Product Spec of a A Basic Phone

I was recently looking for a basic phone for my uncle ( and also for myself ) which would be cheap and have a long lasting battery life. I am yet to find something which suits me, but it got me thinking that there is no really good low end phone OS now.

What has happened in the last few years is that with the advent of the touchscreen, everyone wants to sell a touchscreen phone. Now, it makes sense when you have something which consumes a lot of data - e.g. for emails or browsing or facebook. And the low end phones - like the nokia Asha series - which are cheap to sell, have this touch tacked onto the phones. This is a pretty bad experience as things like scrolling etc do not work well.

The closest phone that I came to liking was the Motofone, but like Motorola is apt to do, they under-made the phone, and it did not do that well.

Motofone F3 - not quite there.

So, here is my specifications of a low end phone.

• It will be a phone without internet access. 
• There are many people who do not want internet access. They buy the phones and never enable 3G on the SIMs or if they do, they hardly use it. 
• There are many places in the world where you do not have internet access. E.g. travelling in many parts of India. 
• It will need to have a great battery life
• I envisage that it should have a week's battery life. One of the most irritating things about phones nowdays it that you need to charge them atleast twice a day. 
• Great battery life also means that if you leave the phone charger on a short trip, you do not worry. 
• It will have a fast and responsive addressbook which syncs through your PC
• After all, once you remove internet access, all that remains on the phone is the actual phone. 
• Syncing with the PC means that your address book can be updated to google or whatever service. This will be through an installed program. 
• Essentially this will be quite simple as the extract from the phone will be a simple vCard export which can be imported to various services. 
• It will have a good camera
• 5MP or so. Saves to a SD card so that it can be easily inserted into a card reader on the laptop or an external attachment. 
• I find the camera is an invaluable addon to the phone for the sheer easy of access. 
• Maybe can have a dedicated button to start the camera. 
• It will not be touch based. 
• For the limited functionality, touch is not required. 
• FM radio
• This is a good requirement as it really used by a lot of people. I do not know why high end phones do not come with FM radio.
• Casing/Screen properties
• Screen should be big so as to have a lot of display area. I would want 2/3 of the front to be screen. 
• On not using the phone, the screen should show : 
• The current time
• Can be enhanced for multiple timezones / sunrise/moonrise/etc. 
• The FM radio station if playing 
• Only the FM should be controllable via a trackball/pad.
• Missed calls/sms incoming status. 
• When incoming call, the entire screen area should be having the details of the caller from the Phone book. 
• Font should be easily readable from arms length.
• On activating the phone: 
• Same as on not using the phone, but now can select the different rows of activities to check them out. 
• Pressing numbers should instantly start the phonebook lookup based on number and letters
• It should be eInk
• Colour eInk if the phone has a camera
• Else b/w eInk. 
• Waterproof casing for isntances of using the phone in rain. Normally, with today's phones we cannot. 
• Touch casing of the phone so that if you drop it, it does not crack. 

Would all this be achievable within 5k INR ? 

Do you think that such a basic phone will have a market ? 

6.5k + Pageviews in a month ! Thank you all !

I was just looking at the analytics for this blog, and fell off my chair - I have 6.5k + pageviews in the month of March ! That is just awesome !

Thank you all for visiting my blog ! 

I am not sure why the spike ? The posts in march were not that many or that interesting.

The top post is - strangely enough - bugzilla installation post. It is not an original post - though I modified the post to be more readable and helped out in a few comments.

Also, looking at the top posts, it seems people are more interested in tech stuff.

I dislike Android phones now

I have started to dislike using the Android phones.Sure there are a lot of people who swear by it - but I am getting hit by issues which I did not have to contend with in the last couple of years that I was using the iPhone. Here are just a few of those.

Why is it that the phone manufacturers do not learn from apple and provide substantial internal storage ? Here I got a very stupid error which wants me to uninstall applications. WTF ! Why have an Android market if you cannot even install programs on the device ? The internal memory of the device is just around the 200MB mark - its a joke.

