thecruisemaniac.com

And finally… the Phase - I of my project at Symbian ends today… The last few mails flying to and fro before the final sign-off and acceptance.

The last one month has perhaps settled my score for action that I’ve missed in the last 10 months at my job.  And it has been a massive learning phase for all of us.  Some of them, perhaps the most crucial learnings for our team have been thus:

1. Work only when ‘you‘ want to.  Not when you have to… And this is a gospel at Symbian.  Two hours of working with commitment produces a far more gratifying result than 2 weeks of bitching around because you are asked to.  This is an absolute maverick style compared to the way people work back at my company!!! True freedom…
2. Document the code: I REPEAT WITH A LOT OF COMMITMENT!!! DOCUMENT THE CODE!!!  People here dont write separate documentation.  Tools like doxygen pick up the documentation in the source code and convert into the SDK documentation that we see as reference manuals. (More on this in a dedicated post).  This process maybe quite time consuming, but nevertheless saves time on the overall project deadlines…  I have seen people here documenting a function for about 10-15 lines before they even write the function signature.  It’s part of their culture… Not their process…
3. I had to mention this… NOKIA IS GOD!!!!  No one can, will and I repeat further again, ever will shake NOKIA from the top!!!  The reasons are perhaps very evident and simple -  Having gotten to see the source-code that the people at Nokia have written, I have no reasons and needs to substantiate the statement.  The coding is perfect.  The technique a.k.a. approach to design and architecture is absolutely immaculate… and the guys out there are definitely waaaaaay more committed than we are… (We as in, atleast us that have looked at their source-code)
4. And I have the answer to why the Symbian documentation still sucks…  We can discuss this in greater detail sometime later…

As of now, one more debrief meeting and then we’re off…  And we’re just keeping our fingers crossed and praying that Symbian let us do the second phase of their project from the Symbian dev-center…  Wish me luck!!!

Chao… and out…

After the battery recall fiascos by Sony and Dell, its Mobile giant Nokia’s turn to play the game…

The BL-5C battery which is installed in a massively huge number of models of Nokia mobile phones have been found defective. This battery has been manufactured by Matsushita Electric. The details are put up on the Nokia website here.

And from what I hear, the recommendations are that you stop using the battery immediately… Which kinda sounds silly as you were using the battery till Nokia came forward and said it is defective and my educated guesses are that people would continue using it had nokia not informed the ‘junta‘…

Getting back to the actual news, now that Nokia has mentioned it, get your battery to a Nokia service centre and have it replaced. The website mentioned in the post also checks your battery serial number to see if your BL-5C battery falls into the set of defective batteries to be replaced… Mine is a BL-5C and does not need to be replaced…

So… Kewl there!!!

Tags: Nokia, Battery, Recall, Defective, BL-5C

Speaker: Manjula, Virefree.

The session was about how to stay at home, get funded and work from home.

IDG is a company that has experience in this domain… Once you have an idea and a little funding, a team is needed. The biggest advantage is the fact that your income is guaranteed. There is also a sense of security in terms of a project happening… And Manjula (Will link here later…) is the First EIR in India.

This also happens on standard funding terms. If you want out, you have to sell your eqity back to the VC’s that are based on predetermined clauses…

Virefree is a startp that Manjula has. This is a firm that handles products relating to security and mobility in the mobile space… She said that EIR is quite flexible in the business models flexibility and things like that… The business model has moved from Products to a Hybrid model.

So long for the first live blog @ BCB4.

Tags: bcb4

Just a quickie… Less than 24 hrs and then its 2 full days of heavy-duty unconferencing… The frenzy is building up… JUST BE THERE!!!

Dont die a loser!!!

Tags: bcb4, iim-b

Be there!!! 28th and 29th of this month, IIM - B. The Collectives edition… Crowd, Gangs, Ideas, Topics, Hacknight, Gaming, Talks, Pitches, Discussions, Brawls, IT DOES NOT GET BETTER THAN THIS!!!

