Saurav Srivastava | Saurav Srivastava

Vectir : The only remote control you will need

Posted on February 3, 2010March 20, 2011 by Saurav Srivastava

When I had my old Sony Ericsson K750i it had a feature using which I could control Windows Media Player or any other compatible media player using my phone over Bluetooth. It was quite a useful feature as I didn’t need to buy a Windows Media Centre remote to control the media players. Besides, its just one less device to deal with as K750i used to do it all.

After buying my Nokia N79, I was missing this feature a lot & was looking desperately for some application which could give me this or similar feature. I tried various application for my N79 but either some of them refused to connect or just didn’t work. Few days ago I tried Vectir & to my surprise, it worked flawlessly with my N79 & Windows 7.

Vectir works by installing the application on your system & installing a small Java based app on your mobile phone. All you have to do is to start the application on your PC and then start the application on your phone. Once the Phone app has started, it will search for your computer, after which you can connect either automatically or if Bluetooth serial port service is not installed in the computer then by setting a COM Port manually.

It also supports connecting via WiFi but this I wasn’t able to test as I don’t have a WiFi card in my desktop.

Once configured, you can also change the keypad shortcuts to your liking. This I liked as now I have almost same keypad shortcuts for both Windows Media Player & Media Centre.

What I like about Vectir is that it doesn’t come in your way when using. You just start the application on your computer & it can continue to work in the background. I would have appreciated if it could run as a service, as once configured, we don’t need to see the configuration part again.

Since Vectir is still quite new & considering Windows 7 was jut released, I hope the developers do decide to include some features like jumplist support in future as the entire right click menu of Vectir tray icon can come in a jumplist.

A more native UI to Windows 7 would also be appreciated though its not as important currently because once running, users will hardly see it again as it runs completely transparent in your system. The entire UI of Vectir is made in WPF & being a .net application, not only it is fast but also secure & efficient on RAM.

Currently Vectir runs with any mobile phone supporting Java based apps whether it is normal keypad based or Touch Screen. It is one app which you should sure try before buying a Media Centre remote for your PC.

You can download a trial and check how good it works for you.

Roundtable with S.Somasegar, Microsoft

Posted on April 17, 2009April 18, 2009 by Saurav Srivastava

My M.V.P lead Mr. Abhishek Baxi called me few days ago all of a sudden to tell me about the urgent opportunity to meet Mr. Somasegar S, Senior Vice President of Microsoft, Developer Division. Whose going to miss such an opportunity, so I packed my bags, took the first bus available to Delhi as train tickets were not available on time & reached Delhi.

I had no place to stay so stayed with my brother in his college hostel & thanks to his contacts I was able to locate Oberoi Hotel. I reached there on time for the meet to start.

Its rare to get a chance to meet such influencing personality like Mr. Somasegar S from Microsoft who is the reason why we developers & designers are able to create such magnificent solutions for Windows. He creates the hammer, using which we chisel out the craft.

I wasn’t expecting many people but to my surprise there were many people all from there own field of expertise. It was an honor to meet Mr. Vijay Malhotra again who inspired me to start paying attention to Linguistic when we make a software at InfraniX. I was also able to meet Mr. Vinod Unny, regional Director Microsoft.

I hope I didn’t make the attendees angry by throwing maximum question at Mr. Somasegar. I asked question like integration between Photoshop & Expression Blend, Microsoft DreamSpark initiative etc. Despite of having just one hour with us, Somasegar Sir were able to answer many of our questions.

You can view all the pictures at the Flickr Photo stream of Abhishek Baxi. I am adding some to this post.

Group Photograph

Even Grace Agrees, I am still fat.

Windows Diary

Posted on April 8, 2008April 10, 2008 by Saurav Srivastava

I was thinking today, what happened to the good old diary we used to keep in real life? Where did it go, has it vanished somewhere? It seems that it really has vanished, or maybe the form is changed.

We now spend so much time on computers, why not have a diary which we can password protect or share with other family members. So far I have not seen any compelling diary application for Windows so I decided to make a concept UI as I am not a software developer. Now if only like always I could find a software developer willing to make this a reality. Presenting Windows Diary…

Windows Diary uses a database to save all the diary entries. You just start the app & select the date from the calendar on the sidebar which you can show or hide using the sidebar button on the task toolbar & click on the “New Diary Entry” button on the toolbar. You can have multiple diary entries per day & multiple pages per entry. You can edit, add music, video or image to the diary, export the diary entry as a PDF or XPS or mail it to anyone. Then you have the Show/Hide sidebar & Options button.

