Inside the mind of Reinwald Warapen

My conversation about Postman on 94.3 RadioOne

2013-05-01T14:14:00.001+05:30

I had an interesting conversation about Postman with Hrishikesh Kannan (Hrishi.K) on 94.3 RadioOne.
RadioOne is Mumbai's most favorite English Radio Station. This conversation was aired on 1st May'13 on the breakfast show.

So don't forget to listen to it http://youtu.be/KvQ9Xc4g3ak

Till next time ...

Postman's Official Video Launches Today!!

2013-02-27T13:49:00.000+05:30

Last weekend was super fun. We were busy creating the Official Video for Postman (SMS Spam Blocker). After multiple takes and retakes we came up with this. Post production was done by Nadine Pereira who spent pains taking effort to get everything just perfect and I absolutely love the outcome.

Till next time ...

Postman gets it's first Video Review

2013-02-17T12:37:00.002+05:30

So this week my Android application Postman (The SMS Spam Blocker) got a Video Review by MobileGeeks. Slowly but surely, Postman one day will become the most used and popular SMS Spam Blocker for Android.

Till next time ...

The premium version of Postman launches on Google Play

2012-11-04T12:45:00.001+05:30

Postman the SMS Spam Blocker has become one of the most popular SMS spam blocking android applications. With over 94,000 users, 1200+ reviews and an average rating of 4.5 Stars only shows how effective and useful Postman is really.

Successful installation of the premium key will automatically upgrade the free version of Postman on your phone to the Premium version. So upgrade today to enjoy the "Ad Free Version" of Postman for a lifetime.

Till next time...

Are you facing issues trying to buy apps on Google Play? This may help you...

2012-10-29T11:56:00.000+05:30

Are you receiving an error like "Your payment could not be processed. Please sign into Google Wallet to request support"? I have been facing this issue since 26 Oct '12 and have been unable to purchase any app on the Google Play Store.

I tried the following approach which solved the problem.

* Sign in to your Google Wallet account (http://wallet.google.com/manage) from a computer, not from a tablet or phone.

* Click "Payment methods" link on the left, then "Edit" to edit the information for the card that you tried to use previously on the Google Play Store. This card should have a green mark indicating default/preferred card.

* Update your CVV/CVC number and press Save.
* Please delete any duplicate credit cards.

* Once you have done that go back to the Google Play Store and try to purchase the application again. This time it should go through successfully.

My personal thoughts on this issue

Google has recently made many changes in Google checkout and have even introduced two new currencies the Indian Rupee (INR) and Russian Ruble (RUB). Because of such changes many users from these countries (especially India) are facing issues when buying apps from Google Play. Logging into your wallet account and updating your card somehow fixes the issue and enables you to purchase apps again on Google Play.

Till next time ...

Postman gets smarter with 'Smart Spam Notifications'

2012-06-25T03:56:00.001+05:30

Is it possible to show the message moved to Spam notification once in 2 hours? Or maybe 4 hours? No just make that 6 hours!! Can I just disable those notifications cause I'm quite confident I've trained the spam filter well. These were the frequently asked questions by some of Postman's users.

Postman's Smart Spam Notifications now satisfies all those who want silent notifications every time and those who want it once every 'x' hours and also those who just don't want any notification at all.

Postman's Smart Spam Notification is available in v7.0 which is scheduled to launch on Fri 29 June '12. For those who can't wait I've attached some screen shots.

Till next time ...

"Clean and Simple" just got "Cleaner and Simpler"

2012-06-11T02:38:00.001+05:30

It's been a while since nadinepereira.com launched. Based on various discussions Nadine and I had over the past few months and also taking into consideration some very valid suggestions from people who interacted with the initial website, Nadine had created the visual design for Version 2.0. Those visual designs and ideas went through allot of discussions and iterations.

Allot changed right from the interaction, to the color tone of the website, to the fonts used, to removing stuff that was confusing and unnecessary. What we thought was clean and simple when we first launched just became a whole lot cleaner and simpler.

Till next time...

Finally ICS on my S2

2012-05-31T00:18:00.000+05:30

After months of waiting, I was ecstatic to hear that Samsung had launched Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0.3) for S2 (GT-19100) in India.
The upgrade was smooth and took around 30 minutes. So use Kies and upgrade your S2 today !!!!!

Till next time...

