Being a technology and gadget enthusiast, one could not ask more than an all expense paid trip to the land of 3G, Japan.

More than 500 pictures clicked, a sneak peak into the next generation technology, experiencing the power and utility of 3G mobile communication channel and an amazing trip to one of the most hospitable countries of the world! All of that and more at fun filled and action packed 3 days in Japan.

It all started with the TATA DOCOMO 3G Life gig. Towards the start, it may have appeared to be one of those fake competitions which a lot of brands execute to increase awareness, but that wasn’t the reality. Both TATA and NTT DOCOMO are amazing brands when you take a step ahead to experience the sheer blend – trust of TATA and expertise of NTT DOCOMO in some of the most amazing mobile technologies one would have heard about.

For the uninitiated, Tata Docomo is India’s fourth largest operator in terms of wireless subscribers and the first amongst the private companies to launch 3G services in India on 5th of November’2010. TATA Docomo is a joint venture between the Tata Group in India and NTT Docomo, the leaders in mobile communication, in Japan. NTT Docomo holds 26% stake in the company.

Now towards the interesting part, the journey!

But before that, let me share an amazing video that’s one of the many scintillating technologies we played with;

We’ve tried capturing it across a 3D glass! It was a typical case of how a virtual museum can be set up to to a walk through of an old city! Mind boggling.

The entire journey was fascinating. I had some real bad notions about Air India, which to my surprise, did a fair job! I was glad to finish off a long due book on my Kindle while others dozed off. Did you ask for a picture?

A little more than 2 hours after we landed at the airport, we managed to check in at our luxurious rooms at hotel Hilton Tokyo. The 29th floor room had a picturesque scene off the window! But soon, we were to have a quick lunch at an Indian restaurant and rush to the NTT Docomo Headquarters at the Sanno Park Tower. I am thankful to the tour guide and the cab driver. The two ladies were humble, helpful and honest!

On our way to the hotel from the Airport

The hotel, Hilton Tokyo;

Did I say luxurious and picturesque rooms?

The famous Indian restaurant where had lunch! The food way ohkay.

Not too late, we arrived at the NTT Docomo’s Head Quarters!

We were received by Mr. Murat Karadeniz, Executive Advisor, followed by Mr Kii, M.D. of Global Business and Keisuke Yoshizawa – Executive Director of Strategic Investment & Alliance.

The 2 day agenda was placed before us. Trust me, it looked so tightly scheduled! Also, Japanese swear by time.

After a brief round of introduction, we were provided a 3G wireless router and a 3G mobile phone. Needless to mention, both were on the NTT Docomo network, giving us great connectivity!

It was time for a group photograph!

We were then taken to the Docomo Future Station – A studio featuring some of the amazing technologies I had ever come across!

NTT Docomo offers a varied range of phones under the categories: Docomo Style, Prime, Smart and Pro.

Amongst several mobiles phones, we saw Japanese version of Samsung Galaxy S carrying Android Froyo, Sony Ericsson phones, and several models of Lynx. They also had locked Blackberry phones and Windows based handsets.

Japan is not only the land of rising sun, but a land where the first commercial 3G was launched! Japan has experienced 3G for a few years already and are shortly moving to the next gen mobile technology termed LTE (Long-Term-Evolution) which has far more capabilities and of course, the speed!

Controlling a car using a touch screen device. Interesting, huh?

Experiencing a 3D virtual museum where in you control the movement by waving your hands in the air was mind blowing!

After all of this, a cup of tea was much needed!

We then moved to another Indian restaurant for dinner.

The next morning started off with an awesome breakfast which had Japanese omelets! I had only heard of them.

What happened next was amazing! Using the mobile phones we were given a day before, we could buy burgers at McDonald’s. These were smart NFC enabled devices which were capable of being loaded with cash!

This is where one needs to touch his phone;

This is what you do after that!

We then headed to the Docomo Smart Lounge showcasing some of cool, lifestyle devices that included Samsung Galaxy Tab amongst other devices from Sony, Blackberry and Lynx!

A Samsung Galaxy Tab, powered by NTT Docomo;

We were then taken to the NTT Group Note Lounge in Otemachi. Sadly, we were not allowed to take pictures for obvious reasons.

That was the last official destination we had. Following which, we headed to Akhiabara market, which is one of the famous electronic hubs of Japan. You can get anything you think about in technology. From Android based tablets to iPads. Not all are cheap though.

Lucky enough, we got good deals on Canon cameras and 3 of us picked, one each!

The second day dinner was in our hotel where we were treated by the hosts from NTT Docomo. It was a great dinner, full of awesome conversations on technology, culture, languages, people and more!

The next and the last day, we could get a chance for some local sight seeing and then a revisit to Akhiabara!

Soon, we headed to the airport on a flight which was delayed for around 12 hours!

