Reliance Broadband is an ISP in India and they use a web browser based authentication system to log the user onto their network. One of their most popular plans the – Night Booster 4X offers 4 times more speed than day for unlimited  downloads from 10PM to 8AM. Now if there was a way to turn on your system at 10PM, automatically login to Asianet and turn your download manager on and then shutdown at 8AM it would have been perfect. The only problem is that the http based authentication system makes it a bit unwieldy to automate. Well not really . I found a bash script to automate this login process.

Features

- Automatically connect to Asianet Dataline without having to sign in via the browser.
- In startup and free mode the script will keep the connection alive.
- The script will automatically reconnect if connection breaks because of a power failure or a line problem.
- In free mode the script will call any related startup and shutdown scripts placed inside the ~/.auto-login/startup and ~/.auto-login/shutdown folders.

Setup Instructions

a) Copy script to your favorite scripts folder.
b) Edit script to update username and password with your Asianet login information.
c) Add script to your startup process. See different ways of using the script below to know more.
d) If you want to start and stop other applications at the time of starting the script then create a folder ~/.auto-login and inside that create sub-folders startup and shutdown. Place other scripts that have to be called during startup and shutdown of this script into the respective folders. Make sure that these scripts have their executable bit set.

Different ways of using the script

1) Add a shortcut to your task bar to launch the script with the parameter “auto”. Use this shortcut to start the connection with one click and stop the connection with one click. Remember that the connection will time out if there is no activity. But that should not be a problem because you can connect again with a single click.
2) Add the script to your startup process with parameter “startup”. This will keep the script running in the background and the script will keep the connection alive with keep-alive requests.
3) Add the script to your startup process with parameter “free”. This will keep the script running in the background and the script will connect only during the free download hours and then it will keep the connection alive with keep-alive requests until the free time ends. When free time ends it will disconnect the connection. In this mode the script will also run any related startup and shutdown scripts placed inside the ~/.auto-login/startup and ~/.auto-login/shutdown folders.

The latest source can be downloaded from http://github.com/anoopjohn/Asianet-Auto-Login-Script

If there are issues with the script please use the github issue queue at http://github.com/anoopjohn/Asianet-Auto-Login-Script/issues

Any student with a valid student email address are eligible to get a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional, 32-bit or 64-bit for only a mere $30. The student will have the choice on which version they get, because presumably students with weaker net-books may want a less demanding version (but less features).

Windows aren’t the only ones being generous, with apple offering their new operating system “Snow Leopard” for $29, beating Microsoft’s Windows 7 price by $1.

Windows 7 Logo

This offer will continue until January 3, 2010 at 12 a.m. CST. So you should, if you’re a student have plenty of time to pick up a copy as this offer is way to sweet to give up. The deal is found on the win741.com site, a recently launched site from Microsoft.

This move seems like a smart one by Microsoft, considering apple have beat Microsoft (Home Premium (upgrade) retailing for $120 and $200 for a Professional upgrade) on the standard prices with Snow Leopard. ($29).

Microsoft is preparing to launch software for GPRS “feature phones”  in developing markets around the world. The software will allow the light, low-cost phones to  support Twitter, Facebook and other Internet content, bringing popular app content to phones that would otherwise be unable to offer it. Feature phones are an inexpensive smartphone alternative that combine calling and one or two other applications. The software called OneApp will be unveiled in South Africa, and Microsoft plans to extend it to other nations where feature phones are popular including India and China.  Amit Mital, corporate vice president of the Unlimited Potential Group and Startup Business Accelerator at Microsoft, had this to say: “”We designed OneApp from the ground up on feature phones with very limited memory and processing capabilities. OneApp will be able to help people do things they couldn’t do before with their feature phone — anything from paying their bills to helping diagnose their health issues or just staying connected with friends and family.” [via Yahoo Tech]