Last weekend we went to The Rappa -An Island Eco Resort located 210 kms away from Bangalore near Hassan. We left Bangalore on the 31^st of October at 7.15am, families were also invited. The bus took the NICE Road till Magadi and we stopped at Kunigal for Breakfast. We played Dumb Charades, Cards, Housie and Antakshari during the journey. We were only few kms away from Rappa when we had to stop our bus as the road ahead was blocked due to temple inauguration in the village. We were invited to join in the festivities as it would take 2 hours to clear the road ……so we decided to do the 30 minutes walk in the afternoon sun accompanied by the cool breeze from the river to reach Rappa. We were welcomed by 3 lovely dogs -Shunti(Pomeranian), Brownie(Golden Retriever) , Shadow(Basset Hound) and another surprise awaiting us was Jack, a mighty horse which was brought to Rappa a month ago. We were so excited to check out our accommodations which were Machans, Tree houses and Swiss Tents spread beside the river. After the walk, we had all worked out a good appetite and so we enjoyed the lunch.

Nobody wanted to rest so we started with the games. We had four teams for each game which were divided earlier and each team came up with team names like Jinis, Shakalaka boom boom , Rainbow, TechJini Warriors, Parasites and Halloween. Yes, Amal we haven’t sensored ‘Shakalaka boom boom’ from being mentioned in this blog

We started with Lagori which was good fun and The Rainbow team won the game….. of course there were lot of fights which added to the fun. It was not tiring enough for few so we decided to play Cricket followed by Foot ball. I guess too much work and no play gave everyone too much energy we didn’t even want to take the tea break. The Sun was setting by then and we were surrounded by good music, chill breeze and everybody settled down on the sand around the campfire under the dark sky, full moon and stars shining bright (which we hardly get to see here due to city light). After soaking into the lovely atmosphere everybody started dancing and singing along with the music. We had hot hot bajjis and chicken kebab served during the campfire. The dancing did not stop till the fire went off and we had dinner around 12. People at Rappa had planned a Night trek for us. We drove 20 kms from Rappa to reach the point where we had to begin the climb to the top of the hill. We started the climb accompanied by the Shunti, Shadow and Brown with the help of Moon Light. There is a temple on top which is opened once a week to worship God. The view from atop was spectacular (Should be clear and better in day light) . We could see other range of hills, forest and Tipu’s Fort below. It was quiet, dark and very cold on top. We sat there, enjoyed the view and listened to the stories of Tipu Sultan and his secret underground path told to us by our Trek Guide(Nagesh). And yes how can I forgot Rohit and Santosh have lost their 4 hours of memory due to too much mixing of water and juice

We came back to Rappa at 4am to catch up on some sleep and were up by 6.30 to do Kayaking. The river is wide and long as it is a place were two rivers meet and there is an island in the middle of the river. Most of us went rowing till the island and some went swimming in the deep waters.

We had a good breakfast of bread, jam, butter, omelet , poori, saagu, orange juice,tea and coffee. We went by the river side to play team building games to encourage bonding among each other. Each team had 6 members in this game and one person was blindfolded. The blindfolded person would lead the line and rest stand behind to pass on the instructions given from the last person. The twist in the game was that no member was allowed to speak. Instructions were to be passed on only through actions. There was a start line and finish line and on the way three objects were placed. The blindfolded person had to pick up these objects and then move ahead to the finish line. The Rainbow team won this game as well. The second game we played was ‘Brick Game’. There were 6 members in each team and were given 4 bricks. Three people had to step only on the bricks and three would move the bricks to make sure those on bricks are moving ahead towards the finish line without stepping on the ground.

We were physically getting tired and people started complaining about body pain so the next game we played was ‘Create an Ad’ where each team had to Create an Ad on the given product , name the product and enact. The products given were Baby Nappies, Glue, Designer Saree, Hair Growth Cream, Fat losing Belt, Detergent Powder and Mouth Freshener. This was real fun and told us a lot about people’s personal life like how is Akshi as a wife, Amit Singh as a husband and how was Rohit’s childhood

It was lunch time by then and we had to check- out after lunch so we packed our bags had lunch and left Rappa half hearted.

What is the Android NDK?

