Limo Foundation - a open mobile software platform

Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone established the LiMo Foundation to develop the Foundation Platform, a Linux-based, open mobile communication device software platform.

A world-class Linux-based platform aims to provide key benefits for the mobile industry including lower development costs, increased flexibility, and a richer mobile ecosystem - all of which contribute to the group's ultimate objective of creating compelling, differentiated and enhanced consumer experiences.

The Foundation's purpose is to advance the creation, evolution, promotion, and support of the Foundation Platform and to cultivate an ecosystem of complementary products, capabilities, and service

Go there

Search engines and privacy

CNET makes a comparison of how the search engines handle privacy. Big boys Google and Yahoo retain your data even after 18 months.

Youtube streaming made easy

Youtube now allows you to stream videos much more easily - You can now fast forward, view any part of the video and not wait for the buffering to be completed - just drag it with your mouse!

Joey by Mozilla

Nope .. its not Firefox for mobile phones yet..


Joey can be used to watch a video or read on your PC, and then read the same on your mobile phone. Not sure why someone would do that, maybe a way to send directions, maps ? to your mobile phones.

Look at the video below for more!




Project Joey, Customize Your Mobile Web Experience - Tutorial from AirMozilla and Vimeo

Intel Classmate PC

The Intel Classmate PC displayed at OSCON. Looks good, apparently sells for 200$ (maybe large volumes) - one of the developing countries has ordered more than 100,000 of these. Has a 20G hard disk, 512 MB (?) RAM, runs a 900 MHz mobile celeron processor.

The Classmate runs Mandrake and Microsoft Windows XP

Feedburner Blogger Integration

From the Feedburner site,

If you host your content on a Blogger blog with a blogspot.com address (or use Blogger's “custom domain” feature), you can now redirect your native Blogger feed to your FeedBurner feed (quite easily, might we add). Gone are the muggy, languorous days of wrestling with "autodiscovery" tags in foreboding corners of your Blogger template code or hacking through this tangled discussion thread for a glimpse of configuration clarity. Starting right now, you just log into your Blogger account, select Settings | Site Feed, enter your FeedBurner feed address and click "Save Settings." Zap! Pow! Kraaakkkk! Now you've got the complete picture of how your content is being consumed out here, out there, out everywhere.

Why is redirecting so important?

We're glad you asked. By redirecting your feed, you can get a true picture of how many subscribers you have. Some of you might even see a few more subscribers magically appear, though results will most certainly vary. Why so? Sometimes, publishers inadvertently fragment their feed audience by offering more than one feed address on the blog itself or within their autodiscovery tags (the method by which feed readers automatically detect the address of your feed for syndication purposes). This results in some subscribers not being counted, and no one wants that in a world where everyone should count for something. By redirecting your feed, you can consolidate any straggler subscribers and greatly improve your ability to effectively measure your audience.

Fun with Tables

Via Ajaxian

Brasero - CD/DVD Burner for Linux

If you are looking for an CD/DVD software other than the usual K3B/Nero for Linux/wodim, Brasero might be worth looking at.

It has a simple interface which supports drag and drop of files from Nautilus, previewing of files.

On Ubuntu

Install : sudo apt-get install brasero

Google Desktop for Linux

Long expected, Google finally has released the popular Google Desktop for Linux. I have just started indexing and look forward to searching man pages in a way I never knew :) - All I used to do was man -k before. This would be so much better I would hope.

Get it here

Silverlight is Moonlight on Linux

Flash on Linux will have some competition - Its called Moonlight - the Microsoft Silverlight implementation.

More screenshots here

Free tool to check page load times

Want to check how much time your scripts or images take to load up?

Pingdom has a free tool for you - A Full Page Test loads a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). It mimics the way a page is loaded in a web browser.

