ReviewSaurus - Technology Rocks!

How to install JSON support for PHP in CentOS

ReviewSaurus — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:04:17 +0000

Without putting much of thoughts and discussion. I would like to write down the commands that you can run on terminal window. It will enable JSON support for PHP in CentOS.

yum update “*php*”
yum install php-pear
yum install gcc
pecl install json
cd /etc/php.d/
echo “extension=json.so” >> json.ini
service httpd restart

Thanks to arckid & phpfreaks.

[Awesome App] Create calendar from your facebook photos!

ReviewSaurus — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:05:27 +0000

iTasveer, one of my favorite online photo printing service has recently launched a wonderful facebook application called Mast Calendar. This application lets you create a personalized calendar with your photographs and lets you put nearly 20+ b’day events. Once you’ve chosen the photographs and events – you can either download a high resolution calendar for use on computer or get it printed & delivered it to your house. What I liked was the price – It’s only Rs. 99 and for this reasonable price you get a high quality personalized calendar.

The facebook application has been built on their proprietary platform, they call it DoodlePad. Using this application, you can choose the photographs and place them at desired locations on pre-designed calendars.

Over all, its a cool application that people can play around with and make use of it as well. Although, I had to spend quite a bit of time in choosing the events as there was no search option while choosing the events – so, if you have like 1000 plus friends then you’ll surely find tough time in choosing the events. I hope that iTasveer team will add the search functionality soon.

Other than that, I won’t mind an app from iTasveer that’ll help me create widgets of the photographs uploaded by me. If an application like Mast Calendar takes not more than 7 days to be built (as claimed by them) then a small application that allows me to play around with photos and make small widgets with it should not take time and I would surely like to do that too.

Microsoft come up with IE for Mac OS X – for some market share!

ReviewSaurus — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:18:47 +0000

There is hardly any time when any person using computers will not be associated with Microsoft – either someone will be using one of their operating systems, they’ll be connected to Exchange server, using their hardware or if they are Linux or Apple fans then they’ll be busy talking trash about it. Literally, Microsoft rules in many ways in our lives — As Apple or Linux fans – somehow it’ll be little difficult for you to accept it but think about it once again!

When we talk about Microsoft, one of the points of discussion will be Internet Explorer and I have to say that even though I left using Internet Explorer long time back and as more people are following the trend, IE has vastly improved. With the release of IE 8, you can surely see significant difference, still it is seeing a drop in its market share and one of the primary reason for the same is that others are marketing their browsers well as compared to Microsoft.

IE lost 7.8 percentage points during 2009, ending the year at a new low of 62.7%, an annual loss rate of about 11%. In 2008, IE lost 8.3 points, for an annual loss rate of 10.5%. That’s a pretty clear trend line.

One of the biggest reason for all this blood shed was the popularity of Mozilla Firefox (available on all platforms) and the help it gained with Google’s promotions and then Apple’s Safari started getting popular because it released its version for Windows and no doubt, Apple Macs got popular as well and got 8% of the OS market share. Later the some part of the pie was taken up by Google Chrome, that is also available for all the platforms now.

All the browsers are gaining popularity, its only Microsoft’s IE (can I call it Old horse) whose popularity is declining every year and is only available on one single platform i.e. Microsoft Windows. Microsoft used to have IE for Macintosh and no matter what (whether people use it or not) they should at least come up with the versions for other operating systems too! I’m sure there are no IE fans that’ll stick to windows just because they want to use IE.

Here’s my plea to Microsoft — There are thousands of Indian Websites that are still biggest fan of Internet Explorer and no matter what, they won’t support any other browser – so for their sake or at least for the sake of those Indian users – come up with versions of Internet explorer for at least Mac! Remember you still have a development team building Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac – use them!!!

Nexus One – Everything you want to read about it!

ReviewSaurus — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:56:32 +0000

Nokia, Blackberry, HTC and who not tried to create the iPhone killer and they miserably failed. Some of the key reason for the failure are – 1) Under powered mobile OS. 2) Under powered Hardware. Many will argue about these two points however, I will be explaining these reasons in detail as you read further. Before all that, let me reveal a good news first i.e. Our very own favorite Google has finally and officially entered in the smart mobile phone market by launching Nexus One! Nexus One! Nexus One! (Oh! I almost swayed away with emotions).

When did Google Launch this phone?

Google launched Nexus One on 5th January 2010 and I’m positive that for all the tech geeks – this will be their biggest New Year Gift! The phone’s hardware was actually designed by One & Co. (Acquired by HTC in 2008), although it was launched in collaboration with HTC. [via - cnet]

Will this be tied to some network like iPhone?

As of now, the phone is available in US and as everyone will expect with Google, they believe in Open & free world! Surely, the phone isn’t free – however, it is open in the sense that its not tied with any network at the moment. So as a customer no one needs to buy the phone and some crappy and sluggish network operator with this. One can easily buy the phone from here and choose the operator of their choice.

