Technosrix

Tethering Motorola Defy. Internet over USB on Windows and Linux

2012-01-26T14:57:00.001+05:30

I purchased Motorola Defy Android mobile phone running Android 2.2.2, ( the later Defy+ runs Android 2.3). the phone supports 3G hotspot over WIFI. But for some reason my phone kept crashing after few minutes of use of the hot spot feature. So I wanted to setup the tethering over USB. I use Kubuntu and Windows . Here, I wil explain how to tether your Motorola Defy phone using USB. The same should work on DEFY+, though I have not tested on it. Both the approaches doesnot require the phone to be rooted. And I use Airtel 3G in India

Tether on Windows:
Follow the instruction here. https://forums.motorola.com/posts/bc40b2fbdc Its stratigh forward and works for DEFY.

Tether on Linux:
This involves litle bit of tinkering. Follow the instructions in this article http://www.humans-enabled.com/2009/12/how-to-tether-your-verizon-droid-as.html . The original article itself is capable of tethering DEFY. I have altered couple of steps to suit me and am sharing it here.

Step 4:
my rule for DEFY is
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{"22b8:428c"}=="22b8", MODE="0666",

Step 10:
If you are using DEFY with android 2.2.2 , then don't bother to download the Azilink with Android 2.3 patch. Download the latest release from the Azilink site itself.
cd ~
mkdir azilink
cd azilink
wget http://azilink.googlecode.com/files/azilink-2.0.2.apk
adb install -r azilink-2.0.2.apk
wget http://azilink.googlecode.com/files/azilink.ovpn

Step 11 & 12:
I had merged steps 11& 12 as follows
vi start_modem

#Type in the text below, then hit ZZ to save
adb forward tcp:41927 tcp:41927
sudo echo "domain lan" > /etc/resolv.conf
sudo echo "search lan" >> /etc/resolv.conf
sudo echo "nameserver 192.168.56.1" >> /etc/resolv.conf
sudo openvpn --config azilink.ovpn

Follow the rest of the steps from the original article. Azilink About page quotes " since this program doesnot run as root it cannot forward ICMP-based ping requests. To simulate this all pings are translated internally into UDP pings. Unfortunately, many hosts do not respond to UDP ping requests." So don't be surprised if you cannot ping your host but still able to use the internet.

Run Tweetdeck on Linux without Adobe air.

2011-12-10T14:50:00.001+05:30

In my recent post , I had cribbed about why Am ditching Tweetdeck for Gwibber. Primarily it's because am not getting any more Adobe Air updates for Linux. But there is good news. Twitter which acquired Tweetdeck this year, has released native ( that means no more Adobe Air dependency) versions of the sotftware on Windows and Mac. But no release yet for Linux. Then how can this be a good news. Well , apparently , the Windows native version runs decently well on Linux over Wine. Wine lets you run Windows software on other operating systems.

Here is the instruction to get Tweetdeck 1.0 running on Ubuntu 11.0. For RPM based ditros like Fedora use yum (appropriately) instead of apt-get.

First upgrade the Wine package to the latest. This is not required , but it is better to always use the latest Wine to get the best performance. AS on date wine-1.3.34 is the latest stable version for Ubuntu 11.10

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install wine

Now, download the latest Tweetdeck from http://www.tweetdeck.com/. It will be a .msi file eg. TweetDeck_1_0.msi

wine msiexec /i TweetDeck_1_0.msi

This will launch the installer. clik on install.

The tweetdeck is ready to be used . You can select it from you GUI or start it in command line as follows.

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Twitter/TweetDeck/TweetDeck.exe

There are however few quirks.the notification window doesn't pop up always. Something That I hope Wine will fix soon.

