Tech Updates!

My New Tablet

2011-04-04T11:42:00.001+02:00

Every person on the planet wants a taste of the technological rat-race going around us. Whatever u do, how-so-ever you pretend to hide, somehow or the other, you do end up being a part of this 'RACE'....and the best part is when u surrender yourself into this, u come to know there are sub-races going on in this big race.

Recently, I too was a victim of one such race........after ignoring for a long time, I surrendered myself to the Tablet-Wars going on. I kept on keeping myself solid, trying to convince myself from the fact that this is just something which'll satisfy my technical hunger but will not keep me happy maybe after a month or so. I was just trying to find reasons of not to buy it........however lame they were.....Sometimes the Screen Size, sometimes the Battery, sometimes the Screen Brightness even (how lame an excuse). But finally my technical-brain (which is just 2% of total) won over the rest of 98% (yet again).....and hence I decided to buy one....and hence "SURRENDERED in the RACE".
I thought, now since I convinced of buying one.....i'll just browse which one to buy...not aware of the fact that there is a RACE going-on at each level. So I started to get into details.

The first SubRace was ofcourse of the Tablet Operating System.......now being an Apple Fan, ofcourse I wud die before saying that anything except iOS is the better option. But then from my iPhone experience, I learnt one thing. "Everything comes at a price"....and I was paying a huge price for my freedom. I mean transferring a mp3 to my tablet.......y in the world do I need to restrict my self to iTunes. y cant i just download directly on my Tablet and listen to it. So I had to give up on the Apple OS and then went on for the 2nd stable option..ANDROID by Google. I mean, who doesnt use Google Products atleast once a day. (Bill Gates ?? I doubt that too). With a strong support from a industry giant, and from the whole community around it, I decided ANDROID is what I want in my Tablet. Windows, WebOS etc were just so not ready to meet all my expectations being a Developer from background. I had to sacrifice something or the other in each one.
Hence, Race 1 result : ANDROID OS

Then comes the Screen SubRace......Resistive or Capacitive. I mean are we in the 90s.....who in the world wud now even be choosing a Resistive screen even-if it comes at RockBottom prices. What wud I do with something which wud take like forever to execute a single command. In this Fast-Paced world, I think Resistive screen is nothing but just a way of fooling people to get out their last-hard-earned money from them. I think the makers of this screen shud be ashamed at what they are doing. Dont they know that they r selling nothing by crap...something they wont even use ever.
Hence, Race 2 result: CAPACITIVE Screen

Then comes the 3rd SubRace which is for Battery life.........I mean what wud anything of the above mean if my battery drains at a rate faster than Brett Lee's ball! But at the same time I didnt wanted to restrict myself from not using web to its fullest. Steve Jobs by his excellent marketing skills actually convinced how bad Adobe Flash is for the Mobile Computing industry....he might be right....but then he just cant take away Flash Player from us...without giving us any option. U cant just be always right. If Flash drains battery....then make sure u improve your battery cells.......if u cant, then u just can take something from us! This was one of the other reasons of choosing Android. I have my Adobe Flash Player installed.....but believe me, its not as bad as Mr Jobs makes it. A good 4-5 hours of battery life is good for me. I cant expect a battery to run longer that this......after all being an avid developer, I know what it takes to run a small "Hello World' program. So we r talking of Web, Youtube, Internet, Calenders, EMail (push, fetch), 3D Games....and then my Videos, Audios all working simultaneously......expecting more than 4-5 hours is like adding my name to Schindler's list.
Hence, Race 3 results: 4-5 Hours of Battery Life

Then comes the 4th SubRace......which is the most important of all.......PRICE. Everybody wants everything at the least of the price. But then there are no free lunches in the world. Hence, I knew I have to pay a good price for my expectations and demands...but I do not want to pay like huge amount for something called "Technology". What I believe is that Technology is the cheapest thing on the planet. Dont believe me....then beat this: You get 1Tera Byte of Hard Disk for like 100 Dollars (still overpriced by me)....
1 Tera Bytes = (10^12) Bytes = 1 Trillion Bytes for 100 USD.......TELL ME ANYTHING ELSE WHICH YOU CAN BUY IN SUCH A HUGE QUANTITY FOR THIS PRICE....NOT EVEN TOILET PAPER ROLL. Anyways, coming back to point, I didnt wanted to pay tooooo much for a tablet....something in an middle-class affordable range is good for me.....and this would be like anywhere from 150 to 300 USD. Thats it....not a penny more. Anything more is like losing to these biggies who want to steal all your money without giving anything.
Hence, Race 4 results: 150-300 USD for a Tablet.

