Saturday, December 27, 2008

YouTube/FLV and Padissimo on P1i

The latest Core Player 1.30 has built in support for streaming youtube videos! And, you can even play FLV videos stored on your memory stick too! Yeah!!! Go get it from imserba forums. For streaming YouTube videos smoothly you need at least 3G or WLAN to be working really fast.

Another cool app has been released by CPS(CellPhoneSoft) for P1i and the like(M600). Ever missed the D-Pad on your P1i? Padissimo fills that void!!! Download and install it from here. Launch it, then just long press 0 to hide the screen d-pad. Now use 2, 4, 6, 8 and 5 keys as d-pad anywhere in menu or web browser. To disable d-pad(especially recommended when you are on opera mini), just long press backspace key.
Enjoy!

Automatic Wallpaper Changer in Ubuntu

Remember "Webshots Desktop" on windows??? 'Twas a cool program which thrived in Windows 98 age. It used to change wallpapers automatically at fixed time intervals. But it used to sit in the system tray and eat up lots of valuable resources. Now, its the Ubuntu Era!!! Ubuntu is catching up in the Desktop OSes race. So, a boring evening and I thought of finding the best automatic wallpaper changer for GNOME. After lots of googling I found many options. Most of them were python scripts, adaptation of someone else's starving labour!!! Scripts aren't good for newbies and like to whew them away. I tried some of them, some worked and others tried mixing up the grey matter inside my mind. At last I found a nice one with intuitive GUI. Its called "wallpaper-tray". To install it, search for it in "Synaptic Package Manager" and install it. After installation open a terminal and type "wallpaper-tray" and hit that damned "Return" button!!! You can select a folder(or multiple ones) from which images will be displayed. Set the time in minutes for shuffling. To add it in Startup, so that you don't need to launch it manually everytime you boot, just open the "System" menu, there click "Sessions" in the "Preferences" submenu. Add it there. And you're done! And , its not a resource hog like the nasty Webshots on Windows.
Enjoy ;)

Saturday, December 20, 2008

SE joins OHA, kicks away Symbian and Windows!!!

Sony Ericsson has joined hands with Open Handset Alliance to design phones based on the Android operating system. Isn't it surprising?? They had shown interest in the Symbian Foundation's open source venture. And after creating a breakthrough device(XPERIA) based on Windows they're saying bye to Windows??? Where is SE going. By the way, at non-java phones they were the best, are the beat and will be the best always!!!
Here is the news taken directly from their site.


December 9, 2008

Sony Ericsson joins Open Handset Alliance™

On December 9, 2008 Sony Ericsson announced the extension of its portfolio strategy to include support for the Open Handset Alliance™, committing to produce an Android™ based phone in due course.

"Sony Ericsson is excited to announce its membership of the Open Handset Alliance and confirm its intention to develop a handset based on the Android platform," said Rikko Sakaguchi, CVP and Head of Creation and Development at Sony Ericsson.

"We believe Sony Ericsson can bring a wealth of experience in making consumer focused multimedia handsets with new user experience to the Alliance drawing on the successes of the Walkman™ and Cyber-shot™ sub-brands. Sony Ericsson is a strong supporter of open operating systems and we believe the Open Handset Alliance offers an exciting opportunity for a new and unique user experience only Sony Ericsson can deliver."


Rikko Sakaguchi, CVP and Head of Creation and Development at Sony Ericsson.


Complements existing Open OS strategy
Membership of the Open Handset Alliance will complement our existing Open OS strategy which is based on the Symbian and Windows Mobile® platforms. Android is a complete, open mobile phone software stack that enables Sony Ericsson to provide the best user experience with all the latest technologies available on the Internet.
Visit the Open Handset Alliance website>>

Developer support
This announcement confirms that Sony Ericsson is joining the Open Handset Alliance and that we have begun development on this platform. It is still early in the process, and we cannot yet reveal any information about any future SDK from Sony Ericsson.

Monday, December 8, 2008

Wikipedia and DAA

Exams are near and study season is on. This semester, we've a paper called DAA, thats an acronym for Design & Analysis of Algorithms. For the students, this is the most nasty paper of this sem, just because there is no perfect book for it like we've Navathe and Elmasri for DBMS, Galvin for OS, Lipschutz for Data Structures and all of the rest not enumerated here. The book for DAA that everyone follows is called Fundamentals Of Computer Algorithms. The book is too thick and writer names are equally weird. One simple name is Sartaj Sahni. I hate the font and the dull colour of pages so I don't want to study from it at all. Also there is a lot of exaggerated stuff filled inside. It is too difficult to understand the concepts from it and the algorithms take whole of your brain's processing power and still can't run inside your mind!!! Most of the stuff belongs to Computational Complexity Theory so not as helluva as OS to understand. So, I was searching for some niftier alternative. I tore apart the DAA page from syllabus booklet and started searching for things on net. Search means google. For every topic that I was searching, the first result was a wikipedia article. The language, to the point articles, points, easy small and concise algorithms filled with elegance are easy to slurp and digest! I finished 75% of the syllabi in just two days(not 48 hours but less than 10 hours). I've never studied more than 6 hours a day in my life. The toughest paper of this sem now seems helluva to me! Long live wikipedia!!! Include all course material from our syllabi and we'll never have to deal with boring books.
Here is the list of some important stuff about which I got my fundamentals cleared on wikipedia in last 2 days:
Quicksort
Mergesort
TSP
15-puzzle
8-queens problem
Sum of subsets
Dynamic Programming
Branch and Bound
Backtracking
Greedy method
Divide and Conquer
Problem Classes i.e. P, NP, NP-hard and NP-complete
Cook's theorem
Graph colouring
...and lots more! That much seems enough to pass!! lol

Friday, December 5, 2008

Built-in IM client

Most new(old ones too) data capable phones have a built in IM client. In SE java phones, it is there in Messging menu with the name My Friends. Most of the people don't know how to use it. Although Java apps like Nimbuzz, Mxit, EQO, e-buddy and Mig33 are better performers at speed but for the occasional user, nothing beats My Friends. You just need to go to yamigo.com and register there. You'll get all setup instructions there itself. If you're stuck midway then do ask me here.
I'm busy now a days so blogging is getting little attention. Hope, I give much of myself to this blog after semester exams end. Bye bye:)