Category Archives: Computers

Sync Livescribe Across Dropbox

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Let me begin by saying that I have a fairly complicated computer setup. First I have a Desktop, with a nice, large, high definition 20″ monitor! For practical reasons it doesn’t make much sense to carry this around with me all of them time. I also have the Livescribe Pro Charging Cradle which sits on my desk and is connected to my Desktop, allowing me to dock my pen any time to complete a download without having the pull out the mobile cradle. Next I have a 15″ Compaq Presario Laptop that is slowly aging (but still going strong)! I travel with that laptop sometimes and use it around the house when I am not at my desk. For that reason, it also needs my Livescribe data as well. Then just to complicate things more, I also have a 10″ netbook which goes with me everywhere and because it’s with me most of the time, I need to be able to access my Livescribe data on it as well. There is always the way of manually copying the Livescribe folder from one computer to another via USB flash drive. However, that takes a significant amount of time because my Livescribe data is 1GB (approximately) and it’s only going to get larger as time goes by. Also, another flaw with this method is that it requires me to remember to copy over the data folder twice. Once when I arrive at the computer and once when I leave adding a 5 minute job twice every time I want to move computers.

For reference the Livescribe Folder is located at “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Livescribe\Desktop” (on Windows XP). For Windows Vista or Windows 7, the folder is located at “C:\Users\Username\Appdata\Local\Livescribe\Desktop”. It’s not as long but since I use both Windows XP and Windows 7 between computers, it’s another path to remember. At first I thought I would create a network share (on my Desktop) and then use Offline Files to synchronize the Livescribe folder with the network share. The only problem being that I’m often switching between multiple computers very quickly and it takes time for Offline Files to synchronize because it doesn’t sync on the fly.

I started looking at various other services that allow synchronizing and was tempted to try out Windows Live Sync Beta. Thing is, I had used it several times before and one major gripe with it is that the data isn’t in the cloud so I have to have all of my computers on all the time to make sure they get the updates. This led me to dropbox.

For those of you who don’t know, Dropbox is a file synchronization software that has a huge back-end within the cloud. It uses Amazon’s popular S3 service for data and allows each free user 2GB of space. Also, if you haven’t signed up for Dropbox yet and would like to, if you sign up using my link, we will both get and additional 250 MB free. This is plenty of room for syncing the Livescribe data at least for now. So what Dropbox does is sync any files within your Dropbox folder with all of your computers and devices. I know what you’re thinking. The problem here is that Livescribe Desktop expects it’s folder to be at a specific location and that location isn’t your Dropbox folder. Of course, Dropbox can only sync files that are within your Dropbox Folder and the Livescribe Data folder certainly isn’t there…

So then here’s the solution! It’s called symlinks. Symlink is short for Symbolic Link. Now what does Symbolic Link mean?

In computing, a symbolic link (also symlink or soft link) is a special type of file that contains a reference to another file or directory in the form of an absolute or relative path and that affects pathname resolution. Symbolic links were already present by 1978 in mini-computer operating systems from DEC and Data General’s RDOS. Today they are supported by the POSIX operating-system standard, most Unix-like operating systems such as Mac OS X, and also Windows operating systems such as Windows Vista, Windows 7 and to some degree in Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
Symbolic links operate transparently for most operations: programs which read or write to files named by a symbolic link will behave as if operating directly on the target file. However, programs that need to handle symbolic links specially (e.g., backup utilities) may identify and manipulate them directly.
— From: Wikipedia contributors. “Symbolic link.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 19 Aug. 2010. Web. 1 Sep. 2010.

Basically that means that a Symbolic Link will allow us to store data somewhere and make it appear seamlessly to be somewhere else. This is the solution to using Dropbox with Livescribe Desktop. All we have to do is move the Livescribe Desktop folder to the Dropbox folder and then Symlink it to it’s normal location!

In addition to Dropbox and Livescribe Desktop you will need the free Junction Utility from Microsoft Sysinternals. Go ahead and download that now. I’ll wait!

Before we begin, I should add that all commands that must be entered in the command prompt are surrounded by “”. You don’t need to the enter those ones but any of them within the code itself is imperative to enter.

All right! Let’s go!

First you need to decide if you are on Windows XP or on Windows Vista/Windows 7. While the directions are very similar, there are several key differences between them. Windows XP directions will come first, followed by Windows Vista/Windows 7. Please remember that in all of the directions you have to replace Username with your own username.

