Sir Arthur C. Clarke has left us

He is most well known around the world for creating the concept of Satellite Technology. Satellites play a vital role in today's world for communication and other purposes. If not for this man, when would such a conecpt have been created?

He also wrote a number of interesting science fiction books, and made many predictions about the future of mankind and the universe. He predicted that man would visit the Moon before the year 2000, and man did go there in 1969 and many times afterwards. Most of his other predictions too have proved to be correct.

Arthur C. Clarke lived in Sri Lanka (of all countries) for a large portion of his lifetime. I believe he liked the peaceful environment and beautiful scenery which would help him continue inventing, writing and predicting. He adapted to the Sri Lankan way of life and ofter enjoyed wearing a sarong and t-shirt like most other Sri Lankan men do.

Another major part of his life was his post-Polio syndrome which made him unabled to walk properly and placed him in the wheelchair. Yet he continued to lead an active lifestyle. Countless times I saw him at the Otter's Aquatic Club, sitting in his wheelchair, enjoying the scenery and watching the children have fun in the pool. He came there for regular exercise to keep himself as fit as possible.

Sri Arthur C. Clarke was awarded a CBE (knighthood) in 1989, although he was unable to fly to England and receive the honours from the Queen as he was too ill for the long journey. He was also the Chancellor of the Moratuwa University from 1979 to 2002. The Moratuwa University was the first to offer IT eduction in Sri Lanka, and Arthur C. Clarke would have played a major role in its development.

In 2005, Sir Arthur C. Clarke was present at the opening of CBN Sat, Sri Lanka's first Satellite Pay Television network. CBN Sat caused a revolution in the television industry of Sri Lanka, and Arthur C. Clarke would have been happy to be a part of its beginning.

In December 2007, Arthur C. Clarke celebrated his 90th birthday together with the President of Sri Lanka and numerous other dignitaries. At the same time he produced a video bidding farewell to his frined and fans, knowing that he would leave the world soon.

Early this morning, Sir Clarke passed away after being hospitalized for four days. He would have predicted his deaths months or even years ahead. And he would have been happy and at peace when he died, as he knows what a great service he has done for mankind.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, may your sould Rest In Peace!

VerveEarth

VerveEarth is a new seach engine-type website which turns surfing the World Wide Web into just surfing the World. VerveEarth organizes registered websites and blogs according to their base position in the world. For example, my blog's link is in Colombo, Sri Lanka on the VerveEarth map.

When you visit VerveEarth, first you see a world map (via Google Maps), with RSS icons all over the place. You can zoom in to any region and all websites/blogs in that area will be shown clearly using those icons. You place your mouse over the icons to read their titles, or click on them to see the latest posts in short (thanks to RSS). If you are registered at VerveEarth, you can choose favourites and then view a map of only your favourite websites in the world.

VerveEarth gives everyone a more interesting way to browse the internet. Apart from just clicking around the world map, you can type in a website and search in normal fashion. If you really want to understand what I say clearly, then visit VerveEarth now.

I got to know about VerveEarth from a email sent to me from the CEO of the service (it was probably automated). VerveEarth's website is completely interactive and loads surprisingly fast on my snail-type SLT ADSL connection.

At the moment VerveEarth has very few websites documented as blog owners have to register for people to see it on the map. VerveEarth probably will not go for web crawling like other search engines. And also VerveEarth is still in beta, so you can trust the service to improve more as time goes on.

If you own a website or blog, I recommend you go over to VerveEarth and put it on the map. Once the service becomes popular you can expect a ton of hits to your blog/website.

In Sri Lanka - As of now only my blog and another blog are registered at VerveEarth.

Dialog Mobile TV: Updated

Dialog has updated and improved their Mobile Streaming Television service sometime during the last few days. I was pleasantly surprised to browse to the Dialog Mobile TV Channels page and find some new channels and a new design.

