Making History Alive

Kontera : The next generation of E-marketing

2010-11-29T20:13:00.000-08:00

Trade has always been a key component of the human civilization form its very early days. It started off with the simple barter system and then eventually manifested itself to the multimillion dollar venture it has come to become today. Some would argue that the main objective of a business organization is to maximize the profits for its owners or in the case of a publicly-traded company, its stockholders. Others would say that its principle aim is to cater to the needs and interests of a larger group of stakeholders, including its employees, customers and even the society in a larger sense. In the process of serving these desired groups of interest or the stakeholders the respective trade organizations use make use of the concept of publicizing. More often the organizations use advertising as a mode of publicizing their product or their trademark.

What is advertising and why is it so important in the commercial world?

“Advertising: it’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere! Everyone is assailed with advertising messages every waking moment. The obvious media- television, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards and direct mail- are just the tip of the advertising iceberg. Your cereal boxes, milk cartons, clothing, bedding, fashion accessories and even your automobiles are covered in advertising. Into this cauldron of advertising vehicles has been thrown the Internet, grocery carts, the reverse side of cash register tapes, ATM screens, even displays in some public restrooms...”
(Dahl, 2006, p. 8)

Advertising therefore can be interpreted as a form of communication, intended to persuade an audience be it viewers, readers or listeners- to purchase or take some action upon products, ideals or services. A basic advertisement includes the name of a product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer, fundamentally with the hope of persuading a target consumer to purchase or to consume the particular brand in question. These marketing messages or advertisements as they are more commonly known, are usually paid for by the sponsors and viewed by the prospective consumers via various media. Given the competition among global organizations for any particular limited market, those who transfer their message clearly and more effectively becomes more successful in selling the respective product. The simple explanation behind this whole process is that humans prefer to choose what they know rather than what they don’t. This has made advertising a indispensable element in establishing successful businesses transactions.

Born with the Internet-boom in the early 90s, ‘online advertising’ toady outsmarts all the other forms of advertising that exist in the world. Most trade organizations yearn for a strong online presence which is achieved by their websites and by advertising their products and services online. One minor setback with this concept is that the products will only be advertised to customers visiting the relevant website. Therefore a new set of online advertising companies have quickly gaining momentum as they supply ‘ad-publishers’ to advertisers. These ad-publishers will publish advertisements given by third party companies who will be paid based on the advertising traffic they direct to the publisher. The most notable third party ad-publisher is Google with its ‘AdSense’ program which allow thousands of blogs and smaller websites to become publishers thus allowing the advertisers a more cost effective advertising budget.

Most online advertising programs use the concept of ‘keywords’ which means that the third party advertising company will look for key words highlighted by the article writer and based on the key word the relevant advertisement will be displayed. For example: if the article has words like ‘college degrees’ or ‘undergraduate courses’ as its key words the advertising company will display advertisements on universities which provide college degrees or similar institutes that conduct undergraduate courses. One drawback of this scenario is that the given key words may not accurately represent the true content of the article as a whole and finally the displayed article might not have a significant relevance to the displayed advertisement. An excellent example would be an article written on Microsoft Windows operating system that has ‘Windows’ as its key word. Unfortunately the ad broker might display advertisements of companies who sell pure simple windows- not the software, but the kind you find in houses- over the Internet. This problem is caused because content identification algorithms focus primarily on the key words rather than on the actual content of the entire article.

“Better targeting of ads using individual interests and individual behaviors will ensure that we do not bore or annoy as many people with each ad,” says Eric Clemons , Professor of Operations and Information Management at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He further elaborates that this factor was in fact a major catalyst that contributed to the dramatic decline in 2009 advertising revenues. The simple concept behind the story is that online advertising requires a much more dynamic and scalable model which will support both the content viewers and the advertisers rather than annoying them.

It is in circumstances such as this that Kontera proves it true potential. What is Kontera and what does it have to do with online advertising? By definition Kontera Technologies, Inc. is an advertising network which provides in-text advertising and information services. How does it operate? If you are a frequent visitor at various blogs run by independent Bloggers you will come across words which are underlined twice. The underlining ain’t for emphasis - it illustrates that these underlined words are serving a dual purpose as advertisements.When a certain reader moves his/her cursor over one of the underlined words above, a pop-up advertisement appears, partially obscuring the article. In the ad above the word “AdWords” for instance is an online dictionary from which the user can search the meaning of words.

Figure 1: The use of double underlined words as advertisements

What is the difference between Kontera and other in-text ad brokers? Is Kontera different? How so? The answer lies in the technology Kontera is using. With the introduction of the Synapse engine a few months back the Konetera flagship product ‘Contentlink’ is able analyse the overall content of the article. More importantly it is capable of analysing the subject matter and the content of the article allowing it to deliver the most relevant ads to its readers (Figure 2). Therefore the advertisements which the consumers will be viewing will not just be keyword matching advertisements but those that have a relevance to the content that is being read. This enables a better user experience plus more revenue generation for both the publisher and the advertiser. With the Synapse algorithm analyzing everything in the network in real-time, it will be possible to display even more relevant advertisements over the course of time. Moreover, with the strategy of ‘Topical Targeting’ Kontera is able to identify thousands of concepts and expanded phrases that are relevant to the topics of interest of any advertiser’s target audience. With the advancement of this technology the relevance of advertisements will increase immensely, thus ensuring the trust between the advertiser and the consumer.

Figure 2: The use of Content in advertising.

A simple example could be denoted as follows. Say, you have blogged about a newly released computer game: James Cameron's Avatar, The Game, Ubisoft etc. Regular ad networks that use keyword lists would provide you with a list of ads referring to computer games by Ubisoft in the same genre of the game and the literal meaning of the title. Kontera, on the other hand, with the use of its Synapse algorithm will analyse everything in the network in real-time and will identify that the game is actually based on the James Cameron movie ‘Avatar’, additionally it will display advertisements relating to the movie, where to buy a blue ray version or a DVD etc. Hence it is crystal clear that Kontera contains a higher level of artificial intelligence that is beyond its other static In-Text advertising market competitors.

Furthermore, Kontera’s synapse engine contains the following innovations:
● Dynamic ‘A/B’ optimization – Kontera Synapse tests different topics and monitors how users interact with each page on Kontera’s network in real-time. The In-Text phrases with which end users interact more, represent users’ interests. In this way intent is determined through “the voice of the users.”

● Phrase Discovery and Exploration – Kontera Synapse automatically identifies and tracks the trending of new phrases, as they appear across the network. Those phrases are cross linked to relevant topics and entities (people, places, etc.).

