Sunny Talks Tech

Making Love to Webkit

2012-01-28T06:58:00.001+05:30

I just viewed Steven Wittens Acko.net and it is just awesome. You have to click here, to see the amazing stuff done with CSS 3D on the website. Don’t forget to click on the Load Scene, a little down in the post and then using the mouse to drag the scene. Classic Stuff!!

The site has used mrdoob’s JavaScript 3D library that also has some amazing examples to look at. It is very interesting to see how 3D is JavaScript is coming along in Webkit. People have been making Love to Webkit and it all looks so aesthetically pleasing and romantic…

NetCAT goodies

2012-01-28T00:09:00.001+05:30

Some people might have followed on the blog that I had been participating in the Netbeans Community Acceptance Test (NetCAT) program for the 7.1 release. The release in my opinion is one of the most stable versions of Netbeans ever. This should be attributed to the co-operative effort between the developers, quality managers, community of testers and Jiri Kovalsky, who manages the NetCAT program.

There are some points for bugs, fixes, RFE, feedback, surveys etc. during the alpha and beta phase of the development and the NetCAT final tally for 7.1 is here. The best part in my opinion during this NetCAT release compared to earlier years was the quick bug fixes delivered by the Netbeans Engineering Team.

I also got some goodies for participating in NetCAT.

Why REST with JSONP when you can CORS?

2012-01-27T01:29:00.001+05:30

JSONP (JSON with padding) is a hack used by JavaScript developers by wrapping a JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) document within a function call. So, if the JSON document looked like {"givenName":"John", "familyName":"Smith"}, the JSONP for the same would be callback({"givenName":"John", "familyName":"Smith"}) (callback being the commonly used wrapper function). So, if you are familiar with JSONP, you will realize that it is used to make Cross-Domain calls where JSON is not accepted by the browsers if they come from another domain. Thus, AJAX requests across a different domain was not possible through JSON and hence using JSONP was the common hack.

The problem with using JSONP is that it is called as a JavaScript function response and hence you will not be able to use it as normal HTTP calls. That means you would not be able to send HTTP headers and that can be a problem at many places. There are hacks to deal with the problem, but these are best described as hacks. Another limitation of the JSONP hack was that you could only make GET requests and nothing more. Hence to make a standard, W3C created the CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) standard which nearly all modern browsers support.

The main issue with using JSON or AJAX (XHR – XMLHttpRequest) across domain was that browsers would not be able to acknowledge if the response was malicious or in response to the request that they made. The same-origin-policy, prevented making cross-domain requests. Then came CORS, a technique by browsers to check the origin policy first and then accept responses. So a server that wants to allow getting any type of HTTP request from another domain would list the domain or * in its HTTP response header as follows:

Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: http://example.com:8080 http://foo.example.com

This means that there is some modification to be done on the server-side resource to add these headers to the response. Another point to note is that it works with XHR requests as well as client errors (4xx) and server errors (5xx).

Excellent examples on how to use CORS can be found at HTML5Rocks. On the server-side of things, you can find resources to enable CORS.

In Tomcat for a Java web application, you can enable CORS using the CORS Filter library. Basically you copy the jar file into Tomcat lib or WEB-INF/lib of your application and then add filters in your application’s web.xml or tomcat’s global conf/web.xml. For a resource which requires Basic Authentication and Cookies can be configured as follows:

<filter>
    <filter-name>CORS</filter-name>
    <filter-class>com.thetransactioncompany.cors.CORSFilter</filter-class>
    <init-param>
     <param-name>cors.allowOrigin</param-name>
        <param-value>*</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
     <param-name>cors.supportedMethods</param-name>
        <param-value>GET, POST, HEAD, PUT, DELETE</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
     <param-name>cors.supportedHeaders</param-name>
        <param-value>Content-Type, Last-Modified</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>cors.exposedHeaders</param-name>
        <param-value>Set-Cookie</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>cors.supportsCredentials</param-name>
        <param-value>true</param-value>
    </init-param>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>CORS</filter-name>
        <servlet-name>MyServlet</servlet-name>
</filter-mapping>

Instructions for Cookies in Safari can be challenge. A nice post to workaround can be found here.

Difference between iPad2’s Safari and Desktop Safari

2012-01-26T02:58:00.001+05:30

Since we are targeting the Raxa EMR for JSS for Webkit-based browser, it is important that the team understands the subtle differences between the Desktop shipped Safari and the version of Safari shipped for iPad2. The differences with Chrome are quite a few, so I won’t list those here.

