Encounter: JOBS across the GATE"s"

Steve Jobs of Apple fame and Bill Gates the person who could not come out of his Winodws , crossing each others track during the journey of their fame.

India and the mobile market

some time back i had written a "single line post" about mobile phone market in India.

This search query came in as a icing on the cake. Just do a quick Google for "fastest growing mobile phone market" and there you have it :)

coming soon: MFSFA*

The bad part of innovation is " being first matters" , and at the same time innovation doesn't just mean creating new things, it also involve doing it better. A very good example for this is Google. Google did not invent search engine, yet Google become the leaders of web based search providers. Well the context of this post is entirely unrelated to Google, it has to deal with My first freeware symbian application :)

From past 10/12 weeks I have been working on a symbian application which would help in saving electricity by alerting users to disconnect the mobile charger once the battery is full. This, according to nokia would conserve a significant amount of energy. The app is ready for a beta test but for only S60 2nd Edition devices :)

As I mentioned in my first line "being firsts matters”, today saw a post on symbian-freak regarding PyBattery, a freeware python based application which servers the same purpose. The Coincidence is, my application is aslo called called “Battery” its symbian c++. From past 2 weeks I haven’t written a single line of code cos of my busy schedule, but I would be ramping up now to give out the first beta.

Screenshots coming soon…

*MFSFA My first Symbian Freeware Application

Nokia PC phone: New generation PC connectivity for Nokia Phones

Finally Nokia hears to the S60 users Plea and grants them with Nokia PC phone. This is a smart interface by which user can make calls, send SMS messages and manage contacts from PC browser!

The Nokia PC phone is a browser extension/plug-in and it works with Firefox 2.x. Internet Explorer 7.x will be supported soon

I have been struggling with Nokia PC suite to send SMS and to manage Contacts and i was never happy with there User interface. This is a smart move from Nokia of having the PC connectivity solution integrated with the browser.

Some of the features included in this app are:

1. SMS alerts: Now you will get an alert on the PC when you receive any new message.You can read and reply to the SMS with few clicks

1. You can Call , Add and Send SMS to the numbers directly form the web site

You can download the installable[~15mb size binary] from PCPhone website

I have not tested the app to its full extent.The app has huge potential and i hope in future this would come as part of Nokia PC suite and at the same time PC suite would get some sort of a facelift.

New and Improved Gmail chat features

Google has improved there "Gmail chat" interface. Though u cannot make a voice call form with in the "Gmail chat" there are 2 main enhancements.

First being the Group chat option: Now you can chat with multiple contacts in the same window. i.e. conference. finally the feature which i was awaiting to have in my Gchat.

The second one is about the smiley :) yes, now you go can from B-) to to
Best part is, you can choose in which format you wish to have your emoticons!!!
i like the second one the most....

but y dont we have these option in Gtalk standalone application???

India spearing into Space age with ISRO and TATA's Fuel cell car

TATA and ISRO tie up to propel INDIA in to the space age, this time its not the rockets but the automobile. Tata in alliance with ISRO is gearing up to bring out the prototype of hydrogen based CAR. This Car would run on hydrogen and the exhaust would be JUST water vapour. This is the reason why it has earned the title of "World's most Greenest car"

The technology behind hydrogen based:
Though burning hydrogen releases lot of energy , we are not doing this in the case of hydrogen [Fuel cell] based Cars. (we don't need a bomb behind our cars! do we?)

Making it work is as simple as combining Hydrogen with Oxygen to form water. Believe me this is what is done. During this process electricity is generated and this is used to propel your car.

Below is the ppt which I presented to my class during my engineering , back in 2005


View Full size

The technology sounds simple but practically its not that easy to achieve.There are few points to be considered before jumping to a conclusion.

1. Do we have the required infrastructure to supply hydrogen as fuels to individuals.[Only NASA can afford hydrogen to run its Space expeditions]
2. Safety. How safe we are? carrying highly flammable element very close to us
3. The Cost of the system.
   

This initiative from TATA and ISRO is for prototyping. If you have plans of buying a car , and would want to wait for this prototype car, then i have some suggestions .You not wait for this, because as of now a Hydrogen based car would cost some where around $40,000 !!!




India with such bold initiatives is surely shining. Lets hope India would be the role model for all the 3rd world countries to embrace the new technology and bring down the pollution rate.

wonder blunder

Today morning i received a mail from my bank to my residential address.
I was shocked!! How on earth, i could receive this mail? NO, I wasn't worried about the content of the mail, but the address!!!

Look at the pic below

Do we have Berlin in Karnataka, INDIA???

