Wisetechie Blog : Ctrl your Tech Life

Good news for those who have life insurance policies in LIC (Life Insurance Corporation of India) or are looking to get them. You can now pay your LIC premiums online at the click of a mouse, (at some clicks of mouse actually). Here are simple steps to pay your premium online and you get a receipt almost instantly. I just paid my mom’s premium so i know

1. Goto www.licindia.com

2. Create a user there , the name MUST be the policy you wish to pay for.

3. Enroll your policy after registering, click on enroll policy and select the number of insurance policies you want to enroll.

4. Fill in you name, policy number and premium.

5. It will show you if the policy number was accepted.

6. Click on pay premium , check the policy whose premium you want to pay, and you will be forwarded to Bill Desk who handle the online payments. Read all the instructions on screen carefully all the way.

7. Select your bank through whose netbanking you want to pay, CITIBANK customers may also pay with their debit cards.

8. Login to your bank account and complete the transaction.

9. You will be redirected back to LIC’s site where you will get your receipt.

It turns out that the site was nothing short of a scam , no embezzlement was involved but scam nonetheless. The site warlier gave free domains to people with the option of showing or not showing ads. I was one of the stupid few who signed up and made a cool TLD alias to my already existing earlier domain. With time my site became popular both on visits and search engine Page Rank. DOT Tk or .tk Page Ranks are in no way affected by the fact that they open the page in a frame. Anyway , i recently checked my DOT Tk or .tk alias and was horrified to see a 15 second counter and POP UP ads. POP UP ads are THE WORST form of advertising. Yuck, my site looks like a CHEAP for PROFIT only website now , YUCK again , so i am slowly fazing out the DOT Tk or .tk domain. So an advice to all of you , stay clear of DOT Tk or .tk domains and if you already have them , look for alternatives. The free domain is not worth it. Also there are a number of restrictions on the DOT Tk or .tk domains

1. You cant register more than 3 free domains on a email address.

2. You must guarantee a minimum number of visitors each month or they will take away your site and suspend it.

3. I have wasted a lot of time in trying favicons for the free DOT Tk or .tk domains. And i have come to the conclusion that its not possible.

4. You dont own the domain , Dot TK does , so even if your site becomes hugely popular its of little use to you, moreover you are making them money by showing the ugly DOT Tk or .tk ads.

Linux Asia 2007 will be held this week in New Delhi, India.

VENUE: INDIA HABITAT CENTRE
DATE :31st jan’07 - 2nd feb’07

Creative has launched its new mini MP3 player the ZEN V PLUS in India. The product looks cool and offers a great alternative to the Ipod. Moreover i hate the Ipod because its overpriced ,featureless and its battery kills the device. Moreover Apple is one of the least eco friendly companies in the world. The one in the photo is the Orange/Black one GB version. The headphones in the photo are not the standard ones qhich accompany the player. the player also comes in an orange white version. the player is also available in 2,4 and 8 GB versions.The 1 GB player has a street price of 7000 rupees.

A great price , but make sure to try out the product thoroughly before you buy it !

In what is going to be pleasant news to the ears of old serial lovers, Malgudi Days and Fauji , two classic serials will now be available for free watching on Rajshri.com. However downloading them will not be free and will cost 99 cents an episode , yikes !

Fauji was the serial which supposedly jumpstarted Shahrukh Khan’s career.

Malgudi Days are R. K. Narayan’s ageless tales about the sleepy town of Malgudi. Enjoyable.

Neo sports will now be available on tata sky. This comes as a relief to the thousands of Tata Sky dth subscribers who had to miss the first match and watch the second match delayed on Doordarshan. Dish TV subscribers will however continue to miss out on the action.

But the interactive feed will be available on tata sky only from the next series when India take on Sri Lanka. Neo sports can be watched on channel number 411 on Tata Sky.

This is the online shopping portal of Big Bazaar , more importantly all the stuff you can buy at Big Bazaar at exhorbant discounts can be purchased from this site. This is really cool as anyone who has been to a Big Bazaar outlet will tell you that there isnt even enough air to breathe in while you are at the store. And the checkout queues are a mile long. Futurebazaar however does NOT have the daily needs grocery items , more of electronics , clothes, books , cell phonesetc. at some of the cheapest prices in India

For those of you who are Tata Sky customers looking to get DVR , you are going to be disappointed ,their customer care is illiterate even as to the meaning of DVR. Here is their reply when i asked by when a DVR will be available on Tata Sky

This is with reference to your mail dated 13/1/2007, regarding DVR.

