Mobile Phone Craze

As I'm preparing for my next big adventure, both financially logistically and mentally; part of the preparation process is picking our functional, reliable and affordable equipment. At the moment I am actively looking at a replacement mobile that'll both address my mobile phone needs and essentially also be useful for a media demanding adventure.

I have a Nokia 95 now and the truth is that is works perfectly fine - more than fine actually. Sure I don't have the latest technologies or a touch screen but it makes clear calls and I can check my email, take photos and videos on it. I could do with better photo and video quality and a more stable hardware. It's not too bad since I've updated the OS and made a point of moderating all the beta apps I have installed on it.

Normally I wouldn't need an upgrade. I used this camera during my rickshaw adventure in India and there were some shortcomings. I'd think my next adventure would be longer and more ridic and so these shortcomings will be amplified.
Things I would need:
1) Longer Battery Life
2) Better quality photo and video capture (better signal processing for clear audio capture)
3) Ability to easily acquire apps for lifecasting/mobile blogging
4) Auto GPS lock and coordinates appended to photos/video content
5) Easier data entry (keyboard or legit touch screen)

And of course it would need to be a GSM world quad band phone like n95 to allow for slipping in and out SIM cards if I choose to cross borders.

So living in the US, the ultimate answer to this question seems to be the iPhone 3G|S. I had asked a bunch of friends for their opinions and they came back with the iPhone too. I've kept my eyes peeled for competitor devices like the Nokia N97, T-Mobile's myTouch 3G or the Palm Pre -- Pricey, not well equipped and blah!Sprint? respectively. Not really doing it for me.

And then... suddenly... on the same day I asked my friends the question of the iPhone - I was asking myself this: Why is the iPhone so popular? Is it significantly better of a device? Better engineered? Or is it just better marketing, further fueled by exclusive contracts with operators? Are consumers in the US blind to the competition? Are we talking band wagon peeps here?

So I went on my Google Reader to catch up on some articles and damn, September 3rd 2009 was the pick me up day. So many exciting articles not just about .. ooh look at that leak photo. Ooh look at that *potential* product. No, post FCC release info. Actual products, predicted launch dates and even for some price. How exciting.

Nokia X6
By far this has made me most exciting. Much faster ARM processor, CAPACITIVE touchscreen!!! Great camera? 32 GB storage? EUR 459. There is also the slimmed down X3 and the N900 tablet that was released at the same time. Specs

Nokia N97 Mini
Still a pricey option at EUR 459 but hey, maybe it will bring down the price of the standard N97!? N97 Specs N97 Mini Specs

Sony Ericcson Xperia X2
Wow. Can't wait for the review. This looks solid. Camera is as good (12.1MP) as Aino and Satio which is already out and performing well. Who knows, maybe X3 (Rachael) is a reality too!? The good thing is that this will tumble the price of the X1 which is a solid phone but just too damn pricey.
Xperia X2 Specs

HTC Hero
Damn it is over here in the US, but shucks... why does Sprint have it? I don't want a CDMA phone.. who does, and wants to pay $70/month for data!? Beats me. Somebody please buy Sprint and end their misery. Negative words aside, good deal on Sprint's part and fantastic price point. End of the day, this is a great phone with the Sense UI platform on Android. There are so many fantastic reviews about this piece of equipment. Specs

HTC Touch Pro 2
This is indeed Microsoft's flagship phone for the Windows Mobile 6.5. Leapfrogging from the success of Diamond and Touch Pro.. this qwerty slide out beast has a good UI and solid rave reviews about WinMob 6.5 to support its success run. Too bad T-Mobile and Sprint are going to get burned when Verizon comes out with incredibly competitive pricing on this bad boy in the next week or so ($199). I wish Verizon was a GSM provider.
Specs

And of course to end my rave... an elusive picture showing the *next* Nokia phone. Who knows if this is true. It seems to me like Nokia has plenty on their mind anyway.

So looks like I am going to finally find a phone that would be an actually valid replacement for my Nokia N95. Of course the prices are insanely high right now and I'd hope that people buy/upgrade to these phones and then sell them on eBay. Probably won't work for the X6. I am okay for right now so if I hold still I'm pretty sure these prices will come down to an acceptable range and it'll be a worthwhile upgrade to something I am excited about versus picking up whatever is cheap on the market and not necessarily useful.