Compiling latest Gwibber on Ubuntu 11.10

2011-12-09T14:14:00.001+05:30

Gwibber is an open source microblogging client for Linux. It brings the most popular social networking web services to your desktop and gives you the ability to control how you communicate. My favourite though was tweetdeck. But after Adobe ditched Air for Linux, Tweetdeck doesn't look enticing anymore. I had to scout for a viable alternative . After trying lot of alternatives like choqok, hotot, I found Gwibber is the one. At least it had more feature in common with tweetdeck. Hotot has a better UI but it is still in its alpha stage..

I use Ubuntu 11.10 and the default version of Gwibber on it is 3.2.1. I wanted to upgrade that to the latest Gwibber version ( as of date) 3.3.1.1. It's a pretty simple task and here it is how to do it.

Download the latest Gwibber source code from here https://launchpad.net/gwibber . Replace the version no. with whatever version you downloaded.

tar -xvf gwibber-3.3.1.1.tar.gz

cd gwibber-3.3.1.1

sudo apt-get install build-essential valac-0.14 intltool libgtk-3-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgnome-menu-dev libnotify-dev libgee-dev libsoup2.4-dev libdee-dev libjson-glib-dev gsettings-desktop-schemas-dev libgtkspell3-dev libunity-dev

./configure

make

make check

sudo make install

gwibber ( this will launch the newly compiled Gwibber)

If you had skipped the sudo apt-get step then ./configure might complain about missing packages like valac or intltool. or sometime you might end up getting

configure: error: Package requirements (glib-2.0 >= 2.26

gobject-2.0 >= 2.26

gtk+-3.0 >= 3.2

gdk-3.0 >= 3.2

gio-2.0

gio-unix-2.0 >= 2.26

gee-1.0

libnotify >= 0.7

libsoup-2.4

pangocairo

dee-1.0 >= 0.5.19

json-glib-1.0

gmodule-2.0

gsettings-desktop-schemas) were not met:

No package 'gtk+-3.0' found

No package 'gdk-3.0' found

No package 'gee-1.0' found

No package 'pangocairo' found

No package 'dee-1.0' found

No package 'gsettings-desktop-schemas' found

If you still find yourself facing with missing package error, then identify the package as follows

apt-cache search <package name as reported> | grep dev

find the appropriate packages from the output and add them to the sudo apt-get list above .

How to Input Indic languages on Ubuntu Linux using IBus

2011-08-08T14:23:00.001+05:30

Interacting with computers in native language takes the technology closer to masses. There are many ways to input in native languages.On Windows platform , Microsoft Input method editors (IME)can be used to type in non-latin languages like Indic or CJK . A newer alternative is Google IMEs, Though it supports only transliteration. On Linux there are different alternatives to type in non-latin languages viz scim, xim, uim etc. SCIM IME was the most popular on Linux until recently. However SCIM is older and has its own disadvantages.So a newer architecture was developed called IBus.

The Intelligent Input Bus (IBus, pronounced as I-Bus) is an input method (IM) framework for multilingual input in Unix-like operating systems. It's called "Bus" because it has a bus-like architecture.

Latest Linux releases inluding Ubuntu 11.04 come with IBus installed. Am listing down the steps to configure Indic languages like Tamil, Hindi, Kannada on KDE or GNOME desktop on Ubuntu Linux 11.04.

Open a terminal and type the following commands. Alternatively you can select these packages from Synaptic package manager on (K)Ubuntu. Install IBus if it's not already there.

sudo apt-get install ibus

sudo apt-get install ibus-m17n ( this package contains tables for Indic languages)

sudo apt-get install ibus-qt4 (if you are using KDE desktop)

sudo apt-get install ibus-gtk (if you are using GNOME desktop)

sudo apt-get install im-config

Now run im-config from command line or using your favorite app launcher. Slelct ibus as the input method.And accept whatever the pop-up dialog says.

Restart the PC and log in to your desktop. You should see a keyboard icon in the taskbar. If not type 'ibus' in the terminal and give enter. Now you can add the selected input methods by right clicking on the icon and selecting preferences.

