Tech Tonic

First published in the Hindustan Times (Mumbai edition)

So there I was, sitting in a Jet Airways flight frantically scrolling the “Pearl” trackball on a Blackberry Curve, engaged in a fearsome battle between paddle and bricks, when the air hostess tapped my shoulder. “I’m sorry Sir, you have to switch that off”, she says politely. “It’s in flight mode”, I tell her, hoping that I haven’t let the ball fall while looking up. “There’s no such thing as flight mode, Sir”, she tells me knowingly. Politeness can be annoying when combined with ignorance. “But if you’re letting people use laptops, how is this any different? It’s just a small computer”. I’m not giving up easily but she doesn’t seem flustered. “No sir, the ‘waves’ cause the screens in the cockpit to flicker”. Now she’s just making stuff up. When I question her as to what waves exactly, since all the radios (GSM, GPRS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth) on my phone are off, she pulls out her trump card. “I’m sorry sir, DGCA notification 133, prohibits use of phones, sir”. I give up and put my phone away. It could still have its radios on in my pocket and there’s no way she would know. Just to test the idiocy of the rule, I keep my data card in my laptop switched on throughout my next flight. This makes the laptop work exactly like a phone but no one asks me to turn it off. I’m quite certain that I’m not endangering my co-passengers or the aircraft equipment, because I’ve cross checked with at least three people before boarding this flight. A telecom company CTO, a pilot and a professor of electrical engineering all tell me it’s a big bogey with no scientific basis. The rule itself is archaic and my experience clearly proves that it has no way of being effectively implemented even if it were true.

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The new on-board DTH (or actually shouldn’t it be called DTS ie. Direct-To-Seat?) on Kingfisher Airlines is awesome. Watching live television in the air is quite a kick and even makes long flights bearable. The LCD screens have a very good viewing angle and in fact I was easily able to see the screens of passengers sitting on either side in addition to my own. The brightness and contrast control buttons don’t work and not all channels have equally good reception. There was no disturbance at all on my flight though colleagues tell me that it doesn’t work perfectly in bad weather and they’ve had blackouts on certain flights. Scrolling tickers on news channels are a bit blurred but imminently readable and the pixilation is visible only when you stare hard at something static like a channel logo. The headphones that come in the little kit are supposed to clip onto your ears and start biting the earlobes after about an hour. Some of the frequent flyers around me seemed to be aware of this and were using their own headsets. Overall, the experience gets two thumbs-up and is definitely a differentiator. The only annoying part of the experience is when the captain interrupts the TV audio feed to make an important announcement: “Ladies and Gentleman … introducing live TV on Kingfisher …”. Considering every single person on the flight is already tuned into some channel or the other, the timing is awful. Suddenly, a bunch of people burst out laughing. I peer through the seats in front of me, expecting to see them all watching The Great Indian Laughter Challenge. Nope, that’s Yana Gupta giving flight instructions in Hindi. I agree – that’s pretty hilarious!

First published in the Hindustan Times (Mumbai edition)

We waited for the “unlocked” piece that would, rest assured, hit the Indian grey market a few days after the iPhone launch in the US. It never came! All that chest thumping in the newspapers from the Palika bazaar and Nehru Place wheeler dealers proved to be an empty boast. This baby was secure and unbreakable. There was only one way to do it - the legal way. We called up TV18’s New York bureau chief, Indira Kannan and asked her if she would buy one, activate it and send it across to us. Luckily Indira’s existing plan was coming to an end and she wanted to switch operators anyway. In the US they have number portability which means she could retain her number even if she changed to AT&T. So she bought it, got it up and running, routed her calls to voicemail and set up a cheap international roaming and dialing plan on it. She packed it, shipped it and sent it. Just to make sure that there would be no customs hassles, we asked her not to send it in the box. It arrived safe and sound.

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Suddenly, the geeks at Tech 2.0 are the coolest, most popular people in the office. We’re getting mobbed and manhandled. People are asking us for autographs! Ok, maybe not that last sentence, but the rest is true.

I’ve been reviewing gadgets for half a decade now and never has anything in my hand got the reaction that this gets. Just seeing the joy and wonder on people’s faces when you show them some of the nifty multi-touch tricks, is fantastic. Tech 2.0 Editor, Varun Singh, got to spend a night with it and I’ve pried it outta his hands for a couple of days till the reviewers take over.

I’ve been an iPhone skeptic in the past, but I may just cease to be a naysayer. None of the cool features have any real utility but Apple has never been about pragmatism has it? The sheer “cool” value of flicking your fingers on the screen and “pinching” photographs puts you in another league of user. I’m sure our reviewers will find lots of glitches but the first week preview is a total thumbs up.

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A source at NASSCOM tells me that they’re trying to get Apple founder Steve Jobs to address the big annual summit in February next year. It’s definitely going to be a stretch since Apple has little interest in India. Not only have they refused to officially set up shop in one of the world’s fastest growing markets but they were among the first to pull back tech support from Bangalore.

I suggested that NASSCOM try the emotional route to bringing him here. Jobs, at Stanford’s 2005 convocation, admitted that he used to have his only meal of the week at a Hare Krishna temple. This was when he was hanging around at Reed College for a year, even after dropping out and learning ran dom stuff like calligraphy, which eventually inspired the superb Mac intosh fonts. He then backpacked around India for a bit with a friend before going back to start Apple. And if all that isn’t enough, his spoof online avataar, the consistently hilarious ‘Fake Steve Jobs’ loves saying “Namaste!”