The Android NDK is a companion tool used only in conjunction with Android SDK which allows application developers to build performance-critical portions of their apps by use of native (C/C++) code.

This provide benefits in form of reuse of existing code and increased speed.

Contents of NDK:

• A set of tools and build files for generating native code libraries from C and C++ sources.
• A way to embed the corresponding native libraries into application package files (.apks) that can be deployed on Android devices.
• A set of native system headers and libraries supported starting from Android 1.5 .
• Documentation, samples, and tutorials.

Download NDK from http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/1.6_r1/index.html and uncompress it.Now run the script in <NDK>/build/host-setup.sh.This creates <NDK>/out/host/config.mk which configure NDK for system.

How to write an application using NDK?

Follow underneath steps to create our own application using NDK and make it running on emulator.

Write an Android Activity

You need to include following lines of extra code in our java file.

• Call native method inside on create method.
• Declare native method outside oncreate method.
• Call to “System.loadLibrary” method inside a static initializer block to load our shared library object.

package com.example.FileLoaderActivity;

public class FileLoaderActivity extends Activity {

private static String TAG = “FileLoaderActivity”;

// The name of a test file to write

private static String FILENAME = “hello”;

// The full path to the test file

private static String PATH = “/data/data/com.example.FileLoaderActivity/” + FILENAME;

@Override

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {

super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

setContentView(R.layout.main);

……………

// Call the native method to read the file just written

byte[] bytes = loadFile(PATH);

…………..

}

public native byte[] loadFile(String fileName); static {

System.loadLibrary(”fileloader”);

}

}

Generating C/C++ header files For generating C/C++ header file for our shared library:

• Build project which generates Java.class files under <project_home>/bin
• Use javah tool to generate a C/C++ header file.

Issue the following command at the top of <project_home>, my command looks like:

javah -o fileloader.h -classpath bin com.example.FileLoaderActivity.FileLoaderActivity

The above command will generate a file called fileloader.h .

Creating our Shared Library

Create two folders which will contain source code and make files:

• mkdir -p ~/workspace/<project_home>/jni folder - contain the source code for our shared library.
• mkdir -p $NDK_HOME/apps/fileloader folder- “project definition” folder for our shared library

Now copy header file ‘hellondk.h’ from Eclipse project folder to ~/workspace/<project_home>/jni/

For building our NDK project, we need to create two Makefiles which will specify how and from where to pick source code and library file.

• Android.mk
• Application.mk

“~/workspace/<project_home>/jni/Android.mk”

Android.mk file describes source file to build system and its contents are :

LOCAL_PATH := $(call my-dir)

include $(CLEAR_VARS)

LOCAL_MODULE := fileloader

LOCAL_SRC_FILES := fileloader.c

LOCAL_LDLIBS := -L$(SYSROOT)/usr/lib -llog

include $(BUILD_SHARED_LIBRARY)

“$NDK_HOME/apps/fileloader/Application.mk“

Application.mk file describes modules that are needed by your application and it looks like:

APP_PROJECT_PATH := ~/workspace/FileLoaderActivity

APP_MODULES := fileloader

Creating Shared Library Source

Now create C source file for shared library which defines JNI method called by Java file.Signature of this Jni method should match with fileloader.h file generated by eclipse build system.

~/workspace/FileLoaderActivity/jni/fileloader.c

jbyteArray Java_com_example_FileLoaderActivity_FileLoaderActivity_loadFile

(JNIEnv* env, jobject thiz, jstring filename)

{

……………………..

}

Compiling our Shared Library

Change current working directory to $NDK_HOME and run command “make APP=fileloader”.You can find your shared library into folder $NDK_HOME/out/apps/fileloader/ directory.You can now run our FileLoaderActivity project from within Eclipse. Dont forget to push file “hello” mentioned in java code before running project.Here’s a screenshot of what you should see in the emulator.