What are the specs of Nexus One?

1. Size & Weight – At 130 grams w/battery the phone is just 5 grams lighter than iPhone. It’s height (119mm) is slightly bigger than iPhone(115.5mm) however, its width(59.8mm) is less than that of iPhone(62.1mm).

I’m giving the comparison between iPhone and Nexus One side by side so as you also start understanding that why Nexus One will be an iPhone Killer.

2. Display – Nexus One’s display (3.7 inch diagonally) is .2 inch bigger than iPhone (of course, the difference is almost nothing, so we can keep both the phones one equal on this part. However, where Nexus One becomes better is that it’s screen resolution (800×480) is much better than of iPhone (480×320).

3. Camera – Nexus One definitely has better camera on papers than iPhone. It flaunts a 5 MegaPixel camera as compared to 3 MP of iPhone. Although when it comes to recording videos – iPhone can capture videos at 30 FPS as compared to 20 – 27 FPS of Nexus One. Here are the thoughts about Nexus One’s Video & image quality by one of the dedicated blog about Nexus One -

Unfortunately, we can’t give the Nexus One a perfect review when it comes to this area. Photos and video are just average, and very similar to all of the rest of HTC’s devices in the market as well as the Motorola Droid. iPhone definitely kicks but in this area.

4. Operating System & Processor – Nexus One wins this hands down! It features Qualcomm QSD 8250 1 GHz Processor! That whooping fast!! I still remember that how I used to jump with joy while using Intel 386 computer that my uncle used to play prince of persia. Anyway, this means that Nexus One is much faster than Apple iPhone as its processing speed is some where between 600 – 700 Mhz. Nexus One uses Android OS 2.1 (Eclair) that is Open and I’m sure with the launch of this phone, will feature way more applications!

Why this phone will be an iPhone killer?

To be honest, Apple iPhone has come to a stage where it surely can’t be killed by any phone. When I say that the phone is iPhone Killer, I’m only saying that this phone will be better in features and will take some part of iPhone’s market. One of the key reasons iPhone flourished was there was no phone that matched its style, Apple’s brand and a very powerful OS. However, Nexus One looks promising enough that it will easily be able to give competition to iPhone in all these departments.

Nexus One surely looks sexy enough that its owner won’t feel jealous after looking at the iPhone, they will rather feel proud that they have Nexus One and not iPhone. Google’s brand value is way more than Apple (that line is not for Apple Fans – they should ignore that last line and should read this line instead — Google’s brand value can give competition to Apple’s brand.)

As far as the OS is concerned, I will still give preference to iPhone (Reason – I’m Macbook owner & Apple ~~fan~~ Lover too), although I won’t take anything away from Google’s Android for simple reasons like 1) Google is developing it. 2) It’s open. We’ve seen that some of the world’s best software are Open Source and that the developer community embraces anything that is developed by Google and is Open. So even though, iPhone’s OS (i.e. OS X – which again is powered by open unix) may be powerful at the moment, it will not be the case in very short future.

Links that will surely give you more information about Nexus One!

1. The best review of Nexus One – I’ve read till this time!
2. Nexus One – Tech Specs.
3. WikiPedia is cool as we all know :)

Interesting blog & news entries!

1. Om Malik – Androidification of everything.
2. Cnet – More phones in future by Google.
3. Blog Search of Nexus One.

Images of Nexus One

Check out more pages from Flickr.

I personally feel that Nexus One will surely rule the market, we’ll have hundred thousands applications built for Android platform and that Apple iPhone will surely get to see its toughest competition ever! No matter what happens, I’m confident about one thing – we’ll surely have even competitive market — again beneficial for consumers – this may result in price drop (various other phones if not iPhone) and probably some good news for AT&T customers.

Vevo Player on Youtube also not working?

ReviewSaurus — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:08:39 +0000

I’m quite amazed to see that how one of our post about YouTube not working has attracted quite a good amount of visitors on this blog. Anyway, I thought that I would also like to add that it was for a short amount of moment that YouTube didn’t work for me and I was really asking our readers if they were facing any issues.

Other than that, I faced a similar kind of problem. However, it was not the same problem as I faced at the moment. It is more related to my inability to play videos that are played under Vevo’s brand on Youtube. Here’s one of them.

Vevo is an online music video website owned by Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, EMI and Abu Dhabi Media Company, that is developed and hosted by YouTube, Sony, and Google Videos, with content being initially provided by Universal Music Group. [via Wikipedia]

The music is available not only through Vevo’s own website, its also available on YouTube. However, when I try to go on Vevo’s website, this is what I get to see -

When I thought of playing some videos on YouTube, I noticed that they at least open, however they are Vevo branded player and somehow are not streaming the videos right. Although, at the same time if I stream any other Youtube video under YouTube’s branded player they stream and work fine.

