Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

News

Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site

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The New York Times will stop charging for accessing parts of its web site including 20 years of archive (from 1987 onwards).

The reason is (I quote):

“The business model for advertising revenue, versus subscriber revenue, is so much more attractive. The hybrid model has some potential, but in the long run, the advertising side will dominate.”

Fantastic! Instead of making us pay, the New York Times will get its money from advertising.

As a corollary, is it possible to have a (paper) newspaper in 2007 which does not have a website with 100% free content? Will that be possible in 2010? I have my doubts.

Happy 13th birthday to us!

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Time flies!

Today Christina and I are celebrating our 13th year together. We met on 11 September 1994 at the university of Réunion Island. I was in 2nd year studying Sciences et Structures de la Matière (aka Maths and Physics) and Christina was starting her first year in Lettres Modernes.

This photo was taken on my 21st birthday in a restaurant in Saint-Denis on the 25th of September 1994.

After about one year, we moved to Lyon in France where I finished my studies in Computer Science while she did a Masters in Information and Communications.

Back to Mauritius

We returned to Mauritius in 1998 and started working in January 1999. We managed to save a little bit of money and we got married in January 2000.

By that time, Christina was already working at the University of Mauritius while I was working at the Mauritius Chamber of Commerce & Industry.

Anya was born in 2002 shortly followed by Kyan in 2004. I joined the University of Mauritius shortly after.

Today, Anya is 5 years old and she is going to start primary school in a few months. Kyan is a strong 3 years old boy.

Christina and I feel exactly the same as we felt in 1994. We might be a little older physically but we have not changed a lot in our heads… That’s cool!

What next?

Great things! Stay tuned :-)

My opinion on my Nokia 6288 cellphone

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Last month, I bought a Nokia 6288 cellphone in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Here are its main features:

  • High gloss black painted surfaces
  • Slide concept
  • High-quality video recording and playback
  • Bright QVGA 262,144 color display
  • Two integrated cameras: Back side 2 megapixel camera with flash and front side VGA camera for video calling
  • Two-way video call capability for face-to-face communication
  • Video ringtones
  • 512MB miniSD memory for saving those special moments
  • High-speed connections with 3G and EDGE

The phone is a Series 40 3rd Edition phone. So nothing too fancy. But it’s functional and quick to use. It feels a little fragile though and that’s why I always carry it in a pouch that Christina gave me.

The 2 megapixel is woeful at night but good (but not excellent) in bright light. I’ve managed to capture some nice photos of the family and I’ve even put them on Flickr! In fact, it’s great to always have a decent camera handy.

 

Connectivity

The cellphone comes with a USB cable and even though I managed to make it work with my Macbook once, it has stopped working since. But I don’t care as Bluetooth works great. I use the great PhoneDirector application to copy data to and from the cellphone. And iSync also works great for synchronizing the address book after this simple hack.

Conclusion

My Nokia 6288 is a good cellphone. Granted, it’s camera is not great. And it seems to be fragile. But you can use it to make calls (and this is important on a phone). And it’s user interface is snappy.

I’ll use it until I become rich enough to buy an Apple iPhone :-)

An essential update

For some unknown reason, the phone does not allow Java applications to access the web and this is a pain in the ass if you want to use GMail or Opera for example.

I finally found the solution today!

Follow the steps and everything will be OK. The only slight modification I had to do was to use “WEB” instead of “Cingular WEB” as this is what Emtel calls it.