Check here

Samsung Ultra Edition II

Samsung's Ultra Edition 10.9 (U600) exudes elegance and modern style, coming in a range of colors which includes sapphire blue, garnet red, platinum metal and copper gold casing. The clever design of Samsung's Ultra Edition 10.9 (U600) includes a unique and stylish interface for uncomplicated usability. It also comes equipped with a 3.2-megapixel camera encased in an ultra slim profile, which boasts a 2.22-inch wide TFT LCD widescreen. For feature watchers, Samsung's Ultra Edition 12.1 (U700) offers HSDPA 3.6 Mbps data transfer speed and video telephony.

Via Mobiledia

Apple iPhone Details

• there's no Flash or Java support
• there is PDF support
• Quicktime is used for encoding and displaying video and audio
• said video is encoded via H.264
• with Safari on the iPhone, links can be embedded in web pages to allow phone calls from a click; this would be insanely useful for corporate directories and such
• web pages are limited to 10 MB (!), Javascripts can only run for five seconds
• the iPhone's browser user agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A538a Safari/419.3 (quick, everybody check your http logs!)

Via Ars

Yahoo Mail Unlimited Storage CRAP!

(Click on the image to view FULL SIZE)

So much for my excitement of having UNLIMITED email storage. My Yahoo email account throws the above error - all I did was forward is few hundreds of mails per day.

Forget Unlimited Yahoo CRAP - Download using Gmail POP

Google Error - computer virus or spyware application

If you happen to see a page like above, when you visit a Google page, you need not panic.

According to Viruslist, Google might have just blacklisted some of the IPs which might have sent automatic queries to its search engine and you might have just picked that IP address when you renewed your Internet connection.

So, next time you get this, you should probably just ignore the message, enter the Captcha or try to renew your Internet Connection again

Safari - trying to fool the world ?

Mark Wilton-Jones has researched a bit more to show Safari isn't as fast as it claims to be

"At the release of Safari 3 beta for Windows, there were several claims about Safari's page load performance. It was giving results that showed it was clearly faster than other browsers. Since I generally like to check things for myself instead of trusting what companies say, I gave the new Safari a whirl. Sure enough it was very fast. Its CSS was quick, its page loading was quick, its JavaScript was quick. Perhaps quick, but certainly not as fast as they seemed to claim it was.

I have a variety of machines that I tested it on, and all showed the same thing; it was fast, but not really faster than the competition (Opera, for example, but other browsers were also faster in some cases). But when tests used JavaScript to check the page loading speed, Safari produced numbers far smaller than other browsers, even though the actual page load was not faster when tested with a stopwatch. Simple CSS float tests would produce times of less than 100ms, while the actual page load (from disk, so no network lag is involved) could take as much as 5 seconds."

Read more

Galeon - the fastest browser in the world

I was looking for a lightweight browser to supplement Firefox (I use Cookieswap for different profiles too). I was trying to use Opera but somehow I hate the way it renders. So, ended up trying Galeon - which based on Gecko and again am pleasantly surprised at the amazing rendering speed - Now, I believe it's probably the Fastest browser in the world


To install on Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install galeon

Safari - no, its not the best browser

Ars Technica reviews Safari for Windows and yes they are absolutely right, Safari is no way close to being the best browser - I find it painful to use Safari - just too many things to get used to - Stick to Firefox

Read the review here

Gmail POP: Username password not accepted

Another Gmail quirk - I don't know why it happened to me, but if you get this error

This is what their official help suggests

"We suggest making some adjustments in your mail client's settings so you aren't always prompted to enter your username and password. Please check the following settings in your mail client:

• Make sure that you entered @gmail.com after your username. For example: john.doe@gmail.com
• Re-enter your password to ensure that it's correct. Keep in mind that passwords are case-sensitive.
• Make sure your mail client isn't set to check for new mail too often. If your mail client checks for new messages more than once every 10 minutes, your client might repeatedly request your username and password.

Now, please follow the steps below to resolve the problem:

1. Disable all POP clients you're using to read Gmail messages. (If you use one at work and one at home, please disable both.)
2. From the computer on which your POP logins are failing, visit http://www.google.com/accounts/DisplayUnlockCaptcha
3. Enter your Gmail username and password, and the letters in the distorted picture.
4. Once you have successfully logged in, restart your mail client and try to download your mail."

