Cheap HDMI cables will produce the exact same picture and sound quality as expensive cables.

HDMI uses Transition Minimized Differential Signaling (TMDS), which does two things:

1. Compress digital signal to minimize transitions (the TM part)
2. Compares two simultaneous versions of the signal to negate noise (the DS part)

This means that you either get the whole data as it was sent, or nothing at all; it’s not possible to get something in-between like a “distorted” or “poor” signal. In rare cases, if the cable quality is poor, the receiving end will not be able to tell 0 from 1 and you will clearly see white pixels across the screen (no pixel information). However, it  is more likely that you will see no image at all. The same can be said for audio: the digital codecs (Dolby and DTS) have error-correction built in, so you get bit-for-bit output or no audio at all.

There are only 4 types of HDMI cables

1. Standard-speed (Category 1)
2. Standard-speed (Category 1) with Ethernet
3. High-speed (Category 2)
4. High-speed (Category 2) with Ethernet

Category 1 cables can only carry up to 1080i. Category 2 can carry signals up to 4K including 3D. 3D content is simply double the resolution, not double the frame rate.

“HDMI 1.4″ is a connection spec, not a cable spec; in other words, it refers to  hardware (TV, Bluray, etc…) capabilities, not the HDMI cable itself.

Cables longer than 10 meters

If you need to run long HDMI cables (10 meters or more), it’s probably worth considering an active cable. An active cable is one with chips built into it that help boost the signal. One example of such a chip is RedMere. Active cables allow for thinner cables or longer cables. For most connections, any regular cheap cable is fine.

Sources:

• http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20056502-1/why-all-hdmi-cables-are-the-same/
• http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57321956-221/why-all-hdmi-cables-are-the-same-part-2/
• http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57540275-221/still-more-reasons-why-all-hdmi-cable-are-the-same/

The following results are close talk time approximations, please refer to the previous charts for more accurate numbers:

• If you talk less than 300 minutes per month, get a Zain subscription with a 4 KD plan.
• If you talk between 300 and 700 minutes per month, get a Wataniya subscription with a Hala 300 or Hala 500 subscription (10 or 15 KD)
• If you talk between 700 and 850 minutes per month, you can get either Hala 850 or Zain’s 20 KD package
• If you talk between 850 and 1230 minutes per month, get Zain’s 20 KD plan
• If you talk more than 1230 minutes per month, get Zain’s 30 KD plan

Here’s the breakdown:

• If you talk less than 273 minutes per month, get the 4 KD package.
• If you talk between 273 and 556 minutes per month, get the 10 KD package
• If you talk between 556 and 1230 minutes per month, get the 20 KD package
• If you talk between 1230 and 2256 minutes per month, get the 30 KD package
• If you talk more than 2256 minutes, get the 40 KD package

To know your talk time, visit Zain’s website.

Thank you!

Logo 1:

Logo 2:

Logo 3:

Update: Thank you all for voting! Your choice for best logo is Logo #1. Stay tuned as we update Kuwait Paper Dump soon.

Shayma, the geeky Kuwaiti lady who brough you BarCamp, has asked me to bring your attention to Imagine Cup 2012.

Imagine Cup is an annual worldwide competition held by Microsoft for student between the age of 16 to 26 years old. Kuwaiti participants would go to Dubai and compete against other students from around the Gulf region, and the top three teams would advance to the worldwide finals (hosted in a different country each year). Last year, a team from AUK represented Kuwait in the worldwide finals in New York.

This year, for the first time, Imagine Cup will be hosting a local competition in Kuwait, and the team that wins first place in the software design category will advance to the worldwide finals in Sydney, Australia!

Also for the first time, Zain will be sponsoring a Mobile Development Contest for Windows Phone 7. Winners will not advance to the worldwide finals, but will receive all sorts of gifts and prizes from Zain.

Don’t miss this opportunity; go to ImagineCupGulf.com and register before 28th February. The finals will be held on 12th April, 2012 at The Regency Kuwait and attendance is open to all.