I

Also keep getting frequent crashes. I understand if there is a crash due to a 3rd party application - but this crash occurred in the android market application !

And now the straw that breaks the camel's back. See the message underlined in red. The damn device rejected an incoming SMS ! WTH !

The phone manufacturers are still taking the consumers for a ride. I am also guilty of being a gullible party - but this is also to do with my friends who let me down in guiding for a new phone. They did not point out these issues - and now when I come across this - they say its there.

Unfortunately I am stuck with this phone for sometime till the price of the 4S comes down in India or I get it from a friend. This is quite frustrating. Simple common sense has not been used by the Android team and the Android vendors.

Sometimes, in interviews people ask what can be changed for a product. If someone asks me about Android - well, they will get an ear full. 

Show me the apps !

Somedays, i just love the new interface in Ubuntu unity. This is one of them. The 'Windows'+ W key combination shows me all the running apps ont he desktop neatly arranged. Then just click on the app you want to go to. This is much better than using the Alt+Tab combination to cycle through applications if you have many of them open.

Review : Samsung Galaxy Ace

Most of my friends know that I am a big fan of iPhone. So it may come as somewhat of a surprise that I ended up getting an Android phone. The Samsung Galaxy Ace to be exact. 

Lock screen on my Android

One of the main factors for going in for this phone was the cost - at a bit over 13K INR it is almost a third cheaper than the iPhone4s which is still not available in stores in India. Another factor was that I wanted to try out Android programming. 

The most often asked question that I get from people is how do I find the Android OS and the phone after having used the iPhone 3G over the last 3 years. Here is my review. 

My main criteria in looking for a new phone was as follows : 

- Android 2.3 as that is the current latest OS for phones available ( Samsung just launched with aOS4, but it is not yet available in India). 

- Within 15k INR

- Have a camera with a flash

- Be able to create a wifi-hotspot 

The ACE in my research came out to be good on all counts.

Now onto the actual review broken into categories. Comparisons are based on my experience with iOS4 on iPhone3G, iOS5 on my iPad, and Android OS 2.3.4 on the Galaxy ACE.

Notifications

Notifications on the Android rock ! The multitasking and background processing is phenomenal. Whether you are on gtalk, or twitter or facebook, any updates that you get are instantly displayed on the top notification bar. iOS5, with its new shiny notification system does not match up to Android in terms of notifications.

User Experience. 

Android still needs to go a long way in terms of user experience to match up with iOS5. The experience on my old iPhone is still better than the new phone. The screen transitions, the font rendering , the display of graphics is just so much better on iOS than aOS. Lets take the simple case of double tapping in a webpage. On the iOS it expands that table or div element to span the screen perfectly. Easy to read now. However, on the aOS, it just expands to what it thinks is a readable size which gets the lines to go out of the screen ! Horrible ! 

Battery Life

The 3 year old iPhone has better battery life than the few weeks old Ace. It is probably due to the fact that I can have multiple background services running, while the iPhone3 cannot multi task at all. the iPad has the most amazing battery life so far - i can get through a week with it.

This is my biggest pain point as of now. My current work involves me being on calls for quite a bit during the day, and I cannot get through a full work day on one charge alone . To be fair my work day is long - 10am -10pm kinds.

Edit : Battery life is horrible! 

Music quality 

Both are good. The speaker on the ACE is louder than the iPhone.

Camera

The Galaxy ACE wins hands down. the 5MP camera does great pic and video recording and also has a flash. However, the iPhone4s has an amazing camera which will beat the Galaxy Ace to pulp. 

Unprocessed pic of a view in Dehradun with Mussorie hills in the background. 

Earphones

Typically people do not pay much thought to it, but the default earphones with the Galaxy Ace actually hurt the ears. I need to get a new one. The default earphones with the iPhone on the other hand are very comfortable. 

Customization

The aOS allows for many customizations that you cannot even dream of in the iOS. For instance below is my home screen on the phone - the date and calendar widgets are down loaded from the app market. iPhone gives much better apps, but the screen layout by itself is limited. 

