Configuring your phone for mobile Internet (DST/bmobile, Brunei)

Note: for Android configuration refer to this post

With mobile Internet being very cheap on DSTCom (B$0.05/MB) we all wish to to be surfing the ‘net but before that your phone needs to be configured to do so. The settings supplied by DSTCom are:

For Internet access
Name: DSTInternet
APN: dst.internet
Username: <no username>
Password: <no password>

For MMS
Name: DSTMMS
APN: dst.mms
Username: mms
Password: mms
MMS Server: http://mms.dst.com.bn/mmsc
Proxy Address: 10.100.6.101
Port No: 3130

However it’s not always easy translating these settings to your phone. I recently had issues with a friend’s Sony Ericsson G502 being a Nokia person myself.

Update 1: Due to search requests on bmobile internet connection I shall add it here based on the findings of Hazarry’s work here (PDF file) and bmobile’s iPhone settings.
Bmobile’s APN: bmobilewap. More detailed configuration can be found

For Internet access
Name: bmobilewap
APN: bmobilewap
Username: <no username>
Password: <no password>
Proxy Server Address & port (these settings seem optional as they are not listed in bmobile’s settings PDFs)
HTTP: 129.9.10.20:6500
WAP: 129.9.10.20:6500
Socks: 129.9.10.20:1080

For MMS
Name: bmobile MMS
APN: bmobilemms
Username: <no username>
Password: <no password>
Proxy Server Address & port: 129.9.10.20:6500
Socks: 129.9.10.20:1080

Server Name : B‐Mobile MMS
Gateway : 129.9.10.20
Port Number : 6500
Server Address : http://mms.bmobile.com.bn/was
Connect Via : MMS Servers
Size Limit : 300K
WAP Version : WAP 2.0
GPRS Authentication: PAP

–End of Update 1

Nokia E51 Configuration

Continue reading “Configuring your phone for mobile Internet (DST/bmobile, Brunei)” →

Speaking of Bad Terms of Service

While doing some shopping online I came across the following clause in the terms of service from an online store. I would tell you where I got it from but after reading it you’ll know why

7. NO LINKING, FRAMING, MIRRORING, SCRAPING, DATA-MINING OR POSTINGS

Links to the Website without the express written permission of 1GCB are strictly prohibited. To request permission to link to the Website, please send an email to cs@shopping.com.bn. 1GCB may in its discretion cancel and revoke any permission it may give to link to the Website at any time and without any notice or liability.

The framing, mirroring, scraping or data-mining of the Website or any of its content in any form and by any means is strictly prohibited. You may not use any collaborative browsing or display technologies in connection with your use of the Website or to post comments, communications, or any other data of any kind to or on the Website with the intention that such postings may be viewed by other users of the Website.

Brownie points for a clause against data-mining and scraping, though.

Impartial Law

When I read the article entitled “Setting Priorities Straight” by Ignatius Stephen earlier this month I felt pretty disgusted with the way things got settled.

“Mr. Ambassador, sir, your car is being locked. Hurry, hurry!” cried the head waiter who came running. “Talk to the officers, please. Quick! Mr. Ambassador!”
….
“Sorry, I parked here. But mine is a diplomatic vehicle. Ours is a new mission here and meanwhile I am waiting for a diplomatic car number plate,” the emissary explained to the arms of the law.

Point on contention being that it seems that just because the person is an ambassador they think they can get away with the wrong doing of parking in a place they are not supposed to park. I for one am utterly disgusted with this. Just because the person is of a high social rank, he/she can get away with their actions despite being in the wrong, and in this case breaking the law. Laws are in place to maintain order. If we break it, we deserve punishment. I believe there is room for leniency, but in this situation that does not apply.

On a side note, what use is a law if it is not enforced? I sure many of us remember the raid of the kedai komunis (translated to “communist shop” (if anybody knows the origin of this do leave a comment)), that sold nothing but pirated CDs and VCDs at the time. There was a major operation to rid the country of these pirated materials. It happened once or twice but and after that, it seemed that they did not seem to care about piracy anymore. The kedai komunis is still there, selling the same old pirated goods. More recently last year they raided an IT computer school (I would give links but can’t seem to Google search within brudirect.com) for usage of pirated software and the typical non enforcement after that.