Update: Added the banner

Checkout the presentation: Link.

Upon arrival, email gets filtered and ends up either in the “Important and Unread” section or the “Everything else” section and this is where the user’s “email check cycle” begins:

1. Start by reading the “Important and Unread” section (conveniently placed at the top of your mailbox). This automatically causes mail to jump to the “Important” section. If an email is not important or doesn’t require an immediate response, demote it and move along to the next important and unread mail.
2. Now that you’re reading important mail, process them to the best of your abilities, then send them to the archive. If you realize that you can’t respond to a particular email at that moment, leave it in the Important section. Staring important mail has no effect. Next, next, next… done!
3. If you have previously starred mail, you’ll find a starred section (also conveniently placed below the Important section) for you to attempt to process and archive next.
4. Now you’re ready to read the “Everything Else” section. Reading mail in that section will not move it anywhere.
5. If you read mail that you can’t process or get back to at this current time, you can star it to indicate that it is “pending” or “in progress”. During the next check cycle, starred mail will processed sooner than the “Everything else” section, even if you receive new mail (see point 3).
6. Process the remaining mail and archive

Just to be clear, the term “processing mail” means taking an action on either replying, forwarding, labeling, deleting, or reporting spam. The final destination for mail should be the archive, unless you know for sure that you no longer need it.

I hope this post explained the general idea. If you have questions, voice your thoughts by leaving a comment.

Hachiko is the name of a dog who, for more than 10 years straight, waited for his owner at Shibuya Station every day. Because of his loyalty, the dog eventually became a national celebrity, and a statue of of him was built adjacent to the station. There’s even a US movie about Hachiko!

Unfortunately, the place was too crowded for me to get a good picture of the statue, but I did manage to snap a few shots of people dancing wearing funny classic western outfits (not sure what that was about, but they were having fun).

For the second part of the tour, we headed to Owakudani. We had to get on a cable car to reach it, and there we found out that the japanese cooked eggs on the volcanic springs until they turned black. “Eating a black egg will extend your life by 7 years!”, they claimed. No, I didn’t try one, it smelled of sulfur. Finally we sailed on Lake Ashi all the way to the Shinkansen (bullet train) station.

“Your time on this earth is limited, don’t live someone else’s life, live by your vision.” -Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, the visionary who inspired all kinds of engineers, developers, professionals, as well as people outside of Apple and the rest of the industry, has passed away today.

Over a short period of time, he was able to bring truly innovative products and services that drastically changed many of the ways we do things today.

Whether you like Apple’s products or not, you have to appreciate the fact that Steve’s persistence for perfecting technology and paying attention to details had tremendously raised the bar for the rest of the tech companies.

The second half of the day was spent at Akihabara, the “Electric Town” as they call it. Unfortunately, most of the stores were closed that day, but we got a glimpse of what it had to offer in terms of video games, anime, and the like. We managed to snap pictures of what looked like an anime studio of some kind just before leaving town.

Watching this video is a must, especially for business people. This guy gets it: people are attracted to beliefs and to the people who act on them in an honest authentic way. Beliefs are the basis of trust and when people trust one another, their strengths amplify; they take more risks knowing that others will support them and their cause.

Another related presentation:

1. TemplatesWise.com
2. Free-Power-Point-Templates.com
3. Pete’s PowerPoint Station
4. PresentationFX
5. Powerpoint Styles
6. Brainy Betty
7. TemplateWide.com
8. Presentation Magazine
9. M62
10. Free PPT Templates

To satisfy my daily appetite, I’ve been bringing my own food with me to work. Usually, I’d bring a sandwich, some juice, and maybe a bar of chocolate for snacks. If I happen to forget, my only options would be to either try to negotiate with coworkers to order in fast-food, or simply call the work kitchen and ask for a hot cup of milk tea with some biscuits.