Well, lets get this straight, you are NOT an iPhone developer if:

• you have no idea why you write “nonatomic” and “retain” in all properties. And you’ve never tried to find out.
• you cannot tell the difference between release and autorelease
• you hear the terms “main run loop” or “event loop” for the firm time during the interview
• you think all classes are either views or controllers
• you have never written code for “applicationDidReceiveMemoryWarning” and “didReceiveMemoryWarning”
• you do not know if you should release objects you created by through “copy” or “mutableCopy”
• the terms build configurations and provisioning profiles do not ring a bell
• you have never even seen the iPhone HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) document
• you think both “viewDidLoad” and “loadView” are same methods
• you have never used breakpoints and the debugger
• you have never used the Instruments Application to monitor memory or network usage
• you do not know how to read crash logs or how to add symbols to crash logs
• even after programming for iPhone, you do not know about the Model-View-Controller pattern or the delegate pattern

And in case you are just starting off with iPhone programming, it would be wise to know the basics of both objective-C and the iPhone SDK. Don’t skip reading at least the following:

• iPhone 101
• Objective-C programming language guide
• iPhone Application Programming Guide
• View Controller Programming Guide for iPhone OS

I still have not investigated the root cause but the following fixes it.

We did not do anything extra or change any code or project build configuration. Here is what we did:

1. Restored our iPhone/iPod Touch devices by erasing everything and reinstalling the OS. Did not sync the device or restore old data to avoid putting in the provisioning profiles again.
2. Deleted all certificates and private keys from keychain on the mac (all including the Apple provider certificates)
3. Removed all provisioning profiles from xcode.
4. From the developer portal, we deleted the adhoc and dev provisioning profiles
5. From the developer portal, we revoked the push SSL certificates for both dev and production versions
6. Then we regenerated the push SSL certificates, both production and dev. Note that we did not download them from the wizard itself at this time.
7. We then waited for a few minutes (5-10 mins) and then generated the provisioning profile. Not downloaded yet.
8. We again waited a few minutes (5-10 mins) and then downloaded the certificates (sandbox and production) and the profiles (dev and adhoc)
9. We then generated the single PEM file from the certificates and the key only for the production version. We did not even install the sandbox version certificates in our keychain.
10. Then installed the adhoc provisioning profile in xcode and the device
11. Started the application and tested a push notification
12. It worked

They key difference is that we generate and download the dev profiles and sandbox certificates but do not use them at all. We only use the production certificates and the adhoc profile. That seems to always work.

Need of Gestures:
Touch screens are a great way to interact with applications on mobile devices. With a touch screen, users can easily tap, drag, fling, or slide to quickly perform actions in their favorite applications. But it’s not always that easy for developers. With Android, it’s easy to recognize simple actions, like a swipe, but it’s much more difficult to handle complicated gestures, which also require developers to write a lot of code. In such a situation we can use gestures.This API, located in the new package android.gesture.

We decided to try it out and see how it works. For sample we made a list and used the ‘drag to dustbin’ gesture to delete individual list items.

Step 1: Creating / defining our own gestures using GestureBuilder

Step 2: Copy the gesture file created by GestureBuilder from SD card and put it into ‘res/raw’ folder of your project.

Step 3: Write code to handle the event generated by your gesture

I mostly use tabs to remind me of important emails. One, they are always in front and second when I restart Thunderbird I don’t have to look for them again as Thunderbird remembers/maintains last open tabs. Ofcourse tabs are also very helpful in keeping all open windows clean.
New Lightning addon works well with google calendar. Very helpful when sharing different calendars with different people. It synchs well and also gives reminders.

But thats not what excited me enough to write this article I upgrade to b4 pre today and they have included Gloda search engine based search and conversations. Earlier it was available as an add on and I tried this earlier with b2 but it didn’t work.

Thunderbird 2 has per folder indexing which is not so helpful. You will have several folders and then your replies going into sent items. So what is needed is a tool to search across all folders. Also several times you need to read full conversations which is very very difficult right now. Thunderbird 3 has this powerful search engine ‘Gloda’ which search across all the folders and presents them either as a list or as conversations. WOW!! could it get better?

Now you can search your entire mailbox, rss feeds etc from single place and that too with lot of intelligent options. The result is also displayed very nicely. You have several filters to further refine search/conversations.

And if you are also integrating 3rd party libraries (analytics, ad networks etc.), you would have to ensure those also are backward compatible.

Q: How can I ensure that my application works on all iPhone OS versions from OS 2.0 to the latest 3.x version? And I do need to use some 3.0 features like push notifications or the Map Kit functions.