So, is it the issue with everyone who are not in the country where Vevo isn’t available or is it only happening to me? Please share your experience with these videos.

Microsoft Surface videos that’ll blow your mind!

ReviewSaurus — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:21:11 +0000

Microsoft Surface is brilliant! I know that most of you will already know that what exactly this is all about, however I was so much moved by looking at the video of Microsoft Surface that I couldn’t control myself from not publishing anything about it – even after long time.

WPvideo 1.10

Here’s another one! This one will surely blow away your mind! Don’t forget to watch this video!

WPvideo 1.10

I just hope that we get Microsoft Surface and if at all we can play around with it in our homes, I’ll be probably one of the firsts to buy one (provided it gets dead cheap :P) This revolutionary product will surely change the way we use computers. With my jaws still dropped, I can only say one thing – Computer are becoming more human!

Pirated Windows 7 is already hit in Indian markets!

ReviewSaurus — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:58:18 +0000

In a recent report published on IndiaTimes, I found out that how much piracy is costing companies like Microsoft. According to the news, nearly 50,000 copies of Pirated Windows 7 has been sold in a city like Lucknow. The average price of pirated windows 7 is about Rs.100 ( around 2 dollars), so the total amount is nearly $ 100,000! Now, that much amount of business is of Pirated Windows 7, the actual legal copy’s business will be around $10 Million!

So if city like Lucknow where the IT industry or business industry is small as compared to the metros, is costing nearly $10 million to Microsoft then I’m sure that the number will be way to high when it comes to cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore and so on..

Imagine that if the companies will reduce the price to an extent where people will prefer to use an original copy of the operating system, I’m sure that they’ll be able to make more than double their revenues and will be able to sell more services to those customers – Did someone mention the word SaaS (software as a service)?

Anyway, this situation is not bad till here, it starts to look ugly when you’ll know that most of the computer shop owners sell these pirated windows 7 copies and defend themselves by saying that if these things are available on the internet for free, then why sell original copy. They even say that if I’ll not do it, someone else will do it!

That story is from the shop keepers side, I’m sure most of you’ll not be amazed when I’ll tell you that these shop keepers easily sell the pirated copies to the customers because many of the Indian customers don’t have any idea about computers and they don’t even know that one needs to pay a heavy amount to the companies for buying a legal copy of the operating system. What are your thoughts on the same topic? In our next discussion we’ll talk about making use of Linux and ensuring that you get use the computer and still use a legal copy and that too all for free! Other than that, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of the same. All of this will be discussed from a regular computer user’s point of view.

Should one install more RAM in computers?

ReviewSaurus — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:29:12 +0000

I hear most of the computer users cry that there computer is running slow and isn’t as fast as it used to be. Well, there can be multiple reasons for the same, including but not limited to 1) Computers getting infected from spywares or viruses 2) Hard Disks getting full 3) RAM is low as compared to the latest software installs.

I’ve already covered quite a lot on how one can ensure that there computer can stay away from spyware & viruses, I’ve even covered on the topic that how some one can use ReadyBoost technology on Windows Vista to use pen drives as RAM, however I still say that this technology isn’t the permanent solution and one should put actual RAM on the computers.

RAM’s are pretty cheap these days, I got 4 Gb of RAM for my Apple Macbook for as low as $ 110. It has considerably improved the performance of my laptop and I know that I’m already safe for like 2-3 yrs. Of course, I’m a power user and I run more than 3-4 heavy applications at a time, thus it makes sense for me to install more RAM on my computer – the question remains though that should an average computer user install more RAM on their computers or not? I’ve tried to answer the question and here it is -

1. More RAM will ensure that your computer is future proof – Generally operating system makers (Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac) release new versions of their respective operating systems in every 2-3 yrs. and with every new release, they start acting as memory hog for your computer. So, if you’ll have more RAM, you know that with every update and release you won’t have the trouble of changing the RAM. At any given day, I would suggest at least 2 Gb of RAM if you are using Windows Vista.

2. If you start playing Games – Same is the case with PC Games! With advancement in hardware and their slashing prices, companies are trying to improve the quality of their games for better gaming experience, however that results in heavy applications that need more RAM & Video memory. If you are planning to play games on your computers then you should consider installing more RAM on your computer.

3. Run multiple applications at a time – Having more RAM allows you to utilize the multi-tasking ability of the computer systems. There are people who prefer to run light music in background while they work on their business application. I’m doing that same at this point of time, while writing the article – I’m listening to music and occasionally I’m checking my emails too. Having more RAM allows me to run all these applications at one time and no worry about my computer being slow.