● Comprehensive brand safety controls – Synapse includes a full suite of brand safety capabilities. Advertisers benefit from Kontera’s knowledge of sensitive topics and keywords within each category. In addition, specific ‘avoid’ lists can be defined for an advertiser or specific campaigns. These controls ensure that advertisers are not proximate to content that is harmful to their brand.

One of the most important concepts implemented is the brand safety controls. This allows the more sensitive topics to be very specific, preventing scenarios like that of the advertisement that can be misinterpreted as referring to an ordinary ‘windows sale,’ while the content of article is in fact specifically referring to the Microsoft Windows XP software. This enables a great brand safety in advertising.

If we forget the technical brilliance of Kontera for a moment, there are a few other things which will always lift Kontera to a level beyond your expectations. One of them is the administrator panel offered for the users. In many cases for the publishers. Kontera supports a variety of content management systems, thus publishers can set up Kontera in their websites which are powered by WordPress Blogger Joomla and Drupal with just a few clicks. In addition Kontera automatically generates the code to be fitted into any custom website. Therefore even a publisher with no technical background can integrate Kontera into his/her website. Figure 3 illustrates the Kontera interface for creating a custom code for the above scenario.

Fingure 3 : Kontera Setup Page

After setting up Kontera the most important thing for a publisher is to view how well he/she is doing in Kontera. To support this Kontera has provided an elegant interface from which the user can view not just the earning but also the click ratios and number of visits. The reports could be generated for a time period but the default is set to a week. The users can compare the traffic variations and the earnings on a daily basis. Plus, detailed reports based on larger time frames and keyword reports can also be generated. A URL report can be generated to identify the pages with the highest traffic rate within a week. With the enabled reporting mechanism the publishers can identify the most frequent keywords and trends in the market. More importantly the publisher can use this information to navigate their websites based on the content and context. This proves that Kontera not only gives the publisher an income but also the data from which he/she can derive certain facts. These facts can be used as tools in upgrading as well as in the process of making decisions. Figure 4 provides a screenshot of a reporting page.

Figure 4: The reporting interface.

Finally at the end of the day, all publishers are concerned about their earnings and more importantly how their earnings can be transferred to them. Some advertising companies have a long arduous process in transferring earnings, I have personally experienced this shortcoming with Google’s AdSence. For South Asian countries like ours Google AdSence uses a cheque payment method and usually I spend about three months getting one cheque settled, that’s really a tear-some process. Contrarily, Kontera offers multiple paying methods for you to choose from (Figure 5). A user can use the traditional cheque payment methods, a wired transfer or a Paypal transfer. In fact enabling a Paypal transfer is really cool, as Paypal is supported by almost all the online auction and shopping websites so basically you can use your earnings instantly rather than waiting for a lengthy and timeconsuming process.

Figure 5: A screenshot of the payment method selection.

So why do I prefer Kontera?

I think all the above factors sum up my answer. Yet there are a few additional elements that increase my loyalty towards Kontera. Well for one, for new publishers Kontera allows a great rate. It can be up to 70% Revenue Share, Signing Bonus for qualified sites with over 25k US page-views/month and you get paid starting at $50! That’s basically more than what we ask for. On the other hand Kontera is extremely user-friendly, anything can be done graphically and it has plug-ins that support all the major content management systems.

Kontera has always kept things simple. If you are a Blogger- some extra money, if you are a publisher- an easy way which won’t chase away the viewers and more importantly when you are a viewer you cam view relevant adds, when you want, as you want. Finally, for me, a relatively small Blogger, what I have learnt is that big or small Kontera has something to offer for ALL.

The Magadiya @ Java World Congress

2010-11-22T04:17:00.000-08:00

As there were few concerns regarding the world Java congress I too had a look. Just to check what the hell was going on. But unfortunately the site http://www.javaworldcongress.org/ was not to be seen. So I did some goggling. And found that the site is no more but a cached version is available. Then later I had a view. The Java Congress is having a partnership with some organizations as collaborators.

I just had a peep and most of the sites directing to those institutes was not available. But i was able to find websites of two collaborators.

First one was a organization called Home net. Just look at the address of the organization.

The second one was a organization called DevKnow. Just look at the address of the organization.

Its really funny that the both organizations have the same address. And more importantly one organization (Dev know) is having the address of the Java World Congress Secretariat as its address.

Something somewhere is not correct.

Business Process Outsourcing – The Other side of the white-collar

2010-04-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) was born with capitalism as a consequence of the
uncontrolled competition between capitalists, something inherent to this system. It is a means of increasing the exploitation of the whole working class both in the West and East with sole ambition of increasing profits for capitalist entrepreneurs!
The two headed beast Outsourcing has caused the destruction of thousands of jobs in the Western countries. In a few decades entire industrial branches have been almost entirely transferred to countries with much lower manpower costs. Corporations view it as an opportunity to lower costs while widening markets.

The effects of outsourcing don’t only hit those who lose their jobs in the western countries. It is the whole of the world waged people which is subjected to the pressure of the insane, competitive race between capitalist nations and to the blackmail of outsourcing, both in the country of departure and in the relocated industry. In reality, this has resulted in exploitation of developing nations and reducing

labor standards on a global scale. What illustrates the reality of outsourcing is the ruthless competition that is forced on different parts of the working class at the international level.

The BPO industry -Shift from blue collar to white collar

It all started few decades ago in labor intensive low tech manufacturing fields like apparel industry. Now outsourcing is spreading to new categories of workers, white collar and skilled labor. Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a form of outsourcing that involves the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of specific business functions (or processes) to a third-party service provider.

BPO is typically categorized into back office outsourcing - which includes internal business functions such IT, finance and accounting, and front office outsourcing - which includes customer-related services such as contact center services

The high-tech BPO industry – the tear drop of Sri Lankan youth

These multinational so called Advanced TechnologyCenters (ATCs) promise a challenging environmentat work due to strict delivery deadlines demanded by US, Europe and Middle-East clients. These companies bill anything above USD 150 per man day for a basic resource for IT services to US Clients, though only 10-15% is passed to the employees. The balance of expenses before earnings per share is incurred on maintaining a state-of-the-art Technology
infrastructure and remunerating higher management at US Standard - Salary, Benefits and Perks. The operational model demands at least 48 working hours (on the paper) per week, where project managers have strict guidelines to ensure employee productivity.