Following are some of the differences to remember:

No Flash support
Safari iPad does not support position:fixed in CSS
Safari iPad creates link for 10-digit numbers automatically
Safari iPad does not allow scrolling over textareas and iframes
Safari iPad has issues with CSS Animations that cause flickering. Use JavaScript animation or hacks in CSS -webkit-backface-visibility:none; and -webkit-perspective:1000;
Safari iPad greys the upload button

Things have been improving compared to the first iPad and iPad2 and the differences are minimizing.

EMR at JSS Bilaspur – In pursuit of happyness

2012-01-08T00:48:00.001+05:30

Over the last 3yrs, I have travelled across the world and looked at 100+ health facilities of different scales. My last encounter with a health facility in rural Bilaspur was very different. Having looked at systems of practice in a variety of health facilities including subcenters, private clinics, primary health centers, community health centers, district hospitals, tertiary hospitals and super-specialty hospitals, each of these places have different characteristics. What makes Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS), situated in rural Bilaspur in Chattisgarh special is the motivation levels among all the staff at the health facility. This includes clinicians, nurses, technicians and computer operators… And the motivation of these people stems from the fact that they still believe in care, rather than just providing health services. I use “still” because in my worldview of health facilities, most often I see people missing out on the “care” from the notion of health-care.

My visit to JSS was for volunteer work that I have been doing over the last few months to see an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system to be setup at JSS. Over 100 volunteers across the world have come together in this pursuit to build an EMR system that is easy to use, suited to low-resource settings and can help improve work of the providers as well as help provide better services to patients. JSS was founded 15yrs back by post-graduates doctors of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), India’s most prestigious medical school and hospital to provide healthcare to people who are deprived from it because of poverty, neglect and lack of development. And when I visited JSS on Christmas 2011, I could see the savior work done by JSS for the many people who come from far-flung places because they are treated with dignity and care.

The EMR system broadly from interviews and discussions with some doctors, nurses, other staff and my interpretation of the context needs to do the following:

Help to improve efficiency in use of resources and providing patient care
Help to maintain correct medical practices through validations
Help to understand who, what, why is being treated at JSS

EMRs or for that matter any computerization process advertises many-fold benefits. Technology is most often considered the silver bullet that will solve all problems. From my experience this is rarely the case. So these 3 points might provide a guiding path to decisions that we make in the design of the EMR. In the design of the EMR, just like JSS we have to put “care” at the forefront of our efforts rather than technology prowess. Thus, this system is envisaged to be a point-of-care systems where providers will look up records and use the system to provide “care”.

The other very unique thing about JSS is that is it rooted in the locale of the context. Having seen other health facilities setup by “change-makers-coming-from-the-outside”, JSS is uniquely very much part of the context. This is one of the reasons I see why people come from more than 100kms away to JSS for treatment. People view JSS as locals and one among their own. This is one aspect that I think the EMR system should incorporate. It should embody in itself the locale. By locale, I mean the local practices, language, usability… among other things.

I would say we have some lofty goals for the EMR. One that the project lead calls as “Linux of EMRs”, but in my opinion even if we achieve more humble ends, like not causing burden to providers and patients that would make me happy. It is this pursuit that drives me to work towards this cause. I call it a pursuit because I realize this is not something that is a stagnant phenomenon. It will change with every small change that we make. Every morning it is this pursuit of happyness that drives me to understand what an EMR system would be of use at JSS.

PhoneGap under Incubation at Apache Foundation

2011-11-10T11:36:00.001+05:30

When Adobe announced the acquisition of Nitobi, the creators of the nice cross-mobile development tool, like many people I was worried that this would become a closed-source Adobe Air mobile. Adobe has recently been voicing that it would deprecate Flash mobile and instead move towards HTML5 and JavaScript. Thus, PhoneGap seemed like the perfect acquisition to make money out of the new generation of cross-platform mobile development.

The heart-warming announcement came a couple of days back when it was decided that PhoneGap was moved to Apache Foundation as an incubation project. The project is called Callback and the code has been moved to github for now. There are also some nice tools coming in Adobe Dreamweaver which can be used to work with PhoneGap and with the acquisition it might get better and better integrated. This means that Adobe will hope to make money out of the development and probably the build service, yet keep the platform open-source and free…

All in all, I think this is great movement for PhoneGap and cross-platform mobile development. What has been hard for ages since the promise of JavaME, seems more likely now. Good job Adobe!!

