Anaryst – The intellectual property game / pre-review / unboxing/first look

Anaryst - the board game - unboxing#1

I bought this first of it’s kind IPR game. My love for IPR is well documented in past posts and I have even been attending National law school for the last 1+ year in the specialized course run by them on IPR law.

This looks to be a very promising game designed and developed by an IPR lawyer, Pravin Anand. Kudos to him for recognizing the need for something of this kind and this will definitely go a long way it educating our youth and the younger genre on the importance of IPR.

Apple care protection plan

I have my MacBook insured for accidental damage (similar to the DELL Complete Cover protection plan that I had for my DELL desktop) by a PSU insurance provider. This AppleCare protection plan (APP) provided by Apple Singapore is an addition to that and there are technical differences in the type of protection/cover the device gets.

By the way, I have bought ALL of my electronic gadgets with this warranty cover and have even benefited multiple times with my DELL desktop Vostro tower with it’s CompleteCover warranty so I know the value of this – also, I learnt what it is to not insure an expensive electronic gadget the hard way when my iPhone (which was not covered by water damage) was rendered totally useless last December (2008).

Seventymm – India’s answer to NetFlix/Slumdog millionnaire/F1 update

Seventymm.com is India’s answer to NetFlix.

I have been using this service for an initial subscription of Rs. 849 unlimited for 1 DVD per day for 3 months and so far, my experience has been very good. The DVD quality has been excellent and their pick-up/drop is a hassle-free experience for us.

We are putting our DVD player to maximum use with an average of 5 movies in 5 days! In just a week we saw the following:

NLSIU classes/update

It’s been a long time since I blogged about this endeavor I have undertaken.

I have to say that I found this course more demanding than what I envisaged. I had to postpone taking up my examinations to Jan 2010 due to time constraints I faced in balancing both my studies at NLSIU and my work schedule that has become hectic. I had 4 papers and 1 viva voce that I will take up in January 2010.

My Blackberry Bold replaced free of cost

Source: http://www.blackberry.com

About a fortnight ago, I had show stopper issues with my Bold which suddenly could not take in charge. I used to leave it for 2-3 hours on the USB charger with the PC but it just did not charge. It was strange. Thankfully, this time it’s 1-year RIM warranty was put to good use.

Bought a Sony DVD Player

http://www.sony.co.in/product/dvp-ns728hp

Advantage is my Sony Bravia LCD is Full HD (1080p) so this one has a simple HDMI cable that slots into it easily so I can watch full HD. This cable comes free with the DVD player and the cost of this cable itself (bought separately) is about Rs. 2500.

This is the one I picked up yesterday evening from 4th block Jayanagar. You should see Moser Baer DVD’s – they are priced at Rs. 49 and Rs. 99 for genuine DVD’s so I picked up some of them from Calypso, 3rd block, Jayanagar. It’s one of the best music CD/DVD shops in tinsel town!

I am a major advocate of antipiracy (esp. after my IPR course woke me up on it’s negative effects to everyone) and the loss it is causing our music and movie industry so I recommend everyone to use only genuine CD’s/DVD’s.

Source: http://www.sony.co.in/product/dvp-ns728hp

Advantage is my Sony Bravia LCD is Full HD (1080p) so this one has a simple HDMI cable that slots into it easily so I can watch full HD. This cable comes free with the DVD player and the cost of this cable itself (bought separately) is about Rs. 2500. It also comes with the USB slot in line with it’s competition so that completes the “Must have” for a DVD player as of today:

- HDMI connectivity to play on a Full HD TV

- Plays scratched DVD/CD surfaces due to wear and tear (earlier ones of Sony DVD players were too sensitive and hence could not do this)

- USB slot

- Support for all CD/DVD types (MP3’s, CD tracks, DVD’s etc)

This DVD player set me back by Rs. 4990/- (MOP) as given by Adishwar/Sony showroom.

This particular model is made in Malaysia (same as my Sony Bravia) and imported in March 2009. It is imported by SONY India.

Rolls Royce Phantom – my chance encounter!

Keeping with the uniqueness of my posts, here is one more: On my way back from work, I chanced upon an exquisite beauty!

Near the Forum Mall, Whitefield, was a Rolls Royce Phantom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Phantom) on display! I quickly took out my Blackberry and snapped out a few pictures courtesy of some of the chaps from the Mobile Store who were there. They even offered to take pictures of mine with the car and put it up on their website but I politely declined.

Wolfram Alpha / a new computational knowledge engine

This looks promising. Point is how will they commercialize it to sustain the vast amounts of data and information it will have to assimilate over time.  Also, would this service scale? This is where Google was successfully able to handle huge amounts of data and information assimilation without any degradation in performance.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/ 

Will use this search engine for sometime before I post my feedback on this.

I voted, did you vote?

There is no point criticizing the Government, the public offices, the institutions, the politicians etc. if you don’t exercise your fundamental right and cast your vote. So, get up and vote – for a change. Let’s make India a better place to live in!

Passport renewal / very efficient service of Indian passport offices/postal service

Source: Bangalore passport office (http://rpobangalore.gov.in/)

I am not deviating from my rule of ‘uniqueness’ of content on this blog because this post is truly unique in terms of the sheer efficiency of our Indian Government and much criticized institutions so I owe this good piece to them!