Wisetechie Blog : Ctrl your Tech Life

Lol, no we are not going underground, nor are we encouraging stealing. Its just that this particular function of Picnik is extremely useful and innovative.

Here is how it works, you enter the URL of the site whose pictures you want to take, and voila , it displays all the photos on the page separately. It does not get the layout pictures and hence eliminates the screening process.

See how easily it stole the pictures of our website.

You may also import files from Picasa Albums and Flickr. Although it wont replace picasa/or photoshop anytime soon, its a really nice step. Offers a great amount of filters which might be reviewed by us later.

And website owners beware, Picnik didnt check for a robots.txt file, so your non-robot accessable pages otherwise might also be prone to theft.

Http Code: 200 Date: May 28 12:22:56 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 32556

Agent: Picnik Image Editor +http://picnik.com

Tata Sky is off to a great start as far as numbers go, I believe it must have enlisted a record number of people in its few months of existence. But numbers aren’t everything, as the market will start to saturate, customer satisfaction will be the key. But Tata Sky does not seem to realise this, treating customers like shit wont get you anywhere. Everywhere when you ask a Tata Sky customer, if he is satisfied, the answer is a straight ‘NO’. But does Tata sky care ? It definitely doesnt seem like it.

Tata Sky first went wrong when it stopped listening to the consumer, take the whole Neo Sports incident for example. They first got Neo Sports, announced it pompously with their set top box alert system and when the cricket series got over quietly shut it down. Then India did not perform in the world cup and they got their excuse. Seeing that the common man is upset with cricket, they capitalized. Before the world cup they gave hope to subscribers(current and future) that when cricket series are on, we will get the channels showing the series. But look now, the India Bangladesh test matches are being shown on Neo Sports, but there is no Neo Sports on Tata Sky, a scam well executed by the management of Tata Sky.

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Good news for customers of HDFC Bank in India like me. With effect from April 2007 , their insta-alert service is now free. Which means that whenever there is a transaction of Rs.5000 ($125) or above in your bank account you will receive an alert on your cellphone as a SMS.

A weekly alert can also be configured for your account balance, in which case you will get a SMS with your account balance at the end of every week.The full list of actions for which an Insta-alert can be received are

• Debit transactions greater than Rs. 5,000/ Rs.10, 000/ Rs. 20,000/Rs. 50,000
• Credit in account greater than Rs. 5,000/ Rs.10, 000/ Rs. 20,000/Rs. 50,000
• Account Balance below Rs. 5,000/ Rs.10, 000/ Rs. 20,000/Rs. 50,000
• Weekly account balance
• Salary Credits
• Utility bill payment due Alert

The service is free for Savings Account Customers, except those having a classic or ‘no-frills’ account. Also people with current accounts will need to pay Rs.50 per quarter to avail of the service. Payroll account holders will also need to pay for the service.

To activate the insta-alert service log into your HDFC bank netbanking account and do the needful.

I am happy though seeing my cellphone beep away

Full range of terms and conditions can be had from your bank branch and/or phonebanking.

Rating:

First things first, Futurebazaar isnt paying me to write this, although I wouldn’t mind if they did

I ordered a 2GB pen drive from futurebazaar.com recently. Frustrated with the lowly and pathetic service of Indiatimes (if you love your money, give indiatimes a BIG SKIP) , i decided to check out one of the new players in the market. Futurebazaar is the online shopping portal of Big Bazaar which is an arm of the Pantaloon group of India.

I made the payment by credit card and i received an order confirmation only a day later. It said that my Card had not yet been charged and my order would be processed after bank’s verification of the charges. Hmmm, logging onto Netbanking i saw that my card had already been charged. I waited a day, the next day i got confirmation that my card had been charged and that they are ready to ship my order and they shipped it the same day.

But the order status at the website is confusing, it shows ‘In process’ all the time if you check the main page, the individual status page is the one which changes to reflect the latest status.

I received my pen drive on the 3rd day via Bluedart at 10:00 AM dot, the package was neat , had a warranty card and a card certifying that goods were genuine(Indiatimes i am sure cant provide this, most electronics they sell are grey market smuggled ones).

All in all, a 4 out of 5 experience with 1-2 minor glitches.

Yahoo’s virus scanner recently failed while doing its duty, i.e. to protect and serve the yahoo customers. Its virus scanner was ‘unavailable’ and it very politely told me that the attachment i was about to download may or may not have a virus.

Hmmm, i hope my home antivirus nevers ends a scan like this, the virus scanner is unavailable, your hard disk may or may not have a virus !

When Microsoft ventures into something, you know its going to be the best and the biggest. So this Graphing calculator was no different.

The Graphing calculator is just a small part of Microsoft Student’s Math tools and is made by the Educational Products Division of Microsoft (My favourite division for reasons you will never know )

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Microsoft has launched its file hosting service called Windows Live Folders. It offers 250 MB of free storage space on the MSN servers. The maximum file size is fixed at 50 MB. Not only can you host your files for free, you can also limit access to them to your friends and family. All they need is a Windows Live Account for accessing the files.

The display is uncluttered and minimalist. You are allowed to organize your files into folders. Each folder can have a certain share level which is indicated by the (huge) icon next to the folder name.

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Google seems to be in revamp mode, take a sneak peak at the new adsense homepage which comes up randomly sometimes.

Tata Sky gives an alert every time a new channel is added, you press the yellow button and they pompously announce that so and so channel is now available on Tata Sky, but when they remove channels , they remain hush about it, they recently removed the Neo Sports channels after the deal with Neo Sports fell through. The Bangladesh series is scheduled to be shown on Neo Sports only. But thanks to the high court you can watch the Neo Sports coverage on channel 101 which is Doordarshan national, they are also showing the cricket match.
Also deleted are 24Ghante, Play TV, Zee Jagran, Zee Smile, Zee Music, Zee Kannada, Zee Telegu, Zee Sports, ETC Punjabi, ETC, Zee Premier, Zee Action and Zee Classic , 13 channels owned by Subhash Chandra’s Zee group. This was done as Tata Sky wanted only 19 of Zee’s channels, while Zee wanted to sell all 32. TDSAT ruled in Tata Sky’s favour. This means TATA is now saving 46 rupees per customer, but these savings have not been passed onto the consumer as of yet. The order came on April 21, so there is little hope now that TATA Sky will pass on the savings.

They also added a new channel BBC Entertainment(203 ?), it only runs from 6pm every evening.

Check and Mate. Alexa has finally delivered the knock out punch to Statsaholic. From now on all Alexa statistics charts will be having Adbrite Brite Pic ads. Also no site can publish the charts without the ads according to the new terms and service of Alexa. Also seen on the site is a sponsored by section which allows you to buy square ad space.

This seems to be part of Amazon’s big plan to monetize Alexa and forever shut out people from using Alexa charts for their own benefits.