3G and GPRS Feeds
First of all, each channel has two feed. One is for 3G and the other for GPRS. The GPRS feed has a lower bitrate so that GPRS users can actually watch television properly without spending the day buffering. The 3G feed has a higher bitrate and therefore higher quality, and so far I have not experienced any buffering problems.

New Channels
The important part is that Dialog has introduced new channels. Two of the new channels are popular pay television channels. Another new channel is a local pay television channel, launched last year on Dialog Satellite Television. I have never heard of the other new channels, so it is possible that Dialog (or a friendly company) is broadcasting those themselves.

Live Cricket







This channel contains STAR Sports India which broadcasts the India-Australia-Sri Lanka Triangular Series these days. It is unknown whether this channel is permanent.








The good old new channel that was available on Mobile TV for a long time now.








This remains Cartoon Network India, and is a trouble for parents who care about their Phone bills. Nothing has changed here (except for the seperate GPRS and 3G feeds).

Channel C
This is a new channel which broadcasts Sri Lankan music videos. It is currently undergoing test transmissions.









The ultimate channel for Hollwood Gossip and News. It is unclear whether this is the Asian feed or European Feed so far. But this channel is supposed to turn up on Dialog Satellite Television as well in the next few days.









This is the Sri Lankan pay television channel which broadcasts tele-dramas and films 24/7. It was launched on Dialog Satellite Television in December last year. The channel will be available only for Dialog Satellite TV customers who pay an extra LKR 25 after March 31st 2008. This makes me wonder whether Mobile TV customers too will have to pay for the channel.

Crazy TV
All things crazy! I go crazy when I try to sort out if this channel is international. So I believe that this channel may be broadcasted by Dialog themselves.

Joke TV
Once again, the channel is self explanatory. And also, this too may be broadcasted by Dialog.

Bollywood TV
This channel broadcasts Indian music. So far I have not seen any films, so maybe the channel is only for Bollywood Music. I've never heard of this channel before either.

Local Channels
The local channels on Dialog Mobile TV are the same as on Dialog Terrestrial and Dialog Satellite, except that here TNL is missing. Isn't something else missing from before?

The loss of the Maharaja
Yes, Sirasa TV, Channel One MTV and Shakthi TV are missing. And possibly they are not returning at all. Why? I don't know.

There is a possibility that Dialog wants Maharaja out of the way as Dialog is launching its own channels now. Or maybe Maharaja Corporation wants their channels to be available only on terrestrial. Whatever happens, it's Maharaja's loss, not Dialog's.

Final Thoughts
This improvement is likely to heat up the mobile market in Sri Lanka. So far, Dialog has been utterly silent about this, but soon there is likely to be a major advertising programme. Mobitel will work fast to improve their services and maybe introduce some new channels to their Mobi TV service. However, no one seems to be talking about any Mobi TV, even though Mobitel has announced it. Does anyone know about it?

These days Dialog may be celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Dialog GSM (not confirmed), which means that there will be many benefits for customers.

I'm watching and waiting for Dialog's next move, as well as their competitor Mobitel's next move.

MPEG: A Brief Overview

Motion Picture Experts Group, better known as MPEG (pronoounced "M. Peg"), is the group responsible for developing and standardising three of the world's most popular media encoding formats. The MPEG encoding is using in almost all digital broadcasting services, and also in a variety of digital video discs (DVD, HD DVD, Blu-Ray).

MPEG-1
This is the first MPEG standard, whose first version was finalised in 1993. It was developed with the idea of fitting audio and video into a Compact Disc (CD). The format was made the base of the Video CD, a compact disc containing MPEG-1 encoded video which became most popular in Asia.

MPEG-1 allowed for acceptable quality with a resolution only upto 352x288 pixels, and with a maximum bitrate of around 1.5 Mbps. The video quality was similar to that of a VHS tape, except for the pixelation. The audio consisted of only one channel (mono). The standard is almost obsolete today, but is important as it gave way for the more advanced MPEG standards we use today.

