The Usual Statistics

• iPhone holds a world-wide mobile phone marketshare of 5%
• There are totally 250 million iOS devices on earth (iPhone + iPod Touch + iPad)
• More than 500,000 apps on Apple App Store out of which 140,000 are exclusive for iPad
• More than 18 billion downloads from the App Store
• Paid 3 billion dollars to the developers so far
• there are 67 million game center accounts

Apple Cards

Apple photo printing service that delivers your photographs at your doorstep.

2.99 USD (USA)

4.99 USD (Worldwide)

iOS 5 features roundup from WWDC (Available from October 12 onwards)

• New Notification similar to Android
• iMessage (Blackberry Messenger for iOS)
• Location-aware Reminder App
• Twitter integration deeply into OS
• Newsstand
• Wireless Sync & Update
• Airplay Mirroring
• Supported by iPhone 4S,4,3GS iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen, iPad, iPad 2

iCloud free for iOS 5 and OS X Lion Users. 5 GB of storage is free.

iCloud available from October 12 onwards.

Find My Friends

You can invite your friends to temporarily share their location with you.

iPod Nano

So no more extra sensors required to track your walks and runs on iPod Nano.

The Nike+ upgraded.

8 GB 129 USD

16 GB 149 USD

New White iPod Touch

iPhone 4S

Its going to look the same as iPhone 4.

Apple A5 processor

HSDPA – 3G Data at 14.4 Mbps

World Phone – Supports both GSM and CDMA

Camera

8 Mega Pixel

Face Detection

Time to first photo is 1.1 seconds and just 0.5 seconds from the second one onwards.

1080p HD video recording

Siri = Voice Recognition + Artifical Intelligence

Your Intelligent Assistant that helps you get things done by just asking

Read more on Siri at Techcrunch

Available for pre-order from October 7 onwards.

Available on Stores from October 14 onwards in USA,Canada,Australia,Germany,UK,France,Japan

Available on 22 more con tries including Singapore from October 28 onwards

Available on 70 more countries end of this year

MiFi devices are Portal WiFi Routers to share internet connection from 3G/GPRS/EDGE/CDMA/EV-DO and other mobile internet/broadband technologies.

Scenario

In Addition to the Broadband Internet Connection at Home and the GPRS/EDGE/3G connection in the mobile phone, People also have a 3rd requirement for Mobile Internet Access from Laptops/Tablets. There is a need for Internet Access Device for Internet Access from Laptops and Tablets during travel. Internet Tethering from the Mobile Phone(3G/EV-DO) is an obvious option, but it is practically impossible because it trades-off a very valuable resource during your travel which is battery life(which is required for making Phone Calls). Hence 3G USB Data Cards have became a new line of devices for Internet On the GO. Every Telecom Operator in India has a 3G datacard in their product line.

USB Data Cards are not solving the problem rite !!

The 3rd required Personal Internet Device is the USB Data Card today and it is not the right 3rd device in many ways.

• USB itself is a problem: This device is to access Internet away from Home and Office in Laptop/Tablet/iPod & other Internet Devices(sometimes). The existing 3G data cards that are sold by the Operator connects to the device via the USB port. USB ports are a commodity interface only in laptops. Tablet computers, iPods, Portable Gaming Consoles, etc only do have WiFi as a commodity interface.
• Does not support more than a Device at a time: The USB data cards provides out of the box internet access only to the device to which it is connected to. Today there is necessity for Internet access from multiple devices at the same time and sometimes even multiple people(eg: In-Car Internet).
• Tied to a single Operator: The devices that the operators sell are mostly tied to a single operator. Indians are used to Unlocked mobile Phones and we always appreciate a device that supports all operators(like the mobile phones).

How MiFi Devices are solving it rite !!

• WiFi: This is the most common interface for Internet access in laptops/tablets/iPod/Portable Gaming Console/Mobile Phones(sometimes).
• Multiple Devices at a time: It has out of the box support for multiple devices.

Products Available in the Market Today(India)

Olive Telecom is the cheapest available in India INR 3500

MicroMax sells one at INR 4900

Operators also sell directly

Reliance INR 8000

Vodafone INR 5500

How it Works

Whenever you hit a website from your mobile browser, the request will go to the particular website routed throws your mobile internet provider(Telecom Service Provider eg: Airtel). When you access a website, the mobile internet providers include some additional information to the request to make billing and tracking easier for them.