Worked for me :)

sylpheed - the no frills mail client

I haven't tried out sylpheed since gtk-1.2 days. I was looking for a replacement for Evolution which I was using as my second mail client (use Thunderbird as the primary client) .

I wanted the simplest of GUI based mail clients and Sylpheed seems to be perfect fit - Its fast, does most of what a mail clients do (protocols, privacy, junk mail handling, command line options, etc) and more importantly doesn't crash (evolution crashes a lot!). Its a little unconventional in terms of UI, but I guess its manageable.

On Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install sylpheed

Nokia 8600 Luna Phone

• Slide open the glass cover to reveal the keypad and camera beneath
• Light your way onto the scene - the keypad glows subtly beneath the polished glass cover
• View pictures on the high-resolution display, supporting up to 16-million colors
• Capture special moments on video or with the 2.0-megapixel camera with up to 4x digital zoom, landscape camcorder and video player
• Enjoy music and videos with video playback and streaming, built-in FM radio, and the music player supporting AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, MIDI, AMR, and WMA audio formats
• SMS reader and high-quality text-to-speech instant messaging (IM) and presence-enhanced contacts
• Downloadable Java applications via J2ME to complement preinstalled games (High Roller Casino, Soccer 3D, and 3D Golf Tour)
• Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR (enhanced data rate) specification supporting stereo audio streaming via A2DP BT (advanced audio distribution profile for Bluetooth
• Use Mobile Search to find and connect to local services, websites, images, and mobile content
• Micro-USB 2.0 connector for audio, data, and battery charging and synchronization with PC using Nokia PC Suite

Via Mobiledia

Firefox Web Forgery Indication

I was planning to put in some junk data into one of the phishing mails I got and to my pleasant surprise - Firefox nicely warns about Web Forgery - see the screenshot above.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: Historic discussion live from D 2007

Via Engadget

What are the big guys doing?

Almost all the big Internet companies (and probably software companies) have a Labs site where they dish out the latest they are working on.

Here are some of the most popular ones

1. Google Labs - http://labs.google.com

I guess many of us would know about this. This is where Google has their latest 20% innovations

2. Adobe Labs - http://labs.adobe.com

Adobe has probably defined Internet so quietly (or maybe Macromedia ;) ) that we use all of their products and yet be oblivious that its made by Adobe. At Adobe Labs, you will probably find the next generation Internet platforms that Internet companies work on.

3. Yahoo Next - http://labs.yahoo.com

Yahoo calls their playground - Yahoo Next. They have pretty interesting products lined up like My Web 2.0 Beta and is worth a check.

4. AOL Labs - http://labs.aol.com

AOL has a labs page too, their labs concentrates mostly on AIM and its plugins

5. Microsoft Research - http://research.microsoft.com
Doesn't exactly have too much of Web experiments, but they do have some interesting projects such as Nocturnal

Their http://labs.msn.com throws up something which probably associates them best -Service Unavailable

Know any other company playgrounds ? Leave us a comment!

Screencast in Ubuntu

Its easy to create a screen cast on Ubuntu using a program called byzanz which will save the screencast as an animated gif file.

To install byzanz

Use sudo apt-get install byzanz

To record your screencast, On a terminal, type byzanz-record filename ( the default option is to record for 10 seconds), but you can increase the duration. use byzanz-record --help for more options

How to Survive the Worst PC Disasters

PC World has an article running on what to do when you encounter a PC disaster.

If you are newbie, you might want to take a look at it and probably even save the article

Update on Picnik

We had posted about Picnik a while back, looks like there have been some improvements.

They have a Firefox Addon and some interesting options such as ability to capture whole pages as screenshots.

Try Picnik again

fvalidator - free javascript validator

fValidator is an open source unobtrusive javascript tool for easy handling form validation so that you don't have to painfully code if your form has too many fields.