I am amazed, how could a bank like IDBI could do such a mistake!!.
Still more amazed with the courier service. Phew!!how did they manage to search Berlin in INDIA :P
I think the PIN Code guided those guys to deliver it properly

N95 Application wishlist : Golgoli Game

From the day Nokia announced there N95 mobile, I have been madly following the reviews, User opinion and Nokia's post marketing support.

Every thing seems to be perfect except for the battery and RAM hiccups.

Lately, we are seeing loads of freeware application based on Accelerometer floating around.They look amazing viz. NokMote, Y-Inclinometer, Lightsaber

But what i am eagerly waiting is for an application (rather a game) similar to this.


This is already available on linux based device called Simputer [picopeta now Amidasimputer]

This makes use of the "flip-flop" sensor which on the other side is similar to the N95 Accelerometer sensor.

The game is pretty simple and straight forward.
You need to move all "Balls" called Golis into the centre circle.
And how do you move the balls? this is the most attractive part of this game, By tilting the device.

Being a developer myself, I would love to develop this app , but due to time constraint i would not be able to :(


P.S Simputer is the "Forgotten Soul of Indian PDA "
Visit
http://www.amidasimputer.com
http://www.picopeta.com/

Short range communications protocol like bluetooth , IrDa have been incorporated in mobile phones and also in other devices which require some sort of short range communication.

IrDa has a huge successes in the form of remote controls for TV, Video Playes and other house hold electronics, where as Bluetooth has been the defacto standards for mobile short range communication because of its low power consumption. Although both Bluetooth and IrDa fall under short range wireless communication it did not enjoy the exposure as RFID did.

RFID <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--> <!--[endif]-->

Soon you will be able to do an inventory check with your mobile phone. Wondering how? Reading the RFID.

Yes, in future mobiles may come equipped with RFID reader hardware and software. Mobiles have been equipped with Barcode readers[IrDa based] from a very long time. But the sad part is, by the time our mobiles were able to understand this, barcode were almost considered to be obsolete [but still used]

RFID are sonsidered to be the future of identity tagging for all sorts of consumer and industrial goods.

Nokia has come one step closer to achieve there Concept shocased in there "Nokia Concept ph0one Video"

In this video notice the data exchanged between the e devices when they are brought very close together, that is the result of NFC as Nokia likes to call it. The soul behind NFC for mobile devices is JSR 257

The Java Contactless Communication API (JSR 257) enables mobile devices to communicate via short-range wireless means, such as RFID, infrared light, or even Bluetooth, and presents such devices via a simple, homogeneous interface to Java applications. This article explains the role of the Java Contactless Communication API in the emerging field of near-field communications, and provides an example of reading data from any contactless target, including an RFID tag.

BCB5: Brainchunk->Attendence(EAbsent);

Due to some unavoidable circumstances I have to skip BCB5.
So I can not keep up the updates. Apologias to not able to keep up my words.

I will try to get the feedback from fellow bloggers, and if i can understand there experience :) i would try to elaborate on the same

Android: First impression

"The Droid is out"

Everyone on this planet is talking about it, the most awaited "MOBILE PHONE PLATFORM' was introduced to us on 11/05/2007 and days after this we got to see it live in this video.

what was all the hype about? well "When God sneezes! the earth tumbles!!" I think this is what happened in the case of Gphone. When google showed interest in coming into mobile handset market, there were dozens of rumours/hoax flying around, and what we got finally is ANDROID.

The SDK and the underneath platform technology dint impress me.

1. The UI doesn't look COOL enough.
2. Its running on Linux core [Hardware Abstraction Layer- HAL]
3. All the native Components are written in c/c++.
4. Application layer is JAVA so the exposed API's are all java based.

surely it is more than what have been discussed

The best part of ANDROID is the webkit based browser. Goolge has managed to successfully port the worlds most powerful browser available for mobiles to their Linux 2.6 kernel . Webkit is port of Apple's safari based webcore engine.

what does this mean? All most all the phones right from a feature phone to a smartphone and PDA have linux running beneath. Linux has the highest number of users [apart from symbian and WM] in PDA/Smartphone arena. With this port of webkit onto the linux platform we can expect almost all the linux based mobiles to have webkit based browser.Linux mobile enthusiast would be thrilled to use this powerful tool which the symbian users are doing from past 2 years.

finally who is gonna win this race mobile race?
will it be open standard - syambian?
Or open handset platform - Google?
or proprietary and closed - windows mobile , OSX?

its very difficult at this stage to predict anything.With google entering this race, future of mobileswould be worth waiting for.

