BlogAllAlong

So I ordered some thermal paste

Bashar — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:03:23 +0000

So I ordered 3 pieces of thermal paste. Next thing I know DHL Express is calling me to inquire about what is this and for what I need it. Then they told me I must take the papers and go to Environment Public Authority for clearance. As if that wasn’t bad/ridiculous/hilarious in and of itself, I then got the papers and you won’t believe it!

For non-Arabic speakers, it’s a paper where I pledge not use any of these materials (which I should list below), and store it in the company wharehouse until test results arrive, and be ready for any inspection visit by the government.

Thermal Paste Clearance

And in case you’re curious what kind of toxic material I have smuggled into this country, here it is.

It’s so sad someone have busted my genius plans. I blame this.

Book of Spells Brings A Meaning To The PlayStation Move

Bashar — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:49:45 +0000

A while ago I wrote about Sorcery, and the continuous disappointment PlayStation Move seems to bring. Not very long after however, I received my order for the Book of Spells, an augmented reality book game where you flip pages, learn and cast the magical spells of Harry Potter, as if you were reading a book from Hogwarts. I bought it mainly for my niece, as she’s a hard core Harry Potter fan, but I have to say, I’ve never been so impressed before with a camera based game. Since the book uses clear symbol marks on each page, the game works flawlessly and can identify pages with the book in different positions. And while the game isn’t that much fun for adults, I had wonderful time just sitting and watching my niece and kid explore and cast new spells. They absolutely loved it, and I can’t blame them.

This seems to be the best PlayStation Move based game yet, and also the closest a child can get to living a harry potter experience from inside his house (unless you live at Hogwarts ofcourse)

I’m not sure if it was a commercial success however, as the game is only six months old and it’s already selling for $10.5 bucks on Amazon.

Mada apologizes for any convenience they might have given me

Bashar — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:27:44 +0000

This is a follow on to my previous post about Mada and why you should never try them, which explains how I had problem with their service from May, router got hacked and service was slow as hell in August, and when no one solved my problem, I asked to cancel my subscription and get refund for the remaining period of my contract, since Mada could not even guarantee 1.8 Mbps speed, as opposed to their promised 2 Mbps minimum. In early November a funny thing happened. I saw three missed call on two minutes period before half an hour. This was Friday 9:30 PM, so I could have million things going on. When I called it was Mada, and when I checked my email I found out they have closed the ticket I opened since May, saying it was resolved. The one that never got resolved. When I asked them why is it closed and problem is resolved they guy on the phone simply told me “We called twice and you didn’t pick up. We closed the ticket. That’s our protocol”. I told him this is stupid protocol, and the ticket is now six months old, and they just woke up at this time, make three quick calls and close it isn’t acceptable. He said he can’t re-open it (tadaa), but he will open new one. I insisted they explain it relates to the ticket opened in May.

One month later they called saying they want to assess service quality. When I told him what happened, and that the router is offline for months, and I don’t want further testing as I already got alternate service, they guy said “Well Sir, you’re not helping me here. I want to test the speed” I told him it’s too late. Months too late, and I normally replaced it. Just a proof how bad it was and that I wasn’t bluffing, and all I want is refund. He didn’t help me in anyway, and eventually hung up.

Today the best thing happened. A lady called saying she wants to ask about the quality of the service. Not sure if this has anything to do with the ticket, but she was speechless when I told her my story. After I finished she said “Well we apologize for this” I told her I don’t want an apology. If they mean it, they can get back to me with my refund. She said she will send my complain. I told her we’ll see, and I was welling to bet 100 KD they won’t do anything about it. Soon after I finished my call, I got this piece of art customer support email.

It’s heart touching how not only did they close my ticket, but they apologize for any convenience this might have caused me. Worry not Mada. It did not make me any more convenient. Not even the best comedy writers can come up with such stuff. I hope guys at Dilbert are reading this.

Sorcery Review

Bashar — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:22:02 +0000

Just as expected, PlayStation Move after two years in the market still doesn’t have a decent group of games to brag about and justify the spending to buy it. One game that seemed to be promising was Sorcery. A sorcerer’s apprentice with very little magical experience under his belt, grabs his wand and decides to take on an epic journey on his own, mastering different magical spells, and exploring potions of magical powers along the way. Likely inspired by Harry Potter, and coming in this time with no strong competition from other sorcery games, and with the PlayStation Move there to capture the magical wand movement, the game seemed to have all it needs to bring in a home run for the PlayStation Move.

I got the game mainly for my seven years old boy, and I was beside him to play the difficult parts. The boy loved it alright, as I think most children would. Swinging his wand (controller), casting magic spells to move boulders and kill enemies. You gain new magical powers as you progress through the game, and flip through them with special wand (controller) movement, giving it more sense of actually performing the magic. What I really thought was neat is how you can perform different magical spells in sequence and combine them to create super attacks. That’s not always easy however, you need to do it fast. At least, not for the little ones. That’s where you come in handy.

The game has nice storybook themed cutscenes style that was really enjoyable. The story however wasn’t that great.

And while the game gave hours of fun for the kid, I see it falls below my personal expectations. First of all, the game is too short, even my kid picked on that. But that’s not where it get real bad in my opinion. The controls and controller response aren’t well implemented, and despite having this ability to recognize true directional movement, casting spells is restricted to certain directions only, and can’t be done freely where you truly aim it at. Some puzzles required accurate gestures that didn’t just frustrate my kid, but got me irritated as well, it was taking all the fun out of it. The point of the PlayStation Move is to recognize your movements and mimic them, giving the player true sense of control. The way it was done with Sorcery is very limiting, and can be probably replaced with regular controller instead. Heck, it might even make the game more fun. But that was obviously not their main objective. They wanted a game to push the PlayStation Move forward. The funny thing is, many reviews call this the best Motion control so far (it was released in May 2012). But that’s only because there aren’t any real games out there. Sorcery pushed things further for sure, but it still needs more work if you ask me, and we can surely dream of better things to come.

Conclusion:

I would not waste time on it personally, but I recommend it for the kids. If you’re up to such kind of games, then the current price of $13.30 at Amazon might make it a good deal for you. The price itself tells a story though. Usually PS3 games hold their price a bit longer than half a year.

3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use Mada

Bashar — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 08:09:54 +0000

Mada is that new company that emerged and rose to fame during last year’s bandwidth cap, promising to be the only cap-free company. I never bought these promises, and knew they were just using the situation to their advantage. Nevertheless my parents weren’t so happy with VIVA, and their land lines are old and can’t tolerate high DSL bandwidth, I thought Mada SOHO just can’t be worse. Boy was I wrong.

My first impressions dealing with the company weren’t so high, as their sales seemed confused how to process my purchase order. Something which they should be fairly trivial. But that’s not a reason not to try a company. It’s only an indication. Strong one I should add though.