A Review of NetBeans IDE 7 Cookbook

2011-09-22T08:39:00.001+05:30

A few weeks (actually a month+) ago, I was sent a request to review the NetBeans IDE 7 Cookbook and blog about it. Incidentally, I was preaching/teaching Netbeans to a few students during the same time. So, although I thought it came at the right time, later I was travelling quite a bit and didn’t have much time to read through the book. Finally, in the last few days, I decided that I should read through the book and see what it is all about.

The book is published by Packt Publishers and written by the Brazilian Rhawi Dantas. It is nicely arranged in terms of the chapters and the kind of details that it talks about. Starting from the basics of creating projects, importing projects, to designing GUIs, Web projects, Mobile development, Profiling and Testing… It covers most parts of the IDE pretty well.

What it lacks is the depth of coverage. Like Maven and some of the options like skipping tests is a very useful feature in Netbeans is missing from the book. Or the WSDL Editor. Or Navigation features like Go To Implementation is missing!!

In conclusion I’d say the book is interesting for beginners and slightly boring for experienced Netbeans users. If you are preparing for Netbeans Certification, then this is a book you should read, but otherwise I feel the web documentation of Netbeans is good enough to find your way through… I’d rate this book 2.5/5

NetCAT 7.1 Bug Counting

2011-09-22T08:10:00.001+05:30

Since, I have signed to NetCAT 7.1 (Community Acceptance Program), I wanted a quick way to see the number of bugs that I have filed compared to the other top 20, I’ve written a small script to go through bugzilla. The one that is on the page seems a little complex to look at and has lots of numbers to look at.

I’ve done this instead:

Beyond the bugs, there is also the email count… We will get to that later!!

Speeding up Unit Tests by running them in parallel

2011-09-19T03:20:00.001+05:30

I just discovered an interesting parameter in the maven-surefire-plugin when using JUnit 4.7+, that tests can be executed in parallel. With multi-threaded CPUs, OS and the like, this helps a lot when you want to decrease the time of your test suites.

So, what are the configurations options that you have:

Running test methods in parallel:

<plugin>
   <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
   <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
   <version>2.9</version>
   <configuration>
     <parallel>methods</parallel>
   </configuration>
</plugin>

Running test classes in parallel:

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>2.9</version>
  <configuration>
    <parallel>classes</parallel>
  </configuration>
</plugin>

There are some things to take care when running unit tests in parallel. Some of them might not be independent, isolated and reproducible. There are times when you have some test methods that might depend on other methods in the test class. That time you should use the parallel test class execution. You may also want to tweak the number of threads and core on which these threads run, using this configuration:

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>2.9</version>
  <configuration>
    <parallel>methods</parallel>
    <threadCount>4</threadCount>
    <perCoreThreadCount>true</perCoreThreadCount>
  </configuration>
</plugin>

Sad state of Dell service centers, but loving my new SSD

2011-09-17T04:48:00.001+05:30

I had received my new Intel 320 Series SSD nearly 2 weeks back, but have been struggling to find a way to fit it in my Dell Studio 1749 laptop. Struggling because the SSD didn’t ship with a laptop connector/caddy and Dell’s extremely bad service centers in Mumbai.

Even before I had my SSD, I looked through all the documentation on how to fit it in. I wanted to add the SSD to the second drive slot that is part of my laptop, but needed a caddy and L-shaped SATA connector. I had enquired the Dell customer care and they responded, they didn’t sell the stuff but should be available at the service centers in Mumbai. So as soon as the SSD arrived, I landed at the service center. But what stupidity on my part, to expect the dell service center engineers to know what I was going to talk about. One of the engineers bet with me that laptop’s can’t have two hard disks, another said I have to “burn some plastic” to fit it in. No one, out of the 7-odd engineers at the Dell service centers in Andheri or Mumbai Central had heard the word “caddy” in their lives!! (!!Damn Golf!!)

Nevertheless, after a couple of hours of trying to explain to these people, I had full faith on our lamington road fellows to have imported something from China. Sadly, it was just the regular “atta-chawal” (off-the-shelf stuff) that you can get at every computer shop around the city. Why would people come so far to lamington road, if they didn’t keep “not-so-common” parts?? Not that Dell has any small market in India… so the lamington road shopkeepers should have atleast heard or seen such a possibility… Nevermind, I realized from earlier that an eSATA cable for Seagate GoFlex Agent HDD (STAE103) is impossible to find in this market, forget my caddy!! After visiting over 30 shops and 5 laptop repair guys, I was convinced (… and even they were) that such a thing was impossible to find in India

So, I ordered online with priority shipping from the nice guys at newmodeUS. I say nice because I called them after ordering to clarify about the eSATA cable that I also purchased (already cut to work with Seagate GoFlex ) along with my caddy and they answered nicely. I couldn’t find anywhere in Norway that had these either!! . It reached me in 2 days and I was happy again!!

