Google guessing answers to your query?
I saw this today and thought it’s kind of new, to me at least. Google seem to be trying to build an AI that can understand and answer your query.
The query seems to be able to best answer birth and death dates by analyzing popular sites content. You may try things like “Larry Page was born on”, “Halo 3 release date”, “Brave release date“, which is June 22, 2012. Mark your calendars. Perhaps the birth dates is not new, but I hardly doubt the cause of death isn’t. Anyone noticed it before? Any more neat tricks you know of?
Popularity: 1% [?]
Qualitynet Weekly Cap Is A Myth?
I hope everyone who reads this knows already about the newly enforced and contract violating cap on our internet bandwidth. Now I’ve been too lazy to update my blog, but I haven’t been sleeping on the matter otherwise trust me on that one. And while we keep losing every day our valuable bandwidth, I thought I’d save what I can save till we win this case against the Kuwaiti ISPs (#q8cap is the official tag to follow btw). So I went and changed my Qualitynet cap to weekly two days ago. You just sign a form, and I did it at Zahra Co-Op after I read another tweeter doing it. The Qualitynet guy assured me it’s working.
OK, so I log in to QStore and I see it shows my cap still as daily. Oh well, maybe tomorrow. Next day it’s still daily, and I lost yesterday unconsumed bandwidth apparently. OK! Maybe it starts next day and then accumulates. And since I couldn’t get any answer from Qualitynet support, waiting was the best I can do. This morning, same thing! I lost two days of bandwidth now. So I called, and got connected quickly. Apparently my call is important to them. Below is more or less how the conversation went, as it was long and I got put on hold 4-5 times!
Me: Hi. I signed for weekly cap two days ago and I still don’t see any change.
Him: Wait… Well I can see you have zero usage today, go ahead and use it.
Me: Well I want to know my weekly limit.
Him: System is under going update, it won’t work now. Only daily limits are applied
Me: OK… how long? By tomorrow?
Him: Not sure. Try again in 4-5 days
(Hmm… some planning they have!)
Me: And meanwhile I lose my daily bandwidth?
Him: No you can use it!
Me: What if I don’t, and next day I need 6 GB. How do I do that? You’re the one who put the bandwidth, and now you tell me I can’t save it for next day?
Him: Hang on…
(LATER)
Him: There is no weekly right now, just daily or monthly.
Me: What? I just signed a form. What kind of missed up company is this? When did it change?
Him: This is what we have. What do you want?
Me: I want weekly. I just signed up for it. When did it change? The guy told me it’s working already.
Him: There is no weekly.
Me: Then why is it available as option in the form?
Him: Who told you? Where?
Me: At Zahra Co-Op
Him: OK if he told you it’s working then it is.
Me: WAIT WAIT WAIT… I’m not here to listen to words. I need to see it. How do I know it is working?
Him: Well you have zero usage today. Go ahead and use it. You can see it for today.
Me: OK, I need it for the week. What if I hit the cap?
Him: Hang on…
(LATER)
Him: Sorry to keep you waiting. You’re on the daily plan
Me: Huh? What the hell did I sign then?
Him: OK. I will open a ticket?
(As if the ticket is something generous)
There was at least couple more waiting on the line, I just can’t recall the conversation fully. But to sum up, Qualitynet enforced illegal cap on us, offered daily, weekly, and monthly. I applied for weekly as best resort for now, but Qualitynet does not have the capacity to implement that weekly cap. And the support guy kept contradicting first saying only daily is working, then daily and monthly are available, then weekly is working for you, then no, you’re on daily. Some trust I’m building for this company.
I’m wondering if the whole purpose of the form is just to get me sign on some form of cap. I thought it about it before, but if it is, it won’t stand as a support for them, I only did it as best available option till we get this miss cleared up. It didn’t say I agree to a cap, just that I chose one, since one is already enforced anyways.
Has anyone else got his weekly/monthly cap working? Can you see the chart?
UPDATE: So I got a call back telling me the weekly cap is not in effect yet, and he’s not sure when it might be working, only daily and monthly now. I asked how come you let me sign a form for something you don’t have. He promised to get back to me. Few minutes later, he did and told me to restart my router and the weekly cap will take effect. It did, so I’m now on the weekly cap.