I’ve been doing this for many months, but for the past couple of weeks, I haven’t been able to prepare my food because of personal commitments and time restraints, so as a result, I’ve been drinking milk tea almost on a daily basis. I didn’t realize it at first, but that was when the effects of caffeine had started to kick in and made my sleeping and awakening habits extremely difficult.

Not Feeling Sleepy

Consumption of caffeine does not eliminate the need for sleep; it only temporarily reduces the sensation of being tired. —Wikipedia.org

Complete tolerance to the sleep disruption effects of caffeine develops after consuming 400 mg of caffeine 3 times a day for 7 days. —Wikipedia.org

I’m not a coffee person. In fact, I’m not a caffeine-of-any-kind person, because I avoid energy drinks too. Even for the occasional tea indulgence, I limit my dose to one small estikana, or perhaps add some milk to dilute the tea. I suppose it’s obvious to you by now; I don’t have much tolerance for caffeine nor do I have the will to properly develop one!

Headaches and Nausea

Caffeine withdrawal cause the blood vessels of the head to dilate, leading to an excess of blood in the head and causing a headache and nausea. —Wikipedia.org

I’ve heard many people swear by how much caffeine helps them concentrate and get things done better and faster, but is it really worth it? I mean, once you’re out, these effects start to take their toll on you until you get another dose.

No Motivation for Up to Five Days

A reduction inserotonin levels when caffeine use is stopped can cause anxiety, irritability, inability to concentrate, and diminished motivation to initiate or to complete daily tasks; in extreme cases it may cause mild depression. —Wikipedia.org

Withdrawal symptoms may appear within 12 to 24 hours after discontinuation of caffeine intake, peak at roughly 48 hours, and usually last from one to five days. —Wikipedia.org

The Alternative? Drink Cocoa!

From now on, I’m going to keep some cocoa power with me at my office for those emergency moments when I’ve forgotten to bring my food or remain unsatisfied. Chocolate definitely beats tea in my books.

A study conducted by Cornell University has shown that hot chocolate contains more antioxidants than tea, therefore reducing the risk of heart disease. —Wikipedia.org

Cocoa possesses a significant antioxidant action, protecting against LDL oxidation, perhaps more than other polyphenol antioxidant-rich foods and beverages. Chocolate phenols have been shown to protect the arteries from plaque formation and to prevent LDL oxidation for two hours after consumption. —Wikipedia.org

Now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t help but realize how funny it is that Sun Microsystems develops software called Java, while Apple chose to name one of its programming frameworks, “Cocoa“.

Have you had caffeine problems? What did you do about them? Do you have better food options at work? Let me know. My head still hurts.

Update: Joy of Tech drew a comic about coffee at work!

I’ve been using Gmail since around the time it launched in 2004, and in more recent times, I found myself hitting the 7.5 GB mailbox size limit more often that I’d like. To remedy the situation, I would then find myself going through years worth of mail and deleting content that is irrelevant, and as you can imagine, the process is really tedious.

You may be wondering how I managed to clog up my mail box so fast. Truthfully, I don’t receive that many emails, and most people will tell you that I’m a fairly organised individual with minimalist approach to things. So where have I gone wrong? Or more importantly, how can I prevent mail from clogging up my mailbox?

Archiving

One of Gmail’s initial concepts was archiving; the idea that you’ll never need to delete mail at all. Users, after having read or replied to an email, are expected to stash the conversation into their archive. The archive, I believe, is analysed to improve things like spam detection, since archived mail indicates legitimacy. In addition, it allows users to track the history of messages as “threads” to follow old conversations. Now the question becomes: If I’m not supposed to delete email, how much mail can I keep?

Unlimited Storage

Since its launch, Gmail promised that users’ mailbox size will grow endlessly over time –they called the project infinity+1. In other words, by the time someone manages to fill their mailbox, more space will have been made available to them. Superb idea, although unfortunately, I still managed to repeatedly fill my mailbox! There must be an effective way to manage all this mail, otherwise it would slowly roll into one giant pile of chaos, no?