Boot times from 35 sec to 19 sec; Shutdown from 15 sec to 6 sec. Netbeans starts in less than 7 sec compared to 25 sec. Overall amazing performance upgrade!!! The laptop even earlier was a performance beast with 8GB RAM, 500HDD, 4-thread, 3+Ghz i7 processor… but this speed boost is awesome!!

0-day already out to exploit yesterday’s IE bugs

2011-08-10T12:27:00.001+05:30

If it wasn’t already known to Microsoft, I can confirm first hand that today I downloaded and played with available 0-day to exploit Internet Explorer bugs in the wild. Microsoft has just released the patches to fix these exploits, but I was surprised to see that the exploits are available free for the world to use.

The exploits basically allows remote code execution from a website once visited through Internet Explorer. Once such a malicious page is visited, the hacker is able to take control of the machine and perform administrative operations, including but not limited to adding backdoors, steal information or make hacked computers act as bot to mass attack servers.

I will not disclose where the code is available to play with, but it is surely a warning for all Windows users to update their installation with the patches released yesterday. It is not just about your information, but your computers could be used to launch other attacks,

Details of the patches can be found here and here. Microsoft releases security patches on Tuesdays, but critical patches should be released asap!!

Maven dependency for tools.jar in JDK7

2011-08-09T02:43:00.001+05:30

Although it has been known for sometime now that JDK7 will bring the change to vendor properties name change from “Sun Microsystems Inc.” to “Oracle Corporation”, I thought it would serve as a good reminder since Java 7 final was just released.

If you have a maven project that uses tools.jar and adds that as a dependency to the project as follows:

...
  <profiles>
    <profile>
      <id>default-tools.jar</id>
      <activation>
        <property>
          <name>java.vendor</name>
          <value>Sun Microsystems Inc.</value>
        </property>
      </activation>
      <dependencies>
        <dependency>
          <groupId>com.sun</groupId>
          <artifactId>tools</artifactId>
          <version>1.4.2</version>
          <scope>system</scope>
          <systemPath>${java.home}/../lib/tools.jar</systemPath>
        </dependency>
      </dependencies>
    </profile>
  </profiles>
  ...

For making this work with JDK 7, you have to change the java.vendor value to Oracle Corporation like this:

...
  <profiles>
    <profile>
      <id>default-tools.jar</id>
      <activation>
        <property>
          <name>java.vendor</name>
          <value>Oracle Corporation</value>
        </property>
      </activation>
      <dependencies>
        <dependency>
          <groupId>com.sun</groupId>
          <artifactId>tools</artifactId>
          <version>1.4.2</version>
          <scope>system</scope>
          <systemPath>${java.home}/../lib/tools.jar</systemPath>
        </dependency>
      </dependencies>
    </profile>
  </profiles>
  ...

WebGL & Hardware Acceleration in Different Browsers

2011-03-09T07:24:00.001+05:30

There is a new race these days in the world of web browsers and it is how fast they can render graphics. As more and more people are trying to make web browsers as the rich media client, we see that hardware acceleration in browsers is getting the next point of race among the web browsers. If JavaScript benchmarking wasn’t enough, most new benchmarks these days are looking towards at WebGL (The JavaScript for 3D) and hardware acceleration in browsers.

There aren’t too many games out there yet, that use the WebGL extensions and so I believe this is another race from the browsers that isn’t about better user experience but more to win points in the benchmarks. Nevertheless, since the worst fairing browser IE9 has improved on the performance of WebGL and uses your computer’s graphics card to accelerate graphics in browsers, it is the every alternate browser’s moral responsibility of sorts to give you enhanced performance. This means that every other browser vendor will now tell you to update your graphics drivers, to prevent crashing of your browser and improve performance. While updating graphics drivers is not what the average computer user would do, the browser manufacturers will blame that crash on the graphics driver.