A Quick Guide to Finding a Flat in San Francisco

San Francisco, in my mind, is a nice mix of Europe and East coast America. They do call it the most European city of America. Diverse neighbourhoods, unique by block, tolerant society and very very friendly people. Nobody complains about San Francisco!

That said, SF is indeed a high cost of living city! European apartment sizes with New York city prices because the city has grown to use all the available land in the peninsula. This also means that is can be quite hard to find the right apartment.

Craigslist.org is indeed the best source for apartments with yelp.com a good source for evaluating realtors (and restaurants). Use google maps or windows live maps to get a feel of the neighbourhoods in the city. Also read this link to learn about city planning rules and therefore the amazing money saver: rent control.

When I was moving here, I got a great list of hints about each of the neighbourhoods (boroughs) of San Francisco from my good friend Sean Cusack and would like to share it with you.

Possibly couch surf or crash with a friend until you find the right place to move in and then lock in your one year contract. You want to stay away from short term leases < 3month as you’ll find yourself having to move out as soon as you get in or have to deal with harsh move-in, move-out timings that may eat away at your flexibility of finding a good ‘next place’.

Couple of other quick things to consider. 1) Do you like Victorian housing? A lot of the brand new places will be expensive because of zoning laws and anti-destruction protocols. On the other end of the spectrum the really old and well maintained Victorian structures will be pricey too. 2) Do you plan to have a car? For some parts of the city like SOMA parking can be as high as $250/month. The good thing is that there are always other options. Depending on your work/school location you can combine BART/CalTrain with a bicycle and get around that way saving money and reducing your carbon footprint. Visit the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition to get more information about bicycle routes.

And to go with the short description of boroughs/neighbourhoods below, a map of the regions of the city (in case you were unable to familiarise yourself using gmaps or livemaps): Here you go!

SOMA/South Beach - Preppy-ish, new neighborhood. More bankers here and therefore higher prices but very nice and well maintained condos. Good restaurants and a lot of amenities AT&T Ballpark. Rent control will be really tough to find here.
USF/panhandle - Not a lot to do, but cheaper since its a college 'hood.
Alamo Square/NOPA - A little bit to do here, but within really easy transit to the Castro, Mission, and the Haight (3 great neighborhoods)
Bayview - Sketch as hell. Stay out of here.
Bernal Heights - All the sketch of the mission, with a lot less fun stuff to do.
Castro/Upper Market - The gaybourhood of the world. Though straight, I spend a ton of time here because it has some awesome restaurants, a crazy personality, and the bars serve up super stiff drinks.
Cole Valley/Ashbury Heights - A preppier version of the Haight. Smaller, but still pretty cool.
Downtown/Civic/Van Ness - The stereotyped part of the city. Too many skyscrapers for my taste...you lose the feeling of being in SF, and you feel like you could be in any big city around the world.
Excelsior/Outer Mission - See Bernal Heights
Financial District - See Downtown/Civic/Van Ness
Glen Park - Boring...and not too easy to get to anything but the Bart
Haight Ashbury - Probably my favorite neighborhood in the city in general. This hood lives to be bizarre. Its really tough to find a decent apartment for cheap, and it can get a little depressing at night due to the super high concentration of potheads. You'll have to dodge some tourists as well down here.
Hayes Valley - Home to a lot of the best restaurants in the city. Rides the border between the mission and skyscraper land. This could be a cool place to live too.
Ingleside / SFSU - Middle of nowhere
Inner Richmond - The Richmond district is like a Chinatown for the locals. The weather isn't so hot, but its cheaper to live here, but you don't sacrifice some good eats (asian food). It is also close to GG Park which is nice. Public transit access is tough though, and the parking is bad...
Inner Sunset / UCSF - Like Inner Richmond, but on the other side of the park. Easier to get to the Haight, but sleepier than the Richmond district for sure.
Laurel Hts / Presidio - A beautiful parkland to live in that is affordable. HOWEVER, public transportation is non-existent...you'll need a car all the time here for sure here. Really weird tenant rules here since the place is managed by the government. I have a friend who lives here and loves it though.
Lower Haight - Like Haight Ashbury, but with more personality. Cooler bars and restaurants, less tourists, but sketchier in terms of crime.
Lower Nob Hill - Old money, close to tourist land, pretty residential
Lower Pac Heights - Like Nob Hill
Marina / Cow Hollow - Pretty much the only part of the city tourists see...mobbed with tourists everywhere
Mission District - Probably the newest hood to undergo urban renewal. Its become *the* place for cheap, but tasty eats in the city. A fair amount of good nightlife as well. One of the sketchier places to live though (worse than Lower Haight, better than the Tenderloin). There's always a party here...which can be good and bad :).
Nob Hill - See Lower Nob Hill
Noe Valley - A lot of young families live here, so parking is easy and the place is safe. 24th street has a good variety of very good restaurants and basics (groceries, barbers, etc.). Super easy public transit gets you into the Castro, the Haight, or the Mission in a snap .
North Beach / Telegraph Hill - italian Neighborhood. Has quite a few tourists, so its easy to get trapped in bad restaurants...however, its obvious this place has a ton of hidden gems.
Pacific Heights - Old money, but near Japantown for some ultra cheap sushi and Korean which tastes fantastic.
Portola - A nice place, but in the middle of nowhere.
Portrero Hill – Can be a pretty sketchy place, and tough to get out of it, but really close to regional rail lines and home to some cool local bars. There are some nice pockets though
Richmond / Seacliff - Like the Inner Richmond with less to do
Russian Hill - The stereotypical SF residential neighborhood. Big houses from old money and cable cars (and the curvy part of lombard street). A little main street with some good eats.
Sunset / Parkside - Like Inner Sunset with less to do
Tenderloin - Cool clubs and bars, crackheads and bullets all over the place. By far the most dangerous hood in SF… right behind Hunter’s Point (Bayview)
Treasure Island - This is the man made island in the middle of the bay bridge. Don't live here...you'll have to pay $5 every time you want to drive somewhere.
Twin Peaks - Nothing to do here. Beautiful views of the city if the weather is good (this hood probably only gets 30 sunny days a year though)
Visitacion Valley - Ghetttttoo!
West Portal - Kind of a neat neighborhood, but its always covered in perma-fog, and its a hike to the rest of the city.
Western Addition - This place ranges from ultra ghetto gunshot to nice. You'd have to pick a place wisely.