You can also search for a particular diary entry by name, tag, or date using the integrated search field.

I don’t know much, what else would you require in a diary application? Or is there any idea using which I can make it further simple? Let me know in the feedback.

Concept UI: Windows Password Center

Posted on April 8, 2008 by Saurav Srivastava

Windows Vista lacks a good password management application by default which all other Operating Systems provide in one form or other. Since I already have a good idea for an UI, I am presenting here a concept UI for Windows Password center.

It’s a very simple application. The best password management tool available in Windows is AI Roboform but it is limited to Webpages only & can’t remember passwords for Windows Live Messenger or Outlook 2007 etc. Windows Password center acts as a single platform for all kind of passwords. Any application can save the password in this, & once unlocked, as long as it is not locked, anyone application can use the passwords stored.

This isn’t the complete UI. Just 20% infect, but the layout is final. More info & final screen shots & UI to follow soon.

Concept UI: Yahoo Messenger for Mobile Phones

Posted on April 8, 2008 by Saurav Srivastava

I was looking at the state of Mobile IM clients out there today, & it’s not that good. None of the official companies such as Yahoo or Google or Microsoft are releasing mobile version of their IM Client based on JAVA which can be used on all phones. Yahoo has released Yahoo Go but it is not JAVA based which restricts it to only a few phones out there. Microsoft has Windows Live Messenger for Windows Mobile 6 but not for any other phone out there such as my K750i. Google isn’t any different, though they at least have a mobile E-Mail client based on JAVA.

The possibility of JAVA for Mobile is endless. It is a lifesaver for restricted OS based phones such as Sony Ericsson or Motorola. These phones don’t support third party native software but have full support for JAVA software.

I mostly use yahoo messenger, so I decided to make a concept UI of Yahoo Messenger for Mobile based on JAVA which I think what it should be like. I call upon any J2ME developer who is interested, I would be glad to help in making the front end UI part if someone can contribute to make the back end software engine. The JAVA API for Yahoo Messenger is already documented at jYMSG Sourceforge webpage & using this API anyone can make a JAVA Mobile based Yahoo Messenger client, I would be glad to provide the UI part if required. More information can be found at the DevX webpage. Here is how the concept UI looks like. This is a very basic text & emoticon only version of Yahoo Messenger which I have tried to make.

When the user starts the application it loads & gives the user the following screen.

The user is asked to enter his Yahoo ID & Password. After that he can select any one of the given options as shown below the login information section. If he selects to save the login automatically his username & password will be saved in the phone as long as the application is not removed. Next time when the user starts the application it will automatically connect to Yahoo Messenger. After entering info he clicks on “Sign In” & messenger connects to yahoo showing a progress bar.

Once the user logs in, he is shown the groups of his Yahoo messenger & the online & offline contacts. By selecting in “Settings” under the “Menu” button, he can select whether to show offline contacts or not.

By default Messenger sorts contacts by their status. He can click on any group name to expand or collapse that group. To start a chat he just needs to click on the name of the friend which will then give the chat Windows. The Contact List window also notifies him of the unread mails in his Yahoo Mailbox at the top menu bar, as shown in the image.

The interface is based on tabs. The current selected tab is shown in black color, the background tabs are shown in white color while any offline or unread Message he receives is shown in another tab which flashes in golden color until the user select to show that tab. The application notifies the user of unread messages in various ways such as flashing the tab, or vibration in the phone or playing a notification sound. All this can be selected in the “Settings”.

Here are how the Menus & Settings look. The menu background is plane white color, & when you mouseover a menu item, its color changes to blue & a hover rectangle is shown on top of it to notify that this item is selected. To open a menu item, either click on it or press the keypad button.

Menu at the first Sign in page, for settings

Connection Settings selected & Settings Page

Settings about how to notify the user. Just to show here I made an image for the checkbox, however in reality it will be replaced by JAVA Checkbox

Font size can be increased or decreased anywhere.

User preference to set the status & whether to show offline contacts in list or not.

Menu for Contact List

Menu while chatting to superman

Emoticons Section. You can either type in the emoticon code, or select from the list

You might say that the interface is very plane & without much images. The reason is that when we make something for JAVA Mobile, developers have limited amount of JAVA Heap size or JAVA RAM to work with. Even in my K750i the JAVA heap size in just 1 MB, due to which small file size of JAR file & low RAM requirement is essential. If I get a willing J2ME developer then we will make the Messenger first as you see here, & after that we will add images as & where required. Since this is a front end, it can also be slapped on the back end of Symbian OS version