Below is the progress of my suffering and struggle with Mada, detailing the 3 reasons why you should not try and use Mada.

1- Service Quality:

I’ve heard that story over and over now. Service works fine for first week or two, and after the trial period is over, it goes down to hell. For me, it worked a bit longer than that, making between 3-4 Mbps, and even when it got affected, it was still better than VIVA. So I purchased the annual subscription, and with it unleashed a curse on my family.

First, their WIFI coverage was too weak to cover just a single floor, that I had to buy an AirLive router to strengthen the signal. But that didn’t hold things standing for long, for soon, the service of Mada itself began to tumble to the ground. After I used to get full strength signal (they have a 3 signal indicator for strength), I was now only getting 1-2 of the 3 signals. Moving the router around didn’t do any good, and with that started the next chapter of the story.

2- Customer Service:

After my family complained of the slow internet, which was now worse than VIVA, giving around 1.5 Mbps in good times, while Mada promises minimum of 2 Mbps. I made my first complain over the phone sometime during first quarter of 2012. The guy over the phone did the regular speed test, acknowledged the speed problem, and said he will work on it. Few months passed, and I didn’t hear back. I thought the problem might have been resolved since my family didn’t complain again. But apparently it didn’t, and they just didn’t want to pressure me. In May they told me again the service is still as bad if not even worse. So I called again on Friday May 25th, asking about my ticket. The guy on the phone tells me I have no open ticket. What? I was surprised and furious, not knowing back then that this is the norm at Mada to ignore customer calls rather than single incident. All my questions about my previous call was met with complete ignorance it ever existed. There is not even a call record of it, let alone an open ticket. What kind of CRM are they using I wonder. So anyways, we had to redo the testing once more. Again, speed problem acknowledged. He put me on hold for a short while, and then I heard a whistle and someone saying in Arabic “And he complains about speed”!. When he came back I challenged why the sarcastic tone he had. He tried to dodge my comment, so I asked again furiously

Me: “Why are you mocking my complain?”

CS (Customer Support): It wasn’t me it was someone else beside me taking another call.

Me: So you normally mock your customers when they have problems?

CS: It’s another employee not me.

I had no proof it was him of course, though I’m wondering what’s the point of recording the voice conversation if we will hear third party voices and can’t dispute who it was. It should be me and him only. I tweeted about this publicly and Mada replied asking for details. I gave them my number and time of call, but they replied this is not enough and they must get the CS name. What happened to the call log then? The worst part was that the CS then went on and replied with response that could go along with the mocking remarks, saying the reason I’m getting slow connection was because I have 12 devices connected. It was family gathering, so several iPads and iPhones laying around. Though no one at my family’s house does any torrent download, and there wasn’t any heavy usage. I argued that this is not an excuse, and since it’s a family router, of course I will be connecting several devices. That shouldn’t affect the speed to that extent. I have similar number at my house, and I can still get the maximum speed promised by Qualitynet when doing speed tests very often. He insisted on doing a test to disconnect all but one device. So we did, and the speed using only my iPhone did barely touch the 2 Mbps. Barely, when it should be minimum. It also showed how bad their router is in supporting multiple devices. Mind you as I later checked Mada FAQ online, they state it very clearly that they can support up to 20 connected devices, and that this will affect the speed will be affected, but only very minimally. Clearly an overstatement.

I told him this is a family router and absolutely unacceptable, as normally every person now holds a smart phone and half owns iPads as well, beside the laptops. I asked him to open a ticket for the matter. He said he will open it, but I will have to call on Sunday to ask for Engineer visit. One has to wonder why? He said this is how it works. So the ticket seems useless already. OK, no problem. If it will get the problem solved, I will live through the silly system they have.

I called Sunday around noon and logged my request for engineer visit. Mada promises engineer visit within 48 hours if you have a problem. So they immediately took it to the extreme and said Tuesday. OK, no issues. Tuesday at noon I called, they said I’m in the queue and the engineers have lots of calls to attend to. Another way of saying “we’re heavily under resourced”. Called again at around 5 PM. Same answer. At about 8:45 PM I called again, knowing this engineer visit is not happening today. But never did I expect the CS on the line to tell me:

CS: Who told you there is an engineer coming to visit?

Me: Excuse me? I was promised an engineer since Friday, told it will be on Tuesday, called twice today and told he’s on the way. Now you simply tell me there is no engineer coming at all!

I kept arguing and explaining how no one seems to care, and until now, for months, I have not received a single follow up call from anyone at Mada. He promised he’d call back. He hung up, and called back few minutes later. Why did he have to hang up I’m not sure. All I know is he called, and then put me on hold for 10 minutes while he was talking to the IT department. Is this how companies do it today? I hung up and then he called few minutes later. I asked why did he put me on hold rather than call when he has an update, and he was apologetic. OK, let’s move on. It was already getting late. He said he wants to do testing again and try to change few things remotely. Why the hell didn’t you do that in the first place? Few tests didn’t show much sign of improvement, so I decided to try again another day as it was getting late. below is a snapshot of all the calls I had to make on Friday, Sunday, and Tuesday to follow up. As you see there are only two incoming calls, and a total of about 60 minutes wasted on the phone.

During the next few days, weeks, and even months, I made several calls. The conversation would usually go something like this.

Me: I’d like to follow up on open ticket I have

CS: OK. They’re still working on it.

Me: Still? It’s been a month (or a week, or 2 months depending on date of call). What are they doing exactly?

CS: I don’t know. We sent them an email and waiting for them. They will surely respond.

Me: Doesn’t sound so to me. It’s been a whole month and they’re still working on it?

CS: Yes!

Me: OK let me speak to the IT.

CS: You can’t

Me: OK so you speak to them.

CS: I can’t also. I forward the message and they work on it.

Me: Well obviously they’re not. I want to raise the issue to the customer care manager. I want to talk to him.

CS: OK, I will send email to customer care manager. But you can’t speak to him directly.

!!!

So IT won’t resolve my problem. I cannot talk to them. Customer Care can’t talk to them, and all my requests to speak to customer care manager were denied. If I was meeting the minister it would’ve been easier.

3- Security:

The ticket remained open and with no update for months, until Friday, 24th August, my brother told me he couldn’t connect to Mada Router at all right now, and the network doesn’t even show up. I opened my wifi connections and saw our network has disappeared, and a new one was showing up. The name of SSID however was an offense to the royal family (of course I can’t share it). I shut down the router and as expected, the network disappeared from the list. Switch it back on, and the offensive SSID came right back up. Really? As if Mada wasn’t bad enough already? So I disconnected all devices, and called Mada at about 2 PM, first, and for the joy of it, asking about my 3 months old ticket. Nothing! My continuous grilling was met with ignorant answers as usual, asking me to redo the test (again). I went on to the real reason of my call then.