Here are some numbers comparing browsers in simple WebGL benchmark on a Windows 7 with Intel 2.5Ghz i5 and 4GB of RAM:

Browser (version/platform)	Frames per second (higher is better)
Firefox 3.6.15	6 FPS
Opera 11.01	14 FPS
Chrome 10.0.648.127	12 FPS
Firefox 4 Beta 12	60+ FPS

All browsers in the list are released stable versions, other than Firefox 4 which enables hardware acceleration only version 4 of their browser, but is still unreleased. Clearly, Firefox is very fast and possibly the ones who are running ahead in optimizations of WebGL. Nonetheless, other browsers (Opera 11.50, Chrome 11 and IE9) are also competitively close. I wanted to highlight really how fast things can get with some hardware acceleration.

Socio-materiality: Creating words for the heck of it

2011-03-07T06:40:00.002+05:30

While last week, I was in NTNU, Trondheim for a friend’s PhD defense, I decided to stay back and listen to a seminar on “Socio-materiality”. The “jargon monoxide” (super lol!!) to describe that technology, work and organization cannot be viewed separately. We’ve definitely heard that human & non-humans are an assemblage and cannot be looked at separately... and I completely agree that academics deserve ridicule, when they do such things!!

Nonetheless, after the seminar I couldn’t believe that the whole 3hrs, we repeatedly kept hearing that technology changes social behavior and that in turns shapes technology and there is a case of “entanglement” that makes the social/human and material/technology to be only looked at as a single object. The cases were interesting (especially the case of Gartner and their Magic Quadrants) and in each of the case we see the entanglement and mutual shaping. What I still don’t understand is that why we didn’t have an uproar from the audience (… and those much more interested in the concept than me) to this jargon monoxide!!

As researchers we continuously look at ways in which we understand the things around us. Language is one to interpret, understand and communicate the different interpretations inside our head. My father shouts out while I’m writing this, “Research is only searching again and again, what already exists and is probably already known”. If that were true, then jargon monoxide is the basis of research… We create new jargons and retire old ones!! Is that our primary job??

Apple wants 17+ yrs old only to use Opera

2011-03-05T05:28:00.001+05:30

In another of Apple crazy works at the App Store, Apple does not allow users under the age of 17 yrs to download Opera. Opera is the first non-Apple web browser to be made available at the App Store, but with that crazy restriction. Now Opera, just like Safari opens web pages. It actually does it better depending on which benchmark you are looking at.

Opera reacted in the following manner:

“I’m very concerned,” says Standal. “Seventeen is very young, and I am not sure if, at that age, people are ready to use such an application. It’s very fast, you know, and it has a lot of features. I think the download requirement should be at least 18.”

For those under 17, there is a workaround. Just visit www.opera.com and download it. We do not ask for your age or your credit card number. Please, get your parents’ permission before using this browser

Opera does have a sense of humor

iPad 2 : Something about Apple just fascinates people

2011-03-05T04:59:00.001+05:30

Why do people get fascinated with Apple products? I’ve always wondered… Is it really that Apple products are so much better than what’s available in the market? They had the iPod, the iMac, the iPhone and the iPad (…to name some) and gave them cult status. Now with the iPad 2, I see the same fascination in people in response to the launch and the ads.

The iPad 2 really isn’t the best in terms of hardware packed into the device. Motorola Xoom/Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has the camera on both front and back better than the iPad 2. Battery life and processors are equally competitive. The ecology around Android is really awesome and growing rapidly. The iPad 2 is thinner, but wasn’t the iPad already thin?? The iPad 2 doesn’t have USB. It does not run flash. It will use proprietary formats for connecting to other devices. It does not have an SD card reader. So why are people still fascinated with the Apple iPad 2?

One thing is how Apple sells you the stuff... The ads make an emotional connection with you. The people who tell you things in the Apple ads, just like Steve Jobs speaks at the launch of these devices, make you feel fascinated. The “cool-ness” of Apple devices are another fascination. The external design and look-and-feel of Apple products are these days probably similar to other high-end devices, but the overall experience of the Apple software in my opinion is the biggest difference. How many times on the iOS have you seen a “Force Close” dialog, that an Android device would often throw? How many times do you feel an interface element to be out of place, when using an Android device?

I write this as I’ve just finished playing with a friend’s Motorola Xoom while at the library. I’ve tried the Galaxy tab, the iPad, but none of them are “Post PC” as Jobs describes it at the moment. Somebody nicely said, its an Apple vs Oranges comparison. You choose the fruit you like… I don’t like both yet!!

The Mirage of Mobile Number Portability

2011-01-09T03:07:00.001+05:30

Just like a thirsty traveller in a desert follows the mirage thinking that its water, Indian mobile subscribers have been waiting for mobile number portability for long. Little do they know that when mobile portability actually arrives, it’ll only be a mirage of what they hope for!! Mobile Number Portability is the ability for a subscriber to carry their mobile phone numbers and switch operators. Thus, by just paying a small fees of Rs. 19/- you would be able to change your mobile operator and still keep your same phone number.