However, in reality most of the young employees (Mostly agebetween 22 to30) are frequently FORCED to work even more than TWENTY FOUR CONTINUOUS HOURS OF WORK without proper break or rest. The attitude towards employees has been disastrous in some cases; where in the past, hundreds of employees have been laid off within few weeks. Directly or indirectly forcing a permanent employee to resign at short notice from work has been a specialty area of these so called prestigious BPO companies for the last 5 years. In most of the cases the employees who attend the work in the morning are given their termination letter and asked to go home saying that the company has not met the expected profit margin for the financial quarter. However it is generally seen that the same company continue to recruit new employees from the very next day! They continue to apply various techniques to hire-at-will, and fire-at-will. Although the recruitment advertisements appearing Newspapers and web sites look very enticing, scant regard has been paid to the statutory requirements of employing persons in Sri Lanka. Some of the violations in these so called ATCs include manager-employee harassment and humiliation at work, getting signatures on official documents under force and duress, promotions and career success based on favoritism and acquaintance, and host of other violation of mandatory local statutory requirements.

Fascinating recruitment drives

The 10000+ IT and engineering related workforce in Sri Lanka of which 80% are below project
manager level, is hired from Universities in Sri Lanka.

These multinational giants conduct well organized recruitment drive and allocate a significant budget for this purpose. Sponsoring at Career Fairs, Career Days etc. are some of the techniques proven to be effective in attracting fresh graduates into the workforce. Most of them join with promises given by the recruitment division which ranges from working abroad, branded career start, corporate image, market leading remuneration etc.

Role stretching – More strain for employee and higher profit for company

Role Stretching is a practice of some of the US basedcompanies where an employee is encouraged to play the role of a senior person. The employee does not get any additional compensation or other benefits for this exercise, but they are expected to work even harder and
billed at a higher rate to the customers. The employee is given the expectation that, after playing the ’stretched’ role, they would be subject to an early promotion. But this is hardly the truth, but only an enticement to work harder. There are several other deceptive and crafty techniques to obtain higher productivity from an employee.

Exploiting the youth

The workforce predominantly consists of workers between ages 22-38 years with an average age of 30. Most of the workforce is from middle class families who have limited influence in society to expose or take legal action against violations committed by the more affluent comprador Management of these blue chip companies. Hence most of them silently suffer until they are tactfully drained out of their soul and spirit. Besides, any legal action against a multinational giant could deprive an employee of a respectable career, subsequently, due to possible retaliation by the Management.

Brain strokes – The silent killer

There have been a number of deaths reported within last few years, though there have been past reports of casualties who have survived strokes also known as ‘brain attacks’. High tech IT work itself involves considerable stress due to immaturity of technologies used and high expectation levels of customers When the management put extra pressure by cutting down the effort estimates and resources, the youth has no option but to work day and night continuously for prolonged periods. Some of unfortunate pay the ultimate price of their lives while most of others loose their social and family lives. Most companies operate like sweatshops. They don’t value people, and yes, they definitely don’t value the sentiments of people. True – This is a cut-throat competition world, but does it require people to behave as if they are the megalomaniac dictators?

Government must take actions

Out sourcing is one of the few aspects that may be befitted to developing countries. Since BPO companies are on the increase in Sri Lanka, it would be prudent for the statutory authorities of Sri Lanka to investigate and monitor the operation of BPO companies particularly the level of compliance to Shops and Offices Act and the Industrial Disputes Act.
It would also be useful for International Human Rights Organizations to monitor the level of treatment meted out to this white collar workers and devise a channel to listen to any stories and experiences that are worthy for investigation.

Enlightening the employees – the way to win over slavery

This article has been written in order to educate the plight of white collar workers in a typical BPO organization, so as to influence maintaining of checks and balances to ensure adherence to stringent statutory and Human Rights principles in treating Sri Lankan intellectual segment when selling knowledge services overseas. It is up to the ‘workers’ (regardless of blue collar or white collar) of the whole world to understand themselves as comrades in struggle and hold out their hands across the limits of sectors and frontiers. They need to make their disparate movements into a single struggle against capitalism and develop the consciousness that this struggle can come to fruition through the destruction of the capitalist system. This means the abolition of wage labor and of labour power as a commodity, which is the root of the proletariat’s slavery.

(courtesy:: www.lankarising.com)

Love your work, but not the company

2010-04-10T07:03:00.000-07:00

There is great saying “Love your work, but not the company”. However, it takes so much of time for most of us to understand the philosophy behind this great saying. One who comes from a village rooted with Buddhist value system usually takes longer time to understand the reality behind the above saying.
By the time he understands the reality it is usually too late because good part of their youth is already exploited by private owned or multi national companies.

The capitalist system

The post colonial political leadership has been dominated by compressed families in Colombo. Although Western colonial masters officially left our country, they had established the capitalist system. The capitalist system continues exploiting local labor in various industries ranging from white color IT industry to blue collar Garment industry. The so called open economy paved the way to pump out remaining money by selling excessive western junks ranging from Coca Cola spirit to Lux soap.

The village life

Village is a place where social bonds are tight. People respect deep rooted values conditioned by Sinhala Buddhist culture. They have ample time to care and help each other. Most of the time, the neighborhood in village consist of close relatives. Therefore, they hardly ever feel social insecurity in their life.

The temptation

The capitalist system demands people for their multi-national companies to operate. Their needs range from physical labor to supervisors and more privileged management posts. They use politico-economic domination to attract people for their system. Colonial educational system provides most of the management workers while the villages are targeted for cheap labor.

On one hand they have created a miserable reflection on the life of the village and on other hand creating a rosy cooperate image on their multi-national companies targeting relatively ignorant youth into their vicious.

The vicious cycle

A youth who comes from traditional village family background expect the same friendly and co-operative culture in the company. Companies usually promise the same and set various targets to keep the person motivated. He has thousands of dreams for the future. Ambitious employee is gold for the company. He will do anything and everything to fulfill his ambitions. Trap in to housing or vehicle loan will further tighten him into the vicious system. Now, he will be willing to give more than hundred percent to the company for his mere survival in his fantasy world! Late hours and long weekends will be taken for granted.

The reality - Company is not a human

The fact is that “Company is not a human”. A limited liability company is formed for the sole purpose of generating profits. There are no owners as such in a listed company. There are only share holders who freely buy and sell their shares eying for better profits for their investment. The same person who invested in your company this year may sell all his shares in your company and invest those in a competing company next year. He may be investing in a completely different area from your field. Though workers are victims of specialization, money is freely movable in market economy!

