Bluetooth

IMHO Bluetooth is a very underutilized technology. At the very basic form Bluetooth is a data transfer technology over short range. Version 2.0 and above can achieve a speed of 2Mbits/s. Mind you it is Mbits and not MBytes. Depending on the class of the device the effective range can vary from 5 meters to 100 meters. For all practical purposes we can assume it to be 10 m (30ft).

Most often Bluetooth is used for mobile headset that people put on a single ear. Occasionally it can also be seen as being used for wireless keyboards/mouse/printers etc. All these uses make effective use of short range and modest data transfer speed. However I would expect innovation going beyond the basic data transfer. Let me explain.

USB is a wired data transfer technology. one of the features USB devices offer is to draw power directly from the USB port without the need for any battery or other power source. This has led to some devices which absolutely do not relate to data transfer. Think about USB fan or USB LED light or USB powered vacuum cleaner to clean your keyboard, USB powered Christmas trees for your office desk and so on.

Now how Bluetooth devices can be used in innovative ways which might not relate to data transfer, or only small amount of data transfer? Each Bluetooth device has a unique identifier which is used to pair with other Bluetooth devices. This feature opens up some interesting possibilities.

On Linux, there is an application called BlueProximity which runs a pre-configured command on the PC when it detects a specified Bluetooth device (e.g. your mobile) entering or leaving a specified range from the PC. By default it is configured to lock your PC when you walk away from it (with your mobile in your pocket) and unlock when you come back near the PC. you can as well play/pause songs that you are listening or mark your status away/available on your chat client.

Even the cheapest of the mobiles have Bluetooth which gives it a very wide existing userbase. In future it can be used for making payments using your mobiles or unlock your car when you come within the range.

Next on my TODO list if to search the net for innovative uses of Bluetooth technology

LibreOffice 3.4.3

A few months ago I complained about slow installation of LibreOffice 3.3. A few days ago I downloaded LibreOffice 3.4.3 and installed it on a windows machine.The experience this time was better. The download was around 50MB smaller and it installed in almost half the earlier time, i.e. 1.5 hrs. This is still a lot more than what I would expect (1.5 minutes) but good to see things improving.

The new LibreOffice is fairly good and I could create simple documents in it without much issues. However the biggest pain remains interoperability with MS Office. When I saved my .odt document as .doc there was visible ugliness in the formatting of the document. Bullets, for example, were changed to some other symbol than normal solid circles. Similar things happened when I opened .doc or .docx files using LibreOffice.

Mind you both the applications are very good for standalone use but interoperability of the formats remains pain in the neck. Microsoft obviously do not have any incentive to work on this aspect and in fact would do all in its capacity to hamper the same. And Open Source alternatives will always be on the losing side paying the catchup game.

So What are our options for this interoperability?
One way is to export the document to PDF format, which preserves the exact formatting on all the platforms.While this options works like a charm where we dont expect further updates to the document from the recipients (CVs etc), we have to look for alternatives for "collaborative editing".

From top of my mind I can think of using wiki or Google docs to edit online. I am also told that the Open Source software AbiWord, which is available on multiple platforms, seems to have a "collaborotion plugin" which allows us to edit documents simultaneously by multiple authors in real time.
Need to evaluate AbiWord. Added to the ToDo list. :)

Parents: Talk to your kids about Linux...Before somebody else does

iPhone Vs Android Vs BlackBerry

I found it very funny and it comes very close to the reality :)

Fishbone Analysis

The Causal Analysis or Root Cause Analysis is also known as fishbone analysis. Mainly because this diagrammatic technique results into a structure very similar to a fish-bone. It basically drills down a problem category to reach its root cause.

I had many times used Mind-Mapping techniques using Freemind which employs similar breaking down of bigger chunk. however the in my experience the mind maps are more dense while the fishbone diagrams tend to go very deep having multiple levels. The best mindmap I have used has a depth of 5 levels while the very first fishbone I was trying to prepare had 6 levels and very soon it reach the level of 9. My Favorite tool Freemind depicts the drilled down nodes only in a mind map format which is not suitable for fishbones. Google redirected me to XMind, another mindmaping tool which also had capability to render the same information in a fishbone style. A lot of time saved for a small team here preparing the fishbone diagrams by hand :)

5 Fully Functional Opensource Applications You Didnt Know Exists

I am making a bold assumption in making a strong statement that the applications which were noticed by me are not picked up by any one of my readers independently. I would love to be proven wrong in making that assumption. so please drop in a comment if you happen to know any of these software already.

