WARRENASIA BLOGGIN'

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It’s been bloody ages and I humbly apologize!
There’s been loads going on - at Warrenasia and in my life. :p A short summary follows, of the months gone by:

In June, I went to Toronto for 2 months. Besides spending time with the family, I indulged in expensive shopping - picked up a Canon EOS 30D with some interesting lens and accessories. After getting back, I went to Bombay for a couple of days to get some more parts for the 30D. Later, a trip to Amboli with the crew, to (ab)use the 30D. (I love the sound of that - 30D)

In November, I bought a Royal Enfield 350cc Bullet (’89). Got it stripped and worked on from scratch - sized up piston, a fresh paint job, chroming and buffing - the works. I love my new baby!

In the first week of December, I started dating this beautiful lady.
Some days later, I did a week long trip to Kerala with my family - Cochin, Munnar and Thekady. Some more abuse of the camera! Munnar is a beautiful hill station - highly recommended.

Just FYI, contrary to common belief - I was working the whole time too!! :p

In January, we took over the re-design and development of happeninggoa.com - an interesting project. And we also gave FLUVER a lot of attention to boost sales.

On 9th February, I held a photo exhibition, titled Canadian Summer, to launch my new office in Mapusa. (Photos will be up on my next post - thank x3t for inspiring the exhibition post)

Valentine’s Day was fab! Loads of orders for FLUVER and on a personal note too

So that’s that for now. Life’s good and everything is wonderful.

I recently bought HP’s new tablet PC - the TX1003 AU. I’ve been using it for about a month now and it’s been quite fabulous. The basic features are:

The first thing I did was upgrade the memory to 2 GB. The sad thing is that this baby comes pre-loaded with Windows Vista and there are no drivers available for any other operating system, even on HP’s site. Anyway, once I got past that fact the features of this tablet have kinda swept me off my feet.

First of all the integrated Finger-Print Reader saves me a lot of time everyday, cause I don’t have to type in my password to log into Windows, websites, messengers and many other applications that may require authentication. After the initial setup, all I have to do is swipe my finger and I’m logged in.

Another great feature is that the volume controls are a separate set of buttons just above the ESC, F1 and F2 keys. Unlike my older laptop, where I have to hold a key combination to mute or increase/decrease the volume, it’s much easier to have access to specifically assigned buttons to do this job.

The integrated speakers on the TX1003AU are attached to the bottom of the screen. Manufactured by Altec Lansing, the sound quality is quite amazing - crystal clear and loud. They lack a little bass, but heck - it’s a tablet PC - not a boombox. There are 2 microphones integrated at the top of the screen, which are supposed to provide better clarity or something, but I’ve not noticed much of a difference from my older laptop which has only one microphone. Anyway, the mics are well positioned and optimal for voice chatting or making VoIP calls.

The mini Remote Control is an awesome feature - just great to watch movies or play music sitting away from the tablet. I just plug it to my Creative sound system and 19″ TFT and it’s movie time!

Now, for the best part - the screen of the HP TX1003AU, that normally looks like a laptop, swivels 180 degrees and goes flat down to become a tablet. Pop out the stylus and I have full touch screen control, including handwriting recognition and drawing capabilities. The touch screen features can be used even when the tablet screen is in it’s normal position - but it becomes useful when it’s swiveled into a tablet. The screen is remarkably sharp and is great for my long hours of work.

The WiFi ON/OFF switch is located on the right hand side, on the front panel and is easily accessible. The range seems quite good right now, I get network signals from 2 houses away through the walls - but that could be because they have wooden houses here in Toronto. I will have to check the strength again when I’m back in Goa.

There is a small touchpad ON/OFF switch just above the touchpad and is quite useful when typing, so that the cursor doesn’t jump, if I accidentally touch the pad. It is a very unique touchpad that blends smoothly into the body of the laptop and only has dots on it to show its existence.

There are 2 headphone sockets on the front panel - so 2 people can watch a movie or listen to music at the same time, while in a quiet zone, like a plane or the like.

Lastly, the battery - after about a month of charging and discharging the battery, as I use the tablet on battery as much as I use it on AC power, I still get about 3 hours of battery time. If I’m running some heavy application like playing a DVD or a game, then I get a little less than 2 hours of battery time.

So, overall, a great buy at just Rs. 63,000 - a whole load of features and amazing performance. This tablet seems to be just perfect for my business and personal life.

It’s nice to see that my blog is useful to many people searching for answers to their hardware problems. Google is sending visitors to this blog everyday - mostly from US, Canada, UK and Australia.

Though I haven’t been posting too much lately, I do intend posting a lot more information - specially about hardware and SEO.

As FLUVER is picking up, we’ve been busy with those deliveries. THINKTANK is showing signs of life too - which is good!

FLUVER has got a PageRank of 4 and has about 170 of its pages indexed (check here) - I LOVE U GOOG! I’ve already anticipated number ONE rankings for various sets of keywords, which will help to boost business.

Besides those new ventures, our web hosting and domain registration services have kept me busy too. Third level .UK domains have been introduced, along with 24 other new TLDs. Third level UK domains are being sold at Rs. 350 per year, but ONLY TILL 31st May 2007! Also, all domain registration prices have been revised again - because of the drop in USD exchange rates and also because of change in buying rate from the registrar. .COM/.NET domains are now being sold at Rs. 380 per year.