A customized home screen

App Store

Here, the apple's appstore is much better. The categorization and browsability - either throught the phone or itunes is much much better than Android. If you want to just browse apps in android, you will get lost. Its better to figure out what you want and then search for it. Also the quality of apps is much better on the iOS than on the aOS. Lets take the case of the facebook app - it is much better on iOS.

Ultimately, I think it comes down to price. If price is a constrainging factor, the android based phones - like this Galaxy ACE is total value for money , paisa vassol. If however, you are not constrained by money, then the iPhone4S is an amazing device to get. 

Cost of a Mac

So, someone was telling me the other day that if one wants to get a laptop of the same spec as a Mac, it would cost more.

Is that true ? I decided to check it out.

I decided to check it against the Alienware laptops from Dell. ( Alienware used to be a different company, but Dell aquired it a few years back. I guess they thought they would benifit from the reach of Dell).

Here I am not going to go on about the OS part of it. Just the hardware part. OS is a personal choice. If you like to let the OS do everything - its a Mac for you. If you want to configure everything - go and get Linux. If you want something in between - try Windows. Whatever.

This is a comparison purely for gaming rigs. I am looking at the cost vs specs of a high end gaming rig.

	Macbook Pro	Alienware (custom rig)
Cost :	$2499	$2074
Screen :	17"	17"
Memory :	4 GB	4GB
Hard Disk :	500 GB 5400rpm	500GB 7200rpm
Processor :	2.8 GH Intel Core 2 Duo	2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9600
Keyboard :	Backlit	Backlit
OS :	Mac OS X	Windows Vista Home Premium 64
Colour :	White	Black
Graphics :	9600M GT (512MB)	GTX250M (1GB)
Weight :	2.99kg	not specified
Battery Life :	7 hrs	not specified
Screen Size :	1920x1200	1440x900

Matching the specs of the apple , the Alienware rig comes out to be less costly !

Different Perspectives

Today, while working on my laptop I realized that it is becoming more and more irritating to work with Windows. Its the simple things that get your goat. E.g. extra confirmations for everything (Windows Vista). Un-accessible software (e.g. visio drawings) which you cannot view till you have expensive software installed.

As a good regular twitter user I twitted this:

"At one time Windows was the easiest to use. Now it is a lesson in frustration."

The responses were quite interesting :
From a friend from darjeeling, who is a non-techie user of the PC :

"its still the easiest for me, coz i never had a chance to try the rest hehe! but lots of problems i agree"

From a friend who is quite into tech:

"for me its always frustration, most things r non-intuitive & when things dont work, its difficult to figure out why, no logs :|"

I think this quite goes to show that most of the users are not worried about the technical aspects of the software we use on a day to day basis. They are quite ok working with familiar software and yeah, some issues are there, but they take it in their stride.

The tech junta on the other hand, who work quite a lot with the softwares are tuned to the nuances of the stuff, and quite know what works and what doesn't. They are the ones who give the reviews about stuff which works and which doesn't. But does that really matter ? Cause most of the persons using the software are ok with what they have. Does it really matter to have intellectual discussions dissecting the software when the regular user is ok with it ? I still know people who are running windows 98 and are quite happy with it.

Howto install Bugzilla on Ubuntu 11.04

Update : 1st may 2011 : Updated the installation for Ubuntu 11.04 and Bugzilla 4.0

I was trying out bugzilla installation on Ubuntu. Although there is a bugzilla3 package I never was able to properly configure it. Today, decided to look at this issue again and googled for any HOWTOs. I got this sweet piece of setup at : Handyowner . There are some formatting issues which made me struggle a bit - so here is the reformated installation guide.