The most recent law in place is the prohibition of smoking in specific places according to the Tobacco Order 2005 and it was finally fully enforced on 1st February 2008. A friend of mine happened to be in a situation where she had to suffer the negligence of smokers smoking in an area where it was prohibited. She gestured towards the non-smoking sign and was given a sour face by the smoker. Who didn’t even stay to finish the meal but got up and left. Also reported in the papers:

One patron said he warned them about the new rules, but they ignored him. (source)

People need to learn to be less selfish and more socially responsible. If you want to smoke and decide to put yourself though the health risk, you may but let it not harm/effect the lives of those around you.

The order also makes it an offence to smoke in certain public places and vehicles and anyone found guilty of violating the order will face a fine not exceeding $1,000.

I for one would love to see the Tobacco Order to be enforced so we can leave in a cleaner Brunei. We as a people of Brunei need to do something. Let us not be innocent bystanders suffering at the hands of others. Let us do something.

A Lesson in Web Application Security Part 1

So it was today that the ‘O’, ‘AS’ & ‘A’ Level Results came out and in the recent days before, it was pretty well advertised that students could get the results by SMS. So when I heard word that the results were out I went to the Registration page to be greeted with a pretty, how would I put it, not so aesthetically pleasing site. Yes I know functionality is what is important and I do personally believe in that and I know my skills in design need a lot of work but come on people!

The site in question

So I decide to take a look around and see how they handle the registration of users….

Step 1: Input Details

Step 2: Confirmation

Step 3: Nothing, we’re done!
Nothing, we're done!

It does state that registration is free which is good however they was a huge flaw in the design process of this registration. As shown in the next 2 steps:

Step 4: Receive Confirmation SMS
Registration for BN123 4321 CANDIDATE NAME is successful. To cancel the registration, type MOE CANCEL 98765 and send to 8885555

Step 5: Receive Results SMS
O LEVEL RESULT 2008 Exam Center: BN123 Candidate Index: 4321 A.M = A B.M = A BIO = A CHE = A COM = A ENG = A MAT = A PHY = A RSLT = 8 0

–Update: Actual candidate name and results changed for illustration purposes

Part 2 will be released once Mach Telecommunications Systems fixes the exploits in question (or if they don’t do anything about it, forcing me to release it)

Update: Read Part 2 here

The Great Brunei Flood of 2009

Like many others I was caught in the floods and inconveniences of last night. As with BruneiMotors.com I too wish to applaud the Fire resuce, Ambulance, Police and any other forces who were sent out to help the drives, the stranded and all those affected.

Some shots from Gadong
Unitek Area (next to bridge exiting Gadong via the Mall):
Unitek flooded

Unitek:
Flooded car

Car parked at the Unitek area
Unitek area & Bridge

More pics of the events of last night

The flood aftermath at RanoAdidas

Submerged! at anakbrunei.org

Heavy downpour last night cause flash flood around Brunei at BruneiMotors.com

With many people displaced/inconvenienced due to the floods or the lack of electricity, myself without electricity, it makes me think of how refugees feel. We can get so frustrated with these little inconveniences when there are so many others around the World running for their lives, not knowing if they will even live to see another day. I hope it helps us humble ourselves are realize how much we have and how much we take for granted.

Take care everybody. Drive safe. God bless!

Pizzas at just $15.00 nett per person?

While dining at Sheraton, head over to Brunei’s only Italian Pizzeria at the Pool Terrace for pizzas at just $15 nett per person
Source (Brudirect)

Sheraton Promotion Flyer
Images taken from tigerlim.blogspot.com

So I had the Pizza promotion with a few friends the other day and we found out the hard way that it happened to be $15 net per pizza. The phrasing did seem a bit strange to me, but I didn’t think that Sheraton, being one of the finer hotels in Brunei, would pull such a scheme, but alas I was wrong. So this is just to show my disdain for the misleading marketing of Sheraton.

On a lighter note, the pizzas were pretty good though the pizza with 4 different types of cheese didn’t have blue cheese.

BruDirect News RSS Feed

BruDirect dubbed Brunei’s No. 1 News Website also known as, in my books, Brunei’s No. 1 Website in advertisements and general page clutter as shown below (I dare you to click)

So I got fed up and created an RSS feed that automatically updates daily. After much tweaking finally I have

Brudirect News Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/brudirect

Updates daily, every 30 minutes

(Note: the feed contains only stories hosted on Brudirect, not external stories from Yahoo or ESPN shown on Brudirect)
For those who don’t know what RSS or news feeds are, Common Craft did a fantastic video of RSS in Plain English as show below

For if you just rather have a single webpage to read you can bookmark this page.

TelBru / E-Speed Customer Service

My delayed Telbru / E-Speed story as promised here.