MPEG-2
This is the most widely used multimedia encoding standard in the world today, mainly because of its usage on DVDs. MPEG-2 is used worldwide for digital broadcasting as well.

MPEG-2 supports upto 720 × 576 resolution with max. 8 Mbps bitrate for usual DVD-quality video. It also supports High Definition video upto 1080p with a high bitrate. MPEG-2 Audio allows 2 (stereo) or more channels to be included, using MP2 or AC3 encoding.

MPEG-2 has less quality and a much higher bitrate requirement for HD video. Nevertheless, it is popular for broadcasting in High Definition.

MPEG-4
This is the newest MPEG standard available today, and hopes replace its predecessor MPEG-2 very soon. It was finalised in 1998, and first became popular for use in encoding media to share on the internet. Later it was adopted as the standard encoding format for the Blu-ray and HD DVD media discs.

There are substandards which work under MPEG-4, including MPEG-4 AVC, x264, DivX and Xvid. The actual quality and bitrate-efficiency depends on the substandard used. H.264 is arguably the best, with bitrates as low as 3.75 Mbps for HD video.

MPEG-4 is most advantageous over MPEG-2 because it can encode very high quality video with much lower bitrates than before. It also supports High Definition video. Bitrates vary according to the substandard used. A regular DVD-quality video using 8 Mbits in MPEG-2, can use as little as 2 Mbps on MPEG-4 to with hardly any quality loss.

Many DTH services now use MPEG-4 because of its low bandwidth usage. On satellite DTH services, even more channels can be squeezed into a transponder using MPEG-4. This can reduce costs greatly for service providers, as less transponders are required. DirecTV, Dish Network (both in USA), Reliance Big TV and Sun Direct (in India) all use MPEG-4 for broadcasting, and many existing services will upgrade to the new technology within the next few years.

The MPEG-2 standard would become obsolete very soon if DVDs did not exist and/or HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs did not cost so much.

In Sri Lanka - Dialog TV hopes to add new channels using MPEG-4 very soon. I will be covering that subject in another post, coming soon.

Webcam Business

I have three Webcams at home:

1. Logitech Quickcam Chat
2. Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000
3. Kodak ...

The Quickcam Chat is my latest webcam, and is not an improvement over the others. My good old Quickcam Pro 4000 stopped showing video after about a year of use. When in operation it shows a black, sometimes flickering screen. Only the microphone worked properly. After research on the internet, I came to the conclusion that the sensor in the Pro 4000 was dead and gone.

So I bought a Quickcam Chat looking for a cheaper deal. Big mistake. The Quickcam Chat's picture quality was light years behind my Quickcam Pro 4000. The picture was even worse than the front camera of my 3G phones.

My Kodak webcam (1999) never works under Windows XP or Vista, so that too is useless to me.

Can anyone suggest a good webcam to buy, which has less chances of dying within the first few years?

Mobitel 3.5G

Mobitel too introduced their Thrid Generation network last week. They announced an improvement over Dialog 3G's services as Mobitel has 3.5G, a newer version.

Mobitel M3 boasts 7.2 Mbps downlink speed and 1.9 Mbps uplink speed, which is a large improvement over the ordinary 3G. However, only 512 Kbps downlink and 128 Kbps uplink is available for mobile users. The higher speeds are available under monthly subscription for home and office users, not for mobile users. The subscription packages range from LKR 400 (512k) to LK 15000 (7.2M).

Free Data Bundles on 3G Home Usage
But unfortunately all the subscription packages have download limits. SLT once more cheats the customers, by calling these limits "Free Data Bundles". Once you pass the limit, you have to pay LKR 10 for every 10 MB downloaded.

I personally believe it is better to get Dialog WiMAX 4M for LKR 14000 and download without limit, than use Mobitel Broadband for LK 15000 and pay even more for "excess" downloading. Its simply not worth for users like me, who download a lot of data every month. I should get around to measuring my downlink usage.