Clearly there is not enough education nor preparation about the different caps. Now why did I have to go to the branch? It should be doable over the phone, since they have right to change whatever they want in the contract as they claim. Beside that waste of time, I wasted another 15 minutes, and if I have not argued hard about it, I would not have gotten it.
UPDATE 2 (24-6-2011): Qualitynet never fails to get lower. One day after I got the weekly cap working I had to restart my router. Next day I find out the cap is back to daily. I call again, waste few minutes of my time to explain the problem, and demand it get back to weekly, and get compensated for the wasted bandwidth. The guy opened a ticket at noon. Now it’s 1 AM next day. Did they call or fix it? No.
Popularity: 1% [?]
OpenSignalMaps Tells Tower Location and Signal Strengths
Open Signal Maps is a free service that relies on data sent from Android mobile apps installed on users welling to contribute a little data back, to help map all the world cell towers and signal strength, so that you no are no longer under vague promises or in need of answers by the telecom companies. You can tell which companies cover which areas, and with the latest patent granted to Apple allowing networks providers bidding for network service, that could indeed be very helpful, and pushes network operators to be more serious about the quality of service provided.
An iPhone version of the Open Signal Maps app is in the work as well. My bet is they opted for Android first to avoid the App Store policy and complications.
What struck me is that new as it is, the site already has light coverage data in Kuwait.
Luckily Android, with the release of Galaxy S, is not just for geeks in Kuwait now, and I ask everyone to have this app, which will give you coverage info, and contribute little back to populate Kuwait map.
Popularity: 2% [?]
United Airlines Out Of Office
No comment
Popularity: 1% [?]
iPhone WiFi Doesn’t work after going to standby?
Started having this problem few days ago where iPhone wifi tends to fail so frequently even when wifi signal strength is full, almost all requests fail. Restarting, or forgetting network didn’t help either.
If you’re having this problem the solution that seemed to work with me is the one suggested by clonergan here, which is in short to use static IP address by going to Settings -> Wifi Networks -> Click blue arrow near your desired network, click Static tab and enter your static network info.
Tip: You can use the same network details from the DHCP tab, just use a different IP if you suspect there is duplicate IP in use on the network.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Wataniya says “Your email or no Wnet service!”
I’ve been living a couple of dark days after my upgrade of Qualitynet connection caused down time by MOC to switch me to their new port, taking more than two days and spanning the weekend. So I thought it would be a good time to get the Wifi router I wanted from one of the telecom companies, to use it with my Galaxy Tab, as well as mobile.
After considering all options I went with Wataniya Wifi Router this afternoon. The initial impression was big frustration as I could not get it to work with any of the devices, and even taking the sim into Galaxy Tab didn’t work. Worse is my regular mobile data line stopped working completely for some reason. Calling Wataniya keeps me waiting for long time, just like any other caring company, only now Wataniya tries to estimate the waiting time “Your estimated waiting time is 15 minutes. Please hold on until we attend to your call”!. And after the estimate turns wrong, you start getting “To leave a message press 1, to keep waiting press 0″. No seriously, you expect me to fall for that?
After catching an employee it turns out no one activated my line at the branch and that was the problem. But once it was activated, all my web requests were redirected to this dismaying Wataniya page.
The screen is forcing me to hand my email beside my mobile number, as if SMS spamming wasn’t irritating enough. I complained to the support guy about it and he was surprised it’s acting this way, and said if you want I can open a ticket for you and they will make it work for you within 24 hours. No thanks, enough torture for the past 48 hours. Not that I didn’t have games and movies to waste time on, but every little thing makes me open a browser, only to realize I’m not living in this century.
Seriously Wataniya, you spend millions on your ads to empower your brand. Such simple act of ignorance destroys it all in a second. It’s not worth it for you, and you don’t need it. You need better coverage, ohh and less than 15 minutes waiting time.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Don’t you hate copycats?
Not only did he steal the article from one of the most famous tech news sites on the web, he took their photo, and didn’t even bother to do decent translation. Heck, Google translate knows better. Ministry of Knowledge? Do we have a Ministry of Magic as well?
UPDATE: I posted a comment with backlink to this post on Unlimit-Tech just to test the water. It’s pending approval.
Popularity: 1% [?]