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Hame Wi-Fi Router, Power Bank, Wireless Storage Access and a lot more!

Hame 5 in 1 Router

Hame 5 in 1 (Swiss Knife!)

If you’ve been using one of the new-gen smart phones, I am sure you have complains about what battery-sucking monsters these are. Even with moderate use, they just won’t last more than a day. While one could manage by feeding them with power every once in a while, it really becomes tough when you have to travel. Phone calls, emails, social media, music, games and what not. You just can’t do without these (I am not debating whether this is good or bad. Leave that for some other time). And not just smart phones. Portable music players, speakers, console games, tablets. All of these need to be charged more often than you would like.

So is there a solution? Well, I guess there are lots. The gadget world is so full of devices that you can never be without a solution (BTW, every new gadget solves a few problems, but it creates a few as well :)). The market is flooded with power-banks that are portable. You can just get any of them. Depending upon your (and your smart phone’s) appetite for power, these are available in various capacities. So if your phone battery is 2200 mAh, a 2200 mAh power bank is sufficient to charge your phone once. A 4800 mAh power bank would charge it a little over twice.

But if you’re smart, you would not buy ‘just’ a power bank. Just like I did 😉 . My quest for a power bank led me to a wonderful range of devices that provide tons of other features apart from providing power to devices. Introducing the Hame ‘smart’ power banks (there are many other brands as well). It offers the following:

  1.  5200 mAh of solid back-up power.
  2. Wi-fi Router for wired LAN connections: If you’ve been to hotels where they just provide wired LAN for free (and charge a bomb for Wi-fi) , you know how useful this can be.
  3. Share your portable 2G/3G connection from dongle over Wifi: I have a Tata Photon  3G dongle that works like a charm with this gadget (if you’re thinking why not directly plug into your laptop and use it? Well how about Wi-fi on your smartphone? And what if you want your family/ colleagues to share the connection?)
  4. Wireless Storage: If you have a DLNA certified media device (most of the LCD/LED TVs are) and want to stream media from a hard drive or pen drive over Wi-Fi, this gadget will not let you down. I’ve tried, and it works like a charm.

I guess there was one more feature that I can’t recall. I’ve used each and every feature I’ve listed above for over 3-4 months now and they all work really well! For the price I paid, the returns are truly remarkable.

To me it is like the electronic Swiss-Knife of the modern day needs! Highly recommended.

More details on the website:

http://www.hametech.com/

I bought it from eBay, but these are available on all major online retail stores.

 

Readability

 

“Simplicity is the best policy”. I had read it as a kid. Little did I know what does it exactly mean. As I grew up, I still didn’t appreciate this. However esp. in the last few years when technology has infested our lives, I am beginning to realize how cluttered and complicated everything is.

  • My average reading span for an article on the web had reduced to a few seconds. I had trouble reading beyond the article headline.
  • 3 years ago, I could watch a complete video on TED (which was usually less than 20 minutes. No more. I hardly have the patience to watch them now.
  • I often lost context due to the web sites trying to squeeze everything in the world on their pages.

Enters the Kindle which I won’t write about (for various reasons).

Enters Readability. It is a simple service which allows you to mark articles to be read later. Nothing great so far. But that is not just what it does. It has a cool reading mode, which just makes reading fun. Just install this extremely recommended Chrome readability extension and transform your reading experience on the web for ever. It not only simplifies everything, but also allows you with options to control the font sizes, width etc.

And there is more to it. It allows you to push those articles to Kindle so that you can read them at leisure. I just can’t explain what good this does to my reading experience. Even if Readability starts charging for this service, I would be happy to pay.

There are other services like Instapaper ,which is good as well. I prefer Readability over Instapaper simply because the former can handle images when converting the article for Kindle.

Don’t ask me about the digest feature not being there in Readability (for free). Read article by article. And delete article by article. We are talking about simplifying things. Digests do not really help.

Very few things in the world simplifies life, and Readability (and Kindle of course 😉 ) does.

 

How important is your blog post’s title?

Before you go on to read, just pause for a while and think what this post is all about just by reading the title.

Chances are:

  • If you are a techie, thoughts like SEO, page rank etc. will come to your mind.
  • If you are a business guy and all that stuff, chances are that catchy, positioning  etc. come to your mind.
  • And if you are somewhere in between (probably like me), then a mix of above would flash across.

Opps!  nothing came to your mind?  Go and relax! Probably you are quite tired.

So how important is the title anyway? I won’t write all about the catchy stuff, SEO and all that. It is pretty well covered on the web. Instead, I would like to share my own experience on this subject.