Me: Well here is the real problem. My router has been hacked remotely, and someone changed the SSID to …

CS: to “…” (finishing my sentence)

Me: YES!

CS: You’re the second one.

Me: Great. So on top of your slow service, lack of support, your routers are also insecure!

CS: No this is not related to security.

Let me repeat that once more, because I’m sure you’re trying to understand it as I was. Mada Customer Support commented on the SSID hack that “it’s not security related matter”. He literally said that. I went over the roof telling him how could this be anything but a security problem! And luckily, Mada were the last people to access and reconfigure the router, so they only have themselves to blame. And no, it was not the default password. The CS said he’ll call back. He shortly did, telling me to keep it on as he fixes it. OK. Now you’re working?

It passed 7 PM and I still haven’t heard a thing, and the whole house is without internet. I called them and asked about the ticket. The CS guy was talking weird until I realized he is talking about my May speed problem. I told him that’s a different problem you never solved, and I’m asking about the hack to my router.

CS: I don’t see any ticket

Me: What? So the guy just left me waiting and did nothing! How can your support be so careless? Where is the ticket? Obviously no one was doing anything since 2 PM!

CS: Did you have the default password?

Me: No.

CS: Then how can someone hack into the router remotely? It can’t possibly happen.

OMG he did not just say this. Only, he really did!

Me: WHAT? It’s a hack to your unsecured router! Would I be calling if it wasn’t hacked? Do you think this is a game?\

CS: No I’m not saying that. Give me the IP to access the router.

I’ve already given them the IP then dozen times perhaps. I told him to fetch it himself, and then told him to just forget it as it’s not worth my time, and their support is useless, promising to visit HQ and ask for refund.

Mada Head Quarter:

Asking around, I managed to find the hidden Mada head quarter which they don’t announce on their website for some reason. They recently moved head quarter to a new location, so it’s supposedly the bigger one. I don’t want to imagine what the older one was like, but the moment you step a foot in the company, you understand where all the turmoil is coming from. A small tiny corridor with 7 customers waiting in front of the receptionist, with a tiny room behind where two tech support are working on returned routers from angry customers. There is an even smaller room with two small sofas they call waiting room. It can’t hold maybe 4 people. There were men and women inside the small corridor, and if that wasn’t bad enough, they don’t even have numbers! You give your router or whatever you have, and just wait hoping you are being served in turn, without a clue how much longer you have to wait.

I told them I need to meet the customer care manage, and that my problem is 3 months old and I can’t wait longer. They asked if I had brought the router, but of course I haven’t, since no one asked me to. They were surprised that no one have ever suggested to bring the router for inspection. I told him this is another proof your guys don’t know what they’re doing. Too late now.

I waited for over half an hour in this tiny hot corridor, seeing how customer after customer gets frustrated, and complains about the service. Everything is in the open, in front of everybody else. I was losing patience and the lady at the desk noticed it. I told them to get him soon or get anyone else, otherwise I will have to go in on my own. They told me he was informed but he still didn’t come. Soon a guy, called Hussain Bhatti, came to me outside, and when I started telling the story, he thought it’s simply a guy asking for too much. Things didn’t start well between us, as I wasn’t ready for any excuse after what I have been through. He soon took me to his office and tried to calm things down. I was shocked to hear he was the HR manager, and only meeting me because no one else will. Where is the customer care manager from all this? Anyways, he went on to explain the technical aspects of the service and how the neighboring users can affect my usage. Ofcourse I already knew most of what he said, having worked in Wataniya for 3 years. I went on then to explain how the service wasn’t just slightly affected but tumbled badly to 1.5 Mbps or lower, how the promised engineer never came, how my ticket was ignored for 3 months, and then how the router was hacked. He didn’t fully understand until I showed him the snapshot of the SSID. He gave me his business card and asked me to forward the ticket email I had 3 months ago detailing all I went through, promising to send it across to the concerned people. I thanked him, and told him I wish we can reach a WIN/WIN solution, and keep me as possible customer shall things improve in the future, rather than have to revert to legal channels. He assured me that shouldn’t be the case as Mada regularly refunds customer money if they fail to provide the service. He’s about to learn that’s not so true I’m afraid. Below is the email I sent Mr. Hussain. (I noted later I got his name wrong in the email).

From: Bashar Abdullah

Date: August 27, 2012

To: Hussain Bhatti

Dear Mr. Sameer,

Thank you for taking the time to meet me yesterday. Please allow me to sum up my experience and current problems in writing for your kind reference and action. I have attached the call logs I have kept, which are only part of the calls I have made over the months.

When I subscribed to Mada last year for my family, and during the test period, we were getting 3-4 Mbps, and full strength signal on the router. That was good in itself, but the Wifi coverage of the router wasn’t strong enough to cover a single floor. I went on and bought AirLive router to strengthen the signal. One time cost for good internet connection is not really an issue, but it is an added cost to get the decent service.

Service went on fine for few months, until sometime in the beginning of this year, the service started to slow down dramatically, and we were only getting 1-2 signals out of three on the router. I called Mada support, explained the problem, did all the testing, showed we were getting 1-1.5 Mbps only at most, and the guy on the phone said they will look at it, hung up, and I never heard back from anyone again. Few months later, at end of May my family kept assuring me the service hasn’t improved and is getting unbearable. I did another test and obviously nothing has improved at all. I called customer care asking about my ticket, but there wasn’t any! So my initial call few months back was completely ignored. I explained I had called few months back and nothing was done. Ofcourse all he could offer is to start all over again, since the first guy taking the call did not leave any trace of the complain. We did all the tests, and he said it’s Friday he can only open a ticket, but I will need to call again on Sunday to request engineer visit. I find it odd and useless to open a ticket if I will need to call again in two days to remind them I’m expecting someone to come for assistance.

I called on Sunday requesting engineer visit, and the lady on the phone told me the engineer will come on Tuesday. Tuesday I called at 2 PM, as you can see from the attached call log, and I was told engineers have many requests and are working on their schedule. Called again at close to 5 PM, and again nothing. No engineer coming or any sign that he will. When I called again at 8:45 PM, I was shocked when the customer care told me in amusement “there isn’t any engineer visit. Who told you an engineer is going to visit you?” Seriously, this is beyond any reasonable explanation. I told him how I have been calling since Friday for a solution, was promised an engineer visit, and now on Tuesday I find out there is no engineer visit, and nothing is being done at all regarding my problem. Also, note from the call log, I still did not receive a single follow up call from any made representative, so the 5 days old ticket is useless. When I told him no one even tried to follow up, he said he will, and he did call back few minutes later, put me on hold for like 10 minutes to talk to IT. Why would I need to be put on hold for 10 minutes while he talks to his IT guys? That’s 400 fils and 10 minutes wasted of my time for only this call. He called a little later also to try and fix the problem, saying they will do changes in the configuration, but nothing much improved.