Labels

Alas, Gmail’s answer to mail management: labels. For the longest time, the way I’ve been using Gmail was something that goes a little bit like this: mail comes in and immediately goes through some filters. If it matches a certain category, for example “work”, it would get labelled and archived –the effect of putting it in a sub-mailbox. So if I glance at my sidebar, I would see something like this:

• Inbox (5)
• Work (4)
• Invoices (1)
• News (7)

In that situation, the role of my inbox became, “all mail that isn’t categorised”. I’d begin by going through the “Work” label, as I want to be sure I don’t delay anything important, and move to the other, less important labels, such as “News”, some time later. If I see a particular email that I liked, I’d star it, effectively creating an archive of favorite emails; Starred.

Getting Rid of Mail

When my mailbox got full, I had to go through the labels that were of least importance, for example, “News” and deleted everything, because I knew very well that it didn’t contain anything crucial. However, with labels like “Work”, it was difficult to tell which mail was worth keeping of not.

Whether an email contained an attachment or not had little relevance, because some mail had large important documents that I wanted, while numerous other emails contained very short conversations that I no longer cared about. I had no way of indicating “temporary” or “permanent” so I had to go through each email manually. Yeah, it was brutal…

Priority Inbox

About a year ago, Google introduced Priority Inbox, a feature that split the inbox into 3 or 4 sections such that new email would be placed in the appropriate section depending on the level of importance. Gmail attempts to learn and predict the importance of mail by analysing your previous conversations (the archive!) or, if specified, go by the filter rules associated with determining importance.

Google boasted about how Priority Inbox will help unclutter the inbox and improve productivity, but from my initial experience, it just seemed that it was adding more complexity and hassle. Not only do I have to go through each sub-mailbox, but now my inbox will have sub-categories as well –it didn’t make sense. Not to mention that while browsing labels, mail was not arranged by priority, so there was no improvement there.

A New Approach

It was only a few days ago when it finally dawned on me: at this rate, my regular mail-sorting technique was no longer effective. There are several reasons for this:

1. If I read email in a particular label (sub-mailbox), the only ways in which I could indicate that I needed to get back to it was to either to keep it marked as unread, or move it to my inbox. In the first case, I’d subconsciously have to keep track of the number of unread “to do” emails and watch out for any new unread emails so as to not confuse the two, and in the second case, my inbox will contain both important and unimportant (unlabeled) mail that I’d have to manually check every once in a while.
2. If I wanted to browse a category, for example “Newsletters”, it would be too overwhelming to find a particular group of emails because it would be an aggregation of many different sources. I would resort to using boolean search operators instead.

Rather than think in terms of mailbox, sub-mailboxes and jumping back and forth between them, I had to focus on the process that occurs to mail as it arrives so that I am able to track and respond to messages very quickly. (For technical people, this is analogous to setting up a policy on a router to take decisions on incoming packets).

A Simple Workflow

Alright, so here’s my new way of working with email: A new email would arrive, go through some filters where it may get labeled, and ends up in the inbox (not archived!). If it was flagged as important, my inbox count will increment:

• Priority Inbox (1)

Any unimportant mail will quietly sit in the “Everything Else” section of the inbox and wait for me to look at it in my spare time. In practice, this means that I only have to keep an eye out for one number, and not a group of different labels/mailboxes (You can hide the other labels into the “More” item). It also prevents distractions as the number of new emails will only increment if it is truly worth your time.

Tag!

A note about labels: think of them as tags that help you “group” mail rather than separate them. This is because email can have multiple labels, for example: a “newsletter” from “work”. In the separate-folder ideology, you may put such mail in the “work” mailbox and mix it with the more legitimate work emails, or similarly, if you place it in the “newsletter” mailbox it will pile with other various and unrelated newsletters. If later, you decided to do a search, you can say “find email that is labeled work AND newsletter”, rather than “find email labeled as work AND is from newsletter@staff.com” (because you’ve considered the “newsletter” label for mail that is not work-related). Another solution would require creating more specific labels like “Work Newsletters”, “Other Newsletters”, etc… but that’s just adding more mailboxes that need tracking:

• Inbox (5)
• Work (4)
• Work Newsletters (2)
• Invoices (1)
• Local News (5)
• Other News (3)

Keeping Track

Okay, so now that your sidebar has indicated that you received an important mail, you can start by reading the “important and unread” section first. If you want to get back to an important email later, simply leave it there as it will remain in your inbox in the “important” section, otherwise, respond and/or archive it and get it out-of-the-way and look at the next one.

