Of curves and flight

I love my Blackberry [curve 8520]. Like my iPod, I probably wouldn't have used it if someone hadn't given it to me.

True, it has a lot of catching up to do in many areas - mainly camera, video recording and browser as such. But they've really nailed the messaging/emailing aspect of usage. No wonder business folks swear by it. My 8520 is now showing signs of ailing after two odd years- the headphone socket gives a loose contact with wired headsets so I have to use it without a headset. In-ear bluetooth headsets give me a headache so I found the best both-worlds match. The MW600. It works quite well despite being a little pricey. What I like about this phone is that I discover one nifty feature after another by trial or by accident. I recently upgraded from OS 4.6 to OS 5.0. The biggest change has been in terms of the new SMS interface (bubble chats and emoticons). I don't plan to change this phone until it wears out and leapfrog directly into the 4G bandwagon.
(Unless someone wants to gift one {tongue-in-cheek}).

Of networks, Aircel is reasonably good in TN. The EDGE network is surprisingly good where I stay, which is supposedly a remote corner in Tamil Nadu. In Mumbai it is poor with just sections having good networks and relying more on third party networks. But their website sucks! Somebody should really overhaul usability of the site. It is slow - unreliable - and difficult to navigate.

Generally, corporations have a bad practice - ripping off loyal customers. For example, someone signs up for data plan X. The price for plan X then drops (because of competition, lowered operating costs whatever). So new customers pay the lower plan and the older ones pay the premium price unless they ask for it. I know both Reliance (with their Netconnect Broadband+) and Aircel (with their BB unlimited data plan) did it. Why not take it up and go out of your way to announce the price reduction to the customer who signed up with you earlier?

With Google officially (well almost at least, but I don't think it means anything anymore) giving up their "do no evil" mantra and Google+ also raising a lot of concerns especially in light of the upcoming unified privacy policy, we can safely assume no one corp is trustworthy on the web. Its up to the user to protect his or her privacy on the web. While G is not as bad as FB yet, G knows a lot more intimate secrets of a user (consider email, docs and all of your search and video history - in a nutshell your personal life) it should be unnerving for anyone. And it is quite hard to avoid Google from your daily life - search especially.

SOPA, ACTA, Privacy concerns - The web is really getting difficult to tread nowadays?

Dropbox and some extra space

I've been using Dropbox on and off (mainly because I have to switch too many PCs), and I love it. I have written about it earlier as well.

Here's the thing: If you use this link - http://db.tt/IInECxd - to sign up and install dropbox, you will get an extra 250MB space (on top of the 2GB).

PS: So will I :) (it is a referral link)

Thank you Dennis!

Of late, I am totally lost to what is happening in the outside world. I just read this news about Dennis Ritchie's passing. Unfortunately, and taking nothing away from what Steve Jobs has contributed and accomplished, Steve's passing sort of put this news under the covers.

I have never followed Dennis' life, but I know everything significant in computing that has happened in the modern era traces its roots back to C. I have spent days poring over his "The C Programming Language" book during my earlier years. Even the Python language I love and adore was written in C.

This is a thank you to Dennis for everything he has contributed. Knowingly or unknowingly, his work ticks around our life - if ever we used a computer or perhaps even a mobile phone.

Note: Message from Dennis' family.

ubuntu desktop - the leap

Earlier, I wrote about installing Ubuntu on a pen drive. I recently made the leap and installed it on my laptop as well.

Desktop

I haven't done away with my Vista yet, and probably won't as well. I also won't go overboard and state this as a panacea as well - mainly because my skills of handling Unix aren't exceptional. But Ubuntu 11.04 as a GUI itself is pretty impressive. I can say that my basic work can be done here - namely, all browsing plus minimal spreadsheet and editing work. I have yet to see how well this goes. But GUI Unix is growing up :)

I installed this on about 45GB of partition. I found a very useful step-by-step guide. The main difference I see between Windows and Linux here is that when the system is idle, i.e I am not using it, the system stays idle. In Windows, the HDD light keeps glowing suggesting background activity. The responsiveness of the machine is also good.

The other amusing thing is that Ubuntu can read contents from my Windows partition, while Windows pretends Ubuntu doesn't exist!

Finally, I found this uber-cool game I played long ago I don't remember where. Here it's called KGoldRunner and is very addictive! A lot of other impressive apps are available for free from the software center.

 

Closing your Bank of America (BOA) checking account

I searched the net for the procedure to close a BOA checking account "online". Online as in - no talking to a rep and having to hear why my relationship is important to them or why I am a valued customer - etc!
But I saw almost no first-hand confirmation and the BOA help page indicated that I had to mail in my request to a Florida address.

One person mentioned he did it and I decided to give it a shot. It is indeed possible - you can do it through the following steps.

1) Stop all deposits and withdrawals (including automated ones). Your account will open back up if any of that happens. BOA charges hefty (and sneaky) fees if the account balance drops below the minimum balance (a whopping 1500 USD as on date). This step is important - make alternate arrangements for all payments and deposits.

2) Wait for your statement cycle to complete - that is, wait till you receive your statement. Clear your balance to zero through ACH or whatever means. Note that once this happens, BOA can charge their minimum balance step penalty - so the next step has to happen ASAP.
(Leaving a balance has some complications so it is best to zero it out)

3) From your online account, use the online chat option to talk to a rep and inform him/her about the closure request. You will hear why you are important, valued  etc, but my rep was helpful and did it quickly. There used to be a secure email option for the same, but it appears to have been removed now.

ubuntu

Linux and ease of use don't always go together. This is one area where Windows scores over other OS'es. This blog post is being done with my x386 laptop running Ubuntu 10.10 from a USB stick.

From scratch, it took 4 hours to be up and running - two hours of which went for the download itself. Trust me - installation was a piece of cake - the creators of Ubuntu have really gone to great pains to make ease-of-use a top priority. This is what I did.


* Head over to pendrivelinux and download their universal installer (~1MB)
* Download ubuntu itself (~700MB)
* Setup a partition of 4 GB for persistence and install (8GB USB drive)
* Change boot order to check USB first

You're up and running! You don't really have to use the command line for basic operations (mine are web browsing / emails).

I even got Reliance Netconnect running without software setup. There is a good link for that if you need help (in the comments).

Now, this is not just a fancy thing - it is actually a necessity.