I kept calling every few days to see if anything has happened, but every time I call, I get the same answer. “They’re working on it!” What are they doing? I never got an answer for that, and my request to talk to the IT or anyone in charge were all met with denial. This went on for long time until I went on a trip, came back, and nothing still changed. No one ever called back to check up on the open ticket. 3 minute youtube video would take 3-5 minutes of buffering, and no, no one at home downloads any movies or does bit torrent. Short YouTube videos is the most we could consume usually.

During my initial calls in May, one guy explained this slowness is due to the number of connected devices (12 at the time). But Mada FAQ clearly says I can connect up to 20 devices, and that service will be affected, but only very minimally (see attached snapshots). So a drop to 2.8-2.5 Mbps is maybe minimal, but definitely not to 1.5 Mbps.

I got so frustrated eventually, and bored from chasing non-existing support. We just let it go until last Friday, 24th August, the wifi was not accessible, and when I tried to see why, I saw that the SSID name of the router have changed to, excuse me, “Khra 3la Al A***” (see attached photo). Obviously the router has been hacked, and the last people to change the router configuration, and login credentials were Mada support during one of my many calls. I called support, first I thought of checking on the status of the old ticket. He said it’s still open, and last update was on May 29 saying you got 3 Mbps. That’s however totally untrue, I would’ve settle for 3 Mbps, but I never told them I got this speed, and if I did, and that is considered acceptable, then why is the ticket open? And why didn’t someone explain this to me in one of my followup calls? I’m pretty sure I never tested it to be that fast, and never did tell them it’s 3 Mbps. Not sure how and who updated the ticket at the time without confirming it with me. I’d be happy if it was 3 Mbps. But it wasn’t. Just to be clear about this, because I was shocked to hear this for the first time in August, 3 months after I have been chasing after the ticket.

Then, I explained the new problem, the router hack. As I read the SSID, the guy completed my sentence, saying you’re the second one to report it. So obviously it’s not something wrong I did, but common router security hole. I explained how this means they have security issues, but he somehow replied “It’s not about security” What is it about then? He said he will get back to me shortly. Little later he called asking me to leave it on until he resolves the problem. I did, but I also disconnected all devices, as I can’t tell to what level the hack is serious, and it could compromise our private data.

Nothing after that, until I called back, as usual, on 7:15 PM. The guy dug up my May ticket, and when I started talking about the hack, he did not have a clue, and even challenged that since the login credentials have been changed, then no one could possibly have hacked the router. Basically implying I’m making this up or hugely confused. Where did my ticket go? There was no ticket created at all, and no handover on the problem, no followup or nothing. They security hack was just left like this. At about that time the router was off, perhaps remotely shut down, I’m not sure. We left it off as we can’t trust it anymore, and it’s been off, and we’re without internet since Friday 24 August.

You see what we had to go through is not just one little problem or two. It’s series of issues and bad customer support that keeps ignoring all reports I send their way. And when I came to the office to talk to someone in charge, the lady at the desk was shocked that absolutely no one from all the people I talked to over the phone have suggested I bring the router for inspection.

Now I’m really fed up, and no one wants the service anymore. So, and looking at the history of my problems and lack of solutions, I am asking that you terminate my account immediately, back dated 24th August, date which the critical problem was reported and service was unusable, and was remained unused since then, and refund the remaining balance accordingly. My account is a 1 Year / 240 KD that expires on 10/4/2012, and from the date of critical service issue, 24th August, till expiry date, that’s 7 months and 17 days. Minus the two free months that come with the year subscription, we would end up with 5 months and 17 days. Each month is worth 20 KD, so that would be (5*20)+(17*0.666) = 111.3 KD.

I should note that during one of my phone calls for the May problem, customer care representative assured me that I will be compensated for all the days since I reported the speed problem. If that is not the case, then here is another problem with the mada support giving incorrect information and making false promises. Either way, all I’m asking is for a refund since the time the service became completely unusable and we stopped using it.

I will be waiting your kind update on the matter.

Kind Regards

Bashar Abdullah

———- Forwarded message ———-

From: <customercare@mada.com.kw>

Date: Fri, May 25, 2012 at 6:02 PM

Subject: Ticket is created

To: ***@gmail.com

Dear Mr. BASHAR

We acknowledge receipt of your email regarding the above subject..

Please be informed, that we have escalated the issue to our concern department and shall be contacting you in this regard.

Your concerns have been recorded within your profile under Ticket No. 201205250000004, please use the same for future enquiries.

We appreciate your support and cooperation on this subject.

Thank You,

Customer Care

Mr. Hussain did forward it to several of the staff, keeping me copied. Two days later, at 10 PM I got a call from Mr. Amer, Mada supervisor who have joined the company few months back it seems. He was apologetic about the timing and how he couldn’t call earlier, telling me the issues was brought down to him from the GM. He listened to my whole story and was in shock, telling me “This is obviously not just miscommunication but we have handled your case wrongly. I’m a speaking from technical side, and would like to help you if possible”. I really respect him taking the time and offering to help, and since we were genuinely looking for a decent service, not a way out, I promised I would open the router for him to test it, but that if the family didn’t like the speed, we will still ask for cancellation. He said cancellation is not his part, but that shouldn’t’ be a problem.

Wednesday at noon I called him and told him the router is on at his disposal. He logged in for an hour, solved the hack problem, and did his testing. After the hour he called telling me the hack problem is solved, but that 1.8 Mbps in my area is the most I can hope for, and I won’t even get that. This test was done with no devices connected on my end mind you that. I thanked him, and told him to cancel the service. He asked me to call customer care. No way! I told him I’m not going through that loop again, and I’d like him to forward the matter. He agreed.

One week later, and still no update. I called and messaged Mr. Amer, but he never replied. So I emailed Mr. Hussain again on Sept 5th.

From: Bashar Abdullah

Date: 5 September, 2012

To: Hussain Bhatti

Dear Hussain,

Following on the incident, Mr. Amer called me last Tuesday trying to understand the problem and offer a final attempt to reconcile the problem. I honored his request as he was clearly passionate to help. He spent last Thursday working for about an hour on the router. He fixed the hacking problem, but told me that the maximum speed I can hope for is 1.8 Mbps at best, and it will likely be less than that. So a 1-1.5 Mbps.

I thanked him but explained ofcourse this is below the minimum we can work with and would like to cancel the service, and get a refund for the remaining time. He promised he’d forward the matter to the concerned department to take appropriate action, and I should hear something in next two days. Unfortunately it’s been a week and I still have no update, and I could not reach him yesterday on phone or sms. So I am asking you if you can get me an update on the matter, and try to speed things up, since it seems I am back to square one now.

