabs on exit, location bar autocomplete with title & address and other new features.

There are still bugs in this feature. First and important one is that you cannot drag and drop the bookmarks within the places. You will need to cut/copy and paste the bookmark to other folders when organizing. I hope this will be fixed in the nest stable release.

Second bug is, places organizer does not remember the columns selected in the views. By default it shows Name, Tags and Location. I can select other options like Keyword, Visit Date, Visit Count, Description, Last Modified, etc. from the Views -> Show Columns menu. If I close the Places Organizer and open it again, my previous column selections are all gone!

Labels: Browser, FireFox

In 2006 we wrote about Chikka Messenger from Indiatimes.com to send free text messages from PC to mobile phones.

Now Chikka.com has came up with the new web-based version of Chikka Messenger, Chikka X Messenger. The new version, which can be accessed at new.chikka.com lets you connect to your buddies in Google Talk, Yahoo!, AIM, MSN and ICQ directly from the web login.

Free PC to Mobile Messaging is also supported in the website. The list of operators supporting chikka is also expanded. You can send the message to your friends mobile by clicking on the phone icon to send to your buddy´s mobile phone. If your buddy´s mobile number is supported by chikka, the SMS is send free. Otherwise you will be alerted before sending with Chikka TXT Plus. You can also send international SMS to mobiles in 200 countries at very affordable rates, through Chikka TXT Plus - which is not free.

You need to enter the mobile in international format country code + mobile number (Example: 919349311111). You can also assign a screen name for your buddy.

Once you´re logged in to the Chikka X Messenger, you can also sign-in your Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, MSN and ICQ accounts. Click on the IM Accounts link on the messenger and choose your IM network and enter your user name and password. Your list of available buddies will appear in your buddy list found on the right side of your screen. You can add both registered Chikka users as well as non-Chikka users with mobile phones as buddies.

According to the chikka website, shikka supports Airtel, RIM, Reliance Telecom, BSNL, MTNL, Vodafone, Tata Indicom, Spice, Idea and Aircel networks in India.

Do you use chikka? Does the free PC to mobile SMS work for you?

Labels: Free SMS, Messenger

Anothr, by the Chinese internet startup iNeZha.com, is a micropipeline bot which enables you to deliver personalized information from various feeds to your Instant Messengers just in time.

You can add RSS/Atom feeds to the Anothr bot on Google Talk, MSN, Skype, etc. and get notified in the IM when a new entry is posted. This helps you to subscribe to your favorite blogs, news, communities, etc.. via the IMs.

To use Anothr bot, add the bot to the instant messenger. Anothr provides bots for Google Talk ( anothr@gmail.com ), MSN ( msn0006@anothr.com ) and Skype ( anothr.com ). Once the bot is added, the bot sends you the necessary information regarding the next step. Send ? for help. All the feeds and delivery options can be managed on "Anothr" web service.

You can add a feed by typing the URL (eg: teck.in), or search for feeds by input keyword(eg: teck). The bot automatically discovers the RSS feed from the website address. The bot polls the feeds on a specified time interval, the default is 15 minutes.

Bot Commands:
List your feeds and ID: List
Delete a feed: - [Feed ID] (e.g."- 1")
Set alert interval: Timer [Minutes](e.g."Timer 30")
Suggestions: Ideas [Content]
Invite a friend: Invite
More commands: Menu
Read: Read [ID] (e.g."Read 1")
Tag: Tag [ID] [Tag name]
Pause: Pause [ID]
Replay: Replay [ID]
OPML
On/Off
Let bot leave chat group: GO OUT

Sree: http://teck.in/
Anothr: checking validation of the feed ( http://teck.in/ ), please wait...
Done!(Feed ID is 2, type "- ID" to delete the feed, type "Read ID" to read the feed)
Your current alert interval is 15 minute(s), type "Timer [Minute]" (e.g." Timer 30" for 30 minutes) to change.

Subscribe via Skype/Gtalk/MSN

Labels: Blogging, Messenger

Monsterindia.com Launched SMS based job search in India. Send your job search query such as "Jobs Software Engineer Trivandrum" to 53030 and instantly receive the top three job search results.

[via ET]

Labels: Mobile, SMS

More than a billion short messages are estimated to have been exchanged by over 200 million mobile subscribers in India on first two days of 2008, wishing New Year. Many subscribers chose to send their greetings even 2 or 3 days in advance, and there by helped reduce congestion. At an average Re 1 per message, the SMSs mean a Rs 100 crore windfall for the operators!

while most telecom networks have the capacity to handle even a 200-per cent increase from the normal day peak-hour traffic, networks record a 300-per cent increase. Therefore, subscribers continued to face a clogged network across the country. While some complained of receiving the same message from the same contact more than twice, others said messages sent took more than half a day to reach the destinations. And those trying to talk to their friends at midnight found that the calls were just not going through.

The operators said the problem was not unique to India as cellular service providers across the world face a congested network on New Year eve. In 2007, authorities in some countries such as Spain, advised their mobile consumers to send their greetings in advance or use e-mail instead.

According to TRAI, the average number of SMS being sent per subscriber is 31 per month.

Labels: Mobile, SMS

SMSGupshup.com now provides Free personal messaging and free picture greetings. You can send Free personal messages from the web at smsmgupshup.com, in addition to the regular group messages using Gupshup.

You can also send the free picture greetings from the cell phone or the web interface. They provide picture greetings for New Year, bday, flower, cake, anniv, heart and more. (The picture messages are not supported in CDMA.) You can send text or pictures, to a group or an individual. BTW, the messages to the 56767 costs 3 rupees in Reliance. Its always good to use the web interface or the Google Talk IM interface for sending the messages.

Labels: Free SMS