Hero of the Galaxy

As promised I indeed bought an Android phone. First I bought a Samsung Galaxy. It is a plain vanilla android phone. I was actually planning to buy a HTC Hero but "The Mobile Store" at Velachery did not have Hero. They only had Galaxy. They did not know a damn thing about Android but somehow oversold it to me. With the device being 7000 rupees cheaper than Hero while it had almost same spec and with their promise of replacing the device if there is any problem I ended up buying Galaxy reluctantly.

After buying the phone, I read the reviews, and they rated Galaxy as very average. Added to that the GPS did not work at all. I also realized Galaxy does not provide OTB MS Outlook Exchange server sync. Hmm bad. I had to visit "The Mobile Store" multiple times about these problems. Poor guys did not have any clue about GPS. They repeatedly tried convincing me that it is Airtel that needs to enable GPS. After lot of frustration and with the help of "GPS Status" app, I figured GPS would work if I go out and stand below clear sky. GPS receiver in Galaxy is very weak. Ok...fine. I was about to live with it and then came the killer. The regular EDGE itself stopped working. Even after lot of massaging Galaxy refused to budge. Terrified, I again rushed to "The Mobile Store". They told me that I need to go to an authorized Samsung Mobile service center and get a "Dead on Arrival" certificate and after that only they would replace the device.

I doubt if Samsung service center ppl also had any clue about this new model. I convinced them to give the DOA certificate. The incredible thing was just after getting the DOA, Galaxy started connecting to EDGE network. By this time I completely hated Galaxy so I kept quite about it. With DOA and another 7K I exchanged the Galaxy to a HTC Hero.

Hero is definitely nice. The Sense UI is cool. Couple of problems though, Android OTB does not support Tamil fonts. I will have to root the device to make Tamil fonts in. I am little scared to root 32K brand new babe. In addition I am not sure if I would loose or not the Sense UI when I root. I am continuing the research.

Will post updates...

Attack of Droids

Ok! So now the music starts and the screen is lifting. Party about to start.

There has been so much buzz about android phones to be unveiled before end of this year. And the most expected one, Motorola Droid, opens its counter tomorrow with Verizon. I am thrilled and excited about the prospect of Android to which I have become a fan.

Unfortunately Android options in India are too little and too costly. Airtel sells HTC Magic and HTC Hero at around 32K. I have been thinking, double thinking whether its worth 32k. But heck with it. I am going for one soon.

Android: The Platform of the Future.

As you may know last year T Mobile released its G1 phone powered by Android. It is a device in the league of iPhone. While G1 is pretty exciting, still every one said iPhone is still to be beaten. However this year there is emerging consensus that the platform to be beaten in coming days would be Android.

So what is Android? Android is a Mobile Internet Devices platform developed by Open Handset Alliance, which is primarily promoted by Google. Why there is so much buzz on Android

1) Unlike iPhone platform, Android is going to be open source and less restrictive. Any can develop applications based on Android and sell it in the market, while for iPhone apps, Apple needs to approve it before it can be posted in iPhone Apps market.

2) Android has received support from multiple handset makers including that of Motorola and Sony Ericsson besides a lot of small handset makers. In this year at three devices (One Chinese - Qiji, One Australian and another one Neo Free Runner from OpenMoko).This will result in a market that is flooded with devices powered by Android and hence a reason for developers to reckon with it.

3) Google targets Android not just for Mobile Phones. In deed Google mentions of "Mobile Internet Devices" rather than "Mobile Phones". So people are expecting devices from set-top-boxes to notebook to be powered by Android. Currently there are few cases where people were successful in running their laptops and other non-Android mobile phones with Android.

4) Google has released Android SDK for developing applications. This will follow java syntax, which would help developers who know Java(who are in plenty) to easily become developers in Andrioid platform.

5) To consider the local context and market in India, it is very clear that mobile phones are way ahead of PCs in people adaption. Hence, any strategy to address digital divide should consider Android type smart phones. Soon, there would be a lot of ultra cheap smart phones running android with intuitive user interfaces in vernacular languages with content of interest for local audiences. This would probably lead India to real digital and information revolution.