I’ll be at the Startups and Bloggers Collectives… Completing one full year at the BCB edition, and my personal Hat-trick with BCB’s.

I was mentioning to people at the Blog’a'loreans meet last saturday that I wouldn’t be able to make it because of commitments for corporate camps with NisargaIndia. And well, waddaya know… circumstances said otherwise… And now… Me @ BCB!!!

I’ll be talking about Wings @ the Bloggers Collective… And will be assisting Himanshu with the Startups Collective… And yeah, we’re (Himanshu and I) gonna have our own pitch at the startups collective too…

So, be there!!!

Update: Politics involved here… I’ve removed the lines regarding the scenario there!!! Apologies… to the readers of course!!!

Tags: bcb4

Himanshu, a fellow blogger had been asking me repeatedly as to why I hadn’t blogged in quite a while… Well… here goes…

In the last one month (or close to one month), a massively huge plethora of events have taken place in my life… (excuse me for the words there… I couldnt think of anything else more picturesque and expressive!!! )

In no particular order of importance and priority:

1. Landed myself into a project. And where??? In SYMBIAN!!! The corporate I’ve been praying to for the last 2 years!!! Got to work on-site at their Indian dev-center in Whitefield, Bangalore. To add icing to the cake, I got to work on the multimedia technologies on Symbian 9.5. Talk about looking at the source code of things to come atleast 2-3 years on from now… And to go back home with the satisfaction that you’ve got your hands dirty with the best of mobile technology available to mankind!!!
2. NisargaIndia has upgraded its offerings from plain Eco-Tourism, Wildlife Conservation and Research to Corporate Team Outings and Corporate Outbound Programmes. I got the previlige of conducting one of these programs for a very enthusiastic managers and middle-level staff team from HSBC.
3. NisargaIndia is organizing a couple of programmes for differently-abled people. Coming up under the banner of Wings, this program aims at helping these people to regain their confidence and be better equipped to take on the world independently. Wings is being geared up to do the following:
   1. Parasailing for differently-abled people at Hoskote Lake Bed. This is happening on the 8th, 9th and 10th of August.
   2. Ornithology classes and training for blind people. This is to help them make use of their extremely sharp hearing powers…
   3. Himalayan treks to help them realise that they are no different than normal people who can’t make shit out of all their 6 senses in perfect working order!!!

   Wings needs your support for all these activities. Contact me at ashwin [at] nisargaindia [dot] com if you wish to help us in this tryst to enabling people who are much better at life than we are!!!

4. I got my appraisal!!! The best part is, I can spend more!!!! Much more than I imagined!!!
5. My brother topped his college in the Ist year semester examinations. This has come as a massive shock my parents are still recovering from at home!!! This guy has never been spotted with a book in his 18 years of life!!! And now, 2nd rank in the college???

Well, that wraps up a good round of news updates from my life.

And I do promise to put up the badges and posters for the Wings programme… Until then…

The Cruise is on!!!

I came across this wonderful ad… And i felt that it was right to put it up for everyone to see… A wonderful way to give out a delicate message…

[display_podcast]

Amazing launch of the iPhone last friday… 2 days of queuing up… 500, 000 or more units speculated to be sold over the weekend…

Thats about the only thing on the news these days… The Master Magician a.k.a. Steve Jobs has done it yet again… in royal style…

I would definitely agree on the statement: “No phone has ever been given this kind of a super star status and hype in the history of mobile communication!”.

But, under the covers, does the iPhone really stand up to the hype??? I personally feel it doesnt… Lets face it, Quad band, Edge, Safari on Mobile, AJAX, li’l bit of AJAX enabled tracking apps, a sleazy UI, 2MP cam, music, youtube video, iTunes Sync, a MAC OS X build sizing a whopping 700MB of 8GB available memory and that’s it. Yeah, I forgot, you lose data on the phone if you remove the battery!!! This is 2007!!! The iPhone doesnt have non-volatile memory??? Whats with this???

(I was told I was wrong on this point!!!  Apologies on the error!!!)