The investors’ interest on a company is short term and therefore company is always on a survival mode. Savings is not in the vocabulary of capitalist company. If the company has made huge profit last year the bulk is already shared among the share holders and new target is set for the next year. In the same time the same investors who benefited the profit last year may attracted to some other venture this year.

Face the reality
You may have been promised a rosy way up by your top management to keep you motivated. But in reality, every company is in a consistent struggle of surviving in every year by year. The capitalist system is molded in such formula. You are not working for a human but for a mechanism meant for profit making. Therefore, if you blindly love your job you are just another fool.

The capitalist system has different branches name Human Resource Management to keep the spirit up in the company. Every one from top to bottom is asked to fool the next level. However the people in the top management who comes from compressed business families clearly know this reality and they are shameless to participate in this vicious system for their benefit.

But you may be an innocent victim of the vicious system at one level. You may be forced to play the dirty tricks on your sub ordinates at another level . If you are not moral conscious you may survive in the system or else you will be forced to quit soon.

Do you still love your job? The decision and subsequent consequences are with you!!

References:
- Love Your Business More Than Your Family (This is what the west moulded entrepreneurs are taught !)

(refferenced form http://www.lankarising.com)

Gamification: Turning Work Into Play An Interview with David Helgason, CEO of Unity

2010-04-06T03:14:00.000-07:00

Last month, h+ covered the work of Professor Byron Reeves, who champions the adaptation of gaming technologies for the workplace. Around the same time, David Helgason of Unity, a company that produces game development tools for the Web, mobile phones, and the Wii announced “The Year of Gamification” on the Unity blog (See Resources). For Helgason, gamification is the application of game technology and game design outside “gamespace” and the acceptance of games in non-gaming sectors. Usually, Helgason’s customers use his technology to create games like Zombieville for the iPhone. But lately, he’s noted an increase in customers using Unity to create employee training programs, among other things. h+ talked with Helgason to get a sense of the practical consequences of gamification.

Fedor 11: Making a Way Out

2009-06-19T06:31:00.000-07:00

Since i have been a fan of fedora since fedora 8 it has added its newest release fedora 11. Since fedora is one of the most user friendly and stable linux distributions avaliable fedora 11 seems to come handy.

As noted these are few of the best features in Fedora.

1) Fast Boot: Fedora developers' goal was to get users from turning on their PC to a GNOME login screen in 20-seconds or less.

2) Ext4 file system by default. Ext4 is the latest official Linux file system, and its biggest advantage is for servers.

3) Better graphics. Fedora 11 uses X.server 1.6 for graphics and that means you'll see an overall better and more stable display.

4) Synaptics touchpad improvements.

5) Fingerprint - Extensive work has been done to make fingerprint readers easy to use as an authentication mechanism.

6)Virt Improved Console - In Fedora 10 and earlier the virtual guest console is limited to a screen resolution of 800x600. In Fedora 11 the goal is to have the screen default to at least 1024x768 resolution out of the box.

So why not try it out for your self .................

Yarl Devi : The train of HOPE

2009-04-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

The media of the last week was full of the launch of the Peace Train to Vavuniya on the 20th of May. Looking back at the protracted armed conflict in this country, the `moments of peace` or more accurately, the `the moments when war is absent` have been few and far between.

The Yarl Devi intercity express train was the train which connected the Jaffna peninsula with the rest of the country. And she had two sisters one moving to southern sriklanka and the other moving to hill country. This is the first advertisement published by the Srilanka Railway department is the following.

Last train moved to the jafna peninsula in 1987 and never returned until it was shipped to Colombo when the armed forces took control of the jaffna pennisula in 1996. There after the train opperated only to vavniya.

Both Tiger Air Crafts Downed

2009-02-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

The confirmed sources says both LTTE aricrafts had been shot down. Sources say the first plane downed on the IRD building following anti-aircraft gunfire. over 40 persons, majority civilians were injured in the downing of the plane. One person later died. The other plane went down at Anamaduwa following F7 attack.

LTTE aircraft shot in the skies of colombo

2009-02-20T09:44:00.000-08:00

Unconfirmed reports form Colombo indicates that one of the two aircraft's carried the air strike had been shot down by the sri lanka air force.

the following link provides an insight of the usage of light aircraft's by the LTTE. Click here to view the article.

LTTE Aircrafts attacks Colombo 20/02/2008

2009-02-20T09:25:00.000-08:00

Latest reports form colombo Says that two tiger air crafts have bombed the city of Colombo. The location was a civilian settlement and the inland revenue department. 28 Civilians are reported injured and one civilian killed. The location of the explosion is in close proximity to the capital Colombo.

The anti aircraft guns was heard firing form the roof tops of the secured buildings. The attack
comes after few hours the defense ministry has announced that it had finally encircled the tigers last bastion.

"Two aircraft came and the engagement is still going on," said Lankan air force spokesman, Wing Commander Janaka Nanayakkara.

The LTTE aircraft was spotted over the skies in northwestern Mannar forcing the authorities in Colombo to activate air defenses system and shut down power supply in the national capital.

According to sources, the radar in Mannar detected the LTTE aircraft short while ago following which the air defense system in Colombo was activated.

Anti-aircraft guns were heard firing in the air in Colombo.

Power was cut off and searchlights pointed to the sky to detect any suspected LTTE aircraft, he said.

Troops in the north reported that two unidentified aircraft were heading towards Colombo, the sources said.

In the last few months the Tamil tigers of Elam (LTTE) conducted 9 air raids at Colombo and suburbs. The Srilankan Air force if equipped with Chinese made F7 interceptors and radars to counter the treat.

The latest reports indicated one aircraft was shot down by the air force.

More information will follow.

AMD Phenom II Overclocked to 6.5GHz - New World Record

2009-02-02T03:15:00.000-08:00

The story sounds familiar: Intel hits a new milestone in nanometer architecture, and AMD waits a while to follow up. It happened with 65nm processors, and it's happening again now. Two days shy of a year since Intel launched Penryn, its first 45nm chip, AMD is finally ready to counter with a few 45nm CPUs of its own--Phenom II has finally arrived. But based on our hands-on testing of two Phenom II machines--the Dell XPS 625 and the Maingear Dash--the chip isn't quite as dominating as AMD would have you believe.

AMD Phenom II Explained

AMD is positioning Phenom II in between Intel's Core 2 Quad and Core i7 offerings. Phenom II chips are available in two versions, the X4 920 and the X4 940 Black Edition, which compete tit-for-tat against Intel's highest Core 2 Quad CPU frequencies at 2.8 and 3.0 GHz, respectively.

