My adventures with MMS (Part 1 of ...)

MMS Advertisement in the Kuensel

Most mobile users are familiar with SMS, the short text messages you can send from your mobile phone to other subscribers. SMS is a fat and healthy cash cow for mobile operators. The average price of sending an SMS in the world is around US$0.10, but the cost for the operator is close to nothing. In Bhutan the user pays Nu. 1 per SMS, arguably one of the cheapest rates in the world.

SMS is limited to text. You can't use it to send photos or videos. So mobile operators invented a technology called MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), which can be used to send music, videos, photos and ringtones between phones. Sending an MMS costs more than sending an SMS, so naturally the operators would be happy if we use it. MMS has been available for quite some time now with both B-Mobile and TashiCell, but has not gained popularity in the Kingdom.

Now Bhutan Telecom is trying to change all that. On Saturday BT put a hard-to-spot advertisement in the Kuensel. Apparently they are offering free MMS for the month of September. (The regular price for sending an MMS is Nu 5 from B-Mobile to B-Mobile, Nu 7 from B-Mobile to TashiCell. It costs nothing to receive an MMS). This is a good marketing idea - let people try the new technology for free. However, unlike SMS, configuring your mobile phone for MMS can be a bit tricky, so BT generously suggests sending them a message with details of your mobile phone, and they will send you back all the instructions.

Following the instructions in the ad, on Saturday afternoon I sent an SMS with my mobile phone details (make and model) to 25252 (the advertisement mentions the number 25251, but it is a typo. The number is 25252). I immediately got a response saying:

Thank you for your request. We will get back to you soon. Bmobile.

Then nothing happened. I finally got another SMS yesterday (Monday), saying

Dear Customer, you'll receive setting shortly. Use 1234 as password.

As of now, I'm still waiting for the settings.
To be continued!

P.S.: If you managed to enable MMS on your handset, kindly share your experience by adding a comment to this post.

P.S.2: The information about the new promotion is now available on the BT website.

Free calls from Bhutan to the U.S. and Canada

You can now use Gmail - Google's free email application - to call regular phones from your computer. And calling numbers in the U.S. and Canada is free until (at least) the end of 2010. That's 4 months of free phone calls to your relatives and friends in New York or elsewhere in North America. Calling other countries is not free, but the rates are excellent (e.g., 2 cents per minute to Australia). However, this will require a credit card.

I tried this new service from Google, and it works well.

You can read all about this new feature in the official Google blog. If you don't have a Gmail account, you can get one here. It's free.

Note (1): This service is supposed to be available only to U.S. customers. However, it appears that the way Google currently checks if you're a U.S. person is by looking at your Gmail language settings. Make sure it is set to "English (US)". I previously set to "English (UK)" so I couldn't make any calls. Once I switched to "English (US)", the magic happened. You can change the language settings by clicking on "Settings" on the top right corner of your Gmail page.

Note (2): If you're using Bhutan Telecom's broadband connection (aka ADSL), the calls are not really free - you're using Internet data. According to my calculations, the new service uses up to about 1MB per minute, which at BT's rates (Nu 399 per 2.5GB) translates into approximately Nu 0.15 per minute - still much cheaper than a phone-to-phone call.

A time for technology and a time for no technology

More and more of our waking hours are being filled with "tech time": Using Facebook on computers, sending and receiving SMS messages on mobiles, browsing the web, listening to music on iPods or mobiles, and of course, watching TV. All this tech-activity comes at the expense of other activities such as working, studying, playing sports, socializing, reading, eating, sleeping, or just enjoying down time. In an recent Kuensel article on the "Hole in the Wall" computers placed in Changjiji, a 12-year old child that now uses these computers after school was quoted to proudly say "I played football and marbles, but now I play counter strike [a video game]".

In many developed countries children no longer play outside or see their friends in person. Instead, they stay indoors and play computer games, or chat with their friends on Facebook. One clear result is the decrease in physical activity, leading to child obesity and related diseases such as diabetes.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, titled Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime, another result of spending too much "tech time" is damage to our brain and its ability to absorb. They write

When people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.

