Iphone Buying: Apple Store Vs Carrier Vs Best Buy

A quick inquiry of costs involved in buying a new iphone with a 2-year contract with some carrier in US seems as if it does not matter where you buy the iphone from, be it Apple online store or instore or some carrier store like ATT or at a retailer store like Best Buy. But a closer look might yeild a different perspective.

Apple store:

• sells only new devices. Does not sell refurbished devices
• 16GB Iphone 4s with taxes costs approximately $255 in california. even though the advertised price is $199. Taxes are always calculated on the original price of the phone but not the discounted retail price
• apple has a no strings attached return policy within 30days of purchase
• apple is not responsible for cancelling the contract with the carrier. A new purchase is locked in catract only after 30days. So make sure you call the carrier to cancel the contract if you purchase and return a new phone through apple

ATT store 

• sells both new and refurbished devices. Refurbs are slighly cheaper ofcourse
• 16GB Iphone 4s with taxes costs approx $255
• ATT has 30day return policy but charges $35 restocking fees. There is no restocking fees with apple. Restocking fees is applicable even if the device is not taken out of the box with ATT.
• ATT takes care of cancelling the contract if the phone is returned with in 30days

Best Buy

• Sells both new and refubs. Refurbs are cheaper
• 16GB Iphone 4s with taxes costs approx $255
• Best buy charges no restocking fees within 30days
• They also have a buy back program
• if the device is returned between 2-4 months they pay approx $340
• between 4-12 months they pay approx $250
• between 12-18 months they pay approx $140
• best buy claims that the buy back rates are applicable as long as the device is working and nrmal daily wear and tear is ok
• let us say the iphone 5 is released next summer and some one who just bought iphone 4s in november wants to get iphone 5, he can return iphone 4s at best buy for $340 and get the iphone 5 from best buy. But the carrier will charge early upgrade fees of $250

Google Plus Circles Venn Diagrams

Circle is a very common word of usage to describe a specific set of people a person is to connected to in some way. It is a very nice easy adapt word used for categorizing friends on google plus. Though the name says circles and UI has a few circles for adding friends to on google plus, it does not fully exploit the advantage of using circles for such concept. Circles have special properties both mathematically, socially and philosophically. Some of the changes which can enhance the usability of circles are as follows

• Use a venn Diagram which in turn can
• take the advantage of intersections, unions and exclusions to categorize people into multiple categories in one step rather than having to add one person to multiple circles
• human mind can process this kind of visual data better
• The size of the circle can be proportional to the number of people added to it
• If a specialised dot can represent oneself, then the distance of this dot to other other people in a circle can decrease as the communication, likes between them increase. But all the dots are restricted to move with in their own circles.

facebook password history

How much password history is facebook storing. I entered an old password by mistake, Facebook gives me the following information along with a login failure message

• the password entered is an old password.
• The date and time when it was changed.
• the computer and the network from which the password was changed is also suggested vaguely

This can be a  potential hit and try hack to gain access. The old password on facebook can be active on some other accounts that the user uses.

Why does facebook need to store password history at all

Excel to custom character delimited value text(similiar to csv)

Recently after spending a lot of painful hours on trying to convert a excel file to a pipe or tilda or hash delimited value text file, i figured out a very easy solution to implement this on a windows xp machine

Setting up custom character as the default delimiter

From the Start button on the MS Windows task bar, highlight
Settings and select the Control Panel. In the Control Panel window select
Regional and Language Options.
2. In the Regional and Language Options window, select the Regional Options
tab, click the Customize… button.
3. In the Customize Regional Options window, select the Numbers tab.
4. Set the List Separator field to a pipe-delimited symbol | by pressing Shift and |. (You can set any other character you wish)

5. Click OK to close the Customize Regional Options window.
6. Click OK to close the Regional and Language Options window.


Convert MS Excel to the Custom character separated value text file

7. Open MS Excel.
8. In the menu bar click File and then click Open.
9. Choose the excel format file that you want to convert.
10. After excel opens and the data is loaded, In the menu bar click File and the click Save.
11. In the Save As window select CSV (Comma delimited) from the Save as type:
dropdown list and click Save

Don't forget to revert back the default delimiter setting else you will see a lot of unwanted of behavior in alot of applications, MS word, Excel, etc

Favorite poem for 3rd grade

Veer Tum Badhe Chalo

Veer tum badhe chalo
Dheer tum badhe chalo

Sath me dhvaja rahe
Bal dal saja rahe
Dhvaj kabhi jhuke nahi
Dal kabhi ruke nahi


Samne pahad ho
Sinh ki dahad ho
Tum nider hato nahi
Marg me ruko nahi

Veer tum badhe chalo
Dheer tum badhe chalo

Badal garajte rahen
Megh baraste rahen
Bijliyan chamak uthen
Bijliyan tadak uthen