So I’ve had quite a bit of E-Speed issues since the Olympics and most of the time I just suffered with it but a few weeks ago I decided to file a complaint. I have to say I’ve had a pleasant experience with the technical support when they’ve come down to my place. Take it the first 2 times they came I wasn’t in, so I wasn’t sure what exactly they did if they did much at all. However from the past 3 visits when they came, I explained the exact problem to them face to face and they informed me of the possible issues and went about fixing it.

Apparently when the E-Speed was installed (a few years back) they didn’t do the job properly. My telephone line has phones upstairs and downstairs each with different connection points, and the upstairs connection was used for E-Speed via a DSL filter connected to the modem while the downstairs phone was left as is. This is NOT how it is supposed to be done because the connection downstairs is connected straight to the mains bypassing the DSL filter. The correct way is for the main connection from the telephone pole outside to be connected to a DSL filter and the telephone line output from the filter is supposed to be used for any telephone connections (both upstairs and downstairs).

The E-Speed people told me the wiring is a contractor issue which I should handle which is understandable since they did the telephone wiring in the house, which is fair enough. They did notice some noise in the telephone cable so they called up TelBru technicians who proceeded to change the cable from the telephone post to my house. E-Speed worked however only that night did I realize that the phone couldn’t make outgoing calls. So the next day I called them again and the TelBru technicians came over. I have to say the person who filed my complaint didn’t understand me too well as her description of my complaint was wrong (I’ve had other issues pertaining web hosting questions that the person on the help line really did not understand me and said that they’d get a technical officer to get back to me, but they never did, but alas that is another issue), but anyway I explained the issue of the wrongly wired connections to the Telbru technicians and they started fixing it without charge! After that I’ve been having a pretty good and steady Internet connection. So a big shout-out and kudos to the E-Speed and TelBru, let’s just get some better / more informed people on the telephone lines so as not to make mistakes. Imagine if I wasn’t home and they tried to fix the problem described which was wrong and thus wasting the time of everybody. So let’s just hope Brunei strives for better customer service in all departments and places because I’m pretty sure that we all know we need it

DST’s OntheGo! on the fritz?

So DST just launched it’s OntheGo! service which is a “mobile portal product by DSTCom providing information and entertainment contents which can be accessed by all DSTCom customers on 3G as well as on GPRS/EDGE.” (yet again with the ‘!’ at the end of the name). It seems like a competitor to bmobile’s mobi.TV but as you can see from the completely different channel selections they are for different target groups.

	OntheGo!	mobi.TV
Rates	Various as below	$9.90 for 16 channels (does not state if there is a charge for streaming, which I believe there would be)
News	CNN	CBNC,Al Jeezera
Sports	ESPN Sports	Golf Asian Tour, Extreme Sports
Entertainment	Disney, Nickelodeon, Astro Ria, and Astro AEC	fashionTV, F Men, Luxe TV, Asian Food Channel, Travel Channel, Fun Little Movies, E!, Fish Tales, Animax, Taffy Kids
Music	MTV, Astro Hitz	C Music, Trace TV

OntheGo! Rates
Browsing	Free except for Mobile ESPN & Star SPorts Mobile $1 each per month. Islamic Portal $3 per month and data charges apply for Facebook, Yahoo!, Daily News, Simpur Mobile Portal & Music Chart
Video On Demand
< 2 minutes clip	$0.30 per view / $0.50 per download
>= 2 minutes clip	$0.50 per view / $0.80 per download
Video stream	$0.05 per min
Live stream	$0.05 per min
Webcams	$0.05 per min
Downloads
Ringtones, Phone Themes, Screensavers	$1.50 per download
Wallpapers, Calendars, MMS Greetings	$0.50 per download
MMS Uploading	$0.05 per MMS
Games	$4.00 per download

OntheGo! is trying to do more than mobi.TV by being a portal like iTunes which has it’s music store, video store and application store. It’s trying to be a one stop shop which for the moment. And I say this just from the information I get online (Brunei Times | Brudirect | Borneo Bulletin) because I can’t access the site on my phone / on my computer / via a proxy so I can’t take a look at what it’s like. I like the fact that they are trying to build media access on the go, however I think we still need better backend work. I’ve heard complaints about DST Go! speed, probably due to everybody jumping on that band wagon thus sharing the speed within the area of usage and I still get GPRS connection errors now and again. And I guess they should get the website up, running and ready when the news is out! Because that is totally unacceptable.

Note: for Android configuration refer to this post

Nokia E51 Configuration

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