Lets put that on par with a Nokia N95 here… Quad band, 3G, GPS, AJAX (yeah AJAX here too. The Core engines of the browsers on both the mobiles is the same!!!), music, 5MP camera, Hi-quality video recording, IM, dual camera (I mean Video Conferencing), Internet radio, internet video, Video Out, expandable memory, applications developed by a fervent community, and the list is endless…

The smartphones that people think of being capable of doing a-z of things you want can be brought out only by GODS!!!

However, I do accept the fervour that comes in when The Magician is brought into the scene… nevertheless, hands down, except for the stylish UI and the apple branding, the nokias and sony ericssons still lead the wars on the smartphones segment…

Lets look at this issue with a pinch of salt. When it comes to a smartphone, the phone a.k.a. hardware is still more or less the same. You still have an APP processor, a Baseband processor and maybe a Media accelerator and other peripheral hardware… That exists in similar configurations on all the phones on the planet…

The true potential of this hardware is unleashed when a powerful and a fully capable OS sits on top of it. And, a huge team of Godsend geeks churn out application code to squeeze the living daylights out of the hardware…

The iPhone sincerely needs to come up to this level and then think of taking on giants like NOKIA, SE, Symbian and the like…

I had somewhere down in my previous posts mentioned thus:

“You cant do everything you think you can… You have to be the GOD there… NOKIA is GOD!!! No one is spared!!!”

Vinay had this interesting pic on his blog:

Tags: Nokia, Smart+Phones, iPhone, Apple

I’ve been running around with Opera 4 beta on my Nokia 6630 since it launched yesterday. I must definitely have been in the first few hundred of the lot to have downloaded it…

And boy, Am I pleased!!! The feature set is awesome, the app is very lightweight compared to its predecessor the Opera Mini and has a kewl set of features. In this post I try to review the product and look at how it fits to the “running-around-a-lot-with-my-smartphone” kind of a user.

To start off, the Opera 4 beta will be referred to as O4 through the rest of this post.

O4 beta is a J2ME application just like the mini. It installs alongside the existing J2ME version without disturbing it at all. But nevertheless, I definitely have to mention that it is WAAAAY lighter than the previous versions. On that note, I will however contradict my statement with an addition that you still cant run heavyduty Symbian apps or J2ME apps with this guy running on the phone…

Mp3 works after an initial stutter, video doesnt. Otherwise, it is still definitely lighter than the previous version. Faster startup and shutdown times are also to be noted.

Now, coming to the feature set of the O4 “Dimension”, this application has a few wannabe features that people have always wanted on mobile browsers:

• Zoom in browsing: This is the feature that S60 3rd edition browsers have. Look at a page, from the birds eye view, choose a section to zoom in, and move into the section and do your work. “5″ is the key that does the job. Now, this feature on every S60 mobile capable of MIDP2.0… which is almost every damn smarty in the market…
• Mouse cursor: Long time never see pal… The cursor is finally there on non S60-3rd Edition phones. This is a real boon for people who browse the net on the move. As simple as Point and click. Now, My 6630 can do pretty much what the Symbian 9.x phones can…
• Fast Panning of a page: Keys 2, 4, 6 and 8 allow fast panning in the top, left, right and bottom directions respectively. The pan is amazingly smooth and slides like nothing else… This is a very good feature to use when in the Zoom-in mode where the whole page is not in view.
• Integrated Yahoo Live OneSearch: Quite good. But I would presonally prefer Google. The Symbian version gives you google by default.
• Bookmarks: This still stays from the previous versions sans the RSS. The Add / Edit / Delete a.k.a. Bookmark Management feature is smooth and Fast.
• Pagination / Scrolling: Everything scrolls across smoothly. Any window transition is a scroll. And it is really smooth, which makes my mobile look space age…
• And then theres all the old features carried over… with more speed of-course!!!

