IDLE BLOGGER » Technology

Things that happened since I last blogged

Jagadish — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:22:28 +0000

As always, there are too many things to write and too less time. I really enjoy teaching a lot and I love it when I teach these kids new things and they are just amazed like I did some magic trick. The thing I hate about teaching is that it takes up a lot of time. It really does not allow me to do other things. I spend a lot of time making homework problems, solutions for them and grading. The grading part of teaching is probably the most aggravating aspect. You see the kind of blunders they make in homework after going through all the trouble of explaining things, it really pisses me off.

Anyway, a lot of things happened since I last blogged. A few things I really hated and a very few things I enjoyed. Just thought I’d make a list in no particular order.

Nadal lost
Federer won French Open. I kinda expected this would happen though
Deccan chargers have won the IPL. Chennai kings lost in semis.
My girlfriend bought me a MacBook. I don’t know if I should cheer about this or not. I am a windows guy, not a great fan of Mac. But I will have to try to use it and see I guess.
Apple released a new iPhone which I really wanted to get. I even planned to get out of my contract with Sprint but really not a wise move considering AT&T has really bad network. Coming from a Sprint customer that is a huge insult.
Palm pre, the most loved phone since the original iPhone has finally been released, it is another phone I still want but I might not get it because I just don’t want to spend all that money and change my existing $30 SERO plan.
E3 has come and gone and so much to cheer about .
Microsoft – great show, highly impressed with Project Natal but I doubt it would work as well as they showed it would. It is not going to be an easy task pulling it off. And honestly, Peter Molyneux should shut the fuck up. He has a big mouth and I doubt if Milo would work as well he touted he would. Artificial intelligence is a still thing of science fiction and we are far from it. This is coming from a guy who does programming for a living, you better believe it .
Nintendo – probably the most boring show of all three. I am a rabid Nintendo fanboy and even I couldn’t help but yawn a few times but the announcement of Metroid: Other M has completely offset everything. Also I heard that there is a new Zelda in the making, there was a trailer for Super Mario Galaxy 2 and finally Little Big Planet Mario style. All exciting things but Nintendo is still missing that one puzzle piece, Wii-HD. Get it done, Nintendo. Give us HD.
Sony – Sony came up with the regular stuff. They had a brilliant show and very entertaining as well. God of War 3 was amazing, the Last Guardian trailer was awesome as well. Have to say, their motion controller seemed very interesting too. But they only showed a bunch of tech demos and no games yet. This kinda proves that MS and Sony have finally adopted the Nintendo philosophy and they jumped on the bandwagon a little too late. It might still take them a year or two to pull it off but HD is one thing Nintendo is far behind, so unless Nintendo comes up with Wii-HD, MS and Sony will be moving ahead this generation.
India lost the T20 World cup. They didn’t even qualify for the semis. They have been winning a lot lately, so this was expected to happen one day. I had no interest to start with anyway.
Lakers WON!! Enough said!

I guess that covers everything. Maybe I will blog often now that I have gotten that off my chest

Pros and cons of a touch-screen Mac tablet | The Digital Home – CNET News

Jagadish — Sat, 23 May 2009 02:00:47 +0000

Can Apple succeed where Microsoft failed?

Since the advent of the new Millennium (2001 not 2000), Bill Gates has been touting that tablet PCs are the future of computing. Almost 10 years and his retirement later, we still don’t seem them very popular. These devices which have no physical keyboard and all the inputs are based on touch screen, were supposed to replace the laptops. Microsoft failed miserably mostly because the touch screen technology in those days was naive and dysfunctional, handwriting recognition was pitiful. Microsoft probably pushed the technology a little too early. In 2001, desktop PCs were the norm but now, laptops rule the roost. Even Netbooks which are tiny are selling like hot cakes. Touch screen technology is definitely much better now with the multi-touch and what not! I am still curious to see how apple will attach a keyboard to this thing. I mean there are already lot of complaints about the iPhone’s virtual keyboard, something like that will never work on a Tablet. CNET does a quick round-up of all the pros and cons of a Tablet Mac.

