Make Your Own 120 GB Portable Hard Drive in Less than Rs. 2500: ProPakistani

Make Your Own 120 GB Portable Hard Drive in Less than Rs. 2500
YouTube to Stream Live Makkah Prayers in Ramadan
Nokia 500, Mid-Range Symbian Phone, Announced
Use Facebook on Mobile Free for 90 Days with Ufone
Google+ Vs Facebook [Features]
ISPs Take on the Celcos

Make Your Own 120 GB Portable Hard Drive in Less than Rs. 2500

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 09:17 AM PDT

Portable storage technology has evolved abruptly in recent couple of years. As Chinese products jumped into local market, high capacity flash drives have become very much common.

I still remember when, for the first time, I saw someone using flash drive; back then I actually didn't know what it was (2002 or 2003 I think). And now every Tom, Dick and Harry has got a flash drive.

Talking about hard drives and flash drives, external storage of high capacity in lesser cost is still what everyone wants. And here we got a desi method of getting a portable drive of our own, with affordable price tag.

Making Your Own Portable Drive:

This method comes handy for those who have plans to shift from rotating media drive to SSD (solid state disk) or bigger hard drives. Here are things you gonna need!

Things you need:

One used 120GB rotating media 2.5" (laptop's) hard drive Average price is approximately Rs. 2000.
Portable hard drive case that comes equipped with a USB 2.0 pin attached. Average Price range is Rs. 250 to Rs. 800

It takes less than a minute or so to fix your hard drive in the case and you are about to make a portable drive of your own in couple of minutes.

P.S. Portable hard drive case will have data and power pins, simply plug them in with the hard drive and you are done.

(Pictures attached at the end of the post will help you to setup)

Advantages:

Very much cost effective, as 16GB USB flash drive will cost you around 2000 and using this method you can create your own 120GB portable USB drive (not available in market in this size).
It works the same way as any other USB drive, i.e. plug and play.
Another feature that it incorporates is, you can have your partitions intact. As in case of flash drives and memory cards, your computer reads only first active partition but here all partitions will work.
Very fast data transfer speed as compared to flash drive (v2.0)
Can be used as a backup drive for large data.
Larger storage capacity.

Disadvantages:

Bigger in size as compared to flash drive.
Vibrations, that may increase if fitting is loose.
Rotating media inside, so you have to be careful while in operation and movement.

Please note that I am in no way comparing this drive with flash drives, nor promoting it in anyway over flash drives. Yet these drives come handy when you consider size to cost ratio. Moreover you have to be careful about purchasing used hard drive from market – make sure it's in good working condition with no bad sectors on it.

Following are the pictures that may help you in getting the idea more clear.

YouTube to Stream Live Makkah Prayers in Ramadan

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 08:25 AM PDT

Ramadan Mubarak by rizviGrafiks 300x200 YouTube to Stream Live Makkah Prayers in Ramadan First of all, I on the behalf of ProPakistani Team, wish a very wealthy and full of blessings Ramadan to all our readers.

May this month fill our lives with its benedictions and at the end we may be able to get the maximum out of it.

Here is a good news for all the Muslims out there. Keeping up the spirit, Google has partnered with Saudi Ministry of Culture and Information to stream live Makkah prayers in this Ramadan.

An official page at YouTube has been made which will show live prayers from Makkah for the whole month of Ramadan.

Google in a statement said that:

This is the first LiveStream event coming from MENA, specifically Saudi Arabia, and we hope that it will give the opportunity not only to two billion Muslims but to the entire world to observe one milion Muslims praying each day from the holiest point in Makkah, the Kaaba, for the first time in history.

Following is the live stream of prayers from Masjid ul Haram, Makkah:

Live streaming link: http://www.youtube.com/MakkahLive

Nokia 500, Mid-Range Symbian Phone, Announced

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 08:24 AM PDT

Nokia today announced the launch it's new smartphone, which also happens to be bring a naming convention change – the Nokia 500 – a mid-range Symbian Anna powered phone that boasts 1GHz processor.

Nokia 500 would come with a 3.2-inch capacitive touch display, with a screen resolution of 640 x 360 pixels. On the back, there's a 5-megapixel camera with video capturing support. There's also Bluetooth 2.1 and Wi-Fi b/g, as you'd expect.

