Airtel 3G Tariff Plans

In a recent conversation with an Airtel customer care executive (a knowledgeable one in a long time), I found these tariff charges for Airtel 3G. Please note that this is for Bangalore, India - though there is no big change in tariff between cities.

To check for balance data usage and validity:  *123*11#

Recharge for: Rs.103

Free Data usage: 100MB

Validity: 30 days

Recharge for: Rs.200
Free Data usage: 250MB
Validity: 30 days

Recharge for: Rs.450
Free Data usage: 600MB
Validity: 30 days

Recharge for: Rs.750
Free Data usage: 2GB
Validity: 30 days

After free data usage: 30p/20KB

Note: There are no unlimited usage plans as of now.

Compare this with the current 2G (Edge/ GPRS) tariff of Rs.98 for 2GB, valid for 30 days. 3G is Expensive!!!

Check the link below for more information and more data plans.
http://www.airtel.in/Airtel-3G/tariffs.html

Please leave your comments below.

How to give back to the online community?

We always like to be in the receiving end of things. It is easier to take than to give.

But they both go hand in hand. Without someone giving, there will be no taking.

Whatever small thing that you know (no matter how insignificant to you) would be so precious and hard to find for someone else. For example something that you figure out on yourself. So just give out the information to this world and any doubts/ clarifications can be given afterwards when people who need it contact you for further information.

In this post, I tell about the ways that a person can give back to the online community from which he takes so much.

Before we go further, I would like to say that the effort counts more than what is done. What matters is giving, not what is given.

That said there are diverse interests among human beings. There is an expert inside us on atleast one thing - through interest, experience, knowledge, friends etc.

There are a lot of platforms now on the internet that make the process of giving back to the community the help received.

Wikipedia - Classic! This is the ideal example of Crowd Sourcing and giving back to the online community. You can create an account in Wikipedia and edit or create articles.

Yahoo! Answers - It has points system and has a large user community. Often you can see this in Search results. It has been there for a long time and you can contribute in a world of topics.

Aardvark - Only recently I discovered this website. It was started independently and then bought out by Google.

Quora - This is growing to be a great community of people answering questions.

Note: Difference between Aardvark and Quora is that Aardvark is more about short questions like "What movie should I see today?" and you get immediate answers (usually in a matter of minutes). Quora is more like Yahoo Answers and takes a standard approach to answering questions.

Answers.com - I am not familiar with this, but have got some good answers from here.

Twitter - In a short character count of 140, you can give so much of knowledge to the world. There is a google chrome extension - InboxQ that simplifies answering through twitter.

You can use these services to answer questions that are raised by people. Lets face it, there are somethings to which we cannot say "Google It!". I have been using most of these services to share with people what I know.

Last but the best... Blog. Blog about anything and everything that interests you, annoys you, makes you happy and anything (Of course you can do the same with Twitter also). For example, if an mp3 player makes you happy blog about it and the people who come across that post would know that this mp3 player is good.

So start contributing to the online community. And you know what, you can learn a lot through these questions.

What do you think? I have given what I know here. You can add to this list through the comments. Maybe this could be a good start or tell about how you contribute to the online community already.

Why I wanted to move my Blog from Blogger to Wordpress and Why I didn't

There is a lot of debate over which online blogging platform is best. This question can be much easily answered if it is slightly altered - "Which blogging platform is best for me?" - Wordpress vs Blogger, Blogger vs Posterous, etc.

Yes. I asked this question to myself and here I am writing a post about it.

To start with, I have not written anything on my blog for so long. So I needed to start afresh. Wordpress was a good refresher.

But then I thought that I could change to a good blogger theme and maintain my blog in blogger itself.

When I started blogging, I was all excited about a place for myself in the World Wide Web, and I put a lot of widgets in my blog which made it look cluttered.

But then changing the blogger theme automatically removed the widgets in the old theme.

Wordpress has the biggest collection of themes. Blogger themes are old for me.

But then new blogger themes like "picture window" are very good and I am impressed.

Wordpress has a mobile version for my blog, which is sleek. Blogger doesn't have that yet.

But then I learned that Blogger announced the mobile version on December 17th 2010 and it is now automatically changing to the mobile version when it is accessed from a mobile device. But it works only for webkit browsers like the default browser in Android.

Wordpress has a good open source android application for creating and editing posts. Blogger does not.

But then I found that Blogger also has an official android app, but it is not as good as wordpress, but there is another app called blogger-droid.

Finally Blogger is so yesteryear. Wordpress is the big name in Blogging world now.

But then I like classic things. The name blogger and blogspot retain the spirit of blogging when it was first introduced. I like my web address - http://alexnazy.blogspot.com

Blogger was the first platform that I started blogging and I want to retain it. When my friend first introduced me to blogger he said - "This is a place that you can tell whatever you want to the whole world - with your own web address". I couldn't believe him, because as far as I knew, you had to pay for a website to do that. I had to create an account and post something to believe it.

Blogger is owned by Google and so you can use your google login to create or edit posts in Blogger. Also you have the option of allowing people to create or edit posts - People with Google Logins - I mean everybody has one nowadays (Thanks to Gmail).

Also added to this you can link your own domain to blogger for free.

Considering all this, I think I will stick with blogger for now.

Update: As far as I know until now, I think that Google search (SEO) is good with Wordpress than its own blogger. Still I am holding on to blogger.

Update 2: I added this blog to "Add your URL to Google" page and after a day or two I am able to see my blog listed in the search results by Google.

What do you have to say? Please tell it in the comments.