Mobile Number Portability (MNP) exists in a lot of countries. Basically in most of these places, mobile numbers are considered as assets or belongings of an individual, similar to your house address. In India, it is being advertised by operators as an opportunity for customers to move to a ‘better’ operator, when you are dissatisfied with your current operator… and this is exactly why I say it’s a mirage!

Every operator has some number of customers who don’t like their service. From most people I have talked to, every operator has this group of dissatisfied customers. But since anyone who was dissatisfied would previously just change their phone numbers, it wasn’t a big deal for these customers… They are so fed up with the operators that they have already moved to the next operator. On the other hand, people who cannot change their phone numbers because the phone number is really important for them, generally adjust with the operator and the ecosystem balances itself naturally like any mature market does. What Mobile Number Portability is not doing is changing the infrastructure or the technology deployed by the operators. It does not change the policies, tariffs or customer service of the mobile operator. For a sector which is somewhat saturated in a lot of circles, it really is not much of a change agent.

If the reports from the pilot in Haryana is anything to go about, there really hasn’t been a large change in the customer base and market shares of the mobile operators. Other than Idea, most operators have not advertised a lot about MNP. Most operators are following a wait and watch policy and not many want to be first-movers in grabbing customers from others. Its been over a month for MNP in Haryana and that should have been enough to see the change factors because of MNP. But the lack lustre effects of MNP have shown that it is something that the market and the customers are not enthusiastic about. May be in other circles the market might be more dynamic, but we’ll only know when the nation-wide launch happens on 20th Jan, 2011. It will be interesting days to see how the different telecom circles work their way in the post-MNP era.

I think of the mobile operators today like politicians. Everyone is dissatisfied with politicians. There is always something to complain about them. Still you expect everyone should be voting and democracy should run smoothly.

Apple’s Magic Mouse and now Microsoft’s Touch Mouse

2011-01-07T03:48:00.001+05:30

Apple was the company that made the GUI and the use of the mouse popular back in the old days. But ever since, Apple hasn’t been the best designers of the mouse and Apple has been often been criticized for not being able to make ergonomic pointing devices. Apple has tried numerous times to redefine the mouse with different shapes, design, button positions over the years, but the simple two/three button with scroll mouse has nearly been the market favorite including those who swear by Apple devices.

Last year Apple came out with what was another attempt to redesign the mouse. They called it the Magic Mouse. It was a failure at ergonomics and not many people loved it. Today at CES 2011, Microsoft Research presented what it hopes to be Mouse 2.0. It is a mouse without buttons, similar to a laptop trackpad. It does not have scroll or buttons and works based on the touch of the fingers. Thus you can swipe your fingers, perform pinch and zoom gestures etc. on the mouse surface. "One finger lets people manage individual documents or pages by flicking to quickly scroll, pan and tilt, and one thumb lets people move back or forward through a Web browser. Two fingers manage windows, letting people maximise, minimise, snap and restore them. Three fingers let people navigate their whole desktop, showing instant viewer or clearing their desktop."


Apple’s Mighty Mouse	Microsoft’s Touch Mouse

I am of the opinion that both the mice do not have what it takes to be called a revolution. There is already an installed base of users who are used to the two buttons and scroll and will not see any real benefit to move to these new gadgets. These do not have special features that are extremely important to computer users. If you have a laptop, you already have the trackpad do it for you.

Microsoft coming back to ARM

2010-12-24T23:32:00.001+05:30

ARM, the processor manufacturer that powers 90% of the mobile phones, digital media and music players, hand-held game consoles, calculators and computer peripherals such as hard drives and routers is a super-power these days and Microsoft realizes this more than ever. That’s the reason why there is talk that Microsoft is going back to release a OS for the ARM processors.

Back in the old days of Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft has a release of Windows that ran on the ARM architecture, but due to pressure from Intel and the growing market of IBM-compatible PCs Microsoft stopped release OS running on ARM. Thus, Microsoft only released Windows for x86 architecture (…and sometimes for Itanium). Microsoft has had WindowsCE running on ARM, but it is not the Windows that is popularized. The latest buzz means that Windows 8, the next version of Windows will be able to run on ARM processors

The reason why this news is interesting is because Windows Mobile 7 was just released and is a different architecture than the desktop Windows. If this means anything, then it shows Microsoft’s idea that a common platform can be moved across different sizes of devices, similar to what Apple has been doing with the iPhoneOS, iPadOS, iPod Touch and OSX. The idea is that the OS can be stripped off services and run on smaller devices. Today as more and more devices became part of our lives, we want to have similar experiences on all these devices… probably through different interfaces, but want the way data is looked at through a common way. Especially as developers, it is frustrating that the same applications cannot be ported easily across processors and platforms. The web is definitely the future of data, but rich client applications are important for the experience and the browser is still not everything that the devices/PCs can do.