AMD Phenom II CPUAMD bumped the shared L3 cache of the Phenom II processors up from 2MB to 6MB, giving each CPU a total cache of 8MB. L3 cache serves as a shared memory space for the cores to draw from. Increasing the amount improves the CPU's ability to pull data from this faster memory space instead of having to issue slower requests to the system's main memory. The move puts Phenom II processors right in the middle of Intel's Core 2 Quad lineup for cache size, but the result is still short of the 12MB caches found on higher-end Core i7 chips.

Though limited overclocking of the 920-edition processors is available through AMD's OverDrive software, the company is tipping its hat toward the extreme-performance crowd with its Black Edition processors. These CPUs run multiplier-unlocked, which liquid-nitrogen-armed enthusiasts have been able to exploit to frequencies above 6 GHz, surpassing the world record for Intel Core i7 processors, which stands at 5.5 GHz.

The new world Record

In the past, the AMD Phenom II has been overclocked to an extremely impressive 5 GHz. And while this was extremely impressive, it would seem that AMD wouldn’t want to be outdone.

AMD’s own Pete Hardman and Sami Makinen were able to overclock an AMD Phenom II to a blazing 6.5GHz, at an operating temperature of –230 degrees Celsius using liquid nitrogen and liquid helium as their cooling agents.

Should you be interested in seeing the whole process play out, be sure and check out the video here (and, as is usual with videos of this nature, prepare your ears for some awful trance music).

Defending Viruses that spreads from usb drives

2009-01-10T03:12:00.000-08:00

Well all of us have the problem of viruses if we use Microsoft versions of operating systems. Most often the usb drive becomes a virus truck. The moment we plug our pen drive to a windows machine it is Automatically mounted and played. This is configured using the autorun.inf file. This file consists of the cell scripts to execute when the USB is mounted via the windows based operating systems.

Now what the viruses do is when it write itself to the USB disk it

also edits the Autorun.inf with a command to execute itself on the time of mount.

such edited file is shown below

[autorun]
open=system.exe
shellexecute=system.exe
shell\Explore\command=system.exe
shell\Open\command=system.exe
shell=Explore

Here the system.exe is a virus. So how can we get through with this. The way Im going to tell you is by disabling the autorun feature of the Operating system. Well this is not an exact cure but is will hold on as it wont execute any files in a USB or a Media drive (CD VCD).

Once this is done you want see the Selection menu that pops in when you plug the pan drive or a CD. But this is easy than removing viruses.

So this is how to disable this feature.

We do this using the Group Policy editor. Like many other management consoles, the GPE is not listed in Start-All Programs. To open it, go to Start-Run and enter "gpedit.msc" (without quotes). Figure 1 shows one view of the console.

figure 1

So once this dialogue appears go to the Computer configeration and click on the Administrative Templates. A tree list will be opened. Click on the system folder and you will see a set of files open on the settings. Scroll it down till you find the Turn off AutoPlay.

once clicked on the Turn off Auto Play you will get this type of dialogue. Click on the disables radio button. And press ok. So we are done

So as we are done now windows have the autorun feature disabled. This will partaily protect you form the viruses that comes within the USB.

The tradeoff we are facing here is that the DVD and Audio CDS wont autoplay. You will have to manually autoplay them using a media player or by write clicking the disk.

Well You wont have these problems if you move to UBUNTU.

2008 Best of Open Source Software

2008-12-30T00:55:00.000-08:00

The Infoworld had selected this year best open source software under eight categories covering business and productivity applications, development tools, middleware, networking, security, and storage. They have chosen 60 products.

Among the easy picks for this year’s winners were OpenOffice.org for office productivity suite, Snort for network intrusion detection, and Splunk for security log analysis. Although, these applications were already believed to be solutions ahead of their competition, InfoWorld’s editors, analysts, reviewers really had a difficult time choosing between other solutions in all eight categories that included the following: enterprise applications such as CRM, ERP, BI, and reporting; collaborative applications, including mail/calendar, wiki, and social networking; desktop productivity apps from office suites to 3-D modeling; platforms and middleware, including operating systems, databases, virtualization, and SOA integration; developer tools from AJAX and rich Internet apps to Web service testing and version control; networking, including server monitoring, routing, Wi-Fi scanning, and VoIP software; security software, including firewall, IDS, disk encryption, and security testing; and storage which includes monitoring and administration, backup, and NAS.

Three sun products won the awards in two different categories: My SQL as best database and the recently acquired VirtualBox as best desktop virtualization both under the Best of Open Source Platforms and Middle category and OpenOffice.org as best productivity suite under Best of Open Source Productivity Apps category.

A partial list of the winners as listed in the InfoWorld website is as follows:

Best of open source in productivity applications

Audacity, Sound Editing
Blender, 3D Modeling
Firefox, Web Browser
GIMP, Image Editing
OpenOffice.org, Productivity Suite

PDFCreator, PDF Creation

Best of open source in enterprise applications

Alfresco Community, Content Management
Compiere, Enterprise Resource Planning
dotProject, Project Management
Hyperic HQ, Application Monitoring
Intalio BPMS, Business Process Management
JasperReports, Reporting
Liferay Portal, Enterprise Portal
Magento eCommerce, E-Commerce
Pentaho Open BI Suite, Business Intelligence

SugarCRM, Customer Relationship Management

Best of open source in collaboration

Elgg, Social Networking
MediaWiki, Wiki
VNC and Chicken of the VNC, Remote Control
Scalix, Mail and Calendar

WordPress, Blog Publishing

Best of open source in networking

Asterisk, IP Telephony
AWStats, Log File Analyzer
InSSIDer, Wireless Network Scanner
Nagios, Server Monitoring
NDISwrapper, Wireless Network Interface
Vyatta, Router, Firewall, & VPN
Wireshark, Network Protocol Analyzer

Zenoss Core, Network Monitoring

Best of open source in platforms and middleware

CentOS, Server Operating System
JBossESB, Enterprise Service Bus
MySQL, Database
phpMyAdmin, MySQL Administration
Puppy Linux, Small-Footprint OS
Talend Open Studio, Data Integration
Ubuntu, Desktop Operating System
VirtualBox, Desktop Virtualization

Xen, Server Virtualization

Best of open source in security

AppArmor, Application Security
Metasploit Framework, Penetration Toolkit
Ophcrack, Password Cracker
SmoothWall Express, Network Firewall
Snort with BASE, Network Intrusion Detection
Splunk, Security Log Analysis
TrueCrypt, Disk Encryption

Untangle Gateway Platform, Gateway Security

For complete coverage and the rest of the winners see the article at InfoWold.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/04/32TC-bossies-2008_1.html

Software Defined Radio : The radio for the next era

2008-12-18T21:48:00.000-08:00

While searching for a research oriented project for the final year at the university i come across some interesting topics. Among them the software defined Radio was some thing i have never heard.