Besides this, Nokia 500 will have:

General:

Processor: 1GHz
Platform: Symbian Anna

Display and User Interface

Screen size: 3.2″
Resolution: 16:9 nHD (640 x 360 pixels)
TFT display
Capacitive touch screen

Memory:

Internal memory: 2 GB
Support for up to 32 GB with an external microSD memory card

Connectivity

Wi-Fi b/g
Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR
High-Speed USB 2.0 (micro USB connector)
Micro USB connector and charging
2 mm charging connector
Standard 3.5 mm AV connector

Talk time:

up to 7 h
Standby time (maximum): to 500 h
Video playback time (maximum): 5 h 15 min
Video recording time (VGA,15 fps, maximum): 1.5 h
Music playback time (maximum): 35 h

Nokia says that Nokia 500 will be available in black and white colors, before the end of the year.

There's no final word, but Nokia 500 would cost around or less than Rs. 20,000

Use Facebook on Mobile Free for 90 Days with Ufone

Posted: 01 Aug 2011 04:04 AM PDT

facebook ufone Use Facebook on Mobile Free for 90 Days with Ufone

Ufone and Facebook are collaborating with each other to provide free Facebook access on mobile. As part of launch promotional offer with Facebook’s Java Application - 90 days free access is being provided by Ufone without any data charges.

Earlier Mobilink offered a similar service but it was available for text updates only i.e. loading pictures was not free.

Launch Promotional Offer:

Starting 1st August 2011 and extending for 90 days, use of Facebook Java application for free. On the 91st day from 1st August 2011, standard GPRS charging will apply on use of application. Promotion period will end on 29th October 2011.

Regular charging will proceed 30th October 2011 onwards. During the promotion period, all external links/applications will be excluded from free browsing i.e. applications added from the "Apps" tab in Facebook application will be charged as per selected GPRS plan.

Application Download:

Application can be downloaded from Facebook page on Ufone WAP Portal. From your handset please access the following link to download the application:

http://wap.ufone.com/ufone/includes/app_pages/community/facebookapp.jsp

Once downloaded, the application will be installed automatically.

Supported Devices:

Though the application is supported by 2500+ handset however 800+ devices have been tested for compatibility with the Facebook Mobile application. Updated list of these devices can be found here: http://bit.ly/jaK2Y2

Tariff:

There is no subscription charge on use of application.
Standard GPRS charges apply on use of application as per selected plan.
Application is available for use for both Prepaid and Postpaid subscribers
Free 90 days GPRS access promotion period starts 1st August 2011 and will end on 29th October 2011.
Free 90 days GPRS access promotion period is only available to Prepaid Subscribers on Volume Based GPRS packages including customers who have subscribed to GPRS Data Buckets.
Free access is only valid for Facebook features in the application.
All external links and/or applications installed in Facebook Application are excluded from this promo and will be charged.
Prepaid Customers subscribed to Hourly Package and Postpaid Subscribers are also excluded from this promotion period.

Google+ Vs Facebook [Features]

Posted: 31 Jul 2011 10:29 PM PDT

Since the launch of a whole brand new social networking platform Google plus, the battle is on between Facebook and Google.

The search engine giant is threatening strong social network giant Facebook which created a splash in the market, looking at its best and presenting latest and different apps, looks and strategies.

Let's take a quick view on both social networks features wise.

Google+ circles vs. Facebook lists:

Google plus is giving its users an innovative look and feel with classy animations powered by HTML 5, ease of making and managing friends and family circles by just a "Drag and drop".

Facebook provides creation of groups by the feature called "lists" but unlike Google Plus it seems not as user friendly.

Google plus is more concerned with easy management of privacy solutions and until now circles has achieved higher +1's by users.

Google+ hangouts vs. Facebook video calling:

Although recently launched feature of video calling by Facebook in collaboration with Skype has been warmly welcomed even though it lacks group chatting feature but Google plus is towering a brilliant difference with its feature called "hangout". It allows face to face public or private meet ups with video chatting and ability to enjoy YouTube videos with up to 10 friends.

Google+ stream vs. Facebook news feed:

Modified version of the news feed, Google stream facilitates user to update status, live experiences, share pics, videos, links or location with circles. Having fastest sharing feature at g+, the instant upload, gives it a plus over Facebook as it can't upload videos and photos from mobile device right away. Alternatively an "upload email" is used to update status, videos or posts from mobiles.

On the other hand Facebook News Feed gives you the ability to select the most discussed feed or the new ones, something missing from Stream. Coming to the basic purpose of providing a steady stream on news, I would say it's a tie between the two.

