Barcamp 3 in IIM Bangalore on 31st April and 1st May

Barcamp Bangalore

Barcamp is an adhoc gathering, an open event for people to meet up, share, exchange ideas and possibilities. We turn around the notion of a formal conference by eliminating the distinction between speakers and delegates. Everyone is just a participant, and is equally welcome to propose a discussion, moderate it, or speak up on a topic they are familiar with.

Does this work? Indeed! Look up the main Barcamp site for the several that have taken place around the world so far, or read up on what an unconference is.


I hope to attend this barcamp as I have heard a lot about it. See you all there.

iMate

I finally got a new phone. Check the company link here

I have been using it for like 3/4 days now and I feel its worth the price. I got it from official mobiles, residency road, bangalore and they offered a really good price to me. I got the phone with a 2GB memory card (mini-SD), which is the maximum the phone can support. Without a memory card, its very tough to exploit the features phone has to offer as you cannot install any new applications.

Looks and built quality of the phone is really nice although I would have preferred a camera lens cover. One thing I found was the keys are really closely spaced and I feel some problem typing messages.

The interface is pretty neat and once you get used to it, things can be done real quick. The phone is responsive enough unless you are running a really heavy application on it (like a mp3 player with equalizers etc). It sports an internet explorer and pocket outlook and they work very well. With integrated wifi, the phone is very useful. I installed skype on the phone and could talk to a friend in US (using skype out) while connected to my linksys router. The connection manager handles security keys etc pretty well. I have faced no issues on that front.

In terms of the software bundled, Active Sync is included and its pretty easy to transfer files to the phone. I have not been able to figure out a way to sync using bluetooth yet, but then I have not even opened the manual till now.

On the entertainment front, it is good to install core player on the phone for videos and pocket pc music player for mp3 as the integrated media player is not very impressive. Pocket PC music player, though very heavy on system resources is actually very impressive in terms of sound quality. If you are a music freak, this is a must have software. However its not freely available and you can only try out a shareware version for free.

The camera on the phone is 1.3 M pixel but has no autofocus. I feel cameras on sony ericsson (ones with autofocus atleast) are much better and if you are really looking for a great camera, consider those phones.

My overall impression of the phone has been pretty good and I feel its worth the money I paid. I paid around 11k for the phone and 1.5k for the mini-SD card, which sounds reasonable to me. I had considered sony ericsson etc too while buying this phone and I feel one must seriously consider an iMate before you finalize on something else.