What is software defined Radio ;

We all know of the radios. And often we know that radio cards provide the hardware capability to use radio via a PC. And we have a software running to control the sound the channels. But cant we just go beyond that. Software defined radio is the proposed mechanism for doing that. Its simply implementing the hardware capabilities via software. Dont get it. lets pay a Closer look.

A closer look

Software radio is the technique of getting code as close to the antenna as possible. It turns radio hardware problems into software problems. The fundamental characteristic of software radio is that software defines the transmitted waveforms, and software demodulates the received waveforms. This is in contrast to most radios in which the processing is done with either analog circuitry or analog circuitry combined with digital chips. GNU Radio is a free software toolkit for building software radios.

Software radio is a revolution in radio design due to its ability to create radios that change on the fly, creating new choices for users. At the baseline, software radios can do pretty much anything a traditional radio can do. The exciting part is the flexibility that software provides you. Instead of a bunch of fixed function gadgets, in the next few years we'll see a move to universal communication devices.

What took so long ?

The concept of a software radio is not new. It has lasted for sometime until recently the PC s where cable of implementing and running the complex algorithms that implements the Digital to voice conversion. This is not as simple as it seems. As the only input that the computer gains is an Analog to digital converted data form their on its all software. So we have the code at the closest level to the antenna.

So what is the best part of this ?

Well that is yet to come. Imagine a device which you can plug into your computer and provide the relevant function Independent of the device. The potential is to build decentralized communication systems. If you look at today's systems, the vast majority are infrastructure-based. Broadcast radio and TV provide a one-way channel, are tightly regulated and the content is controlled by a handful of organizations. Cell phones are a great convenience, but the features your phone supports are determined by the operator's interests, not yours.Imagine a device that can morph into a cell phone and get you connectivity using GPRS, 802.11 Wi-Fi, 802.16 WiMax, a satellite hookup or the emerging standard of the day. You could determine your location using GPS, GLONASS or both. And the antenna working as a small radar station. A software defined Radar.

links

forum for software defined radio

Top 10 * 5 predictions for 2009

2008-12-15T03:14:00.000-08:00

Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009

1. Virtualization
2. Business Intelligence
3. Cloud Computing
4. Green IT
5. Unified Communications
6. Social Software and Social Networking
7. Web Oriented Architecture
8. Enterprise Mashups
9. Specialized Systems
10. Servers – Beyond Blades

Read more

Best destinations and types of travel to explore in 2009.

(By The Specialty Travel Agents Association (STAA))

1. Culinary
2. Dominican Republic
3. Ecotourism - (Srilanka , Bahamas Islands)
4. Galapagos Islands
5. Maldives
6. Mexico
7. New Zealand
8. Portugal
9. South Africa
10.Thailand

Top 10 Blogs for Writers for 2008 / 2009

1. Copyblogger:

2. Men With Pens:

3. Freelance Writing Jobs:

4. Write to Done:

5. Confident Writing:

6. The Renegade Writer:

7. Remarkable Communication: succeed.

8. Writing Journey:

9. Freelance Parent:

10. Urban Muse:

Top 10 fastest-growing companies

Here are the companies that scored highest in their ability to grow revenues and net income, alongside the corresponding average year-on-year growth rate over a period of four years.

Company Revenue Growth (%)

1. Baidu.com 154.23
2. Lenovo Group 137.79
3. Google 73.9
4. Research in Motion 65.95
5. Salesforce.com 62.24
6. HTC 51.39
7. Huawei Technologies 48.72
8. Blue Coat Systems 48.20
9. AT&T 46.71
10. Akamai Technologies 44.89

Company Net Income Growth (%)

1. SonicWall 733.31
2. Baidu.com 328.39
3. Salesforce.com 308.72
4. CA 286.81
5. Deutche Telekom 286.33
6. Akamai Technologies 282.63
7. Lenovo Group 201.07
8. Apple 174.93
9. Sony 149.66
10. Google 137.92

Botnets : The next generation of weapons of mass distruction

2008-12-09T23:08:00.000-08:00

"The current issue of Policy Review has a paper by an American computer scientist and the recent Permanent Undersecretary of Defense for Estonia. Drawing on the Estonian cyber attacks a year and a half ago, as well as other recent examples, they argue that botnets are the major problem. They propose that botnets should be designated 'eWMDs' — electronic weapons of mass destruction

So what is cyber attacks & cyber warfare?

Cyber warfare is asymmetric warfare; more is at risk for us than for most of our potential adversaries. Another asymmetric aspect is that the victims of cyber warfare may never be able to determine the identity of their actual attacker. Thus, America cannot meet this threat by relying solely upon a strategy of retaliation, or even offensive operations in general.

Cyber attacks are best accomplished through exploiting intelligence on the enemy’s networks and servers, and on those servers’ software, the current vulnerabilities of the software’s applications, and standard security practices and typical lapses. Cyber attackers can exploit their targets’ networks and servers such that those systems not only stop supporting their intended purposes, but actually work against those purposes. As evidenced by recent attacks on the Pentagon computer system, the United States must assume that our potential adversaries in the world are preparing for such attacks.

read more

What is the best experince of a cyber attack ?

In the Bruce Willis thriller “Live Free or Die Hard,” fiendish computer hackers throw the United States into a wild tailspin of fire and flood and national gridlock. But you need not to go to the silverscreen to witness this. Many banks and finacial organizations faces the treat of such attacks. In addtiion when the entire defence network depends on the communication channels an attack on that chaneel makes the user vanerable to all types of attacks.

the Estoinan experiece is a clear example. On May 2007, the events that took placein Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, proved everyone wrong. On that day, Estonia fell victim to the first-ever, real Internet war. Read more

So what is a botnet ?

Botnet is a jargon term for a collection of software robots, or bots, that run autonomously . The term is often associated with malicious software but it can also refer to the network of computers using distributed computing software.

While the term "botnet" can be used to refer to any group of bots, such as IRC bots, this word is generally used to refer to a collection of compromised computers (called Zombie computers) running software, usually installed via worms, Trojan horses, or backdoors, under a common command-and-control infrastructure.