Transfer your Livescribe Data to Dropbox if it is on a Windows XP Computer

  1. Remember that download I had you make? Well it was a zip file. Unzip the zip file and move the junction.exe file to “C:\Windows\System32\”.
  2. Open Windows Explorer to your Livescribe Data Folder: “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Livescribe”. Move the folder “Desktop” from the Livescribe Folder to your Desktop.
  3. Exit Livescribe Desktop
  4. In another Windows Explorer window, open your Dropbox folder, usually: “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\My Dropbox”.
  5. Now make a new folder named “Livescribe” in the “My Dropbox” folder.
  6. Move the “Desktop” folder to the “Livescribe” folder in your “My Dropbox” folder. Dropbox will now start indexing and uploading your data. Depending on your connection speed and amount of data, this may take several hours.
  7. Open command prompt. This is done by clicking the start button, clicking run, typing in cmd and pressing enter.
  8. In the command prompt type in “junction” and press enter. You may see a license agreement. Click “I agree” to continue.
  9. In the command prompt now type in “junction “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Livescribe\Desktop” “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\My Dropbox\Livescribe\Desktop””. This will symlink your Livescribe Desktop folder back where it belongs.
  10. You can delete the backup of the Desktop folder on your Desktop at this point, if you so choose.
  11. At this point you just successfully transferred your Livescribe Desktop folder to your Dropbox account. Just remember to only have Livescribe Desktop running on one computer at a time and your data should remain intact. However, there is no way I can guarantee that and you should always keep backups. I am not liable if you lose your data.

Use Your Livescribe Data in Dropbox with Another Install of Livescribe Desktop on Windows XP

  1. If this computer doesn’t already have Junction on it, download it and then unzip the zip file and move the junction.exe file to “C:\Windows\System32\”.
  2. Set up Dropbox on the computer. Your data may take some time to download especially if you have a very full Dropbox.
  3. Exit Livescribe Desktop.
  4. Open Windows Explorer to your Livescribe Data Folder: “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Livescribe”.
  5. Delete the folder “Desktop” that is within.
  6. Open command prompt. This is done by clicking the start button, clicking run, typing in cmd and pressing enter.
  7. In the command prompt type in “junction” and press enter. You may see a license agreement. Click “I agree” to continue.
  8. In the command prompt now type in “junction “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Livescribe\Desktop” “C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\My Dropbox\Livescribe\Desktop””. This will symlink your Livescribe Desktop folder back where it belongs.
  9. At this point you have successfully setup Livescribe Desktop on another computer to access your Livescribe data stored in Dropbox. Just remember that Dropbox can’t sync that data while Livescribe Desktop is open so after exiting it, give it a few minutes to finish syncing.

Transfer your Livescribe Data to Dropbox if it is on a Windows Vista or Windows 7 Computer

  1. Remember that download I had you make? Well it was a zip file. Unzip the zip file and move the junction.exe file to “C:\Windows\System32\”. User Account Control may ask for permission. You have to give it that.
  2. Open Windows Explorer to your Livescribe Data Folder: “C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Livescribe”. Move the folder “Desktop” from the Livescribe Folder to your Desktop.
  3. Exit Livescribe Desktop
  4. In another Windows Explorer window, open your Dropbox folder, usually: “C:\Users\Username\My Documents\My Dropbox”.
  5. Now make a new folder named “Livescribe” in the “My Dropbox” folder.
  6. Move the “Desktop” folder to the “Livescribe” folder in your “My Dropbox” folder. Dropbox will now start indexing and uploading your data. Depending on your connection speed and amount of data, this may take several hours.
  7. Open command prompt. This is done by clicking the start button, clicking run, typing in cmd and pressing enter.
  8. In the command prompt type in “junction” and press enter. You may see a license agreement. Click “I agree” to continue.
  9. In the command prompt now type in “junction “C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Livescribe\Desktop” “C:\Users\Username\My Documents\My Dropbox\Livescribe\Desktop””. This will symlink your Livescribe Desktop folder back where it belongs.
  10. You can delete the backup of the Desktop folder on your Desktop at this point, if you so choose.
  11. At this point you just successfully transferred your Livescribe Desktop folder to your Dropbox account. Just remember to only have Livescribe Desktop running on one computer at a time and your data should remain intact. However, there is no way I can guarantee that and you should always keep backups. Once again, let me remind you that I am not liable if you lose your data.