Get it here

My Experience of Beryl on Feisty Fawn

I finally installed Beryl on a nvidia GeForce based machine.

I had to

sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl beryl-ubuntu beryl-manager emerald-themes

Had to add Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True" to my device section to get the Window titles back. I was also suggested to make DefaultDepth 24 in my Screen section of xorg.conf

One I had done this, restart X/Gnome and do a beryl-manager to get going. Little buggy but its worth the fun watching windows flying around :). Expose feature ! Wow!

I like the Beryl Manager > General Options > Shortcuts / Commands feature so that I can get my terminal open if I press Alt-t - ofcourse you could add any command that you want - say launch Firefox. Doing this in metacity involved some hacking through the gconf-editor

The options just stunned me - you could basically own what you want to do - you could configure anything and everything. Move over Vista

What I love as of now

1. Screen Edges

2. Desktop CUBE - wOw!

3. Configuration options

4. Stunning effects.

5. Non GPLed Themes - Sorry :)

6. Haven't had a crash yet :) Ok, It just doesn't like rxvt in the background, crashes pretty regularly. My system hangs once in a while. Ugh, SAD!
Late night fun!

How to NOT use an online ad

I happened to see a Google Ad for a job portal which interested me - So I click on it and to my horror I see the above screen which has that many 'mandatory' fields. How the hell do you expect someone to copy paste their resume the first thing you land on a page.

At the most you could get the user to signup with a basic password and send reminder mails if they don't fill the required fields soon enough.

The New Google Analytics !

Google released a new version of their Google Analytics product and the first impression is that its a huge makeover from the earlier version.

There are some nifty features such as exporting your analytics report to PDF or send the reports by email. You now operate through a Dashboard similar to Blogger, things can be customized in the dashboard.

The graph visualization is much better and usable, ranges work much better. Overall, a good improvement!

Install Gnome themes through gnome-art

Trying out Gnome themes (or for that matter, any themes) could be quite addictive.

At the same time, getting them from http:// art.gnome.org previewing the themes, untarring them is quite boring. Gnome provides a utility - gnome-art to do that for you - It lets you preview themes for applications, windows, backgrounds and splash screens, download or install them directly through a single window.

To install Gnome Art for Ubuntu/Debian

sudo apt-get install gnome-art

Start up gnome-art - gnome-art through the terminal
or

System > Preferences > Art Manager

It will download the theme data the first time and retrieves only the new files from then on.

You now can Preview, Download or Install directly

Sony Ericsson T250a - the entry level phone

Sony Ericsson T250a Specs:

- VGA camera
- Screen: 1.7-inch 65K-color TFT (128 x 160 px)
- WAP 1.2.1
- Polyphonic ringtones
- Speakerphone
- Vibrating alert
- Picture messaging (MMS) and text messaging (SMS)
- Predictive text input
- FM radio
- Alarm clock, calculator, calendar, phone book, stopwatch, and timer
- Infrared
- GSM/GPRS 850/1800 or GSM/GPRS 900/1900
- Talk time: Up to 7 hours
- Standby time: Up to 300 hours
- Size: 100 x 45 x 13 mm
- Weight: 82 grams

Try Ubuntu through Wubi

If you always wanted to try Ubuntu and didn't want to install it fiddling with partitions on your hard disk - you should really try Wubi.

Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other application and it does this by installing Ubuntu into a single file as opposed to installing on a partition

Download the installer

Via Wubi

Slow Ubuntu Bootup ? Disable fsck on vfat

If you have installed Feisty and notice that your bootup is really slow - fsck might be one of the causes - dosfsck which is called via fsck everytime you boot takes quite a bit of time and slows down the boot process dramatically.

You can disable the fsck check by changing the entry "1" (checks file system everytime) to "0"

So, your fstab entry for vfat partitions would look something like this

UUID=301C-1A1D /media/hda1 vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 0

Gift of Gab

This Mother's day, Skype is promoting VoIP by allowing Free SkypeOut to anywhere in the world for a day.