Nokia Research: The unsung hero

In the case of many heroes, warriors and saints, we only praise and adore there capabilities and achievements. We don't really care about who inspired them, who shaped them to achieve what they are now. Same applies even to the field 0f technology and research. Usually we fail to recognize the men behind the most cutting edge technology coming out in the market, for example Nokia Research Center has been working around the clock to give us a better mobile experience.

http://research.nokia.com

Nokia Research Center (NRC) is a separate unit within Nokia, not attached to anyone of the specific product development business units.

Download the "Nokia Research Center Yesterday - Today - Tomorrow" podcast Presented by Bob Iannucci, SVP, Head of Nokia Research Center.

The Area of research include

1. Access and Connectivity
2. Data and Content Technologies
3. Device Architecture
4. Digital Services
5. Human Interaction
6. Physical Touch Digital Match

Some of the cutting edge applications/ services like Mobile Web Browser, Active monitor, sports tracker are the graduates of NRC

Some of the projects which excites me are MARA, Nokia Computer Vision Library(NCV) and Virtual Office.

What I would expect from MARA and NVC is some sort of a enhancements to the smartphones which helps the blinds to use a smartphone to navigate by getting an visual feed back of there environment. This may not be far from reality.

Though NCR is the incubator for most of the new application from nokia, I haven’t seen many of the blogs / community linking to this site.

Hats off to the people how drive the nextgen cart of NOKIA. They are the true unsung heroes of Nokia.

Happy diwali from orkut

Happy deepavali to every one

Biggest surprise to me for this dewali came from an unexpected source.

I have been busy from last 2dyas and was away from my computer.Today when i log into orkut i saw a special tap on the top right banner.Guess what! orkut wanted to wish us in the best way it could by giving us a new THEME. Enjoy this gift from the worlds most used social networking site.




This is the Orkut -Diwali - Theme


But i was little dissapointed to see this on my google home page


i was expecting some sort of new logo crafted to suite this festival of light :(
[ i thing i was over excited by seeing orkut's new skin for diwali :) ]

But i fond other web giant posing for this special festival.

http://in.yahoo.com/

"Google, Where is my phone?"

All Road leads to "Open Platform".The speculations, hypes and hoax about the Gphone stops at ANDROID, an open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices, which includes includes
An operating system, user-interface and applications -- all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation. This acquisition 2 years back payed off.

This platform was developed in collaboration with the mobile giants like Motorola, HTC , Intel, Broadcomm to name few.
How can we miss Windriver when we are talking about ANDROID. The proposed OS is suspected to be a flavour of windriver Linux.

SDK will be out soon, Waiting to see what will we have in there ;)

What does this openhandsetplatform mean?
simple you will have your..
Google contacts as your Phonebook
Google Calender as your mobile calender
Google Docs as your office suite
Jaiku for SMS
Zingku for MMS
Picassa/Youtube for media

And in case if you wonder , who will be the service provider....
Thing big think "life time" think GrandCentral

everything is so tightly woven around the "WEB"

Lets wait till the Prototype hits the market

Adobe Flashlite 3 on my 3250

Adobe's next gen runtime engine for mobile Flashlite 3 succeeds FL2.1 with enhanced features like Flash video a.k.a FLV format , MMI extensions for UI design and also as a plug-in to the web browsers.In short this means, we would be able to watch FLV on s60 phones.

I got my developer edition FL3 player couple of days back.The most interesting part is that its running on my Nokia 3250 which is a Symbian S60 3rd Edition handset.

[Note: According to Adobe, the current device which supports FL3 and its FLV playback is N95]


Thanks to Giorgio Natili i was able to play flv video for the first time on my Mobile.
below is a pic i composed to detail out the FL players





The video which i recorded [running the FLV video playback application] is a huge file so cannot upload :|

Update: Adobe Labs has released there FL3 [Developer Edition] to the public.You can download the Standalone player from Adobe Labs.

Please Note This installer only supports standalone content and cannot be used to view SWF files that are embedded in a mobile web browser or to test any type of personalization content such as wallpapers or screensavers.

The Website also instructes that The Flash Lite 3 Developer Edition has been certified by Adobe for the Nokia N95 (non-US 3G version) only.

But the Developer Edition Flash lite is running on my 3250. So go ahead at give it a try with your S60 3rd Edition devices including N80 and N73 :)

Screenplay, Freeway illustrated by symbain

Remember in my other post i had mentioned about the 2 new technology symbian introduced to us.

well, if words weren’t enough to explain such a beautiful concept , here are the video illustration of the same.

Points to be note:

1. Note the home screen, do u recognize that icon on the top left of the screen J
2. Notice the tap on the screen to receive the incoming call? Have you seen a similar big white DOT

In my opinion Nokia - symbian marriage is getting stronger and stronger as years go by.This Screenplay technology is the driving force for Nokia’s S60 Touch or other way also applies.

