Archive for year 2009
2009 : The year… that was
Dec 31st
The end of 2009 is here, another year gone & we are older by one more year. This year was different as lots of good things happened along with bad things but the number of bad things were less compared to 2008.
Year started with me trying to get away from old kiddish life and following on the discipline of dad.
I joined SlideShare, New Delhi in 2009 & have been working here so far. Its good to work in SlideShare as you are able to learn a lot and work in a good environment under the guidance. Some problems are there, but I am trying to overcome them.
I got in a serious relationship finally.
I joined Twitter 
First time in my life of using mobile phones in 8 years, I lost my Nokia N79.
I gained weight, lost weight, gained again & lost weight.
Some friends made a deep position in life, friendship grew more with Ibrahim, Praveen, Aakriti, Pranjali, Suchita & Sukirti.
I became Local Guardian of my cousin sister. Her teacher said on parents teacher meeting “I called your big brother, not friend”
Started taking programming more seriously & improved upon designing skills. Learning C# now.
There were a lot more things, but this is all I will mention.
Facebook & Twitter : The GX way
Nov 22nd
Twitter & Facebook are all the rage these days. Almost everyone I know is on it even if they are not active there. A friend of mine recently joined Facebook who is a long time Orkut user & her first question was “How do I talk to someone on Facebook? Where is the scrapbook?”. I have to say, Facebook is sometimes confusing, no wonder they released Facebook Lite recently.
When I am using Twitter or Facebook, I prefer not to go to there website to do the thing. I am a person, who prefers to navigate through the web using conventional desktop application, which is why despite of having GB of space in GMail & Windows Live Mail, I still use Outlook. Likewise, here are two applications I use for Twitter & Facebook which I liked at first try only.. & have good potential on the Windows 7 platform both made using SilverLight
Twitter = Sobees Lite
Sobees is a WPF & SilverLight based client for Twitter, Facebook & MySpace. Although only the twitter component is what I use as the Facebook part of Sobees isn’t up to the mark for me.
What I like about Sobees is that it supports integration with Windows 7 Superbar & Jumplists, lets me change the layout as I want & update my status on multiple services at once only. I can have a single column layout which is what I prefer with Tabs on top or Side or a Multi Column layout… anyway I need. This is something only DestroyTwitter gives (As far as I know).
Sobees also shows a notification in the bottom right hand side when there is a new update. I can also update my status using the jumplist too.
Being WPF based, it uses hardware acceleration to which makes scrolling through large lists easy. Most important thing due to which I like Sobees compared to any Adobe AIR based Twitter client is the ability to change the font size according to what I like. Text make up as a large part of the Twitter experience so more configuration in text is a always a better feature compared to Adobe AIR where text fonts are at a predefined size only & do not scale with change in Monitor DPI.
Sobees is currently in Alpha phase & yet provides amazing Twitter experience, final version should be available soon with support for DirectWrite & Direct2D.
Facebook = Fishbowl
I found about FishBowl through a tweet of fellow MVP Manan Kakkar. Its a desktop client for Facebook released by UXlabs@Microsoft. Another awesome app made with SilverLight & features optimised to Windows 7. I always wanted to use a desktop client for everything & Fishbowl does that for me & Facebook.
From what it seems, Fishbowl is using DirectWrite for the text.
Scrolling through the lists in Fishbowl is better then Sobees, so I guess Direct2D isn’t enabled in Sobees yet. But since Fishbowl is able to scroll through long lists easily, I am sure other apps can do it too.
Do check out these apps, they are worth using specially if you are on Windows 7
My newest toy : Samsung R517
Nov 15th
I bought my Desktop PC from Lucknow to Delhi as I am more avid fan of a desktop then laptop, so now I needed a computer for my home in Lucknow, something my dad & sisters can easily use.
Few days ago, I went to Nehru Place to buy a laptop with my friend, he was eying netbooks which all had Intel Atom CPU & were available for Rs 20,000 approx. However, he wanted to run Windows 7 on it & doubted the power of Intel Atom with Intel GMA 500 onboard graphics which is default on all the Netbooks out there. He wasn’t wrong, Intel Atom doesn’t have sufficient power to give a good Windows 7 experience.