Almost two years ago, I wrote a post on getting Reebok and similar watches being offered as freebies, out of sheer frustration. While I chose the title carefully, little did I know that it would become the most read and most commented article on my blog. “free reebok watch” would show my article as the top result on Google search. You can read the post here. Go read some of the comments.

Before we move on, I would like to post some of my favorite comments on the post:

  • “hey I read this.
    Plz Please Plz….
    I also want watch, Plz give….
    I never won any gift from internet or any other way.
    So I request you please arrange only 1 watch for me….
    Thanku very much.”
  • “from reading your offer i think that this is a very nice service than any other else,so plz consider my coment and snd me instruction on my mobile from where i have to get my prize.
    Thank You!!!”
  • “send we 500 rupees i will send u 5 Rebook watches. i bought them in 80 rupees”
  • “hiii this is harsha i watch this and i want 2 won this rebook wrish watch and i didnot get any thing from u plzzzzzzzzz plzzzzzzzz plzzz offer this watch to me plzzz”
  • Thanks 4 a very fruitful advice …..n do cooperate me to have this damn bold n beautiful watch as soon as possible
  • Dear Sir I like this watch please sir send me this watch at my postle address Mian Ijaz Tahir C/o Al-habib Super Store College road Burewala District Vehari Punjab Pakistan I will wait for it thanks.

There are many, you could read on if you have time.

Now my most favorite ones from two gentlemen Nithul and Naveen:

  • “nithul the way u r wasting the money of public is horrible. if u donot have the capabilities to beat a company then dont blaff that they take the help of reebok. u know u are a stupid creature who are promoting this stupid blog with reebok”
  • “Saalo comment marne par tumhe kon watch dega ,
    ye sab sab ko pagal bana rahe hai…
    apni website ko advertise krna chate hai..
    and now finally i want to buy a reebok watch upto rs 200 ,,
    (reebok square model)..
    hai koi maai ka lal jo dila de..
    hai toh mail me at
    naveenyadav929@gmail.com
    i m waiting….”

Once in a while, I get these really funny comments, it just makes my day! That is the thrill of blogging.

Now coming back to our topic on the importance of title, I can’t emphasize on it more. The title is damn important! I think my post was really crisp to have people miss the following:

Update

hi everyone, thanks for your comments. This post was just meant to express how companies are attracting customers. I of course do not have these many watches to spare! I never expected so many people to comment !!!!!

Note that all comments posted above were received after posting the update. But I hardly think anyone read it (even though it is highlighted), else I shouldn’t have received the first set of comments. Keep in mind that commenting on a blog post is really rare! Those who blog  (and track) would know. Probably out of 250 people reading an article, one would comment. Given the fact that so many people have commented on this post asking for the watch, I can confidently say that they would have just read the title and possibly the first couple of lines.

In principle,  it is just the title which motivated the people to respond to my post. If they really read the entire post, the comments would have been different.

So next time when you write that blog post, remember that it is worth spending that extra minute to think about the title 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

Sir Tim Berners-Lee Live!

 

Tim Berners-Lee, founder WWW

I am in Riyadh to attend the 2nd ELI Conference on eLearning, which is the largest conference of its kind in Saudi Arabia. I was particular excited to listen to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founder WWW and Jimmy Wales, founder Wikipedia. We all watch so many speakers on video sites like you-tube, TED etc. I was particularly interested to see if it is a different experience to listen to them live.

And there is a huge difference. You suddenly feel more connected. Even though I was just one of the crowd, there was a shuttle connection. The motivation multiplies. And suddenly the mind starts thinking a lot of new stuff. It was an a great experience.

So what does the founder of the World Wide Web (WWW) have to say about the web at this point in time. Well nothing new that we are not aware of. But still, it is different when you listen such things from legends :-). He emphasized on the following:

HTML5: Tim is bullish on HTML5 and sees the web driven by it in the times to come.

Learning on the Web: Tim believes that a lot of learning will happen on the web. It is already happening, but it would expand tremendously. (I guess he had to say this because of the theme of the conference was eLearning 😉 )

Data on the web: He particularly emphasized this point. These days, when more and more data is being pushed on the web, there’s a need of an ecosystem which can address:

 

  • Privacy
  • Anonymity of data (if required)
  • Security
  • Transparency

    The above would be the biggest challenges as we move ahead.

He also mentioned about web 3.0 which will largely we driven by the semantic web. Not to forget, the social and collaborative approach would be of significant to whatever is done on the web.

I would again say, listening to such people live is very different from watching some videos and stuff. So whenever you get an opportunity, just do not miss it. It does motivate.

I end this post with a brilliantly done image by one of the guys from ImageThink (more about the image in another post)

 

ImageThink - Tim Berners-Lee on the Web

ImageThink - Tim Berners-Lee on the Web