Windows doesn't provide an easy option in case your HDD crashes or the OS is corrupted. Booting through USB is tricky and unless you have your original DVD for installation it is going to be difficult. My laptop shipped with Vista preinstalled. Also, installing recovery tools and AV on this Ubuntu stick will help fix problems later. As a side benefit, there is also this portable OS that goes along with you.

I have some learning to do, but it is exciting! Linux and ease of use are really together now!

A woot for Wikipedia!

Read this today - and kind of made my day! Thank you note from Jimmy Wales!

A thumbs up to all folks who pitched in together to make this happen. Makes me hope that people are capable of joining together and work for something they want to see happen in the world!

Wikipedia is unique now - the content and the site itself (in line of donations) are owned by the Internet public!

RSS is dying?

For some reason, people are caught up with the idea that RSS is obsolete and no longer relevant? Even browsers seem to push RSS to the backseat?

Some time back, I read another article that stated RSS was dying - and the reason/substitute? Twitter/facebook. I think it is lame! Someone else pointed out the correct term for the best advantage of RSS - high signal to noise ratio. With Twitter/Facebook - it is very low. RSS gives everything I need without the clutter in one single interface (with a reader of course). It beats me - Bloglines decided to shut down citing this reason (and lives on now because of another reason) and now RSS support is being designed out be default?

Am I missing anything? What other technology gives this single focus advantage? Definitely not Twitter and Facebook! I quit them because of the high "noise"!

Webmasters: Please don't stop supporting RSS! Even if browser designers are myopic! I can live with adding URLs manually to my reader - but I am totally lost without RSS! P-L-E-A-S-E!!!

That original site I linked to explains the implications very well.

Facebook

:) - I have no spite, but I thought this was cute!
And honestly - despite whatever reasons for which I quit FB, I miss it!

Support Wikipedia

Robert Munday has written a great post about this.
The appeal from the founder Jimmy Wales is here.
The contribution page.

I've taken Wikipedia so much for granted that I don't notice it being present even anymore. Right now, any topic that is Googled almost always has the Wikipedia entry among the first three results. This is an opportunity to help them when the request for it.

World Population | India and China

Looking at the charts below - the first one is the top 10 nations in terms of population as of 2006. You can see China and India are in their own league. In terms of nation size, comparing India, China, USA, Brazil and Russia makes sense.

The second chart compares the gold medal contenders. China's growth rate is 0.6 while India's is 1.5 (%). So extrapolating this [slightly trivialistic but plausible], we can see that in the next 10 years or so, India will over take China. Fact: China has four times land size of India. USA, Russia and Brazil are more than 2x the size of India (Russia probably 4 or 5x).

If population management is not a priority of the Governement [it appears it is not], it probably shouldn't exist!

Data is from WHO. I made the charts.

Blackberry Games

I started playing some games on the Blackberry in an idle moment. I am not a great fan of the card games, but I found two very interesting and addictive games that were not cards-based.

One is the ancient (in computer era) brick and paddle game. The other is word mole, where you weed out letters from the garden in a particular order to form words. Larger words get more points.

Python PET Challenge - Resolve an input number into a product of its prime factors

PET issued a programming challenge. Read the detail text:

In summary, the goal is to express a number is a product of its prime factors. For example
24 => 2^3 * 3^1
25 => 5^2
26 => 2^1 * 13^1

My Python program is here. Contrary to their requirements, I used Python 3.1 instead of the 2.xx series and did not skimp on whitespace. The output on the codepad website is incorrect - I presume they are using an earlier version of Python.

A sample output for 433132:


input number => 433132
all factors ==> [2, 4, 7, 14, 28, 31, 62, 124, 217, 434, 499, 868, 998, 1996, 3493, 6986, 13972, 15469, 30938, 61876, 108283, 216566]
all prime factors ==> [2, 7, 31, 499]
2 ^ 2
7 ^ 1
31 ^ 1
499 ^ 1
[[2, 2], [7, 1], [31, 1], [499, 1]]

Update - 25th Oct 2010, Monday:
I had also shared this problem for my team to solve and one of them came up with this incredible solution. It's the simplest I have seen so far. This is C# and code is here.
It doesn't bother with storing the results and goes strictly by requirements.

Dream digital camera!

My dream digital camera – anything that matches? I haven’t found any camera so far. Makes me think that tech has to advance further!

1. 1920x1080 FULL HD video at 60fps
2. 12MP or higher resolution photographs
3. Water proof (fully – no trick caveats)
4. 64GB of inbuilt memory with additional slot provided for a 32GB card (or higher)
5. 10x optical zoom – preferably 20x
6. HDMI out for videos/photos
7. A/P/S/M controls + prefixed controls for common scenarios (portrait, landscape, action etc)
8. Exposure bracketing
9. High Speed Sequence shot mode
10. Time lapse mode
11. Battery should last for 2 days of intense use, but should run without battery if powered in (like laptop). Can we make it solar powered also?
12. Finally – how small can we really make it without compromising on anything? The deal breaker is the 20x optical zoom for size!

Yes in short it is the perfect cross between a HD Video Cam and a Digital SLR.

1. Other things that are really bells and whistles:
2. Inline video editing (well, the iPod already allows this!).
3. WiFi connectivity, so you can upload to YouTube/Picasa (can allow a front end application to manage account settings and store in the camera)
4. Always on (iPod style)
5. Built in video/picture themes (so the video/picture comes out in that style). Can allow folks to upload themes into the camera
6. Someone can gift one to me!

Managing Music - what I do

Over the years (say a decade), my music collection has grown immensely. At this point, it is about six thousand tracks and ~40GB in size. Most of it was accumulated through the purchase of audio CDs over the years, ripped as MP3s and then tagged and organized.

In this period, due to the sheer size of the collection, I have had to evolve my own method of managing this collection and choosing the tracks to play. With the arrival of iPod, I've again had to adapt the approach a little, but I should say the iPod has made things much more easy.

Though the collection is to listen, the order has to be reversed. The first priority is to organize the music and then to listen. The better a collection is stored, easier it is to find and hear music. I use multiple tools for this. I originally used MediaCenter, but it became quite expensive. It is excellent and AFAIK, it came as close at it could to be a one stop shop for all organizing and playing needs. Its absence is not a show stopper - I was able to accomplish the same effect with multiple but free tools.