It is surprising that there is so much attention being paid to speculation and rumors. But, this is supposed to be a “confirmed” rumor. So I guess this is all okay. I am not sure if this will succeed, but I have been wrong before

Pros and cons of a touch-screen Mac tablet | The Digital Home – CNET News.

Human Interface!

Jagadish — Sat, 23 May 2009 01:38:21 +0000

Flintstones version of a touch screen

From Voodoo to GeForce: The Awesome History of 3D Graphics | Maximum PC

Jagadish — Thu, 21 May 2009 04:17:10 +0000

I have always been a huge PC gamer all my life even though my humble beginnings as a gamer began on an NES. Even though, I played a huge number of games on PC and have been very well-informed about graphics cards, I never really had a graphics card on my computer, sadly. I always had a desktop with integrated graphics card and a laptop which could not be upgraded with a new graphics card. But my computer was always well equipped to play these games at “optimal” level. Probably, this is the reason I could not get into the latest games because of the lack of the latest graphics card. Either way, I am not rich enough to keep up with the pace of upgrading my graphics card. They become obsolete every 6 months. So it is hardly worth the investment to play just a couple of games. I can see why the console games have become popular of late.

Anyway, all that whining apart, I have read this cool article about the history of graphics card and I thought I would share. Click the link below to read more.

From Voodoo to GeForce: The Awesome History of 3D Graphics | Maximum PC.

Piratebay’s Immunity…

Motorola S9

Jagadish — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:55:06 +0000

I have been looking for a decent Bluetooth stereo headset for a while now. A few things that always swayed me away from making a purchase was the bulkiness of the headset and most importantly, the price. Most of the stereo headsets available in the market were in the “$80 and above” price range. I was not ready to shell out that kind of money because I was more than happy to have a wire hanging from my ears to torso. I was never a proponent of Bluetooth technology because the bandwidth offered was not a lot. But Bluetooth 2.0 has made significant advances in the right direction with 3 times faster data transfer, lower power consumption and more.

When I saw Motorola S9 stereo headset for $40 on buy.com, I knew it would be a good purchase. The price was affordable and they looked nice and sleek. I showed the picture to one of my friends and his first thought was that they look uncomfortable. They were anything but uncomfortable. They were not a snug fit as they were kinda hanging behind my neck but there was no pain wearing them for long periods of time. The pairing was a breeze with my smart phone (Sprint’s HTC Touch) as well my laptop using a Targus Bluetooth adapter.

The call quality was also very good both inside the apartment as well as outside. I noticed that people found it hard to hear me when I was outside and I had to speak up a little. The call quality deteriorated considerably during windy conditions but that was expected anyway.

The range was also very good inside the house. I usually leave my phone on the table in my living room and moved around the house without losing the connection to my cellphone. It was a different issue outside the house though. Sometimes, I had to hold the phone in my hand instead of putting it in my pants pocket as the music would start breaking. This only happened during the early days and I haven’t really noticed this happening recently. Maybe it’s not a real issue, we will see.

The touch sensitive buttons on the side are also really neat. I have heard people complaining in their reviews that sweat activates them during a workout. I haven’t had that trouble really. I was not using my stereo headset at the gym, so I can’t comment on that. They respond very well and I have no complaints.

Overall, I think Motorola S9 is a great purchase for $40. I am sure the prices will reduce further as Motorola is introducing Motorola S9 HD into the market. If you are someone who loves to take your music on the go, this is for you. It has great sound quality, long battery life, comfortable fit and great looks. Buy it. I assure you, you will not regret it.

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I-Movix SprintCam v3.

Jagadish — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:01:50 +0000

This is just amazing video. Watch it to the end, the way jelly jumps and floats in the air is just brilliant.