Apart from these 4 SubRaces, one cud just argue about nr of other races...WiFi, 3G, Bluetooth, Weight, Screen-Size, Internal-Storage, RAM, CPU, etc etc. See i think there is no end to all of these. For me these are the 4 major factors. I decide carefully on these 4, then I think I'll be able to satisfy my technical-hunger to quite an extent for which I did so much of hard-work.

FINAL VERDICT:
After carefully looking into a lot of Tablets, I finally chose "HeroTab C8". I loved this Tablet....was a bit heavier....but then, I never expected a feather touch on my hand. It has Android 2.2 OS, Capcitive Screen, 4 hours of battery life, priced at 200 USD, WiFi, 3g Option (with External Dongle), HDMI output, 7" Screen, 1GHZ of Samsung CPU........(See a overview video HERE)
All in all I love my Tablet........and above all I loved that I surrendered in the technical Rat-Race but still used my brain and chose what I need....not just what people are buying around me. I might not be the smartest....but all I know is that for this price, people would be definitely feeling a fool buying GalaxyTabs, iPADs....etc etc.

Go! Language by Google

2009-11-13T14:23:00.000+01:00

Last week I heard about a new Language "Go!" in the town. Not caring much about it, I thought of it just as "Yet another one to join the race". The very next day, while looking for something in Python, I again came across reference of "Go!". Now, would you call it destiny or what....hearing the reference of something again and again. So I fired up my Chrome (fastest) browser and types in "Go Language"....and to my biggest surprise, it was a Google Product (http://golang.org/). Being a complete fan of Google Apps, Search, Gmail, Chrome, Wave (lately)....it had now become my sole responsibility to go thru this new language and how does Google perceive a Language should be.

As I read thru their Specs, History, Language construct and all....I was shocked by some interesting faces:

The main creators of this language are Robert Griesemer, Ken Thompson(B language, UNIX, Plan 9 OS) , and Rob Pike (Plan 9, Inferno OS and Limbo language). Now with these kind of leaders pioneering something, u ought to expect nothing less than a Supernova.
This is a systems language....something more C like, concentrating more on the system.
The language is a amalgamtion of C++ and Python.
Go, has been designed by Google from the ground up as “a concurrent, garbage-collected language with fast compilation”.
Go routines are Google’s answer to threading in Go, and any function call which is preceded by the go statement runs in a different goroutine concurrently. A feature called channels allows for easy communication and synchronization between such routines.
Like Python, Go supports “slices”, which allow you to refer to parts of arrays using a simple syntax. Thus for an array “a” with 100 elements, a[23,42] will result in an array with elements 23 through 42 of a. Go also tracks the length of arrays internally, further simplifying array usage. Additionally, Maps in Go allow you to create “arrays” with custom index types, and are a native feature of the language.
Unlike other object oriented languages, Go has a much “simplified” type structure, which disallows sub-classing! Go offers a different flavour of object oriented programming using interfaces, which Google believes will simplify use. By using interfaces, explicit type hierarchies need not be defined, instead, a type will satisfy all interfaces which are subsets of its methods. The relationships between types and interfaces need not be defined explicity! This can have some interesting implications as people can add interfaces to connect unrelated types even later in the development of an application.
One consistent point in the features of Go is that it is better to have one excellent implementation of commonly used features such as garbage collection, strings, maps etc. rather than have them rethought and re-implemented in each program.
As nearly all Google products, Go is “beta” and not yet suitable for production use. By releasing it early Google hopes to garner a community around it and hopes that enough people will be interested in it to justify continued development.

So all you guys.....try it out.....and I am sure this language is here to stay just like pioneers like C, C++.

Cheers!

Browser Wars: Still On ......

2009-06-24T15:46:00.001+02:00

With the advent of faster and better web technologies, I think the rate of new web browsers supporting these and integrating them all making a seamless application is growing very fast. Couple of months back I heard that Google has entered the Browser market. Being a Google fan and also a Curious downloader, I installed Chrome. Used it...infact am still using it......coz I just love the way it works. Very simple though a powerful mind behind the scene.

Yesterday, similarly I heard of "Flock: Social Web Browser". Seeing the name I kinda had a rough idea as to what I might be getting......but didn't knew how it'll all work. Hence curiosity won again I downloaded it...and finally Launched the Application.

Came the default "Getting Started" screen....with the most famous Web links waiting for their turn to be logged into their respective accounts and fetch whats in there for me. Being an avid Facebooker, I logged into facebook and VOILA.....All my facebook comments, the media, the friend-list, contact, etc etc are just a small pane on the left hand side of Flock. I cud see whats happening....

This and many more features to be explored.........Just have a sneak-peak!!

Blogged with the Flock Browser