Getting the digital version of music

Now a days, this is pretty no brainer stuff. A lot of MP3s are available on the Internet. I personally get my own audio cds and rip them for my collection for quality reasons. I use only MP3 (stay clear of DRM crap!) and encode them at 192 kbps fixed bit rate if it is music. For audio talks, 64 kbps is good enough. A lot of built in tools in the OS itself. For example, in Windows, Media Player does a good enough job of encoding music. iTunes, which I now use also is good. This is free (and excellently usable even if you don't have an iPod). Media Player cleverly defaults to WMA which I don't recommend. MP3 is here to stay - so stick to it!

Organizing music

There are two components to organizing music.

Tagging - is vitally underrated and is the most important step. All audio players and most audio management software relies on MP3 tags - not file names to recognize tracks. I've seen a lot of music files which use their own way of storing information in tags which is not at all good. There are four important tags that need to be filled to keep the music collection sane.

Artist, Album, Track, Genre. Others are optional as far as I've noticed. Track No is normally filled by the encoding software if from an audio CD. Keep a consistent naming convention for naming the artist, albums and track names. Especially when it comes to regional names stored in English, inconsistency can be a pain. Genre is useful when you want to do automated song selection from thousands of tracks - as in my case.

In the above example, the three fields as shown by iTunes are the track name, artist and album name.

The second step is to store them in a consistent way in folders. Normally, you would want to accomplish the following:

1. Put all the tracks categorized properly under folders and sub folders


2. Name the physical file consistent with the tag names.

Most software follows the Root Folder -> Artist Name -> Album Name -> Tracks folder structure. Some allow you to customize them. I use this option - as you can see below.

Many music softwares allow you to rename files in a way that is consistent with the tag names. I use the following format.

[Track No]...[Track Name]...[Album Name]...[Artist Name].mp3

This good if the music library in the software is lost - the library can be rebuilt from the files. The MP3 themselves have the tags as well - so it is a two way backup.

I use a software called MusicBrainz Picard to accomplish both steps. It is good because it allows to do both steps in one go. For more popular tracks, it does a database lookup as well and fills in the tags (I rarely get the luxury for Tamil tracks!). The really cool part about this is that it allows to customize the file name to no end using formulae. If you're the finicky fussy kind, this is your dream software!

Above is the format I use to rename my files.

%artist%/%album%/$num(%tracknumber%,2)...%title%...[%album%]...[%artist%] is the formula. It roughly translates to the naming convention I listed above. You can also see that the Folder structure is also specified here.

Upto now, whatever we've done accomplishes the following:

1. Getting your digital media


2. Tagging them


3. Putting them properly in folders and files


4. Naming the files neatly

If you already have a collection that is not in any proper order, I recommend taking the 30-40 hours it requires to organize them now! Once you have the root folder under which your entire collection sits, you can load them into iTunes in one swoop and voila - automated music library.

Volume Levelling

I do this additional step to ensure all tracks have uniform volume. I use a software called MP3Gain for this. It adjusts the gain of the MP3 tracks after analysis but doesn't change the MP3 file contents itself, which is good!

Above, you can see a sample interface. My default is set to 92 dB.

How do I keep track of which MP3 files have completed this normalization exercise? I use the Comment field of the MP3 file and mark it "Volume Levelling Done". A little lame - because the comment field is a great place to store lyrics. I don't use it that way so this works for me. Another good thing is that this comment travels with the MP3. You can also use a custom field in your music library software to store this, but that gets lost if the library is damaged.

You can see this comment above.

Once all your tracks are volume levelled and you have this comment in the comment field, you can write a smart play list on iTunes to filter out any track that is pending volume levelling.

Choosing tracks and listening to music

What you will need to do is to rate your songs as you listen to them. Over a period of time, you will have a huge collection of songs you've listened to and rated. If you have an iPod, this process is easy. iPod and iTunes are like peas and carrots. Every time you sync, iTunes knows what you've listened so you have to just go and rate them from your "Recently Played" list. Otherwise, do this manually. This is a self updating list. The more you listen to and rate to songs, the better the future picks will be.

After this, picking new songs from the library is a matter of writing a smart play list (very powerful and customizable iTunes feature!). An example below from my library:

The above smart play list gives me 25 random songs that are not Spiritual in nature but are outstanding (as per my rating). If you've rated 5000 songs, the pick will have a lot of variety and quality.

Backing up

For me, my collection is a decade long effort. So having it all in one place, while ultra convenient is also dangerous. For me, my iPod itself is a backup. In the event of a disaster, I can reverse extract from my iPod. Additionally, I also backup the HDD once a month to another.

Finally...

Anything I've missed? Anything that you do is simpler or better?

Technorati : Music iTunes MP3Gain Picard iPod

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Bloglines - bye!

All these years, I avoided Google Reader to stay with Bloglines, only to find this today! :-(
For whatever reasons ("focus" apparently), Bloglines is going to go away shortly and I have to move to Google Reader now!
It was a service with high quality - I didn't have to use Google Reader at all all these years! I even had a mini blog going of all items I was reading through Bloglines. I did stop after a while because it was too unsustainable!
Adios Bloglines - may be good things cannot be free all the time!

Alpine CBE 103 EBT and KCE-433iv

The arrival of the iPod changed a lot of things in my gizmo-life. Well, not a lot, but lot in significance!

One such change is the Alpine CBE 103-EBT. This is an iPod compatible car unit. In retrospect, it is much better than whatever I anticipated. It is also an icing that it was my mini DIY project.

1. Can listen to my iPod in my car
2. The unit controls the iPod
3. The unit displays the song title, artist and album information
4. The songs sound pristine with the Alpine's DAC (digital -> analog converter)
5. The unit connects to my phone with Bluetooth and answers calls. Can talk handsfree while driving
6. The unit pauses the iPod when a call arrives and resumes after the call.

It's actually too good to believe. Before this, I had the iPod plugged into the aux input of the unit from the headphone out of the iPod. The difference (signal to noise ratio) is considerable (> 50% in terms of volume required to listen to the song).

Well, when I got the unit, post installation on the car, the technician got the cable to connect the iPod. That cable was different than what the unit was expecting and so the iPod couldn't be connected. It was like the only reason why I was getting the unit. A month later, the store still couldn't get the cable. This cable is what is listed as KCE-433iv on the title.