Kind Regards

He soon replied with this short email, keeping everybody copied.

Dear Bashar,

I once again will send the details to the NOC team. Let them conclude the issue and revert.

Thank you

Next morning I woke up to this forward, again through Mr. Hussain. Note that the original sender was hidden, and up till now I am yet to hear from the customer care manager, or even sales manager.

From: Hussain Bhatti

Date: 6 September, 2012

To: Bashar Abdullah

Dear Bashar,

Greeting!

Kindly review the following usage of your account carefully. Its tabulated for your info:

Dear Bhatti,

Please find the below usage report in the last 6 months, he has downloaded 100 GB in August, 2012 only:

Mar (MB)

9680.02

Apr (MB)

8992.64

May (MB)

12830.13

Jun (MB)

8816.55

Jul (MB)

260360.16

Aug (MB)

102452.4736

Total (MB)

403131.9736

Total (GB)

393.68

The data was extracted to understand the account utilization and how fairly it was maintained. The trend of your usage is way above the norms i.e. 393GB’s. The company will get back to you on your connection speed. Meanwhile, your account usuage has already blazed the capacity we normally allocate on even open terms, let alone in June and August you burnt 128GB of downloads which shows that the account was well in use.

Thank you

You can tell this got me out of bed, and soon fired up my reply.

From: Bashar Abdullah

Date: 6 September, 2012

To: Hussain Bhatti

Dear Hussain,

Please send the below as my official response.

I am surprised this is being turned into bandwidth usage rather than bandwidth speed. Mada is cap free as they clearly advertised, so I don’t understand the term “blazed above the capacity we normally allocate even on open terms“. The huge jump from June to July in usage is normally because of the summer vacation. More people are at home surfing the web, so the bandwidth, despite it’s slowness, is being utilized more. Theoretically speaking, even when I’m getting just 1 Mbps, I can download up to 10.54 GB of data per day. 1.5 Mbps can give you 15.82 GB. So you see the 100 GB in August means there is a mere 3.33 GB downloaded per day on average. Not even half the daily theoretical limit of 1 Mbps. If we are talking the minimum promised of 2 Mbps, then the maximum per day is 21.1 GB! That’s like 15.6% of the daily limit. Nothing to feel so generous about as highlighted below, since the terms ARE open and without a cap.

Also, from the same table provided, you see how half the months we have only consumed 8 to 9 GB only in a whole month! This is when it wasn’t summer, and we don’t have all day to wait for things to load. We were downloading a mere 0.266 GB of data in a whole day. Big reason for that is very often those youtube clips will keep buffering for too long that they would get bored and close the session.

So you see the provided bandwidth usage, which is only high in the two months of summer when more people are utilizing the bandwidth, doesn’t prove there isn’t any speed problems like I have reported. It also seems to ignore the other problems I have faced during the recent months.

Just to summarize again, as I don’t want the issues I went through to be left out, these are the problems:

1- Speed: In May, and before that, I have done several tests with Mada team showing that I am getting slow speeds of 1-1.5 Mbps. Ticket was opened as a proof of that, and is still not close to this day. If I was getting proper speed, the customer care would have explained it, and the ticket would have been closed. The speed was tested again last Thursday, 30th August by Mada supervisor Mr. Amer, and without any device in our house connected. Mr. Amer confirmed I can only get maximum 1.8 Mbps, and that is not a guarantee as well.

2- Ignoring my speed ticket: As I have shown, my open ticket about speed issue has been completely ignored for the past 3 months completely. No one offered anything for me to fix it, nor told me to bring the router for inspection at any time.

3- Router hacked: As I have shown before, the router was hacked, and even then, no one cared at all to open a ticket or to follow. The hack was simply and quickly ignored by your guy handling it, and I had to shut down the router to avoid further issues.

So there was a mix of slow service, security issues, and a complete lack of support from Mada end. Together I have more than good enough reason to cancel my subscription, and request a refund. I was willing open a new page if the problems is fixed, and forget all that happened. Given that I get proper speed. Mr Amer, the supervisor in Mada confirmed that I cannot right now get speed above 1.8 Mbps, and I will likely get less. This is based on his tests done when no device was connected at our end, so it was an optimal case test.

Given all that, the last I can expect is for someone to show how generous they have been, and that I was in someway abusing the service, rather than being the victim of slow speeds and complete lack of support.

Again, we are wasting time I’m sorry to say, after it was clear to everyone what have happened. If Mada was half as persistent as solving customer problems, as they seem now in holding on to the remaining contract value, we would not have been here.

The router has been off since the day of the hack. Only turned on for 1 hour during Mr. Amer test, then closed again till this day. We refuse to use, and we demand full refund since that day as I said before.

I will be waiting for a quick update from Mada in the next two working days, as this has clearly taken long enough.

Kind Regards

He replied saying the concerned personnel will get back to me. That was September 6th. September 13th there was still no update, so I sent a followup email just to make facts clear, not hoping for anything more from it.

From: Bashar Abdullah

Date: 13 September, 2012

To: Hussaib Bhatti

Dear Mr. Hussain,

I hope you realize the grief me and many Mada customers go through when trying to deal with any problem concerning Mada. Another week passes without a single update. Can Mada really compete with other ISPs with that level of support?

Maybe you’ll argue all ISPs are the same. I’ll agree that I’m not exactly happy with all ISPs. But I have tried Qualitynet support. They do follow up until I confirm problem is solved and the ticket is closed. Fasttelco sent engineer to try fix speed problem several times. When it was obvious we can’t get proper speeds anymore, due to the lines going bad, they refunded the money without hassle, even though it was not their problem but MOC related. A W-Net customer forgot about his auto-renewal, and was hit with 300KD+ invoice. When I pointed the problem to some Wataniya employee, and they saw his usage was in fact zero during all this time, they waived the invoice. Again, it was the customer’s mistake, but honest one, with no harm on any part, and they acted on it.

In our case, its obvious and I have proven I am getting below the minimum speed of 2 Mbps, my open ticket was ignored for months, and my router was hacked and even that hack incident was ignored. Until I came to you and raised all these issues that is. Yet, I still get ignored, and the one email reply I got was trying to jump around all those issues, showing the download volume rather than speed. A slow car can take you from Kuwait City to Jahra. It’s just how long it took that is the problem.

Again, I’m thankful for you to try and solve the problem, but as you see there is no sign of any cooperation to try and resolve my problem.

I guess I will need to work out a solution to this problem myself, since Mada is not willing to offer a refund.

Regards

He replied soon with what seems hopeless letter.

Dear Bashar,

I completely understand what you suggested below, I was trying to facilitate your issue in essence you get served. The concerned personnel are part of this email and they will revert as per the policy relating to cancellation of contracts.