Hoping that we can move towards converging platforms… especially easy ways to port client applications across platforms

China bans wikileaks cablegate pages

2010-12-01T12:17:00.002+05:30

The wikileaks release of the US cables is indeed the biggest newsmaker in world politics at the moment. Their leaks have shown the two-faced nature of diplomats, that we probably all knew, but never knew for certain. Nonetheless it is a major leak that could as some believe also result in World War III

The US government is clearly in a fix with the release of the cables and is trying to save face wherever it can by contacting its embassies around the world. Also Obama has said that the US government will exercise legal actions against wikileaks and its founder and run an embargo on this “irresponsible” and uncontrollable media.

But on the other side of the globe, China is clever enough to control the media. The Great fireWall of China just blocked the wikileaks cablegate pages and none from inside of China is able to view those pages on the internet. Now, if only the US learnt its lesson and started to whip naughty journalists and crazy activists, the world would have been a better… and safer place!!

Cheapest 5 Android Phones

2010-11-17T04:18:00.001+05:30

While some including me believe that the top-end of mobile phones will live forever and the platforms of the top-end won’t come to the low-end, there are others who believe that open platforms like Android (or the many earlier Linux consortiums – CELF, OSDL) truly provides platform that can work on the high-end and low-end equally well.

But as we’ve quickly seen, instead of the hardware manufacturers, the software industry really has driven what hardware sells. We saw that for the PC market and are quickly seeing that in the mobile phone markets now. How the OS and the applications are making or breaking the success of the mobile phone handsets. Nevertheless, here are the cheapest Android phones in the Indian market, which may probably be global leading in terms of mobile phone growth in the low-end market… And the prices will keep dropping I guess!!

1. Huawei IDEOS U8300 – Rs. 6200/-

Huawei has many handsets in India in the CDMA market. Most of these handsets are serviced by operators that provide these mobile phones along with the plan. The IDEOS is manufactured in China and is sold in many markets around the world. I happened to see this phone is also available in Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia.

This entry-level smartphone was designed with the needs of young, mobile users in mind. This smartphone combines a QWERTY keyboard and a touch-screen in a small, chocolate-bar inspired package. Powered by Android 2.1, it comes with the most popular social networking applications pre-installed, so users can stay in touch anytime, anywhere.

For more information, please visit: www.huaweidevice.com/ideos

The phone has low battery life, but provides excellent features for the price.

2. Acer beTouch E110 – Rs. 6990/-

Stylish, compact and slim design
2.8” (QVGA) resistive screen
5-way navi key
3G and Bluetooth connectivity

Looks pretty and is light-weight. Doesn’t have very good battery life, but does have some good applications and interfaces built-in like Spinlets and Nemo Player

3. Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro – Rs. 8700/-

- 240 x 320 pixels (QVGA)
- 2,6" capacitive touchscreen

- GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
- UMTS/HSPA 900/2100

- 5MP Camera with Flash
- WiFi

Great build quality and excellent software and hardware polish. Great support and service centers. Known brand

4. Samsung I5503 Galaxy 5 – Rs. 8800/-

Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
3.6 Mbps HSDPA support
Smart dialing
2.8 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen
Android OS v2.1 Eclair
TouchWiz 3.0 UI customization (on both, I5801 has Orange UI too)
600 MHz processor
2MP camera with geo-tagging
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n support

5. Spice Mi300 – Rs. 9400/-

Android 2.1 Ready
Android Market Place
Google Messaging Services with Push Mail
AGPS

Key features

3.5G
Wi- Fi
3.2” HVGA Capacitive Touch Screen
5 MP Camera

Troubleshooting smslib-based applications (DHIS Mobile, SCDRT, InventMobi, StocksTracker)

2010-11-17T02:49:00.001+05:30

While I’ve been troubleshooting SMS Applications (based on smslib, Gnokii, Kannel) for over 3 yrs, it is excruciatingly painful to tell people the basics of the troubleshooting again and again. There have been numerous small docs, readme files, emails that have repeated the same things again and again. To people who have gone through with the implementation and fixed problems, I’ve repeatedly requested to document these at some place (…infact as part of their job profiles), but none have sadly been able to produce anything useful. So, here is an attempt to make the troubleshooting process a little more easier for someone who is stuck. There is always websearch that will finally give you the answer to the troubleshooting process, but this is just a reminder to myself where to look at.