Use Your Livescribe Data in Dropbox with Another Install of Livescribe Desktop on Windows Vista or Windows 7

  1. If this computer doesn’t already have Junction on it, download it and then unzip the zip file and move the junction.exe file to “C:\Windows\System32\”. Once again, User Account Control may ask for permission. You have to give it that.
  2. Set up Dropbox on the computer. Your data may take some time to download especially if you have a very full Dropbox.
  3. Exit Livescribe Desktop.
  4. Open Windows Explorer to your Livescribe Data Folder: “C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Livescribe”.
  5. Delete the folder “Desktop” that is within.
  6. Open command prompt. This is done by clicking the start button, clicking run, typing in cmd and pressing enter.
  7. In the command prompt type in “junction” and press enter. You may see a license agreement. Click “I agree” to continue.
  8. In the command prompt now type in “junction “C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Livescribe\Desktop” “C:\Users\Username\My Documents\My Dropbox\Livescribe\Desktop””. This will symlink your Livescribe Desktop folder back where it belongs.
  9. At this point you have successfully setup Livescribe Desktop on another computer to access your Livescribe data stored in Dropbox. Just remember that Dropbox can’t sync that data while Livescribe Desktop is open so after exiting it, give it a few minutes to finish syncing.

Congratulations! If you followed these directions correctly your Livescribe Desktop data should now be happily syncing through Dropbox and accessible on all of your computers. I must caution you one more time however, never to have Livescribe Desktop running on multiple computers simultaneously. Dropbox will not be sync the data and you will most likely end up losing a significant portion of it. Once again, I must remind you that I take no liability if you do lose your data. However, I do believe that the likelihood of that happening is very slim, especially if you read all of the directions listed above before you begin. If you have any problems with this, please post a comment and I will try to help you.

As far as I know, a similar technique will work with Dropbox and Livescribe Desktop on a Mac. According to Livescribe however, it is not possible to currently transfer data between the Mac and Windows versions of Livescribe Desktop. Supposedly, it is incompatible. However, I personally have no way of finding it out because I have zero Macs to try it with. If anyone wants to try it, please remember to back up before trying and do let me know so that I can update this post. And yes, even though there is a Dropbox for Linux, the lack of a Livescribe Desktop application for it, makes syncing your data there a moot point.

Why I Switched Back to Intense Debate for Comment Management

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Previously, I wrote Why Intense Debate Still Isn’t Ready for WordPress Use! Since then, my view on Intense Debate has changed. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve always been a big fan of Automattic’s attempts to combine user accounts between various services allowing us as blog holders to simplify the number of logins we need to remember. Nearly two months back, Intense Debate attempted to add themselves to the Autommatic “account combined” list.

It had mixed success because while it allowed those of us with WordPress.com accounts to comment through Intense Debate, we still had two profiles. There was an Intense Debate profile and a WordPress.com profile. This created confusion because we now had two accounts instead of just the one that we were supposed to. The intentions were to fix this soon, but it still hasn’t happened. Here’s why it affected me:

I decided to try out Intense Debate myself to see if it would fit the needs of this site. I ended up creating a new Intense Debate account, not realizing that I could just sign on with my WordPress.com login and password. I linked this site to and my comments synced perfectly with Intense Debate. Then of course, I read this post and decided that I wanted my Intense Debate profile to be the same as my WordPress.com one. Of course, I deleted my Intense Debate account and then reset the plugin. I tried to connect it to my “new” account but of course, it wouldn’t let me do that. It seems that you need to disconnect your WordPress blog from Intense Debate before deleting or switching accounts. Now I’m stuck, without Intense Debate. My hope is, that when the merger goes through properly, they will realize that my orphaned blog belongs to my WordPress.com account and attach the two together. That would save a lot of hassle for all of us who don’t read directions properly before beginning.

Since then, Intense Debate support have looked into my accounts and have combined the two of them under my wordpress.com account and I no longer have two accounts, 🙂 They believe that all other accounts should be combined by the end of the year, which with the volume of accounts they have is understandable.

So, here I am: running Intense Debate again except this time with only 1 account!

Release: Printable Graphpads for Livescribe!