(Wikipedia)

Some of the proposed solutions are dicussed in the following article.
Read more

UNICOS : Powering the worlds fastest Super computers

2008-12-06T02:38:00.000-08:00

I never knew much about UNIOS untill recently when i had the idea to lean about super computers. And as i focused my attention onthe operating systems they are running UNIOS was one which powers the 9th rannking computer and is capable of powering all the Cray build super computers. (This contains 4 computers of the first ten). The latter contains what i found out about the operating system form the web. Please note these are adopted form the sites which the link is provided at the end.

what is actually UNICOS?

Unicos (officially all-caps UNICOS) is the name of a range of Unix operating system variants developed by Cray for its supercomputers. Unicos is the successor of the Cray Operating System (COS). It provides network clustering and source code compatibility layers for some other Unixes. Unicos was originally introduced in 1985 with the Cray-2 system and later ported to other Cray models. The original Unicos was based on System V.2, and had numerous BSD features (e.g., networking and file system enhancements) added to it.

Wikipeida

Characteristics
The UNICOS system makes extremely flexible and robust calculating machines with support of the following hard and software characteristics possible:

Parallel processing
The UNICOS system is the first high performance UNIX based operating system which supports SMP.

Multi-processor and multi-threading operating system
The UNICOS system is scalable on more than 32 processors. Cray aims at a small CPU percentage for the consumption of system processes, also in the greatest and the most extensive configuration.

High performance I/O bandwidth and capacity.

UNICOS I/O scales with the number of processors in the system. The standard UNIX was modified around a file system for up to 8 tbyte to support large files. The support of several devices in a system, multiple types of fixed disks and memory devices in a file system (for build in memory solutions) and the file storage strategy with the used algorithm were specified. Cache support is availably for physical devices in addition to the file system. Through this a high efficiency is made possible for some devices and file systems. The UNICOS system allows combining of buffered and direct access to I/O devices without integrity loss of the data which are not natural for the devices of other systems. For Cray is performance not acceptable without data integrity.

A layered Overview of the architecture of UNICOS

UNICOS could easly scale efficiently to 30,000 processors. This consists of two primary components—a microkernel for compute PEs and a full-featured operating system for the service PEs.(Processing Element).

Read More

E-begging: A modern trend for easy money

2008-12-02T19:23:00.000-08:00

Early Days

Begging is known as a profession of the less satisfied or the less privileged. Since the early civilizations, begging has existed in various forms. The crippled, the disabled and the older men and women who had no wealth and couldn’t earn there bread was thrown into the profession of begging. For many years in the central Asian countries the begging has established as a profession. For each town there exists a KING beggar. He is responsible for the dispatching of beggars in various locations on what quantity & what quality. And any one to beg in any place the permission had to be taken. Finally at the end of the day the beggars have to give him some portion of the earning. The king provides safety form the urban council plus the authorities through various mechanisms so the fee is reasonable. With the king in one end the beggars also had unions and groups of operation.

In addition the beggars have developed their own codes for message transferring. The objective of these messages was to identify and pinpoint certain people & places who are more generous. What time to approach them and when not to. So the history provides proof of the begging and its establishment as a profession.

Begging with the letter E in front

Today in the electronic era the begging does exist in many forms. And the beggars been more innovative in various forms have found a number of ways to beg. And the population moving into E Begging is not just the less privileged and the orphans but educated dudes in clean suits. So what is really e – Begging are the forms of e – Begging?

e – Begging

E begging is basically an any form of electronic mechanism of asking for money directly or indirectly. And the beauty is the beggars really don’t ask for money they ask for some thing else. What is that?

The forms of E – Begging

1.Google Addsence
2.Mass email delivering
3.Fake advertising and Back door information gathering
4.Hacking and software frauds

Though there are a number of other was the major way of doing a E- begging is Google addsence. So lets check how it has become a begging.

Most of the south Asian undergraduates are short of money and are seek of easy money. So who is providing it? Well the Google does it via providing ads where you will get paid for displaying them. How is that it becomes an E-begging.

What these boys do is they create some blog at a free blog posting site (eg: BlogSpot, Multiply). Then they add some content. What ever and put some content there. Now this becomes the story of the beggar. Now the Google has lots of algorithms to catch frauds. So how are you going to get the Job done. Pretty easy. Most of the mechanisms that Google catch you are known. So try to minimize chances of getting caught. This is how it’s done.

1.Get together with a group of bloggers. And post them your URL. They will return them a set of there blogs as well which you have to visit and drop clicks and page impressions. They will return the favor. This is similar to alliance with a set of baggers for the common benefit.

2.The second is the more straight forward and easiest. Use a chat engine which is not Google mail or Gtalk. Make new friends in different countries. Once they get a bit closer ask them to visit your blog and often drop they will clicks your adds. This is a decent request and the beggar enjoys a nice gain.

3.Have multiple sites for multiple areas. Every hot topic will earn you some thing. It’s like a beggar visiting Hindu temples at the ceremony days for a free meal. So the ea beggar is the same.

4.Joining a king e-Begger. This is joining a full time addsence blogger. Usually these types of bloggers own few sites with huge traffic. The king will provide you some traffic and specially good rate of clicks which no pattern. And he will charge a rate based on the earnings. Hmm remembers the traditional king beggar.

So don’t the e- beggars get caught? Don’t they have their accounts frozen? Of course they do. But don’t you often see the same beggar caught by the police after a while appears in the same place or a place nearby. It’s common for the e- beggars too. Though they are often caught this is easy money. Two hours a day will get you enough living. So why don’t you continue. After all in the Internet creating false identity is nothing. And you won’t get imprisonment for doing so. In addition you have a 6 billion dollar company waiting to pay you.

Some times It’s a privilege to be an E-beggar. But some times there are few better ways. Often we find old men who do small sales in the pavement of a road or a station. They may sell some small items, a match box or some coffee packets to cover up. These items are costly than in the retail shops but the generous men buy them as a help. This provides them a more recognition and respect.
I would like to put my self to the latter. Who provides something valuable to the reader? Not just a click or a page impression.