Then we saw something which we really like & found totally worth them money. We found Samsung R517 Laptop for just Rs 25,000 which comes with FreeDOS. The reason it is available for this cost is due to the exclusion of an Operating system which reduces the cost. I bought this laptop for my family today.
By looking at the laptop, you can easily confuse it with Lenovo ThinkPad R series laptops. Even I was confused when I saw it for the first time. Samsung has tried to go with a no-frills, no-jazzy look with this laptop. Its a simple, plain laptop which has enough potential & power as primary laptop for my family who uses a computer ones in a while only & there tasks constitutes of browsing, Microsoft Office, chatting, watching movies, music etc but the most important thing to note here is that they don’t use the computer everyday. There, it opens ones or twice a week only.
Keeping this in mind, I decided to buy this laptop for my home too as I did not want to spend a lot of money & wanted something which can support Windows 7 Home premium easily & can be used for the next 3 years without even touching.
The laptop configuration is as follows :
Intel Pentium dual core T4200 running at 2 GHz with 800 MHz FSB
15.6” glossy screen with a resolution of 1376X768px
2 GB DDR2 800 MHz RAM
250 GB 5400 RPM Samsung SATA2 Hard disk
Intel GMA X4500 onboard graphics
Realtek 5.1 channel HD audio with SRS
.3 MP Webcam which is sufficient enough for Video chats
rest as usual, like Wi-Fi, etc. One thing to note that there is no Onboard Bluetooth. I wonder why Samsung decided to exclude it. I bought a generic Bluetooth dongle with it for Rs 150. The display as you see is glossy, something we designers do not prefer but for home use its good, videos look awesome on it, specially HD Videos. The laptop was handling 1080p video just fine
For full configuration, check Samsung’s Product page for R517
The right hand side of laptop has only the DVD writer while the left hand side contains 3 USB Port, one Wired LAN port, Micro SD card reader, Audio & Mic ports & one VGA Port to attach external monitor.
Like I said, simple yet effective package. There isn’t what people won’t need & it is sufficient for most people as far as hardware peripherals are concerned.
I decided to install Windows 7 home premium & decided not to install pirated software as long as not required. I was surprised to see that we can make a fully working Windows system without paying anything for the software. Here is what I used :
1) Browser : Internet Explorer 8 is given in Windows 7 by default but I decided to install Google Chrome official version with extensions like Adsweep, flashblock & smoothscroll just because it is faster then IE 8 overall. Also, Chrome integrated with Windows even better then Firefox. Firefox would have been too alien for them as IE 8 or Google Chrome are good enough out of the box while Firefox needs a lot of extensions to make it work good.
2) I decided to use Free Download Manager which easily integrates with both IE 8 & Chrome. It automatically takes over Chrome’s downloader using a Netscape compatible dll.
3) Chatting : Personally, I have moved to Digsby, but my sister still prefers to use individual messenger clients because they provide better features like PhotoShare of Yahoo messenger. I install what we all are used to using, latest version of Google talk, Yahoo messenger, Skype & Windows Live Messenger.
4) Office suite : Though I could have given them OpenOffice, but just because I had a license spare & my sister is more familiar with Office 2007, I gave her Office 2007 Student edition as she only needs Excel & Word.
5) E-Mail : Well, she is better off using Web mail clients considering the huge space in GBs that they allow today.
6) Windows Live Suite & applications : This is something worth noticing. With Windows 7, Microsoft has tightened the integration between Windows Live apps & Windows. Frankly speaking, everything is already given which is just a download away. I installed Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Photo Gallery & Windows Movie Maker which is enough for the way they use & manage videos & images. Considering I also have a Sony CyberShot digicam which I will be giving at home, Windows Live Photo Gallery fulfils the requirements completely. All they do is copy the image, crop out the unwanted areas & mail to whoever is concerned.
