Wisetechie Blog : Ctrl your Tech Life

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Futurebazaar.com is back in a fresh new avatar. It no longer looks bland and boring but bright and attractive. The site has been redesigned and now has a lot of flash and a background colour so to say.

First of all, my old password did not work. I have made multiple orders from futurebazaar.com but was unable to login using my password. I had to use the forgot password feature to login to my account. But guess what ?

Even the old password didn’t work. Now i have praised futurebazaar.com in some of my earlier reviews, but they have essentially killed their website if a person cant even login to the site.

Also while browsing certain products, i got error pages and blank pages. I don’t even want to send an email telling them about their site errors. The last time I did that, I got an email from them that its working at their end (forgot the golden rule of businesses).

The new site is buggy and un-navigable, at least today it is. So they really need to get their act together to retain customers.

I had ordered this Walkman from Sony to be delivered by 24th December and chosen Overnight Standard. How long should packages sent via overnight standard take within continental US ?

1 day , 2 days, 3 days , 4 days ? or even more ?

Fed-Ex literally made their overnight service a BIG JOKE with my latest package. Continental US Delivery took so much time that my Christmas was essentially ruined. Just see the status messages :

Dec 26, 2008  

4:25 PM At local Fed-Ex facility  PORTLAND, OR 

4:10 PM Delivery exception    PORTLAND, OR Delay beyond our control 

7:17 AM On Fed-Ex vehicle for delivery    PORTLAND, OR 

6:59 AM At local Fed-Ex facility    PORTLAND, OR 

Dec 24, 2008
12:01 AM At local Fed-Ex facility    PORTLAND, OR 

Dec 23, 2008
10:59 PM At dest sort facility    PORTLAND, OR 

7:47 PM Departed Fed-Ex location    MEMPHIS, TN 

7:14 AM In transit   MEMPHIS, TN 

2:15 AM Arrived at Fed-Ex location   MEMPHIS, TN 

12:43 AM In transit    CHICAGO, IL 

Dec 22, 2008
7:08 PM Left Fed-Ex origin facility   HILLSIDE, IL 

6:14 PM Picked up    HILLSIDE, IL 

6:07 AM Package data transmitted to Fed-Ex  

What the hell does delay beyond our control mean ? Calling them you got to hear only mumble and more mumble, no explanation, no nothing. Fed-ex is totally unprofessional and don’t honour my business and don’t deserve it. I would also request anyone out there who respects and honours the Christmas spirit to not give Fed-ex their business.

The company ruined my Christmas, please ruin it for them ! Please do not use this unprofessional company for any of your packages. They should realise bad customer service = no more customers. Even USPS is much better than this company.

Got it finally of December 27th 2008 thankfully.

Locr is an amazing software. I first discovered it in my father’s Nokia E71 (review soon). Anyway, i installed it on my Asus P320’s windows mobile, thank god the version worked on my phone also even though it was meant for windows mobile 5 and my phone has windows mobile 6.1.

So it has versions for both windows mobile and symbian, so far so good. So the long and short of it. The software allows you to easily embed the information about the GPS coordinates of the location you took your photo. This info is easily recognised by Flickr and Zooomr. So you can actually see the photos you took on a map (and trust me it looks awesome).

Currently i have taken only photos at my house, so i cant show you the feature for privacy’s sake. So i will show you the photos in locations when i go out. Your phone must have GPS for this feature.

There is really only 1 way to install the Realtek HD Audio drivers properly. No matter what all other forums say. Service Pack 3 is the main culprit as the drivers see that its above SP2 and dont install. I personally face this situation and was really distressed because it looked like either i will have to reinstall Windows Xp or have my new supercool and super monster computer without sound. Imagine having a monster PC with a motherboard with HD Audio and your driver doesnt install.

Both scenarios were something which i would never have approved of. Anyway so i Googled. I got 10s of solutions but most didnt work. Only 1 worked and i will put it here hoping that Google dear will catch it and people who face this problem installing the Realtek HD Audio 0xE000027.

1. First Step is to make sure all instances Realtek Audio and its associative softwares are uninstalled from add remove programs and device manager. This includes Intel High Definition audio.
2. On your PC change the CSDVersion registry key to Windows XP SP2:
   HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows\CSDVersion value=200

This problem arises as the patch thinks that SP3 includes a better version of the patch itself and hence doesn’t install itself.

3. Download the latest drivers from the Intel website, navigate to the KB888111 patch.

4. But before installing the patch, goto your device manager and disable the UAA. Now uninstall the UAA.

5. Install your patch now.

6. Install the Realtek drivers now and things should work.

7. Change the SP version to 300 again.

If it didnt work, try once again. I can enjoy 7.1 channel high definition sound from my Intel Original motherboard now. Realtek HD Audio now works fine. Hopefully Error 0xE000027 is fixed now.