(This article is based on the article published by Mr BSPDR karuanarathne. Any author who wishes to use this work should obtain written permission from the author)

The Edge between antiwar campaigns and LTTE propaganda campaign

2008-11-29T01:06:00.000-08:00

Srilanka the island nation is in one of the most critical times in known history. There are signs the government forces is nailing the coffin of LTTE once a powerful outfit. Due to the evident succession in the eastern province the government of Srilanka has launched a full scale war against the LTTE in the north. The objective of this mission is to liberate the un-liberated areas in the Northern Province in the country from the shadow government of the LTTE. The current status of the war favors the Srilankan forces where they have 8 divisions surrounding the LTTE held territory while 4 divisions are just few kilometers behind kilinochchi: the administration hub of the LTTE outfit. Considering the speed of the advancement of the army it seems only a matter of time before the Killinochi falls making an evident gain in the offensive. The capturing of this town along aside with Mullativ will mark a physiological setback for the Tigers.
The LTTE strategy to face this situation was to defend their lines and force the international community (especially to India & Tamilnadu). One his heroes day speech the spireturak leader of the outfit V. Prabakaran has urged India to take part in the issue and arrange an end to the ongoing war ( India is our friend, we are not against any country, remove the hindrance of ban)"
But the situation of India has changed dramatically with the series of attacks launched at the commercial hub Mumbai by a terrorist organization. The political analyzers predict a dramatic change in India s involvement towards the war against the Terrorism. India which has already extended the ban of LTTE for 2 more years will not want its hand in a war between a terror organization and a neighboring country.
As the foreign involvement form far form coming the only chance for LTTEs survival last on the fact to convince the international community on human rights violations. And due to the suicidal attacks took place the security forces takes no chances. Every one is checked and suspected. And not often the freedom is experienced in srilanka due to heavy search operations. The majority of the community accepts this though it has a significant effect on their life. Only a very few criticizes the government for doing so. The LTTE propaganda machine often reports abductions of a white man. But most of the abducted people are found on the foreign countries after a while.
It is a known fact that more than 300,000 people are abounded with the war in the north. And the NGO are making a big noise for a cease fire. But what they forget is the LTTE is not letting them to cross over to government controlled areas. The civilians are kept by force as a defense shield. Its not an exaggeration to say that the LTTE has build most of their new camps with in the camps of the IDPs. This protects them form long range artilleries and aerial attacks. This is a part of LTTEs strategy.
If the LTTE could be forced to let the IDPS leave that leave only the two sides in the battle field. But the LTTE doesn’t want to that to happen which will make them volatile for Arial attacks and artilleries.
With the above facts it’s easy to identify the an anti war campaign at this time is doing exactly the what the terrorist wants. So though the anti war campaign is not an LTTE propaganda campaign what happens is that they become evident for what the terrorist demands. So some times you have to select the solution which may not seem the more benevolent for the goodness of a larger quantity.

Mumbai Goes in flames

2008-11-28T01:02:00.000-08:00

In one of the most violent terror attacks on Indian soil, Mumbai came under an unprecedented night attack as terrorists used heavy machine guns, including AK-47s, and grenades to strike at the city's most high-profile targets -- the hyper-busy CST (formerly VT) rail terminus; the landmark Taj Hotel at the Gateway and the luxury Oberoi Trident at Nariman Point; the domestic airport at Santa Cruz; the Cama and GT hospitals near CST; the Metro Adlabs multiplex and Mazgaon Dockyard -- killing at least 101 and sending hundreds of injured to hospital, according to latest reports.

Loud explosions and gunfire continued till late on Thursday night at the Taj Mahal hotel as well as at Trident Oberoi, and the authorities said the operation could well go into Friday.A final assault on the besieged Trident Oberoi was underway. Late in the night, there was a major fire in the Trident where about 200 people have been trapped and terrorists exploded grenades that set the roof ablaze amid exchange of gunfire.

The attacks appeared to be aimed at getting international attention as the terrorists took upto 40 British nationals and other foreigners hostage. The chairman of Hindustan Unilever Harish Manwani and CEO of the company Nitin Paranjpe were among the guests trapped at the Oberoi. All the internal board members of the multinational giant were reported to be holed up in the Oberoi hotel.

(The map depicts the locations that the attacks took place)

Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh on Friday refused to comment on investigations into the Mumbai terror attacks till the operations to flush out terrorists are over.

"I will not talk on investigations till the operations are complete. Let the security forces first flush out terrorists from Nariman House and hotels," he told reporters outside the Oberoi-Trident Hotel, the scene of the terror attacks.

Read more on the attack

NoKia n99i : A disgrace to Nokia Outfit

2008-11-24T00:44:00.000-08:00

Nokia a prestigious name in the mobile world. And the Nokia N Series comes with all the cools features. But the cost hmmmm. I was wondering for a better choice. And then was i received the information of a Nokia N99 about six months ago with all the cool features plus a huge set of usable features.

the total feature set looks like the following
Detailed Product Description

Royal VX-888+ 24k gild diamond
* Style: Slim / bar type for Men
* Material: metal cover
* Weight: 280g
* Dimension: 114mm * 44.5mm * 15 mm
* Color: gold with silver
* Frequency: GSM/GPRS 900/1800/1900
* Display: 1.88 inch TFT monitor, 260K color
* Camera: 2.0 mega pixel CMOS digital camera
* Memory: 128M bit FLASH + 64MB RAM
* Battery: 900mAh lithium
* Language: English/Chinese
* Ring tone: 30 polyphonic
* GSM Phase2 + GPRS Class B 10
* Sunplus SPCA554 Multi-chips
* Build-in Pulsator, antenna, T card
* Support 3GP video and MP3 player,
* Support T-FLASH, SMS, MMS, MP3,MP4, VMD and MIDI
* Build-in 3 games
* Support STK extra services
* Support with audio and memory depends on T-FLASH
* Support local recording, memory depends on T-FLASH
* WAP Browser (support WAP2.0, 1.2.1)

Well a total of cool features for $300 . Well I did brought this. Well did work for two months until the charger went off. So I visited a local shop but that type of particular charger is not available. Damn it i was so confused. I tried all the shops even the importers but the chargers was not available. Finally i had to use a universal charger.

Then my display went off. Once again no parts. I was doomed. Then i started my search on this phone I found some really nice stuff on this.

If you remove the casein of the phone, you will see that the phones motherboard is Motorola. And the imel will tell you that the manufacturer is also Motorola. (but its only the main board)

In addition the operating system is not Symbion as for most Motorola phone. Neither is it Nokia Os or windows CE. Its something else. This os is very common in most of the unbranded Chinese made phones, irrespective of the brand. for the phones withe lesser features the functions wont work. So its like a more general purpose operating system.

I will add more information on this phone as i finds out but up to now these are certain ,

1. This phone is not original Nokia
2. its parts are very rare
3. Its a Chinese made jargon
4. The license of its software is doubtful

Nokia phones are never like this. they are reliable & durable. Parts are very common.So i was shocked with all these. So my advice is don't buy this.