by : admin Uncategorized

Google Maps come to Pakistan, Finally

I have been waiting for this moment for long. Google maps mobile have finally added detailed maps for Pakistan. Now i can search for a nihari shop or a fower shop or any other business and Google maps will show me the marker. The navigation part is still missing. Google is still not offering turn by turn directions nor it gives the details like traffic, street view or driving distances, but it is a big welcome change. Moreover, I still cant see the detailed maps on PC version. I’m sure PC maps are following its mobile counterpart but there is an obvious reason why mobile maps have come first.

Pakistan is a big market for mobile Google maps. Pakistan has more than 90 million mobile users, vast data network over GSM/GPRS/EDGE and absolutely no other street navigation system at all. Does it get any better than that?

Actually it is a community effort using Google map maker on PC. Map maker allows users to add roads, streets, businesses, crossings and everything else for areas for which there are no maps defined yet. Then other users approve or disapprove there additions and changes. Eventually a map comes into being that is eventually supposed to be posted to Google maps and Google maps mobile. So the Google maps mobile we see today for Pakistan, has all the maps that were made on map maker and have been moved to main Google maps for mobile and I’m sure Google maps for web will be updated soon.

This move by Google will not only increase the usage of their product in Pakistan but a big number of software and hardware solutions will now spring up for the local market soon. A lot of people already using GPS enabled phone will put their GPS to use now with this free service. I think it will boost the sales of GPS enabled handsets as well.

Do try it out at http://maps.google.com from your mobile.

*** UPDATE ****
Google maps for Pakistan are still not available on web as well on wap (google locals). Lets see when they show up there.
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*** UPDATE 2 ***
Screenshots for your interest 🙂


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by : admin Uncategorized

I smoked my Toshiba laptop

Literally burnt it!


Well, I keep doing this all the time and I’m sure all you laptop users out there do it too, but this is a strange thing that happened last week. I was copying a file from my desktop onto this Toshiba pro M200 and it was a big file, several GBs. I thought I’ll put it to copying and will go downstairs for dinner. I just noticed the laptop was running low on battery. I pulled out the charger from the bag and like I always do, first I plugged the shoe into the wall-socket (yes power was on) and then I plugged in the charger to the laptop.

I think I heard a very minute spark, and the laptop just died on my face. I don’t believe this. I tried all the tricks like trying to boot withough battery, just on DC and what not, but all my efforts went to trash. Finally I decided to give it for repairs but before that I decided to take the data out. It took me quite some effort and finally a friend helped me out to get the hard-trived pulled out. Like any other SATA disk, it got easily configured with my desktop.

I backed up all my data and sent it for the repairs. They took a few days and I just got a call that confirmed that the laptop’s mother-board and both RAM modules got totally fried. Processor luckily survived, and well, some other parts like hard-disk too.

I have never experienced, nor heard of any such incident before. I do it several times a day. Whenever the PC is low on power, I just plug in the charger into my machine, which is already plugged into wall socket, no harm ever done. If any of my reader has heard, read or experienced anything like this, please do share.

In addition, we also keep doing this with other chargeable devices like cell-phones, ipods, shavers etc. Please spread the word and try not to follow the practice of plugging in powered on chargers into your laptops ( I know its still hard for me to do so).

Last but not least, don’t people at Toshiba put a circuit breaker, fuse or something in the battery charger circuit? Even if i plugged in 5000 volts input to the charger slot, it should’ve smoked one IC or something instead of smoking the whole Motherboard. Am I complaining too much?

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