Nokia and symbian together are ready to take over the smartphone world. Will it happen we just have to wait and watch.

In the mean time they have a big challenge to over come :)

Windows Desktop Search uninstall

In my previous post related to windows Desktop search, i did not recommend to install WDS. But some took the "pleasure" of doing this and from the day they have installed there life has become hell. Believe me they are "REALLY ANGRY" on me for that little post. They should be, because once you install this. its not that easy to get ride of WDS. This was supposed to happen and you know why ;).

OK now let’s get to business.How to uninstall this!! Give a try with ADD/Remove program. These will not goanna help in this exercise, at least for me: it dint work. Luckily found this simple technique, thanks to RCIayH on msdn forum, he suggests that most of the time this problem is caused due to the absence of uninstall directory which should have been created while installing.

If you are unable to find this “C:\WINDOWS\$NtUninstallKB917013$’ on your system then the best and simple solution is to copy this folder in any of ther other system where WDS has been properly installed. If you are unable to find these files then you can download this from http://www.2daytech.com/$NtUninstallKB917013$.rar [thanks Mrashed] extract this in your windows folder and run spuninst.exe and there you have it , you have your old search companion back on ur system :)

Kudos to MS for releasing SUCH s/w and letting us explore there OS :|

Thank’s to RClayH and MRashed

Symbian Dissected

The greatest and the most unassailable software fortress has been broken.I am talking about about Symbian's Platform Security.This has come as a shock to everyone.The impregnable platform is no more safe and has amazed all veterens of symbian os.This has opened the doors and paved way for all the 3rd part software to easyly access the system files which symbian never wanted.

As a symbian developer i never thought "symbian Platform security" could be broken!! Well it has already been done according to this post at http://symbaali.info/ he even has a post like this

"Goodbye S60 Platform Security, Hello CAPABILITIES!"

Symbian was boasting about their platform security.This came as a slap on their face. In fact Symbian would be in a state of shock now since the hack was fueled by Nokia's Firmware update "NSU" .
This person was able to intercept firmware downloaded by NSU make some modifications and then flash it on to the device and voila!! you have a device which can grant full all access to the symbian file system system.

He refers to using a simple "SWIPOLICY.INI" file which is SoftWare Instalation Policy
the description can be found in Symbian developer library and is well documented.
According to the document

When installing native Symbian OS packages (.SIS files) onto a device, the code performing the installation (the Software Inst aller, sometimes referred to as SWI) first reads the settings in a policy file in ROM (swipolicy.ini) to determine how the installation should proceed. Swipolicy.ini is configured by a device manufacturer prior to device shipping.

This document describes the contents of tha

t policy file and the effect the settings have upon software installation. Swipolicy.ini is not divided into sections and parameters can occur in any order. This document applies to Symbian OS v9.x and onwards.

On a phone, swipolicy.ini is located in z:\system\data\. On the emulator, this corresponds to \epoc32\release\platform\build\z\system\data\.

Finally after flashing the modified firmware file t he File wil dictate how the SWI [sofware installer, which is responsible for all the installation happens on the phone] behaves.

Below is the screen shot of the file location after flashing :

and the contents of an unaltered firmware are as follows:[swipolicy.ini]

AllowUnsigned = false
MandatePolicies = false
MandateCodeSigningExtension = false
Oid = 1.2.3.4.5.6
Oid = 2.3.4.5.6.7
DRMEnabled = true
DRMIntent = 3
OcspMandatory = false
OcspEnabled = true
AllowGrantUserCapabilities = true
AllowOrphanedOverwrite = true
UserCapabilities = NetworkServices LocalServices ReadUserData WriteUserData UserEnvironment
AllowPackagePropagate = true
SISCompatibleIfNoTargetDevices = false
RunWaitTimeoutSeconds = 600
AllowRunOnInstallUninstall = false
DeletePreinstalledFilesOnUninstall = true

The hack is simple and straight forward, yet it may not be that simple to execute from everyone but the point is, even such a security can be broken!!
This has been confirmed by the Forum nokia champions like antonypranata.

Now its all left to symbian and Nokia to battle it out ant the next few weeks would be very interesting.

The hack isn't just about granting full access to 3rd party applications, it has much more severe.Lets wait what the giants have to say about this. Symbian and Nokia i think never had been challenged to this heights. well its a wake up call to all the big corporate.