Thank you

NOTE: During all those email exchanges, there were at least 4 personnel from Mada were copied, and total of 8 till the end. I have no idea what departments they represent, but all I know is that means more than enough people are aware of the problem, and no one seemed to care.

He truly seemed to be trying to solve this silly matter that have grown out of proportion. Needless to say that was the last I ever heard anything from Mada at all. 13th September for a call I opened in 25th May (or actually before), and we’re now past 13th October.

What’s really sad and funny is how silly companies can be in dealing with their customers problems. Mada works hard to gain reputation on Twitter, and keeps on gifting free routers and services to bloggers to buy them out and gain positive reviews. But they forget their paying customers, who are the real customers anyway, and are willing to go this far against them.

With this Mada have actually put me in an excellent position, with absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Mada on the other hand could lose the remaining amount through legal channels, have lost me as possible customer in the future of course, have already lost candidate customers who were considering Mada but heard my story, each worth about 240 KD/year, exceeding the amount they needed to refund me, and will definitely lose more as this post reaches more people.

A friend have suggested I run this by Mada before I go public with it. But I decided differently, for I don’t want to blackmail or beg for my money. I truly tried to resolve the matter between us, hoping the story can have a better ending. They decided otherwise, and shut down doors of negotiations. I believe people should know about this, and it will do us all more good if this goes viral, so that companies will be more aware of the value of good customer service. Something we truly need in Kuwait.

Funny Fact: My family eventually went back to VIVA, and were getting 3.5-4 Mbps at lower price.

Google guessing answers to your query?

Bashar — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:28:27 +0000

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?

Qualitynet Weekly Cap Is A Myth?

Bashar — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 07:25:25 +0000

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.

OpenSignalMaps Tells Tower Location and Signal Strengths

Bashar — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 05:46:47 +0000

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.

United Airlines Out Of Office

Bashar — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 18:41:53 +0000

No comment

iPhone WiFi Doesn’t work after going to standby?

Bashar — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 09:41:16 +0000

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.

Wataniya says “Your email or no Wnet service!”

Bashar — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 16:56:46 +0000

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.

Don’t you hate copycats?

Bashar — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:00:44 +0000

[Unlimit-Tech]

[Original Engadget article]

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.

Block Unwanted #ZwaratKhames Tweets & More with “Go Away Tweets”

Bashar — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:19:53 +0000

If there is one good thing that can come of those endless Ramadan shows, it’s the motivation to build something to filter them out. It wasn’t really bothering me that much, but it was getting loud enough that it seems there is nothing but this #ZwaratKhames to talk about on twitter that I decided to finally jump on board Greasemonkey world. After all I am a monkey fan!

So I wrote a little script, call it Go Away Tweets, to remove tweets that include the word zwaratkhames (Yeah that’s right!), and you can easily edit it to your liking to include whatever you want. To use it, for Firefox users first make sure you have Greasemonkey add-on installed. next, get the Go Away Tweets script installed.

If all you want is to block zwaratkhames then your job is done. Vuvuzela filter is also added as a bonus. I’m trying to do some good deeds to the world here! If not, you need to do little editing to the script as follows.

1- Go to Tools -> Greasemonkey -> Manage User Scripts

2- Select the Go Away Tweets script and click Edit

3- There is a list of keywords in the form
keywords[0] = “your word here”
keywords[1] = “your word here”

Set your word where it says so. You can add more keywords by duplicating the line and incrementing the counter, e.g.
keywords[2]…

Google Chrome users are better using Blank Canvas Script Handler to enable easy editing of the script. Do so first, then download the Go Away Tweets, and edit it as explained above.

LIMITATIONS: Currently the script only runs at first time. If you fetch new tweets on the fly without refresh, your evil tweets will come back. SORRY :>

Khalid Al-Zanki Confirms copy/pasting his content

Bashar — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:12:12 +0000

Few days ago I posted on Posterous about the fraud Khalid Al-Zanki is involved with, which ended up with the help of friends and the social web being circulated around the web massively. Today Khalid has posted a blog post which vaguely replies to ours, and is ironically mostly a copy paste from Wikipedia, but that’s alright, at least this time he was clear about it. Now before I start my response to the article, I would to make clear of some points:

1- Few months before the post, I have commented on Khalid’s blog highlighting the massive copy paste in his site. He deleted my comment and never got back to me by email.

2- This time, when my friend MBH comment on his post after I published the photos, he deleted it again, but replied to him politely via email, confirming what his latest blog post tries to explain. You can see the details here with snapshot of the email.

3- Since we posted about it, Khalid never made any attempt to publicly reply to our claims.

4- His Twitter account turned private and is still at the time of writing. Obviously he didn’t want us to get involved in the discussions.

Now, his post is basically a copy/paste of the definitions of Private Label, Private Label Rights, and Royalty-free stuff. I won’t redo the explanation here you can read it off Wikipedia or his blog. But about his post, he smartly wrote it without any mention of what’s been going around in the blogsphere, or without specifying that his is how he got his blog posts and all the rest of the content. But why else would this post come out of the blue? If it’s not to reply to his critics.

So what does his latest post really tell us?

Khalid Al-Zanki copies his content from various sources. He claims to have legal rights in all cases that he does. But is it the case really? Are all his blog posts? His famous eBook, Terms of Use? All of these are copied? Even if legally, where does that leave Khalid Al-Zanki? The famous online marketing and product launch expert, who’s value is so high no company in Kuwait can hire him, according to him. it only leaves him with an About Page that is also a copy paste (see last post)! Did he have right for that About page too? If yes, what kind of a celebrity figure can’t afford to write his own few lines about him selves, or at least hire someone to write real personal biography that is exclusive to him?

It basically all sums up to the point that Khalid is a copy/paste person, and for that, I can’t understand the thousands of KD he charges for his expertise and talks.

From another angle, Private Label and royalty-free content are well known and quite legitimate. But to what extent and in what context? For example, I personally bought royalty-free music to mix with my videos, since I don’t have the skills, and I need legitimate music alongside my videos. But I own the main thing, the video, and I aid it with music. I could pay someone to write for my company or write a book under our brand. But never claim I personally wrote it, let alone brag about it all over the social networks. And what’s worse is when this book or content isn’t exclusive, and you end up seeing tens or hundreds of people claim to have written this content to them selves. Something is completely missing from all this… Credibility!

Things don’t stop here however. It’s not someone who is buying content to publish on his website and monetize the ads beside it, no. He is using it to claim it to him self, pretend to be skillful writer, man of thought and vision, something valuable that he can demand thousands of KDs for his consultancy to companies, who have fallen times and times for his trap.

I only got one last thing to say to Khalid… Thank you for admitting to it. It’s up to the people to judge now.