1. Choose the Base SDK as iPhone Device 3.0. You can do this by right click on project name->Get Info. Then on the General tab, set the “Base SDK for All Configurations”to “iPhone Device 3.0″.
2. Choose your deployment to be the lowest version you want to support. You can do this by right click on project name->Get Info. Then on the Biold tab, select “All Configurations” for Configuration so that this change is applied to all you configurations. Then look for the “iPhone OS Deployment Target” property under the “Deployment” section. Set that to the correct iPhone OS version. In my case I set it to “iPhone OS 2.0″.
3. In your code wherever you use any APIs available only in versions later than your deployment target, use them conditionally after checking if they are available. This can be done for both classes and selectors.

Apple’s documentation describes this in further detail. Here is an image from the documentation that describes how the compatibility works based on the configuration:

When using 3rd party APIs and linking to dylib libraries, there might be further problems if the versions are not compatible. When trying ot integrate AdWhirl, we got an error:

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libxml2.2.dylib
  Referenced from: ……
  Reason: Incompatible library version: xxxxx requires version 10.0.0 or later, but libxml2.2.dylib provides version 9.0.0

This happens because iPhone OS version 2.x  and 3.xuse different versions of the library. The simplest way to fix this is to make the linking for the library weak. This can be done by right click on your application under “Targets” and select Get Info. Then on the General tab, under the linked libraries, locate this library and change the linking type from “Required” to “Weak”

Verna Technologies - I thought a lot but I have no idea what these guys are trying to do. They have copied our site word by word, even the founders name Only thing that is different is their address.

I tried to call the number but it is switched off, tried to contact their domain registrar but they are not working on Saturday. Will evaluate on Monday after talking to them once whether this calls for a legal action or not.

Are they real? or are they really so creative that they can’t even write what they have to offer?
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We organized for distributing snacks, gifts (thanks to Akshi,Arun and Santosh) and planned to conduct games for the children. Another objective of the visit was to identify long term needs of the children and the Ashram so that we could help them in their development and not just provide them with momentary happiness.

As some of the team members were caught up at work (we missed you all) only 10 of us visited the Ashram. We reached the Ashram late in the afternoon and were glad to see that the children were back from school. The Ashram is an old house which needs infrastructural development (like painting, lighting, modern amenities) and accommodates 60 kids at present . There is a play area , garden with fruit bearing trees, washing area for the children and a friendly Dog named Belli  (means silver in English). We met Parvathamma (blind lady) who runs the Ashram and spent time talking to kids about their School and how they spend time in the Ashram. We then distributed snacks, gifts and asked every child to write a wish list. The children were welcoming and disciplined. Majority of the children were able to understand English hence we  were able to communicate with little difficulty.

It felt nice to bring a smile on the face of the children. We plan to sponsor education, provide uniforms for the children in future (during June-July) and get involved in the development of the Ashram.

As the children had to do their home work we could not conduct games  but we did play in the swing, see-saw, slide!!!!

Sapna was impressive right from the first question of her interview. We have very strict interview process and have history of upsetting recruitment companies (we keep on asking for candidates but no offers). There was not even a single question which I asked her and she had to think. She always had a way to solve the problem instantly, not always the best way but she always knew in which direction to go. Her interview went for 3 hours then I told Shyamal she is really good. He was pleasantly surprised as I have not said that often so he went to talk to her. He talked to her for another 2 hours. Thats a good sign when Shyamal doesn’t send someone back in first 15 minutes.

She is spontaneous - Always has a solution
She is VERY hard working - Travels daily for 2 hours (one way) in ‘local transport’ and usually one of the last ones to leave office. And yes mostly among early comers too.
Extremely dedicated - She is one of few persons I have never seen taking a break.
Desire to learn - Never settles with the solutions, she always wants to know why? how?
Dependable - If any work is assigned to her, you can be sure it will be done and she will not rest until its done.
Proactive and Responsible - Even when she was over loaded she volunteered to take up second project.
She is very emotional - She scared everyone on her first day when she started crying during our group lunch. She was missing her colleagues from old company.

We thought she was a very serious person until we went on our river trip. It was so difficult to get her out of the water Sapna is one of our ‘jinis’