Assumptions:
Ubuntu is already installed and configured on your target machine.
The machine is connected to the Internet you can browse the World Wide Web.
Here are the main steps:

1. Install Per l(5.8.1 or above)
2. Install MySQL
3. Install Apache2
4. Install Bugzilla 3.2
5. Install Perl modules
6. Bugzilla using apache

1. Perl
Verify if Perl is installed:

$ perl -v

If not installed :

$ sudo apt-get install perl

2. MySQL
Verify if MySQL is installed:

$ mysql --version

If not installed :

$ sudo apt-get install mysql-client mysql-server mysql-admin

Create “bugzilla” user with a strong password:

$ sudo useradd -d /home/bugzilla -m bugzilla
$ sudo passwd bugzilla

Tip! Here is what makes a password strong: make it lengthy, combine letters, numbers and symbols, use words and phrases that are easy for you to remember, but difficult for others to guess.

Create a database ‘bugzilla’ and grant privileges to ‘bugzilla’ database to ‘bugzilla’ user:

Tip! I usually set the bugzilla user password through the mysql admin interface ( Application -> Programming -> MySql Adminstrator).

$ mysql -u root -p
mysql> create database bugzilla;

mysql> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| bugzilla |
+--------------------+

2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> grant all privileges on bugzilla.* to bugzilla@localhost;

3. Apache2
Verify if Apache is installed:

$ apache2 -v

You can also view in a web browser the default welcome page at http://localhost
If not installed :

$ sudo apt-get install apache2

4. Bugzilla 3.2.2
Download Bugzilla from the site “ http://www.bugzilla.org/”.

Tip! Download a stable release, unless (1) you would like to go bleeding edge, (2) you do not care about spending time with your girlfriend, your wife, your kids or your buddies, (3) your boss said so and you couldn’t say no.

Untar the downloaded file to your download folder

$sudo tar -xvf bugzilla-3.2.2.tar

Move bugzilla dirrectory to /usr/local/

$ sudo mv /download/bugzilla-3.2.2 /usr/local/

Make a symbolic link from /usr/local/bugzilla3.x to /var/www/bugzilla

$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/bugzilla3.x /var/www/bugzilla

5. Perl Modules
Bugzilla’s installation process is based on a script called checksetup.pl. The first thing it checks is whether you have appropriate versions of all the required Perl modules. The aim of this section is to pass this check.

Verify if Perl modules are installed

$:/usr/local/bugzilla-3.2.2$ sudo ./checksetup.pl --check-modules

If not installed:

$:/usr/local/bugzilla-3.2.2$ sudo perl -MCPAN -e install

Edit the ‘localconfig’ file

$:/usr/local/bugzilla-3.2.2$ sudo gedit localconfig

Change the $db_name, $db_pass and $db_user value to the correct values. Here's how it looks like in my localconfig (replace the password with your actual password, this is just a placeholder here)

# The name of the database
$db_name = 'bugzilla';

# Who we connect to the database as.
$db_user = 'bugzilla';

# Enter your database password here.
$db_pass = 'bugzilla@123';

Run the checksetup.pl again. This will add a whole lot of tables for bugzilla, and you can verify that by looking at the tables in the 'bugzilla' database.

$:/usr/local/bugzilla-3.2.2$ sudo ./checksetup.pl

6. Configure Apache2 for Bugzilla
Add the following directives to /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

$sudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

*Note : Since the brackets give problem with blogger, added pic for the relevant code changes. All the non commented lines are what you have to type in.

7. Additional security
create user “apache2″

$ sudo useradd -d /home/apache2 -m apache2
$ sudo passwd apache2

Edit /etc/apache2/envvars to add. This is how my config looks

export APACHE_RUN_USER=apache2
export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=apache2

Note : The default user and group is www-data. I don't really know how to setup the export to use both the www-data and the apache2 user simultaneously. If anyone can help with the syntax, it will be great ! 

Edit /usr/local/bugzilla-3.2.2/localconfig to add

$webservergroup = ‘apache2′;

Rerun checksetup.pl

$:/usr/local/bugzilla-3.2.2$ sudo ./checksetup.pl

This will ask you to setup your administrator for bugzilla. Go ahead and enter the password and email ids.


8. Check the Installation
Restart the apache server using the command

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Type the in your browser http://localhost/bugzilla/ . You should be getting the bugzilla login page. Login using the email and password you did at end of pt 7.