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Several months ago, I received Livescribe’s Pulse Smartpen as a birthday present. At the time, I was amazed by the features and the concept of such a device. It soon began to play an integral role in my technological life and now I really would be lost without it. You can see my full review (after months of using it) here. As I have mentioned on the official Livescribe Forums several times, the only thing that the Pulse Smartpen lacks is graph paper. Now I’m not the only one that has noticed this and Livescribe has been promising to release dot paper with grid lines on it at some point. Unfortunately, they’ve been saying that for a little over a year now. As I’m sure most of you know already, when Livescribe says something, it usually takes them some time to actually do it. Personally, I’m not a big fan of waiting for someone else to do something when it’s relatively easy (though inconvenient) to do it on my own. Of course, Livescribe has an SDK. However, the SDK is only downloadable to developers. No problem, to become an “official developer,” you just need to fill out a registration form and then download the SDK. Using the SDK, I eventually managed to create my first paper project for the smartpen. I of course dubbed it: Quarter Inch Printable Graphpad 1. However, the only problem with the current SDK is that it’s not currently possible to script page number generation. This is supposedly a feature that will be released in the long awaited Desktop SDK. Coincidently, Livescribe plans to release this by the end of quarter 2, 2010. To the end user this simply means that it will take a slightly longer time to input the pages to Livescribe Desktop. I should add that uploading custom pages currently only works with Livescribe Desktop for Windows. It is currently incompatible with Livescribe Desktop for Macintosh.

I’ve successfully created four of these graphpads (all with quarter inch graph paper as a template) and all of them have basic paper replay controls. Each of these graphpads is 25 pages long, leaving you with 100 unique pages total. However, I haven’t licensed the fourth graphpad as I haven’t had a need for it (yet) myself. I would be willing to license and release it if people request it because they need it. Chances are, at some point I will end up needing it myself and will release it at that time.

If you are interested in downloading and deploying these graphpads, I recommend that you head over to the download page, where you can find all of the necessary links and instructions.

Why Intense Debate Still Isn’t Ready For WordPress Use!

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Intense Debate is definitely one of the best debate/comment systems out there. There’s no question of that here! Automattic has done a brilliant job with Intense Debate but it still needs a lot of work. I love the fact that one Intense Debate account allows you to login to many different sites to post comments because of their diverse and widespread plugins for many different platforms. It certainly is easier to users and to webmasters because they don’t have to worry about pruning for spam and checking on their spam plugins. Sure, a webmaster still needs to look into those but with Intense Debate, the pruning is all handled by them and not by you. The time needed to clean up the spam is greatly reduced.

I for one was very excited when Intense Debate announced WordPress.com Sign In. I don’t know if you have noticed but Automattic has slowly been implementing that across all of their platforms. However, across their other platforms, they have also included account mergers, merging accounts between services with the WordPress.com account with identical email addresses. That is where they really shine. I’ve had a WordPress.com account for a while, because I needed the API Key for Akismet. I’ve also had a Gravatar because I love not having to set my avatar up on every site I start up. Late last year, they merged the databases of Gravatar with WordPress.com and my two accounts became connected. There was no longer a disconnect.

However, the Intense Debate implementation failed in this context. Account Mergers are not possible at this time. The Intense Debate Team said:

If you already have both IntenseDebate and WordPress.com accounts, don’t worry – we will be merging your accounts in the next phase of our integration, so keep commenting!

That’s good, it means that integration is coming but it’s still not quite ready for mainstream use. Let me give you my own story.

I decided to try out Intense Debate myself to see if it would fit the needs of this site. I ended up creating a new Intense Debate account, not realizing that I could just sign on with my WordPress.com login and password. I linked this site to and my comments synced perfectly with Intense Debate. Then of course, I read this post and decided that I wanted my Intense Debate profile to be the same as my WordPress.com one. Of course, I deleted my Intense Debate account and then reset the plugin. I tried to connect it to my “new” account but of course, it wouldn’t let me do that. It seems that you need to disconnect your WordPress blog from Intense Debate before deleting or switching accounts. Now I’m stuck, without Intense Debate. My hope is, that when the merger goes through properly, they will realize that my orphaned blog belongs to my WordPress.com account and attach the two together. That would save a lot of hassle for all of us who don’t read directions properly before beginning.

Therefore Intense Debate isn’t quite ready for WordPress use. It’s very close and it’s getting closer, but there is still a short ways to go. Once they manage to complete the merger, I for one will be quite pleased with them. I’m just hoping the “next phase of [their] integration” happens soon!