Lost King of Pop, but seriously when’s the next album?

How unfortunate was last week? Definitely a couple of significant losses but the one that really hit hard for me was Michael Jackson. MJ was the reason I started dancing. How exciting were the days I danced to MJ in front of the mirror trying to replicate his amazing moves. Eyysh, before all of it I remember having so much trouble getting a feel for rhythm.

Lots of drama and rumours on the networks though. Is it all true? Drug O/D? Suddenly missing? Fake autopsy results.

All said and done, I think it would be really funny if it was all a cover-up. Guess what, wait a few months and there’ll be a few new tracks from Tupac featuring Michael Jackson and Notorious B.I.G. hahah. That’ll be funny if debt ridden celebrities dying = a way to cash in on the post death sales while enjoying the end of days in the Cayman islands hehe :)

comScore Brand Crosses India

45 degrees C, 3850 kms, heatwaves, sleepless nights and plenty of the shady situations. Sounds awful, but it was the best two weeks, ever. It wasn't just an adventure through India in a crappy rickshaw, it was a cultural and historical excursion, a culinary extravaganza, an opportunity to speak to & touch the real India - its people, and a rendezvous with mother herself in all her glory of peaks, rivers and oceans. And of course the 150cc 2 stroke rickshaw with a max speed of 50kmph (on flat land and no wind) by 3 guys with no auto mechanic skills, made it an adventure.

We went into this trip not knowing what to expect and came out on the other side speechless. Everyone asks us : "Tell me all about the trip". "Awesome", we would say. But, you had to be there with us. Even the photos and mobile phone videos wouldn't do justice.

But that's not going to deter us from sharing a few tips from the road...!

-- A few words about Blessings and thanks --
We were so lucky to be able to do this trip. From the generous donations to our charities SOS Children’s Villages and FrankWater by our corporate sponsor comScore, friends and family, to the rishis, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and so on, from home and on the road, we were blessed to reach the end safely. With these generous contributions we were able to support some charities who do brilliant work in India and therefore add meaning to our adventure. We thank everyone for that opportunity.