If you haven't tried out VoIP before, it would be a good time to do so.

This offer would be valid only in US and Canada.

Samsung I400 Smartphone

Here are the features of the latest Smartphone that Samsung has released

Samsung SGH-I400

Specification - Standard: GPRS/EDGE Tri-Band (900/1800/1900)

Camera: 2.0-Megapixel

Camera - Display: 2.3-inch QVGA TFT (262K Colors)

Features: Bluetooth 2.0 (A2DP), USB 2.0

Full Web Browsing / Web 2.0 - Music Key / Dual Speaker - microSD (4 GB)

Size: 101 x 50 x 15.8 mm - Weight: 92 g

Google - BROKEN

Google seems to have just too many problems these days. One service seems to broken almost every day. Of the three services that I use, Gmail, Blogger and Groups, one of them is broken almost so very often

Google Groups seems to be down for over 5 hours now, there is no official communication on what's going on - there is almost no help if you want to from Google. You had Gmail users complaining that their messages and accounts were disabled for days together.

As someone puts it "Asking Google for help and getting it is like asking President Bush to speak intelligently .. aint gonna happen ."

Google isn't going anywhere with so many bad services. They have revolutionized the web like no one, unfortunately, its crumbling right now.

Firefox Extension - Password Exporter

While I prepare myself to upgrade to Ubuntu Feisty Fawn, I've been backing up my data before I reformat my good old hard disk which currently has Mandriva 10.1.

In the process of the backup, I needed a Firefox password saver which would let me save passwords and then import them later - Password Exporter turned out to be the perfect answer - lets you export/import passwords to either a XML file or a CSV file and your xml file can be encrypted too. Neat.

This Earth Day... you should know...

The international panel of scientists predicts the global average temperature could increase by 2 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 and that sea levels could rise by up to 2 feet.

Scientists have even speculated that a slight increase in Earth's rotation rate could result, along with other changes. Glaciers, already receding, will disappear. Epic floods will hit some areas while intense drought will strike others. Humans will face widespread water shortages. Famine and disease will increase. Earth’s landscape will transform radically, with a quarter of plants and animals at risk of extinction.

Read more

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04

Ubuntu 7.04 comes packed with a host of new features including data migration from Windows, new and easier ways to install multimedia codecs, binary drivers, as well as networking improvements and of course, GNOME 2.18, the 2.6.20 kernel and more.

Ubuntu 7.04 is the most user-friendly Ubuntu to date and includes a ground-breaking Windows migration assistant, excellent wireless networking support and improved multimedia support.

Windows migration tool - The new migration tool recognises Internet Explorer favorites, Firefox bookmarks, desktop wallpaper, AOL IM contacts, Yahoo IM contacts and imports them in Ubuntu. This offers easier and faster migration for new users of Ubuntu and individuals wanting to run a dual partition. In addition to single accounts, you can migrate several users' settings in Ubuntu.

Playing an MP3 or other media file just got a lot easier. If the required pieces are not yet installed, 7.04 will get the correct codecs for you, no more searching and no need for long and complicated instructions.

Stunning new desktop effects are available as a technology preview for users who choose to enable them. They remain turned off by default, for the benefit of users with older or less powerful chips and certain non-supported graphics cards.

New in 7.04 is Network Manager, a simple way to find and connect to wireless and wired networks. With a single click, view all the available wireless networks and their strengths. For those on a secured network, WPA support is built in right out of the box

Feisty features all new artwork; check out the new Desktop Background image, and a boot-up splash image that has more 'bling'. The new theme also includes a polished icon set.

Download here

Ubuntu Community Magazine

FullCircle - the Ubuntu magazine has a brief history of the various versions of Ubuntu as well as the preview of the upcoming Feisty Fawn release. Download it from the link below

Download link

Which ads are blocked most often?

My normal internet activity involves visiting Technology, Finance sites, use gmail, Google search, once in a while visit sites where I can download stuff.