So I had to scour the internet to get it and I finally got a place where it was selling. It had to come from the US. After I got it, I had to install it myself (DIY part)! It involved opening the car's driverside dashboard panel, reaching into an obscure angle to find the connecting slot and plugging in the wire. It was much difficult than I had anticipated.

But it worked first time like a charm - and I haven't looked back since then. I am now like this spoiled kid who cannot go back to old ways!

Logitech PureFi Anytime

Some cool and not so cool things about this unit:

1) The one that I got did not detect the iPod. Apparently, many units have a high failure rate in this department. But Logitech serviced it for free.

2) Charges the iPod while playing

3) Can carry the unit around for portable sound. In effect, my entire music library!

4) Really nice to wake up to PY!

5) No play/pause button on the unit. Big design mistake!

6) Could have a longer snooze time (15 mins max currently)

Case in point for the iPod creating an industry around itself.

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Note: The image or screenshot in this post is licensed with creative commons.
The copyright for this image / screenshot belongs to illustir. Click on the image above or here to view the image on illustir's website.

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Sennheiser HD580

I am an audiophile.

Actually, I am not. I like to think I am though :)

During my college days (read: I was not earning), my appa took care of my education expenses and my travel expenses (didn't expect differently did you?), plus also gave me some pocket money (to the tune of 400 Rs per quarter). I started saving to buy a very good headphone. I didn't know much then, so I found this over-the-ear philips headphones that cost 750 Rs. After some time (many painful days, don't remember how long), I purchased them. Remember its a big investment for me. Essentially, I was putting all my money into an unknown expense. But it was worthwhile. I had them for a long time and it was a joyous experience listening to music through them compared to the run-of-the-mill one I had earlier.

Then, in one of the forums, someone mentioned about the separation clarity provided by Sennheiser headphones. I always wanted to get one since. So the first thing I did when I went to "Pardes" was to buy one. I had no clue, no prior experience, no way to validate the quality (you know, when everything sounds the same through everything you put on your ears?). But I walked into a hi-fi sound shop and I pointed to the Sennheiser headphone range and told them I wanted one.

"Which one?" asked the rep.

"I don't know."

"Would you like to sample them?"

"Yes. I still don't know where to start!"

"What do you want to listen to?"

"Show me a Western Classical sample." (I obviously cannot say iLaiyarAjA :))

So he took the HD580, plugged it into a high end system (that is a separate topic I think - the system was something for audiophiles) and played a sample I don't know where from.

But those few moments were ethereal. I will never forget them. I listened to the piece for 4-5 mins and I told him I would take it. The scary question was "How much?"

"280 USD plus taxes".

Remember this was 2001. 10000+ bucks in INR.

The thing is, I still have them. They're slightly worn out on the ear cushions, but the sound is still pristine. The above picture applies to me as well - I have the same gear now - iPod classic plus HD580. Only thing is, they're so huge, its awkward to walk on the streets with them without gathering attention.

Otherwise, the separation of tracks, the "stereo width separation" are all awesome. I don't know how long it will last, but I think it already has more than provided its worth. This is how you make a product!

A note on the photograph: Spend some time looking at it - the attention to detail is stunning!

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Note: The image or screenshot in this post is licensed with creative commons.
The copyright for this image / screenshot belongs to targophoto.com. Click on the image above or here to view the image on targophoto.com's website.

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Dropbox - Startup lessons learnt

As someone who uses Dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com), the startup story was amusing, informative and it made me happy for their success. The app is surprisingly effective and the free version is more than useful (and sufficient) for individuals. Try it and you may be pleasantly surprised!

Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned

View more presentations from gueste94e4c.

Cooliris is cool!

It's a way to see a large number of images in an infinite 3D wall. It's already proven handy (especially useful in those situations when your friends share a Picasa link contining 3500 images - of course I am exaggerating with the 3500!). Click on the image below for the larger size.

It basically works as an add on with IE, Firefox (I haven't tested or know that it works with Chrome). It works using MediaRSS (Picasa uses this, you will see a CoolIris icon on your album after a successful install).

Its not a substitute of browsing through an album or playing a slideshow, but if you want to pick the juiciest photos from a large bunch, this is the way to go!

Go to http://www.cooliris.com/

Premium Brands

With some exceptions, I've had a disdain for "premium brands". While it is true that some of them are just a product of slick marketing without offering anything premium in performance (monster cables for ex), I've begun to realize some have reason to claim the premium (attention and price). Some examples:

Ipod: I haven't seen any other player come close in terms of marrying functionality and usability (I've used about 5-6 players over the years). Apple is still on my list of "review before buy". For example, I won't be owning an iPad anytime soon!

Blackberry: Was high on my disdain list. But I realize that it took one particular aspect and engineered it to the extreme (mailing and messaging). I can see a stark contrast on the usability aspect vis-a-vis other phones (Win PDAs, Nokias, Samsungs)

Bose: I would say it's 30% premium and 70% hype marketing. There are very few speakers that match the tiny size aspect with monster performance.

Tissot: Still can't say if the price is justified. But altimeter, compass, thermometer, chronograph, alarm all rolled into one waterproof compartment - very little to argue. Oh, you can check your time too!

Suzuki Swift VDi: Well... couldn't resist :)

The Third and the Seventh

I know the blog says "Computers and Technology" and the post is also relevant in a sense, but this is more art!
The video below is all (99%) CGI! In retrospect, I could make out a few areas like that, but it is mindblowing! It is said to have taken two years for Alex Roman to complete this. If you're not convinced, look at the second video below that shows the timeshots.


The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

The timeshots:


Compositing Breakdown (T&S) from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

10 questions to Hans Rosling

Ever since I saw the gapminder statistics, I suddenly have a lot of respect for Hans Rosling (paradigm shift!). These are ten questions the internet community presented to him and his responses. Beautiful questions and beautiful answers! In the five world leaders to whom he would choose to present his statistics (in the hopes of creating some change), he names Manmohan Singh as one of them. Not sure about the others, but I am wondering if he is being too optimistic about the Indian PM :)

Gapminder | Countries of the world

The above chart is proof that data can be "interesting" as well. Just keeping the contents aside for the moment, the eye-opener is the number of dimensions the chart uses for representation.

