I tried complaining to Kems Technical and Sales regarding the Data Caps and they didn’t mention this when I renewed my account for a year about a month ago. I paid 575 KD for an 8 MB connection, I told them that I was not informed of these Caps when I first renewed my service, it should not be applied at all. They said they might remove daily caps next month and just keep them as monthly caps. With 8 MB I have a 8GB Cap per day and per month it would be 240 GB, then they told me that the monthly Cap would be 200 GB not 240 GB, it doesn’t add up. I was on the phone for over 20 minutes talking from one useless person to the next which really got annoying. I decided to test the Caps as soon as I got home.

I started downloading about 80 GB worth of shows and thought let me test what would happen and when it would get back to normal. After 27 GBs and the Cap still wasn’t applied, it didn’t drop down to 25% of the speed, it was still downloading between 750 Kbps to 920 Kbps, so I will see what happens further.

Recently for the last few months I have been hitting the maximum capacity of Gmail. I tried going through and cleaning up my mail box but I just ended up making up excuses and keeping the emails, I never really want to delete any emails. So I decided to do two things, one is to upgrade my mailbox and secondly is to really go through it and sort it out. So I went for the $5 plan since it really cost nothing and more then triples my regular capacity, and I ran FindBigMail on my mail box which sorted out my big files and I got to see I had a lot of junk emails that could be deleted that I was reluctant too but it was really junk.

Gmail Storage Upgrade Packages:

• 20 GB ($5.00 USD per year)
• 80 GB ($20.00 USD per year)
• 200 GB ($50.00 USD per year)
• 400 GB ($100.00 USD per year)
• 1 TB ($256.00 USD per year)

Link: FindBigMail

Mada Communications just announced Home Internet Services through WiMax based services. Previously Mada only dealt with Corporate services and clients and didn’t enter the home market, but as of yesterday they have a booth in Marina Mall selling this Modem. For 20 KD a month you get speeds UPTO 10 Mbps, meaning you can get up to that speed but not necessarily stay at that speed. If you sign up this week you can get this package without any Data Caps for the first three months and after that it will be a 20 GB per month Cap, and you don’t have to sign up for a year. After speaking to them they are thinking about putting packages together at a later point to help increase the 20GB cap, maybe for every 5KD extra you pay you get 20GB but that is just a debate at this point. I went to Marina and bought two of them, one for me and one for a friend who lives in Khaldiya. Honestly its pretty cheap and worth trying out to see what kind of download speeds we can get out of it.

This is supposed to be a plug and play system, you switch it on and it works right away. I switched it on by Fintas since that was my first stop and for some reason it didn’t connect. I had other stops throughout the day so I decided to take it with me and plug it in and try it where I go.

It has two Ethernet Ports and Two Telephone Ports for ISDN service which is to be introduced at a later stage. Its not a small device, its about the size of an iPad when you see it but I do like the simple design of it.

Where it worked well:

• Mishref
• Shamiya
• Kuwait City
• Qadsiya
• Dahyat Abdulla Al Salem

I got speeds varying from 5 to 8 MB Downloads, and 0.2 to 2.8 MB Uploads which is pretty decent. Overall WiMax technology has been around for a little while now but its still a bit unstable. Overall its an excellent service from Mada Communications and I hope they rethink their Data Cap strategy. I was testing using a direct ftp download to check on the speed fluctuations and it ranged from 500 Kbps to 1100 Kbps which is pretty impressive overall, the pings are bit high though so anyone using it for gaming would be annoyed. I like the service I just hope it doesn’t get too saturated and can support a larger number of customers. Also one note they are still not available by the shalaihaat so its still just within the initial areas within the main residential areas around each ring road start from the 6th ring road and heading towards the city. I’m still going to tweak it and mess around with it but overall its pretty good.

(I Hate Data Caps! So Much!)

In the last 24 hours Viva has applied data caps all its internet “Unlimited” package. It used to be the favored internet connectivity for people and companies. With these Caps it has become useless, people don’t realize the amount of data used when your surfing sites like Youtube or gaming online. Thankfully I’m dependent on the Fasttelco and Kems for my gaming and Downloading needs, and during that time of the crazy dust storms Viva was great but with these Data Caps Viva are now down in the dumps, no reason to keep the subscription, time to end the subscription.

Data Caps:

• 2GB per Day – I already hit that right away
• 60GB per Month

Back in the day I remember movies like Hackers, Swordfish, and The Matrix where people just slam on their keyboards and they break through the Government & Defense Department Computers within minutes. All of them just typing away at black screens then transfering secret documents or a ton of money like Swordfish or Hackers.

Now thanks to the website Hacker Typer, you too can hack like they do at the multiplex! Just pound away on your keyboard and, presto, hacking! Put on some BlackStreet and pretend it’s 1997! Explorer is for sissies!