All of the applications below are best of the breed even when we consider the proprietary software. They serve a very niche area and hence do not enjoy popularity of other well known Open source apps like Firefox or VLC

1. JKiwi (A Virtual Makeover and hairstyler application)
   Extremely professional features and UI. My daughter loves this and can spend hours changing her looks.
2. CuteFarm (Farm / Agriculture management application)
   I stumbled upon this one when I was looking out for ways to manage farms in a better way. The application was just beginning at that time and has come a long way since then. 
3. Animal Shelter Manager
   Personally I love pets but cannot have one because of the preferences of my family members.  Stumbled upon this gem while searching for information on dog breeds. Supposed to be the best shelter manager software out there.
4. Storybook
   I fancy myself as an author and have a couple of plots in my mind for a long time. HoweverI could never gather the steam to start writing one. Came across this one and I started writing my first novel using this tool. Soon I found myself entangled into the myriad of features and cross connections and the story itself never took off :). I believe that is more to do with me being n00b rather than the fault of the tool itself.
5. Sweet Home 3D
   A very nice application for the interior designing where you can create the 2D home layout and place different type of furniture in it. Later you can view the 3D preview of the home from various angles.

Installation of Windows 7 on MacBook Air

One of my acquaintances solicited my computer gyaan for installing Windows 7 on his swanky new MacBook Air-13". You might wonder why would one want to do that. It turned out that this businessman uses Tally to maintain his accounts and Tally doesn't have Mac port.

I tried to wriggle out of the situation by explaining that I am working with Linux as the only operating system for past many years and haven't installed Windows for ages, let alone on a Mac. But the person was persistent and believed in my abilities more than me.

I asked him why did he go for a Mac while he know nothing about MacOS and never owned any Apple product before. Turned out that he was out for purchasing a new laptop and was lured by the looks of MacBook Air. I should have guessed! :)

The guy was well informed and had purchased USB adapter for Ethernet as well as external USB disk drive which were of immense help during the procedure. 

I admired the beauty of the machine and was impressed by the features (magnetic snap-on charger, almost blade-thin display, glowing apple logo on that thin a display etc) as well as responsiveness of the UI. I always wondered why Apple fanboiz are so crazzy for the crippled and obscenely expensive gadgets. But now I started understanding the religion.

A quick Google search revealed that a huge number of Mac owners install Windows on it. So many that Apple created a separate application called "Bootcamp" to assist this installation. This app downloads the required Windows drivers for the specific hardware. Quite happy with this assistance I started clicking through the application screens and at one point it started downloading the drivers. The UI for the application was very simple. So simple that it was practically useless. Have a look for yourself.

The screen gives me absolutely no idea about how big the download is or at what percentage we are now or how much more time it is going to take. The progressbar was moving fraction of a millimeter each time so it was really difficult to gauge is it really advancing or not. After about half an hour I decided to let it happen and convinced the owner to just click through the app till the download is complete and I will complete the process next day. He agreed reluctantly.

Next day it turned out that there is no progress. Frustrated I ask him what did he do after I left. Till then we were downloading using Tata Photon+ and he felt that a wired internet connection would be faster. So he disconnected the USB Photon+ and plugged in wired Ethernet. Since the progress bar was not moving at all now, he clicked the stop button, closed the application and started the process all over again that he had witnessed. The progressbar jumped to its earlier location and just stopped there.

I acted in the same way as any sysadmin in big corporation would act. I rebooted the machine and started all over again. That indeed resolve the issue, whatever it was. This time the process was initiated from zero again. The MTNL broadband was indeed faster and after an hour or so the drivers were downloaded (550MB) and I copied it to external USB disk. Bootcamp also allowed me to partition the HDD.

The Windows installation was the same as I remember from more than 10 years ago. Surprisingly it refused to get installed on the newly created partition throwing error that the partition is not NTFS formatted. A closer look at the screen showed really small text "Drive options (advanced)". clicking there I was allowed to format the partition. I wonder why Bootcamp didn't format it as NTFS in the first place. Any way, the installation continued and it showed progress percentage figures and when it was stuck at the same number for a long time there was an ellipses (...) moving all the time indicating the installation is actually progressing. Better than Mac I thought.

 It was really boring to stare at the screen not knowing when it will finish.

I cannot stop comparing this experience with the Linux (Ubuntu) download and installation experience. There you see how to communicate the progress information to the user.

उड़ जाएगा हंस अकेला....