Geeks: God of the modern times

Geeks in my opinion are the Gods of ElEctronik erra. They are set of people who expect even their shoe to have some sort of wireless connectivity

Few days back , my friend came to visit me, just then he had bought a new wallet, and i was having a look at it.My reaction was "cool!! what does it do?" He jumped out of his chair and laughed over my foolish question. he said "DUDE its a wallet!!! do you expect it to have a LCD display showing the current amount inside it?, or you want it to do a wireless money transfer? whats running in your mind??". In fact even i dint know what was running in my mind.

There are so much of technology outbreak happening, what ever we see around us , we tend to give it a techno dimension. But hey mankind has benefited a lot from these one of a kind human breed :)

They are the people responsible for LINUX, they are the people responsible for Mozilla, all in all they are the one responsible for all the best of the breed softwares which in some are the other way have been motivated/inspired by the Open source community which again is the gift of geeks to mankind

Geeks are the Messiah of the Techno God
"With out them this world would have been still in the dark ages"

I bow to all the geeks out there.

Symbian Programming horror

Lot of my colleagues ask me "why is symbian so tough to understand and program?"

well symbian programming is not that tough but its not that easy either. Symbain's EVP David Woods in a book written by him titled "Symbian for Software Leaders" talks about a document he wrote during the early days of Symbian, During the developement of EPOC.

The document "Goals for a ERA software development" spoke about some of the points programmers should keep in mind while developing an ERA* software.The one which caught my attention and which influendced me to write a blogpost was this particular point from that doc...

7. Simplicity of interface

To prevent the programming interface becoming too large and
unwieldy, it shouldn’t offer programmers too many equivalent ways of achieving the same end. The interface should be ‘‘complete’’ but not‘‘more than complete’’. There’s no need to hand-hold the programmer,who can be assumed to be already proficient in all aspects of C++.

Now i know a better and a smart answer to the age old symbian question :)

Note: to know more about the ERA development goals read This book available at Amazon.

* ERA - EPOC RISC Architecture

Up close with s60 touch

I found these flash illustration of Nokia's New S60 touch interface

Seeing these, i am quite disappointed, its no where near the Rich User Experiance offerd by iPhone.
But hey! this can play direct-youtube i.e. flv thanks to Adobe's Flashlite3 [a powerful runtime engine for mobile]

And i would also like to bring this in to the lime light. if you closely observer the clicks on the button , the buttons seem to have come alive [i.e press and release like physical buttons] this is what Nokia means by "Tactile feedback" which appears in their press release

in short Tactile feedback lets you feel what you’re touching.Pressing a button gives you a firm fall-through sensation that let's you know it was pressed. A disabled button is stiff and buzzes, to let you know that your press is being ignored. And when dragging you feel a soft springiness, with only a light touch needed to move across the surface.

How can this provide a better awareness of the device's response and improv the user experience?
well, it senses not only the location of your touch, but also the force with which you're pressing, the area of contact between your finger and the surface, the distance that the surface has been depressed and its velocity — each updated one hundred times per second. This enables application designers to create powerful and expressive user interfaces.
Source

with all these technologies fusing at one place, we expect to see a lot of innovations to hit mobile market.

we all know what happens when the market leaders fails to innovate.Hope all the other big players catchup and be a strong contender to Nokia and Apple

BCB5 hitting Bangalore

What - Barcamp Bangalore 2007 winter edition [in short "Geeks day out"]
Where - Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB)
When - 17th and 18th November 2007


I Will be there, Follow me on twitter

faster symbian

We talk about windows xp vista, Apple MAC os tiger leopard. SUSE, ubuntu,RED hat all these are power full operating systems. But talk about OS for an handheld device like a mobile phone there is only one name that stands out : SYMBIAN
And now the most popular Smartphone OS is getting more Smarter , Sexier and Sophisticated.

Smarter symbian:
with new features introduced from symbian 9.x onwards especially starting from symbian9.3 and 9.5 like Demanding paging, File caging , RAM Defragmentation symbian is on the adobe of smartphone industry

one of the feature Demanding paging is illustrated in the following video

It also bought a smile on the traditional C developers by introducing P.I.P.S [which is posix on symbain]

Sexier symbian:
With S60[most loved User interface for a SMARTPHONE] getting a touch interface, symbian gets sexier.

Take a look at this video

I recall, Nigel Clifford(CEO , Symbian) speaking to NDTV Cell Guru.
when he was asked " do we expect to see an iPhone killer from saymbian"
Nigel answers "May be, sooner than you expect"
and here we have a Stronger answer.

Sophisticated symbian:
This initiative was whole hartedly welcomed by a set of pretty cool technologies from symbian.