1) Size of the circle to represent population

2) Color of the circle to represent geographic location

3) Horizontal orientation to represent income

4) Vertical orientation to represent child mortality rate

Also, none of these would fly if the chart weren't "intuitive". It will make me think twice before I need to represent something as data. The other thing is to see if there are tools that will allow me to represent multiple dimensions like these. I don't think the traditional excel chart will fly!

You can download the chart here - it's been used per Creative Commons.

Technorati : Charting Tools, Charts, Data, Gapminder

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Relevant technology breakthroughs

The scientific community is always going to be innovating. It has more to do with the way the human mind works, really! We benefit in the form of gazillion gadgets and their variants. Technology itself has traveled a long way especially in the past two or three decades. But there are still crippling limitations. Now if we can channel the obsessive need to innovate in the proper direction, it is a win-win situation. The proper direction might be what is today's crying need for environmental protection and sustainability. So, some of my thoughts below.

1) A way to pump massive volumes of data across the globe in a cheap way:
Yeah, I know we're getting there. Broadband internet is a good example. But it is still limiting. For example, if we theoretically assume that all data transfer is instantaneous, we can have a five or six member video conference that is real time. Imagine what that would do to "business travels"? If companies can cause its stakeholders to interact across the globe very effectively, business travels for individual folks might even need CEO approval (companies will do anything to cut *costs*). This translates directly to reduced carbon footprint.

2) A foolproof, non clumsy, side-effect free way of birth-control:
To get some perspective, no birth control method today goes on record saying it's 100% effective. This can only mean we're still doubtful or limited in terms of what is being offered. I think seven billion is good enough for one planet.

3) Clean, 100% renewable energy:
We're dabbling with solar energy. But seriously, we should be at a point where every single source of energy is clean and renewable. In other words, for as long as we can imagine into the future, we really shouldn't be thinking about an energy crisis. And seriously, the sun seems the most obvious choice, but we're really struggling to tap its energy at that scale. Our jokes in terms of global warming debates today would be non existent today if we were able to tap the sun's energy that way.

4) Emission free cars:
We already know it's possible. BMW released a car that outputs water (steam) as its only side product. So why not focus intensely in making something like that a standard?
Similarly, why not think of planes that do the same? A plane today has a footprint of 1kg of CO2 per km of travel!

5) A way to "create" water:
We are not very far away where water will be a premium commodity. Why not start working on it today? How about plants that produce water (not purify them) from elements? A sideline might be translating ocean water to drinking water *on a mass scale*. We already have technology in place, albeit an expensive one.
I am really hoping we don't get to a point where we have to wear oxygen masks to live!

6) A scientific process to reverse population growth:
There is no real technology here. The only way to do this without killing anyone (we do that for different reasons though!) is to stop producing people to the level that this number is lower than the amount of people who naturally die in the period. That needs peoples' cooperation! May be the technology to get "global messages" to all people in the world is the key here.

7) Technology to bio-degrade plastic:
Come on! There has to be something! I trust the wisdom of nature which has always been ahead of humans in forethought. I feel it's only a matter of time for humans to "stumble upon" what is already existing. In any case, we've been given the building blocks to piece together whatever we wish to create!

Anything else that is begging for attention? I didn't include treeless paper here because we already have the technology (hemp, bagasse etc). If you don't use what you already have, and still cut down trees for that, that can only be called overweening arrogance.

Too many tweets!

Saw this today, LOL!

Technorati : Twitter

Del.icio.us : Twitter

Zooomr : Twitter

Flickr : Twitter

Google Maps on mobile

This is the scariest thing I've seen in some time. This is on the mobile phone. The blue dot is my location. I did not tell Google this. I do not know how it found out. Have to research more.

But 4-5 years ago, if I had imagined this would be in the common man's hand, it would have been awe filling - but now it's already here. I think next logical step would be to get this map data fast to the mobiles (maps take a lot of data - and to get them on a mobile connection is quite a challenge). The 3G, and the to-come-in-future 4G networks should help!

What does the future hold?

Technorati : Google, Google Maps

Del.icio.us : Google, Google Maps

Zooomr : Google, Google Maps

Flickr : Google, Google Maps

Should Kindle change?

Kindle is rocking and rolling - and surely Amazon has hit on a winner.

But as with all technologies, this e-Book syndicating technology is in a nascent stage. I think it needs to change further, and it will.

1) The e-ink / e-paper technology need not mimic traditional newspapers or books. Why can't it be in color?
2) The technology is currently trying to mimic a traditional reading approach. I feel that with the digital advantage, may be it is time to redesign books to leverage this possibility. I think interactivity will be the key.
3) With Kindle throwing another option into the mix, the future of conglomerate devices is very near. We already have phones trying to do a lot of things - camera, browser, PDA, messaging, and oh yes, phoning! Add digital e-Book reading into the mix.
4) I think in parallel, battery technology will be explored. Devices that run for a week without charging would be great!
5) The technology is also very expensive today.

Interesting days ahead!

Derisking Google - II

I am surprised I missed two important items from my previous post:

Blogger Blogs: I read a tip from some blog (sorry, source lost). Create a new google ID - say, call it .backup or something like that, and add that ID as an administrator to your current blog(s). That way, you still have access to all your blogs. Once you recover/recreate your master gmail ID, you can add that back to reclaim all your blogs. Your blogs themselves need to be backed up (export the entire blog as an XML). 

Google Reader: Export all your feeds as OPML and import into an alternate reader (say Bloglines).

Derisking Google

With Google being everywhere on the internet, and with them strategizing to integrate their entire umbrella of services on a single user ID, the risk of losing a lot when that one ID is much lot. True, bulk of the services are free, but we've built a lot of content surrounding them, that we might not have actually thought through the implications.

First, why would we lose the ID? It could be hacked. Or, it may just stop working for a technical error. I've read reports about both. So, off the top of my head:

- GMail access (with all the mail and attachments)
- Google Docs (depending on all the time and energy you've invested)
- Picasa photographs
- Feedburner feeds
- YouTube videos

You can derisk many of these through some simple steps (read derisk as minimize - I think risk on the internet can never be zero!)