Postman's brand new "Mobile Website"

2012-05-15T10:56:00.001+05:30

After analyzing the data on Google analytics I concluded that a substantial amount of traffic comes from people using an Android device. Well the data did not surprise me since Postman is an Android application after all. I did this analysis a couple of months back. After this it was but obvious the next big thing for Postman was to create a super sexy mobile website. Finally I made the time last Sunday, sat nonstop from around 1am to around 6.15 am (just about the time the sun was coming up) and Postman's mobile website was completed and yes even launched.

Till next time ...

NadinePereira.Com Launches !!!

2012-03-15T01:54:00.000+05:30

For the past 3 weekends I have been working day and night with an awesome graphic designer, a true artist helping her build her portfolio website. Since none of the Wordpress templates impressed us we decided to build the website from scratch.

The website entitled "From Idea To Design" launched a couple of days back. It is built on the lines of “Focus on what's important”, “Keep it clean and simple”, “That 1px adjustment matters”.

So go ahead, please have a look at http://nadinepereira.com/. As always your feedback, would be much appreciated.

Till next time ...

Using multiple versions of JQuery on a single page

2012-03-04T00:39:00.000+05:30

It's simple. You just need to the use the noConflict method. noConflict relinquishes jQuery's control of the $ variable.

I've written a small code snippet below.Here the page first loads jQuery v1.3 and then v1.7.1.

As soon as the later loads I call the noConflict method and define an alias in order to use version 1.7.1. Now if you notice "$" gives me access to v1.3 while "$j" is v1.7.1 specific.

Till next time ...

Need a debug tool when setting up Google Analytics for your website?

2012-02-18T13:32:00.000+05:30

While setting up Google Analytics tracking code on some websites, I came across this really awesome and very useful chrome extension called 'Google Analytics Debugger'.

This extension loads the debug version of the Google Analytics javascript and prints useful information to the javascript console.These messages include error messages and warnings which can tell you when your analytics tracking code is not set up correctly. In addition, it provides a detailed breakdown of each tracking beacon sent to Google Analytics.

Once this extension is downloaded from the Chrome web store, turn it on by clicking its icon to the right of the address bar. The messages can then be seen on Chrome's javascript console.

Till next time ...

Postman, Directi & I get featured in 'The Economic Times'

2012-02-07T18:45:00.001+05:30

A couple of weeks ago, I had a telephonic conversation with an editor for 'The Economic Times'. The conversation was based on Postman, my experiences on being a young intrapreneur and how companies like Directi encourage intrapreneurs.

This was featured today in an very well written article entitled 'Innovation 2.0' by Arshie Chevalwala.

You can view the entire article here.

Till next time ...

Postman crosses 25,000 downloads

2012-01-31T14:09:00.000+05:30

Postman (a.k.a the SMS Spam Blocker or the SMS Spam Filter) crosses 25,000 downloads today.

Postman is available for "Free" on all the popular Android App stores (Android Market, Samsung Apps, AppChina and many more ... )

This feeling is just awesome. A sense of satisfaction that Postman is slowly but surely becoming popular.

Till next time ...

Postman is now available at the Samsung Appstore

2011-11-23T11:27:00.001+05:30

The Samsung Appstore unlike the Android market has a review process for any application that it wants to make available to potentially millions of Samsung devices.

So after 8 days of Samsung reviewing Postman, the SMS Spam filter is now available for download at the Samsung Appstore for Free.

Download Links :

For Premium Galaxy (WVGA) which includes Galaxy Beam, Galaxy R, Galaxy S, Galaxy S Super Clear LCD, Galaxy S2, Galaxy S2 LTE, Galaxy W, Giorgio Armani Galaxy S, Samsung W899) :
http://www.samsungapps.com/topApps/topAppsDetail.as?productId=G00002296860
For Mid-end Galaxy (LQVGA) which includes Galaxy Pro,Galaxy Y Pro : http://www.samsungapps.com/topApps/topAppsDetail.as?productId=G00002296860

For any reason if your Android device does not support the downloads available at the Samsung Appstore, you can always download it for Free from the Android Market https://market.android.com/details?id=com.thesimpleandroidguy.apps.messageclient

Till next time ...

The story of "How Postman got featured in The Mumbai Mirror"

2011-09-18T11:57:00.001+05:30

Its been around 4 months since Postman was available on the Android Market. With around 962 downloads and around 30 (5 star) ratings it was doing "Well".But who wants their product to do just well? "Awesome" ,"Kickass" ,"The most downloaded application" now that's what I want for Postman.