Source: David Coiffier

WordPress Vs Blogger

Jagadish — Wed, 23 May 2007 06:58:00 +0000

I am sure most of you guys are aware of the different blogging tools available online. Blogger is probably the only free blogging tool available and can afford to stay that way because of google. But I also found that Blogger is also the most basic blogging tool that there is. Even after the new beta, there is really nothing great you can do. If you look at the interface, it is the same old compose box except for the added tags. Even the settings and options hasn’t changed much. Even your templates look the same even though you can add a couple of widgets to the sidebar now when you had to tweak the template to do the same. But there is still a long way to go. One of the disadvantages of blogger is that there are no expandable posts. The whole blog post, no matter how long it is, will be shown on the page. Well ofcourse, you can add these expandable posts but it would require a lot of complicated tweaking. The new blogger template is not as easy to understand as the old one. The themes to choose from are very limited too. And I themes I found on other sites were not very pleasing either. There is only so much you could do here. I’m probably loading everything against blogger here but you would realize how cramped it is when you want to go beyond the default stuff blogger gives you.

Coming to WordPress, there are two flavours. One is WordPress.com and the other is WordPress.org. WordPress.com is similar to blogger, it is free and it gives you a .wordpress.com blog but as good as it looks, wordpress.com sucks because there is only so much you can do there. It is very restrictive, you cant put anything related to Javascript on the site. So you cant paste your google analytics code or other stuff here. Then there are the upgrades that you have to pay for. There are several templates available for you to play around with but if you want to make changes to it, you will have to cough up $15 for it. It is not a good thing to do really, especially when you cant even paste Javascript related code. But if you compare feature to feature, the default wordpress is far superior to blogger. The writing tools are amazing, inserting an image is easy peasy. Expandable post can be done with the click of a button. Youtube links can be added easily with tag. You can add widgets to the sidebars and there are some really good ones to play around with. But still no javascript related code is allowed. Your site statistics wont be as cool as the one from blogger. But wordpress has an inbuilt stats page, that will suffice I am sure .

Well if you want all the goodness of WordPress and more legroom, you need to get the wordpress blogging script that is available on wordpress.org site. Ofcourse, you will need your own hosting space and domain name. But it is the stuff made for bloggers. There are a million themes for you to play around with, there are umpteen number of plugins for every customization you need. It is just what you need to make your blog look professional like you mean business.

Symantec and Adobe complain over Vista

Jagadish — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 09:21:00 +0000

In the news, Microsoft’s Vista seems to have hit a snag even before it is released, with Symantec and Adobe complaining over Microsoft’s monopolistic behavior. Symantec’s complaint has been the inclusion of patchguard in Vista which stops software like rootkits meddling with the kernel. Their concern is that they require low level kernel access to prevent malicious code from running. While I understand their concern, I don’t quite understand what they are getting at. They cant possibly ask Microsoft to make less secure Operating system just to allow third party security vendors to earn their bread. I am sure if Symantec guys sat down and waited for the OS to be released, they will probably find a way to work with patchguard to solve the issue. Instead of churning out memory hogs with every update, they might as well try and create an antivirus software which attempts at minimizing the memory usage. All they’ve been doing over these years is to add several graphical bells and whistles every year instead of making a software that is efficient and light like Kaspersky.

And Adobe’s case is more like the age old Netscape-IE war. Since MS is developing is a new format called XPS, they feel that it might hamper the sales of their PDF software. I don’t know what is wrong in making their own format. MS is after all a software giant and they have the right to make softwares. People always have the choice of using a different software if they don’t like one. I’ve moved on from IE to Firefox long back. In fact I’ve never used IE as my primary browser. I’ve used Opera, Mozilla, Netscape because they all had tabs but never was a big fan of IE until IE 7 came out. So the software makers should stop worrying about MS is putting in their OS and start worrying about making their own software better because Adobe Acrobat reader has become increasingly stale with every release. I don’t think there are any new features added to it except for the security updates.

I think one should stop telling MS what to do. Nobody tells apple what to do. I think apple bundles its own software and tools with every Mac and nobody complains. Just because MS is the software giant does not necessarily mean that they will make the best software there is. And competition will survive if it is better than MS, like Firefox showed us.

You can read the whole thing here.

Things that happened since I last blogged