Imagine you are travelling in the local train of Mumbai and since its a long journey of about an hour you decide to take a short nap. You change some settings in your mobile and go to sleep. As soon as the train reaches a station prior to your destination, you mobile gives you an alarm. You wake up and get down.

Isn’t this pretty convenient?

I wonder why has this been not implemented so far by the cell companies? We already have the location information being displayed in our cell phones! (In Nokia handsets its called Cell info display). This information can be fine tuned a bit to suit the purpose. Its pretty easy for the cell cos to maintain a sequential list of stations. We just need to select a location from the list. As soon as we reach that location, voila! The application sounds an alarm.

Go a step further and think about outstation journeys! No need to ask anyone about the prior station or whether the train is on time or not. Pay Rs. 50 extra at the time of booking your ticket and give your mobile number. All the basic details should keep coming to you via SMS! You know exactly how far is your destination, how many stations are left, how much time it will take and this info keeps updating every now and then. Additionally, you will be prompted in a special way when your destination is near.

Go a step further and we should be able to get more details via SMS like where is the next big station (with cafe, snacks, newspaper/magazine stand, etc.), when is it coming, for how long will train stop there, what are specialities of the coming station (e.g. oranges at Nagpur ), etc.

Why don’t cell cos and railways tie up to provide something like this? This could be a great value addition.

I today received a mail in my yahoo account. Here’re the contents.

Security Center

Military Grade Encryption is Only the Start

At PayPal, we want to increase your security and comfort level with every transaction. From our Buyer and Seller Protection Policies to our Verification and Reputation systems, we’ll help to keep you safe.

PayPal is committed to maintaining a safe environment for its community of buyers and sellers. To protect the security of your account, PayPal employs
some of the most advanced security systems in the world and our anti-fraud teams regularly screen the PayPal system for unusual activity.

Recently, our Account Review Team identified some unusual activity in your account. In accordance with PayPal’s User Agreement access to your account will be limited. This is a fraud prevention measure meant to ensure that your account is not compromised.

In order to secure your account we may require some specific information from you. We encourage you to log in by clicking on the link below and complete the requested form as soon as possible.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-run

Ignoring our request, for an extended period of time, may result in account limitations or may result in eventual account closure.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please understand that this is
a security measure meant to help protect you and your account.
We apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Department

PayPal Email ID PP****

I think these fraudsters need to learn new techniques now. These tricks are too old! Here is the complete header

From PayPal Sat Jan 7 17:54:25 2006
X-Apparently-To: ****@yahoo.com via 68.142.201.246; Sun, 08 Jan 2006 03:14:33 -0800
X-YahooFilteredBulk: 211.115.216.228
X-Originating-IP: [211.115.216.228]
Return-Path:
Authentication-Results: mta274.mail.mud.yahoo.com from=paypaI.com; domainkeys=neutral (no sig)
Received: from 211.115.216.228 (HELO bigfoot.com) (211.115.216.228) by mta274.mail.mud.yahoo.com with SMTP; Sun, 08 Jan 2006 03:14:33 -0800
Received: from mountaineerpublishing.com ([68.213.49.6]) by BFLITEMAIL-KR4.bigfoot.com (LiteMail v3.03(BFLITEMAIL-KR4)) with SMTP id 0601080604_BFLITEMAIL-KR4_491054_8660022; Sun, 08 Jan 2006 06:06:41 -0500 EST
Received: by mountaineerpublishing.com (Postfix, from userid 1048) id D6E531A8A159; Sat, 7 Jan 2006 20:54:25 -0500 (EST)
To: money.matters@bigfoot.com
Subject: PayPal Account Security Measures (Routing Code: C840-L1541-Q110-1937)
Message-ID: <1136685265.21980.qmail@paypaI.com>
From: “PayPal” Add to Address BookAdd to Address Book
Content-Type: text/html
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 20:54:25 -0500 (EST)
Content-Length: 1537

Notice it is from service@paypaI.com, its not L for Lion, but its I for India Even the return path is melanie@mountaineerpublishing.com. Here’re the screen shots of the original and duplicate sites. Almost all the links are same, but forgot password link is different from the main site and of course the login button will execute some different script

Original Paypal Site

Duplicate Paypal Site

GROW UP SPAMMERS AND THIEVES! LEARN NEW TECHNIQUES TO GATHER CONFIDENTIAL DATA

The competition in cell service providers has reached a new height. Thanks to Tata Indicom for starting it Their new scheme costing 2500 gave 2 years’ validity and consequently incoming calls for 2 years without recharging. This caused panic within other CDMA/GSM cell operators and windfall for Tata. It increased its market share manifold (although it still remains quite low comparatively).

Reliance came up with its own schemes . Orange (now Hutch) in Mumbai came with a recharge of Rs. 999/- that gave 1 year’s validity (so incoming calls for 1 year) and talktime of Rs. 500/-. Thats pretty reasonable. But there still was some scope of reductions and Airtel came up with a life time validity package for Rs. 999/-. (Note: No details or direct links from Airtel site is available at present. The site seems to be under upgrade )

Hutch in a span of few days matched it with Hutch chalta rahe. Only thing that one needs to do is rechrge it once in 6 months, even if it is with as low recharge as Rs. 10 in case of Hutch.

I am pretty impressed. Chrages in India is one of lowest in the world and we are still experiencing further reduction!! This is what competition can do. Now once someone spends Rs. 999/- he can remain mobile by spending only Rs. 20/- in a year! Is there any more scope for reduction? Only time will tell. But the new regime of CPP (Calling Party Pays, i.e. free incoming) that was introduced some years ago has done wonders for the cell penetration. Today, I saw a BMC sweeper on the road talking on his cell! The telecom revoultion seems to have arrived