With no more unread important emails to attend to, the second part of the inbox is the “everything else” section, which should contain mail that does not necessarily need urgent response or immediate acknowledgement. Examples of these would be mail forwards, joke emails, marketing announcements, and so on. Simply read through those in any order you wish, and if you need to keep track of a particular message, star it so that it is placed in a separate section (optional).

Stars, in this scenario, are not the “like” indicators that I had used before, instead they are used as a temporary highlight for unimportant mail that I want to get back to at a later point in time. You may choose to not use a “Starred” section and have your starred mail mixed with the “everything else” section, but it may confuse the order in which you process your mail later.

Cleaning Up

So far, we’ve only covered how to process incoming mail with filters, labels, and managing them through Priority Inbox, but haven’t tackled the original problem of deleting or getting rid of unwanted email. If you’ve taken all the steps so far, then next part becomes easy because all the hard work has already been done for us!

Search for “has:attachment -is:important” –don’t miss the minus sign–, that is, all mail that contains an attachment, but is not important. If you’ve been marking email as important or unimportant correctly, you’ll quickly see a list of large unimportant emails that you’ll probably don’t mind getting rid of. Also, if you find a particular label for email that is consistently unimportant, lets say “Daily Reports”, you can refine your search: “has:attachment -is:important label:daily-reports” and eliminate those. Or if you intend to keep this years emails and delete any mail prior to that, add “before:2011/01/01″ to your query. That’s all there is to it!

A Note About Attachements

Often, when running a search for “has:attachment”, you’ll find mail that doesn’t have the paperclip icon. I believe this is because some mail clients/services “embed” (uuencode) content rather than “attach” them (MIME standard). A workaround would be to create a label that indicates mail as having an attachment, rather than relying on the paperclip icon.

Conclusion

To summarize, although not perfect, Gmail is still one of the best –if not the best– email service available today. Taking advantage of its many features requires letting go of old paradigms like “folders” and “favorites” and thinking in terms of “labels” and “importance”.

I highly recommend enabling the Unread Message Icon feature from the Gmail labs, and pinning the Gmail tab within your browser like so:

That way, all you have to do is glance at the corner to see if you have anything important to read. Remember: Unimportant mail will never increment your inbox count, hence significantly reduce your distraction time.

Final tip: Learn how to use keyboard shortcuts for the most common actions, such as “c” for compose, “e” for archive, “a” for reply-to-all, and if you get mail that requires you to do something, “shift-t” to refer that email in your task list. (Press “?” to see all shortcuts).

I hope this long post has helped you make better use of your inbox. If you have any more ideas or techniques please leave a comment blow!

Step 1: Buy a Samsung 1080p LCD TV

You could go for a larger screen with LED lighting if you can afford it, but at just KD 230 for the 40″ Series 5, there just aren’t any reasons why you should not replace your old TV anymore. You can find Samsung TVs at Carrefour (or Electrozan I believe?). Make sure the resolution is 1920 by 1080 pixels!

Step 2: Plug your Hard Drive

Yes, your hard drive; plug it into the USB port of your Samsung TV (NTFS and FAT32 format supported). Use the remote to navigate to your favorite movie or TV show and hit play. The TV supports MKV, AVI, and MP4 file formats and almost all common audio and video codecs (DIVX, XVID, H.264, AAC, AC3, MP3, etc..), including subtitles. Other TVs may play some codecs, but Samsung is the only brand that I found to have the best support. The TV runs Open Source software and the built-in media player allows firmware upgrades. Codec details can be found in the manual [PDF].