Switching from WordPress MU to WordPress

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For almost a year now, I ran a WordPress MU site with BuddyPress, and bbPress, all running the latest bleeding-edge SVN releases. Unfortunately, I soon learned that this is not an easy task at all. Bleeding-edge releases, while fun and full of new features are very disaster prone. In the process of fixing things,  other things break and then, it’s just not a happy application. The amount of time I spent fixing things, searching how to fix things, and scratching my head because I just couldn’t fix things was just too much. Obviously, running bleeding-edge software on a production site isn’t the best of ideas.

I was unable to keep up with the updates and eventually the sites just died. Some programs on the Virtual Private Server insisted on filling up the virtual hard drive with lots and lots of statistical data. Unfortunately, statistical data on several dead websites is hardly useful at all. Once the virtual drive was full the server basically destroyed itself. Isn’t that just lots of fun?

After several months and several domain expiries, I decided it would make sense to get rid of a testing ground and only keep production sites. I reasoned that if a testing ground was needed, it would be easy enough to build on my local virtualbox setup of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition. I reloaded the VPS with CentOS 5 and happily was greeted with an empty hard drive again. Last time, my VPS was running Kloxo from LXLabs. Unfortunately, after the great HyperVM and Kloxo vulnerabilities of 2009, I was very wary with installing Kloxo again. It also had the “great” statistical tendencies.

I decided to install Webmin and it’s module virtualmin for administration because I have used it before and it is a truly much better alternative to Kloxo. Virtualmin, though has a paid version, however, in my experience, the GPL one works just fine. Admittedly, I do know my way around Linux and could easily run all of these commands through an SSH terminal but it’s much easier to just use a web-based control panel.

The install was quick and painless, just a simple bash script that needed execution and everything was working fine. I logged in to Virtualmin, created a new account for this domain, after modifying features per domain and set up was complete. I simply had to install WordPress and then upload modified sections of my database from the WordPress MU install. From there, it was simply configuring permissions, installing plugins, setting themes, and embedding functions.

In an afternoon’s work, I managed to backup all of my data from WordPress MU, BuddyPress, and bbPress, reload my Virtual Private Server, install a new control panel, set up new DNS with XNAME, and restore my backups to WordPress (Single User). Hopefully here, problems will be virtually non-existent and with some luck, everything should work for good this time.

Livescribe Pulse Smartpen: Changing the Way We Work

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Several years ago the concept of digital pens reached a mainstream environment. These were pens that interacted with special paper to either digitize what was written, provide information or something else. The FLYPEN was one of the first to arrive on the market. At the time, I thought it a waste of time, something I would never end up buying because I could see no use for getting digitized copies of everything I wrote down. I also wasn’t willing to pay several hundred dollars for one.

Then a company named Anoto began creating this “dot paper”, paper with a printed dot pattern to make digitization and interaction better for smartpens. Anoto released their own pen and that looked interesting, yet at the time I was still unable to see the need for one.

Last year, I started looking into a new company, Livescribe that created the Pulse Smartpen. This was looking rather interesting. Anoto dot paper technology, java based software and “penlets”, 1gb of storage space, and the ability to record audio while taking notes. All of a sudden, this device began to look rather interesting.

In my day to day life, I end up taking a lot of notes. Though I do normally have a computer with me, it’s not always feasible to use it for note-taking. For example, when creating diagrams or any type of drawing, using a laptop touchpad is just plain horrible and results in sub-par quality assuming it’s even legible at all. For this reason, the Pulse Smartpen was looking appealing. I received it as a birthday present and immediately decided to put it through a test. I was given the new 2gb model of the Pulse Smartpen.

Included in the box is:

  • 1 Pulse Smartpen (2gb or 4gb)
  • 1 Starter Notebook
  • 1 Ink Cartridge Refill
  • Quick Start Guide
  • USB Portable Docking Station
  • 3d Audio Recording Headset

The Pulse uses an infrared camera to read the dots on special paper to figure out where it is (dot-positioning-system) and from there records all of the strokes you make on the page, instantly digitizing everything you write in your own handwriting! With audio recording, and the ability to design your own paper and penlets with java, for it’s cost this pen seems like a very nice deal.

Within two days of having, and using it, I found my notetaking habits were vastly changed. The pen truly revolutionizes the way people work. The pen came before the keyboard and many times it’s much better than the keyboard. With the pulse, you get the best of both worlds, digital and a PEN! The ability to record audio and link it to written text on the base is a major plus point of the pulse. In practice, this allows you to either write less and listen more, then add more notes later. It also provides a failsafe incase you forget to write something down. You can always listen to it.