How Airtel does it

I hope most of the mobile internet users know that Airtel Live (http://live.airtelworld.com) is a place where you can buy and download wallpapers,ringtones and you will be charged automatically. Generally these wallpapers that you download will be from external content providers like hungama.com and for them to know the information about the subscriber who is buying the content, Airtel add a subscriber’s mobile number also along with each and every request that is sent to Hungama.com. Unfortunately Airtel sends the mobile number along with every request that is sent to any website.

Who are affected

Don’t be shocked !!! All Airtel GPRS/EDGE Users are not affected by this. For eg:- People who use GPRS/EDGE with the Mobile Office access-point are safe.

As Far as I know most of the Telecom Operators in India have this loop hole.

For Techies

The mobile numbers are sent in the HTTP request Headers. Given below is a small subset of headers that are used to send the mobile numbers (Few of them are standards).

HTTP_MSISDN

HTTP_X_MSISDN

HTTP_X_NOKIA_MSISDN

HTTP_X_NETWORK_INFO

[HTTP_X_NETWORK_INFO] => GPRS,9198945xxxxx,airtelfun.com,unsecured

Specimens

I tried my best to dig into my logs and came up with these specimens for different operators.

BSNL WAP

[HTTP_CALLED_STATION_ID] => bsnlwap
[HTTP_X_MMS_SGSNMCCMNC] => 40472
[HTTP_X_MMS_PREPAID_FLAG] => N
[HTTP_X_MSISDN] => 9194461407xx
[HTTP_VIA] => 192.168.1.77:8080 (TeleDNA 2.0), 1.1 demil1.byetcluster.com:80 (Lusca/LUSCA_HEAD)

The full header is available here http://pastebin.com/iW2Dc43y

In the above specimen the first line is obvious. The second line’s header name ends with MCC MNC

MCC – Mobile Country Code – 404 – Mobile Country Code for India

MNC – Mobile Network Code – 72 – Mobile Network Code for BSNL Kerela

Check here for MCC / MNC codes reference

The third line is the actual mobile number and number starting with 9446 also confirms that it is BSNL Kerela

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_telephone_numbering_in_India

BSNL LIVE header http://pastebin.com/cvBvGgpt

BSNL Cell One Header http://pastebin.com/rEYFkqhr

Interesting part in the Cell One Header. See what they are storing in the COOKIE

[HTTP_COOKIE] => User-Identity-Forward-msisdn=9194310316xx;Bearer-Type=w-TCP;wtls-security-level=none;network-access-type=GPRS;roaming-information=no_info

Vodafone Live

[HTTP_X_MSISDN] => 9197690476xx
[HTTP_VIA] => Jataayu CWS Gateway 4.2.0 at smsc1.mms-vlan.live.vodafone.in, 1.1 demil1.byetcluster.com:80 (Lusca/LUSCA_HEAD)

The first line is the mobile number and 9769 is the series for Vodafone Mumbai Metro Circle

The second line also confirms that it uses live.vodafone.com as a gateway that runs on Jataayu CWS Gateway.

IDEA Cellular

[HTTP_X_NOKIA_GATEWAY_ID] => NBG/2.0
[HTTP_X_NOKIA_BEARER] => 255
[HTTP_X_NOKIA_MSISDN] => 9198260177xx
[HTTP_X_NOKIA_IPADDRESS] => 10.9.122.233
[HTTP_X_NOKIA_PREPAIDIND] => 8

The full header is available here http://pastebin.com/9PRgJ1vA

The mobile number series 9826 is for IDEA Cellular Madhya Pradesh Circle

IDEA Cellular uses the Nokia WAP Gateway. I am not able to interpret rest of the headers, please let me if anybody is able to make sense out of it.

Airtel
[HTTP_X_NETWORK_INFO] => GPRS,9197948400xx,airtelfun.com,unsecured
[HTTP_MSISDN] => 9197948400xx
[HTTP_APN] => airtelfun.com
[HTTP_X_NOKIA_CONNECTION_MODE] => TCP
[HTTP_X_NOKIA_BEARER] => GPRS

The full header is available here http://pastebin.com/CEkyvxib

The above mobile numer series 9794 is Airtel Uttar Pradesh EAST.