So here is the story of "How Postman got featured in The Mumbai Mirror"

It was Monday morning around 3.30 AM when I tweeted about Postman to one of Mumbai Mirror's reporters "Kunal Pradhan". Within minutes he replied back to my tweet indicating to get in touch with "Jaison Lewis ".I then spent around 2 minutes trying to search for his twitter handle and redirected my tweet to him. After this I called it a night.

On Tuesday around 9.30 AM Jasion replies back to my tweet stating he was "Looking into my android app".I was happy but I had no clue what was in store for me the next day.

It was a normal Wednesday (14th September 2011).I got up around 9.30 AM and as usual I scanned The Times Of India and Mumbai Mirror for top stories.When I reach page 28 of The Mumbai Mirror (Tech Section) I was ecstatic ,excited ,and for a moment couldn't believe my eyes. To cut to the point Postman was featured in the Mobile app section.

It was a proud day in my life and a big milestone for Postman.

Till next time ...

Browser internals when it comes to "Caching"

2011-07-12T15:09:00.002+05:30

So as mentioned in one of my previous articles My take on Optimizing HTTP Caching for your web application there are two response headers that any browser depends upon for caching a file i.e Last-Modified time and (max-age or Expires) .

So lets deep dive into this.In the demo below I have used the following:

Homepage of Facebook
Firebug to debug the headers
Firefox 5.0

When you browse the homepage notice that for any static file (in this case I have picked up a css file) there is always a Last-Modified and an Expires.

There are multiple ways you could browse a website .I have broken them down below:

1) The General way :

This is the mostly used way.I say this because in general a user will keep clicking links and browse the website. Here for any GET requests for a static file

The browser will first check if the file is present in its cache.
If the file is present , the browser will check if file is not stale. It does this by verifying that the max age or expires value for that file has not been reached .
If the file in the cache is stale, it will make a request to the server using a conditional GET.

This is how the headers look when the browser makes a conditional GET

Notice the browser sends a If-Modified-Since header in the request .The value of which is the Last Modified timestamp it got when it last received the file from the server. The server on receiving the conditional GET request will either reply with the new file content or a 304 "Not Modified".

2) Forcing the browser to make a conditional GET

This can be done by hitting F5 on the page.Notice that when this is done the browser forces a conditional GET.

3) Forcing the browser to get the file from the server

This can be done by hitting a CTRL+F5 (Windows) or COMMAND+SHIFT+R (MAC). When this is done notice that the browser sends a request without a If-Modified-Since header.Hence this request will hit the server and not get served from the browser's cache or the proxy cache if any.

Till next time ...

Sick of PuTTY ?? Try ZOC

2011-06-12T10:54:00.002+05:30

Are you looking for an alternative to PuTTY? Then try ZOC http://www.emtec.com/zoc/index.html

ZOC is an awesome SSH/telnet client and terminal emulator for Windows and Mac OS X. Ive been using it for over a year now and its been brilliant in every sense.

Till next time...

Keep it simple SILLY !!!!

2011-06-01T04:15:00.002+05:30

The first version of Postman did well. 218 downloads in just 2 months and literally everyone around me knew about Postman. It was a HIT. But after talking to some of the users I did learn something. That something made me change the entire way Postman works and probably my perspective of building any android application that targets an audience such as "The Entire World".

Postman v1.0 was based on user defined filters.Letting the user define custom filters,I thought would be awesome and powerful but in fact I did notice that most of the users liked the application to do the magic of filtering out spam rather than he or she defining custom filters.Also more importantly I encountered a different section of users who got confused with so many options and set wrong filters and for them the application did not work as expected.

So after giving it allot of thought I realized "lesser the configuration ,would in turn lead to lesser confusion and probably a scope for a wider user base" .

I then decided to revamp Postman and make it intelligent enough to detect the SPAM SMS itself .Now for the end user it would just be a one step process. i.e Install Postman and let it do its magic of filtering out Spam SMS.

Thus the phrase - Keep it simple SILLY !!!!

Till next time...

Postman is now on the Android Market !!!

2011-04-10T00:14:00.003+05:30

Its been more than a week since Postman beta was launched and I got a good response from many, indicating it was time to introduce him to the world or even better "The Android Market".