Commandline Twitter

Got this idea about seeing if I can make a command line app for Twitter. I just don't want the full fledged thing, just the basic latest updates. Since I am also interested in learning python ( call it a geek itch), I decided to take it as a sample app for my foray.

It took me about 1 hour from setting out to finding the library to use and to write the code, and put in some text beautification. Nothing fancy, but does the job.

for those interested the code is as follows :

import twitter
api = twitter.Api(username='username', password ='password')
statuses = api.GetFriendsTimeline()
for s in statuses:
print "%s \t: %s" % (s.user.name , s.text)

How to setup Dual Screens

The screenshot that started it all

My post on facebook about my extended desktop got a lot of people interested, and they want to know how to setup the same with their systems. So, here's how !

This is in 2 parts. Howto do it with a laptop, and how to do it on the desktop.

HOWTO setup Dual Screen on Laptop

My first attempt at dual monitors

This is the comparatively easier approach, and one probably you can try out first. Simple steps to follow are as follows :

• Connect the monitor cable to the laptop ( the blue port ... it should either be on the sides, or on the back of the laptop.
  
• On your windows desktop ( XP here as I have not used Vista on laptops) , right click and click on 'properties'.
• Go to the 'settings' tab. It should show your current laptop screen, and another monitor greyed out.
  
• Click on the greyed out monitor, and click on 'extend desktop to this monitor' . Make sure that the resolution is set to something your laptop's graphics card can support and the monitor can support.
  
• Click 'Apply' and that should do the trick!

Upside : 0 cost if you already have a laptop and a monitor lying around.

2. HOWTO setup Dual Screen on Desktop.

Ok. This requires quite a bit of more work. This can again be achieved in two ways.

2.1 Using a graphics expansion module.

A maxtor graphics splitter

Companies like Maxtor provide you hardware which you attach to your comp and it then connect to the monitors. The upside is that you don't have to get fancy graphics card. The downside, not so much available in India.

Steps :

• Buy the hardware
• Install drivers and follow the instructions.
  

2.2 Using a Graphics card.

Nvidia Graphics card with 2 DVI output ports

This is how I use it. I am a game buff, so I needed a good graphics card. Now, what most people don't tell you is that the graphics cards come with 2 DVI ports ! Woot ! So, you can connect the monitors to each of the graphics output. The advantage - crystal clear graphics at high frame rates !

Steps :

• Install the graphics card ( in my case the NVIDIA 8800GT )
• Connect both the monitors and start up the system. At this stage only one monitor will actually display the output.
  
• Install the Nvidia software (you should download the latest from the net, as the ones available in the CDs are quite oudated).
  
• Go to the nvidia control center and enable dual screen.
  
• Viola ! You are done !
  

Linux steps :

• These steps are a bit unintuitive. So, you need to do a bit of mumbo jumbo ( if you dont like command line) or just a bit of command typing (if you are comfortable with command line).
  
• First boot into linux if you are on dual boot. The default drivers on linux suck, so you need to download the ones provided by nvidia.
  
• run the command 'sudo apt-get install nvidia-settings' from a terminal. Let it install.
  
• Run the command 'sudo nvidia-settings' and save your configuration.
  

And thats it ! you are done.

My current setup running linux.

You may want to refer to some of my earlier posts and other links :

• Laptop with Monitor setup
• Linux installation and setup.
  
• Wikipedia on Multi Monitor

Screen Resolution problems on Ubuntu ?

Did you just do an upgrade in Ubuntu, and are now stuck with a 640x480 resolution ?

This seems like a common problem on machines with Nvidia based graphics cards. There are various solutions given on the net, but the one that works for me ... remove the Xorg.conf file.