Now press ctrl + space to enable the IME, select the language you want to input and start typing in that language. IBus-m17n supports transliteration for few Indic langugaes like Tamil , Hindi.

Google adds support for Indic Languages in Google translate. Finally!

2011-06-25T22:19:00.001+05:30

I was waiting for this good news from Google for a long time. Finally, it’s here. Google Translate will now support 5 Indian languages viz. Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. This is still in alpha release mind you..

Beginning today, you can explore the linguistic diversity of the Indian sub-continent with Google Translate, which now supports five new experimental alpha languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. In India and Bangladesh alone, more than 500 million people speak these five languages. Since 2009, we’ve launched a total of 11 alpha languages, bringing the current number of languages supported by Google Translate to 63.

More details can be found in the post by Ashish Venugopal, Research Scientist , Google. Curious to check the accuracy of the translation, I tried translating the above quote from the Google blog to Tamil.

I will say the accuracy is almost 70%. Certainly not bad for alpha release. And Google’s statistical machine translation approach will help in improving the accuracy as more web content are presented in these language. Now waiting for the update on Google translate for Android.

Major price cuts from Big Android brands

2011-06-14T19:15:00.001+05:30

This week is a price cut week. Big Android brands are competing to slash prices on their hit models in India.

Moto DEFY price slashed from Rs 18500 to Rs 15000 http://androidos.in/2011/06/rugged-android-motorola-defy-sees-price-drop-to-inr-15k/

Samsung slashes Nexus S prize to Rs20000 http://androidos.in/2011/06/nexus-s-sees-another-price-cut-%E2%80%93-only-for-inr-20k-now/

HTC desire Z price slashed from Rs23000 to Rs17000 http://androidos.in/2011/06/htc-desire-z-now-only-for-inr-17k-at-saholic-deal-alert/

Display technology Jargons for beginners

2011-05-02T23:38:00.000+05:30

Ever been puzzled or intimidated by the jargons TV sales man uses? Here is a brief on the key terms used [ and mostly misunderstood] in display technologies.

Display Tech: 6 Misunderstood Specs Explained

This simple article explains what is Frame rate, refresh rate, Motion interpolation, Interlace, Deinterlace

Upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04 is nothing less than Nightmare

2011-05-02T00:33:00.001+05:30

Excited about the new Ubuntu release and the Unity desktop, I decided to upgrade my Ubuntu Linux 10.10 to 11.04 ( Natty narwal) . A bug in the upgrade utility, made the upgrade process a nightmare and it took me 3 hrs of googling and trial and error to fix it. Fortunately, I could bring it up.

I ran the update-manager,and selected the upgrade to 11.04 option. It downloaded the upgrade utility and it started downloading the new files. All went well till the files got downloaded and installation started.

After the installation started , the system hung. and I had to restart it. But after restarting, the system threw an error "Disk Drive / not ready yet or not available". It asked to select ‘S’ to skip or ‘M’ for manual mount. Apparently, a bug is raised for this https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/udev/+bug/753853.

Select M for manual mount and enter the following commands in the shell to mount the file system.

mount -o remount, rw /

sudo mount –a

sudo /etc/init.d/networking start

sudo dpkg --configure -a

more info on this bug can be found at Update-Manager crash seems to have caused major problems and Disk Drive / not ready yet or not available

If you don’t give the sudo /etc/init.d/networking start then the installation will again freeze while trying to start the nfs-kernel

Incase , after restarting the ubuntu boot was interrupted with the error plymouth main process killed by segv then try booting with previous 2.6.35 kernel.

More info on this error can be found at [SOLVED] No Plymouth Boot screen after upgrade to 11.04 and plymouth main process (53) killed by segv signal?

After this the installation completed . However Ubuntu threw a blank screen when I selected the 2.6.38-pae kernel. Luckily the 2.6.38 kernel booted and fine and now I cam work with Ubuntu 11.04

Bandwidth monitor tool : Free and open source

2011-05-01T21:08:00.001+05:30

If you are searching for a good, UI based Free and open source bandwidth monitor tool , here is a tip to save your time

Windows : bitmeteros [download]

Linux : Knemo [on ubuntu linux , open a console and run, ‘ sudo apt-get install knemo’ ]

Both support , historical data, statistical analysis, alerts etc.