So go ahead, try out Postman for FREE https://market.android.com/detailsid=com.thesimpleandroidguy.apps.messageclient

Till next time...

The internal working of Postman

2011-04-01T01:51:00.001+05:30

From the diagram below its quite clear how Postman works:

Postman intercepts all messages that come to the phone.
When a message arrives it gets scanned to see if it matches any one of the multiple filters set by the user.
Every filter has a set of actions associated with it.

When a match occurs, an action is added to the Postman Action Queue
If no match occurs, postman just forwards the message to the phone's default messaging application.

Postman has everything from

android services
activities
broadcast receivers
multi-threading
single action queue
customized views
notifications etc etc.....

The underlying data storage of Postman is a SQLite database.Ive attached the diagram of it below:

The entire code base of Postman is up at https://github.com/reinwald/Postman .Ive tried my best to make it as easily pluggable as possible. If you guys want to add custom actions when filter matches occur its as simple as following some contracts defined ,then adding the custom action object to the action queue and letting postman handle the rest.

Till next time ...

Postman beta launches today

2011-04-01T01:50:00.001+05:30

So after 2 weeks of working 18 hours a day, the beta of my android application "Postman" http://itsmrpostman.appspot.com launched today.

Postman in short is a personal message assistant for your Android phone. I shall let some of the images do the talking. It works on any android phone running a version greater than 1.6.

A big thank you to :

Sandeep Shetty : The creator of http://owe.to , for putting the seed of thought in my head to create an message filter application
Vikrama Dhiman : For his awesome suggestions and feedback.
Nadine Pereira : The one who designed Postman's logo and "The best graphic designer ive worked with".
My Dad : Who let me use his Android phone to do some USB debugging and testing (Since I don't have an android phone ;) )

Hope you guys like the idea of Postman and try it out soon.

Till next time ...

One word for the USB debugging feature on the android phone .... "Awesome"

2011-03-26T04:41:00.002+05:30

Even though practically everything is possible from the emulator, I wanted to check out the USB debugging functionality in my android phone.It was super simple to setup

Enable the USB Debugging option under Applications->Development.
Before plugging in your phone you need to install the USB adb drivers ( if your running on windows).These drivers are vendor specific so you can download the appropriate one from here. http://developer.android.com/sdk/oem-usb.html
Plug in the phone and hit run->cmd-> adb "deviceid" connect and viola your in.....

Some points to note

In order to debug the attribute android:debuggable="true" in the application tag of the AndroidManifest.xml is mandatory.
Access to the SQLite database on your phone directly from adb (like the way it works when using the emulator) is not allowed .If you do try it you would be greeted with a Security error. One workaround to read the database, would be to transfer it to the memory card and then read it locally.

And yeah its as easy as that.So simple but yet so powerful !!

Till next time....

Say hi to your android "Postman"

2011-03-11T20:54:00.004+05:30

How often did you tell yourself "Damn I wish I could block that SMS ?" or "Why does Android NOT come with an option to create Sms's Filters and move them to specific folders."

So say hello to "Postman". Postman is an application that you would want to install and use as a replacement, instead of the standard boring messaging client that ships with your android phone.

Some of the main features that would make you want to use Postman are :

Store messages in appropriate folders
Create multiple filters based on the senders numbers or a particular message body and move them to specified folders.
Completely block an Sms from even reaching your phone
Back and Restore Sms's on any android phone

And for you geeks out there the application will be completely open source https://github.com/reinwald so you could tweak it to your fancy.

An initial very rough mock-up of how the main interface would look

I am just in the initial phase of developing Postman and would be done with a beta version that would hit the android market in a few months.

Do you like the idea of Postman ? and have any suggestions that you would like Postman to do for you when you receive an SMS? Do let me know by, reaching me at reinwald@gmail.com or post a comment here or even follow my blog .Looking forward to hearing from you...

Till next time...

Searching for a Git Client for your windows machine?

2011-02-25T15:47:00.000+05:30

Have you moved to GIT ?

Are you searching for a free GIT client for your windows machine?

If you are like me who use SVN,CVS for version control for various projects and were comfortable with using the respective clients in windows and are searching for the same for GIT then say hi to "TortoiseGit "http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/

With a few steps you can install it and it sweetly integrates with windows. Screen shots below

Try it out !!

Till next time...