Veer tum badhe chalo
Dheer tum badhe chalo

prat ho na raat ho
Sang ho na sath ho
Surya se badhe chalo
Chandra se badhe chalo

Veer tum badhe chalo
Dheer tum badhe chalo 

बढ़े चलो
-द्वारिकाप्रसाद माहेश्वरी

वीर तुम बढ़े चलो
धीर तुम बढ़े चलो

साथ में ध्वजा रहे
बाल दल सजा रहे
ध्वज कभी झुके नहीं
दल कभी रुके नहीं

सामने पहाड़ हो
सिंह की दहाड़ हो
तुम निडर,हटो नहीं
Marg me ruko nahi

वीर तुम बढ़े चलो
धीर तुम बढ़े चलो

प्रात हो कि रात हो
संग हो न साथ हो
सूर्य से बढ़े चलो
चन्द्र से बढ़े चलो

वीर तुम बढ़े चलो
धीर तुम बढ़े चलो

Vocabulary.com Review

Recently I came across this website called http://www.vocabulary.com/ .I discovered that this is an amazing vocabulary building tool. Some of the interesting aspects of this website are

• Facebook Login
• GRE and GMAT style of questions which further help in exam preparation.
• A social game environment with ability to compare the learning experience with other users of the site or your Facebook friends who use this site.
• Encouraging tokens of good performance when you get a specified set of questions right in a series.
• Adaptive learning
• Repetition of words and questions which were answered wrong once so as it get meaning the registered in the mind
• graphical tools to track progress and performance
• Quick reference dictionary and thesaurus
• 40000+ questions
• The system builds a model based on your performance as you progress and tries to teach words that you most probably do not know based on the model
• last but not the least its free

I have personally learnt a lot of new words with the help of this site. All my friends whom I suggested this site gave an extremely positive feed back. This is one resource where the domain name says it all.

Best Job Search Resources

The following is an excellent article on Job search resources categorized by industry and organised alphabetically. I will edit the original blog later and more content

http://newgradlife.blogspot.com/2009/12/top-100-niche-job-sites.html

If any of you know more resources, then add it to comments. I will definitely add them to the list when I edit this blog in future. Lets help the New Grads and others seekings Jobs

Google Wallet possibilities

Lets get to some basics of the product before we discuss the scope

Google Wallet Launch Video

Following are some of the Highlights of google wallet
1) stores credit cards
2) stores loyalty cards
3) stores coupons
4) one tap transactions at point of sale

what more can be expected as product matures
1) suggestions on which credit card(cash cards, rewards cards etc) or coupon to use based on type of card and its features. Nowadays cash cards offer a standard percentage of cash back but also extra cash back on specific types of products in specific months for which the user needs to sign up. same is the story with rewards cards

• google can suggest based on transaction history of millions of customers on the type of card and coupon used. Here the idea is to utilise collective intelligence 
• various combinations of coupons and credit cards can be iterated over based on the features of the card and the offers in the coupon, and finally a suggestion can be made to use a specific card and coupon at the point of sale

2) send alerts to avoid over the credit limit transactions which can happen by mistake. A lot of times users forget to keep track of some of the recent transactions which are still in pending state

3) product bill labels can be scanned by the users as they pick the products to purchase and list can be sent wirelessly to the systems at the point of sale. user can tap their phone once to bring up their record and tap second time to complete the transaction. If a lot of point of sales systems are installed through out the store, experienced users can complete the transactions themselves avoiding the lines and not taking any help from the sales agents.

4) Merchants can have an account with google and get away with having a billing system at all on their end. google wallet can be integrated with a billing engine. just like user receives reports after on their transactions, merchants receive reports on their sales and of course they should be able to customize the reports and even be able to submit them to the government for tax puposes

simple morals well expressed

Nijamu cheppu nijamu cheppu nijamu neeku raksha ra
Yentha varalaina kuda neeku eduru nilachinaaa
Nijamu cheppu nijamu cheppu neeku bhayam adelaraaa
Gunde pagili neeku madina sokamentha ponginaa
Nijamu cheppu nijamu cheppu nijamu neevu cheppa raaa
Paina vunna minnu virigi mannu paina koolinaa
Nijamu cheppu nijamu cheppu neevu nijamu chepparaa


The above is a great dilogue from the famous Tamil movie Talapathi which was dubbed in Telugu as Dalapathi. I admire the beauty of expressing such great moral in very simple yet poetic way. It vaguely translates to the following.


Say truth always... truth protects you
Irrespective of the size and power of opposition you face... say truth
Say truth even if you are frightened to take the side of truth
Even if your heart breaks and sadness engulfs you... say truth
Even if you are buried under the debri of the shelter you were under... say truth
Always say truth