Check the application/library version – report this as part of any question you are asking
Check the Native Library version and the Java Library version. These should ideally match or should have the same type. i.e if you are using RXTXComm (this is bundled with dhis-web-mobile module), then you should have rxtxSerial.so (Linux) or rxtxSerial.dll (Windows). If using the older version, check the comm.jar and the required dlls is at the right location.
Check the compatibility of the modem (Kannel) and (smslib). If not listed, check if it supports common standard AT command and may just work
If you are using SMSLib for Java on Linux with the RxTx, you can have a no response exception or gnu.io.NoSuchPortException, as if no modem is actually connected to your computer – create a simlink to the dev/ttyS20 and also do start your application (for DHIS this is catalina.sh) with the –Dsmslib.serial.polling parameter as given in this bug filing.
Check if you have the correct port number in the configuration. For Windows, look at the device manager and the modem. Put the COM10 as the port (COM is needed for DHIS, while not for SMSListener), while for Linux add the /dev/tty<whatever> (/dev/ttyUSB0). For linux, try running the “wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf” (without quotes) or scanModem script. This will give the modem port
Check the SIM memory location and add it to the configuration file. This is complex, but a Google search on your modem should help. If you don’t find anything obvious leaving it blank should likely work for your modem
If you repeatedly see Framing Errors, it is primarily because the baud-rate mismatch between what you have set and what your modem supports. Running wvdialconf as earlier may give you good indication of what baud-rates are supported and best for your modem. If its windows, then setting to 56000 should be safe enough.
Some modems supports a specialized AT command set. These are init commands and activation AT commands. You should change the manufacturer and model string. If you know the manufacturer, then it is always good to put the exact manufacturer name in that string.

Netbeans Community Testing for 7.0 starts

2010-11-09T08:25:00.001+05:30

Netbeans has just started its Community Acceptance Program (NetCAT 7.0) for Netbeans 7.0. Basically developers who are using Netbeans as their IDE need to download latest builds and report bugs. Good experience to get involved with testing and learn more about Netbeans. Also makes some friends with community and developers at Sun Microsystems.

Helps improve the IDE you use daily!!

Go HERE: http://wiki.netbeans.org/NetCAT

Women more respected in Pakistan & Bangladesh than in India

2010-11-06T20:22:00.001+05:30

I’ve been pretty involved in health information and monitoring the state of affairs in that domain, but this is something I believe is as critical for humanness. The UNDP just came out with their Human Development Report (HDR) and celebrating its 20th Anniversary… I would like to congratulate guys at UNDP for the great work with this report and its indeed an excellent piece of work that has been going on for the last 2 decades. Also who better than Amartya Sen introducing us to the report.

The report is one of the most complete ways to give the overall picture to development. There are obviously critiques to how development is measured and qualitative analysis is sometimes required to study the cases. Nevertheless, it is indeed rich in data for looking at how development is measured. The report covers Health (… and life expectancy), Knowledge/Education, Standards of living, Innovation, Economic growth, Empowerment, Gender, Income inequalities, Security… and creates an index comparing these at a benchmark number of 10.

India ranks 119 on the Human Development Index and highlights somewhat of a sad story, when we are so happy celebrating our growth rates and world reputation success, a lot many things are lacking. May be even aggravating - in this view of achieving only economic growth and race for money and world power! Sure, we are doing great in democracy and political freedoms, but what about the many unfreedoms of gender and income inequalities. I would say it’s a shame that women feel more respected in Pakistan than in India, although we are the world’s largest democracy in the world. More and more as you read the whole report…

Sitting in Norway and reading the HDR feels like we are miles away in India…, but even in closer geographies (e.g. SriLanka), I feel we are very far off from our potential as a society!!

Installing Windows 7 from USB

2010-10-26T15:52:00.001+05:30

I wouldn’t believe it is so simple… Just download the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool from Microsoft. Have the Windows 7 ISO file on your computer and a USB Pen drive with more than 3.5GB.

The tool will format the USB stick and then just cope over all the required files from the iso. Then you insert the USB stick, boot from it and go through the installation screens… Installs in 30min and you are done!! Didn’t expect it to be this smooth…