This piece of music has been haunting me for quite some time now. Very thought provoking words by saint Kabir and excellent rendition by Pt. Kumar Gandharva!! I found myself swaying over the rhythm even when I am not listening to it.

 

Now there could be a question why this is finding a place on "The Hacker's Blog". The "Hacker" mindset is not just confined to the software industry. Many people apply this "Hacking" attitude to other areas like Music. And Pt. Kumar Gandharva, IMHO, would definitely find a place near top of the hackers' list in Music. He overcame the odds against severe physical limitations as well as criticism by experts to perform some very nifty experiments with his singing style.

"Agile Manifesto" and learnings from "The CAthedral and The Bazaar"

Came across the 12 principles behind Agile Manifesto.

1. Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development
3. Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
4. Working software is the principal measure of progress
5. Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace
6. Close, daily co-operation between business people and developers
7. Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location)
8. Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
10. Simplicity
11. Self-organizing teams
12. Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

I could not stop wondering how they resemble with various points highlighted in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by ESR

• Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse). [point 2 above]
• “Plan to throw one away; you will, anyhow.” (Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month, Chapter 11) [point 2 above]
• Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging. [point 6 above]
• Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers. [point 3 above]
• Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer’s personal itch. [point 8 above]
• Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around. [point 10 above]
• Often, the most striking and innovative solutions come from realizing that  your concept of the problem was wrong. [point 12 above]
   

Upgrade to Natty Narwhal

Upgraded Kubuntu at home to latest Natty Narwhal (11.04). I was already using KDE 4.6 using the Natty backports. So no changes noticed during the first day of use. On the positive side, nothing is broken either. Everything works as smooth and fine tuned as earlier.

Google Transliteration.....offline

We all know about Google Transliteration right? It is that neat application from Google Labs which allows you to type using normal QWERTY keyboard with English alphabets and it gets converted in Marathi/Hindi automagiacally. It is really cool to see that happen. My only problem with that was it needs you to be online which rather restricted its use by me. For some time I tried to do without transliteration by keeping a printout of Marathi keyboard layout and typing with it. Unfortunately I couldn't get a hang of the thing really. a But not any more.
The new Google Transliteration IME works even offline. Whats more is now it even offers auto completion, dictionary based corrections and lot more.

The downside?? Works only on Windows for now... :(

Update (20th May 2011):
This seems to be one of the most popular posts of this blog. There were many queries to me offline. So for the benefit of others I am adding a few points below.

1. You need the complex script support installed within Windows, without which you would see small boxes instead of letters. Go to "Control Panel ==> Regional and Language Options ==> Languages Tab", click the checkbox against "Install files for complex script...." and finally click "OK" button.  It will ask to insert the windows installation disk and will copy the required files from there
2. Google transliteration IME is not a separate application. Do not search it in the "Programs" menu.In fact that it the good part. You can now type in Devnagari directly in any Unicode enabled application like Word, Excel, notepad etc. No more hassles of alt_tab copy/paste
3. You need not click on the language bar each time to switch languages while typing. you can enable shortcut keys to do that. To enable shortcuts, right click on the Language bar and select "Settings". At the bottom of the new popup you can see the button "Key Settings" which will allow you to bind specific keys to change the input language.

LibreOffice 3.3

A massive 200MB+ download.
"Copying new files" and overall installation going on for 3 hours now.
Three fucking long hours on a laptop with Core i5 and 2GB RAM and a HDD with 7200RPM.

A long way to catchup with MS Office.

LG Optimus One (P500)

I was monitoring the mobile wars for quite some time. The inclination was always on the android side because of its Linux based origins. Late January this year I finally purchased LG Optimus One (P500).I am more than happy with this phone now.
So far I have tweaked the phone in following ways.

• Rooted
• Removed crapware that came with the phone by default
• Installed Custom Recovery
• Flashed many custom ROMs (The latest is based on Cyanogenmod 7.1-RC0/Android 2.3.4)
• Overclocked CPU from stock 600MHz to 806MHz. Finally settled for 749MHz
• Enabled "Hardware Acceleration"

Following the development on XDA Forums closely.

The sad part is even today many so called tech savvy people in this leading IT consulting company give a blank stare when I start talking about Android. It becomes worse when the owners of an Android based phone look puzzled when I start talking about rooting and flashing custom ROMs.Or am I expecting too much from my fellow colleagues??

Hello World

I have been blogging on and off regarding various topics earlier.
I have decided to start a blog dedicated to the technical things to keep it separate from the personal blogs.
So here we go.....