Step 3: Enjoy!

Sit back and enjoy all your content in HD :)

Optionally, you could buy a 5.1 home theater sound system (make sure it’s supports AC3 DTS, and AAC via SPDIF) and have the complete cinema experience. Then complete your man cave by installing some acoustic foam to soundproof the room. That’s not going overboard is it? People do wonders with duct tape!

At long last, the third iteration of Kindle is here! At an irresistible price of KD 43.950 (plus KD 6 for Aramex shipping), Kindle is the most affordable e-book reader available. I couldn’t think of any other reasons not to buy it. After trying out a few things, I was surprised to find out that it can display arabic fonts in PDFs really well.

Text highlighting works for arabic text!

Getting things in and out of the Kindle is as simple as dragging a file to your USB drive. The Kindle supports TXT, PDF, and MOBI formats natively, and for everything else, there’s Calibre, the multi-platform “iTunes of eBooks”. Calibre can convert dozens of file formats including ePub, HTML, CBZ (comic books!), and images to a myriad of eBook readers.

I didn’t care much for purchasing books from Amazon, because most of my content is technical documentation in PDF format, but I did enjoy sampling some free ebooks from the Kindle Store. When I got tired of reading, I turned on Text-to-Speech and let the Kindle read for me.

If you love reading books, you’re going to love reading on the Kindle. It’s not as colorful or interactive as some of the other tablets out there, but it’s much cheaper, smaller, lighter, easier to use and completely distraction free. All you need to do is charge it once, put your books on it, and you’ll be immersed for days on end.

After having a few sips of what I thought was banana milk this morning, my taste buds sent the most baffling signals to my brain. I double-checked the expiry date, and it was fine. I shook the carton a few times to make sure that the contents didn’t separate or form residue at the bottom, but the drink still tasted sweet and caramel-like. It was only until someone else had passed by and pointed out that I’m having vanilla that I realized what was going on.

Vanilla milk and banana milk don’t taste the same, and I imagine that KDD would use contrasting carton designs to make it obvious for customers! If the difference wasn’t clear for me after several glances, how can the company expect old or colorblind people to buy the right products :/

“No”, I replied “but I have installed thermal insulation”.

“Well, you’re only permitted to tint the side mirrors on the back. Get the front-side, windshield and back tint removed then come back for another inspection.”, he demanded.

I explained that infra-red, or thermal insulation has very little effect on visibility and that I have paid for the highest quality film deliberately, to ensure minimal light distortion. Not to mention that I’ve had it for more than 3 years and nobody told me it was against the law until today. The inspector ignored my reasoning and boasted about stopping all tinted windows of any kind from now on.

It’s so ironic that to this day, we see outrageous vehicles with all-around pitch-black windows go about cruising the streets without a fine, while people with good intentions who want to reduce the heat absorption of their car by paying a premium to maintain best visibility get their paperwork revoked!

Example of pitch-black tinted windows.

“People have cleared their windows, passed the inspection, had their insurance work approved, then went back and tinted again.”, jumped the second inspector trying to sound smart and informed.

Well then, could someone explain to me how it is better for people to blatantly get away with tinting their cars like that? Do these people not comprehend their own incompetence or how small their role is in preventing violations?

Anyway, I left the inspectors and rushed to Shwaikh for the V-Cool garage that installed the film on my car windows 3 years back. I showed the salesperson my revoked insurance papers and asked him how they could have sold and installed film on all car windows when it is clearly against the law.

“We know it is illegal, and we tell the customers that, but it’s their choice and their responsibility to have whichever parts of their cars insulated. “, he lied.

I was not aware of any possible legal violations when V-Cool was marketing their product at the time, nor have I noticed any signs, as of late, that bring attention to this issue to prevent it. In fact, I recall quite clearly that I specifically asked about this before having it installed.

Finally, V-Cool agreed to remove the film for free, and while the staff went about doing that, my eyes were set at a new BMW that was having a pitch-black film installed on all windows, right there next to my car!