7) For image editing, I decided to stick with Paint. Usually, there isn’t much editing they will need, except for resizing, cropping etc which paint is good enough to do because with Windows 7, Microsoft made Paint a half decent editor with basic features which are usually used like resizing, cropping.
8 ) For security, I decided to stick with a properly configured Windows Firewall, Windows defender & Microsoft Security essentials antivirus. These 3 integrate beautifully in Windows 7 & they run like “Set it & forget it “. Besides, its free & sufficient enough. I also turned on UAC.
9) I am an old fan of Yahoo! Widgets, so I installed this instead of using Windows Gadgets.
10) InfraRecorder for CD Burning. Though I taught my sister to burn Data CD & DVD using Windows 7′s inbuilt Disk Burning utility but this comes in handy when burning other type of CDs like mp3 or picture CD.
11) Peazip for archiving. Its a simple & free no frills Archiving utility. Right click & select “extract” for ZIP, RAR etc or right click & select “Add to Zip”.
12) Inbuilt Microsoft Remote desktop for fixing the computer if needed over the internet between home & Delhi
13) Windows 7 codec pack by Shard007. One pack for everything.
Sticking to only the default configuration helps. Things are tightly integrated & now all they have to do, is to open the laptop & use it without worrying about anything.
Well, I don’t know all about using habits of my family, so I will be updating this post as required.
Opera Mini 5 beta : Something Opera is better at
Oct 17th
Ever since the days of my old Sony Ericsson K550i, then K750i & now Nokia N79, Opera mini has been the de-facto browser of my choice. Most of the time, this was due to the fact that the web browser on Sony Ericsson phones was useless & only JAVA based applications were supported, so Opera Mini was a obvious choice.
Although now I use a Nokia N79 which has a good Webkit based browser which does provides desktop like browsing, it is still slower then Opera mini in terms of shear speed & data usage when using on a pay-per-kb model of most Indian GPRS plans.
I have used Opera mini since version 2 & have always liked its rendering speed & font rendering. For a mobile phone’s screen, the fonts are amazingly good. At the server side, Opera is using there own Presto rendering engine with Opera Mini 5, means the page is first rendered on the server of Opera with there latest browser engine then the page’s snapshot is compressed & sent over the air to your phone & what you see on your phone is an optimized version of the same page. You can either see the web page in desktop edition or a more optimized edition for mobile phone’s screen, due to Opera’s Small screen rendering technology first seen in Opera 7 for desktop. Opera indeed has been the pioneer in the field of browser innovation by giving features like tabbed browsing, speed dial, Opera Turbo & Small screen rendering, but they are behind in desktop browser usage.
I do hate Opera for all the “IE 8 is evil” fiasco but for browsing on a mobile phone, even I agree that the current version of IE is bad compared to Opera Mini/Mobile. Opera just rocks when it comes to embedded & device specific browsers. Opera is about to release Opera Mini 5 whose beta version is available for testing. There is only much which you can do with a browser on a mobile phone, but opera just upped it by giving features which are also in there Desktop browser.
With Opera Mini 5, Opera made the UI a lot more user friendly on touch screen mobile phones. Since 90% of the manufacturers are releasing new mobile phones in mostly touch screen form factor, the old Menu based layout of Opera mini 4.2 is not suitable. Opera has revamped the UI completely, yet making sure it adapts according to whether you are using a Touch Screen phone or a Keypad phone.
Below is the screenshot in which the UI is shown on a conventional phone on the left & a touch screen phone on the right with multiple tabs open. Navigation gets sometime used to, but once you get the habit, its quite easy to use. Since the future of mobile phones is touch screen phones only, whether you like it or not, its time to get used to the UI & UX of big buttons instead of Menus.
To make browsing even better on such a small package, Opera mini 5 also brings Inline text editing which lets the user edit the text in the same field instead of opening a new window for entering text. But here is the thing. This inline editing is for those using a qwerty keypad based phone like Nokia E65 or HTC Touch Pro 2, but the old method of a new window for text editing is also there for those of us using conventional phones like Nokia N79 which can use T9 to type.