While many activities in Bhutan are still not done online, such as shopping or banking, the amount of "tech time" seems to be growing fast. Awareness is therefore the key. Parents and educators should try to explain and encourage non-tech time for their children, and should also remember to be good role models themselves.

Pen-drive attacks US military

Pen-drives are a serious threat to your computer's health. Most computers in Bhutan are infected by malware (MALicious softWARE, such as viruses, worms, and Trojan horses) when a "sick" pen-drive (also known as a "flash drive" or "USB stick") is inserted into your desktop or laptop. Malware can reduce the performance of your computer, use your bandwidth, and in general be quite annoying. But it can also pose a real threat.

It was recently revealed that in 2008, an infected pen-drive was inserted into a laptop belonging to the US military. Once the laptop was infected, classified documents could be transferred to remote servers operated by a foreign government or other covert organization. The malware also spread and contaminated other computers in the military network. This attack, which started in the Middle East, was described by a U.S. official as the "most significant breach" of the U.S. military's computers ever.

Click here for the complete story.

Sonam-Tshoey's ice cream now available at 8 Eleven

Initially available only at Sharyang (Changlam Square), Sonam-Tshoey's excellent ice creams and sorbets are now available also at 8 Eleven (next to The Zone). If you're not familiar with Sonam-Tshoey's frozen goodies, give them a try. They are fresh, made in small batches, use local ingredients when available, and contain no preservatives or food colourings. 

Introducing computers into schools

Yesterday's Kuensel editorial discussed the advancement of IT skills in the education systems, mentioning the plan "to empower 5,000 teachers and 50 core group teachers and equip some 168 schools or so with computer labs." The introduction of computers into schools, while now widely implemented in developed countries, has lead to some serious criticism. Does the introduction of computers improve scholastic achievements? Multiple studies have shown that the introduction of computers on its own does not improve, and can even degrade student achievement. Here are a few articles that tell the story:

• An Israeli prize laureate in education discusses some of the issues with classroom computerization and scholastic achievement in this recent article.
• The 2007 New York Times article "Seeing No Progress, Some School Drop Laptops" describes some of the challenges experienced by schools in the United States that have computers and Internet access.

Kids today quickly learn on their own how to type and to use basic or even advanced applications (have you seen some youngsters on Facebook lately?). The role of teachers (and ideally parents as well) is therefore to introduce students to ways in which computers can enhance their learning and their natural curiosity, as well as to educate them about "life skills" in the Internet age.

Training teachers is not as trivial as teaching them how to use the Microsoft Office package or how to use an Internet browser. Instead, teachers should be introduced to pedagogical methods for enriching their curriculum and academic materials by integrating computer assisted learning. It is not simply the addition of "computer literacy" as a subject, but rather an integration of technology into existing education programs to support developing problem-solving skills, creativity, and independent learning.

Viruses attacking our phones

If you thought that your computer was the only battleground for combating malware (viruses, worms, and the like), think again. If you have a mobile phone that has bluetooth technology, you might be prey to malware as well!

I often keep my mobile phone's bluetooth turned on for transferring photos from my phone to my computer. Today, while I was in town, I noticed that an unknown phone was trying to connect with mine through bluetooth by sending me files of type .sis with names such as irsli3wp2js.sis. Luckily, I knew not to open the files. Once you click on the file and allow it to be installed, such viruses can infect your phone and then start looking for new devices in the vicinity to infect.

A host of worms and trojans are out there that infect mobile phones and also transfer themselves through the bluetooth connection. You can read more about mobile viruses on Wikipedia.

How to protect yourself? To avoid the malware that uses bluetooth technology, you can turn off your bluetooth when it is not in use or set your phone to "hidden" or "undiscoverable" while you're not using it. When mobile phones are used for carrying out sensitive actions such as financial transactions, then it is clearly worthwhile investing in security measures such as mobile phone security software.