Code For Future

Far away from Microsoft and Google technologies, this is the first time I’m going to write about some product. Recently I brought a new handset and I started out searching third party applications that are available for the same.

Along with some games, opera mobile browser, gmail, nimbuzz (or skype) what I always need is a good mobile wallet application which will store my banking details, credit card details, ATM pins, some secret notes, etc.

Previously I use to store all this information into password protected notes, but recently when my friend from South Africa become victim of some spyware and lost his PayPal balance, I got more serious about the security of my data in my PC and in my mobile. I realized that I need some tool which will store my sensitive information in an encrypted format which is not easy to break.

So I started my journey to search a tool which will keep my data secure in my mobile. After trying around 5-6 products, I came across a wallet application which promised all. I said “promised” because many tools promise a lot and perform much lesser. The promises were high, so I decided if this tool is able to keep it words then I’ll surely recommend it to my readers.

Now when I’m using this tool on my mobile and PC (yes PC too) from last 6 months and I’m completely satisfied with it, its time I should introduce it to you guys.

The tool is SPB Wallet from SPB Software

Using SPB Wallet, I can not only store my banking/credit card details, i can store them in a categorized fashion. All the information is encrypted using Strong 256-bit AES encryption.  All the data is password protected and they have their own click keyboard which keeps key Loggers (viruses which steal your data by logging your keys) guessing what you are typing. So this satisfied my purpose of having a tool which will keep my data extremely secure. More over if you forget to close the application, it locks up automatically. Man, this is amaaaazing…

The best part is it also has a desktop tool which comes in the same package, which installs on your desktop and you can synchronize the data between your mobile and desktop. It also integrates with browser and then you can choose to store your email/website passwords into the wallet so that when next time you forget them, you can check them into the wallet.

Another security feature I love the most is, it doesn’t show the pins/passwords directly on the screen instead it shows **** and when you click on the stars, it reveals your password to you.

Icing on the cake:
Above all, it has a very nice UI which gives a very rich experience. See some screen shots below

Things I didn’t like about SPB Wallet:

1. While using the desktop application, and when you have connected your mobile using Bluetooth, you need to click on the Sync button twice or thrice. But being a programmer I can understand that this must be a phone-PC connectivity issue so we cannot blame the coders of this application
2. ‘Search’ is the feature which is used less, so instead of giving ’search’ button, if they would have had ‘Exit’ then it would have saved time. Now you always need to choose ‘Exit’ from the menu. But this may be my personal view.

Bad news: This is not for those who believe that best things in life are free. It has some moderate price. But I think it is worth than becoming a victim of viruses and loosing your bank balance and getting huge credit card bills. My purpose of buying SPB Wallet was – being a user of online banking, I wanted to protect my financial information.

You may find more information about the feature here
http://www.spb.com/symbian-software/wallet/

Now days there are lot of companies which run campaigns where they invite people from different backgrounds, different thinking and different lifestyles to complete a simple questionnaire. On average these questionnaire do not take more than 5 minutes. But as our lives go busy, we try to avoid such opportunities thinking they are completely useless and wastage of time.

But think again, does taking surveys really waste our time? I do not agree. They pay us back. They pay us back so well than we ever realize. Imagine a service oriented company providing service but not listening to customer feedback! What will happen to their business? It will go lost and customers will go running to competitors. But what if all of them go deaf and no one is actually listening to the customer? Obviously we customers suffer! Same thing happens when we refuse to take surveys.

Why does it matter?

Few of us do take the surveys but most of us don’t.  Those few people who are answering the surveys actually decide how the future products or services will look and function. If more and more people come forward and take surveys, the companies will be in a better position to know what to deliver. This will save their time and ours too.

Economical cause: When companies will be in a better position to deliver better products in fewer time frames, it will save their money and will reduce the product price too. Now it is only us who will benefit if the cost reduces. Imagine next morning you are able to buy iPhone 3G in a price of other less featured mobile phone models.

power of taking surveys

Take one better example. After releasing Windows-XP, few years later the software giant came to know that people have a relatively higher priority to the battery life of the laptop. So with their next product Windows Vista, they come up with software changes which now enables laptops to long 30% more with the same battery. Intel too supported this and came up with energy efficient processors. Now if we would have been successful to give this feedback in the year 2002 itself, all the world’s laptops that run Windows-XP would have consumed 30% less power for more than 5 years! Imagine the kind of electricity saved. Every day we cut down 214000 acres (yes, 214,000 acres) of rainforest land most of which goes for generating electricity.

A survey is a 2 way sword. The lesser people answer it, the more deep cuts it will give. There are many social, economical benefits of taking surveys.

Now days some companies even pay you for answering surveys. Answering a survey is a kind of self help. Please do a favor to yourself and spend at least 1 hour per month answering surveys. I think we can do this much for our and upcoming generation’s better future.

There is much to write about surveys and how they can be better and efficient. How to build a survey which takes lesser time and yields maximum information and how they should be analyzed correctly. But before writing more, I would like to hear from you. Feel free to leave a comment.

Thanks!

WARNING: Please try on your own risk. Here you are going to edit your registry. Not following exact steps and doing something else might crash your operating system. Do only if you are completely comfortable with it. Or contact your administrator.

Steps to getting rid of “Outlook Integration Error” which stops saving your communication history into your outlook.

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
3. Locate and then right-click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator
4.Point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
5.Type DisableEmailComparisonCheck as the name of new registry entry, and then press ENTER.
6.Double-click DisableEmailComparisonCheck, type 1 in the Value data box, and then click OK.
7.Exit Registry Editor.