UPDATE (10:11 PM):

My friend MBH commented on Khalid Al-Zanki’s post and guess what? Khalid deleted the comment. You can still see snapshot here. Khalid once said that he never ever got a bad review. Guess this is how, he more or less meant he never lets a bad review on his site.

But that’s not all. I found this on his Facebook Fan Page status:

Most Arabs in the 3rd world don’t know about private label. Hmm, so this is how you cashed in on it? Buy your self lots of private label content from western world, post is here as yours, then charge big bucks for what you claim to know?

Luckily I know enough about Private Labeling, especially online, and I know enough to spot a scam when I see one. And thanks once again for bringing the Arab in the 3rd world up to speed with your ploy.

Use Gmail Filters to auto-arrange your email tasks

Bashar — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:38:22 +0000

So often do I come across an interesting article or video while browsing the web, especially using my mobile. I want to read the article, or I have something to do with that article, but I just don’t have the time (or iphone is too slow to keep up with the new OS 4) that I decide to email the link to my Gmail address for later reading.

And since I have like everybody else tons of emails, I start labeling emails as TODO and Worthy for things I need to do, or really want to read later on. So this requires that I go to my Gmail Inbox and label my sent email accordingly. But you can use Gmail filters effectively to skip this last step. Here is how:

1- From Gmail, go to Settings, Filters
2- Click Create a new filter
3- In the From field, insert your email address, so that only you can use that filter. After all, you don’t want outsiders to add things to your todo list do you? I know I’d like to do that to others, so for your sake, keep your email :).
4- In the Subject field, add a specific tag that is unlikely to appear in emails. For instance, I use Google similar syntax to filter as in is:todo. But keep in mind you need to escape the colon character “:” with backslach, so it will be “is\:todo”.

5- Click Next Step
6- Check the Apply the label: box and select your preferred label from the dropdown list, or create new one if you like.

Toy Story 3 Video Game, Just How All Movie Games Should Be

Bashar — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 14:49:37 +0000

How many movie games are released each year? How many movie games have you tried in your life time? How many did you really like? The answer would be I bet very close to zero! Well I can say I added one to mine. The moment I saw Toy Story 3 video game trailer it felt like something different. Like something with a hope of enjoying it. Having gone through the story mode game now, the game really delivered the promise, setting an example of how video games should be made.

First of all, voice actors are all real not a replacement like many other Disney games I tried, this by it self tells you the company is taking the game seriously. Graphics was really great as well, and the game followed the real story to a very good extent, and added some extra fun levels as side stories that won’t really spoil the game, but rather add extra spice to it. Yes there were some critical scenes I thought should be included, like what happened to the bear. They made it look like he was no evil or anything, just a side character you pass by. Other characters were also missing, but nothing that spoiled the joy in my opinion.

What’s the best part for me was the multi-player mode. For the first time I’m really able to enjoy a game with my kid, playing together through the story mode, making our through the obstacles, helping each other, and most of the time, the lack of one player doesn’t hardly affect the other. You die, the other player resumes play until you respawn at next point. So this was for real a family + gaming time in one. I was kinda pushing him to play it over other games toward the end really :).

Is this because of the Avalanche Software? I never liked THQ games, but UP demo sounded a bit nice for kids.

Either way, I hope this isn’t an incidental success but a sign of better Pixar movie games to come. And why don’t other movie studios give such focus to their games? Have you ever heard of a good Harry Potter game? Yes Lego version was probably fun for kids, but that’s a lame shift after the successive failure the movie games have seen. I guess massive movie game failures have given them a bad reputation. It’s just something they have to get done, get quick cash from and leave.

NOTE: Zurg character is playable on PS3 version of the game.

It’s happening… 3D Bluray Movies

Bashar — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 10:15:27 +0000

That’s one movie I definitely wanna get.

Monkey Island Playground

Bashar — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:49:58 +0000

Without any relation to the game (but it should), HERE IT IS!

Why not real one? You know with hidden dirty T-Shirt treasures, lovely governors, spit contests, real grave digging and all. That would be much cooler.

Amazon Kindle for $189

Bashar — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:07:03 +0000

Like it?

Monkey Island II Tie

Bashar — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 16:23:20 +0000

Remember those Monkey Island sneakers? You do? Wow.. your life must be so empty! But anyways, I got an email that seems from the same shoes designer and you can now wear ties that match your shoes while going to work.

You can read her Spanish page if you like (or use Google Translate). And to bid for the Monkey Island tie (currently standing at 99 EUR!), you can do that here.

Don’t you wish now you wear formal?

Google World Cup

Bashar — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:12:25 +0000

New improved Google Currency Converter

Bashar — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:42:17 +0000

Have you ever tried Google Currency Converter? I always do. You simply Google for something like “100 USD in EUR” and you got it. Well now you can even get more. Historical chart of conversion rate, and a form to quickly calculate other amounts.

Try it out!

Aardvark Spam

Bashar — Mon, 24 May 2010 09:37:46 +0000

Aardvark is a social community site to help people ask and answer questions, easily even through your messenger. Isn’t that great? At least Google thought so when they acquired it. I tried it for one question, got a couple of possible good answers. And then I thought of giving back when I opted to answer an e-mail question.

Consider it noted! So what happened here? A guy is changing his email, sending notification to all his contacts, Aardvark gets the email as a question, and intelligently marks it as e-mail question, and I fall for and try to answer it?

I guess so, and if true, there is no way I’m keeping that thing to spam me.

iPhone OS 4 vs. Android

Bashar — Sun, 23 May 2010 21:30:11 +0000

[Guest Post By James Mowery]

With the much anticipated upcoming release of Apple’s iPhone OS 4, especially with the recent iPhone prototype media leaks, tech fans wait to see how OS 4 stacks up against the Android 2.1 platform. Since Android 2.1 was released in January, it has steered many Apple cronies away from their beloved iPhones with its open app development and multitasking capabilities. Now that Apple is responding with iPhone OS 4, will it blow Android out of the water or merely play catch-up to the new kid in town?

Let’s take look at some of iPhone OS 4’s new features and compare them to the Android 2.1 OS.

Multitasking

The new iPhone OS 4 will now feature the ability to multitask between apps. In previous versions, the iPhone featured push notifications but no true multitasking feature. When OS 4 is released, iPhone users will now be able to switch between apps with a simple double-click of the home button. While this is a big deal for iPhone users, I wouldn’t expect much of a reaction from an Android 2.1 user, as that platform has had multitasking capabilities since its inception and has refined the process ever since. Furthermore, Apple’s App Store retains the final say in which apps are released with a multitasking function. While iPhone users will be able to use apps during voice and VoIP calls, its multitasking abilities only bring OS 4 up to par with Android 2.1. Advantage: Android 2.1

New APIs

As iPhone OS 4 is released, so will over a thousand new APIs for users to personalize their iPhones with. These APIs will allow apps to send text messages and make new appointments in the phone’s calendar, as well as integrating the phone’s map and photo album features into popular apps. While these new APIs increase the iPhone’s functionality, the available apps are still limited to the Apple App Store. These APIs have existed in Android’s open source environment for some time now, and when paired with skinning-ability and animated wallpapers, the iPhone really looks like its trying to match Android 2.1, not surpass it.