What the O4 Dimension misses out:

• Still No Password saving: Hope they bring in this feature like the Symbian counterpart. The password saving feature would be a real boon.
• RSS Feeds: Where did they go??? Are they leaving it out or would they put it into the final release is a question I’m awaiting an answer for. I really loved that feature. Your personal pocket based RSS feed reader… Kewl enough to catch up on news!!!
• Image Quality: The O4 gives an option to increase image quality. This has to however be manually activated. In as-much-as I do appreciate Opera’s quest for browsing speed, I strongly feel that the compromise on the image quality has taken a bad beating. The image quality could be marginally improved.
• No Flash Yet: This is a feature that is still expected on Symbian. So, I guess the Mini series would never have it in the near future…
• Skinning: Will this be integrated in the Final release??? Opera, please answer this. I prefer the black skin to the wine-red!

There are still some more add-ons I guess have to be added. Like figuring out how Opera behaves with Orkut. Noting the fact that Orkut opens in the O4 Dimension with absolute ease. The scrap / more friends / et. al. links which are actually images are not recognized by this guy…

In conclusion to this rather long post, “Two Thumbs Up! ” for this amazing piece of software. One instance where J2ME beat Symbian in the race to User Interfaces and User Interaction… Way to go guys… Opera Still Rocks…

And I’m waiting for the final release of this bad boy!!! Definitely worth investing in GPRS in India when you have O4 around!!! This is the new Dimension to browsing.

This is what mobiles have become!!!

Update: Correction for mentioning Yahoo OneSearch as Yahoo LiveSearch. Thanks to Daniel from Opera for the mention… And yeah, his comment down below states all the hotties in the next package… I’m waiting!!!

Tags: OperaMini, Dimension, Beta, Symbian, Series60, Nokia, 6630, Review

This post comes 2 days after BlogCamp pune…

The venue was Symbiosis Infotech Campus, Hinjewadi… A lovely place where wi-fi dint work… Now, I’m not being critical, I’m being candid… First unconference where I could not live-blog… But then yeah, it was interesting in a kind of a way…

Rediff was one of the big stars of the event… They launched a service called Rediff BlogShowCase… which was kinda over-hyped by the media to an extent that was way beyond proportions… Simple RSS Aggregator with a voting and ranking feature… Sounds familiar doesnt it??? It’s called Digg!!! And Digg podcasts!!! Absolut old wine - new bottle stuff… But hey! They’re Rediff.com!!!

So you have StarTV, NDTV, CNN-IBN, CNBC, TechTree, Mid-Day, Financial Express, and what-not and what-all of the media fraternity here… And then, there was Sakshi Juneja - who is Rakhi Sawant’s unofficial PR! Caught up with Rajiv Dhingra and team from WATBlog / WATConsult.

The sessions were mostly marketing stuff. By PurpleNova, PooraPoona, Sulekha, Rediff of-course and some others. Some of the interesting sessions were however the ones on Blog Traffic building and Blogging for learners… which were both interesting and interactive. So, I caught up with that…

And then the personal high of the event, I got covered by CNBC for being a blogger and my experiences on blogging and for the fact that I’ve been blogging since 2004… which apparently puts me in the previliged league of veteran bloggers…

Did a huge pitch for NisargaIndia there. A lot of people were interested in the part that there were wildlife-conservation and naturalist activities in India AND I was not associated with WWF AND that my organization was a privately held one, not an NGO AND that we actually had a perfectly fine and successfully working business model to round it all off…

So thats that about BlogCamp pune. The trip was however lovely… Met up with all my roomies there, my gud old friends, my managers in my old-organization, lunches, dinner, party, disc… whoa… Lovely saturday nite… And now, it’s back to life… and reality!!!

And yeah, is it something about me flying??? Everytime I’m on a trip, on the return flight back home, the flight attendant has to spill something on a passenger… 3rd occurrence today… This time it was however lemonade… and not boiling coffee… Read up my older posts for that incident…

So long…

Tags: blogcamppune, rediff, blogshowcase, SCIT, pune, blogging, media, hype, NisargaIndia