Can you see the difference?

How about now? You can barely tell it's there!

When will the wastas stop and the scamming cease? >_<

The new theme packs several cool features:

• Different layouts for browsing the home, archives, search, and categories
• Faster data requests and retrieval (AJAX) and elimination of images
• Animated loading, expanding/collapsing search results (jQuery)
• Simple font and color scheme; clutter-free overall look
• A new twitter-like page dedicated to users’ comments
• Random display of tips, hints or notifications about the site
• PDF downloading of posts
• Recommended posts with thumbnail preview
• Arabic language support on site navigation
• Unified search with fast results displayed in the main view
• Removal of horizontal ad space

We’re proud to have this as our best design yet, and hope that it pleases our visitors. Please let us know what you think of it and mention the features that you miss or would like us to include in the future. Finally, we would like to thank all our fans, commenters, and followers for their continuous support and sincere contributions. We will continue to do our best at tweaking and improving KPD for everyone to use and enjoy.

Zain Terminology

Before we begin, we need to understand the exact meaning of some keywords. For Zain customers, calls from 8am to 11pm are called daytime calls and any time after that is considered nighttime. The word local in the Zain-ish language often means Zain-to-Zain calls, rather than any Zain-to-other-carier-in-Kuwait because they are local to the Zain network (also known as on-net calls).

The term peak hours refers to the hours that Zain’s network will have a high number of concurrent calls. Since the number of simultaneous calls varies (based on Kuwait’s population) and is undisclosed, Zain can claim that any time during the daytime (8AM to 11 PM) is actually peak, if it wishes.

Ideally, you’d want to call people only on your carrier’s network at really late/early hours to take advantage of the lowest rates, but the reality is that most calls occur during peak hours of the day to different carriers. This is why I’m going to base the rest of this guide on the worst-case scenario so that your bills remain within expected figures rather than skyrocket and leave holes in your wallet.

Voice Plans

As much as I hate making and receiving phone calls, they have become a way of life; talking less to save your phone bill isn’t much of an option anymore.

I’ve seen people avoid making calls by using a ring-once technique as means of free notification. For example, the caller would say, “Get ready and when I arrive at your place, I’ll ring you once”; clever, but lacks feedback.

Okay, to start off, you need to observe your calling trends. Log in to your Zain account and look at the totals of your detailed billed amounts for the past 6 months. Make notes of the number of calls you make (whether on- or off-peak), as well as the total duration of your calls. This will help you decide which voice plan is best for you.

Wiyana

Zain’s voice plans are called “Wiyana”. If you’re using the old “Lana” packages, I suggest you upgrade now, because any unused Lana credit gets discarded at the end of each month. If you activate a Wiyana package from the website, your Lana package is automatically cancelled.

Here’s how it works: Subscribing to a Wiyana package means paying a fee in advance and guaranteeing a constant minute rate until the end of that credit.

Zain offers these voice plans (worst-case non-local calls):

• Wiyana 2.5 KD (40 fils/min)
• Wiyana 9 KD (39 fils/min)
• Wiyana 14 KD (37 fils/min)
• Wiyana 19 KD (35 fils/min)
• Wiyana 29 KD (29 fils/min)
• Wiyana 49 KD (29 fils/min)

In other words, Wiyana 9 KD means: Pay 9 KD at the beginning of each month and get a fixed rate of 39 fils/min (worst case) until you deplete that 9 KD (around 230 minutes or more). If you manage not to deplete all of your 9 KD, the remaining is still kept as credit. If you manage to use up all of the 9 KD early, you fall back to the regular 40 fils per minute fee until the end of the month.

Let’s assume you found out that you talk an average of 450 minutes per month (15 minutes a day during peak hours), then at best, you’d be spending around 18 KD a month (40 fils/min is the peak rate). Remember, we’re using the worst-case scenario, which is usually close to reality. Knowing this, you can calculate the appropriate Wiyana package.