Yes, it’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been busy :p

We have shifted all our website hosting to a new server at The Planet - one of the world’s largest server farms - in Texas. Server details are:

• 2 x Dual-Core 2.4 GHz Xeon Processors (with 4MB cache each)
• 4 GB DDR RAM
• 1 TB SATA Hard Disks with RAID 1+0 structure
• 99.99% uptime SLA guarantee
• UPS and generator backup

We will be revising the hosting rates soon.

We have also signed up with DirectI as resellers for domain registration, so check out the updated prices - the lowest in Goa!

Besides all the website migration that’s been happening, we are also working on website development projects - which I’m hoping to get completed by the end of May.

6:20 pm - the orange sun was about to kiss the top of the hills, while coconut trees lined the distance to their feet. We were all set to shoot Fluver’s home-page couple

Armed with a huge bouquet of red roses, a mini-SLR Canon Powershot S3-IS and loads of enthusiasm, I choose the backdrop to represent Goa. With Nat in Stan’s arms and the bouquet in her arms, I began to click away. Within seconds, the mood was more than perfect and everything was flowing better than planned.

In less than 20 minutes, we had the most gorgeous and heart-melting shots.

Truly, one of the best photoshoots I’ve done.

p.s. Fluv you both - Natasha and Stanley!

A start for THINKTANK’s creative print advertising in Goa.

This is an advertisement we designed for a retail shop that mainly sells car audio and accessories. The advertisement is being published in the classified section of tomorrow’s Navhind Times. Our main eye-catching concept was Cars With Feelings, Just Like Humans

We have mentioned only the 3 categories of items that Formula 1 sells; though we intend to leave the reader feeling like he read a lot more - “Gigantic”.

Do comment! We are open to constructive criticism.

For those of you who aren’t aware yet - we’re shifting all Warrenasia operations to our new 110 sq. mt. office - which is almost ready!

I’m going to order the tiles tomorrow morning and then the only work left will be fitting of the tiles, electrical stuff and fitting of the doors and windows.

Once we’ve shifted, there’ll be a few job openings - for graphic designers, web designers, web marketing teams and computer hardware engineers. Anyone applying for any of the jobs should be able to work at our office - we will not be providing work-at-home jobs.

If you’re interested in working with us, send along your C.V. addressed to Warren Rodrigues. Interviews will be held mid-May.

• Applicants for Graphic designer’s post should send us some of their creative works.
• Applicants for Web designer’s post should send us a few links of websites designed by them. Knowledge and experience of PHP/MySQL will be an added advantage.
• Applicants for Web marketing team should have experience working with online forums, directories and a basic knowledge of HTML will be an added advantage. No experience in Web marketing is required.
• Applicants for Hardware engineer’s post must have experience in assembling PCs and trouble-shooting hardware, network and OS problems.

In 1999, I started off as a graphic designer. Since then, I’ve shifted my focus more to web development, S.E.O. and the like.

8 years later - I continue to run one of Goa’s largest and most successful web hosting and web development house.

I come to realize though, that the quality of graphic designing in the Goan market sucks! Newspaper advertisements are so clichéd and boring and generate no interest level in the reader. Except for a few adverts that come from Bombay-based ad-gurus, the rest should just be thrown into the bin without a second thought.

This called for the birth of Warrenasia’s latest venture - THINKTANK - an advertising motive that will take a bite out of your competition. That’s our aim here at Warrenasia - letting our client lead the way, so far ahead, that their competition has a hard time trying to keep up.

We do it on the web, with technologies like S.E.O. (which involves many days of research and understanding human psychology to target the right keywords for our clients), and, now, we’re brimming with confidence to do something similar on print.

In the last couple of days, we’ve got our stationary and other material ready and, also, organized the squad who will handle THINKTANK. We should be storming the market in a couple of days. Watch out!

No strings attached. No additional charges.

All new .INFO registrations are charged at Rs. 99 for the first year. That’s not all - you also get 5 MB Linux Web Hosting FREE for a period of 1 month. This gives you a chance to evaluate our service and quality.

This is a limited time promotion, so don’t waste time thinking - it’s less than a hundred Indian rupees!!

We are so confident of the quality of our web hosting services that we are allowing you to test and then choose us. You don’t have to sign any yearly contract; you don’t even have to stick with us after the first month if you don’t like our service - you could choose to opt out with no questions asked. Your .INFO domain still remains yours for the entire year, no matter where you host!

Warrenasia is Goa’s premier Domain Registration and Web Hosting firm, offering the lowest rates on all domain registrations (.com/.net/.org/.info/.in/.co.in and more) and the best deals on web hosting too. Most other Goan companies candy wrap their services and charge you ridiculous prices for Domain Registration and Web Hosting. We beat the competition by, simply, being transparent. No hidden fees and no hidden clauses. What you see is what you get!

So I just got another AMD machine! And this one’s a beauty…

• an AM2 socket 3000+ processor
• ASUS M2N-MX board with an nVidia chipset
• 1 GB of DDR2 RAM - running at 533 Mhz

And that’s not all. For the first time, I’ve fallen in love with the cabinet - an 8.5 KG silver/black beauty. As x3t put it - a nuclear bunker!

Anyway, I’ve not got a chance to work on it too much yet - I’m still on my older 939-pin AMD (with 2 GB RAM ;))

Once I’ve run all the tests on the nuclear bunker, I’ll post my findings here.

Till then, peace!