1. Get connected
We had an Airtel SIM card already - voice coverage about 95% of the time! Data coverage is available near big urban centres. We got our number in Chennai(Madras) and they have regional locks and so twitter wouldn't work. But hey we could text our fingers off!

2. Ride it like a pro
Roll on, roll off on the throttle. Take a 30 min break every 3-4 hours. It'll keep the piston, the engine from blowing up. Wear a kerchief around your neck. Curse every now and then. Pro.

3. Be Prepared
With a 6 litre tank, we had to refuel quite often. Get a jerry can to take you across the desert. We left things to the last moment and had to suffice with a plastic 10L jar. This meant over the course of the trip petrol started eating the plastic and we’d spend our days sniffing petrol. Also get a funnel, or like us use plastic water bottles to make a ghetto funnel. Get simple spare parts and learn how to fix them so that you don’t have to try to find help late at night when the clutch breaks in the middle of Bihar after election day. Also stash most but not all money when that happens, but do ask how much they want for their services because very often we found Indians to say 1000 when they mean to say 100. They were very nice guys though!

4. Don’t try to squeeze too much before Launch day
We decided to visit Delhi before getting to Shillong. It was really fun. India is big, it takes time to get places and it is also hot. Altogether tiring. When we got to Shillong we thought of taking a tiny nap. Woke up hours later into the next morning completely missing the launch party and the chance to meet fellow teams!

5. Enjoy the curiosity
Embrace the curiousity. India is definitely an incredible place to explore and learn. So are its people. We’d always be approached with the same questions “Where are you coming from?”, “Where are you going?”, “Is this your rickshaw”. Often it’ll be followed by peeking in and checking out us and our gear. And then before you know it there is a crowd and that leads to a group picture. You’ll see a lot of stares. It can be a bit intimidating at first, but its all good! Once we start talking (or trying to) before you know it there are tea snack and nuts going around!

6. Stay Hydrated
There is a need for pure water in India. It’s so easy to get duped with refilled bottles to perfection and with the heat it is important to have stock. We learned a bit late but we got it down! Cucumber and watermelons really help too!

7. The gift of Karma
Over the course of this trip we gained so much positive karma, we are still trying hard to pass it forward. While the cities can be pretty corrupt, dusty and intense, the rural (most of the land mass) areas are very calm, comforting and inviting. The people are so quick to help us. The best experience is from Madhya Pradesh when a farmer refused to let us go back on the road until we rested at his place which involved a cool well water bath, tea with milk straight from a cow, and so on. Earlier that day we met three other farmers who gave us water to drink when we had ran out – this area was very dry so water is scarce and you have to travel very far to get it.

8. Its more than a race, its a journey. cherish it
We really liked Bodhgaya – the birthplace of Buddhism for its calm, international and exquisite. The Varanasi early morning boat ride was very nice, and the visit to Khajuraho was very revealing! The little kids and scene of Shillong were missed and so were the dense forests of Bengal, as we went into drier zones. Fantastic sunsets, camp cooking, dhabas, truck lodges, new foods, morning sweets and lifts were other things we cherished. Central India was kind and pleasant and then we reached the beautiful Goa and set our feet in the ocean

9. Whatever happens don’t lose your map
But we did lose our map! Which was awful. This meant we had to ask people not only for directions, but the route too. Using a Hindi/Urdu lonely planet phrasebook meant sort of communicating with the locals. The biggest problem we came across was that many Indians would prefer to show a random direction instead of saying “I don’t know”! We got a lost quite a bit after this.

10. Roadkill and Accidents
With so much traffic on the highways, animals are very nervous when it comes to crossing the road and often end up getting run over. Dogs who aren’t very smart when it comes to road crossing! Drivers also over extend themselves which results in a lot of accidents due to drunk driving and mostly fatigue.

Read our unedited blog posts from the road
See our pictures: from Shillong, Meghalaya to Colva Beach, Goa
We appeared in the Times of India | Goa. Read it here

Rickshaw Run Spring 2009

Best adventure ever.
It wasn't the race that was exciting.
It wasn't the organisers that was exciting.
It wasn't the group of people doing this together that was exciting.