Google's Satellite. Are we subsidizing our own insecurity?

Yes. No kidding. The General Dynamics rocket that blasted off last week placed the super HiTech satellite named GeoEye1 in orbit. This satellite can take pictures of the earth at very high resolution. i.e at 41 centimeter per pixel.

The pictures are taken for U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, as part of the NextView project of the agency. But the interesting thing is Google has exclusive commercial license to buy the satellite pictures for the civilian use. As per the agencies licensing scheme, pictures at resolution of 50 cm will be given to Google. According to the CNET article the original NextView contract between the US agency and GeoEye was worth 500$ million.

It is not clear how much Google will pay for its exclusive use of those satellite photos. Considering there will be huge interest from MS/Yahoo and other Map2.0 vendors, I am sure it will be a huge portion, so much so that Google got it's logo pasted in the rocket itself.



Now the thing is, the satellite is going to picture not only USA, but also the entire world, that means countries like India too. So the high resolution intelligence pictures of foreign countries are in turn paid by Google. If we extrapolate it we can say that Google is paying it's government to spy on other countries.

Well...the thing is we can not complain much about that if Google is just a US company. But, Google is a multinational, and part of the profit they are going to make from those Map 2.0 is going to come from people who are searching Google maps from countries like India.

In addition, it looks like, before the pictures are given to Google, any security risk pictures will be manipulated by the US agencies. But what about the security-risks of other countries. For example, do Indian agencies have a say in what get's shown and what not? of course not(I think and I am pretty sure).

It's a double blow and it just does not sound right.

Chrome O Some

The day would have probably dawned with alarm bell (ominous one that is) for people at Microsoft. Even the "happy campers and good people" at Mozilla would have been startled by the unexpected friendly fire that might send them to tough times ahead.

Google has announced that today they are going to unveil the beta of their next generation browser "Chrome". My hands have started itching already to download it & try it. For some well known reason, I think it is going to be really cool. Let us see. I am also little bit worried that Google is becoming the next monster.

I went through their Chrome comic (which is another innovation BTW. I went through it till the last page where that french-bearded manager was throwing out philosophies of why chrome. I could do it only because of the format of the introduction)

- For Chrome tabs have top priority. "Tabs on Top"
- Each tab is separate process.
- Google has built a brand new Javascript virtual machine to be faster, better and elegant (under the hood)
- Each tab can support multiple threads. They say current breed of browsers are single threaded for each tab.
- There is a "Privacy" mode in which none of what you did will be logged or stored anywhere in the client PC.

As Tech Crunch pointed out...with Gears+Chrome google will take over most of your online time and hence probably the world.

Turning software pirate into a paying customer

PLM, EDA, MCAD are pretty costly piece of software with relatively small install base. Each of them follow some licensing scheme, however normally they get hacked and pirated quickly. The complaint from vendors is that even some big companies in emerging market cheat on licenses. While they buy few legitimate licenses so that they would be legal and can get official support, they go for pirated versions to be "cost effective" to support their large user base.

A new start-up V.I is coming up with a tool called CodeArmour. This one does not block pirates from using the software. But, it stealthily collects usage data and sends it to the vendor. The idea is that the vendor can use it as a sales lead. Kind of carrot and stick approach, "Hey...buy license and lets be friends or I will expose that you are a thief"

First thing that comes to my mind is what about privacy violations...Also, will pirates sit and watch this CodeArmour to mow them down without giving a fight...Hmmm

Aras PLM wins another customer

Aras PLM has won Ubidyne GmbH, the global leader in digital antenna embedded radio technology for wireless communications. As per the communication from Thomas Hartmann, Director of System Testing at Ubidyne, the main reason behind selecting Aras was it's main USP, that is Free Open Source Software(FOSS) model.

Aras has a neat user interface that gels nicely with Windows OS/IE. It also comes with the basic set of PLM modules. In addition to all, it's "No Upfront License Cost" model is a killer combination. It is definitely disruptive and we have to see how it fares in the competitive PLM market