The best part of the Pulse’s design in my opinion, is that the only button is the power button. All of the other “buttons” are relocated onto the bottom of the journal & notebook pages. Called “Paper Replay,” they allow you to control audio and the entire pens settings as well.

So all together, Livescribe’s software, and Pulse SmartPen have changed the way I work. I no longer need to pull out my laptop or netbook for everything. I can just use my SmartPen and it’s paper and then have all the information needed on my netbook when I get a chance! I highly recommend Livescribe and I’m sure that once you try it, you will too!

Review: Refurbished Logitech MX Revolution!

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The Logitech MX Revolution (left) has been called, “The World’s Most Advanced Mouse!” by Logitech as well as many other third party reviewers such as myself. I’m inclined to agree to with them even after just a couple of weeks with the mouse.

I bought the MX Revolution refurbished off of eBay because I really don’t feel like spending $80 on a new mouse. EvenLogitech MX Revolution if it was going to Revolutionize my mousing. I ended up getting a fairly decent deal on it and purchased it (refurbished) for $40.

Honestly, would I say the functionality of the MX Revolution justifies it’s steep price. Yes! I would. It’s many buttons, dual wheels, and fancy look, as well as ergonomic design definitely justifies it. There are so many buttons on the thing that I still haven’t found a use for around 3 of them yet! The mouse if obviously built for right-handed people and as such it works perfectly for me.

I’m primarily an Ubuntu user and as such was expecting to be given a hard time by Logitech. However, I was pleasantly surprised when everything just worked. I love the charger and the lithium-ion battery is amazing. I only have to charge it once a week.

Needless to say, I’m very, very impressed with what Logitech has come up with and will continue to be a user.

Domain Change…

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When I first started this blog, I owned the domain http://rohan-kapoor.com. I wanted the domain https://rohankapoor.com but unfortunately for me (at the time) the domain was owned by another Rohan Kapoor who co-incidently wasn’t using it for anything. Strangely enough, when I checked the whois records last June, I surprising found that the domain https://rohankapoor.com was available! I bought it at that time and have since been redirecting it to http://rohan-kapoor.com. Some of you may have noticed that now the exact opposite has happened. Instead I’m now redirecting from http://rohan-kapoor.com to https://rohankapoor.com. My reasoning behind that change was that the domain https://rohankapoor.com looks much better than the same domain with a dash in it. It also makes it easier to find according to many of my friends. Therefore to make it easier for friends and colleagues to find me online, I decided to move my blog over to https://rohankapoor.com. On the webserver end, this is actually so easy it’s almost a joke! As I’m running Domain Mapping to map the blog to the domain, I just simply removed the dash that the domain was mapped to and it just works! I’ve requested google to make the needed changes on their end to move the site over within their database. According to Google’s Webmaster Tools, this process is likely to take 3 months to get completed! Additionally, I need to change out the links on many of the sites I’ve worked on to say https://rohankapoor.com instead of the old address. There should be no problem contacting me because of the domain change as the two email addresses and domains are run seamlessly through Google’s Apps Service! My plan is to keep everything on https://rohankapoor.com for now!

In regards to the many subdomains of http://rohan-kapoor.com, currently they are going to stay at http://rohan-kapoor.com though at some point I will transition them over to https://rohankapoor.com. The old addresses will be seamlessly redirected with 301 Redirects which should cause no problems to the end users!

It’s good to finally be moving everything to the https://rohankapoor.com domain name! It seems more professional, you know?

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Officially Released!

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While I haven’t had time to test it out for myself yet, I am aware that the all new Ubuntu 9.10 was officially released today! As many of you should know, if your reading this, that Ubuntu is literally the best open-source operating system available today. The best part of it is that Ubuntu has and always will be free!

Ubuntu is an African word meaning ‘Humanity to others’, or ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

The Ubuntu team has really done a great job here. From every release of Ubuntu, they have been true to the official Ubuntu philosophy. The free price tag doesn’t hurt either!

Anyways, I’m downloading 9.10 Desktop from the torrent and right now, it’s taken about 10 minutes and is already 75% done. Here’s the link to the torrent!

I’ll probably end up running an install or an upgrade by this weekend, and then I’ll be sure to let all of you guys know, how it is!!

Stay tuned for more about Ubuntu 9.10 | Karmic Koala!