It was India, the people, doing it with my brothers, doing good deeds for India and recieving more than believable good karma back from Indians that was exciting.

Read more about my race here:

A review of my new PC and Vista

So it’s been two months since I purchased this fantastic PC (beast) and I thought I’d blog about it.

First off, Vista kinda sucks. I do like the look better than XP and some of the new apps are pretty cool and the idea they had for memory management is great. On the backend I think there have been significant leaps, but on the front end a tad bit too many issues.

The hardware rocks. It’s a Dell studio xps 345mt. I got it right before Dell released the next version with the cooler looking and larger case. I don’t care about it really. I got a great deal for this machine. This machine is a beast. It’s running the Intel Core i7 chipset which is a quad-core (8 threads). It’s a high performance machine but the fans can be a bit too loud, loud enough to actively switch it off. My biggest issue with it though is the sound card. They used a Realtek one which provides great sound quality but isn’t a well programmed device. I’m experiencing significant audio latency when I have my usb wireless stick enabled and streaming hd content. Sometimes it can be bad enough to give me a BSOD.

Back to the software. On this machine, Aero is slick and I’m having a blast getting back into a Windows environment after a two year detour with a Macbook. I have to say that I’ve forgotten both how flexible and exploration-inducing a PC is, and also how sticky and sluggish it can be. Macs are smooth, simple and sassy, but if you want to find a custom app – you’re for the most part out of luck. If you want to upgrade your system, you’d have to spend a lot of dough. I passed on both accounts.

I like the free Windows Live apps. They are awesome! I’m actually writing this post from Windows Writer which is pretty cool! I’ve been using Windows Photo Gallery, but today I installed Windows Live Photo Gallery and played around with it. It’s brilliant! I can add tags, descriptions, titles & stars. There is a publish feature that makes it super easy to upload to top sites like flickr, youtube& facebook. Windows Live SDK seems to be freely available so it must be quite easy to add your own plugins. When I upload to flickr, all this metadata is intact. The app also has a way of tracking faces! As of right now I can verify faces and link them to contacts in my windows live directory or type up there full names. The super cool thing is that when I upload to facebook, the plug-in matches the tagged name against my facebook friend directory. This is a good direction for Windows Live – looks like they are finally talking to the consumer!

So far so good. I’ve had a great experience with my new PC and the Windows Live apps. I’m just sitting put and waiting for Windows 7!

Technorati Tags: new,pc,windows,vista,dell,studio xps,435mt,windows live,photo gallery,writer,face,tagging

Applying for a UK Visit Visa from the West Coast

My flight to India for the rickshaw charity run stops in London and so I thought, why not get out of the airport. This way I'll get to see and talk to my friends and I'll also be able to haul out my belongings here to the US.
Getting the visa was a frustrating process so I thought I'd share it here.

Spending some time on the internet browsing around revealed to me that the process is anything but simple. Living in SF, the closest consulate is Los Angeles, but luckily my postcode/zipcode was eligible for the Visa4UK application process (which means I didn't have to fly to LA).

(1) So I gather up all my documents (letter from employer, bank statements, residence proof, passport, immigration status(i-94) and file the application online on the consulate's Visa4Uk site. Long process with a lot of questions. I Tried to answer them as best as I could. The hardest was to figure out all my trips in the past few years. I used my passport stamps to get to that.

(2) Filed the application and paid the $129 fee. I got a confirmation statement and final application which I printed out. Got together the paperwork as required in the instructions (all the documents in #1) and a photograph.

(3) The confirmation said that I had to go to some government office to submit my biometrics. No idea what this was. I showed up and it was a private sub-contractor who carried out biometrics (fingerprints, pictures) for green card application, citizenship services and UK visas. After the biometrics I was supposed to send in my printed application to the Los Angeles consulate. The instructions didn't talk about a photograph but the application form itself did. I didn't want to take the risk that the biometrics group would coordinate with the UK consulate (that would be too easy, right?) and so I just got a photograph and sent it out.

(4) This is when things got confusing and frustrating. I got all the documents ready to mail and send but I had no idea how it would get back to me. There were no instructions or guidance about that. To cover all my bases, I included a letter specifying all the documents I am including and what I want back, and put them in an unsealed fedex envelope (with empty return label with my credit card number and authorisation to send back and charge to me) and then put than envelope in another fedex envelope which I sealed and mailed out the consulate.