Heres how you do it.
1. Start up your linux.
2. press the keys together : ctrl+alt+F1 . This will bring you to the command prompt.
3. Login with your username which has admin privilidges.
4. mv the Xorg.conf file to something . E.g. I used the following :
sudo mv /etc/X11/Xorg.conf /etc/X11/Xorg.bk
5. go back to the UI screen by pressing ctrl+alt+F7 .
6. press ctrl+alt+backspace to restart the X server.

presto , it will recreate the Xorg.conf file and you should be back to optimal resolution now.

If you run into issues, you can go back to the F1 screen, and mv the backup back to the original filename. And try your luck on google.

Moto Rokr E6

At the time of leaving the Good Technology Group in motorola, and joining up in Symantec , I had a dilema. I needed a new phone. You see, in GTG, since we were developing on mobile phones, and all the time i was there (almost 2 years) , i never needed a phone. I was using Treos mostly - touchscreen, qwerty keyboard, etc. Now, I had to figure out what phone to use.

Nokia is the prevalent choice in India. But, essentially its the same stuff that has been there for ages. My main criteria was a touchscreen phone, and the ones that were coming close to what i wanted was quite prohibitively expensive. At the same time, being a Moto employee, we get discounts on the mobiles there. Had a look at the portfolio, and the one I liked was the moto rokr E6. Not a great phone by any means, but since it was linux based, had FM and a touch screen with a 2MP camera, and almost half the cost of the next contender in line ( the HTC touch), i bought it.

The plain vanilla phone is not that high on features. It has its drawbacks a plenty, like scrolling your music collection takes ages. Some of the issues are addressable, some are not. Here are things which you can do with your phone. Some of it requires messing with your phone ... so, if you like messing with things, you are gonna enjoy this phone !

EDGE

Frankly, most things that you can do with a phone go beyond the sms and phone apps. Now, you can be connected online all throughout the day using a data connection. The hitch here is that the E6 comes with only a GPRS connection (48kbps ~ 6kB per sec of data). Now , this is ok if you like living life in the slow lane, but what we really want is an EDGE connection ( 236kbps ~ 29kB of data per sec). So, the first thing you want to do is to get EDGE working. Unfortunately, on this phone, EDGE is disabled by default!

This is where the wide user community comes to the rescue. Googling for EDGE (especially since a couple of my friends had already done the updates) threw up direction on the moto mod community. Its been made really easy, just need to have the correct software installed.

• Making the rokr E6 EDGE capable

NOTE : you need a data connection on your mobile phone. If you call up the service center and ask for EDGE , they will in all probability not know what you are talking about. Tell them you want a data connection for your mobile, and it should do the trick.

Spicing it up

Now, i started looking around for software to go with it. With GMM I always had email at my disposal. But, since that is a corporate software, I needed something similar but for personal use. Google Mail to the rescue ! gmail for the mobile is quite easy to use, and almost similar to the version you see using a desktop. It is possible to browse the emails through the web browser, but gmail gives a much better presentation, and also is faster than the web version for the mobile. The only glitch, the latest version does not work on the mobile ! sigh! So, you need to get an older version.

• Download gmail 1.1 for mobile from here.
  

Next, since I am always travelling, download the google maps application from google.

• Google Maps

Another nifty thing is Morange. Its a kind of all in one tool. With it you can read RSS ( a severly stripped down version though, which I find really frustrating), and also chat using any of the usual chat clients.

• Morange (www.morange.com)

(A friend suggests fring, but it does not work on the rockr).

Hope this helps all who have a E6 and wondering what all they can do with it.

PS : Thanks to arpan and alok for pointing out the site for EDGE.

Apple's evolution

iPhone

iPhone, the latest release from apple was released last week ... and it was crazy ! People were hanging out in line since monday to get it ! The buildup was a lesson in creating hype by arguably one of the best showman today - Steve Jobs.