Overall, it was an amazing journey to the land of 3G with fellow folks – Shitij (from TATA Docomo), Honey Singh (HoneytechBlog.com), Arun Prabhudesai (Hover.in) and Clinton Jeff (zomgitscj.com).

Thank you Tata Docomo for sponsoring this trip. We’ll cherish it for years to come!

P.S.: I could take more than 500 pictures across 3 days. Some of them may be found here and here!

Recently, ALCATEL has introduced the ALCATEL OneTouch Net on Tata DOCOMO. The phone allows to freely access Yahoo Services like Y! Mail, Y! Messenger, etc as well as Tata Docomo Dive In services like Docomics, M-Greeting, Mobile TV, etc. Pretty much on the lines of the ‘email+IM’ plan on Blackberry. Interesting thing about this phone is the plans are offered by Tata Docomo as a bundle.

With the Prepay plan you get free life time access to Yahoo Mail and Messenger as well as free 250MB/month browsing for  1 year. The call charges are – Local On-net at 1p/6sec after the 1^st minute is charged at the default rate. All other local and STD tariff legs at default tariff of 1p/sec.

On the post pay plans with the ALCATEL One Touch Net, there are 2 plans – 199 and 299 with 1p/sec calling and 300 and 60 minutes of free talk time respectively. Both plans come with 250MB/month of free Y!Mail + Messenger usage for life. For all post pay connections bought before 20th October, they’re offering a free Reebok watch worth Rs. 2499/-.

Some pictures of a Live handset;

Now to the handset specifications;

• Screen: TFT, 65K colors, 320 x 240 pixels, 2.4 inches, Full QWERTY keyboard, Optical trackpad
• Size / Model: 111 x 58.2 x 13.9 mm, 102 g / QWERTY phone
• Memory: Internal 80 MB, external microSD, up to 8GB, 4GB included
• Camera: 2 MP, 1600×1200 pixels
• Battery: Standard battery, Li-Ion 850 mAh
• MP3/WMA/eAAC+ player, MP4/H.263/H.264 player

Features;

• Social networking integration via Social Pulse
• Access to Yahoo Mail and Messenger free for lifetime on Tata DOCOMO
• One touch access to Yahoo Search,  News, Homepage
• Special designated Dive In key
• Special designated Y! key
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Short key access to My Song, CMT
• One click access to Tata DOCOMO Facebook, Orkut and Twitter.

Time to Win this phone!

Now if that looked interesting, I have a cool offer for you to win it, sitting right where you are! Just visit the OneTouchNet Crack to Grab site.

Use this code to enter the contest:

1. Day 1: 69B27092
2. Day 2: 6A3A5441
3. Day 3: 6B46BEA8
4. Day 4: 6C87DAD3
5. Day 5: 6D10E8B8
6. Day 6: 6D6EBD52
7. Day 7: 6E019632

Note: Each code is valid only for a day and shall hold good till 10 am, next day.

Do share your experiences with mobile and data services in India as a part of the comment section.

Update: The contest is over now and I have won the first prize – A Samsung Corby Phone + INR 10,000/- cash

Samsung is back with a yet another online campaign. This time, it’s a twitter contest. The idea is simple; 5 teams, each with a nominated team-lead tries to get 200 people in his team for the minimum to stay in the competition. Surprisingly, there are no women team leads to compete with

A twitter user who sends out any tweet with the hashtag of team’s name, for example #SamsungCorbyPink (that’s mine!) joins the team. Just one tweet. No change of teams allowed and no need to follow someone.

The contest has been on for a while and shall end up tomorrow, EOD. Our team has been leading throughout with some good competition with other teams. It has been fun with crazy support from fans, friends and friends of friends! Thank you one and all!

If all this was Greek for you, just hit the contest page and come back to support me! All you need to do is click on the this tweet and support my team – I am with the leading team – #SamsungCorbyPink. To join me, RT and win a Samsung phone + 10 movie tickets (courtesy team lead)! 

If the team emerges out as the 1st winner, you stand a chance to win a Samsung Corby Phone + 5 random people get couple movie tickets from me to watch a movie of your choice!

What are you waiting for? Join the bandwagon!

What is a BarCamp?

BarCamp is an international network of user-generated conferences – open, participatory workshop-events whose content is provided by the participants. All attendees are encouraged to present / facilitate a session. Everyone shares their experiences both live and after the event via the web and other channels. BarCamp Delhi is one of the largest communities of individual thinkers and tech enthusiasts – bringing whole entrepreneurial community together.

To join in on the community discussion about BarCamp Delhi, check out the BarCamp Delhi Google Group. You can also follow BarCamp Delhi on Twitter. If you’re tweeting about BarCamp Delhi 6, then please use the hashtag #bcd6

Check out some of the interesting sessions happening at this BarCamp;

• Mobility – iPhone , Android and beyond – Sunil Goyal
• Content Strategy and Social Media – Yu Yu Din, Editor
• Indian LBS Insights – Loop holes, Opportunities – Piyush Gupta
• Recession, jobs and start ups – Brijesh Singh
• Knowledge Management - C.K.Arora
• Youth Marketing and Entrepreneurship Opportunities in Down Turn. – Ravi Dabbiroo
• Extent of Cyber crimes in our Social Lives & Solutions – Rakshit Tandon
• E-enabling Youth through Innovative approaches of Knowledge and Learning platforms - Dolly Bhasin
• Virtualization and Green IT- Where IT Infrastructure is heading – Sanjay Kharb
• Marketing in Social Media Fragmentation Era - Nandini Maheshwari
• The FLOP Business-What, where and how? – Narendra K. Shukla
• The Open Web - Shwetank Dixit
• The Global Warming - Rohit Prakash
• FIX Protocol – Atul Lakhotia
• The Financial Crisis and India Redux – Pankaj Jain
• Adobe AIR – Romil Mittal

The complete list is available are the sessions page. If you haven’t yet registered for this event, do it now at the registration page! Yeah, it’s free

If you thought that was all, we at MediaRedefined.com have put up two interesting contests for Photographer and Bloggers respectively.

Check out the bcd6 contest and win yourself a .com with a year of free hosting from MediaRedefined.com. You can also win a free Flickr Pro account for an year worth 25$

Details for the event:

Date: 28 February & 1 March 2009
Time: 9 am to 5 pm

Venue:

Management Development Institute
Mehrauli Road, Sukhrali
Gurgaon – 122007
Tel: +91.124.2349831-36, 4013050-59

Looking forward to see you there.

For more details, contact me at 991-179-2520.

Ever thought of being part of the next big business idea? If yes, this is for you!

Event Info

Host: Proto.in

Type: Meetings – Business Meeting

Network:Global

Time and Place

Date: Saturday, September 6, 2008

Time: 10:00am – 5:00pm

Location: Amity – Noida

City/Town: Delhi, India

A Startup is probably the best place to be at for a fresher or for a professional who is looking for a career boost or to experience rapid growth. But the issue is that most people are not aware as to where to find these startups, neither are these startups able to be part of campus recruitment processes because of their small size.

The Basic Questions:

What is a Startup? A Startup is a company which is in its early stage of growth. It is most probably the founder of the company with a small team of five to ten people (or maybe less) working hard at a fabulous problem and to grow. There are two ways a startup could go: a) Really really big, or b) Go nowhere. The option is that you learn a lot from being part of a small group of people since you learn everything related to running a company and everything that goes on, which is an experience you will never get working for a corporate, and also if the startup grows big, you make a lot of money along with the founders.

What does it mean to work for a Startup? It would mean:

1. A committed job which would be an amazing place for passionate people
2. Slightly long hours of work
3. A very tightly knit team which is dedicated, passionate and probably the smartest set of people you will meet.
4. Slightly lower salaries
5. High Payback options on success

Who all can be part of this Startup Lunch? If you believe you do possess the skills to contribute to a Startup, you are more than welcome to put-in your name. Some of the verticals you might be coming from are:
* Programmers
* Marketers
* Visual Communication
* Animators
* Etc.

How Does this work?

The principle is roughly the same as the SpeedDating concept. The startup founders are seated on one side and the candidates get to say hello and have a quick conversation to talk about what the background of the founder is, why he started the company and what sort of person he is looking for, while asking questions to the candidate about the reason to join a startup and what his/her passions are and ten minutes later the same process continues with the next founder. Within an hour, you would have met/spoken to most of the startups, and by the end of the day would know whom to get in touch with for your first/next job.

So, what’s Cooking? Delhi Startup Lunch 3 is!
The Delhi Startup Lunch 3 is ready to be served on 6th September 2008.
We invite new & young businesses (Startups) and Candidates from Delhi + NCR region to participate.

More details about the event and the online registration process is available on the wiki page. If you decide to be a part of the event, you contact me or either of these guys to get any information you wish to have.

Abhishek (abhishekb@zoomtra.com)
Avinash (avinash@routeguru.com)
Vishal (vishalg76@gmail.com)
Praval (catchme@praval.com)

Praval is a web evangelist and marketer with Uswaretech.com, a Django web application development shop.

Proto.in come together once in every six months, bringing together entrepreneurs – current and aspiring, investors, bloggers, veterans, technologists, mentors, media professionals, hackers, students, and even folks from the government bodies like NASSCOM, TiE, etc. to build a cohesive and sensible business ecosystem in India.

Proto.in is here in Delhi this july!

The Upcoming edition is finalized for the dates – July 18th and 19th, 2008 in Delhi and tentatively planned at the Indian Institute of Technology – Delhi.

Do check out the website to know more. I thank Mayank to have introduced it to me through his blog. He is holding a small contest to give away free passes for the event! Visit here incase you think you’re lucky!