Don't mess with my Internet!

The greatest thing about the internet is the fact that it belongs to all of us! No matter who you are, where you are from, We all have the freedom to choose where we're headed! But now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could seriously damage the fundamental structure of the Internet.

Tech giants like Wikipedia, Mozilla, Reddit, Google, and many more who actually care to protect the internet are against this. But obviously, there's a bunch of money hungry politicians who are working towards this legislation in favor of a few organizations who think they'd rather break of the Internet than fixing their business models. This is downright evil! and should be fought against with all our strength!

This is why all of us who care to protect the internet should spread the word around and educate people to fight against the legislation of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) Because if any of these get passed that would mean the end of the Internet as we know it.

Don't let anyone mess with your Internet! Join the battle against SOPA/PIPA

Read more at:

SOPA Strike   SOPA FAQ   Tim O’Reilly interview   What Experts think   InfoGraphic

(Picture courtesy of reddit)

So long 2011!

Here's to an exciting year that brought great opportunities and amazing experiences! :)

How Dropbox Won

A couple of days ago, I came across something very interesting Dave Winer shared on twitter. It was a link to the application Drew Houston, the Dropbox founder submitted to YCombinator for their Summer 2007 cycle. I opened it out of curiosity and found it very interesting and thought provoking to read. Here's is the answer from the application, to the  question: "What is your company going to make?"

"Dropbox synchronizes files across your/your team's computers. It's much better than uploading or email, because it's automatic, integrated into Windows, and fits into the way you already work. There's also a web interface, and the files are securely backed up to Amazon S3. Dropbox is kind of like taking the best elements of subversion, trac and rsync and making them "just work" for the average individual or team. Hackers have access to these tools, but normal people don't..."

The moment I read this I realized how well Drew saw the future of his product way before even anyone else sees it. He had a very clear vision what the product is and how it'd help to solve what he waned to solve. And looking at the success of Dropbox, it's obvious that he has executed his plan precisely. This sure is a winning mix. I'd be surprised if a product fails to achieve suceess with the founders having this kind of insight about what they're going to do. I'm sure Paul Graham had his winning smile when he saw this one... well, here's exactly what came to his mind when going through the Dropbox application Y Combinator received that summer...

125 points by pg 452 days ago | link

What happens when I read this:

File syncing. Superset of backups, which people will pay for. Good. Single founder. Bad. But at least he's looking for more people. Went to MIT, 1600 SAT. Probably fairly smart. Wrote a poker bot. Now I'm starting to get interested; has the right attitude. Description of the software sounds plausible but generic. Maybe it's good, but who can tell. But little sister uses it; that's impressive. Scroll down to what he understands that competitors don't get. Wow: very concise and unequivocal. I'm now basically sold. Scroll through the rest. No red flags. Did not make the usual joke single founders make when asked how long the founders have known one another. Good answer to what might go wrong. A-. (Would be an A with a cofounder.)

Very interesting indeed. It seems PG sure knows when he sees a killer idea and a brilliant mind behind it.
The application is full of very interesting questions like "What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?"  and brilliant answers from the Dropbox founder. It's really worth a read if you are a startup minded person and I strongly suggest that you answer yourself to this application for any products you are building.
Oh and btw, If you haven't used Dropbox yet, Trust me! you have no idea what you are missing.
-SeeJay

The Reader

Wow! it's been a long while since I typed anything here... :) this is definitely a record duration and no, I'm not gonna start ranting on how twitter killed blogging for me or anything... to be frank, I didn't even tweet that much, I did a little bit of tweeting, definitely not as much so that anyone would call me an addict of twitter... So a couple of days ago I actually went and changed my twitter bio from "microBlogging addict", to "Information addict" :) Err... an Information addict? you'd ask, yup! that's what I am...

23 years...

So here I am, back on blogging after a long silence. But this long break was not because of the fact that I didn't have anything to write. I think its fair to say that it was because I had so much to say that I couldn't really figure out how to manage them all in to this little blog of mine. There were so many interesting things happening around me.