However, Opera Link, ability to use a custom search engine & the RSS reader are not there in Opera Mini 5 yet, but it is scheduled to be released with the final version. RSS Is the primary task for which I use Opera Mini in my phone so exclusion of RSS is highly unlikely as that is also a feature many users use, cos on a mobile phone.. I have yet to see a better RSS reader then this.
One thing which we conventional phone users with keypad have over the touch screen users, is that our application can have shortcut keys which touch screen cannot. But then again, they have touch screen input which works better for browsing websites in my experience. Opera Mini 5 is actually making me use shortcut keys more & more for all tasks like #+5 for opening the bookmark menu, *+number to open that particular speed dial bookmark etc. It actually fast. There is a thread on Opera forum regarding tips for using the new version
The settings menu is also changed & made finger friendly.
![OM507[1]](http://gxsaurav.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/OM5071_thumb.jpg "OM507[1]")
The best part, Opera Mini 5 now has password manager & inline text selection, which come handy. Since this version has tabbed browsing, long pressing on a link gives you the option to open it in a new tab. Be warned that the current performance with multiple tabs is slow, so even I don’t open more then 3 tabs on my Nokia N79. I hope with the final version, the performance is further increased.
![OM518[1]](http://gxsaurav.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/OM5181_thumb.jpg "OM518[1]")
Opera indeed has a much better product in the mobile browser space then the competition. Even iPhone is no where near, cos Opera Mini is still faster then iPhone & now the UI actually beats iPhone’s Safari UI hands down.
Opera should rather use there resources on making the desktop browser better then suing Microsoft for IE 8 inclusion in Windows & open the browser for 3rd party extensions like Firefox or Google Chrome, if they want to succeed. They have been very very innovating in the browser space but the only reason many people don’t use it is due to lack of 3rd party application & extension integration. Its good that Opera software gives an EMail client, Torrent downloader etc in there browser itself in a very efficiently programmed software, but the general user today knows that he can extend the capability of his Firefox or Google Chrome or Internet Explorer 8 browser using extension but not in Opera, is what stops many of us users from switching full time to Opera.
You can download beta version of Opera Mini 5 by going to http://m.opera.com/next using your phone’s inbuilt browser. This is the recommended way as you also get to chose signed version which remove the continues nagging when using an unsigned JAVA application on a mobile phone due to security reasons.
* Images curtosy of wapreviews.com & intomobile.com
Wake up Sid at 1 am, SlideShare Business launch & what not….
Oct 11th
This week, I saw Wake up Sid again, with a friend. Now this is one movie in which Ranvir Kapoor has given marvelous performance considering this is his 3rd flick. The pairing with Konkona Sen was good, to me she looks like the real life girl we see when we go to some place not some make up clad barbie doll girl who is trying to be something she is not. Now she might not be that hot & all, but her acting skills are commendable in all the movies I have seen.
Wake up Sid reminded me of how I used to be 4 years back, before I myself got serious for life. Only a handful of kids today want to do something on there own, or a plan for life. They say “Live life for the moment”. Well, its good… but what about long term goals???
I saw this movie with Suchi, & she said this movie is based on the life of us … now how did the makers went 4 years back in time & saw us moving on in life to make this movie is something beyond my analysis. She isn’t much different then what Konkona Sen in the movie, she also came to delhi like this few months back & trying to be independent. She had no plan then, but now she has…. why can’t most of the girls be like her? Look hot, enjoy life & the moment but still career oriented.
Suchi can't show her face to anyone.....
Oh! & we had a small party few last week on the launch of SlideShare Business, the big party is still due as SlideShare had its 3rd birthday on 4th October. Its so good to see your brainchild live, people using it & appreciating it which makes us feel proud when we say “It was our team which made it.” All hail to Mani the Gr8 who polished & mentored us to create a diamond like product. That’s him in the left corner.
SlideShare business launch team
What is SlideShare Business