For Mobile Users
M3 is slightly faster than Dialog 3G, and equal to SLT Home ADSL at 512K. Dialog 3G is at 384K, although it has been faster at times. M3 has a session charge of LKR 2 whilst Dialog had removed it some time ago. The prices are equal between the two at LKR 0.02 per kilobyte.

Oh, I almost forgot! There is a "Free Data Bundle" of 200 MB for mobile users too. Customers say that this provides 200 MB of free downloads to all customers. After passing 200 MB the normal data charge will be applied. That's nice of Mobitel. But then why give the same name "Free Data Bundle" for the "download limit" on 3G home usage?

Video Calling
M3 provides Video Calling T LKR 3 per minute and higher to M3 customers, according to the package. It was also said in the M3 launch speech that "this is probably the lowest price you will ever get". LKR 3 is definitely cheaper than Dialog 3G Video Calls (LKR 5 per minute), but whether it will remain so is yet to be seen.

Mobi TV
Now is the the Mobi TV service available in the Americas or Mobitel's own service under the same name. Most likely it is the latter (copyright issues?). This is the competition to Dialog Mobile TV. The picture quality on M3 could be improved because of the slightly faster downlink speed. Other than that, I do not have any information on the channels available.

We are the First in South Asia (NOT)
Mobitel has been proudly proclaiming that they are the first in Asia to provide 3.5G and HSPA (High Speed Data Access) in South Asia. There is a flaw in this advertising. Mobitel is the first to provide 3.5G, but not HSPA. Dialog was actually the first to provide HSPA in South Asia.

This is only a summary of the information that Mobitel has provided, but as with all advertising there are and will be misleading details. Please tell me about your experience with M3 if you have used the service, and about the Mobi TV service. And also some understanding about the "Free Data Bundle" business will be happily accepted.

For the moment I think I will stick on with Dialog because they have not set download limits, etc. And their service has not created much problems for me so far. I do not always trust SLT and their services, especially with the great fake price reducation they issued on landphones (benefits were only for businesses; we paid the same old amount).

Anyway, we must be happy that Dialog and Mobitel are the first to introduce 3G Networks in South Asia. A great milestone for both companies and for Sri Lanka.

UPDATE: Thanks to K FLYER and Tao 365 for further information.

Hands on with Dialog 3G

Dialog Telekom was the first to introduce the Third Generation mobile systems to Sri Lanka. In mid-November this year, Dialog began providing 3G facilities to all Dialog Mobile customers. All customers can now use 3G facilities if they have a compatible 3G Phone.

Soon I received the 3G service on my Nokia N80, and began to wonder if there was a mistake somewhere. When I checked GPRS, it turned out to be very fast. But Video Calling did not work.A few days later, the Press Release on Dialog 3G was made available on Dialog's Corporate website. It explained that 3G was now available to all Dialog GSM and KIT customers. I enabled Video Calling too under the given instructions.

So how was the Dialog 3G experience? For me, it was mostly trouble-free and interesting. However, some of my friends with 3G did say they have problems. But since I have not seen them first-hand, I cannot comment.

3G Internet
Internet on the Dialog 3G network was like heaven after suffering GPRS for over a year now. According to my research, 3G (not 3.5) could reach up to 1.5 mbps. Even though Dialog stated on 384 kbps as the speed on their website, I believe it surpassed that limit at certain timed. One reason for the high speed would be that few people are using 3G services at the moment, although this will change as 3G phone become cheaper.

An interesting fact is that Dialog 3G Internet surpassed the speed of my home SLT ADSL 512k. When downloading a video of about 5 MB, ADSL crawled at a speed of 5 kbps. But when I connected my computer to the Internet via my phone, it downloaded at around 20 kbps. I'm starting to consider moving to Dialog Broadband too (Dialog 2 Mbps is cheaper than SLT 2 Mbps).