Just a bit of history for people who do not know much or are not into tech as deep as me :)

Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniac. It was a giddy climb to stardom and Steve was in his time the worlds youngest billionare. Board politics reared its ugly head, and he was removed from apple. In the interim he went on to make Pixar - the company which redefined animation movies with Toy Story. Then, in the later part of the 90s Steve was back as CEO of Apple, and apple never looked back. ( If you are interested, read iCon which is on Steve Jobs)

Together with designer Jonathan Ive, the products from apple just went on becoming better and better - objects of desire so to say. Diverging from the desktop business which was seeing a revival of the macOS, apple launched a revolution in the form of the iPod. Frankly, at that time , and even today, there are many mp3 players which have more features, but what the iPod did was beat everyone on usability. Just about anybody could use it. With its simple white slim box design it became a hit. Apple's attention to detail are just too good.

Then about a couple of years back, rumors about an apple phone started surfacing. In Jan this year, Steve Jobs demoed the phone for the first time to an ecstatic audience and showed the world the iPhone. It was finally relesed on the last friday of June to an expectant audience worldwide, but only in the USA.

And no, you cannot use it here in India.

Plz dont do this to your phone!

People first in line became heroes after getting the iPhone. You can get hundreds of blogs/pics of those now on the net. However, what facinated me was a couple of links of opening up the phone to see what is inside. $500 up in smoke. Check out the links below :

• Apple's iPhone disected : We did it so you did not have to - Anand Tech
• iPhone Take-Apart - Think Secret

The amazing compactness achieved is really remarkable. I have never designed hardware, but since most companies do not get near to this level of compactness, I think that its ok ;-)

So, what does the iPhone do ?

Most questions can be answered ont he iPhone website. Check out the videos there if you can, words cannot describe what the videos can. However, a brief summary of important points :

• Touch screen with multi touch. Basically you use your fingers to type and flick the pages.
  
• Take pics with a 2MP camera. you can then zoom in and zoom out using two fingers. As the distance increases between the fingers, it zooms in. Aaah !
  
• 4GB and 8GB memory to play your songs. Did I mention , the iPhone is the best iPod till date ?
  
• Fully capeable internet browser. The palm treo i use is not good with full html.
  

But if you are gearing up for buying it right now, I suggest you dont. Here's the reasons :

• Locked SIM with AT&T . Which means I cannot open it up and replace the SIM with my Airtel/Hutch SIM. If you check the take apart pics from AnandTech or ThinkSecret you will notice that there is no way to open the phone apart from destroying it totally. I think interchangeable sims will be available in the future (EU release end of 07, rest of world release mid 08).
• No Edge. Believe me , full html on a slow gprs connection is quite frustrating.
  
• Cannot add any other applications. This is a bummer. What it means is that if there is a cool application available, you cannot install it.
  
• Limited storage space. 4GB is small for music and videos. I have a feeling the storage is going to explod pretty soon to higher nos. Anything less than 20GB is not worth it.
  
• No IM.
  

Following is an interesting photofeature of the evolution of apple through the times ! Click on link below to see it in full.

Apple Evolution

Blogs on my homepage

I am back from my wedding. Wedding pics.. umm... you come over to my home to see the album :)

For now, just been trying my hand at a bit of javascript and AJAX. So, what that does is, it solves a problem for me which I had been trying to figure out for a long time now. Now, I can get the blog posts here to display on my website !

Go, on . Click the link to my website and see how it looks !

DCE dudes to set British GP on fire !

CNN IBN has the following article on the achievements the guys at DCE are making.

• DCE dudes to set British GP on fire.

Amazing going guys ! Best of luck !

Details on British GP track ( Silverstone) at :

• British GP site
• Silverstone
  

Install hindi fonts on Windows

Actually this started off as a search for the Indian budget. Over at the government site I found that the budget was available in the hindi version also. However, the instructions on how to use hindi fonts was minimal, and unless you are one of those people who meddle with the comps a bit too much (like me), it would probably be a bummer for you.

So, I thought a step by step guide will be good. Here's how you go about doing it. This is the windows version, I will come up with the linux version soon.

Step 1: Download the font from here, and unzip it to a convenient directory. I unzipped into a directory on my desktop. See the address bar location as you will need it later in the coming steps.

Step 2: Open fonts. Click the 'start' button -> Settings -> Control Panel. Locate the 'Fonts ' in the jumble of things there. Double click it to open the fonts directory.

