Update: UK Ad Authorities have declared iPhone ad as “misleading”. I guess then they should declare it plain fraud in India.

This is a short rant about two of the “big” products launched recently in India in the last one week and how the people behind their sales/marketing teams either try to take the Indian customer for a ride, or shaft themselves.

1. iPhone: The big icon. Bharti Airtel/Vodafone claimed lakhs of pre-registrations, yet no one lined up to buy it. Anyways, to the point. The ads all over the print, digital and broadcast media in India list out 3 major points in one sentence:

Update Aug 25 2008: Updated to v0.02 and also added 32 bit package. Hit the link given below to download.

You must have heard of (or used) the auto-reply features given by today’s instant messengers that are sent to the ones messaging you while you are not at your desk. But those are one-size-fits-all kind of messages. So, I wrote this simple tool a few months ago to turn Pidgin, everyone’s favourite multi-client Instant Messenger (works with gtalk, msn, yahoo, aim etc), into a customized answering machine (and more) when you are away from your computer. Basically it allows you to divide up your contact list into groups based on email IDs and execute actions based on when someone from a particular group messages you while you are away. e.g. For general friends, you can keep a message like “Will talk to you later when I come back”, or if someone from office IMs you, it’ll send them your phone number “Call me at XXXXXX if urgent”. And if you boss is the one pinging you, you could direct the message towards your twitter account so that you get it as an SMS on your phone immediately.

This is a simple tool I wrote a few months ago to turn Pidgin, everyone’s favourite multi-client Instant Messenger (works with gtalk, msn, yahoo, aim etc), into a customized answering machine (and more) when you are away from your computer. Basically it allows you to divide up your contact list into groups based on email IDs and execute actions based on when someone from a particular group messages you while you are away. e.g. For general friends, you can keep a message like “Will talk to you later when I come back”, or if someone from office IMs you, it’ll send them your phone number “Call me at XXXXXX if urgent”. And if you boss is the one pinging you, you could direct the message towards your twitter account so that you get it as an SMS on your phone immediately.

Sometimes I do some things that even I can’t explain why I did ’em. Did this one in one of those times as well. This is a simple script to monitor motion in front of your PC, auto-lock it when you are away and auto-unlock it when you come back. Did it just because I was really bogged down by the shitload of work that I’ve been doing for the past few weeks (and even weekends as well), so wanted to take a break for a few minutes, and just chanced over my own “Home Security Using a Webcam and Twitter” post, so thought of doing something related to motion detection again.

Sometimes I do some things that even I can’t explain why I did ’em. Did this one in one of those times as well. This is a simple (and useless) script to monitor motion in front of your PC, auto-lock it when you are away and auto-unlock it when you come back. Kinda useless cuz there is no security aspect (read face detection etc) and any kind of motion triggers the unlock. Did it just because I was really bogged down by the shitload of work that I’ve been doing for the past few weeks (and even weekends as well), so wanted to take a break for a few minutes, and just chanced over my own “Home Security Using a Webcam and Twitter” post, so thought of doing something related to motion-detection again.