Dialog Mobile TV
Dialog Mobile TV was launched a few years ago and has been one of Dialog's unique features so far. It provide CNN, Cartoon Network, and several local channels over the GPRS and 3G networks. On GPRS it would be a waste of money to watch television, as there was hardly anything to be seen or heard. But on 3G this experience changed for the better. Television on 3G loaded fast and worked smoothly without any bumps, and it was much clearer than I would ever imagine. I could actually read the text on the newsbar of CNN (although I do not encourage you to do so; the text is small and you can damage your eyes trying to read it).

Video Calling
Soon I got hold of my old N70 and enabled Video Calling on that too. I took my first ever Video Call from me to myself (later I tried with a friend). The quality of the video transmitted was good, although not crystal clear as shown in the deceiving advertisements.But it was good enough to recognize the face and even the background. And the video was transmitted within approx. two seconds. Audio did not always synchronize with the video.

So far Dialog 3G is quite satisfactory for me. With the recent reduction of prices, 3G has only become more affordable. But with 3.5G now in the market with higher data rates from Mobitel, and Airtel coming withing the next year, it will be interesting to see what happens. Competition will work to the customers advantage, although I will not be switching to another mobile network anytime soon. I encourage you to try out 3G now if you have a compatible phone.

Windows Vista: The 256 Experience

Windows Vista officially supports on 512 MB of RAM or higher. The setup itself stops you from installing without the necessary amount of RAM. But fortunately this can be bypassed using a certain crack.

I am currently working on a friend's laptop, on which he wanted Windows Vista to be installed. But its RAM and Graphics are nothing much to be spoken about. 256 MB of RAM definitely did not appeal to the Windows Vista Setup program, so I cracked the setup. Next time it did work.

Almost everything on the internet warned that using Vista on 256 MB of RAM was very foolish, and would be fruitless. But I used to run Vista with 512 MB of RAM on my own computer some time ago, and it worked very well! So I beleived that Windows Vista could run on 256 MB at a reasonable speed as well.

Setup
First I reformatted the computer and installed Windows XP. Then I copied the Vista setup files to the computer and cracked it to work with 256 MB of RAM.

The setup ran at the speed I was used to. Took about 45 minutes to complete. No problems whatsoever. I was very pleased.

First Startup
The "Welcome" screen appeared and stayed on for about 30 seconds. Next it loaded the desktop. Although the system could now be used, it was loading stuff in the background for about 5 minutes, and everything was slow. After that, everything ran smoothly and without any system errors.

Boosting the Speed
The Speed of Vista greatly depends on the Processor and RAM. The processor, in this case, was a Intel Celeron M with a 1.3 GHz clock speed. The RAM was, of course, only 256 MB. So one way to speed up was to increase the RAM.

I could not waste money on buying new RAM for the laptop. Instead, I used Vista's new and powerful feature named "Windows ReadyBoost".

What does it do? It uses a USB Flash Drive (min. 64 MB of free space) as extra RAM. So I plugged in completely empty 256 MB Flash Drive and enabled ReadyBoost. Voila! The system sped up like I never expected.

Tweaking
Actually, so far I have not done any tweaking to the computer. The current speed of Vista on the laptop is satisfactory. Maybe I will get on to it later.

Gaming
This too I have yet to test. The graphics card itself if not very powerful, but games like Grand Theft Auto used to work earlier on XP. So now I must see how it works on Vista.

I will update this blog post with my future experiences with Windows Vista on my friend's low RAM laptop. For now, I am pleasantly surprised on Vista's performance.

Choosing an High Definition Television

HDTV is becoming more and more common around the world, with a few exceptions like Sri Lanka. Unfortunately we are still stuck in the Analog age. But that has not prevented HD Television Sets, Xbox 360s and Blu-ray/HD DVD Players getting in to the country.