ScreenPlay is the new graphics architecture in Symbian OS. Designed to power the richest visual experience available on a mobile phone to date, it gives users big screen effects in their pockets while ensuring long battery life. ScreenPlay is designed for mobile devices with user interfaces which integrate high definition video content, life-like games and animations. It significantly enhances content presentation in versatile, yet simple new ways - by using transparency and overlays, for example. ScreenPlay offers high performance in a scalable fashion - working purely in software on mid-range devices and taking advantage of hardware acceleration when present on high-end devices. These enhancements are delivered without compromising the device's battery power efficiency.

FreeWay is the new and unrivalled IP networking architecture in Symbian OS, providing broadband speeds in your pocket. On mobile broadband networks, FreeWay delivers the capability for super fast download speeds, high quality audio/video streaming and crystal-clear VoIP calls. FreeWay supplies high bandwidth that is suitable for Super3G/LTE, WiMax and beyond - ensuring performance high enough to allow users to download an MP3 file in seconds. FreeWay also guarantees users smooth switching between connection types and networks so that they can remain mobile at all times. A key feature of FreeWay is its compatibility with existing applications such as web browsers, allowing these to take advantage of the benefits of FreeWay without any additional development.

These two new technologies are further enhanced with Symbian's recently announced support for Symmetric Multi Processing (SMP) on Symbian OS, offering 'performance on demand' to maximize battery life and multimedia user experience on future converged mobile devices with multi-processor chipsets.

which in a layman's terms means that with so much power in hand the battery will still have a power to enable the user to use your Multimedia handheld as a normal phone to keep in touch with your loved ones :)

Symbian and s60 together all creating a revolution in the smartphone and i feel proud to be in this space of Mobility Era

Nokia gets an Apple touch

Nokia the mobile giants gets the ipod's Click Wheel kind off interface on to there multimedia beast. Nokia likes to call it the navi™ Wheel

Nokia introduced this interface with the new Nokia N81 mobile

Note: the original provider is synaptics visit here for more details

see the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dZ5krLWcq4

also visit
http://europe.nokia.com/A4577199

safari like fonts on windows xp

I was having a chat with my friend comparing MAC OS and your's truly windows XP. we were discussing about why some love MAC and the rest prefer a PC [windows/Linux].
My answer was simple,

WINDOWS is for muggles
LINUX is for wizards
and,MAC is for artists

take a look here

The argument was not over , the discussion continued with , the new safari browser for windows.
we are so excited with this move of getting the world's most loved browser on to the world's most used platform[windows]. every one are talking about this.

Main point : fonts on safari browser compared to other windows based browser on windows, fonts on the safari browser has a soothing effect. it is worth to understand why mac fonts are so soothing compared to fonts in windows.
windows follow what is called as a true type font. i wont talk much about this coz people have already posted tons of info on this here, here and here

you can understand these technology buy visiting this site http://www.grc.com/ctwhat.htm

well the main reason of this post is , how to get the safari kinda fonts on your windows. this is not a rocket science. This is there in windows XP from quite some time. All you need to do is just use the feature provided :)

Go to desktop properties by right clicking on the desktop and select properties


select the Appearance tab and then click on "Effects" button.

check "Use the following method to smooth. . . . ." if unchecked
and in the drop down menu below select "Clear type" say OK, apply and its done.

the fonts may appear burr but that is what we expect from a clear type font.

Note: the effect is to be observed on an LCD monitor

AS i said am not teaching are writing any new recipe. its just that not many people [whom i know] knew about this

windows desktop search

what's so great about microsoft?..

well.. in short they want to copy everything.
there moto: "make it , if you cant buy it" every product with some potential, they want it under there umbrella.....

Now i'll stop being a devils advocate.

The topic of this post is about windows xp search 3.0 . its much like the desktop search features [and less] to google desktop search. but this time they are making use of their indexing feature which has been there for a looong time on our PC.

I have just installed it and the ease of use looks to be good.

will post more on this once i get an hang of it :p
and well if anybody wants to try that then you can download it here
be careful while downloading, download the right stuff ;)

Mobile Display pops out, literally

race for a bigger mobile display is on,
where does Nokia's QVGA the 2.5 and later 2.8 inch screen, Apple's iphone all screen mobile stand in front of this







source:engadget

india truly getting connected

The number of Indian mobile phone subscribers has passed the 200 million mark

read on

IIS / MYSQL / PHP config

web servers and database are my new horse. am trying to tame both with all the help from the developer world wide and with lil help from my god, it's not that hard :)

from last night am trying sooo hard to configure my PHP to work with MySQL server. Every thing seems to be perfect but still php_info() was failing to display mysql information .