Playing with pligg

So I had this idea for a small (i guess) project which uses a digg like voting system. So I installed the pligg cms and tried playing with it for some time and after two days I decided to go with its well known drupal based competitor drigg. Of course pligg is a good cms and I don't necessarily mean to suggest that anyone shouldn't use it. But it was a little too messed up. Atleast for me. :-|

The things I didn't like in pligg includes the not so clean code, which requres to change dozen places when you need to do something as simple as switching a theme, The not so active development of the cms, unlike drupal which has a very powerful developer base. The not so open karma calculation, which obviously gonna be a PITA later on. And the not so friendly user support which is "known" not to listen to its users :P (which I did NOT experience btw)
So I switched to drigg and I'm glad I did :) it's drupal based and you can feel the cleanliness of the code :) of course if you choose to do the manual installation it takes some time to configure the the modules needed to get drigg up and running, And you're gonna need to know the basics of drupal, but it's all fun and I don't think it would be that hard to learn, even if you are completely new to drupal.

So now I'm tweaking the site and I might write a post on getting drupal+drigg up if I have enough time. And yes! of course I'll reveal the project i'm working :P and if you people have any interest in Free Software you might even like it heehee. but that's yet to see... ;)

How to Unlock the Huawei E220 HSDPA modem

Huawei e220 or Vodafone e220 is the HSDPA modem we usually get from Dialog Telecom or Mobitel GSM (probably from Airtel) when we purchase a mobile broadband connection. But usually it's operator locked, so we can't switch between networks when the current ISP starts treating us like dust, If you've read my previous post you know I have my reasons to unlock the Huawei e220 modem I got from Dialog Telecom. Here I'm gonna explain how I did that and I'll try to be as simple as I can. But Feel free to ask for help if u need any.

Disclaimer: I’m not responsible, nor will be held liable, for anything you do with the information I provide in this tutorial. Use it at your own risk.

Ok, since we are done with the traditional "Disclaimer" Lets see what you have to do.

First you'll have to download the following tools.
e220 CardLock UnLocker
e220 Updater version 11.117.09.04.00
QC Mobile Analysis Tool
And a Hex editor. But if you do it correctly you can do it with an ordinary text editor too ;)

Or you can download and extract this file. It contains all the tools we need for the job, including a lightweight portable hex editor :)

Basically, Unlocking the e220 is simple as running the E220 CardLock Unlock tool and entering the unlock code and pressing the "Ok" button. But that's when you "know" the unlock code.

So how do we find the unlock code for our modem? that's where the other tools come in handy.

Plug your modem to the computer and run the E220 Updater. Wait till it detects your modem and then press the "Cancel" button. yes! Cancel it! This is just to make it easier for the "real tool" to identify the modem.

Now open the QC BQS Analyzer and click on Hardware forensics menu, select Use Com/USB Port

Now the "QC Com Diag" window should be open. Most of the time your modem and com port is automatically selected on the Serial Com port drop down list. If not you'll have to select it manually. And then click on the "Send Cmd" button and wait till the message "Successfully sent command" appears on the bottom right.

Now Select " Read EFS" from the Diag Functions drop down menu and Click the "Lets go" button. When it asks, enter the file name e220.bin and save it. A message saying "Successfully read EFS" should appear.

Now its time to do some hex reading :) Open the e220.bin file from your Hex Editor. And search for the ASCII string Sd, (including the comma) or Search for the for the Hex string 53 64 2c
After few random characters you'll see a clean 8 digit code. Believe me, it's easily recognizable and guess what! thats our Unlock code :D

Once you've found the unlock key all you have to do is enter it on the CardLock Unlock utility and click "OK" And your modem is... Unlocked!!! :D

Hope this will be helpful. I'd absolutely love to know your views on this. Good luck with unlocking your modems :)
-seejay