- GMail - Setup offline access through Google Gears. Additionally, from a alternate account (Yahoo! for example),  enable POP access to download your Google mail on them. This will serve as an online back up of your GMail on Yahoo!. Just remember to enable GMail settings to not archive/delete POP accessed mail. You can also do the reverse (use GMail as POP backup of an alternate account). Finally, setup a proxy ID (authorize Yahoo! or alternate mail account to use a "From:" address of your GMail account, in case you lose access to your GMail account (you can do the reverse also)

- Google Docs - Haven't found a simple way yet. Have an offline backup. Export all docs as a zip and upload to an alternate backup system (Zoho for example). Haven't found a cloud-to-cloud option yet

- Picasa - Again, no cloud to cloud solution, but upload all photos to an alternate storage system (Flickr for example). Also, you should have an offline backup? Only issue in uploading to two systems is a bandwidth constraint

- Feedburner - your feeds should probably live on even if you lose your ID (I am assuming). Reburn your feeds with an alternate ID in any case (if not high)

- YouTube - If you haven't uploaded any videos, you lose only your history of viewing. I am presuming this isn't a big deal for you? If you've uploaded videos, have an offline backup. But reuploading such huge content is a bandwidth constraint.

Any other tips or suggestions you use or have?

Update - 24th Sep 2009: Also see part 2 of this article.

I was not sure what happened; I wanted to get up and leave for a break and instead of Ctrl + Alt + Del, I pressed something else and my desktop flipped to the right by 90 degrees.

It was quite funny. I wasn’t sure how to undo this and for 5-10 minutes I worked this way. The mouse gestures were also totally skewed. Finally, Google to rescue. The key strokes Ctrl + Alt + <Any arrow key> rotate the screen in that direction.

 

Unfortunately, screenshot is totally meaningless as you can just as easily rotate an image software. Instead, try this yourself if you are using Windows. Ctrl + Alt + Any arrow key. You know how to come back!

 

Lesson? What if something that we so so innately take for granted is taken away or turned on its head (here, literally!)?

 

digital photography

I prepared a small presentation on digital photography for an upcoming talk. 99% of the material has been sourced from "creative commons" images (acknowledgements on the second last slide). My work primarily has been to compile them together. You can view it full screen here.

presentation has been embedded below.

LED Torches

Some years back, we had the tubelight and the incandescent bulb.

Later, after CFL's became popular, the move to obsolete the incandescent bulb became stronger. True, this is something we must do. However faithful something serves us for however many years, in technology, it is time to upgrade whenever something new turns up, especially if energy consumption is of fore concern.

The new era belongs to LED lights. There is no question, LED's are hands down more energy effecient. This is the little bulb that glows on stabilizers or PC's. But they can be made in varying power configurations. The only issue as on date is that they're unable to break the cost barrier. LED lights are much costlier than traditional CFL's. My dad tried to light up our dining hall with a LED array. But it turned out very expensive and did not work that well in terms of lighting strength. I think we may need to wait some more time till they become ubiquitous and affordable together.

Anyway, I think we're starting to see more reasonably priced LED torches. They offer powerful lighting along with effecient power consumption. I got one very recently for ~265 Rs (~USD 5). This has 7 LED's. A similar model with 3 LED's was priced at ~210 Rs (~USD 4). It looks good, though it hasn't gone through a real world test. Brand named "Linji" (Company: Taiba). It has an inbuilt battery for charging the torch. The model you see is the CC11 version. 3 LED model is called CC10.

I should also say, all these "light on" pictures below are without charging the unit even once. The only way to find out if the unit needs to be recharged is if the light seems dimmer than normal.

The torch with 3 LED's on

The torch with all 7 LED's on. To be used with the need for lighting is greater. Needless to say, it will consume more battery power.

The retractable charging unit.

Technorati : LED, LED Array, LED Lights, LED Torch, Linji

Del.icio.us : LED, LED Array, LED Lights, LED Torch, Linji

Zooomr : LED, LED Array, LED Lights, LED Torch, Linji

Flickr : LED, LED Array, LED Lights, LED Torch, Linji

iPod Classic

Image by always2ndbest from here under creative commons.

I've always maintained (inside my head) that the iPod is an overrated and overpriced gizmo for what it offers - an ability to play music and watch videos on the go. Well, that was until someone gifted one to me. What is it now then? It's an overrated and overpriced gizmo, with deadly slick design! :)

Sometime back, I had a chance to fiddle with my cousin's iPod. That time, which was my first attempt at it, I figured out how to use the click wheel in seconds. I thought it was quite cool then. But didn't do much with it because of my idea about the iPod. But now that I have and own one, I can see how deeply intuitive they have made it. AFAIK, it's the only player that is been so thoroughly designed from a music listener's perspective. Some aspects below:

1) It's always on! It took some time to get used to, for I turn off the player whenever I don't use. But a music lover wants to get started with it ASAP. So they made it in such a way that it kick starts right away. The battery consumption details are on the designer's head. Pretty neat!

2) It auto pauses (and then auto sleeps) when you take out the headphone jack. Really, pretty common sense. I wouldn't have thought about it if I designed one!

3) Every single video you play, it remembers the last played position.

4) Audio books also remember their last stopped position. You can double speed of play if you can manage to understand what the speaker is saying

5) Creation and maintenance of complex playlists happens on iTunes on the PC. Then sync it with the iPod. I am pretty nitpicky when it comes to playlist configuration and details. The iTunes is only the second app that meets my needs! (Otherone being MediaCenter - that is pretty expensive, so I discontinued using it)

Image by shaymus22 from here under creative commons.

6) Minimalist non clutter interface

7) Mostly, my entire library is with me (with 120GB at disposal). This new found freedom of listening to any song at whim anywhere is funny! This means that the "What am I listening to now..." posts can never keep up with what I am actually listening to any longer. May be, I need to just post some random songs I've heard!

8) Also, the new found freedom of being able to watch videos on demand. It's actually quite good. I saw the entire footage of Pray for me Brother (song + all interviews - 27 mins in all) on this.

So, the iPod classic - overpriced, overrated, slick and beautiful. Whatever I think of it is not going to change its popularity. It is for a reason it was able to create an industry around itself!