Disclaimer : Advice on as is basis, this worked for me, may or may not work for you, but it should

Its a real pain to install the Realtek Audio HD software on your new computer on Windows Xp. I have windows Xp and i spent hours trying to figure out what was wrong and how to fix this rather annoying bug.

But i have finally done it after hours and hours of searching around the internet, experimenting and dozens of computer restarts.

Now this error is caused due to a number of reasons , take your pick :

1. Just installed Windows Xp Service Pack 3

2. Just installed Windows Vista on a separate partition

3. Audio is disabled in BIOS

4. Didnt install the devices in correct order and messed things up.

I will be posting the solution to the problem in 1-2 days. Till then, hang tight !

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Just quote these coupon codes at the time of ordering a new connection and you will enjoy free 1 month of usage of super saver pack and i get rewarded too.

Also Tata Sky has finally launched their DVR calling it the Tata Sky plus.

Its a great video showing just what the future would be like with a touchscreen PC (not the far off future actually, its going to be present pretty soon).

Whether its grouping your photos, or zooming in and out of maps etc. Its going to be a breeze.

  Well if you have a Windows Mobile based Bluetooth phone and love exchanging files among your friends , then there are 2 questions you must have asked yourself or a friend.

1. How to receive incoming files via bluetooth , most windows mobile users find that by default the incoming file feature is disabled in Windows Mobile phones.

2. How to ensure that files received via bluetooth are saved directly onto your memory card. Most smartphones and Pocket PCs have limited internal memory, often just enough to support the default Windows Mobile installation.

The straight answer is a software called Obex Inbox (3rd party software, research before use). Install the software and reboot your Windows Mobile phone.

Now goto settings on your Windows Mobile phone and Just give the path as Storage Card/folder in your Obex settings and all incoming bluetooth beams will be stored in your storage card.

For more Windows Mobile tips and tricks keep watching the blog . The screenshots are taken on the Asus P320 smartphone with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional.

If you have ever read online blogs including this one, you would realise bloggers often use their websites and blogs as a medium to vent their frustrations against firms who dole out shabby or unacceptable customer service to them. And gone are the days when the reviews went un-noticed. The fact that most people search google before buying a product or service from a company makes these reviews pretty darn important.

On this blog only, we have written about poor customer service multiple times. Infact i call this blog a consumer plus technology blog as i enjoy writing about consumer matters as much as other technology matter. Sometimes these reviews work out like in the case of TNT Couriers or Indiatimes, sometimes they dont like Sony India (who are yet to reply to me regarding the issue). But the fact is that companies who genuinely care about customers or those who genuinely care about their reputation do solve matters which are posted publicly online.

Also worth noting is an article in the Business Standard dated 3-Oct-2008, the headline reads “Bloggers trashing your company? Online reputation managers are here ” , i have quoted some text from the article :

Most companies refused to divulge what they called “trade secrets”, but Communicate 2 Managing Director Vivek Bhargava said the first thing is to identify the source and if possible to pull the site down with the creator’s permission. If not, these companies create more content to confuse the search engine, so that the crazy blog doesn’t come up on the first page.

Its a very saddening quote, companies whose aim is to dilute genuine feedback are cropping up. They make pages to confuse search engines so that feedback cant be found about the company. I would love to know which companies employ such organisations. What i found hilarious was that they try to pull down sites. I mean if someone contacts me to pull down an article i wrote i would probably post the email transcripts here. Also if a company does infact solve the issue after i report it, i write a proper thank you post for them.

Well these are general facts about using bluetooth on your windows mobile mobile phones, most people complain that that they are able to send files and images via bluetooth but when receiving they receive errors like “Unable to Connect” or unable to send files. Most think that this error is caused due to their Windows Mobile Phones, but it isnt so (technically), Imate, HTC, Asus etc. wont make phones with bluetooth not able to receive files.  The trick is basically the same for windows mobile 5 and windows mobile 6, i have taken the screenshots from windows mobile 6.1 on my Asus p320 phone, but i remember it was more or less the same on my Imate and its windows mobile 5.

These are the steps needed to setup your windows mobile device to receive photos/music/data files:

Step 1: In Settings click on Bluetooth, select the mode tab and switch on bluetooth and make this device visible to other devices.

Step 2: In Settings , click on Beam and check receive all incoming beams.

After you complete these 2 steps all of your bluetooth incoming beams should reach your mobile phone and you should be able to share photos, files and music with your friends and receive it from them.

But another problem, all incoming files are stored in my documents, how do you ensure that these are stored in storage card ? Answer to that next week