Therefore it is suitable that we prepare for the future, which has already arrived in other countries. After all, we can have a much more enjoyable experience with HD on our Xbox 360. And it gets better if you hook up a HD DVD extension drive to the Xbox, and watch some imported HD DVDs. Even watching cricket on a Standard Definition Television will look nice (although not very clear from nearby).

Here are some famous and trusted Television makers, and their local dealers:-

• Sony - Siedles
• LG - Abans
• Samsung - Sinhagiri
• Panasonic - Softlogic
• Singer - Singer Sri Lanka

Now, there are four types of HDTVs currently available in the market:-

• Tube based HDTV (CRT)
• LCD Flat-Panel HDTV
• Plasma HDTV
• Projection HDTV

Tube based HDTV

This is the good old, space taking Cathode Ray Tube Television, like your old one. But it has 4 times more pixels to provide a HD experience. These are currently the cheapest HDTV Sets around today. But due to the space and energy requirement, I do not recommend this.

LCD Flat-Panel HDTV

This is the slim, beautiful television set that may look like your computer monitor. These are more expensive, but the Eco-friendliness, space requirements and beauty will be worth it. They may also be more reliable than CRTs. Recommended for sizes under 50".

Plasma HDTV

These are similar to LCD HDTVs but have better clarity, sharpness and colour quality. But this comes at a price. Plasma screens are best suited for screens over 50", as they become cheaper than LCDs at that level.

Projection HDTV

A Projection HDTV is based on Front Projection or Rear Projection.

Front Projection uses a separate projector to project the image on to the screen. These are not really suitable except when you want an extremely large size, since the image need to be correctly aligned with the screen (sold separately).

A Rear Projection HDTV is fully built into a single case. It can be made of a CRT, LCD or use DLP or SCoS. Click here for more information on these rather complicated systems. The advantage is they have a larger screen size, and become cheaper than Plasma or LCD at over 80". But it is best suited for a theatre room.

Nokia N95 with GPS: Now Available

Nokia has recently began shipping out their new N95 mobile to Europe and Asia. The phone sports a 5 megapixel camera, DVD-like quality video recording, built-in GPS system and more. It is likely to be Nokia's most advanced phone released so far. And it comes with a US$ 700 price tag to match. Also Nokia's priciest N Series mobile phone.

The N95 also has the ordinary N Series features, such RealPlayer, Bluetooth, Visual Radio, Infrared and WiFi connectivity. But the major attraction in this phone comes from its built-in GPS (Global Positioning System) software. The GPS is able to find your current position anywhere in the world within 20-40 seconds. Over 150 maps are stored in the phone, to be utilised by the GPS and by the Nokia Maps application.

Nokia treats the N95 as the son of computers; what computers have become today. The reason for this is that Nokia has packed in a high resolution camera, complete GPS system, mobile phone, organizer and much more in to 120 grams of plastic. However, it is yet to be seen how this computer will score in the mobile race, especially with a high price compared with other phones. But this phone defintely scores well in Looks, Functionality an Portability, three fields that are taken in to consideration when choosing a phone or a PDA.

In Sri Lanka - It is yet to be seen if the new N95 will have GPS support for Sri Lanka. If it does, wow! We are eagerly waiting for this supernova phone to get to Sri Lanka...

Apple TV - Is it worth?

The new Apple TV gadget is able to obtain downloaded movies, TV shows, music and other media from iTunes and show it on your TV. It sounds cool, but is it really worth it? Apple TV requires a Widescreen HDTV. Most people who have such a screen use it with their computers at anyrate. Isn't it better if Apple let us leaglly burn iTunes movies to DVD-Videos so we could watch our favourite films with our existing DVD players. Its not worth the price tag.

Anyway, this product is probably not coming to Sri Lanka in the near future. Why can't Apple make something good for us in developing countries. There is a good new market starting here with plenty of opportunity for Apple.

At least, credit goes to Microsoft for catering for our South Asian blooming markets. Once again, Microsoft will win if Apple does not do anything.