Tales Of A Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1

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Part 1: Tales of a Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 (this post)

Part 2:  Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1… The Plot Thickens

Part 3: Conclusion to My Sony Ericsson XPERIA Repair Woes

As some of you may (or may not) know, I recently purchased a Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1, their top-of-the-line phone running Windows Mobile version 6.1 Professional. This phone is sold with two versions the X1a for sale within North America and the X1i for sale within the rest of the world. As it is much cheaper to purchase an X1i within the United States if bought through a third party on eBay (for example), there is nearly a $500 price difference. I decided to buy the X1i for that reason as I wan’t ready to spend $1000 on a cellphone (I spent less on my laptop) and therefore bought the X1i from eBay for $600 (about) United States Dollars. This purchase was completed nearly two months ago.

For unimportant reasons, the X1 spent most of those two months in it’s box unopened. I only got around to opening the box of the X1 three weeks ago. In the beginning it seemed like a flawless handset but within the first 24 hours problems began to appear. First the volume down button stopped working. Then multiple buttons on the slide-out keyboard began to malfunction until finally at least 8 of them stopped responding at all. After a call with a Sony Ericsson XPERIA Support Technician, I was told that I should hard-reset the phone. An action that totally wipes all data from the device and see if that would bring the keys functionality back. However it didn’t. All it did was manage to irritate me more because now I had no data on the device (I had backups that were recent but would have to be restored) and the keys still didn’t work. The Sony Ericsson representative was shocked that this hadn’t fixed my problem.

The standard protocol for the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 (being Sony Ericsson’s Top of The Line Business Phone) is that any problems with the device, a new one will be shipped out and should be received within 48 hours. As the Sony Ericsson representative was quick to inform me, that only applies if you have a support card. And the sad part is, the seller on eBay informs me that he wasn’t sent any support cards from Sony Ericsson. After refusing to send me out a temporary replacement, another hour is spent on the phone while the representative sets up an RMA. To add insult to this injury, he then informs me that the repair/replace process can take anywhere from 7-14 days after the device is received. Additionally, he tells me that I will need to pay to ship the item to their repair center.

All this because I don’t have a support card?

Doesn’t sound very fair, does it? Had I had a support card, the representative was quick to inform me, they would have immediately sent out a new phone and covered shipping both ways. I don’t see why I should be treated any differently than a customer with a support card. I paid the same ammount of money as anyone who bought the phone with a support card. I have a full warranty as well! Why should I be treated any differently because I don’t have a slip of paper that states SUPPORT CARD on it?

So I paid my shipping charges, and sent my XPERIA X1 on it’s way to Sony Ericsson’s Product Repair Center. About 5 days after I shipped it to them, I got a phone call from another one of their representatives who wished to give me a status update. First, he tells me that my XPERIA X1 is not repairable. He then offers me a choice to accept a brand new XPERIA X1a or get my broken XPERIA X1i back. After comparing the two, I decided I would accept the XPERIA X1a. The representative then informed me that I should receive my new XPERIA X1a by next Wednesday (today). He also informed me that he would be

unable to give [me] a support card, as we [Sony Ericsson Support] don’t carry them in stock.

Effectively, that means that if there are any more problems with the new device, I will have to pay shipping and then wait a long time again. For someone who has spent almost $600 buying one of these new, that doesn’t seem fair at all. It’s also not something I expect from Sony Ericsson, a company whose support department has been exceptional in all my dealings with them before. Seems that they too, are no longer able to provide the exceptional support that they have provided in the past.

Yesterday, I decided to check with Sony Ericsson, to see if they could provide me with a tracking number so that I could verify when my new X1a would be arriving. The representative I spoke with said that,

There is no change in the account status. As far as I can tell, your X1a hasn’t even been shipped yet.

Obviously this sounds a little fishy, as I had been told it would be shipped last friday, four business days ago. The representative then told me, it would be best if I waited till tomorrow (today) and then called back for a status update. As it’s allready 5:30 PM on Wednesday (past UPS delivary time), I think I will go ahead and call them now and see what they have to say.

Overall, I am quite disappointed with the XPERIA X1 so far and even more disappointed with the level of support I have received from Sony Ericsson. They used to be one of the best companies in the industry, however at this point, I’m not sure if I will be buying another device from them. I’m that badly shaken up and dissapointed.

I’ll try to update this with more information as soon as I have it.

You can view part two of this post here