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Showing posts from September, 2014

Mobile phone network providers can rob you in the name of SMS recharge

I could not stop with local calls analysis article when the SMS tariff was even crueler on us. Here I present you my findings on how easily a network operator robs you, sad part you don’t even know notice it. As I did in my last post I use my own network provider Airtel for the purpose of analysis, and I’m deeply sorry to them for exposing their meanest tariff policies. Straight away I give you all the SMS tariff plans available for Chennai customers from Airtel. Following table is a screenshot from their website. Link - https://pay.airtel.com/online-payments/prepaidResponse.do SMS recharge tariff as listed in Airtel website Now for the analysis part, here plans Rs.18, Rs.49 and Rs.92 are standard & straight forward, the actual amount you pay is equal to recharge amount. So what about the rest – Rs.26, Rs.36 & Rs.61? They are vampires feeding on your talk-time. Previously the content in the bracket was “1 st  SMS of day charged @ 49 Ps” and now they are going to

Why you should choose tariff based on call log?

The article will analyze the tariff plans and tries to help end user find the best way to pick a plan. This will not be a discussion on why or how such charge is fixed but discussion will be on available plans. I’m going to use my network –Airtel for analysis so this will benefit me. To explain my model I’m going to further simplify by choosing only Prepaid- Local call rate cutters for Chennai circle for same period. Plan cost Tariff Period Rs.23 1p/sec 28 days Rs.46 40p/min 28 days Rs.69 35p/min 28 days Rs.85 30p/min 28 days Table 154.1 Local Calls Tariff Listing Naturally from this table you can see that the best plan is Rs.85 as it offers only 30 paisa per minute, while costly plan is Rs.23 as it’ll cost 60p per minute. But this interpretation seems very vague and this is what your network provider wants you to think – “The more you spend on cutter the more you save on talk tim

Walk with Freakonomist

I'm crossing off the long pending, strongly recommended book 'Freakonomics' from my 'Books to read' list. This book was first published in 2005, in the sense its published a decade ago and I still find the content fresh and very much related. I pick books after reading blurb, then I will choose to read if I find the preface and introduction interesting. I found this book to be unique at every level. 'The book doesn't carry any unifying theme' which is repeatedly accepted and quoted in the book which I find awkward. But Why should one have an unifying theme? because every other book has one. Both the question and answer is present in the book itself, such is the book. It is fulled with questions that are not asked by everyone and statistical answers (not empirical), this will amaze the ordinary being, as Mr. Confusion I found them legit. The book is actually collection of papers by Steven D. Levitt, economist, it is co-authored by Stephen J Dubner

If pen is mightier than sword then it could be gun

Fortnight back we had a t-shirt design contest in our office hosted by a very famous blogger. The contest was to come up with an awesome slogan that'll influence the readers to write more, yes we are blogging evangelist. It doesn't just end there you have to pick a plain t-shirt image and embed the quote in it, of course that's how it is design contest else it'll be slogan contest.  And my entry was a reflection of how I tend to use blog, obvious I broke the very first norm of contest hence I was hardly appreciated. But I was not demotivated exciting part was not winning but designing, and hence I share the designs with you guys. I love to be quoted as millennial, its almost like someone calling my Lt Gen - We just don't do things differently we do it with poker face. So I was talking about how I use blog, lets review my reviews - they are mostly critical. In the sense I’m more of a critic than reviewer (Remember Anton Ego of Ratatouille – that sort of thing