Technorati : iPod, iPod Classic, iTunes

Del.icio.us : iPod, iPod Classic, iTunes

Zooomr : iPod, iPod Classic, iTunes

Flickr : iPod, iPod Classic, iTunes

Improving cellphone user experience

Most of these are written with the Indian industry in mind (the western world might have implemented them already to an extent). Some are general (example, the safety aspect of cellphones) and might apply everywhere:

Make them safe to use
Dispel the radiation myth for good. I know they are speculative, but my feeling is that there is some merit to the doubt. Make them safe leaving no room for doubt. Actually, given the history of lobbying that goes around in political circles to keep vested interests alive, a dark part in me thinks that scientists *conclusively know* that cellphone radiation is dangerous for health and are not allowed to leak the information to the public. Once, the next level of technology breakthrough comes, I wont be surprised to hear that they have always been detrimental to health.

Push contact information the cloud
Allow users to keep their phone book on the cloud (provider database). The implications are many:

1) Allow users to export and reload on a different provider's cloud as necessary
2) Technology (a standard) can be used to import all contact information from the provider to a new phone / Send select contact data to a friend and so on
3) Can create contact groups and implement group messaging

Allow real time usage and cost tracking
Allow users to see their current usage (calls, in time, out time, cost, SMS/MMS count and cost) both through an online interface and through an SMS query

Provide access to all incoming/outgoing messages on the cloud
Allow the user to see all messages online. Retain this for say five years or so, and allow the user to pull this with him to another provider if necessary. Again, implications are many:

1) Mark some senders as spam and block incoming directly at provider
2) Proof of incoming/outgoing messages for investigations
3) Allow user to tag non-permission marketing examples to governmental agencies for enforcement

Same can be extended to calls. Of course, both must be enforced with a strict privacy policy

Allow users to change providers without switching numbers
This is a no brainer. Most people stick to a provider (and lousy service) for this sheer reason of having to switch numbers. This comes with a cost - especially for business owners. Allow people to move to another provider and take their number with them.


Lower GPRS cost
The cost is crazy. And mainly because all providers have overbooked their existing bandwidth. So costs are quoted in a very tricky way consistently by all providers. What sense does it make for some one to say 10 paise per 10 KB as the cost? Who browses in KB anyway? This cost is one paise per KB. On the other end it is 10.24 Rs per MB or a whopping 10,485.76 Rs per GB.


Allow SMS sequencing
The inherent SMS limit is 160 bytes plus some header data which the user doesn't have any access to. If we take say 30-40 bytes extra and limit the message to 120 bytes in order to add meta data about the SMS, it would open up many possibilities - like very large messages (already supported to an extent, but very erratic) or threading (making a message contextual in relevance to another message)

For phones:
Some of them are very easy to implement, and I wonder why we're not seeing some fundamental features. The cameras are upto 5MP now (may be higher even as I write this), but certain other features are sorely lacking!

SMS Spam Control
Allow users to setup roles for organizing their SMS (much like email). Things like folders, filtered auto delete and so on.

Scheduled SMS
The phone is always online. So why not schedule outgoing messages on need? (New year, birthdays etc)

Call rules
Same logic as for SMS. Allow user to authorize the phone to block the call (mainly for telemarketing spam or nuisance calls). Additional rules can be setup as well.
 
Phone voice mail
Again, surprising that this is so uncommon. Allow the phone to auto answer the call, take a voice message and play it back to the user for offline consumption. (I think this is the no 1 killer feature, especially for the corporate world in India)

Expose call / message meta data
Through in interface for analysis. Things like usage time, count, time of day etc. I think it will be an eye opener to the user to see how much time he is spending on the phone and also reveal other patterns that is not easily available.

Simple archiving
Allow user to archive messages in a simple way. I don't see the need to make this so inaccessible and convoluted. If all messages are exportable to a PDF, it gives a simple search-able interface to X days of messaging history.

(I will think about this and update later if possible. Anyway, if you have something in your wish list, you can list that here)

Browser Usage

The results were a little surprising. These are from visitors to the blogs under [deepakkt.blogspot.com]. IE 6.0 is on top, with Chrome second in list. But people have already picked up on Firefox 3.5.1

I presume people use IE 6.0 in organizations mainly [mine included]. I don't think any individual uses IE 6.0 any longer.

Why Google Chrome OS is a big deal

Google recently dropped the bomb!

Until now, Google was coexisting with Microsoft, in a way. Because its primary turf was on the net. Now, even with docs, gmail or Chrome, you could use an alternative easily.

But the OS, the scene changes dramatically because it is replacing Windows in its entirety.

I also like their statement, where they are still going to be focusing on web apps, which is their strength area now. But as with Microsoft, Google has the luxury of releasing a bare bones version (long beta) and then tweaking it piece by piece.

It will be interesting times ahead. Depending on how easy to test it out (say, they can go really innovative and allow it to run from a USB drive?), I will give it a try once more information is out.

I am assuming it will be a small, slick GUI that comes bundled with Chrome, an editor (text), an image viewer and editor, a sync utility for all their web apps (GMail, Picasa, Docs). Everything else will be on the web.

Wolfram Alpha is fun!

Wolfram Alpha is a good example of a disruptive innovation. Where Bing competes head on with Google (which is so-so established that it is a verb now), Wolfram Alpha carved a niche segment for itself as a computational engine. So in good time, if there is any calculation that is needed, may be we will say "over to Wolfram Alpha". Anyway, this post is to show some interesting things I've seen with Wolfram Alpha. It is even funny at times!

Give it a whirl, it might become indispensable over time.

Hi There:

Are you smart?

(surprisingly humble, don't you think?)

Easter eggs

(The search for an easter egg is an easter egg!)

Tell me a joke:

(tells a different joke every time. Read the fine text also)

When is your birthday?

4th july 2009 + 474 days

are you stupid

(another example if it's humility. very nicely done!)

Feedity

Nowadays, much of my "web browsing" happens through feeds. Feeds give a
single point interface for everything you need to track on the web.
Without feeds it would be an impossible task to track 35+ blogs, their
comments, what Calvin and Garfield are up to, technological trends etc.

However, there are some websites - or more accurately, some web pages
within websites which are not available as feeds. Making them feeds
would require screen scraping (a technique involving parsing the HTML
behind and pulling the info we require and rendering them as a feed).
However, this is a highly customized process. This is where sites like
Feedity help out.

Feedity is one of the sites that takes in a regular web page and
converts contents into a feed. You can rely on native parsing of
Feedity, wherein it tries to understand headings in the HTML, or you can
provide parsing guidelines - wherein you provide the HTML heading blocks
between which your news headlines are present.

