Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

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Apple iPhone 3G in November in Mauritius

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Patience is a virtue.

I’ve been told that the iPhone 3G will shortly be available in Mauritius for purchase. To be more precise, the devices are coming to Mauritius this month and are expected to be sold as from November.

Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about the price but I’ll hazard a guess of around Rs. 20,000 for the 8Gb model and Rs. 23,000 for the 16Gb model in line with the quoted price in the Hong-Kong Apple Store. I know this is steep but you need to bear in mind two important things:

 

Firstly, the iPhone is not only a cellphone despite its name. It is a Wifi-enabled computer (with a powerful browser and enterprise-grade email client) and a video iPod and a GPS receiver and a game console and a digital camera which can also be used to make 3G phone calls. Additionally, hundred of free and commercial applications can be downloaded from the Apple iPhone AppStore (direct link to the AppStore for iTunes users) greatly increasing the capabilities of the iPhone.

Secondly, the price (if confirmed of course) compares favorably with what Americans pay. The 8Gb and 16Gb models of the iPhone 3G cost $199 (about Rs. 6000) and $299 (about Rs. 8500) there. But, and this is a massive but, you are forced to subscribe to a voice plan (to make calls), unlimited data plan (to access the web) and (optionally) a SMS plan (to send SMS) at around $75 (about Rs. 2000) per month for two years. For the 16Gb model, this amounts to Rs. 8500 + 24 x Rs. 2000 = Rs. 56,500 (mind you, for unlimited data i.e. browsing, emailing, chatting and Facebooking which does not really exist here.)

Of course, here we’ll have to pay for pre-paid voice and SMS credits as well as 3G data. For the sake of argument, let’s say we accept to pay Rs. 56,500 – Rs. 23,000 = Rs. 33,500 for 2 years. This equates to, say, downloading 2Mb of data (Rs. 0.01 per Kb i.e Rs. 20), sending 10 SMS (Rs. 6) and making 15 minutes of voice call everyday for two years which I find excessive.

Personally, I don’t intend to use my future iPhone in this fashion. Remember, it has a Wifi antenna and, as I am nearly always near an access point, I will use Wifi when browsing and checking my emails. What I am implying is that I don’t think I’ll have to buy more credits to be able to use my future iPhone compared to what I’m paying now with my trusty Nokia 6288.

So, in a sense, we’re getting a better deal than Americans as we have the choice of not using (and not paying for) the data plan if we don’t want to. Heck, we can even choose not to use 3G!

The image above

I already have an iPhone 3G… except that it is just a software simulator. In fact, today I installed the Apple iPhone Software Development Kit on my MacBook (you need a Mac…) which, in addition to all the tools needed to build iPhone applications, features this iPhone simulator. It works, it’s nice-looking and it gives me the opportunity of making nice screenshots.

What can I ask more?

I know!

I need to convince my Minister of Finance (aka my dear Christina) to allow me to ask Father Xmas a black 16Gb Apple iPhone 3G in December :-)

Alleluia.

Mauritians finally get good bandwidth…

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… on some selected websites but, of course, this is still an excellent news if one takes into account the pathetic bandwidth we had before.

Since a few weeks, some of us have noticed that some websites were very snappy and that downloads from them were much quicker than usual. I investigated and found out the following:

$ nslookup 
> server 202.123.2.6
Default server: 202.123.2.6
Address: 202.123.2.6#53
> www.intel.com
Server:		202.123.2.6
Address:	202.123.2.6#53

Non-authoritative answer:
www.intel.com	canonical name = www.intel.com.edgesuite.net.
www.intel.com.edgesuite.net	canonical name = www.intel-sino.com.edgesuite.net.
www.intel-sino.com.edgesuite.net	canonical name = www.intel-sino.com.edgesuite.net.chinaredirector.akadns.net.
www.intel-sino.com.edgesuite.net.chinaredirector.akadns.net	canonical name = a961.g.akamai.net.
Name:	a961.g.akamai.net
Address: 196.27.66.9
Name:	a961.g.akamai.net
Address: 196.27.66.8

 

Let’s see. www.intel.com which is, of course, the official website of Intel has an IP address of 196.27.66.8 or 196.27.66.9 when the Mauritius Telecom DNS server is queried. More interesting is the fact that those two IP addresses seem to correspond to one server owned by Akamai (i.e. a961.g.akamai.net) From the Akamai website, we read:

Akamai has created a digital operating environment for the Web. Our global platform of thousands of specially-equipped servers helps the Internet withstand the crush of daily requests for rich, dynamic, and interactive content, transactions, and applications. When delivering on these requests, Akamai detects and avoids Internet problem spots and vulnerabilities, to ensure Websites perform optimally, media and software download flawlessly, and applications perform reliably.

Hundreds of enterprises worldwide use our global platform to sell, inform, entertain, market, advertise, deliver software, and conduct their business online.