In short, to improve the user experience – software companies include more features and have rich user interface and that causes the software to become memory hog and thus one needs more memory. If you think that your computer is running slow then you should consider checking it for virus and even if that doesn’t solve your problem, you should consider buying more RAM.

Prevent Crashing

ReviewSaurus — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:03:33 +0000

Computers crashing can be one of the most frustrating things off to see the blue screen of death may be faced with undue delay and may be worse. Prevention is certainly better than cure will discover how to prevent crashes happening in the first place which may save you a lot of time and frustration.

1) Make sure you keep a note of how much memory have or RAM and you know exactly how big your hard drive is. The system actually uses some hard drive space as memory. Basically don’t want too many programs at once will system can overload and crashes start to take place. One way to make sure you aren’t using too much memory or CPU is by hitting ctrl-alt-delete and the
same time. This starts “Task Manager”. You can then decide how many simultaneous processes you can run, based on the amount of physical memory you have available.
2) Make sure you check your disk space and you have enough left. Sometimes if your screen freezes it may be an indication that you are running out of disk space. If you go to computer on your desktop and click on your C: Drive it will tell you how much space on your hard drive. You need at least 500 meg storage space free on your hard drive for your computer to run without
crashing.

3) Make sure you have anti-virus software on your computer and make sure it is updated regularly there is plenty of free anti-virus that’s some software you have to pay a subscription usually a year. Virus threats change on a daily basis so make sure the virus definition updated daily.

4) On a side note you should always back up your files are software such as partition Magic ghost where you can copy files onto other partition or copy the entire image of your hard drive onto another harddrive. Backups should
occur at least once a month. When working on important documents make sure that you have the program set on automatic save. You can set some programs to save every 10 mins like Word or Excel. So if the computer suddenly crashes you can quickly recover files on reboot.

5) It is very common operating systems need upgrading once in a while so for instance Microsoft will allow you to download patches to make the running of your computer smoother and prevent crashes.

6) Make sure you’re using the proper security settings for your PC. You need to ensure that nobody can access system settings or the registry apart from the administrator. This is because if some system settings are accidentally tampered with or hacked into, this can cause major problems.

7) Make sure you keep the drivers like the sound driver or the graphics drivers updated.

8) Make sure you keep your computer dust free especially around the CPU fan. You can prevent overheating by adding a hard drive fan or a chipset fan. Sometimes laptops can overheat therefore you can purchase laptop coolers that will prevent crashes if the laptop is switched on for a long period of time.

Author’s resource box: Bob is a freelance writer and software developer for http://www.qiqisoft.com.

Is Adobe going to rule the Rich Internet Applications world?

ReviewSaurus — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 14:56:32 +0000

I’m sure few of you already know that I’ve recently shifted to Mumbai to learn Adobe technologies from TeknoPoint Multimedia. I’m currently pursuing RIA Developer Course and soon you’ll see develop applications that’ll make life simpler for bloggers in many ways. So far I’m very much enjoying what I’m learning and while I’m learning it, I’m realizing that developing softwares using Adobe Flash/Flex/ActionScript 3.0 and whatever you see in that RIA Developer course structure isn’t that difficult. And that made me think that if development of software will become this easy, then soon we’ll see whole load of applications in coming years.

Before I go further, lets understand that what exactly Rich Internet Applications means and why I think that it’s going to be the future of computing (via WikiPedia)-

Rich Internet applications (RIAs) are web applications that have most of the characteristics of desktop applications, typically delivered by way of standards based web browser plug-ins or independently via sandboxes or virtual machines. RIAs can be developed through the following frameworks – Curl, Adobe Flash/Adobe Flex/AIR, Java/JavaFX, uniPaaS and Microsoft Silverlight.

There was a time when computer industry required desktop software and around 1996, it was hit by the term “Internet”. The world continued as normal and then “Internet” was hit by what we all got bored of “Web 2.0″. With the advancement of technologies and the requirement of people, its becoming clearer that people now just don’t want to work on software, they want to collaborate, share and want their work ported on various devices and for that Internet is one medium through which it’s possible. So here comes the need of Rich Internet Applications – these are those applications that’ll be available on your computer, web & mobile phones – not only that, they’ll all be synced to ensure that no matter where you are, you’ll be able to perform all the tasks.

Coming back to the topic of will Adobe technologies rule the world of RIAs or not? Well, I’m too new in the field of development to make an expert comment on it. However, as I said that it seems pretty easy to develop the applications in Adobe technologies, so I’m assuming that Adobe will surely capture a big market ahead. There are already tons and thousands of Adobe AIR applications on the internet and I don’t see much development going around Mozilla Prism or any popular application built on SilverLight – I’m assuming that Adobe technologies will surely enjoy a bigger developer base supporting them. None the less, I’ve to say that with the launch of SilverLight 3, it seems that MicroSoft is ready to give good competition to Adobe Technologies. What are your thoughts on this debatable topic?