Step 3 : From the file menu, select 'Install New Font'.


Step 4 : This opens up a new window with 'add fonts' (hmm... QA is not paying attention to the small details). Now, this box is a very old box and you will not see the paths like 'Desktop' etc. So, you will have to manually go to the place where you unzipped the fonts in step 1. Once in the correct directory, it should automatically select all the font files. Click on 'Select All'. This should select all the fonts. Click on 'OK' and it will install all the fonts.

Step 5 : Download the hindi version of the budget (It requires Adobe Acrobat to read so hopefully you have that also, otherwise just download). You will need to click on each link , go to download the hindi version. As a quick check the hindi version of Key to budget can be got from here.


That's it. Now you are ready to read it in Hindi ... unless you are like me ... who can read faster in English !

Your genes are patented.

YOU, or someone you love, may die because of a gene patent that should never have been granted in the first place. Sound far-fetched? Unfortunately, it’s only too real.

Read the article by Michael Chrichton at the New York Times.

Patents were started as a means to protect the inventor from having his ideas filched. However, the way patents are working now - it looks like we will be in a zone of little innovations.

Hi-Res space pics

Nasa has the following hi res pic of the space walk !

Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch

India's global march is on the shoulders of IT. Which to many people gives images of nerds sitting in front of computers doing god knows what ! If you are the ones who consider the above and don't know what these nerds are doing - this article is not for you ! :-D

However, some of the concepts here can be applied to other creative streams also.

The problem is that though we are an IT force, in my experience, we don't really know how to make good software. So, even after being an IT superpower as some profess loudly we don't have any great products coming out. Sure - we have some great companies like WIPRO and INFOSYS, but they are into services. WIPRO has over the last few years stared working on products like RFID, but the focus there is more to be able to show a proof of concept to get more clients.

As a result of the service mentality, we seem to be lagging behind a lot in the development front. Google recently said that they are not getting quality people, and more recently NY Times has come up with an article on As a result of the service mentality, we seem to be lagging behind a lot in the development front. Google recently said that they are , and more recently NY Times has come up with an article on College Education without a future.

For college students I will be putting up an article in the near future (as soon as I am done with the Fedora 6 installations). But for now, for the people already out there, coding, and wondering what they may be doing wrong - here are some gems that I have picked up from various sources :

1. Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch.
2. Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).
3. ``Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.'' (Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month, Chapter 11)
4. If you have the right attitude, interesting problems will find you
5. When you lose interest in a program, your last duty to it is to hand it off to a competent successor.
6. Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging.
7. Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.
8. Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.
9. Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.
10. If you treat your beta-testers as if they're your most valuable resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource.
11. The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.
12. Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that your concept of the problem was wrong.
13. ``Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.'' - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
14. Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected.
15. When writing gateway software of any kind, take pains to disturb the data stream as little as possible-and never throw away information unless the recipient forces you to!

DRM ?

The new Vista comes out with DRM inbuilt, but is it such a good thing? Do you as a customer want DRM?

Oh wait , probably you don't even know what DRM is which is being forced down your throats by the record companies and other software companies ? Here's a short recap on DRM:

DRM : Digital Rights Management.

Its a new technology which the music companies want you to use so that you cannot copy thier content anywhere. Some content on the iPods, like purchased songs from iTunes library, are DRM protected. What this means is that you can only have the songs on your iPod. So, if you upgrade and want to try out something new like Zune, you will have to buy everything all over again. Sounds bad ? Well, this is what you are going to get in the near future.

Its kinda like I buy a cassette, which I put in one of my cassette players - you know some old BPL sanyo system. Then I go out and buy a state of the art Bose, and now I cannot play the casette there, cause the manufacturers think that if I am using the cassette which I used somewhere else, I am pirating. This scenario sucks!

The long answer can be found on Wikipidea.

If you still dont think that my reasoning is good enough why not to go for DRM, read the below article. It will explain, in a way much better than I can, as to why you should not use the DRM :

• Top 10 arguments against DRM