I used Feedity for two webpages (currently) I follow and I find it quite
useful.

Can Twitter be improved?

I presume, Twitter's success is mostly to do with its simplicity. However, I feel the following will make it more valuable. Mostly, these are surrounding enhancements without taking away anything from its core 140 character simplicity.

1. Statistics - I think this, if introduced, will be a rage! Nothing to do - just expose the contents as an API and the community will do the rest
2. Favorite tracking - let users know which of their status messages have been favorited by others through a simple link
3. Conversation threading - allow the user to pick any random status message and view a conversation history. Again, if you don't want to do the work - just expose the details

Blind Search

This is fun.

Try it out. Search for a term, results from three sites (Google, Bing and yahoo) are displayed without naming the search engine. Vote for that which you think is best. I must also say it is surprising my voting results are divided 50-50 between Google and Bing with one result going to Yahoo.

Site is here:

Empty folders in a directory tree

I needed a utility to search for empty folders in a directory tree and wrote one in Perl. Suggestions, comments or alternatives welcome.

---

#!C:\Strawberry\Perl\Bin\Perl.exe

# 
# dirtree.pl v1.00
# Licensed under the Creative Commons BSD License.
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
#      http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BSD/
#
# Software provided as-is without any warranties.
#



use strict;
use warnings;

my @emptydirs;
my $inputdir;
my @recursedircontents;
my $inputdirf;
my @dircontents;

print "Please enter a directory (full path please!): ";
$inputdir = ; chomp $inputdir;                                     #strip newline

#check for trailing "\". If not found, add one
if ($inputdir =~ /\\$/)
{
     $inputdirf = $inputdir;
}
else
{
     $inputdirf = $inputdir."\\";
}

print "You input $inputdir. Parsing as $inputdirf\n";

$inputdir = $inputdirf;

opendir(INPUTDIR, $inputdir) || die("Unable to open $inputdir: $!");
@dircontents=grep(!/^\./, readdir(INPUTDIR));
@emptydirs=();

#Push empty root directory to stack after check
if ($#dircontents == -1)
{
     push(@emptydirs, $inputdir);
}


foreach (@dircontents)
{
     if (-d $inputdir.$_)
     {
          print "$inputdir$_\n";
          
          #cycle through contents of input directory
          if (opendir(INPUTDIRR, $inputdir.$_))
          {
               @recursedircontents=grep(!/^\./, readdir(INPUTDIRR));
               my $savepath=$_;
               
               #check if directory is empty and add to a separate list
               if ($#recursedircontents == -1)
               {
                    push(@emptydirs, $inputdir.$_);
               }
               
               #and add to stack to recurse through the tree
               foreach(@recursedircontents)
               {
                    if (-d $inputdir.$savepath."\\".$_."\\")
                    {
                         push(@dircontents, $savepath."\\".$_);
                    }
               }
               
               close(INPUTDIRR);
          }
     }
} 

print "\nEmpty folders:\n";

foreach (@emptydirs)
{
     print "\n$_";
}

close(INPUTDIR);

---

Google Squared

Microsoft unveiled Bing! recently, and people already have come up with a dig on it "Bing Is Not Google!". While it may be a little unfair on Microsoft, keep in mind that Bing was primarly developed with an intent to outseat Google as the primary search engine.

Where I find Google really impressive is that they never stop innovating. It is just hard to keep up with the new ideas - both in terms of new initiatives or improvements to existing products (take GMail for example). Their newest addition is Google Squared. It is a "lab" offering now, but I have no doubts it would move to beta very soon.

How much time would it take to come up with a table like this? It took less than 2 minutes with Google Squared. (click on the image)

However, a lot of work needs to be done on the product, definitely. I see the following problems:

1) It essentially tries to make the web into a "database" and allows you to resolve this into rows and columns
2) There is no guarantee that you will get the right data at the point where a row and a column intersects. The search term forms the context
3) Results are fairly accurate for something well established data points (something like george clooney movies for example). But for something involved (say tennis results for last 4 grand slams), results are hazy.
4) Even when results are expected, accuracy (and integrity of data) is something that can never be guaranteed. That is a manual step, required especially when the output of squares is going to go as an input to something important. But for personal research and quick analysis, it already is a very valuable tool.

There is no doubt this will evolve and may be in a year or two, squared will be a very powerful data mining tool. And what better database than the nebulous loom called the "internet"!

I am fairly certain Google is not going to counter Bing!. Instead they will tread their own disruptive path and Microsoft will be left to play catch up. Unless, Microsoft decide to do the same thing as well - which I doubt!

Megapixel Mania : Follow up

Some time back, I wrote about megapixels.

While they are important to some extent, they can never replace camera functionality. For instance, I think it would be difficult to replicate this photograph on every camera - despite a high number of megapixels [haven't had the opportunity to test this out. My dad has a 12.1 MP camera. I will try the experiment once]. There was no post processing on the photograph (except cropping to make it smaller!).

---

Note: The image or screenshot in this post is licensed with creative commons.
The copyright for this image / screenshot belongs to deepakkt. Click on the image above or here to view the image on deepakkt's website.

---

Megapixel Mania

When the Olympus E10 came out, it was able to generate 4MP photographs.

That seemed pretty high. But now, the latest ones churn out 12.1 MP's in a very compact size. I am just wondering if there is even a need for this. At 4MP, the peak resolution is 2270*1680 which is pretty high. I think it is at a point where increased MP's are no longer a selling point.

Where a high MP would probably help is if we need to zoom in for detail. Otherwise, for casual photographers who just like to capture memories, 4MP should be good enough - even for large prints. A 4MP photo can generate a 20x16 in print with good detail.

Just to contrast - Varying sizes of a photograph are given below:

75x75:


100x75:


240x480:


500x375:


1024*768 (This is 0.8MP approx):


Full size (2240x1680):

---

7th May 2009 - Added follow up

---

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en_GB

Sadhguru - Pocket PC Theme

I created a simple theme for the Pocket PC called "Sadhguru". I don't think the theme requires an explanation. You can download the theme here:

Installation instructions:
1) Download the theme
2) Copy the theme to your /Windows directory on your pocket pc
3) From the control panel, choose the theme and activate

Home Screen

Windows Menu

Messaging Interface