We would like to inform you that please furnish your Subscriber ID, in order to serve you better and also please explain that what is mean by DVR, which also help us understanding better.

We appreciate your effort in taking time to write to us.

For any further clarification, please contact:

Helpline from MTNL/ BSNL: 1901 425 66 33
West: 020-66006633
South and East: 040-66006633
North: 0172-66006633

Our Tata Sky Associates will be happy to assist you, you can also write to us at help@tatasky.com.

Thank you for your valuable association with us. Assuring you of our best services at all times.

Warm Regards,

Customer Care.

So much for the ‘most advanced satellite TV service in India’.

One of our panel members flied by Spice Jet recently , and here is his experience (@him - i have taken the liberty to correct some spelling mistakes )

How did you book the ticket - I booked the ticket on their website , i made the payment with a credit card , it was quick and easy. I also chose my seat on the internet and printed my ticket.
How was checkin -I checked in pretty early making sure i conformed to all the prescribed things that can be carried. I checked in my luggage and my boarding pass was given. I also saw packages with fragile written being thrown about here and there.
How was the bus - The bus was pathetic to say the least, no seats , ABSOLUTELY NO SEATS , which meant all of us had to stand while other people came to the bus.

The plane - The plane was dirty from the inside and was a boeing , the seat spacing was good , but i had the honour of sitting behind those dodos who like to FULLY recline their seats.

Getting your seat - I had already booked the seat i wanted and had no hassles locating it , but the air steward (it was his first day i was later told) was a little ignorant when i asked him to put my hand baggage in the overhead containers.

The CATASTROPHE - There was a little fog all around , Spice Jet like most other private airlines does not have CAT III trained pilots , hence we had to wait for 2 hours in the plane.I would have been in my destination by now.

The Captain - Sounded like a foreigner ,told us to be patient all the time , the more times he said patient , the more i wanted to tear my hair out. But was polite enough to give us regular updates.

The Meals , you mean the biscuit , it was nice , nothing else is available in the flight to buy. Moreover as it was an early morning flight , most had come on an empty stomach and the delay put them in a foul mood.

The Flight Crew- The dodo-est people one can dream of ,while reading a flight information brochure , he actually read out

“The flight crew shall say this in some @#!@# way” , dont remember what it was exactly.

Then for 2 minutes he laughed at his own stupidity. His english was straight out of Rapidex Angrezi Course.
Overall , Okish experience, 2.5/5

I visited the Zapak site recently and it really has nothing special to see or do. It has almost the same games as say Miniclip might offer. Online Games are a huge moneymaker. So Zapak realising the lack of such a player in the Indian market launched their own service with some HUGE stars like Salman Khan and Bipasha Basu. Moreover i think their advertising spend on Tv must be worth a few crores atleast. Is the idea viable you ask me , yes , because most internet users of India are new ones who know little about other better options available in the market. This venture is owned by Reliance Dhirubhai Ambani Group (Dhirubhai Ambani was a great Indian Industrialist and pioneer of Reliance Industries for those scratching their heads). Their privacy policy is suspect. Quoting from their site , they dont even guarantee the security of your data. Its like a bank saying as no security is foolproof , your money is not guaranteed.

All information gathered on Zapak is securely stored within Zapak-controlled database. The database is stored on servers secured behind a firewall; access to such servers being password-protected and strictly limited based on need-to-know basis. However, we understand that as effective as our security measures are, no security system is impenetrable. Thus, we cannot guarantee the security of our database, nor can we guarantee that information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the Internet. Further, any information you include in a posting to the discussion areas will be available to anyone with Internet access.

And the final shock , you cant play a game without registering and sharing your personal data, LOL. But thats that , the site has big ambitions and we sincerely wish them all the best. Just hope they make their privacy policy more people friendly. And before i forget , they also offer a 2 GB email account , thats COOL , are they trying to make another MSN or something. Rock on !