I also remember seeing few REQUESTS with airtelwap.com instead of airtelfun.com.

I will also develop a small link that you can hit from your mobile phone to check if you are also affected. Will do it sometime and update this page.

Nginx+PHP-FPM makes lots of sense for the Amazon Free Tier Instance which offer only 650 MB of RAM. If you have not heard of Nginx + PHP-FPM as an alternative

for Apache + mod_php for PHP websites, then you immediately have to read this Nginx + PHP-FPM Vs Apache + mod_php comparison.

AMI Properties

• It is in the Asia Pacific Region
• It is compatible with Amazon Free tier http://aws.amazon.com/free/
• It is based on 32-bit Amazon Linux AMI http://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/
• It is a 8 GB EBS backed instance

Software Info

• Nginx 0.8.54
• PHP 5.3.5 with PHP-FPM, CURL and mysqlnd
• mySQL server
• default user: ec2-user
• mySQL root password is not set
• nginx install directory is /usr/local/nginx
• Init Scripts available for Nginx and PHP-FPM and configured for auto-start in reboot

Need more help in setting up or managing infrastructure on Amazon Web Services, get in touch with http://columbusagain.com/contact-us/

I activated 3G following instructions from http://www.fonearena.com/blog/29518/airtel-3g-plans-tariffs.html and you can also get the tariff information from the above link.

D: 1.04 Mbps U: 0.54 Mbps

D: 133.5 KBps U: 69.0 KBps

This is wat happened when I tried to connect to iTunes Store using my Airtel Broadband. Airtel used to display their own page when the DNS resolution fails. Couldnt understand what is the reason for this. Will update when I find out. Post on comments If u able to guess.

The above result is in KBps (Kilobytes per second) and the below result is in Mbps (Megabits per second).

I tried talking to the customer care lots of times and looks like there is no response. I even tried talking to them over twitter.

They responded back in 15 hours. I seriously appreciate tatadocomo for using even Social Media for the customer care. But still it is not a convincing response. They say its fluctuating, but the truth is that its constantly 15 KBps.

I recently joined the (BMC) Bangalore Mountaineering Club. This is a 6 year old club to bring adventure loving people together to pursue their interest. They organize treks,adventure sports for the club members every weekend. They organize 2-4 four different treks every weekend. It takes a 20 minutes of your time to enroll in the club. You will have to pay only for trips that you make. The cost varies from Rs. 600 – Rs.3500 depending upon the distance and number of days. This cost covers pickup drop, guide, food,sleeping bags, etc.

Ramnagaram Night Trek

I got enrolled in the club a week back and I thought I will experiment it with a small one initially. It was a nice experience though it was a very short Trek. Met lots of new like minded people. Made new friends. The Guide/Organizer (Rohit) who is pursuing this job for his love of adventure trips accompanied us for the trip.

Ramnagaram is a just 50 kilometers away from bangalore on the way to Mysore. It is one of the biggest cocoon production center. The movie Sholay(Bollywood) has been shot here. The place is more suitable for rock climbing, but we did not do it.

BMC picked me up near the Life Style mall in Margrath Road which is an usual BMC pick-up point. We started at around 10:45 PM from bangalore and reached the base camp at 12:00 AM and we start trekking with our torch lights picking up figs n logs on the way for the camp fire. We reached the top in just 60 minutes. We did a camp fire for 2 hours. There was strong breeze.We used the sleeping bags to get a small sleep till 6 AM. We were waiting for a beautiful view of the sun rise in the morning, but we could not see it due to strong mist and cloudy sky. Then we trekked back to the base camp.

What is iPhone 4 GlassGate ?

For people who have not seen or read about an iPhone 4, the iPhone 4 has a glass on its surface on both sides of the phone which is different from the normal phones. The glass surface on the rear side of the phone is what leads to this GlassGate problem. When a case is put over the phone the rear side of the phone which is a glass and when it gets in contact with the case around the phone it generates scratches on the glass like shown in the picture above. This is termed by the iPhone users as iPhone 4 GlassGate.

As a result of this Apple had removed all the 3rd party iPhone 4 case accessories they had on their Apple Online Store.