We’re already spending 18 KD on voice service alone, so it would be a good idea to look at Wiyana 14: (37 fils/min * 450 min/month) 16.650 KD or a savings of 1.350 KD (or more) per month. You could also consider Wiyana 19 because, even if you don’t use the extra 1 KD, it still remains on your credit at the start of the next month (usually consumed by SMS bill).

Wiyana 19: (35 fils/min * 450 min/month) 15.750 KD a saving of 2.250 KD (or more) from your regular bill, plus 1 KD remaining credit.

If all of this math is giving you headaches, look at how much you’re paying for voice calls alone on average, then select the Wiyana package that is either close to that amount or covers the average number of minutes you use.

Pick & Talk

The Pick and Talk service works in conjunction with the Wiyana packages. It allows you to pick four Zain numbers and fix their minute rates to a value based on your current Wiyana package (check the Zain website). Any changes to the initial four chosen numbers costs an additional 250 fils. When it comes to picking, select the numbers of people you talk to most often or people you have the longest conversations with.

Send “Talk” by SMS to 99099 to activate the service and pick the first four numbers for free.

SMS

Text messages also have different costs and most people usually underestimate them:

• Zain-to-Zain costs 20 fils
• Zain-to-Kuwait costs 40 fils (as far as what I’ve seen)
• Zain-to-International costs 50 fils

Remember that in the worst case (40 fils/SMS) most people can convoy more information by talking for 60 seconds than send a message with just 160 characters. Here’s a typical example:

Zain Subscriber: Hey, how’s it going? Do you want to catch a movie tonight? (40 fils)
Viva Subscriber: Sure, what movie?
Zain Subscriber: Ironman 2 at Avenues 8 pm, good? (40 fils)
Viva Subscriber: Sure, I’ll be there!

A Zain subscriber with a 39 fils/min (Wiyana 9KD) package would probably have conveyed all that within 1 minute and saved 51% of his bill.

SMS Packages

I wish Zain had some low-cost SMS plans (because I personally prefer SMS) but they don’t. Instead, they have SMSThem, a service that lets you “broadcast” an SMS to a group of people at a half the price of sending them individually. I won’t get into this because people use BBM/twitter for that and it’s free.

Another package is Dewaniya SMS, which is practically the same idea but costs 250 fils/week for the “admin” of the group and 15 fils per SMS per member.

MoneySucking™ Subscriptions

A lot of people pay for things that they don’t use half the time. Make sure you are not using or are subscribed to any of the following packages unless you need them:

• Voice Mail (5 fils per voice mail received)
• MissU (30 fils per missed call or 6 KD a year if you happened to be subscribed to the plan)
• WAP (legacy; it’s not the “real” internet)
• MMS (150 fils for files larger than 50 KB, just send via email instead)
• International/Roaming (deactivate until needed)
• Zain Video Call (It’s not like FaceTime)
• Mobile TV (3 KD/month while TV is free)

Payment

One final tip: Try to pay your bills online to get 5% off of your bill. I still don’t understand why some people fear this method, but the truth is, most modern personal computers are secure enough for online transactions given the built-in firewalls, free anti-virus software, and sand-boxed web browsers made available.

That’s it! Double check your bills and make sure you’re getting the most of what you’ve paid for. Spend that extra money on the good stuff :)

“Necessity may be the mother of invention, but in these modern times, knowledge is limited only by our commitment to curiosity”–3baid

I saw this documentary on TV a couple of weeks ago and it instantly became one of my favorites. All the footage is taken from a birds-eye view of the earth and it’s just breathtaking.

The video demonstrates how we, mere humans, started out as creatures that constantly searched for food to survive ended up to become the planet’s major exploiters of all its resources.

It’s 120 minutes long, but totally worth watching. Grab a bag of chips and enjoy. You can find the English version on YouTube, but oddly, I find the Arabic narative more dramatic.

I’d hate to know what the owner did to put the cat is such a state of awe. Funny nonetheless :P