While I predominantly use Google products, its interesting to see how many ads were blocked in my ad blocking program. See the number of times ads were blocked over a period of 6 months. This site is supported by ads as well - so I woudn't really recommend it - I know there is a contradiction there :(

Just click on the above image, its self-explanatory.

whos.amung.us widget

You go to their website, copy the code and put it on your site, you can let your visitors view what's the most popular page on your webpage, how many concurrent sers are currently on your website. Works neat - ofcourse AJAX based ;). I hear that it works well for 1000 concurrent users or less

Samsung SPH-M8100 Smartphone

The Samsung SPH-M8100 is a PDA WiBro smartphone which offers wireless Internet, voice telephony and video telephony services through WiBro and CDMA 1x EV-DO technology. The slider boasts a 2.8-inch color touch screen display, a TV-out, an MMC card slot, and 2 cameras; a 2.0-megapixel camera and a VGA camera for video calls. The M8100 also features T-DMB, Bluetooth with A2DP functionality, 128 ROM / 64 MB RAM memory and Microsoft's latest view and edit function.

Samsung's P9000 is a convergence device, capable of providing voice and multimedia data communications via WiBro. The P9000 comes with a full QWERTY keyboard for quick typing and surfing, while the MP3 player, VOD, and camera functions provide easy access to multimedia entertainment. In addition, the Samsung P9000 acts as a multi-functional terminal that can be used as a general PC, thanks to its Windows XP-based operating system.

Nokia N95

Nokia N95 is a multimedia device with an innovative 2-way slide concept, integrated GPS functionality, a 5-megapixel camera and support for high-speed mobile networks.

With its integrated GPS, the Maps application includes maps for more than 100 countries, enabling users to explore the world, find specific routes or locate services such as restaurants and hotels and covering more than 15 million points of interest.

With the Carl Zeiss optics on the 5-megapixel camera, consumers can capture print quality photos and DVD-like quality video clips. Photos and video clips can be enjoyed on a compatible television thanks to the device's TV out feature and support for Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technology. Designed for HSDPA networks and with support for WLAN, EDGE and WCDMA networks, the N95 provides coverage and speeds wherever users may be.

It's selling in US!

Google Adsense Aribitrage

I've been always fascinated with Arbitrage - it exists in Stock Markets where you try to find price differences in stocks in different exchanges or between 2 merging companies.

There is one other kind of arbitrage which has become fairly popular - the Google Adsense Arbitrage - its where you bid $1 for a keyword, direct the traffic to a landing page with ads that pay $2 and get the profits.

Michael Gray in his 3 part article explains how Arbitrage works, the things you need to watch when you arbitrage.

Read here

Fuller Screen - using entire screen for browsing

Fuller Screen is a extension that enhances the existing Firefox Full Screen mode into a really full screen mode, hiding the remaining toolbars and statusbar and making them visible again when the mouse pointer hits an edge of the screen - more like a autohide mode

The autohide seems to be a little flaky though - and I am not sure if too many people use Fullscreen anyway - I am trying it out and finding a little hard to get adjusted - thats primarily because I use Live BookMarks, a lot of extensions like Firebug, del.icio.us, Foxclocks which reside on the toolbars.

Give it a try

Ubuntu 7.04 on CDs !

Ubuntu will be shipping the Feisty Fawn CDs through the Shipit service. This might be in very soon - Feisty Fawn is scheduled to be released on Apr 19 2007 - Check here

Among the prominent features are the Xorg 7.2 server, Graphical Desktop Effects, New Artwork, Automatic media detection, codec installation, new Games - Chess, Sudoku

Edgy (6.1) wasn't available in the Shipit service

Keep checking Shipit :)

Gmail Paper - Get printouts of your mails!

Read more!

How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords

If you invited me to try and crack your password, you know the one that you use over and over for like every web page you visit, how many guesses would it take before I got it?

Let’s see… here is my top 10 list. I can obtain most of this information much easier than you think, then I might just be able to get into your e-mail, computer, or online banking. After all, if I get into one I’ll probably get into all of them.

Read more