Ipad –2 Magnetic Cover is the most attractive feature

2011-03-03T13:30:00.001+05:30

Ipad 2 launch video is here. Not surprised to see dual core A5, more graphics performance, lighter weight …They were all expected. The surprise feature is the magnetically aligning front cover ( they call is smart cover, I concur). it is so cool, so functional but not sure how durable it is.

Crescent Engineering college celebrating 25th anniversary - Invitation

2011-02-10T15:10:00.001+05:30

My beloved college is celebrating its 25th anniversary on 11-Feb-2011 (Friday). Erstwhile Crescent Engineering college is now renamed as B.S.Abdur Rahman university (Deemed). Here is the invitation photocopy.

Click on the pictures to enlarge

Dilbert- Three monitors

2011-02-10T12:11:00.001+05:30

Hipee! I have three monitors…

Courtesy : Dilbert.com

Ubuntu 10.10 - Getting Canon LIDE 100 scanner to work

2011-01-20T19:22:00.001+05:30

To get Canon LIDE 100 scanner work on Ubuntu 10.10 or later follow the instructions provided in this Ubuntu Forum. Don’t forget to update the /etc/sane.d/genesys.conf as mentioned in this forum.

Microsoft Mathematics – free Problem solving and graphing tool.

2011-01-20T19:15:00.001+05:30

When Microsoft released the Powertoy calc for XP , I was very relieved and ditched the default calculator program that comes with Windows. But that was almost 5 years ago. Finally somebody in Redmond had realised that lot of students are using Windows and released an excellent problem solving and graphing tool for free. Much more powerful than the Powertoy calculator.

Microsoft Mathematics provides a set of mathematical tools that help students get school work done quickly and easily. With Microsoft Mathematics, students can learn to solve equations step-by-step while gaining a better understanding of fundamental concepts in pre-algebra, algebra, trigonometry, physics, chemistry, and calculus.
Microsoft Mathematics includes a full-featured graphing calculator that’s designed to work just like a handheld calculator. Additional math tools help you evaluate triangles, convert from one system of units to another, and solve systems of equations.

I should admit that I like this candy from Microsoft. Download Microsoft Mathematics.

How to configure Pidgin 2.7.8 or greater with Facebook chat

2011-01-13T15:42:00.001+05:30

I am big fan of pidgin, the multi protocol free and open source messenger. It supports Yahoo, Gtalk, MSN, AOL, etc… on one single app. And has an huge list of useful plugins.

When facebook allowed third party clients to communicate with their facebook messenger infrastructure, pidgin immediately added support for it . You can try configuring facebook account on pidgin with the help of this page

However the default support inbuilt in pidgin doesn't seem to work anymore on Pidgin 2.7.8 and later versions.

Luckily there is a opensource Facebook chat plugin for Pidgin. Download the appropriate installer for your OS from here and install it. Restart the Pidgin. Before configuring the account you need a facebook username. This is different from having a facebook account. Though you might be using the facebook account for a long time it is possible that you might not have registered a facebook username. Register the username here before you proceed.

Ignore the Facebook(xmpp) which is the inbuilt facebook module which is not working for many.

How to upgrade KDE to 4.5.5 on Kubuntu 10.10

2011-01-12T22:38:00.001+05:30

For a long time I was struggling to upgrade KDE desktop on my Kubuntu 10.10 Linux system. All the Apt lines I found on the internet were either not available anymore or invalid.

Finally found the right APT line. execute this line in terminal and you will be upgraded to the latest KDE version on Kubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

Computer Automation for common man

2010-10-28T15:59:00.001+05:30

I have experimented with many automation tools for software testing in my job. There are plenty of professional automation tools like AutoIt, autoHotkey, Celenium, TestComplete etc. You can record your actions with them , add your own script and debug them.

