A Common IT Man's Blog

CM9 Alpha0 released for HP Touchpad

2012-01-18T12:15:00.000-05:00

Seems that HP Touchpad is on a roll this month as CyanogenMod 9 Alpha 0 has been released for it yesterday. It looks very nice but still there's a very long way to go as the following still don't work: Hardware accelaration - hence no Netflix and YouTube only works in SD mode Audio is messed up and microphone does not work yet Camera does not work as the hardware drivers are closed source Most

webOS 3.0.5 update released for TouchPad

2012-01-12T16:52:00.000-05:00

Good news for those of use still holding on to our TouchPads from the fire sale! HP has released the latest update for webOS 3.0.5 86 Over-The-Air for TouchPads. Good to see that it (allegedly) fixes the bugging audio issue that got introduced in the 3.0.4 update. It also has some good updates related to sensor, camera and HTML5 video playback. Read more details on their HP webOS Developer Blog

Count occurance of character in a string

2012-01-10T11:51:00.000-05:00

To count the number of times a particular character occurs in a string, use the below SQL query. If you are using Oracle 11, you can use the new REGEXP_COUNT - note that it uses regular expressions and so special character need to be escaped: SELECT REGEXP_COUNT (first_name, '\.') AS dot_count FROM employee; If you are using any other version of Oracle, then use this query: SELECT

Porting and managing your E-Books on Kindle

2011-12-16T15:15:00.001-05:00

If you have a lot of books in electronic form and want to port them to Kindle and then manage them well, here are a few tools you will find very useful. Use caliber or mobipocket creator to convert books from their current formats to Kindle format. In fact caliber can even transfer them properly to the Kindle for you. I know that a similar conversion can easily be achieved by sending the file to

Your Android/iOS phone may have rootkit (Carrier IQ)

2011-12-06T16:45:00.001-05:00

It was recently discovered that many Android, iOS, Nokia and RIM phones may have Carrier IQ mobile diagnostics rootkit software embedded deep into the software. The implication of this is that it is possible to track a lot more than just your problems with the phone without your even getting a whiff of it! Read more about this rootkit on website of Trevor Eckhart who is credited with finding this

10 Android apps from Google for 10 cents each

2011-12-06T14:43:00.001-05:00

Google is providing 10 Android apps for 10 cents each for 10 days to celebrate 10 billion downloads of Android. Check out if any of the offered apps appeal to you for a dime... Linky

Kindle Import "Operation Failed" on TouchPad

2011-11-07T16:42:00.003-05:00

I was trying to import a few books into Kindle on TouchPad using Calibre + Kindle Import but was getting the error "Operation Failed". Here's how I resolved this problem Uninstalled Kindle & Kindle Import Deregistered this Kindle instance from the Amazon account (it may even work if this step is skipped) Restart TouchPad Reinstall Kindle and Kindle Import Reregister this Kindle instance

Updates to HomeBrew patches on TP

2011-11-07T16:23:00.001-05:00

Updates to the patches listed in my previous post on Installing HomeBrew on TouchPad are now available for webOs3.0.4! Go ahead and update the patches and enjoy your TP. Note that I had to update each patch individually as the option to update all did not work.

Make PDF Reader intelligent on HP TouchPad

2011-11-02T16:17:00.001-04:00

The PDF reader on the HP TouchPad currently just reads pdfs :) It would be great if it could remember the last page that I had read on a particular pdf and it would be great if it allowed me to bookmark specific pages on pdfs. Well, it seems that this particular wish is now granted and works well according to this thread on preCentral forums. It is a simple as downloading and installing this

WebOS 3.0.4 Update released

2011-10-20T11:34:00.003-04:00

Ari Jaaksi, the head of webOS & services and HP announced on his blog here that they are releasing a new software update (3.0.4 - 77) for the HO TouchPad. It is an OTA update and has lots of perforamce improvements, better support for camera, UI updates & tweaks, and more apps! So go ahead and update your TPs, but if you have HomeBrew and custom kernel & patches, then worry not. According to

Google gets a Patent for Doodles

2011-10-12T13:01:00.001-04:00

Was checking out today's Google Home Page Doodle "Gumby" and stumbled upon the fact that Google's Sergey Brin got a Patent (7,912,915) for it! The application was filed more than 10 years ago on April 30, 2001 and is described as "Systems and methods for enticing users to access a web site" To quote the text of the Patent: [Quote] A system provides a periodically changing story line and/or a

Use FoxIt for filling in forms in PDFs

2011-10-11T15:08:00.002-04:00

Needed to fill in a form in a PDF which had not been made originally in such a way that Adobe Reader could understand there were fields in it. Most probably it was a scan & print to pdf of a word document. In such a scenario, FoxIt Reader came to the rescue! It has a tool called the Typewriter which allows you to click anywhere on the PDF and type in text in desired font, size & color - viola!

