Where did PTCL’s gaming lounge go?

Posted by BA on Jul 16, 2009 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

Exactly at a point, when I was about to write a terrible review for PTCL’s gaming lounge, I found the link dead. The gaming lounge was a part of PTCL’s entertainment portal and they had quite a few interesting games servers listed including counter strike, call of duty 4, battlefield 2 and medal of honor-allied assault.

I was excited over the weekend and tried to connect, but found out that none of the servers was actually working. I tried all the 4 games listed above, but no luck. Today I hit PTCL’s entertainment link and only thing I see is a lame site with no links working at all, named Buzz Studio.

What’s going on? I suggest PTCL should finish their sites and get their servers ready before publishing their websites. People actually do visit their sites :p

Advertising Sarcasm at its best or its worst?

Posted by BA on Jun 16, 2009 in Uncategorized | 21 comments

Recently, we have seen companies using sarcasm in hidden or obvious words causing a never ending race of ads showing up on media, especially television. This race has taken the shape of a war when it comes to telecom sector. Every telco is hitting others with the gestures, sentences, music, colors or whatever method they find appropriate. The team at Ufone has been doing its part as well but this ad, which is yet to be aired has taken it to another level.

At times I feel it is a little inappropriate but once it’s a war, all is fair in it. Please do post your comments.

Ufone Urdu SMS – Simple and useful

Posted by BA on Jun 5, 2009 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Ufone has launched its Urdu SMS services and that’s what I call convenience with simplicity. We all keep sending messages in roman Urdu but keeping in mind that the mobile usage has gone way beyond the very basic literacy level, we need solutions that keep things in Urdu or even use picture illustrations for getting a message through. As far as I remember, Ufone is not the first one to launch such translation service, for example Mobilink is already running their SMS translation services.

How it works

For all your message recipients, who cannot understand English script, Ufone has come up with this very useful yet simple service. Simply send a message to 424 written in roman Urdu and you will receive a response translated in Urdu text. If you want to send the message to someone else, type [recipient number] [space] [message in roman] and the service will attempt its best to translate it word by word in Urdu script.

To give it a shot I sent a simple message from a Ufone number to a non-Ufone one and it was delivered within a few milliseconds. Here was a simple test run:

Source Message:

Received at destination as:

Most cell-phones out there in the market do not have Urdu-keypad and do not have Urdu typing support in their firmware/OS, but they have capacity to display Urdu messages. In these circumstances, the service can be a hit.

The only problem in this service is the use of roman combination and users’ habits. Ufone has a software at the back end that is translating these English character combinations to Urdu. In case it doesn’t find your desired combination, or you spell a certain word differently, the translation will not work perfectly. For example I’ve seen people using “Hay”, “He”, “Hey” and “Hy” for the same word “ہے” in Urdu. But once people start using it, they will learn the right syntax. I was expecting a detailed guideline or user-manual on Ufone’s website, that I couldn’t find.

Each message translated will cost Rs. 2+ Tax. Here are the details:

Zong marketing team, getting REALLY short on ideas!

Posted by BA on May 10, 2009 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

I remember Osama’s earleir post on Green & White, that talked about Zong’s advertisement campaign that used a stock image that was already used for a book’s cover. Well, that could be shortage of time and resources and somebody at Zong marketing department went to istockphotos and bought an image for the campaign (I hope they bought it). 

This time around though, Zong marketing has proved that not only they have run out of ideas, they have started stealing them as well. Zong’s recent advertisement running on almost all tv channels has a scene copied from Jim Carrey’s movie Bruce Almighty (2003).

See for yourself :

25 million handsets die as clock strikes midnight in india!

Posted by BA on Apr 15, 2009 in Uncategorized | 12 comments

As its past midnight in India, the mobile phone users all over the country are afraid if their mobile will continue to work or not?

According to this post on Mobile Messaging 2, chinese mobile handset manufacturers have flooded indian market with 25 million handsets that do not have a unique IMEI. This means, the handset is absolutely anonymous and according to the Indian government, these anonymous handsets can be used by the terrorists or can be utilized in illegal activities.

Therefore the handsets should be blocked, i.e should not work on any network in India. 25 million is a dazzling large number and even if half of these sets are actually disabled, it will be a total chaos. It’s reported that here are 15 to 18 million users of such handsets in India. Once these handsets stop picking the mobile signal, some users will stop using a mobile till they have enough money to buy a new one and others will instantly buy a new phone. In both cases, phones with proper IMEI will see a rise in their sales in a couple of months to follow.

I’m sure there will be lots of these sets still in transit or in sales stores. All these shipments will become useless junk of plastic and circuitry. Businessmen owning these sets have to evaluate, should they sell them to another country where such restriction isn’t in place yet, or the cost of re-exporting is too high and its better to simply throw them away? In any case, its not a good news.

We have seen similar regulations being implemented in the region in the name of security improvements. For example in Pakistan, PTA has made it mandatory for every mobile-connection to be registered and associated with a person’s national ID number. This, no doubt, ensures legal use of cell-phone connections and discourage terrorists from using them or at least improving the traceability of calls during an investigation.

Its not only the use of mobile phones. Even efforts are being made to ensure traceability of users over the Internet again to reduce illegal and terrorist activities. Jehan ara’s post here talks exactly about that.

Pakistan is also a big market of such Chinese handsets that give you unmatched features in unbelievable cost. But a regulation like the one India is implementing, can kill the market here in Pakistan as well.

Last but not least, there always exists a subset of handsets whose IMEIs can be changed, erased or faked by a combination of hardware/software trick. At least I’ve not seen any such regulations that stop this kind of illegal activity or discourages it. Do post it in the comments area if you have seen it happening in the region. Its totally up to the handset manufacturers to make it as difficult as possible for the crackers.

And here is a small video clip that talks about the news we discussed above.

Note: If you are in India and carrying such a handset, do tell us if your phone is working or not.