Facebook Like or Google+1:

As a Facebook Like button, G+ has its +1 button, giving eye catching look to g+ social stream. Both the Like and +1 have very natural feeling to them. You +1 what you 'like' and what you 'like' you want it to be incremented, improved, increased or +1'ed.

Google+ huddle vs. Facebook chat for mobiles:

G+ presents impressive text chat for android powered mobile phones even on the move other than the fact that it has Gtalk client for one-one voice and group chat and one-one video chat. Facebook only provides apps like AIM and support of XMPP or Jabber protocol for creation of custom applications.

Google+ location over Facebook places:

So far sharing your location with friends' circle on g+ stream is user friendly, just one click away. Facebook on the other hand does not allow its user to share location right away from their wall and is also limited to some countries.

Google+ sparks and Facebook front search bar:

Google + presents users an 'interest tab' by giving a front-end to Google search for a specific topic, where user enters keywords about his interests and then could easily follow it just like twitter. The user will be updated regarding his favorites and this latest stuff can also be shared amongst the users' circles. That Facebook search bar will find you relevant information from within the Facebook network and you have to search for your items of interest every time while Google Plus maintains the lists.

Google+ instantaneous uploads and FB uploads:

As Facebook has grabbed the user picture and video upload ground so far, the Google Plus' offering 'instant upload' allows users' pictures or videos taken from mobile to be shared with their friends and family instantly from the web. These shares go to the user's stream.

Eye catching Notification systems:

Both networks have notification system that grabs the eye easily. Google Plus' notification system in unified, in one drop down menu you get friend updates, posts to instant upload notifications. Facebook on the other hand has separate notifications for Messages, activities and Friend requests.

Google+ & Facebook browser support:

Both Google Plus and Facebook have vast browser support. They support all the latest browsers whether it is Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera or Safari.

However a fully HTML 5 complaint browser will give the best experience of Google Plus. A thing to note is that the notification section of Google Plus doesn't appear when using Opera Browser. Hopefully it will be corrected once it is out of Beta phase.

Google plus has attained 20 million+ users with 1 billion shares a day but it cannot be fully anticipated whether Google+ will achieve the zenith of success and outrun its rival Facebook as Google Plus till now has not revealed its entire feature set such as g+ business, g+ games and g+ questions and polls which are the basis for generation of rapid traffic on Facebook.

Or will Google+ just follow timely success such as Orkut or just be another Google wave and Google Buzz. It wholly depends on the audience, whether they catch on the latest train or just stay with the "old is gold" mantra.

To read more, click: Google+ Vs Facebook [Features]
ProPakistani.PK

ISPs Take on the Celcos

Posted: 31 Jul 2011 09:49 PM PDT

A few years ago, a report in Newsweek analyzed Pakistan to have the largest WiMAX footprint in the world. This was the era of the Wateen push, with its devices landing in every nook and corner of the nation.

PTCL jumped on the bandwagon, as did other smaller operators like WorldCall. Then it was wi-tribe, Qubee and Infinity, making the nation an army of wireless internet users, with the word 'dongle' becoming a part of the daily speech.

However, like the mobile operators, there was only so much market to be covered. After all, while we would like to have our rural areas as developed and functional as the urban, the cost of internet remains a luxury for the masses. It is in this crowded market that most ISPs have to seek diversified streams of revenue.

The recent launch of tablet devices by wi-tribe showcases a change in thinking by the company. Instead of merely giving services, it has bundled devices for those services to provide a complete experience. The cellcos have been doing similar things with tablets and smartphones; however, the contrast comes in the bandwidth that either can provide to the consumer.

For mobile operators, data traffic travels on the same bandwidth available to the company for voice services. Hence, speeds rarely reach the point of scarily beautiful. For the ISPs this facet is different, as their bandwidth is entirely a data traffic expressway.

This means that while you will not be blown off your seat like in some advertisements, you will not be driven to the point of cursing the device and operator as the hourglass swivels to load your requested page.

While it is too early to judge whether this single offering will sway consumers, the industry is starting to peek out of its bubble and in some instances, listen to the customer. Most tablet manufacturers and dealers are now seeking partnerships with ISPs to promote and sell their latest gadgets, with cellular operators settling for smartphones.

With revenue growth required by both industry players, this arena is gearing for a battle. Rumors of Samsung Galaxy S II coming out with WiMAX can turn out to be a vital uptake for ISPs.

It is unlikely to match up to the price wars currently being played by the mobile companies; however, fair competition should end up giving consumers the best deal.

To read more, click: ISPs Take on the Celcos
ProPakistani.PK