However finding a simple, user friendly, GUI based , automation tool for a common man was hard to find. However recently there are some new cool tools have come up to address this.

Sikuli

Sikuli is a visual technology to search and automate graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images (screenshots). All you need is to capture the images of the areas on the screen like textbox, buttons, and put them in a simple to learn script. It is free and open source. and works on both Windows and Linux. Surprisingly, it is a professional quality product. I have started using and promoting Sikuli in software system testing.

Actions

Actions is free java app that runs on Windows and Mac. It allows you to drag and drop ‘actions’ in to a sequence to form a workflow. ‘Actions’ can be anything like opening a file or rotating an image. Actions software comes with a list of predefined actions. You can add your own actions as well. It is very similar to the automator tool in Mac.

Site for Bangalore Bus route search

2010-10-15T18:40:00.001+05:30

Bangaloreans are lucky!. If you are planning to travel across Bangalore in the BMTC (government operated) bus, but not sure of what bus to take, don't worry. A good samaritan called Narasimha datta had created a simple site which can search and provide you the bus no.s for a particular route. If there is any breakup , then all the bus no.s for the different breakup routes are mentioned as well.

Check the site at Bangalore Bus Route Search

Did Stuxnet worm kill India’s Insat-4B

2010-10-15T18:20:00.001+05:30

Insat-4B , satellite launched by ISRO, Indian space agency, failed to half its capacity on July 7. Rumours have cropped out that the satellites were attacked by a computer worm called Stuxnet. Reportedly some customers of the Insat-4B satellite had moved on to Asiasat, a Chinese satellite.

The primary question is this attack true. ISRO has denied the reports though. If it is true, was it a sabotage or accidental infection. Given the fact that India and China are close competitors in the space satellites market, one cannot rule out sabotage.

You can find more info on Stuxnet worm here

Next generation phone – Conceptualized by Mozilla

2010-09-24T14:36:00.001+05:30

We have seen many concept phone’s video form Nokia, Motorola and other players. Surprisingly , Mozilla, the company that gave us the wonderful open source browser Firefox, has released a video of the next generation phone , called Seabird, that uses pico projectors, and Wii like motion controlled accessories .

Mozilla have clearly stated that they may not be producing the phone. But the effort had come from the Mozilla Labs community which peeks in to next generation technology.

you can also watch the video in 3D here

Getting Avermedia AvertV Super 009 working on Ubuntu

2010-09-05T10:20:00.002+05:30

If you are facing problem getting Avermedia AvertV Super 009 TV tuner card working on Ubuntu Linux, then refer this thread started by me in Ubuntu Forums.

Getting Avermedia AvertV Super 009 working on Ubuntu

Wammu - Mobile phone manager on Linux

2010-09-04T19:54:00.004+05:30

Wammu is a program to manage data in your cell phone such as contacts, calendar or messages. It is built on Gammu library, which provides abstraction layer to work with different cell phones from different vendors (including Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, Siemens, Huawei and others).

Every smart phones or feature phones, that is available on the market today, comes packed with a CD that installs certain drivers and tools to access you mobile phone on the owner's computer. Motorola calls them as Motorola mobile phone tools, Sony Ericsson calls it as PC suite. These tools are used to browse files on the phone, send SMS, make calls, all these from your Windows or Mac computer. Unfortunately, none of the manufacturer provides similar tools for Linux platform. Sad.

Luckily , Linux users have the free and open source tools called Wammu. Configuring, My Sony Ericcson Hazel (J20i) was a kid's play. These screenshots simplifies the job. It had all the feature of a SE PC suite including backing up feature. However , SMS management was much better that SE PC suite ( PC suite SMS manager is quite buggy and i had bad experience os loosing my SMS whenever I use it) and search functionality was quite powerful.Wammu can be installed on Ubuntu Linux using synaptic package manager.