i fallowed all the instruction in PHP faq but no success. and today few minutes back found the solution it was all to do with the windows environment variables.

referring the php_info() out put [refer below image]



Configuration File (php.ini) Path C:\WINDOWS
Loaded Configuration File C:\PHP\php.ini


the configuration file path shown is c:\windows where as in the Loaded congi file it shows c:\php\php.ini
this is the root cause.

solution: the environment variable PHPRC has to set. change it from c:\... to the path where ever your php.ini is present.In my case it is C:\windows\




this may be a old problem nevertheless its a needed solution, took me 4 solid google hours to fix

orkut - getting a facelift

i have always been a fan of google. and of course i like orkut apart from its adverse effects, orkut is a nice way to keep in touch[ i am not a strong supporter either].

orkut being googel's offering, i was expecting some good interface. After 3 years there are a loads of features added like video and now the multimedia scrap, which i think is a "cool feature" but little was done to enhance the interface, which was needed for an online social networking service.

and today when i logged in to orkut, i found this



and guess what , the much awaited make over is hitting orkut. and the screen shot , i have to say looks much more attractive..



lets wait and we will have fun making new friends and ask our self " Who do I Know" [:p]

Nokia 5310 xpressmusic™

This device is been in the news for quite sometime and today i got to see the device for real, and doesn't this silence all the symbian freaks!!

This is an AWSOME device with S40 5th Edition, A2DP support and a 320 x 240 screen.It will also include 2 megapixel camera and microSDHC support!!!!

And the best part is, its gonna be very cheap. So guys look out for this amazing kid on the non-smartphone[difficult to judge to which category this has to go]

i was unable get images of 5310, so i have used my "SKILLS" to give a very rough sketch :p

The dedicated Music Keys are to the left of the Screen, its on a skewed plane and not vertical [refreshing ur geometry :)]

And i forget to mention, its an Ultra Slim Phone by Nokia :)

WTF : It doesn't run on SymbianOS, so what!! it does most of the task you can do with a Symbian Smartphone

Now there is a very very thin line between the s60 and s40 devices. If s40 can match the features of s60 then My predictions may come true

=================Update==========================
Here is this eyecandy on Nokia's website

The real Pic :)

with all these features, i am certainly falling for this device :P

Is S40 the future of S60??

Kalam at his best

yesterday, 17th August 2007,incidentally i came across this interview of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam by prannoy Roy on NDTV. Students were allowed to ask all sorts of questions to the Missile Man.

i would like to quote few lines from the interview

Kalam: "Thomas Alva Edison gave a meaning to the electricity"

we all know Edison as the inventor of the electric bulb, Kalam with few words expressed the importance of his invention.


Q. Prannoy Roy: Are you in favour of nuclear bomb?
Kalam: Strength respects strength.


to get in touch with Dr. Abdul Kalam mail him at apj@abdulkalam.com

iPhone's multitouch technology

"Free as in Freedom "

even a video on the Indian independence has restrictions [:)]
i want to know what the "owner" of this video wants to convey by having such an restriction
is it "some rights reserved" :)

Recall mania

Prestigious Mobile manufacturing company Nokia joins the "Product Recall League" [Dell, sony...]

Batteries used in a range of Nokia handsets potentially experience over heating initiated by a short circuit while charging,causing the battery to dislodge. Of 300 million BL-5C batteries manufactured last year, 46 million belong to the dodgy batch.

Nokia blames it on to their suppliers like Matsushita, who have manufactured some where around 46 million batteries between December 2005 and November 2006.

Nokia advices the users of this product to monitor a mobile device while charging that contains a BL-5C battery.

Nokia and Matsushita offer to replace any BL-5C battery subject to this product advisory.

List of the Mobile Phone using BL-5C battery is here

What i advice is "Get out and have it changed".

And if your devices doesnot have BL-5C,  even then please donot use your phone while charging.

unconferences

Will be there

My country's Pride

Here is t he Last speech from Abdul Kalam as "President of India" 

Salutes to  The Missile Man with  a Heart of Gold.

Vision 2020: we will make it happen

Where is the Phone?

Nokia Concept Phone "Aeon"

What if?

what if the most successful marriage in the smartphone industry breaks?
I am pointing to Nokia-symbian success story. This duo started the smartphone race and now they are the leader in this space.
Symbian the most powerful, sophisticated mobile operating system.
Nokia, Currently the world's largest manufacturer of mobile handset.