Entrepreneurship is the "in thing" in India

2011-10-11T15:08:00.001-04:00

The Entrepreneurial spirit is very high in India these days with tons of very good companies and products coming jostling for attention. Many of the ideas are adaptations / localization of successful ones across other parts of the globe and some are very unique to the unique needs/demographics of the country. Here are a few that I cam across - not necessarily listed in any order of relevance or

Good day for Developers

2011-09-16T17:03:00.000-04:00

It seems that today is a very good day for Developers! On one hand, Google, launched its APIs for the Google+ platform here. On the other, Windows is offering a free download of its' latest Win8 build here. Hmmm ... decision, decisions, time crunch!

State of Mobile OSes

2011-09-13T11:06:00.001-04:00

What with Android, webOS, MeeGo, bada, WinMo7 in the race to become stable and the de-facto standard after iOS, things don't look very good for end-users. QuiksMode blog has a very nice entry summarizing the current fragmented & cloudy (pun intended) state of affairs for mobile OSes here. From this report - it seems that Apple may continue to be the winner unless webOS or MeeGo manage to turn the

Happy Programmers' Day!

2011-09-13T10:34:00.001-04:00

Today is 13th September - the 256th day of the year. The number 256 holds a special place in the eyes of (most) programmers as it is the highest value that can be represented with a byte: 2^8 or 0b11111111. Since this is the highest integer less than 365 (days in a year) that can be represented with powers of 2, this is celebrated as Programmers' Day. Read more on the history of Programmers' Day

Better Blogger Interface

2011-09-11T18:37:00.000-04:00

Blogger is working on a vastly improved interface and I got a preview of it recently. The new interface is really nice and am hoping it will become the standard interface soon.

HomeBrew on HP TouchPad

2011-09-11T18:33:00.000-04:00

On HP TouchPad, side loading of apps - referred to as HomeBrew - is very simple and consists of a few simple steps! No complicated rooting, jail-breaking or difficult procedures as all. As detailed in this site, the steps are as follows: Enable "Developer Mode" by typing webos20090606 in the "Just Type" box at the top of the home screen and enabling it Download webOS Quick Install (WOSQI)

Track your Phone / Laptop using Prey

2011-08-18T14:30:00.000-04:00

Now you can track your stolen laptop / phone (but not iPhone yet) for free using an open source software called Prey. It is a very small & lightweight software that can be installed on your Mac, Windows, Linux or Ubuntu Laptop or your Android smart Phone. Set it up and then you can wake it up in case your device is (God forbid) stolen. There are paid Pro version too for those who want a greater

Java7 Project Coin New Features

2011-08-02T22:22:00.000-04:00

New features released in Java7 as part of Project Coin language enhancements are: Improved Numeric Literals - Binary integral literals and Underscore in numeric literals Strings in switch Diamond operator or simpler type inference for generic instance creation try-with resource statement Multi-catch and more precise throw Simplified varargs method invocation These are explained in detail below.

Java Diamond "<>" operator

2011-08-02T15:12:00.000-04:00

As part of Project Coin - Language enhancements, Java 7 has introduced the Diamond operator "<>". In reality, this is just a short cut for a simpler type inference for generic instance creation. So instead of this: List<String> stringList = new ArrayList>String>(); one can use this in Java7: List<String> stringList = new ArrayList<>(); So you say "big deal"?! The real benefits show when the type

Eclipse support for Java7

2011-07-29T15:02:00.002-04:00

Good news for Eclipse users is that all new builds of Eclipse 3.7.1, 3.8 and 4.2 will now fully support Java 7. Earlier development of Java7 support in Eclipse was being done in BETA_JAVA7 branch which now has been fully merged into the HEAD and the R3_7_maintenance branch. So the implication is that if you want Java7 support, you need to move to the latest builds of Eclipse Indigo (3.7.x) or

Java 7 GA release finally available

2011-07-29T14:40:00.001-04:00

Java 7 was finally release into the wild today and made "GA" - Generally Available! Download the latest from here. Here's a very high level list of the new features/changes that made into Java7: VM Support for dynamically-typed languages using the new InvokeDynamic instructions Strict class-file checking Language Small language enhancements from Project Coin like Strings in switch

Conditional Breakpoints in Eclipse

2011-07-21T12:10:00.000-04:00

If you have a big data set that you are using to test changes that apply to specific scenarios or rows, Eclipse conditional breakpoints can help to make life easier and simpler. In Debug View (obviously!), right-click on the breakpoint that you want to make conditional and in the window that opens up, check "Enabled" box and then the "Conditional" box. This enables the textarea below it where

Change format of Date displayed in SQL Developer

2011-05-25T21:09:00.000-04:00

To change the format of Date column displayed in SQL Developer worksheets (output of SQL queries) do the following: Select Tools > Preferences Expand the Database section In the NLS Date format field, enter the desired date format as supported by Oracle My preferred format is DD-MON-RR HH24:MI:SS