(5) I used overnight delivery and so tracked the package. It reached LA the next day but was delivered and signed for at a different address from the the place I mailed to! Mail forwarding? I didn't know. It took 2 business days to hear from the consulate (automated email) that they received my package. Relief.

(6) A couple of days later the consulate sent me an automated email mentioning that my visa had been approved. It said that I would receive a package via UPS. Tracking number was included. I really wish I knew this information before! Anyway, the package came in safe and sound and the consulate returned all the documents I wanted back and now I have a visa in my hands.

Hope you find this information useful! Let me know if you had any questions and feel free to share your experiences!

Rickshaw Charity Run coming up

Tix all purchased, visas and documents ready, donations goal reached, I’m pretty excited for the Rickshaw Charity run coming up in April.

In the process of collecting donations, a brother of a good friend of mine asked me about the trip and the inspiration to do it. As I was responding through the email I came across realisations that I thought I should share, in this blog post.

“

Hmm.. inspiration huh.. I'm an adventurer as you know. I love mother earth's and ancestral gifts to us in the form of natural and historical sights. I'm always on the lookout for these kind of trips. That's when I came across the Adventurists: a spin off, of the original travel social networking site wayn.com. Find the adventurists here. They offer many different kinds of adventures, and given my love for my motherland India, and my fascination of the auto rickshaw, the rickshaw run was the pick, indeed. So I tried to sign up for the adventure a few times but it never worked out. Too many applications. So I just left it in the back of my mind.
One weekend, I watched the movies "The Darjeeling Limited" and "Oram Po". Darjeeling Limited, really hit home. I was missing my brothers at that time and the idea of the rickshaw run as an opportunity to explore the land we all love, together was so exciting. Oram Po is a Thamizh language movie about a rickshaw driver and his life in Chennai, India. Quite a funny movie that talks about how Rickshaw drivers see a rickshaw as their second home as it is part of their life and their income. Most Indians hate rickshaws as they are noisy, polluting and not very powerful. But they are part of the culture and continue to exist because they are cheap and efficient forms of transportation. I digress; so anyway, I got really pumped about this adventure et al.
My brother and I had been lobbying to get in, and had missed 3 races but this time we really wanted to do this. We really wanted to be in this race. By some form of luck, we finally got a place for the Spring 2009 race, last year.
The past few years have been a growing experience for me as I have questioned many things in my life; work, relationships, religion and then the meaning of life itself. It’s big stuff. In short, I feel I have gotten closer to understanding the true ideals of Hinduism and therefore persevere to be a good Hindu. Maya and holding good karma have been my main directives. So this trip was one of the many things that lead me towards this part. The concept of raising money for these excellent charities and really being in India to spread the good word and the good karma was such a lifetime opportunity for me. It is a fact that only after making the payment and signup fee did I start to critically think about this opportunity. That too has been an adventure in itself, before even getting on the road. I thought about many ways to fund raise, by putting together an event. The first issue was that I lived in London, my cousin in Toronto and my brother in Sri Lanka. We're also travelers so it was quite hard to pinpoint a location and an event to fund raise at.

I only recently realised that I had been fundraising *interest* from the moment I signed up for this race. Emails, face to face conversations, phone calls etc. In all of them, I talked about the trip and the meaning of it to me and the charities we were running for. I was passing the good word. I used justgiving.com which was a simple, safe and clear way to collect money for the chairities. I even requested a sponsorship from my employer and it went through. Normally people take their own sponsorships but I thought the men, women and children of India deserved this money more than I did. I'm in touch with the leaders of the specific teams in India for both Frank Water and SOS CV so it is extremely pleasing to know where exactly this money will go. We still have a month to go, and people are still donating, which is fantastic. I'm getting a press kit from SOS children's villages which is a charity I'm very supportive of. I’ve reached my targets but I’m more excited about the satisfaction this is giving me and when I get my press kit I may just stand out on the street one weekend, just starting with passing the good word.

”

Have a look at our new homepage.

If you’d like to donate to our charities, please do so below:

Frank Water Projects

SOS Children’s Villages