Success of the symbian as a powerful OS can not be narrated with out Nokia, if symbian is doing so well in the smartphone market, its because of Nokia. A Solid proof of this is the failure of other symbian licensee like Sony Ericsson, Panasonic , Siemens, Samsung. Nokia has leveraged the partnership and come out with some truely amazing phones. Nokia was able to do this not just because it holds the higest stake in Symbian,but because of their UI Framework for Symbian.The famous Series60 .Nokia exploited Symbian OS's features to come out with their advanced smartphones which, UIQ and sorry to say even NTTDOCOMO's FOMA failed to do.
What ever smartphone we talk about, here, use and addore are mainly S60 devices. Sony Ericsson's UIQ phones like p800, p900 and even p990i failed to impress geeks :)
in fact even Nokia launched a UIQ2.1 based phone [6708]which for all obvious reasons failed.

Do all these scenarios and facts/figures ring a bell in your mind? It did for me!
Nokia is the sole reason for the success of the Symbian OS.

Nokia recently announced the shipment of 100 millionnt S60 device.[what a success!!], but for nokia this doesn't come cheap because of the royalty[though Nokia hold 48% stake in symbian] this royalty issue is an unwanted burden for the leader on mobile filed

In India people buy mobile phones based on the following criteria

1. Brand
2. Looks
3. Features
4. Cost

Cost has become the least bothered criteria for an average Indian when he go out to buy a mobile [ This has become the trend now]

They are least bothered about what is running inside their Mobile phone and nokia already has won the heart of million Indians with there tough, rugged but yet stylish mobile phones in India.
I have seen people using a phone like N93i and yet do not know how to switch between running tasks!!! of course we can not expect every person who uses a smartphone to be a geek :P

The motivation behind this article came after i came across MotoRokr E6. This obviously is not a challenger for the smartphone contest, but yet for as low as 14k INR this baby is more attractive than N73 which is pricze tagged for 17k INR. I would recommend for non geek users to go ahead and buy this rather than pay 4k extra for something which "IT CAN DO THIS, IF YOU BUY THAT APPLICATION"

Friend: Motorokr E6 has a business card reader !!
ME: We had developed it long back for symbian.
Friend: why dont i see it on any of your symbian phones.
ME: you can see on some phones and if you don't have it , then you have to buy it :)
Friend: #@$@ #% !!!, i am buying E6.

this is the actual conversation i had with one of my friend how wanted to buy a "GOOD PHONE"

The only draw back of E6 is that , its from Motorola :), u can guess the drawbacks

As i previously mentioned price is not a criteria. If a phone with more INBUILT functionality can be bought at a lower [or even at the same price ] as a symbian phone then why buy a symbian phone?

Nokia has established theire brand name even with theire series40 devices and now it has matured such an extent that it can do multitasting

This is the time Nokia should think beyond Symbian and venture into other options and even Linux . We know nokia is doing it from a long time and we even talked about nokia porting its s60 to Linux platform[still unclear]. What i would say is, forget about porting s60 and look at s40 . they even have come up with the S40 5th edition. UI is the make or brake decisions on device like mobile phone and i think S40 should be given more attention.It has the potential of being close to S60. And look at devices like N800 and N770, what is Nokia doing with tablet PCs?

E6 is running on linux and the UI looks a lot similar to UIQ2 and much better than motorola's other linux based devices and the interaction is much smoother.

With symbian OS 9.5 there is a significant saving on Phone build Cost of the manufacturer.This implies a Truly smartphone at an affordable price. Hope NOKIA would try to cut down the cost of their symbian lineup phone with all the software and the hardware getting cheaper.

small dedication to our iCon

From this --------------------------------- To this

reason for this little transition ?
Well Black backgrounds may save lot of energy for a CRT monitor users
but the reason behind have this, has an altogether a different meaning.


To mark the official release of the most awaited gadget, i am having the color Apple loves the most ;)

Hey even i love iphone, its just that i don't believe, iPhone can match a real smartPhone

this goes for our iCon- cheers to Jobs

Thanks to intomobile we have the live webstream of Apple iPhone launch

It's an art

Dismantling any electronic device doesn't need special skills but if you want to practice that on something like a mobile phone, you need to give it a thought before even you get your glouse on.

Recently i found this old video on youtube and seeing this i must say "Dismantling is an art"
and here, it is Executed with perfection.


These devices are engineering masterpieces

Need to say anything?

is this is thefinal verdict?
You never know how people react to the techno wars between the big guns
Apple known for its innovative ideas and of course the fancy design has won the hearts of million with there "i"devices [iMac, iPod ] and now the new cake in the row is the iPhone. it has already created a big wave in the smartphone market.But is it worth all the hype??
Look at this Wonder -this is the " iTHING " - iPhone can not match the features of this baby, but still owing to Steve Jobs , this iPhone is surely to become the popular gadget among these guys