Any mobile user in India, knows how frustrating it is to get spammed by hundred's of SMS per day. I don't waste my time deleting all this SMS. I use Wammu, say twice or thrice a week and search some spam terms and clean them in one shot. The following screenshot shows the search result for the term Gold. Almost 80% of the result is spam and I can delete them in one shot. It also supports regex and wild card searching. So I can write my own spam filter combining all the search terms in one regex.

Tethering Airtel with Ubuntu 10.4

2010-09-04T17:03:00.006+05:30

I have Airtel mobile connection on a Sony Ericcson Hazel (J20i) phone. I have also subscribed to the Airtel mobile office (GPRS) service, which at this point of time costs me 100 Rs per month for 300 MB. I wanted to tether my mobile with my laptop which runs Ubuntu Linux 10.4 and KDE desktop. Wikipedia defines Tethering as use of a mobile device such as a mobile phone to supply Internet access for another devices (such as Laptop). Note : Before you attempt it is advisable to verify with your service provider that your data service (GPRS / 3G) supports tethering. Because the operator might choose the enable/disable them based on the package.

The first stage in tethering is connecting your mobile and Laptop either using the Cable supplied with phone or using bluetooth. I had used bluetooth connection. Bluetooth connection should be fair enough for low bandwidth GPRS ( mine is around 80 kbps). However, My guess is that, for High bandwidth connections like 3G, Bluetooth might be a bottleneck because Bluetooth's bandwidth might not scale up to 3G speed. In short if your are tethering mobile with 3G data connection, use cable, else you are free to use either cable or Bluetooth.

I don't like the default KDE bluetooth manage. So I use BlueMan as my Bluetooth device manager. After scanning for the device select the setup wizard for the device as shown below.

Make sure you select the Dial-up option. Serial port option is tyoically used for file transferring and browsing.

This will isntall the bluetooth modem for he phone and now the phone modem is ready. All you need to do is to configure the KDE Network manager to dial up this modem. It is pretty simple . Open the Mobile Broadband tab and configure the new device as follows.

To get the number and APN values, follow these steps. this is what the Airtel Technicians advised me. On Sony Ericsson Phone go to Main Menu->settings->Connectivity->Internet Settings->Connect using. This will show a list of GPRS services and the current one you are using will be selected. Now press the options ( on J20i it was in the left bottom) and select view. What you see now is the 'Account info' of the selected data services. Replace the 'N' in *99***N# with the value in 'External id'. This becomes your number. APN value is the same value given in APN field in the account info. Save this and you have successfully configured your Sony Ericsson phone with Ubuntu for tethering.

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Getting colored output on Visual Studio build output

2010-08-09T19:19:00.001+05:30

When compiling a solution in the Visual studio , the IDE throws the build output in the Output window. However the output window doesn't support ASCII codes. So It doesn't give the colored output the MSBuild gives. Recently I faced a problem where a prebuild event failed , but the IDE didn't detect it as build failure and completed the build successfully. Apparently , some file was not overwritten in the prebuild, due to permission problem and the stale file was compiled every build. However building the same project using MSbuild clearly showed the failing prebuild step in red and helped debugging the problem.

So I decided to integrate MSBuild in to the Visual studio. So that I can MSBuild once in a while and see that all prebuild/postbuild steps are executing fine. I couldn't find any addin. But I found another nice open source tool mPad in Codeplex. It was written to launch the MSBuild from the Windows explorer shell. But I added it as an external tool in the IDE and created a button for it. This works on any VS IDE.

First download mPad and install on your system. Then open your Visual Studio IDE and select Menu->tools->external tools. Create an entry for mPad as given in the following picture.

If you prefer, you can create a custom button for it. Mine looks like this.

Here is a sample project ( using gallio-testlink-adapter) . I had intentionally introduced an error. The following sample shows how it looks in VS build output and the Mpad.

VS build output

mPad build called from VS