I knew a company like Intel was an Akamai customer but this didn’t explain the increase in bandwidth in Mauritius. Something more interesting was going on. 196.27.66.8 and 196.27.66.9 looked familiar… Suddenly I understood. They looked like the dynamic IP addresses we have in Mauritius. Maybe 196.27.66.8 and 196.27.66.9 were in Mauritius which would easily explain everything.

I did:

$ whois 196.27.66.9

OrgName:    African Network Information Center
OrgID:      AFRINIC
Address:    03B3 - 3rd Floor - Ebene Cyber Tower
Address:    Cyber City
Address:    Ebene
Address:    Mauritius
City:       Ebene
StateProv:
PostalCode: 0001
Country:    MU

This is cool. It means that 196.27.66.9 is managed by the African Network Information Center, an organization based in Mauritius. To be 100% sure that 196.27.66.9 is really in Mauritius, I did:

$ traceroute 196.27.66.9
traceroute to 196.27.66.9 (196.27.66.9), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  41.212.192.1 (41.212.192.1)  72.663 ms  10.613 ms  11.346 ms
 3  ADSL-TPLUS-70-97.telecomplus.net (196.27.70.97)  10.627 ms  11.536 ms  11.003 ms
 4  ph-g1-1-1.1662.telecomplus.net (196.192.102.25)  10.251 ms  10.462 ms  11.510 ms
 5  196.27.66.9 (196.27.66.9)  11.108 ms  10.278 ms  10.987 ms

Phew! This is confirmation that a mirror of www.intel.com is, at least for us, Mauritians, found in Mauritius. Notice how 196.27.66.9 is just one hop from ph-g1-1-1.1662.telecomplus.net which belongs to Telecom Plus. Notice how all the IPs start with 196.

I wonder what other websites have already received the Akamai treatment…

What I am currently listening to…

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I am a fanatic user of Last.fm. Whenever I listen to a song either on my MacBook or my iPod, this information is sent to the Last.fm service which dynamically creates the chart shown above. It shows the artists I’ve been listening to during the past week. Here is what I feel about some of them:

Radiohead

I has just discovered Kid A which is an album that Radiohead did in 2000 just after OK Computer. I’ve been listening to it a lot this week and I love it. OK Computer is a fantastic album but Kid A is arguably better in the sense that it is much more experimental. I love artists who don’t rest on their laurels after having obtained a massive success and try to innovate.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD)

I discovered electronic music in the 80’s listening to Depeche Mode. But Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Art of Noise also played a big role in my musical education. OMD was very successful during this era with countless hits and platinum albums. A few days ago, I found out that OMD also liked experimenting and released very interesting tracks on the B-sides of their hits. All those B-sides have been collected on one CD and I’ve been listening to that lately. Furthermore, they also reworked some of their tracks for John Peel and I’ve also been listening to those.

Moby

I am a fan of Moby since listening to Go and then Play. I’ve been listening to his last album, Last Night, this week and there are some real gems on it. Moby is the grandson of Herman Melville hence his choice of artist name. The next step for me is to listen to the ambient version of Hotel. I’ll do that when I’ll have some free time at home without the kids jumping on me…

Avinash Meetoo

I like listening to my own music. They remind me of that saying: “1% is inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Composing, recording, arranging, mixing and mastering your own music is really really satisfying. And, remember, “la critique est facile, l’art est difficile.” I really need to start working on my third album. I do have some (relatively complete) tracks waiting for that elusive magic dust.

Depeche Mode

I am a die-hard Depeche Mode fan. This has been the case since 1985 when I was introduced to them by a good friend of mine, Yash. Since then, I have bought all their albums, lots of DVDs as well as a substantial number of singles. For new kids on the block, here is an excellent best-of courtesy of Last.fm:

Asian Dub Foundation

I’ve only discovered them two days ago. I’ve been listening to one of their best songs, Rebel Warrior, repeatedly since. Here is an excerpt from the lyrics:

Ami bidrohi!

I am the Rebel Warrior

I have risen alone

With my head held high

I will only rest when the cries of the oppressed

No longer reach the sky

When the sound of the sword of the oppressor

No longer rings in battle

[…]

Ami Bidrohi!

Yes the unity of the Muslim and the Hindu

Will end your tyranny

Ami Bidrohi! Ami Bidrohi!

Tricky

Considered by some to be the god of trip-hop ahead of Massive Attack and Portishead. I’ve have just discovered his 1995 album, Maxinquaye, and I’m hooked. The music and vocals by Martina Topley-Bird are close to being perfect.

—

I know that different people listen to music for different reasons. Personally, I don’t like to do what some call background listening. I rarely play some songs and do something else in parallel. For example, I am not listening to music while writing this blog entry.

What I like is foreground listening or active listening. I like playing a song or, better, a whole album and read about it and its creators on Wikipedia or Last.fm. I also love reading the lyrics at the same time as, like many of us, I have a lot of difficulties grasping them when they are being sung…

I wonder what would happen if music was banned?!?