Link: HackerTyper

I was in Canada a little while ago and while I was there I discovered what fast was, we have been living in the dark ages. Every year for the past decade we discover one extra megabyte going faster and faster. I plugged in the ethernet cable to the laptop only to discover light speed internet connectivity and the downloads were insane. I had it for about 5 days and it was bliss, thinking that we can only have a maximum of 20 MB with fiber connectivity is something to look forward to but 30-60 MB Downloads with 57MB Uploads are what dreams are made of.

Continue Reading…

Viva 7.2MB Connection

All these speeds and insanity just keeps getting confused, nothing is really true until you get it in your location and do some testing. So I had a chance to try out all of the above and I had some surprising results, keeping in mind that Fasttelco is a 2MB Wimax Connection and not a landline connection.

Fasttest Connection:

• Viva 7.2 MB
• Fasttelco 2MB
• Viva 21MB
• Zain 21MB

Viva 21MB Connection

Most Constant/Stable Connection:

• Fasttelco 2MB
• Viva 7.2MB
• Viva 21MB
• Zain 21MB

Zain 21MB Connection

Those were some surprising results and you can see from download screenshots, and this is in Mishref, it could be different in other areas. Some people told me the best connection is the 21MB Viva connection in the city.

Google will focus a lot on groups of friends and how you share with them, and try to differentiate themselves from Facebook in this and other ways.

Google doesn’t appear to want to have a big launch announcement around the product, now or down the road. They keep releasing (or dealing with leaks) new social features in drips and drabs: toolbar stuff, profile stuff, video stuff.

Facebook and Google have not been playing nice over the last two years, and sometime in the near future Google will be rolling out their Social Networking platform. What they are rolling out is supposed to challenge Facebook but at the same time work with their tools. Facebook & Google have been cutting off information & integration from each other over the past 18 months. I for one do not have a facebook account but there is no denying the affect of Facebook and how involved people are with its services, many businesses in Kuwait have become successful because of their pro-activeness on facebook. This does include how it has become an extremely successful tool during political unrest such as it was in Iran and Egypt. Now Google is planning to roll their service out without too much of a fuss, and I’m one looking forward to trying it out. To be fair I really don’t like Facebook and their policies, privacy is out the window, and they have a lot of shady third party software companies taking private information and selling or using it in an unauthorized way. When it comes to Google a lot of people have issues with it but I for one do trust Google since my email and other information is already with Google. I just hope they have really thought it out and it won’t be a flop like Google Wave, or have issues like Google Buzz. I hope it has all the integration options of Google but everything should be turned off initially so people can choose what they want to integrate.

Now this is a match made in heaven, I have been using my American Express card for all Amazon Purchases and other purchases as well. Now American Express & Amazon have teamed up so that you can use your American Express Points towards Amazon Purcahses and the best part is that it automatically gives you the option to purchase with your points.

All you have to do is associate your American Express Card with your account and in my case I have two cards even though they combine for one set of points. Surprisingly this has been around for a few months but only recently have I had a chance to look at the details and associate my account. After going through the process I had about $1700 worth of points that I can redeem so I just piled up on the Amazon Cart and purchased a lot of things that I want and don’t need, and ended up only paying $400. Its just all the things that have piled up from adding items from my Amazon App on the iPad and a few things that I have saved for later.

Since getting rid of the Drive Extender everyone lost hope in the new Windows Home Server iteration, the Vail Edition. I was waiting for so long for that edition that I am somewhat saddened by their decision. Luckily for me I got a ReadyNAS 3200 alternative which I shifted everything over to and rebuilt quite a bit of my collection since a lot went missing due to hardware crashing. I even went to the extent of shutting down my Windows Home Server as it wasn’t performing the way I wanted it to, and I started cannibalizing the hardware for other uses.

One of my first alternatives is the ReadyNAS line from Netgear because they have proven themselves to be extremely durable and probably the best warranty service I have seen.

• Network Oriented
• Works with all different platforms (Windows, OSX, and Linux)
• Choices of Hardware from 4 TB up to 24 TB, Consumer Level to Professional Level
• Reasonable prices and more expensive for the higher level hardware
• More complex options available depending on your requirements
• Lots of redundancy
• Excellent Forum Support
• But has to be specific drives to work with the ReadyNAS

My second choice being the Drobo S or Drobo Pro S. My preference for all kinds of storage is for rackmounted because its easier and cleaner to setup so I would go for the Drobo S. Now the Drobo is an even easier solution and they have had years to improve on it and perfect it, and they have really done a good job with it. Initially it was just a storage device without any network options, but they have added a network connection but it had a few flaws and gradually improved. There are still some skeptical reviews about this product but its a simple product

• Simple
• Easy setup
• Any type of drive can work with it
• 8 Bays is more then enough
• Works with All types of Operating Systems
• Varying pricing depending on the which Model you choose