Folders

Another feature now found on both phones is the ability to create and manage folders. Android 2.1 has had this feature, while this is new for iPhone OS 4. Not a deal-breaker when deciding on a new smartphone, but this is another example of the iPhone playing catch-up.

Gaming

The iPhone has always had the advantage in this department, basically pioneering the latest generation of phone-based gaming, and now they have added a feature to iPhone OS 4 that Android 2.1 cannot match; the ability to play on a social gaming network. This will allow users to play games against their fiends or random opponents, and track their progress in the iPhone’s Game Center. Advantage: iPhone OS 4

Overall, the new iPhone OS 4 has removed many of its notorious limitations and has closed the gap left when Android 2.1 was released. For Apple lovers, OS 4 will make you feel like you possess the phone of the future, but many of its “new” features will look rather familiar to anyone who has used Android 2.1. iPhone OS 4 is a step in the right direction for Apple, but it’s Android who is leading the way towards the perfect smartphone.
About the author: James Mowery is a computer geek that writes about technology and related topics. To read more blog posts by him, go to laptop computers.

Google Communicates with Saddam

Bashar — Thu, 20 May 2010 06:54:36 +0000

Some of you might have already heard about this. The Google Native Client SDK is an effort by Google in bringing the Native Client to the web, helping developers put real rich web applications, without heavy server call backs.

Besides the promising future in this short video, you would see the automatic speech recognition in effect, failing first to distinguish C from See.

But that’s really alright, they are both pronounced the same, I’d be surprised if it got it right. Unless we keep in mind geeks developing it tend to prefer their common sense over the rest of the world. The second one blew me apart laughing.

Hope CIA doesn’t take this seriously. Otherwise they will show interest in links with Bin Ladin!

Anyways, here’s the video, still worth every minute of it.

Gmail Mobile on Nokia 6500 Slide giving ‘Certificate Invalid’ error

Bashar — Tue, 11 May 2010 08:44:09 +0000

This is an email I get from someone reporting the problem, and I thought it would be nice to publish the result for public benefit, so I might be doing more of this later on.

Problem is it seems is Nokia 6500 Slide Gmail app is giving ‘no appropriate certificate’ or ‘certificate invalid’ error. What you need is to install or update the missing certificate. Little Googling and here is the answer on how to install the Verisign Certificate to your mobile phone.

In a nutshell, you

Open your phone’s web browser and navigate to: http://www.verisign.com/cgi-bin/support/rootcert/getrootcert.cer
Download the file and open/install.

Google Chrome Super Fast

Bashar — Sat, 08 May 2010 10:01:11 +0000

Google Chrome is taking up the challenge against fired potato, sound waves, and lighting in speed, showing amazingly high rendering speeds in splits of a second.

And for the geeks, this is the behind the scenes video.

Now imagine if I do this same test here in Kuwait. Bake a toast Vs Google Chrome. That might end up in a tie!

Give power to the wrong people and this is what you get

Bashar — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 10:49:08 +0000

To English readers, this translates Quot to Egyptian Sex Movies. This is what happens when you trust the wrong people.

Google Chrome (MUST) RSS Subscription Extension

Bashar — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 07:11:42 +0000

Know this little icon that appears on the right of the address bar?

This is what tells you that there is an RSS feed to this page that you can subscribe to. And this is what you don’t get in Google Chrome browser for some reason. To get it, I have to search for RSS link on the page, copy it, open Google Reader and subscribe to it. How lame is that?

But here is the simple solution.

Why would something like the RSS auto-detection be just an optional extension, while the page translation is a built-in can’t disable feature?

Quake 2 on HTML5

Bashar — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 14:43:33 +0000

Unbelievable huh? If you know me very well you’ll know how much I hate April Fool, and this video was released the same day. But so was Gmail! I hope Gmail isn’t a long time joke as well cause I’ve been swearing my life on it for years. So anyways, this is the official Google Code page for the project. There are people saying it’s April Fool, and even TechCrunch was confused about it. But if you look at the Wiki and people’s comments, you will see people really trying and building it. No single comment from someone who tried it telling it’s a fool. So it seems pretty real, an for the sake of the future of the web, I really hope it remains real. This could be a serious threat message to Flash.

Mar (MB)	9680.02
Apr (MB)	8992.64
May (MB)	12830.13
Jun (MB)	8816.55
Jul (MB)	260360.16
Aug (MB)	102452.4736
Total (MB)	403131.9736
Total (GB)	393.68

BlogAllAlong

So I ordered some thermal paste

Related Posts:

Book of Spells Brings A Meaning To The PlayStation Move

Related Posts:

Mada apologizes for any convenience they might have given me

Related Posts:

Sorcery Review

Related Posts:

3 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use Mada

Related Posts:

Google guessing answers to your query?

Related Posts:

Qualitynet Weekly Cap Is A Myth?

Related Posts:

OpenSignalMaps Tells Tower Location and Signal Strengths

Related Posts:

United Airlines Out Of Office

Related Posts:

iPhone WiFi Doesn’t work after going to standby?

Related Posts:

Wataniya says “Your email or no Wnet service!”

Related Posts:

Don’t you hate copycats?

Related Posts:

Block Unwanted #ZwaratKhames Tweets & More with “Go Away Tweets”

Related Posts:

Khalid Al-Zanki Confirms copy/pasting his content

Related Posts:

Use Gmail Filters to auto-arrange your email tasks

Related Posts:

Toy Story 3 Video Game, Just How All Movie Games Should Be

Related Posts:

It’s happening… 3D Bluray Movies

Related Posts:

Monkey Island Playground

Related Posts:

Amazon Kindle for $189

Related Posts:

Monkey Island II Tie

Related Posts:

Google World Cup

Related Posts:

New improved Google Currency Converter

Related Posts:

Aardvark Spam

Related Posts:

iPhone OS 4 vs. Android

Related Posts:

Google Communicates with Saddam

Related Posts:

Gmail Mobile on Nokia 6500 Slide giving ‘Certificate Invalid’ error

Related Posts:

Google Chrome Super Fast

Related Posts:

Give power to the wrong people and this is what you get

Related Posts:

Google Chrome (MUST) RSS Subscription Extension

Related Posts:

Quake 2 on HTML5

Related Posts: