The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2010. That’s about 26 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 13 new posts, not bad for the first year! There was 1 picture uploaded, taking a total of 5kb.

The busiest day of the year was April 26th with 779 views. The most popular post that day was Oracle starts to monetize Free Software, is it wrong?.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were dzone.com, digg.com, reddit.com, twitter.com, and theserverside.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for mariadb, mariadb vs drizzle, drizzle vs mariadb, mariadb drizzle, and drizzle mariadb.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Oracle starts to monetize Free Software, is it wrong? April 2010
15 comments

MySQL is gone. Here comes MariaDB and Drizzle. May 2010
10 comments

Adopting RAD in the Enterprise: The 14 Biggest Misconceptions November 2010
2 comments

What Apple taught other businesses tonight. June 2010
3 comments

Nokia and Symbian : Business and Software : Lessons To Be Learnt October 2010
10 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

RAD tools focus on providing code generation and automated testing capabilities with the use of convention over configuration to provide a streamlined workflow to create applications.

Even with the most advanced and easiest to use RAD tools, there are times which the traditional enterprise and the business software development vendors which are having their own implementations and in-house built frameworks are continuously refusing to adopt them.

Most of the misconceptions on the RAD are based on FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) which has been created around the internal complexity of the RAD tools.

Here we take a look at the biggest common misconceptions on RAD tool adoption in the enterprise.

1. RAD tools are magical

This is a common myth among the developers who insist on writing their own code from scratch.

Due to the elegance and the accuracy of properly generated applications, they will assume that the changing of generated code would cause the application to lose its beauty.

They are reluctant to see patterns in commonly developed applications which could be easily generated by the use of RAD tools.

2. You can’t make changes to the generated code

Most of the code generated by the RAD tools are editable, but takes a developer who has the understanding on the related technologies.

When people do not have the exposure to the technologies beneath the RAD generated code, they will start to spread fear and doubt on the customizability of the generated application.

3. RAD tools are for simple applications

Yes, simple applications can be generated by RAD tools, but it doesn’t limit you from creating a large application with the use of the tool.

As long as your application is properly designed, RAD tools will always have a solution.

Agree or not, most of the current applications with support to the cloud are the ones built with RAD tools.

4. You can’t make mistakes while generating the code

Most RAD tools have the capability of correcting mistakes done while generating the code. In most cases, even if you have made a mistake that the tool cannot reverse, there will be a manual way you can correct it.

5. You can’t make complex user interfaces with RAD tools

First, ask yourself whether you really need a complex user interface. The users are really comfortable using a simple, elegant and consistent user interface, rather than a complex and bloated user interface.

Even if you want a complex user interface, you can always integrate your generated code to your own user interface.

6. RAD is for startups, not for big businesses

If you are a big business, you will benefit more from RAD than a startup, because your development and testing time would be significantly reduced due to the reuse of patterns.

Actually, big businesses use RAD, but will not tell you.

7. You can’t integrate RAD applications with other systems

This again is due to the lack of knowledge about the particular application development framework. Almost all of the RAD tools provide means of exposing services to integrate your generated application to other applications.

8. You can’t work in a team setting or use a Version Control System (VCS)

You can always check-in your generated code to the VCS, and work in collaboration. In most of the cases, you just have to make sure only one developer is responsible for the use of tool for a particular module of the application.

9. RAD tools lock you in for a particular technology

Before asking this, ask yourself how much you are locked into the technology which you are currently using.

Most tools provide a humble way to remove the RAD tool dependencies and continue the project as a handwritten project.

10. People who can code should always code, instead of using tools

People who can cook, should always cook? No. Especially when they are given a machine which can create any delicious meal, once the guidelines are defined by the cook? No, not at all.
People, who can code, are the best people to properly use RAD tools, as they understand the tool better, and are able to extend and make the maximum use of the power of the tool.

Additionally, they can write add-ons, application specific and platform specific components to better match the business needs while increasing productivity to the organization as a whole.

11. RAD tools reduces the job security of the developers

This is largely false, as the tool would only increase productivity. Developers would have more time creating ‘applications’ instead of creating ‘application code’. As the tests and the related scripts are automatically generated they would have more time for manual testing of the application and to cater more requirements instead of battling the complexities arising from day to day changes to the application.

12. You can’t maintain generated applications with RAD tools

Before asking this question, look at your own code and see how much legacy code and technologies are still present. One thing you would understand is that application code never grows old or dies. As long as it works, it will be alive.

Using RAD tools, you will always have the particular version of the tool to make changes to the existing code based on the available capabilities. Even if a new version comes along, it will be mostly backwards compatible and would even have capabilities to support the conversion of the existing generated code to the new code to make it better. This is largely possible due to the proper use of patterns in the generated application.

13. RAD is complete

The perfect RAD tool is not yet complete, but the current tools have been evolved over the years and are usually more than enough for almost all businesses. Most tools would provide you ways to enhance the tool in order to better cater for your individual needs.

14. RAD will take your house, your spouse, everything you have and leave you with nothing.

No. Really?

These are just the biggest misconceptions; the rest will be covered in a next post on this blog.

Additional Resources:

• Wikipedia: Rapid Application Development
• Wikipedia: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

Frameworks and Tools

• Microsoft Visual Studio
• Grails
• Spring Roo
• CakePHP

Read more posts on this blog :

• Nokia and Symbian : Business and Software : Lessons To Be Learnt
• What Apple taught other businesses tonight.
• Flash and Runtimes on Mobile Devices, Who is right? Steve Jobs or Adobe?
• MySQL is gone. Here comes MariaDB and Drizzle.
• Is Open Source software a classic example of fail for Design by Committee?
• Why a ‘Single Line’ was added to the Solaris Terms of Use by Oracle?
• Oracle starts to monetize Free Software, is it wrong?

In a nutshell, Symbian was bought over by Nokia and, which intended to make it an industry wide standard in developing mobile applications - made it a foundation run by member subscriptions. To aid this, Nokia gathered a number of mobile phone vendors which were starving for a mobile operating system. Times passed by, and the Symbian source code was made open source and freely available since last year. Since then, Nokia has experienced a reduced amount of market share and has gone down.

Following is a list of lessons which can be learnt from Nokia and Symbian experience.

Design by Committee

Making Symbian design governed by a committee instead of a central designer, largely contributed to the failure of the Symbian to adopt to the environment. Committee members had their own proprietary implementations of the platform architecture, and then the platform started to starve from lack of usable components.

This was highlighted back in April 2010 on this blog, in the post titled Is Open Source software a classic example of fail for Design by Committee?

Technological Vision

Nokia probably had great management people at its top, but lacked any with a technological vision. This is also clearly visible in many software companies engaged in business and enterprise application development. A clear technology visionary would allow any organization to reach its maximum potential with its existing business and technical resources.

In addition to the technological vision, a marketing visionary is also needed within a company to promote its technological efforts to the mass market.

Iterative Development

The traditional waterfall software development method along with phased releases used at Symbian and Nokia [not applicable to Series 40 platform] were too destructive for the foundation as a whole, specially at the times where other mobile operating systems were developed and delivered in faster release cycles and the customers were eagerly waiting for bug fixes and new feature additions which can unlock the best features of the device hardware.

Platform, Platform and Platform

As a platform, Symbian was too complicated for the developers to develop applications for. The platform API(Application Programming Interface) has been too complicated for regular and rapid development. This has not been the case for mobile operating systems that were coming from developer centric organizations.

It should be also noted, that the platform has to be maintained by a core-team, with contributions accepted and merged from different products and projects which use the same platform. This has been the case for Qt framework, which Nokia acquired along with Trolltech. Now, Qt has become the only platform that Nokia will ever promote.

Developers, Developers and Developers

Steve Ballmer’s famous lines, has been reiterated at the recent Nokia World summit by the new Nokia Chief Executive Officer, Stephen Elop who previously  headed the Microsoft business division. Developer centric organizations rarely go down in business, in spite there would be many management people arguing against the fact, simply because they see developers as inferior to the managers or they have a bad perception of overly expensive developers. Developers are the ones who would be defining the boundaries which a modern organization can expand.

Don’t let the hardware limit the developers

At Nokia, hardware rules, this is no different from many traditional software companies which focus on reducing costs by limiting the hardware and capabilities available to the developers (whether at the runtime environment or the development environment). Give freedom to the developers and a solid foundation which they can simply focus on software and  logic, they will do magic. Otherwise, it’s very likely that developers would be compelled to waste time optimizing [or debating the best way to concatenate Strings, which is a classic example] instead of delivering new, interesting and usable features to the end-user.

Product based Matrix Organizations don’t work

Considering Nokia and it’s recent products, one can always see that there is a large amount of different devices which run the same platform, but have different features. It is largely possible that these devices are coming from different teams which are headed by different product or project managers. Very likely that there are developers who excel in different areas of development put into different projects, causing increased fragmentation of the operating system and the device software, making it difficult to maintain. It also reduces the chances of platform improvement by making it difficult to merge individual improvements to the main source code base.

Don’t keep incompetent people

There were loads of people who were working at Nokia from top to bottom (including the CEO and the factory worker) who were simply incompetent for their current role, highlighting a real world occurrence of the Peter Principle. The maximum from them could have been obtained from their competencies if there had been a proper mechanism that would have prevented such. Unfortunately, when the company as a whole goes down, these people are less likely to find a better job and will have to step down and go down another step when joining another company.

Research is important

At all times when these things happened, Nokia Research has been making great advancements in the fields which they conducted research. In the coming times, probably the only Saviour for Nokia would be the product features which can be improved through the in-house research. Microsoft, Google and Facebook are also examples where in-house research has benefited an organization to come out and perform soon after difficult times.

Please feel free to share your views and additions.

Additional Links

• Qt Platform : http://qt.nokia.com/
• Application Programming Interface (API) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API
• How to concatenate Strings [StackOverflow] : http://bit.ly/aVQP1X
• Peter Principle : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
• Nokia Research : http://research.nokia.com/
• Google Research : http://research.google.com/
• Microsoft Research : http://research.microsoft.com/

It’s here. Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 4g.

This is a moment where most businesses start to realize the truth and lessons about managing their customer requirements and product releases.

Found this article on My Nokia Blog on how most businesses can learn from the release and product strategies of Apple.

What Steve and Apple do best is explain why features are great, why they’re useful to you. Regardless if it’s mundane, it helps general public and the press vomit it verbatim. It helps in direct word of mouth conversation and even more so in online social media. Even if people are retweeting nonsensical bullshit, people are talking about your product in the positive way you choreographed it.

You can read more on Apple product strategies and requirement management strategies on similar articles in here within Zero Lines of Code Blog.

• How does iPhone survive without Flash? (Flash and Runtimes on Mobile Devices, Who is right? Steve Jobs or Adobe?)
• Should you decide the requirements for the customer? (Is Open Source software a classic example of fail for Design by Committee?)

Related Articles

• What Nokia needs to learn from Apple Keynotes. Pointers from Steve Job’s iPhone 4 announcement.

Steve Jobs doesn’t hate flash. It’s just the energy consumption and increased competition from other mobile phone manufacturers due to the nature of platform independence that he is concerned about. Accept the fact, he is the CEO of Apple.

Flash and many other runtimes are now becoming a trend of the past as most mobile device makers are now focusing on enhancing energy consumption through the use of native code.

What about Apple?

In his now famous post published on Apple website, Steve noted that there are six (6) reasons why he has decided to keep flash and other runtimes away from Apple devices.

Openness - Flash is completely proprietary as Jobs says.

Full Web – Flash stands blocking the way for the completely open and total web experience without separate plugins for most browsers.

Reliability, Security and Performance-  There are known reliability and security vulnerabilities in Flash plugins. Flash is known to be the number 1 reasons that Macs crash, according to Jobs.

Battery Life – The device battery dies fast, when Flash is running.  This is a known and clearly visible fact, in instances where operations such as video decoding is performed through software, when it is possible through a dedicated chip. The processor is usually a heavy resource consumer, when compared against a dedicated video decoding chip.

Touch – Flash doesn’t completely support touch. This is somewhat notable when you run Flash applications on a Symbian device. The highly famous ‘On Mouse Over’ effect in Flash sometimes destroys the user experience for most touch based Flash applications.

Proprietary and Third party – Having Flash on board the Apple devices means it creates a third-party dependency on Apple.

What about other manufacturers?

Interestingly, Nokia is trying to lead a different trend. They are promoting QT runtime as the future in mobile and desktop application development as a solution to the highly criticized Symbian platform native application development. Actually QT runs faster on Symbian than most native Symbian applications [as I have noted].

On contrast to Apple, Nokia smartphones are known to support a large number of runtimes including Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, Sun(Oracle) Java,Nokia QT and Python. I have used apps that run on Flash, Java and QT runtimes, and have to say that they are pretty impressive and works almost fine as the native applications on Symbian.

For an example, one of the main reasons I bought my current Nokia N97 Mobile computer and previously Nokia N96 Mobile computer is their ability to run Java based applications.

Speaking of QT, even now I use WordPress for Symbian application which runs on QT runtime and is pretty much impressed with the performance and the user experience.

Google has stated that it is and will continue offering support for Adobe Flash runtime on their Android mobile platform.

What about the users of mobile devices?

The expectation from a mobile device is somewhat independent of what Adobe and Apple are fighting for. Consumers use mobile devices for various purposes and the needs of most consumers are largely different from each other. Some would like to play games on their mobiles, and some people focus on staying connected all the time.

It is almost impractical [at least for the moment] for mobile manufacturers to reach both ends of being able to support processing intensive applications and prolonged battery life.

Related Links

• Thoughts on Flash[by Steve Jobs]
• QT – A Cross Platform application and UI framework

After Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle, there has been a large amount of discussions in the business and developer community on the future of MySQL community involved in its development.

A Community Fork?

Interestingly, MySQL community has been able to create a new Database by a fork from the public branch and has revived the project as MariaDB.

On it’s website, AskMonty.org [founded by Michael "Monty" Widenius, the founder and creator of MySQL] states that its aim is,

To provide a community developed, stable, and always Free branch of MySQL that is, on the user level, compatible with the main version. We strive for total interoperability with both our own, and our upstream, communities.

It also states that,

MariaDB is a backward compatible, drop-in replacement branch of the MySQL® Database Server. It includes all major open source storage engines, including the Maria storage engine.

What about cloud?

There is another branch of MySQL survived as Drizzle which aims to focus on Cloud. The Drizzle project states that,

…[It] is building a database optimized for Cloud and Net applications. It is being designed for massive concurrency on modern multi-cpu/core architecture. The code is originally derived from MySQL.

Looking at both of the above, it can be seen that even if the main source of the above two projects are same (MySQL), they are going on different directions as a result of the community turmoil created because of Oracle’s acquisition.

The Future [and the Community Edition]?

Oracle had stated that it will be continuing to serve existing business customers of MySQL of Sun by providing more investments to the development and continuing support for the existing customers, but has not issued any statement related the community editions of the MySQL. It is seen that Oracle plans to retain existing customers of Sun but most probably, not the community. Having a closed source culture and being business minded, Oracle is highly able to transform the existing MySQL customers to Oracle Database solutions by strategically reducing and finally discontinuing support for existing MySQL customers.

Adding with the demise of MySQL [probably within the next couple of years] from almost every xAMP stack, the free and open source community has to reinvent the wheels to continue its race against the well-built closed source commercial software.

This has also been made difficult due to the absenteeism of a centralized management framework for managing the functionality and requirements  in most open source software as highlighted in a previous post in this blog [Is Open Source software a classic example of fail for Design by Committee?].

Related Articles and Links :

• Wikipedia : XAMPP
• Wikipedia : List of AMP Packages
• Oracle : Plans on Sun Customers
• MariaDB Project
• Drizzle Project
• AskMonty.org
• Zero Lines of Code : Is Open Source software a classic example of fail for Design by Committee?

Open up your  code, watch it grow and let it go. Most open source software have started small and has grown up to be large projects that sometimes have changed the entire game of software business and the economy.

While certain projects are totally open, in some projects, the authors have only shared certain components of their applications [not the complete application] and have asked the community to contribute to the code while retaining the revenue [and profit] for themselves.

The times have come for both types of applications to review their development model as the Golden era of Open Source is coming to an end along with the acquisitions of notable open (source) companies by companies that were mainly focused on creating revenue out of their products. [Read the earlier posts in this blog, Oracle starts to monetize Free Software, is it wrong? and Why a ‘Single Line’ was added to the Solaris Terms of Use by Oracle? ]

Open for Extension?

Most open source projects become total messes in terms of usability and product focus because of the community members and other people requesting various features that are sometimes totally unrelated to the main intentions and goals of developing a particular application.

For an example, in the recently opened up Symbian Ideas project, one had even suggested an idea for a platform feature to romance and pamper one’s loves ones through a simple application which is built into the Symbian Operating System. When Symbian votes down this idea, it would be affecting the Symbian perception for the particular person who suggested it [as he would be feeling being let down by a whole community instead of just a single entity such as a person or a company].

If it was a closed source project, when an idea gets voted down, the person would not be feeling offended as a there is a person who is officially responsible for taking the blame and to follow the suggestion afterward.

A typical reverse example for the above is Apple, which dictates what their users should be able to  have access to. In the case of Apple, the users have less choice for customization and modification while Apple takes all the credit and the blame for the feature set that is offered along with its products.

Google is almost doing the same, but with a different model of open source software development, retaining the power within the paid and experienced developers who work within Google, instead of letting everyone contribute their various ideas and messing the usability and source code up with the myriad of user requirements coming from millions of users.

The completely free and open source software distribution model is facing increasingly tough challenges everyday from companies that are heavily investing in their development resources and marketing their products, instead of opening up their code, giving the source and the product away for free and charging for support.

Closed for Modification?

Taking the above case as an example, it can be seen that the developers and the market are following Apple and Google instead of Symbian[sadly]. Due to the less amount of change [predicted and ongoing] in the core of the project [People are reluctant for rapid change]. Apple and Google have released neatly documented and easy to use Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that allows easy integration of the underlying platform instead of completely opening up the source of the platform.

This has increased trust over their particular projects [brands] because of the simple fact that these entities having complete control and total responsibility over their source and project at a single point.

Apparently,  Design By Commitee anti-pattern describes the same scenario.

Related Articles and Links :

• VisionMobile : Is Android Evil?
• Symbian Ideas Project
• Wikipedia : Design By Committee
• Zero Lines of Code Blog : Oracle starts to monetize Free Software, is it wrong?
• Zero Lines of Code Blog : Why a ‘Single Line’ was added to the Solaris Terms of Use by Oracle?

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After the OpenDocument Format (ODF) Plug-in mentioned in my previous post (Oracle starts to monetize Free Software, is it wrong?), here goes Solaris.

Oracle has changed the Solaris (aka. Sun Solaris [not OpenSolaris]) terms of use to reflect the Oracles policy of monetizing and generating more revenue from Sun applications by changing service models.

Earlier,

According to the Sun Solaris 10 license as it was offered back in 2005:

Obtaining an Entitlement Document is simple. On the Solaris 10 Get It page, select the platform and format you desire from the drop-down menus, and then click the Download Solaris 10 button. When you arrive at the Sun Download Center, either sign in or register, ensuring that a valid e-mail address is part of your Sun Download Center account to receive the Entitlement Document. Fill out the Solaris download survey, specifying the number of systems on which you are installing the software. Once you have completed the survey, you will be redirected to the Solaris 10 download page for downloading, and your Entitlement Document will be sent to your registered e-mail address.

Today,

Now Oracle has appended a single sentence that effectively modifies the entire intent of the above terms of use.

Please remember, your right to use Solaris acquired as a download is limited to a trial of 90 days, unless you acquire a service contract for the downloaded Software.

That’s right, you need a service contract from Oracle now onwards to use Solaris more than 90 days. Previously, you could use the Solaris download as long as you wish without having a contract with Sun Microsystems.

If you are giving away something for free while being able to generate revenue out of it, you’re probably in a bad business model.

For Oracle[as always], there is no wrong time to make money. If you don’t own shares of Oracle or worried about the future of commitments from Oracle to the communities involving the users of these software, don’t complain.

But still, you can comment here on this blog.

Related Articles :

• Wikipedia : Solaris (Operating System)

According to a recent tweet, Oracle (the company which recently acquired Sun Microsystems) has started to charge a license fee for its popular open office compatibility plug-in for Microsoft Office.

Is this a signal for other open source and free software vendors to start charging for commercially valuable applications?

Given the functionality and usability of the OpenOffice, it’s the right time to start investing more time and effort on its competencies against Microsoft  Office and most other online office applications such as Google Docs.

The OpenOffice suite follows the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard, and there is no other reason that it should be kept free when there are better free or low cost alternatives available which follow the same standard. For Oracle, it’s time to make money. Free users, don’t complain.

In most blogs that discussed about the new offer from Oracle, it was always noted that certain versions of the Microsoft Office software costs less than the Oracle converter.

Would this be fueling the open source through increased amount of investments from commercial entities?

This is a tricky question, as most companies who earn from Free and Open Source applications earn revenue by providing support. Most of them function and generate profit like they are having thousands of great programmers working free for them.

Yes, some programmers are enthusiastic about free coding and contributing to the open source projects, but it is the time they need to be paid and recognized for their commitments to projects accordingly.

Programmers : If you’re ever good at anything, don’t do it for free.

Starting charging for free software [for the Office plug-in (in this instance)] has created a large amount of negative impressions on Oracle’s commitment to Open Source. As most us know, developers and open source enthusiasts rallied upon and evangelized OpenOffice because it was the best free alternative available for desktop office operations as they had high hopes on OpenOffice to beat its commercial competitors by being completely free and standards compliant.

Any open source company who earns money by using code written by someone else, has an ethical responsibility to look after the community and their wishes. The licensing model of the code doesn’t matter. This is a purely an ethical concern.

Oracle is doing what it thinks that could make money in the short run. There is nothing wrong in Oracles approach apart from the above concerns. Revenues and the community should be kept in balance in order to make profits and foster innovation, if you keep aligned to one, your business is going to fail. Someday, somehow.

Finally for all the open source enthusiasts and hobbyists,

…As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid?

- Bill Gates [in his famous open letter to hobbyists on February 3rd, 1976]

Yes Bill, I agree with you.

Related :

• Techworld : Oracle charges for Microsoft Office to OpenOffice file converter
  Reverses Sun position
• Wikipedia : Bill Gates Open letter to hobbyists

[Taking loans is bad. I do not like to spend what I don’t have.]

I once activated this when I ran out of credits after someone needed my phone to take some calls. After activating, the balance showed -30 LKR, and I was unable to browse using WAP, or use any other service apart from calls, which wasn’t the requirement for me.
Then I cycled to a nearby shop and bought a ‘smart’ reload card, and topped up my account with 100 LKR, and after the top-up the balance showed as 70 LKR, even if I didn’t take a single call using the so called ‘loan’.

[It must be definitely a bug in the account balance checking method when a connection is made through packet data. The authorization method for calls is able to use a minus value, while the other authorization and account balance checking methods returning false at times when the account balance is less than or equal to zero]

Thereafter I called the customer care, the call dropped twice, once after the agent picked up my call and were ‘busy’ looking for a solution, ending the two free customer care calls.

Somehow, in the third time (after being exposed to ads more than 5 minutes), I was able to successfully reach an agent. I inquired why the WAP wasn’t functional when I activated the ‘loan’ and why didn’t they notice whether the ‘loan’ is applicable for value added services such as WAP.

The agent was clueless at first because I talked about the small print, and after sometime told me that there are TWO account balances in my account. One for the free calls left from the ‘loan’ and the other one containing the real balance. He told that if I make a call, it would be directly charged from the free calls balance and asked me check next time when I make a call. I said thank you and hung up.

After sometime I had to make a call, and saw the call has been charged from my ‘normal balance’. I didn’t want to call the customer care again to ‘confirm’ that agent my credit has gone missing.

Over the past few weeks I have been disappointed at Mobitel and also I’m not happy about the tariff for the data consumer. Mobitel charges 98 LKR (VAT included) to give a 200MB per week naming it as weekly freedom. I usually do not activate this unless I want to download something over 10 mega bytes. (That’s right; I’ve been paying more than 500 LKR for just over 5 Megabytes per month for packet data)

In the meantime, Airtel Lanka has come up with a fairly simple plan of offering 400MB of data for 99 LKR per month, and I’m thinking of trying it out though I wasn’t happy with the signal strength of the Airtel 3G network even in where I live, Bambalapitiya the ‘Las Vegas’ in the capital Colombo of Sri Lanka.

Related links:

Mobitel: http://www.mobitel.lk
Airtel new offering: http://www.airtel.lk/AirtelSL/prepaid/youth_pack.html